She was a recognizably human and passionate woman who entertained millions; she made egregious mistakes and learned from them; and she always had a legion of friends and countless admirers. One's fame or power or influence was never the criterion for friendship with Joan, and she was on warm terms with people from every walk of life. The shift in public opinion from respect to contempt began a year after her death, with the publication of a book called Mommie Dearest, which alleged that Joan was a sadistic alcoholic who took special pleasure in torturing her adopted children.
That volume, remarkable as the work of a somewhat hysterical imagination, cannot be taken seriously after one has checked the facts, reviewed original documents and interviewed those who knew Joan and her children. More to the point, the author of the book has retreated from her most outlandish claims--but that, of course, is very rarely reported. In many ways, Joan Crawford was a jumble of contradictions, but the contradictions provide clues to an incontrovertible fact--that she was much more than just a movie star; she was demonstrably one of the screen's most gifted actresses.
In this regard, it has often been claimed that Crawford simply played variations on the theme of the poor shop-girl who climbs and sometimes claws her way to the top, achieving material success by sexual boldness or sheer force of will. But that is worse than a simplification: it's downright inaccurate.
Of twenty-five Crawford films released during the s, she portrayed a salesclerk in only two Our Blushing Brides and The Women ; the record shows that she played a far wider spectrum of characters than is commonly asserted. Joan's critics claim that she had no gift for comedy, and that the so-called "weeping woman's movie" was the extent of her range.
VAT :. View PDF Flyer. Contents About. Pages: i—x. Pages: 1—3. Pages: 7— Pages: 27— Pages: 56— Pages: 74— Pages: 87— Pages: — Pages: Biographical Note Mingyuan Hu, Ph. That would be a true Chinese Renaissance. So too is her virtuosity in navigating effortlessly between demanding texts in Chinese, English and French. It should be read with care by anyone engaged in modern Chinese intellectual history, and by all who are interested in the history of translation.
All interested in the art and intellectual histories in twentieth-century China, in Sino-European communication in interwar Paris, and in cross-lingual relations, cultural studies, and biography. Save Cite Email this content Share link with colleague or librarian You can email a link to this page to a colleague or librarian:.
Your current browser may not support copying via this button. Asian Studies. Intellectual History. Chinese History. The truth is that only 1 percent of Americans have been tested. The failure to test is central to the spread of the virus and its impact on those most vulnerable in our society. The failure to test is dangerous and deadly, and without testing, we cannot resume our lives. The President has said that we are engaged in a war. Leaders understand that in war, force protection of our troops is the top priority.
In this war, force protection means for health care, police, fire, EMS, food and other essential workers to have the protective equipment that they need to save lives without risking their own. The truth is that we do not have the necessary hospital equipment. Without ventilators and other equipment, our health care workers cannot save the lives of those they serve.
Once we all share the truth of what took place and what is currently happening, including in our minority communities, we can work together to solve these problems. The question we have to ask when we choose to accept a particular interpretation is not, is it true? Nietzsches view that the truth may be undesirable suggests that he is not attempting to abandon the notion of truth altogether.
Rather, by questioning the value of truth he is undermining its claims to authority over us, and its claims to be absolute. For Nietzsche there is no such thing as the truth, objective and independent of ourselves; each person is entitled to their own truth, discoverable only from their particular perspective, but Nietzsche warns against the attempt to impose this truth onto others. He envisages philosophers of the future who, although they continue to be friends of the truth, will certainly not be dogmatists.
And what, from Nietzsches point of view, might such criteria be? One possible problem with Nietzsches perspectivism is that it is reflexive: that is, it refers back to itself and so cannot claim to be true for anyone other than Nietzsche himself.
However, Nietzsche would no doubt view this as a strength rather than as a weakness of his philosophy, and would reply to critics of his perspectivism that my judgment is my judgment: no one else is easily entitled to it great things remain for the great. In other words, Christian teaching, taken to its rational conclusion, eventually undermines itself. This idea is summed up in Nietzsches famous proclamation that God is dead The death of God, indeed, represents both a danger and an opportunity.
