ENGL109 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Georgism
23 Nov 2017
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Document Summary
A russian nobleman who is most famous for two novels: war and peace and. Tolstoy was a famous writer, but also an influential social critic. Education was a fundamental tool for improving societal conditions for lower classes. First to say we should improve we should improve the individual self. The highest ideal a wealthy aristocratic person could aim for was one of asceticism. The best possible path for someone with privilege is to give up their wealth to the peasantry. You deny the need for everything but food. Tolstoy was also very against the notion of privately owned property. He supported an economic theory (georgism) that divided wealth generated from the land to every member of a nation"s population. The influence of tolstoy"s political ideas on his writing in what is art is clear. Piece is aggressive and attacks the notion of art as a craft of beauty as the goal of art, and of the high-brow/low-brow distinctions.
