Publisher's Synopsis
The Inversion of Western Aesthetic Sensibility
Our experience of "race" is based on how we define beauty. In the past, we thought that discipline was liberating and beautiful, while raw nature was confining and ugly. Today we believe that raw nature is liberating and beautiful, and discipline is confining and ugly. And for better or worse, modernists see African Americans as somehow non-Western, more natural, or a kind of moral avant-garde. This volume surveys the arts and politics to illustrate the change in our idea of the beautiful.
"There is much to admire in this work." -- Kevin MacDonald, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, California State University, and author of The Culture of Critique.
"This work illustrates with many telling examples the inversion of values wrought by modernist egalitarianism." -- Stanley Payne, Ph.D., Professor of History, Emeritus, University of Wisconsin, Madison, author of Civil War in Europe, 1905-1949 (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
"For the select few who appreciate a masterful weaving of history, philosophy and the arts (from grand opera to the movies) the book is a tour de force. Reading it is like a return to college. For those concerned about the state of modern life, it is a must read." -- Robert Weissberg, Professor of Political Science, New York University.
"Modern sleep and dream science teaches us, as does The Victory of Humanism that all human activity, including art and politics are products of the human brain and that each of us has the privilege and responsibility of using it actively and communicating its creations." -- Dr. J. Allan Hobson, Professor of Psychiatry, Emeritus, Harvard Medical School, author of Dreaming: An Introduction to the Science of Sleep (Oxford University Press, 2004).
"Thomas Martin might as well have added the subtitle to his book "The Changing Nature of Western Symbolism." The author focuses on the shifts in the meanings of Western symbols ... and he explains their different interpretations within different socio-political epochs. The author displays considerable erudition as he puts his description into a wider historical perspective. The book offers us a further insight into the self-perception of the Ancients as opposed to the self-perception of what came to be known as "the Moderns". Backed by solid bibliography and numerous quotations from classics, the book is a valuable source in understanding the deliberate sliding of the Western man into his own self-destruction. ... might qualify as a short sequel to Spengler's and Toynbee's premonitions of the final death of the West." -- Dr. Tom Sunic, Author of Postmortem Report: Cultural Examinations from Postmodernity.
"Martin has written a work of critical importance about American life that merits our attention. His thoughts are well phrased and reflect the author's detailed knowledge of the American cultural scene. Martin moves easily from highbrow to lowbrow culture and can write intelligently about both." -- Prof. Paul Gottfried, Ph.D., author of Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
"In this revolutionary work, Martin shows that during the ancien regime the upper class controlled the lower classes, but during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries this became inverted, and so the low increasingly started to control the high, in both politics and culture. This process of inversion is so well documented it is clear the author has achieved what most scholars thought impossible: a unification of the apparent diversity of modern culture with a few basic principals from philosophy and evolutionary psychology. This book will cause a paradigm shift and allow us to get our emotions, values, culture and politics back under control. Highly recommended." -- Prof. Richard Webster, received Ph.D. from Cambridge, author of several books.