The danger is that the disappearance of the traditional source of value and meaning will give Europe the final push into nihilism; but this also provides the opportunity to create new values in place of the old religious ones, so that each individual assumes the role of a god by becoming the source of his or her own values. Since Nietzsche believes that truths and values have always been invented by human beings, there is something honest and courageous about this new era that dawns after the death of God, as if we are finally facing up to the way things are.
Good and Evil, Good and Bad Nietzsches main criticism of the ideal of truth is the same as his criticism of moral ideals: he dislikes their claims to be absolute.
The philosophical model for absolute truth is Platos theory of the Forms, which states that what is true must be unchanging, eternal and independent of the particular perspective, opinion and prejudice of the existing individual. Such a truth stands outside history, outside life itself, and applies to everyone regardless of their culture, language or personal circumstances. In other words, this kind of truth is objective and universal. Nietzsche argues that this ideal of truth is itself a fiction, a falsification of the ever-changing and diverse world we live in: it meant standing truth on her head and denying perspective, the basic condition of all life, when one spoke of spirit and the good as Plato did.
More importantly, though, Nietzsche believes that a standard that applies to everyone cannot really be valuable at all, because achieving such a standard gives no distinction. For example, if everybody did A-levels and got A grades, the qualification would have no value; if we told an artist that anyone could paint that picture, he would certainly be offended. Nietzsche uses this argument to undermine morality, and to claim that absolute moral values lead to a culture of mediocrity and nihilism: how should there be a common good!
The term contradicts itself: whatever can be common always has little value. Things are good or bad according to a particular perspective, in the sense that we say that something is good for me or bad for me or healthy or unhealthy. For instance, a poisonous plant may be bad for me, and from another perspective it may play a crucial role in the ecosystem, but it would not make much sense to describe it as evil. To say such a thing would imply that the plant was bad in itself, or objectively, whereas Nietzsche would argue that it is only particular perspectives that make value judgments possible at all.
A year after he published Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche wrote a book called The Genealogy of Morals, in which he clarifies and develops his analysis of the opposition between master and slave moralities. As its title suggests, this text offers a genealogy, or an historical account, of the evolution of moral values - a method which itself undermines the idea that such values are absolutely, eternally, objectively true and valid.
In primitive societies, says Nietzsche, stronger people the masters will naturally dominate weaker people the slaves , and so what is good and valuable will be determined by the powerful ruling elites. These value judgments come from the masters sense of superiority, from their self-confidence and pride in their strength and talents; they would not expect weaker individuals to achieve or even to aim for their high standards, and they would not wish to impose their values onto others.
Because the weaker, down-trodden section of society are powerless to take revenge on their oppressors by means of force, they label the aggressive, arrogant ethic of their masters as evil and unjust bad in itself, when really they mean bad for me , and preach values such as humility, meekness and pity. In effect, this slave morality. According to Nietzsche, the ethical teachings of the Jewish law and, even more so, of Christianity, spring from this thirst for vengeance exercised by the weak upon the strong: moral judgments and condemnations constitute the favourite revenge of the spiritually limited against those less limited.
Nietzsches description of the evolution of morals may be more or less accurate, but it should be read not as a factual historical account but as a myth that emphasises that values change through time rather than being intrinsic to some sort of eternal human nature. Indeed, as soon as Nietzsche introduces his distinction between master and slave moralities in Beyond Good and Evil, he makes it clear that these two types are often combined within one society, and even in the same human being, within a single soul.
We must also be clear that Nietzsche is not arguing for a return to the values of a barbaric, primitive culture; he recognises that the development of morality has created more civilised, more complex and more profound societies, and that this has empowered humanity as a whole.
He admires not so much the cruelty and violence of the masters, but the affirmative, creative origins of their values; and he is critical of the reactive nature of slave morality rather than of particular virtues such as compassion and mercy - although he also emphasises that these virtues are hypocritical in so far as they conceal a desire for power and revenge.
Just as Nietzsche argues that truth fails by its own standards, so he suggests that morality rests on a corrupt foundation. Beyond Good and Evil? Nietzsche attacks morality because he believes that it produces the values of the lowest common denominator and imposes them on everyone, thus inhibiting creative individuals and preventing them from inventing the new values that could save Europe from nihilism.
However, he also recognises that not everyone is strong enough for the task of creating values, and that weaker people need to be given rules and conventions to conform to.
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