It is both a wonderful opportunity and privilege to travel and live in Europe every year for a month, in particular in countries that border the Mediterranean. But for every pleasure there’s a downside, which in my particular case is the inevitable, post-Europe depression that kicks-in every time I return to my home and (barren) native land (Canada). In classical knee-jerk fashion, for a minimum of one week, I languish in incurable self-absorption, routinely ignoring family, friends, telephone calls and now e-mails. As it happens without fail, this self-imposed exile becomes the necessary condition for the Nietzschean formulation, ‘the eternal recurrence of the same,’ to take up residence in my thoughts like an insatiable succubus, forcing me to face up to truths that tell no lies, and to finally make peace with the great contradiction that Europe embodies like no other place in the world - and that includes India.
What I believe Nietzsche means by ‘the eternal recurrence of the same’ is having to and then learning to want to endure, for an entire lifetime, the unpleasant, unalterable truths of the human condition. [Camus’ retelling of the Sisyphus myth derives from this]. As it pertains to my situation, the formulation means I have to, and should want to endure the terrible truth of the (arguably) negligible role played by the arts and humanities in human affairs - a truth most explicitly laid bare in Europe.
Europhiles will argue that in the major aesthetic categories in the arts and humanities, Europe’s accomplishments set the standard against which the world implicitly competes. From its cuisine, wines, inner cities, balconies, music, literature, philosophy, art and architecture, and God-given landscape, it concentrates in a relatively small area the best of what mankind has accomplished, and shows, in glimpses, (between wars) man as the bridge to a higher, nobler and more evolved self. At the same time, one should insist that the above claim is proof that nation-tainted, subjective judgments ignore scientific objectivity at their own peril. How is the fair-minded scholar to meaningfully rank the jungle miracle of the Mayan pyramids at Tikal versus the Lombardic churches of Italy? To sing the subjective praises of Europe is to invite accusations of Euro-centricism, notwithstanding the concessions of someone of the stature and influence of Palestinian defender Edward Said, (author of Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism), who readily concedes the highest rank to Europe’s great aesthetic traditions.
But whether or not Europe represents the high point of human culture, or, to take up the Kantian challenge by asking if it is possible to arrive at an objective ranking of world art and culture is to miss the point I wish I could make -- but can’t. If we can say for certain that aesthetic traditions exist everywhere in the world, what we cannot say, [what the romantic in me would like to say], is that the arts have had a humanizing effect, that the great aesthetic traditions have provided the impetus for barbaric individuals and nations to transform themselves into civilized ones.
And yet from art’s humble cave beginnings to the present, the myth that art matters has been embraced, out of necessity, by every artist. Which is to say, even the most cynical artist, defined by what he creates out of nothing, is an idealist. If the artist were only a realist, there would probably be no art, and it is precisely the realist’s vision that signals, for me, the ‘eternal return of the same’, and defines the terms of my struggle to render artistic endeavor meaningful, of practical significance. Because I, who have been steeped in the arts from my earliest years, worrisomely suspect they have failed to make any ‘significant’ difference. If there is a measure by which we can categorically state that Europe’s aesthetic traditions are the most accomplished on the planet, that same measure reveals that its history, (WWI, WWII, Stalin) in this century in particular, has been the most savage, notwithstanding the spectacular achievements of Michelangelo, Bach and Proust - to mention only a few that occupy that illustrious (and crowded) pantheon.
So if on the one hand we have Edward Said deferring to Europe’s great aesthetic traditions, this century’s most influential philosopher, Martin Heidegger, suspects they count fur nichts. How does it come about that after having dedicated his entire career to the humanities, Heidegger writes towards the end of his long life: “only God can save us.” A statement so deep in cynicism the questions it raises have yet to be properly formulated. Is he conceding that his life’s work, (an elaboration of the possibility of rendering our lives meaningful) has failed in the task it set out to perform, perhaps fallen short of even defining its essential task: to tame the savage beast that lurks within us all. Let us recall that under Heidegger’s watch, in Germany, the human being was degraded in a manner that may never be historically surpassed.
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With all due respect to the ‘mythic’ status conferred to the artist, the fact remains that throughout the course of history we have been more easily moved by economic conditions than collections of art, a state of affairs that should move us to consider the very real possibility that the arts and humanities themselves bear responsibility for their historical ineffectiveness. For if they owe their existence to the grand purpose of rendering their subjects more humane, best intentions aside, they have abjectly failed: to wit -- the killing fields of Europe in the 20th century. Perhaps the time has come for the humanities to take up the challenge of setting themselves upon a path whose task it is to remake history in so far as man is able to remake himself according to values elicited by his humanity.
Then again, perhaps we are asking too much of the great traditions, and not enough of ourselves. Best teachers, best literature, best music aside, no one can learn to walk our walk. Perhaps the humanism I dare dream of cannot be sufficiently cultivated through the great achievements of culture, but only through the cultivation of the individual himself. The individual alone must learn to think through and take responsibility for the dubious wars he has waged, for the causes he has historically chosen to die for -- in order to learn to love life at least as much.
THE END