Our classical virtues have been pummeled by developments in our era. In the West, in recent decades, conceptions of the true, the beautiful, and the good have been subjected to considerable, perhaps unparalleled, strain from two unexpected quarters—both quite new: the ideas that we describe as postmodern and the ever-expanding, ever more powerful digital media.
From one angle—a philosophical one—postmodern critiques emanating from the humanities have questioned the legitimacy of the trio—the good, the beautiful, and the true. According to this skeptical account, assessments of what is true or beautiful or good reflect nothing more than the preferences of whoever holds power at a given moment; in a multicultural, relativistic world, the most to which we can aspire are civil conversations across often irreconcilable divides. And so, for example, the mild postmodernist might challenge my characterization of Impressionist art as beautiful, claiming that I am just yielding to an account of painting that, by an accidental set of circumstances, has come to dominate textbooks. The more aggressive postmodernists would throw out the term beautiful altogether—claiming either that the concept is meaningless or something even more venal: shorthand for stating that I have ascribed to myself the right to determine merit. So, too, my statements about truth and about goodness would be seen as arrogant, subjective, or meaningless.
From a quite different angle—a technological one—the new digital media have ushered in a chaotic state of affairs. Thanks to their predominance, we encounter a mélange of claims and counterclaims; an unparalleled mixture of creations, constantly being revised; and an ethical landscape that is unregulated, confusing, indeed largely unexamined. How to determine what is truth—when a statement on Wikipedia about who I am and what I am doing can be changed by anyone at any time? Or when we can all present ourselves on social network sites any way we want? Or when blogs can claim without evidence or consequence that the current American president was born in Kenya? How to ascertain what is beautiful—when a photograph by a once acknowledged master can be endlessly edited on Photoshop, or when judgments of works of art rendered by a majority vote are given more weight than those offered by experts? How to arrive at goodness—the right course of action—when it is so easy to circulate unsubstantiated rumors about another person's private life, or when nearly everyone downloads pirated music even though it is technically illegal to do so.
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