The last decade has seen the rise of the “hot take”. Google’s Ngram viewer, which tracks the prevalence of words and phrases in a huge corpus of English-language texts, shows this clearly. Given that the plural is also rising, we can safely assume this is not because more people are talking about hot take-outs. (Curiously, it also shows that the collocation “hot take” was even more popular in the early nineteenth century. If anyone knows the context, do enlighten me.)
A hot take is generously described as “a quickly produced, strongly worded, and often deliberately provocative or sensational opinion or reaction”, less charitably as “a piece of deliberately provocative commentary that is based almost entirely on shallow moralising.” However, many people use the phrase with only a dash of irony to mean any kind of quick and interesting response, including ones worth paying attention to. I’m sometimes asked for my own “hot take”.
Hot or not, “takes” have become a valuable currency in online discourse. For as long as I can remember, people have felt the need have an opinion on any matter of the day, whether they are well-informed or not. But only if the occasion demanded it. What has changed, I think, is people’s readiness to put their take out there, half-baked or not.
One of the great philosophical virtues is not being too quick to come up with your take. As I say in my forthcoming book, “Making progress in our thinking does not necessarily mean getting to a right answer. It can be enough to reject a wrong one or come up with a better question.”
This made me wonder. In these Microphilosophy newsletters, should I be offering fewer rather than more takes, hot or otherwise? I thought is might be a good idea to balance share more things that have been on my mind, but which have not been resolved with answers. These are not “hot takes” but “warm gives”: some things I offer that you might get you thinking or talking about them too.
Let’s kick off the experiment with some inconclusive thoughts provoked by my first trip abroad since covid. (It was actually my first trip on public transport of any kind.) It really showed me how my continued covid-caution is increasingly eccentric. At 6am at Bristol airport, there were more pints of lager being drunk than face coverings being worn.
It was just an overnight work trip to a rainy Paris, but in my spare afternoon I managed to go the Louvre. The huge crowds at such galleries always somewhat spoil the experience, but since I was contributing to the mass of humanity myself, I can hardly complain. This is the paradox of great places: we want to visit them and yet don’t want them to be spoiled by visitors.
We may tell ourselves that we are there to genuinely appreciate the art whereas so many others seem to be there just because a trip to Paris requires it. We go the Louvre, they “do the Louvre”. Many did have the demeanour of people ticking off a must-do-in-Paris list. All the people snapping the Mona Lisa on their phones, sometimes as part of selfies, certainly don’t seem to be taking the care to admire there artistry. Not that they could anyway: you can’t get close enough.
But if I’m honest, I’m an art ignoramus myself. Do I really know how to appreciate art or do I just know what I like? Why was I there?
I’m not sure. I always feel in some way enriched by a visit to an exhibition or a good museum. But how and why? The question “what makes art valuable?” has no single answer. It can do so many things. I found myself thinking about just a few.
Sometimes I’m just blown over by the art and there is nothing more to say other than that it is brilliantly composed and executed. I felt this stumbling on a room full of Rembrandts that I didn’t know was there. Rembrandt’s self-portraits are especially powerful. They seem to reveal an acute self-awareness but if I think about this I’m not sure whether it’s really true. I would not be surprised if his gifts were purely visual and he was as much a mystery to himself as anyone else. So do portraits reveal genuine insight or is that just how good ones make us feel?
The best painted portraits can capture something of a person in a way that I think photographs rarely do. After seeing many aggrandising portraits of Great Men, my attention was grabbed by one of Barbara Shaw by George Raeburn. Shaw was evidently no classical beauty but without being in any way flattering, Raeburn manages to portray her as an attractive human being, a real person, not an artists’ model. (Looking up some of his other works, he seems to have a knack for portraying his subjects with both generosity and honesty.
An even more striking example of the painter’s ability to capture what photographs cannot was “Christ among the doctors” by Giovanni Serodine. This portrays the Biblical story of the child Jesus astonishing the scholars in the temple with his learning. The paradox of the God made man is dialled up here, since Jesus is not only a mere mortal but a child. It makes little sense and many paintings of the child Christ fudge it by making him a miniature adult. What impressed me about Serodine was his ability to show a Jesus who was most definitely a boy but yet also had a certain authority and charisma. Try doing that with a photograph.
