Hey folks, Mark Linton Meyer from the Partially Examined Life Philosophy podcast here.

What do you think of political art?

I have in general a map at a fan.

I find it manipulative, and I'd rather just hear a political argument instead of slot

again into a piece of fiction where you can gloss over all the complexities.

Well, Jean-Paul Sartre, the famous French existentialist, was subjected to criticisms

like the one I just gave.

He wrote some novels and plays that were accused of being just too full of a political message

to be considered actually good art.

So he wrote a book-length rebuttal to such challenges in 1946 called What Is Literature,

and he argues that it's the very nature of prose to be political.

Now other arts, sure, those are about forms, colors, tones, these pretty sensory elements,

even poetry which uses words is not really about what the words are about.

It's about the words themselves, how they fit together, how they sound.

It uses the fact that words mean things sure, but it's not trying to make a statement about

the world, so much as to create a concrete construction of words for you to marvel at,

just like you marvel at a statue.

But prose, on the other hand, really is using words in the ordinary sense where they refer

to things in the world.

So if you're writing a story or a play, yes you want to have a nice style, but it's not

all about the style, it really has to be about something.

It has to impart some truth.

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