Transcendental goods: Charles Murray discusses art, accomplishment, faith, and doubt.

• Author: Bailey, Ronald
• Position: Interview

CHARLES MURRAY IS the W.H. Brady Scholar in Culture and Freedom at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. His T984 book Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 was a devastating dissection of welfare programs and is widely credited with helping inspire the welfare reforms of the 1990s. In 1994 he co-authored the immensely controversial The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. (reason's critique of the book, authored by future Nobel laureate James J. Heckman, is online at reason.com/9503/dept.bk.HECKMAN. text.shtml.) And in 1997 he wrote an eloquent defense of human liberty, What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation.

Last fall Murray published Human Accomplihment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C.-1950 (HarperCollins). As one reviewer summarized it, "Murray sets out to describe the main human achievements from 800 BC to 1950 in music, literature and the visual arts, as well as medicine and the physical sciences. He also tries to identify the institutions, beliefs and practices--the culture--that facilitate outstanding achievements." In December reason Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey and Editor-in-Chief Nick Gillespie met with Murray to discuss Human Accomplishment.

reason: Why did you write this book?

Charles Murray: I wrote a book that I wanted to read. I am fascinated by greatness. I am fascinated by people who operate at the edges of human capacity, and I am also fascinated by excellence in different cultures.

reason: You argue that the "transcendental goods" are vital to motivating human accomplishment. What are they?

Murray: Truth, beauty, and the good, in the classic sense.The proposition is that artistic achievement and scientific achievement used ideals of the transcendental goods as source material. In some cases, as inspiration. In other cases, as templates against which you measure yourself.

reason: You say that we're in an era of decline--that the rate of human accomplishment has slowed in both the arts and the sciences--because we've turned our backs on the transcendental goods.

Murray: With the Enlightenment, we started a whole series of major acquisitions of new knowledge about how the world works. These were important and real and had great amounts of truth to them. They also played hell with the old verities. I'm thinking of the rule of reason as against traditional religion. I'm thinking Darwinism. I'm thinking of Freud. And...