Agnes Callard

Episode Summary

Jackson Dahl reads aloud Agnes Callard's 2022 essay "Art is For Seeing Evil," published in The Point magazine, offering no original commentary beyond a brief introduction and outro. The episode is entirely a reading of Callard's philosophical argument that the primary function of art is to show us evil — suffering, wrongdoing, and misfortune — which ordinary life systematically censors from our attention.

1. Key Themes

Art's Core Function is Revealing Evil, Not Inspiring Good

Callard's central thesis is that art exists specifically to show us what daily life prevents us from seeing: evil in the broadest sense — suffering, failure, betrayal, cruelty, loss, despair.

"My simple theory is also broad. It applies to narrative fiction broadly conceived, from epic poems to Greek tragedies to Shakespearean comedies to short stories to movies... My theory is that art is foreseeing evil. I am using the word evil to encompass the whole range of negative human experience, from being wronged to doing wrong to sheer bad luck." [00:04:06]

Life Itself is Censored — We Are Biologically Wired Toward Positivity

Callard argues that human perception is intrinsically goal-directed and utility-seeking, meaning we systematically filter out the bad, the irrelevant, and the ugly.

"We are relentlessly efficient in targeting our movements, including those of our eyeballs, at some apparent good... The soul is like a compass. It can't help but point good words almost all of the time." [00:10:13]

The "Noble Lie" About Art — That It Exists for Moral Edification

Callard identifies a widespread institutional deception: that art is taught and defended because it makes us better people, more empathetic, or more civically virtuous. She calls this a lie.

"There is a certain noble lie that we tell students about art... The lie is that art is a vehicle for personal moral edification or social progress, that art aims at empathy and happiness and world peace and justice and democracy and the brotherhood of man. But those are the goods of friendship or education or politics or religion, not of art." [00:22:24]

Plato Was Honest About Art Where Everyone Else Has Been Dishonest

Callard makes the surprising case that Plato — typically cast as art's enemy — was actually art's most honest critic. He understood what art really does and censored it accordingly. Everyone who came after him made their peace with art by lying about its purpose.

"To permit art, we withhold the truth about it. Plato, otherwise fond of noble lies, is in this case a spokesman for the ignoble truth." [00:22:47]

Aristotle's Catharsis Theory as the Original "Rebranding" of Art

Callard suggests that Aristotle's catharsis argument — that tragedy cleanses us and makes us better citizens — was the founding move in a long campaign to make art seem safe and socially productive, rebranding the "evil books" as "great books."

"One might have thought that the natural label for the books most finely attuned to wretchedness and vice would be something like the evil books. Perhaps the story of rebranding to great begins with Aristotle." [00:23:43]

The Author as Uncensored Observer — Art Gives the Reader Unique Freedom

Fiction grants the reader a position unavailable in real life: the ability to look directly and without obligation at evil. Unlike characters inside the story, the reader owes no moral response.

"The reader stands where Joyce describes the artist as standing, in the background, indifferent, paring our fingernails. We have the luxury of admiring Tolstoy's many detailed descriptions of Anna's dangerous beauty... Unlike Kitty, we don't need to condemn Anna for being a fallen woman. Unlike Levin, we aren't duty bound to turn away from her as quickly as possible." [00:18:46]

Fiction's Structure Inverts Life's Structure — Bad is Central, Good is Decorative

Callard observes a structural asymmetry: in life, the bad is peripheral and the good is central; in fiction, this is reversed. The positive exists in narrative only to deepen contrast with suffering.

"In life, we are looking for all the various ways to make our marriage succeed. In fiction, we are fascinated to observe all the possible ways a marriage could fail... The positive has a secondary and derivative place in fiction, just as the negative has a secondary and derivative place in life." [00:17:22]

Even Artists Who Preach Goodness Write About Evil

Using Tolstoy as the prime case study, Callard shows that artists who moralize most loudly in theory produce work dominated by evil in practice. Tolstoy's own theory of art condemned nearly all art including his own; his novels are consumed by unhappy marriages and suffering.

"When Tolstoy writes philosophy, he is concerned with the transmission of morally edifying sentiments. But when he writes novels, he wants to show us evil. Even when he shows us good, he does it to show us evil." [00:16:26]

2. Contrarian Perspectives

Reading Novels Does Not Make You More Empathetic or Morally Better

Against decades of received humanistic wisdom — that reading fiction builds empathy and moral character — Callard flatly states the opposite from her own experience as a philosophy professor who assigns more literature than almost anyone.

"I don't feel that reading novels has helped me navigate difficult decisions or made me more empathetic. So why assign them to my students?" [00:03:02]

Tolstoy's Famous Opening Line is True of Fiction But False of Life

Everyone quotes "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" as a profound truth about reality. Callard argues it is a profound truth about fiction — and an empirical falsehood about life. Happy families are actually quite varied; it is Tolstoy's happy couples who are boringly interchangeable.

