Denis Dutton, RIP (Arts & Letters Daily Editor)

slate.com ^ | December 29, 2010 | Stephen Metcalf

[MontaniSemperLiberi]

Arts & Letters' founder/editor/curator was Denis Dutton, who died on Tuesday from cancer at the age of 66. He was the scion of the Dutton publishing family, a Californian who had moved to New Zealand to be a professor of philosophy and aesthetics at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch.* I traded e-mails with Denis, then joined him for lunch when he next passed through Manhattan. He was unlike anyone I'd ever met.

Denis was a very sly, very funny, supereducated, and widely allusive lunch companion.

. . . . .

Still, it was not tough to discern, even if you had never met him, and only from catching the drift of his Web site, Denis' preoccupations. He clearly loved classical music, philosophical monism, evolutionary psychology, and free markets. He clearly detested Heidegger, literary theory, organic foodies, government bureaucrats, and the gathering consensus on global warming. (Denis made this last his most avid hobbyhorse and rode it vigorously, certain that global warming represented left-wing groupthink and junk science.) I found Denis refreshing and catholic and a little odd; he finally found me a little, let's say, pink for his tastes. Eventually, after about six or eight pieces, he banished me from Arts & Letters.

[MontaniSemperLiberi]

AL Daily is one of the sites I hit when I'm done with the kind of stuff that might make Drudge. I have to agree with the "eulogy" from slate, one could easily figure out that Dutton was conservative, given the tone, academic none the less, of his web site, http://www.aldaily.com/ .

The next time someone says "conservatives are stupid" something similar, just remember "Not Denis Dutton".

[MontaniSemperLiberi]

http://www.aldaily.com/

[x]

Great site. I used to go there every day when I first discovered the Internet -- lately not much at all, though I probably should.

According to Wikipedia he was more of a libertarian than a conservative. Maybe skeptic or non-conformist would get closer to the mark.

[MontaniSemperLiberi]

“Maybe skeptic or non-conformist would get closer to the mark.”

Agree.

[Billthedrill]

A BTT, and an RIP. And Dutton was right about Global Warming.

[fieldmarshaldj]

RIP.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks MontaniSemperLiberi.

• "I have to agree with the "eulogy" from slate, one could easily figure out that Dutton was conservative, given the tone, academic none the less, of his web site"

[EveningStar]

From City Journal:

...A major achievement of [Art & Letters Daily] was revealing to the world of the bien-pensant liberal that there existed a realm of conservative thought containing, not bigotry or morally corrupt apologias for the rich, afraid for their fortunes, but serious reflections upon the human condition. After Arts and Letters Daily, it became more difficult to dismiss conservatism with crude ad hominem jibes. In that sense, like several new media outlets, it has rendered service to those on the left as well as on the right...

DenisDutton.com

Wikipedia article