Editing Herbert Read (section)

==Anarchism and philosophical outlook==
Politically, Read considered himself an anarchist, albeit in the English [[Quietism (philosophy)|quietist]] tradition of [[Edward Carpenter]] and [[William Morris]]. Nevertheless, in the [[1953 New Year Honours]] he accepted a [[Knight Bachelor|knighthood]] for "services to literature";<ref name=GoodwayP180>{{Harvnb|Goodway|1998|p=180}}</ref><ref>UK list: {{London Gazette |issue=39732 |date= 30 December 1952 |pages=2  |supp=y}}</ref> this caused Read to be ostracized by most of the anarchist movement.<ref>David Goodway, "Introduction" in ''A one-man manifesto and other writings for Freedom Press'' by Herbert Read, London, Freedom Press,
1994, {{ISBN|0-900384-72-7}} (pp. 1-26).</ref> Read was actively opposed to the [[Francoist Spain|Franco regime]] in Spain,
and often campaigned on behalf of political prisoners in Spain.<ref>Herbert Read, "We Protest Against this
Spanish Tyranny..." (1952 Speech), reprinted in ''A one-man manifesto and other writings for Freedom Press'' (pp. 199-200).</ref> He was the chairman of the [[Freedom Defence Committee]] founded in 1945.<ref>''Peace News'', 23 March 1945</ref> In 1964 Read joined the ''Who Killed Kennedy Committee?'' set up by [[Bertrand Russell]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Russell |first1=Bertrand |title=Autobiography |date=1998 |publisher=Routledge |page=707}}</ref>

Dividing Read's writings on politics from those on art and culture is difficult, because he saw art, culture and politics as a single congruent expression of human consciousness. His total work amounts to over 1,000 published titles.

Read's book ''To Hell With Culture'' deals specifically with his disdain for the term ''culture'' and expands on his anarchist view of the artist as artisan, as well as presenting a major analysis of the work of [[Eric Gill]]. It was republished by [[Routledge]] in 2002.

In his philosophical outlook, Read was close to the European idealist traditions represented by [[Friedrich Schelling]], [[Johann Gottlieb Fichte]], and [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]], believing that reality as it is experienced by the human mind was as much a product of the human mind as any external or objective actuality. In other words, the mind is not a camera recording the reality it perceives through the eyes; it is also a projector throwing out its own reality. This meant that art was not, as many [[Marxists]] believed, simply a product of a bourgeois society, but a psychological process that had evolved simultaneously with the evolution of consciousness. Art was, therefore, a biological phenomenon, a view that frequently pitted Read against Marxist critics such as [[Anthony Blunt]] in the 1930s. Read, in this respect, was influenced by developments in German [[art psychology]]. His Idealist background also led Read towards an interest in [[psychoanalysis]]. Read became a pioneer in the English-speaking world in the use of psychoanalysis as a tool for art and literary criticism. Originally a Freudian, Read came to transfer his allegiance to the [[analytical psychology]] of [[Carl Jung]], eventually becoming both publisher and editor-in-chief of Jung's collected works in English.<ref>Goodway, "Introduction" in ''A One-Man Manifesto and other writings for Freedom Press'' by Herbert Read (1994), p. 19.</ref>

As early as 1949, Read took an interest in the writings of the French [[Existentialists]], particularly those of [[Jean-Paul Sartre]]. Although Read never described himself as an existentialist, he did acknowledge that his theories often found support among those who did. Read perhaps was the closest England came to an existentialist theorist of the European tradition.<ref>See [[Michael Paraskos]], ''The Elephant and the Beetles: the Aesthetic Theories of Herbert Read'', PhD, University of Nottingham, 2005.</ref>