The Lorax is an explicitly polemical work. Seuss wrote it desiring to awaken people from their indifference to impending environmental disasters, but not by argument and statistics. Rather, he has them imagine that they are witnessing the telling of a tale about a once idyllic, beautiful land; a land whose natural bounty and biodiversity was to be envied. It once had green grass, a blue pond, clean clouds, Truffula Trees and Truffula Fruit, Brown Bar-ba-loots, and the Lorax. The Once-ler recounts how he contributed to the devastation of the environment in his desire to earn ever more money producing and selling Thneeds. Chopping down the Truffula Trees was no problem. Polluting the pond and sky with toxic smoke from the factory was no problem. Whatever it took for the Once-ler to maximize profits was fine until all that was left was an ecological wasteland.
After reading The Lorax, one gets a sense that the Once-ler is a parody of the salesperson who sacrifices himself and everything around him for momentary wealth and only acquires a conscience when it’s apparently too late. As for the polemical stance taken by Seuss in The Lorax, I think the Newsweek review of the television version of The Lorax sums it up well: The Lorax was “a hard-sell ecological allegory, stabbing mainly at big business through a deceptively gentle blend of gorgeous colors, superb animation, and a rippling imagery of words and pictures.”19 The same could be said about the original picture book. It is not surprising that The Lorax became associated with the environmentalist movement, and it still fits well within the contemporary sustainability movement.
The Butter Battle Book is Seuss’s allegory of the arms race between the United States and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War. It’s also a cautionary tale of how an escalating arms race between two states with sophisticated weaponry could really end in mutually assured destruction. The Yooks and the Zooks, the symbolic stand-ins for the United States and the former Soviet Union, have been engaged in a long-standing feud. This feud is over a particular custom—how people should butter and eat their bread. The Yooks prefer to eat their bread butter-side up, whereas the Zooks prefer to eat their bread butter-side down. Each group thinks the other eats their bread wrongly. Moreover, their rival’s custom is a threat to their entire way of life. At first they had a few low-level skirmishes along the wall that separates their towns. Over time, though, these skirmishes convince each side to develop ever more sophisticated weaponry. The one-upmanship between the Yooks and the Zooks continue until they both develop the Bitsy Big-Boy Boomeroo, a bomb with enough destructive force to destroy an entire town. The book ends with a general from each side holding a Bitsy Big-Boy Boomeroo, posturing on the wall separating their towns.
Seuss wrote The Butter Battle Book as a protest of the Reagan administration’s escalation of the nuclear arms race with the former Soviet Union. This book originated from his concern that “a democratic government could impose ‘such deadly stupidity’ on people like him who were so opposed to nuclear proliferation.”20 He thought that the Reagan administration’s policy had the very real potential of causing another world war. This time, though, a world war could mean the end of human civilization, given that each superpower had enough nuclear weapons to annihilate every population center in the world. We can interpret the cliffhanger ending of The Butter Battle Book as being Seuss’s means of getting people to question the legitimacy and even sanity of the Reagan administration’s nuclear deterrence policy.
Nel’s cultural criticism approach gives us the theoretical framework necessary to identify at least two reasons Seuss’s criticism of capitalism run amok, pollution of the environment, and nuclear deterrence is ironic yet effective. First, Seuss began his professional career as a cartoonist for the very successful and lengthy Flit insecticide campaign. As the brainchild of the “Quick, Henry, the Flit!” advertising campaign, he had an intimate working relationship with one of the most influential corporations in the United States at the time, Standard Oil. Perhaps it was Seuss’s familiarity with advertising and large corporations that made his criticisms of crass U.S. consumerism and laissez-faire capitalism so compelling. Second, by the time Seuss wrote his books criticizing influential tendencies in U.S. society he had become a well-known and respected children’s author. That status enshrined him as an icon and supposed purveyor of bourgeois U.S. cultural sensibilities. Having an icon of bourgeois U.S. cultural mores and sensibilities, one whose books middle-class parents read to their children, criticize the status quo must have been a warning siren, indeed. The sometimes satirical nature of Seuss’s art allows him to dwell in these ironies and take full advantage of them.
Ending the Tale
As we have seen in this chapter, Beardsley’s aesthetic theory of art, Danto’s philosophy of art, and Nel’s cultural criticism approach are three ways people can decide what makes something a work of art. We applied each of these theories to Dr. Seuss’s children books and oil paintings. Beardsley’s aesthetic theory contended that Seuss’s works are artworks because they were created with the purpose of invoking an aesthetic experience in us whenever we appreciate them. Danto’s philosophy of art reminded us that when Seuss wrote his children’s books and painted his oil paintings matters a lot in determining whether they will be considered works of art. Nel’s cultural criticism approach got us to admire Seuss’s talent for conveying meanings in illustrations and verse, especially in his later activist books. It also allowed us to appreciate Seuss’s ability to use irony and allegory to criticize U.S. bourgeois culture while being one of its representatives.
