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Social Setting for Art
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From “art” and “armos” comes “arete,” “virtue.” The superlative “aristos” (“fittest,” “best”) now connotes the doctrine of survival of the fittest.
I began this chapter with a quotation from Aristotle distinguishing high culture from barbarism. Let us return to his argument, for at this very moment in time an ossification was setting in. Art was becoming bourgeois.
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Aristotle (Politics VIII.3 at 1337b) stated that high culture required leisure time for contemplation, and hence wealth (much as to be a member of the aristocratic cavalry, one needed enough wealth to spend one’s time training with one’s horse). But there also was a danger here: The ruling class might become conservative.
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Note: The “quotation from Aristotle” was most likely:
“The poets do not depict Zeus as playing the lyre and singing in person,” pointed out Aristotle[1] (1339b). “In fact we call the performers ‘technicians’ and think that a man should not perform except for his own amusement or when he has had a good deal to drink.” Thus, like his contemporaries, Aristotle dismissed musicianship as being a mere craft (“techne”), and as such, unbecoming to men of leisure.