The New Humanities Reader - Sample Assignments

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Sample Assignments by Richard and Kurt

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Virginia Postrel, "Surface and Substance"

Questions for Making Connections within the Reading:

1. Akey word in Postrel's argument is "value." What exactly does she mean by this word? What are the different kinds of value that she acknowledges in her essay? Why is it so important for her that we grant to the aesthetic a special value all its own? Postrel argues that we have failed to see the value of aesthetics, but is it possible to value aesthetics too highly? Does Postrel's chapter implicitly present a theory about the ways that different kinds of values should be related to one another?

2. In her piece, Postrel takes on a number of arguments against aesthetics. On what assumptions do these varied arguments rest? Pay attention to the values and concerns that might motivate the critics she responds to. Daniel Bell is an American sociologist. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer were social theorists inspired by Karl Marx. Other critics of the aesthetic named by Postrel include Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, an unnamed "conservative minister," Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the economist Robert Frank, and the English professor James Twitchell. What might lie behind their attitudes toward aesthetics? Given the diversity of the critics, what might we conclude about our society's prevailing attitudes toward beauty, pleasure, and so on?

3. In her final paragraph, Postrel writes that "creating the difference between Coke and Pepsi is not just an empty pastime but one of the many signs of life in a free society." In what ways might aesthetics be connected to freedom, either for individuals or for society as a whole? In what ways may aesthetics help to heighten or intensify our sense of being alive? Is there a difference between "living" form and "dead" form? If there is, do people tend to agree about the forms that seem most alive? We may ordinarily assume that our experiences of beauty, harmony, and energy are entirely subjective, but are they really? If our perception of "life" in things is entirely subjective, then why did so many customers buy the same "squirt-gun green pagers"?

Questions for Writing:

1. What are the larger implications of Postrel's argument? One way to answer this question is to ask if she has ultimately done nothing more than defend crass commercialism. Has Postrel simply devised a clever argument in defense of a life dedicated to superficiality and acquisitiveness? Or does she point the way to alternative forms of intellectual depth and personal integrity? If most people were to think and act in the way that Postrel would like them to, would our society be any different-or any better-than it is right now?

2. Is the "surface" of Postrel's chapter consistent with its "substance"? Is the way she makes her point appropriate to the point she makes? In order to answer this question, you might look carefully at the formal qualities of her argument, starting with a paragraph-by-paragraph outline. Would you describe Postrel's chapter in the main as "polemical" or as "affirmative"? What do you notice about the tone of the chapter? Would you call it "adversarial" or "conciliatory," "genial" or "strident"? Would you describe Postrel's treatment of other writers as "balanced" or "tendentious"? If you regard the surface of Postrel's argument as inconsistent with its substance, can you think of a more effective way to get the same point across?

Questions for Making Connections Between Readings:

1. How might Postrel respond to Eric Schlosser's "Global Realization"? Would she put Schlosser in the same company as Bell, Adorno, Twitchell, and the other detractors of aesthetics, or might she respond sympathetically to some aspects of Schlosser's critique? Would you say that criticism of McDonald's is symptomatic of a disrespect for the aesthetic? Or might a world that valued aesthetics more highly be one in which McDonald's would go broke? McDonald's is sometimes seen as synonymous with materialism, but if people were true materialists-if they truly valued the qualities of material things-what would they think of fast food?

2. Postrel offers a spirited defense of aesthetics, but she never looks carefully at the ways people actually experience beauty, pleasure, novelty, excitement, and so on. We might find clues to the nature of aesthetic experience, however, in Robert Thurman's "Wisdom." Take a look in particular at the section entitled "Practice: Trying to Find Your 'I.'" When we cultivate awareness in the way that Thurman describes, does every moment become an aesthetic experience? Could it be that our awareness of aesthetics is in some way similar to an experience like meditation? What happens to the "I" when we become aware of beauty, novelty, order, or energy in the world around us?