As you revisit Dr. Seuss’s children’s books and maybe acquaint yourself with his paintings for the first time, see if any of these aesthetic theories helps you better appreciate Seuss’s art. If so, then this chapter is a success. If not, don’t give up philosophical aesthetics, altogether. Perhaps there is another aesthetic theory out there that might better suit your taste.21
Notes
Chapter 1
1. Plato, The Apology of Socrates, trans. C. D. C. Reeve (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2002), 22d–e.
2. See Plato, Euthydemus 278e; Symposium 204e–205a; Republic 6.505d–e. All citations and quotations from Plato (except from the Apology) are from Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997).
3. In Plato’s dialogues, Socrates argues that all people do what they believe at the time to be best at Meno 77b–78b and Protagoras 352c–358e. See also Gorgias 466b–468e.
4. Plato, Apology 30b.
5. Socrates critiques the conventional Greek cultural education at some length in Plato’s Republic, Books 2 and 3 in particular. He takes aim at political rhetoric in the Gorgias, arguing that public speakers and political leaders in general are nothing more than shameful flatterers, telling people what they want to hear to advance their own selfish ends (462c–465e). Later in the dialogue, he argues that music, poetry, and drama—the keystones of Greek cultural life—are just different forms of flattery and rhetoric, aimed at the gratification of the soul without regard to what is best for it (501d–502e).
6. Plato, Apology 38a.
7. Plato, Laches, in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1997), 187e–188a.
8. Plato, Laches 190e.
9. Plato, Laches 191a–c.
10. Plato, Laches 192c.
11. Plato, Laches 192d.
12. Plato, Laches 195a.
13. Plato, Laches 199e.
14. Plato, Apology 22d–e.
15. Plato, Apology 30a.
16. Several characters in Plato’s dialogues espouse different versions of this worldview, including Polus and Callicles in the Gorgias and Thrasymachus in the Republic. In each case, the character describes his ideas as a matter of common sense.
17. For this argument, see Gorgias 474b–480a, 482a–c, 492d–500a; Republic 4.441c–445a; Theaetetus 173c–177b.
18. See Richard Layard, Happiness: Lessons from a New Science (New York: Penguin, 2005); Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness (New York: Vintage Boo
ks, 2005); Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener, Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2008).
19. Plato, Crito 46b.
20. Plato, Phaedo 85c–d.
Chapter 2
1. Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Volume I, trans. E. F. J. Payne (New York: Dover Publications, 1969), 275.
2. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol. I, 309.
3. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol. I, 312.
4. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol. I, 313.
5. For a more positive assessment of Oh, the Places You’ll Go! see Benjamin Rider, “Oh, the Places You’ll Go! The Examined, Happy Life,” in the present volume.
6. The wise man could easily be an allusion to the ascetic St. Simeon Stylites the Elder or any other pillar hermit. These ascetics chose to respond to the suffering of this life by mortifying the flesh and denying all bodily urges and desires.
7. See Plato’s Phaedo (118a). The reference is to the practice of sacrificing a cock to Asclepius. Cocks were traditionally sacrificed to Asclepius by the ill who were seeking a cure. Socrates’ reference on his deathbed seems to imply that he views death as a “cure” to the disease of existence.
8. Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Volume II, trans. E. F. J. Payne (New York: Dover, 1966), 605.
9. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), 177.
10. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, ed. Adrian del Caro and Robert Pippin, trans. Adrian del Caro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 99.
11. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 272.
12. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 92.
13. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 113.
14. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 252.
15. Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, or How to Philosophize with a Hammer in The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, ed. Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 157.
16. See Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 273–74.
17. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 17.
18. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 228.
19. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 232.
20. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 229.
Chapter 3
1. Pontoffel Pock and His Magic Piano/Pontoffel Pock, Where Are You? (TV 1980), Seuss Celebration (DVD: Universal Studios). Further references will occur in the text as (Pock).
2. See Karl Marx, “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts,” in Marx: Early Political Writings, ed. and trans. Joseph O’Malley with Richard A. Davis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
3. Karl Marx, “Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte,” in Marx/Engels Gesamstausgabe (MEGA), eventually 114 conceptual volumes. Erste Abteilung, Band 2 (Berlin: Dietz, 1972), 369.
4. G. W. F. Hegel, Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics, trans. Bernard Bosanquet, ed. Michael Inwood (New York: Penguin Books, 1993), 36.
5. Karl Marx, “Ökonomsiche Studien (Exzerpte),” in Marx/Engels Gesamstausgabe (MEGA), eventually 114 conceptual volumes. Erste Abteilung, Band 3 (Berlin: Dietz, 1972), 549.
