Now that we have our warehouse move complete, we can finally announce that appearance of a book I’ve been wildly excited for ever since the project began. It is Literature and Economic Liberty: Spontaneous Order in Culture, edited by Paul Cantor and Stephen Cox.
It really does blast open a completely new research paradigm for the Austrian School. The editors have brought Austrian insights to bear on a wide range of literature to not only offer a new style of criticism but also to put forward a new theory of criticism. In particular, it shows writers using insights from the workings of the market to develop character and plot – and further proves that you have to know something about economics in order to fully grasp what many great writers were trying to say.
The book is absolutely beautiful, and instead of carrying a price tag in the hundreds of dollars, as such books would if published by conventional academic presses, this hardback is only $20. It is a joy to read, with new insights on every page. It is the first of a kind, but, if all goes well, and this book has some influence, there could be many other collections along these lines appearing in the future.
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This really is an achievement. Excellent work.
I’ve been looking forward to this day. I’m going to place an order right now.
Beautiful perhaps, and yet backward in premise. It is economics itself that is, for each of us, an individual channel of artistic output. Doesn`t matter if you`re writing a novel or writing computer code, whether you`re baking, cycling, or lecturing.
Art is the process, not the product, so trying to scrutinize the product to gain insight into the process seems foolish.
Yeah I ‘d love to buy it, but 95$ UPS shipment to France?
@Vanmind
Art isn’t simply “the product” – even if it can be collected and sold on a market – because an artwork is its own end in itself. It has no use… as your computer code does. This confusion is the ground on which copyright wars are growing.
I definitely will buy this book. I’ve always been interested at examining literature from a more classical liberal viewpoint (something I’ve always thought about going into teaching for), and this seems to be a ticket to do so.
Thanks!
Artisan, read my post again. I said that art is NOT about the product, but instead about the process. Also, a painted picture — the end product of actual art — DOES have as much use as something like computer code. The painting brings psychic satisfaction to those who appreciate the end product of the artistic process that they cannot possibly understand through ‘economic analysis.’
Well yeah, I’m sorry I didn’t get what you mean. And it’s still hard to figure out I find: “art is the process not the product” – so far so good… yet after, you still talk about “scrutinizing the product”… can you explain more?
Allow me to also disagree with your response: “giving psychic satisfaction” may be a consequence, but it’s hardly a function of art (or computer code), less it would be a drug.
On the other hand you can use computer code to secure access to a server for instance. You cannot plan to do anything similar with a “good painting”…
Well, Artisan, what I`m trying to say is that scrutinizing end products of art gives a person no particular insight into creativity. To be more accurate that I managed earlier: art`s only function is to provide psychic satisfaction to the artist.
End products of art (i.e. works of art or objets d’art) exist outside art itself — even if they can never come into being without art — and are themselves marketable goods that dealers, collectors, museums, and so forth can acquire and then display (or not) to bring psychic satisfaction to themselves and their patrons. When you go to a museum, or read a novel, you are neither observing nor directly appreciating art. You are engaged only with the end product of art, which I suppose is something that can be analyzed using economic theory (like any other good — so differentiating as the authors of this book try to do seems superfluous).
Or something like that…
This is a strange and complex hypothesis, Vanmind!?
You mean listening to a piece of music would involve no relation (other than economical) to the performer or the composition?
It seems not compatible with the idea that the artist most times establishes his work in relation to the (potential) effect produced on the public…
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