Episode #101: Arliss speaks with Resident Philosopher Shottenkirk (his mother!) about 20th Century nihilism, God, and the role of art

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2:00-4:20: Arliss states that art had two phases: a hierarchical phase when it imitated music in structure. Like music has a tonic note to it, and art organized itself similarly with composition. But that "was shattered" at the early twentieth century with Kandinsky and Schoenberg who were doing work at the same time, and communicated. "From Schoenberg came horror music - the kind of music you'd score a horror movie to."
4:20-5:50: Arliss further explains that Kandinsky, before he was famous, was a fan of Schoenberg's. "I kind of think of Schoenberg as being the devil of music, basically." And they had a long correspondence.
5:55-6:13: Shottenkirk rephrases Arliss's position by saying that there was some kind of shattering of traditional structures, and that Arliss thinks it was a mistake.
6:13- 7:23: Arliss states that it was "deliberately a mistake". Schoenberg knew he was doing away with the structure he was taught. Was it a good thing? "I don't know" - it happened. And much of the art of the twentieth century is born of that shattering. "But it was a piece of a larger cultural movement away from traditional life; structuring your life around a belief in a God... it wasn't an accident that it followed on the heels of WWI."
7:25-8:49: Shottenkirk notes that when she wrote her book on censorship (Cover Up the Dirty Parts!) that this change in art was entirely the result of WWI, but Arliss is making the larger point that the demise of expected order in art is a broader sociological fact.
8:50-11:39: Arliss gives some history of literature in WWI. On the German side, Franz Rosenzweig wrote the "Star of Redemption" (on Judaism) in the trenches, and at the same time and on the other side Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings, which is a profoundly (Christian) religious book. It was about pre-Christian people, and about dying. "What Christianity and Judaism sought to do was to preserve a memory of yourself" and Lord of the Rings is about "primordial slush of dying peoples in pre-Christian people" and the "anxiety and angst before Christ visited them".
11:40-11:41: Shottenkirk states that it is not clear how this is a shattering of normality.
11:42-12:25: Arliss answers: This was the way life was organized until Schoenberg and Nietzsche, etc., disavowed God and the organizing principle of art and the hierarchy of things.
12:26-13:53: Shottenkirk summarizes Arliss's points. Before the 20th C: Hierarchy, natural law theory. After the 20th C: it is a horizontal world.
13:53-15:30 : Arliss expands on the nihilism of the 20th century.
15:31-16:33: Shottenkirk agrees that art doesn't make up the social world, but it articulates the social world. But asks Arliss about the role of art.
16:34-19:03: Arliss argues that we today have this conceit that we are creative, but in truth we today are totally self-absorbed. But in former times, such as with Bach, who thought only God was creative, there was the most creative of all art.
19:05-24:55: Shottenkirk disagrees and argues that the 20th C. was profoundly creative. Arliss agrees that wonderful art came out of it, "but doesn't know how to square it with my argument". Shottenkirk states that the way to square it is to say that it is nihilistic. Arliss ends by saying that art is not about gaining knowledge; the relation between art and cognition is that there isn't a connection. The reason we do art is so that we don't have to think rationally about the world all the time.
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