Good and Evil in the Garden of Art

Book excerpt: In this book of essays Anthony Daniels tackles the complex relation between good and bad art on the one hand and good and bad ideas on the other. In several essays he contrasts authors or artists whom he considers good with those he considers bad, and tries to explain why his opinion is not merely a matter of individual taste but is based upon reason as well as taste. He argues that judgment and discrimination (between good and bad, beautiful and ugly) are intrinsic to any conceivable human existence, indeed to thought itself, and that the pretense that they are avoidable, that one can indefinitely suspend judgment, are merely a means by which bad or false judgments are smuggled into public life.