6. Karl Marx, “The German Ideology” in Marx: Early Political Writings, ed. and trans. Joseph O’Malley with Richard A. Davis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 142.
7. Marx, “The German Ideology” in Marx: Early Political Writings, 86.
8. See Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (New York: Owl Books, 1990), 67.
9. See Fromm, The Sane Society, chapter 3, A–E.
10. See Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (New York: Owl Books, 1994), chapter 4.
11. Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), 141.
12. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), 137.
13. The rash of “depression” may be more illustrative of the fact that society is not meeting people’s needs than that there is something wrong with people.
14. Theodor Adorno, “Culture Industry Reconsidered” in The Adorno Reader, ed. Brian O’Conner (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 235.
Chapter 4
1. David Abel, “Secret Life Steals a Promising Future,” Boston Globe, January 24, 2004, www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2004/01/24/secret_life_steals_a_promising_future/ (May 20, 2010).
2. Plato, Apology in Five Dialogues, trans. G. M. A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), 31 (26c).
3. Plato, Apology, 32–33 (27c–d).
4. See, for example: Bullshit and Philosophy, ed. Gary L. Hardcastle and George A. Reisch (Chicago: Open Court, 2006); also, Kimberly A. Blessing and Joseph J. Marren, “Bullshit and Political Spin: Is the Medium the Massage?,” and Andrew Sneddon, “Bullshitting Bullshitters and the Bullshit They Say,” in The Daily Show and Philosophy, ed. Jason Holt (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2007).
5. Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005), 61.
6. Lying is a narrower concept than deception, since lying in some way involves propositions, spoken or written, while one can deceive in ways that do not involve assertions at all (e.g., wearing camouflage). Both concepts, though, are rife with philosophical perplexities, and coming up with uncontroversial definitions of either is a difficult task. For a nice overview and bibliography for further research, see James Edwin Mahon, “The Definition of Lying and Deception,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, plato.stanford
.edu/entries/lying-definition/ (May 20, 2010).
7. If one does not include honestly representing one’s intellectual process and product to others as I do in (5), then a liar could even be said to have intellectual integrity. She might lack moral integrity, but not necessarily intellectual integrity. A bullshitter, though, doesn’t care about his own intellectual integrity.
8. While related to bullshit, the idea of deluding oneself with what one wants to be true is closer to the concept of “truthiness” now popularized by satirist Stephen Colbert. For several papers addressing the concept, including my own “Truth, Truthiness and Bullshit for the American Voter,” see Stephen Colbert and Philosophy, ed. Aaron Schiller (Chicago: Open Court, 2009).
9. Harry G. Frankfurt, On Truth (New York: Knopf, 2006), 99–101.
Chapter 5
1. Charles Sanders Peirce, Philosophical Writings of Peirce, ed. Justus Buchler (New York: Dover, 1955), 10.
2. Peirce, Philosophical Writings, 28.
Chapter 6
1. Yes, yes. There are real catfish and real dogfish swimming around in our world, but these hardly resemble the Seussian creatures that share their names.
2. Plato, Theaetetus 201d–210a.
3. See for instance, what has come to be known as “the Gettier problem,” a counterexample to the claim that knowledge is merely justified true belief, in Edmund Gettier’s “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” in Analysis, v. 23 (1963), 121–23.
4. René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 70.
5. Including, presumably, the claim that global skepticism is true!
6. John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II.viii.10 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 135.
7. Marco is also the protagonist of Dr. Seuss’s And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.
8. George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1982), 30.
9. Berkeley suggests that this uniformity exists because the universe is held together by God’s continuous, perfect perceiving. While consistent with epistemological idealism, introducing a supernatural being probably requires even more of an explanation than what its introduction is intended to exp
lain.
10. From the Latin meaning “from the one before.”
11. From the Latin meaning “from the one after.”
12. René Descartes, Discourse on the Method in Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 127.
13. The analytic-synthetic distinction has been a focus of many philosophers and schools of thought, most notably in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and more recently in the work of the Logical Positivists. Others have rejected the distinction as untenable; see for instance W. V. O. Quine’s 1951 essay “Two Dogmas of Empiricism.”
14. Robin May Schott, Discovering Feminist Philosophy (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 56.
15. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin’s, 1965), 93 [A 51/B 75].
16. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Francis Golffing (New York: Doubleday, 1956), 255–56.
17. Jalal al-Din Rumi, Tales from Masnavi, trans. A. J. Arberry #71. Retrieved from www.khamush.com/tales_from_masnavi.htm#The%20Elephant (August 1, 2010).
18. W. V. O. Quine, “Epistemology Naturalized” in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 69.
Chapter 7
1. Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), xxiv.
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