ABSTRACT
Eernest van den Haag has long been interested in mass culture. Liberal philosophers, on the other hand, have investigated the impossibilities of justifying value judgments for so long that they regard anyone criticizing mass culture for moral or aesthetic reasons as bold but naive. At any rate, neither mass culture nor objections to it seem to promote specific political views: fascists and communists, as often as liberals, favor mass culture, although they occasionally borrow some phrases from its opponents. Historians, who of all men might be expected to discern the uniqueness of mass culture, seldom do. Mass culture demands entertainment and so extravagantly rewards those who provide it with money, prestige and power that serious artists become isolated—and tempted. Mass culture threatens to decide cultural issues by a sort of universal suffrage. The trouble with mass culture is that in various direct and indirect ways it tends to make the existence of high culture impossible.
