NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5801136" data-attributes="member: 42582">Contemporary criticism reminds me of Plato's doctrine that it is critics who are the real musicians (because performers are just slaves, and composers just follow the rules of harmony - at least, this is my recollection of a lecture I was in a long time ago).But besides the sometimes excessive self-importance, I don't like the dependence of a lot of contemporary criticism on what I regard as flawed accounts of meaning (especially Heidegger and Derrida and now Zizek, all of whom I regard as grossly overrated).Because I'm trained as a political and social philsopher, and not as an art historian or critic, I tend to see it more in historical/political/social terms than in narrowly aesthetic/"what is art?" terms. Which probably came through in my post above.More generally, I'm sceptical of criticism that is divorced from politics - which is not to say that I think aesthetics is just a branch of morality - my tentative view is that they're independent and sometimes are opposed. It's more that I think Neitzsche is right about the connection between evaluation and social/historical context.To try and bring this back on topic, but probably by saying something that no one else agrees with, one thing I like about Edwards is that he tries, in his GNS essays, to link playstyle and system design to broader ideas about how RPGing works as a social activity, relates to other competing leisure or creative activities, etc. I wouldn't say that he's always right, but I like that he makes the attempt.</blockquote>

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