"I think Tolstoy is wrong about happy families. They're not all alike... The few happy couples in Tolstoy's fiction... resemble one another to an extraordinary degree, as though cut from some basic, not especially interesting pattern." [00:15:31]

Platonic Censorship of Art is Internally Coherent and Defensible

Rather than dismissing Plato's call to ban artists as obviously wrong, Callard concedes that if you understand what art actually does, Plato's logic follows cleanly — and she admits she might replicate it under the right conditions.

"Faced with Kallipolis' compliant citizenry, I might well find myself retracing many of Plato's moves." [00:24:37]

The Defense of Art Requires Suppressing the Truth About What Art Is

The mainstream defense of art — that it is safe, productive, and morally uplifting — is a necessary deception that makes censorship politically unpalatable. Without the lie, art's case for tolerance becomes much harder to make.

"The conceit that we have tamed art may be part of the compromise that supports our anti-platonic absolutism when it comes to censorship. To permit art, we withhold the truth about it." [00:22:47]

Banning Art is Structurally Like Banning Sex — Practically Impossible, Not Morally Wrong

Callard's argument against censorship is not moral but practical. She does not say censorship is wrong in principle — only that the human appetite for art is too powerful for the state to suppress.

"In the real world as it currently stands, it is doubtful that censorship could work, because the force by which people are drawn to art is stronger than any we feel comfortable having the state exert. Banning books is like banning sex." [00:24:11]

3. Companies Identified

This episode contains no companies mentioned for excellence. It is a reading of a philosophical essay with no commercial references.

4. People Identified

Philosopher, professor, and writer at the University of Chicago, specializing in ancient philosophy and ethics. The author of the essay being read; the episode's entire intellectual content is hers.

"Agnes is a philosopher, professor, and writer at the University of Chicago, where she focuses primarily on ancient philosophy and ethics." [00:00:28]

Nan Rantsoff

Recent guest of the Dialectic podcast. Recommended this essay to Jackson Dahl.

"This piece, Art is For Seeing Evil, was recommended by recent guest of the show, Nan Rantsoff." [00:00:28]

Derek Thompson

Journalist and podcaster. Mentioned as having hosted Agnes Callard in a conversation about her theory of the "unicontext," flagged by Jackson as a highlight worth seeking out.

"One recent highlight for me was her conversation with Derek Thompson on her theory of the unicontext." [00:26:32]

Tolstoy (Leo Tolstoy)

19th-century Russian novelist. Used as the central case study demonstrating the gap between an artist's stated moral theory and their actual artistic practice.

"When Tolstoy writes philosophy, he is concerned with the transmission of morally edifying sentiments. But when he writes novels, he wants to show us evil." [00:16:26]

Plato

Ancient Greek philosopher. Reframed as the most honest theorist of art precisely because he understood its true function and moved to censor it.

"Plato, otherwise fond of noble lies, is in this case a spokesman for the ignoble truth." [00:22:47]

Aristotle

Ancient Greek philosopher. Identified as the originator of the "catharsis" theory that rebranded dangerous art as safe and socially beneficial.

"Perhaps the story of rebranding to great begins with Aristotle. His is the first complex theory of art." [00:23:43]

William Blake

English poet. Cited for his observation that Milton was of "the devil's party without knowing it" — used to support the claim that true art gravitates toward evil.

"The poet William Blake commented of Milton's Paradise Lost that the reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of angels and God, and at liberty, one of devils and hell, is because he was a true poet and of the devil's party without knowing it." [00:08:18]

C.S. Lewis

British author and literary critic. Quoted from his essay on Hamlet to illustrate that great art's power resides in its concrete, archaic confrontation with darkness — night, ghosts, drowning, graveyards.

"I am trying to recall attention from the things an intellectual adult notices to the things a child or a peasant notices. Night, ghosts, a castle... a graveyard and a terrible cliff above the sea." [00:06:22]

David Hume

Scottish philosopher. Cited for his empirical observation in "Of Tragedy" that narrative variety and power derive entirely from distress, terror, and anxiety.

"Nothing can furnish to the poet a variety of scenes and incidents and sentiments except distress, terror, or anxiety." [00:05:57]

Irad Kimhi

Philosopher; described as writing on Walter Benjamin. Quoted to support the claim that art operates from "the point of view from unhappiness."

"Poetic thinking, in the sense that applies to Benjamin, is the point of view from unhappiness... artists give unform to unbeing." [00:08:18]

Allan Bloom

Political philosopher and author of The Closing of the American Mind. Cited as an example of a committed Platonist who nonetheless would not extend Plato's censorship logic to burning Anna Karenina.