Before the advent of cheap printing, such paintings had an overtly didactic purpose. This made me think of another feature of paintings: their ability to tell a whole story in a single frame. Take Gericault’s “The Raft of the Medusa”. I won’t recount the story: see how much of it you can glean form the image itself and then take a look here if you want to know more. I eavesdropped on a guide’s commentary on the painting and picked up the tidbit that the pigment he used was darkening with every passing year and there its currently no way of restoring it. For such a grim painting this seems poetic: darkness slowly descends upon the artwork itself until eventually it will be nothing but black.
In the case of Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People”, the story has become a national myth. If you want to understand France, I would suggest no single piece of data is more powerful than this. The entire national self-image is described by it: the pursuit of liberté, egalité, fraternité, all requiring the sacrifice and struggle of the barricades. If you want to know what France is still the European capital of strikes and street protests, look no further than Delacroix.
None of these reactions were those of an art connoisseur. They may sound a bit gauche to a real expert. But if the viewing of art is something that is edifying for all, then it must surely be the case that it must be able to speak to us in myriad ways, not only the ones articulated by art critics. What, I wonder, does art do for you?
News
My latest book, How to Think Like a Philosopher, is now ready to pre-order. Independent bookseller Max Minerva’s Marvellous Books can send the book post-free to the UK, signed and with a personal dedication request from me on request, and you’ll also get a free fridge magnet. There is extra postage to pay if you’re outside the UK but if you are a supporter, that’s free too. I shouldn’t point this out, but it’s worth becoming one just for a month and then canceling for this benefit alone. You can also browse though the many exclusive articles, podcasts and videos and download them. (Times are hard, many of you have to economise!)
I can’t afford not to shout about the fantastic endorsements I’ve got for the book, so this week let me share Anil Seth’s: “An urgently needed guide to clear thinking, brought to life by a cast of our finest philosophers and illuminated by his gentle, humane, and accessible writing. Essential reading, both for making sense of a confusing world, and for living your everyday life. I’ll be returning to this brilliant book again and again.”
I’m hosting a Bristol Ideas event around the book’s themes at St George’s Bristol on Wednesday 22 February. I’ll be joined by Lisa Bortolotti and Rebecca Buxton to discuss the keys to better thinking. It’ll be a relaxed “salon” format”, with 45 minutes of discussion with the panel, a short break to get a drink, and 45-minutes of discussion led by audience questions. Tickets are on sale now.
I’m also talking about the book at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution on Tuesday 7 March.
I wrote a piece on the British fetish for cold, damp but “charming” period homes for the FT Weekend. A few other pieces are stuck in the publishing queue, including a review and a book tie-in article for the Guardian and a long essay on our relationship with animals for Aeon. I’ll post links on social media as soon as they’re out.
On my radar
Talking of art, I’m hoping I’ll be in London before 30 April to see Giorgio Morandi: Masterpieces from the Magnani-Rocca Foundation at the Esoterick Collection. You can ask me why but I’m not sure I have a coherent answer.
I don’t like to recommend books I haven’t read but I feel pretty confident directing you to Aristotle: Understanding the World’s Greatest Philosopher by John Sellars, as I have as much confidence in the author as I have awe for the subject.
On the podcast front, Misha Gleny’s The Invention of Russia provides vital historical background to the current fiasco in Ukraine. Other episodes on this page are to previous serious the “invention” of several other countries, all worth listening to.
Phantoms in the Brain, presented by Guy Leschziner, is a fascinating rethink of the relationship between physical and mental illness
I’ve raved on Twitter about the In Our Time episode about John Rawls’s Theory of Justice. “This podcast is a masterclass in public philosophy. Three people who really know their material talking clearly and plainly, never down, covering a huge amount of ground.”
That’s it for now. Until next time, if nothing prevents, thanks for your interest.