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Catttt Posted 11 years ago
Vocabulary
a few questions a bout a paragraph
A few questions about the following paragraph:
"Steiner may be recognising a hitherto suppressed feminine aesthetic but even to dare to speak of beauty seriously is to lay herself open to accusations of naivety, self-deception and a lack of humour. And, also, of course, of gross political incorrectness. For was not the experience of Beauty largely reconstructed in the eighteenth century as an affirmation of bourgeois capitalist identity, as the Marxist critic Herbert Marcuse has proposed? Rich and powerful men desire to possess it as a sign of their wealth and power – their lovely architectures and landscaped vistas, their art and clothes, their beautiful women and children, indicative of their superior position, health and happiness. In the grumbling skirmishes between the feminists and the Marxists, is Steiner not complicit with this state of affairs? Worse, the evolutionary psychologists have reconstructed much the same thing and, as we shall see in Chapter 4, some theorists and social scientists believe they may even have a political agenda."
1. Does the first highlighted sentence mean "Perhaps because Steiner's definition of beauty in 18th centurt was not consistent with Marcuse's definition which tied beauty with bourgeois capitalist identity"?
2. Do following sentences "Rich and powerful men desire to possess it as a sign of their wealth and power..." present evidences for Marcuse's definition of beauty or do they talk about Steiner's belief?
3. What does " In the grumbling skirmishes between the feminists and the Marxists, is Steiner not complicit with this state of affairs?" mean? What is "this state of affairs" referring to?
4. What is "much the same thing" referring to?
"Steiner may be recognising a hitherto suppressed feminine aesthetic but even to dare to speak of beauty seriously is to lay herself open to accusations of naivety, self-deception and a lack of humour. And, also, of course, of gross political incorrectness. For was not the experience of Beauty largely reconstructed in the eighteenth century as an affirmation of bourgeois capitalist identity, as the Marxist critic Herbert Marcuse has proposed? Rich and powerful men desire to possess it as a sign of their wealth and power – their lovely architectures and landscaped vistas, their art and clothes, their beautiful women and children, indicative of their superior position, health and happiness. In the grumbling skirmishes between the feminists and the Marxists, is Steiner not complicit with this state of affairs? Worse, the evolutionary psychologists have reconstructed much the same thing and, as we shall see in Chapter 4, some theorists and social scientists believe they may even have a political agenda."
1. Does the first highlighted sentence mean "Perhaps because Steiner's definition of beauty in 18th centurt was not consistent with Marcuse's definition which tied beauty with bourgeois capitalist identity"?
2. Do following sentences "Rich and powerful men desire to possess it as a sign of their wealth and power..." present evidences for Marcuse's definition of beauty or do they talk about Steiner's belief?
3. What does " In the grumbling skirmishes between the feminists and the Marxists, is Steiner not complicit with this state of affairs?" mean? What is "this state of affairs" referring to?
4. What is "much the same thing" referring to?
Top answer
1. If you remove the words "in [the] 18th century" from your paraphrase, then yes, more or less" (the scope is beauty in general, or at least since the 18th century, not merely in the 18th century). It may be debatable whether "definition" is the correct word in both places.
- 1.
- If you remove the words "in [the] 18th century" from your paraphrase, then yes, more or less" (the scope is beauty in general, or at least since the 18th century, not merely in the 18th century).
- It may be debatable whether "definition" is the correct word in both places.
- 2.
- I think the former.
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3 Answers
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1. If you remove the words "in [the] 18th century" from your paraphrase, then yes, more or less" (the scope is beauty in general, or at least since the 18th century, not merely in the 18th century). It may be debatable whether "definition" is the correct word in both places.
2. I think the former.
3. "this state of affairs" refers to what is described in the previous sentence.
2. I think the former.
3. "this state of affairs" refers to what is described in the previous sentence.
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Thank you so much for your response. 
Could you please explain a little more about " is Steiner not complicit with
Could you please explain a little more about " is Steiner not complicit with 00
"complicit in" means "involved in or knowing about something bad that happens" (http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/american/complicit). "Is Steiner not complicit ...?" is a rhetorical question to which the suggested answer is "Yes, she is". In other words, the author appears to
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