"Not even as militant a Platonist as Allan Bloom, who condemns rock music on platonic grounds, would suggest committing Anna Karenina... to the flames." [00:21:26]

James Joyce

Irish novelist. Quoted for his image of the artist standing "in the background, indifferent, paring our fingernails" — used to describe the reader's uniquely unconstrained vantage point.

"The reader stands where Joyce describes the artist as standing, in the background, indifferent, paring our fingernails." [00:18:46]

Philip Larkin

English poet. Mentioned as author of "Aubade," which Callard assigns to her Death class while explicitly disagreeing with the poem.

"Philip Larkin's Aubade, a poem I strongly disagree with." [00:01:38]

Elena Ferrante

Italian novelist. Mentioned as assigned alongside contemporary philosophical essays in Callard's class on self-creation.

"We also read novels by James Joyce and Elena Ferrante." [00:01:59]

Homer

Ancient Greek epic poet. Mentioned as assigned across multiple classes; also cited as the poet Plato most wanted to censor in the Republic.

"In my class on courage, we read some platonic dialogues, bits and pieces of Aristotelian treatises, and all 24 books of Homer's Iliad." [00:02:25]

Cormac McCarthy

American novelist. Cited as an example of a writer in whose work barely anything good happens (The Road).

"Cormac McCarthy's The Road... are recent reads that spring to mind." [00:05:06]

Toby Shoren

Friend of Jackson Dahl; author of the essay "Body Futurism," read in the first Dialectic Independent Study episode.

"It's been a little while since I did the first of these where I read my friend Toby Shoren's piece, Body Futurism." [00:00:00]

5. Operating Insights

The Most Honest Framing Is Often the One Institutions Are Unwilling to Make

Callard's account of how humanistic educators defend art with a "noble lie" — claiming it builds empathy and moral character — rather than its true, harder-to-defend value is a direct organizational lesson. Institutions routinely justify valuable activities with palatable but false rationales (art builds empathy; DEI programs improve performance; wellness programs reduce costs). The underlying value may be real, but the stated justification is a political convenience. Leaders and operators who identify the actual mechanism of value in what they do — rather than the approved talking point — will make far better resource allocation decisions.

"There is a certain noble lie that we tell students about art... The lie is that art is a vehicle for personal moral edification or social progress... When art does transparently aim at moral guidance or social progress, we dismiss it as dogmatic, pedantic, and servile." [00:22:24]

Attention is Structurally Skewed Toward Utility — Build Systems to See What You're Missing

Callard's argument that human perception is relentlessly goal-directed — we only notice what is useful to our current aims — is a direct warning about organizational blind spots. Leaders who are executing against a goal will systematically miss signals that don't fit the current project. The gorilla-suit experiment she cites is not just a psychological curiosity; it is a description of how strategy blinds organizations to disconfirming evidence, emerging threats, and structurally important but "irrelevant" data.

"Your whole life is like that. We are relentlessly efficient in targeting our movements, including those of our eyeballs, at some apparent good... You permit a problem into your line of sight only insofar as you are looking for solutions to it." [00:10:13]

6. Overlooked Insights

The Structural Asymmetry of Narrative Has Predictive Power for What "Works" in Any Storytelling Context

Callard observes that in fiction, positive elements exist only as contrast to deepen suffering — they are structurally subordinate. This is not merely a literary observation. It predicts what will succeed in any narrative-driven medium: marketing, fundraising pitches, political messaging, journalism, or product storytelling. The instinct to lead with the positive — the vision, the success, the happy ending — inverts the actual grammar of compelling narrative. The "problem" is not setup for the solution; the solution is decorative framing around the problem.

"If in the texture of the piece there be interwoven any scenes of satisfaction, they afford only faint gleams of pleasure, which are thrown in by way of variety, and in order to plunge the actors into deeper distress by means of that contrast and disappointment." [00:17:22]

Art May Be the Only Technology Humans Have for Examining What Their Minds Will Not Otherwise Permit

Callard closes by gesturing at something she does not fully develop: that there are categories of human experience — the true texture of marriage, the reality of death, the nature of failure — that simply cannot be accessed through any other means than art. This is not a claim about aesthetic pleasure or moral instruction; it is an epistemological claim. Art is irreplaceable cognitive infrastructure for accessing a domain of reality that is otherwise permanently off-limits to the forward-oriented, goal-seeking human mind. For investors and operators: if you want to understand the failure modes of what you're building, the genre of art most relevant to your domain may be more informative than any post-mortem or case study.

"The topic of the course requires reference to something that doesn't show up clearly outside the space of artistic fiction... My hand is forced because without the novels, my course omits something that I see is crucial to understanding death or self-creation or courage or self-consciousness. I am talking about evil." [00:03:43]