In light of so much recent bad news from around the world [neverending sectarian violence in so many places, just for starters], but also here at home [CIA documents re: torture, just for starters, and our seemingly intractable racism and xenophobia], I have been returning to some of the writings of my friend Michael E. Moore, who in 2007 published two beautiful essays on the possible [hopeful] uses and reboots of humanism and humanistic scholarship in troubled times, which is just to say that, re-reading these 2 pieces, both of which address the horrific violence of the 20th century, including the human rights abuses of the Bush White Houses war on terror (and also the ways in which the histories and terms and practices of humanism appear hopeless and even part of the problem), we are persuaded to still hope that, By paying careful attention to the lives of others, living and dead, real and fictional, we may yet be saved, and learn how to humanize ourselves. This will also mean staying true to our friends, so that new paths can appear. George Steiner strongly implies that the proximity of Buchenwald to the Oak of Goethe was far more than a coincidence: this happenstance illustrated the fact that the ideal of humanity developed during the Enlightenment, and expressed in the political ideals of the Eighteenth century, had completely failed to humanize the world. The inhabitants of Weimar who became Nazis and built the camps were in some way the heirs of Goethe and Schiller. Moreover, according to Steiner, the so-called humanizing effect of the liberal arts also seemed doubtful in the extreme. The humanities have become an isolating preserve in which the real world is kept at bay. While reading King Lear or the Fleurs du Mal, Steiner remarks, “I do not hear the cry in the street” [“je n’entends pas le cri dans la rue”] (qtd. in Simonnet). His best student, Steiner declared, was the one who completely rejected his teaching and went off to become a doctor, serving the poor in China. The anecdote reflects the skepticism of an old professor whose life had been wagered almost entirely on literature, and who arrived at the end of a terrible century marked by a sense of futility about the isolated contemplation of the scholar in his or her study. But Steiner’s criticism of literature, in the course of his own profoundly literary life, also brings to mind a saying of the anti-modernist and aphorist Nicolás Gómez Dávila, that “there is no humanism that does not carry with it a critique of humanism” (197). No mature and fully developed humanism can fail to incorporate the edge of critique, or fail to examine its own false paths. We can reflect that Steiner’s criticism is humanistic in its deepest orientation, as well as in its sense of rebellion and disquiet. . . . [Nevertheless,] humanism is a pilgrimage across the human and natural world; in a search for human dignity and, let it be said, for personal liberation in the study of the human tradition: literature, philosophy and history, especially the literature and history of antiquity. Humanism desires to keep hold of the delicate frail things of the world and of humanity. Thus it is not surprising that since the Middle Ages, the study of the humanities has so often had to engage in a confrontation with crude social forces. Study of humanity and the natural world was undertaken to achieve an ideal of humanity in one’s own life, which is often forgotten by scholars. It would be reductive to view humanism as nothing more than a strategic academic stance, although this was certainly one feature of the Renaissance world of letters, as of our own. ~Michael Edward Moore, An Historians Notes for a Miloszan Humanism siue.edu/babel/JNTMoore_Miloszan_Humanism.htm Displays of hatred have been common in recent years, thriving in a moral atmosphere of decline. Nationalism has formed the crucial backdrop to the legal atavism and return to more primitive forms of law . . . . The attempt to preserve a humane culture and to assert our rights or our love of the right, should not be left in the hands of a distant state, since these are qualities of the virtuous life. One should highlight the possibility of friendship and the connections between friendship, liberty, and joy. It is by no means easy to orient oneself during a period such as this one. While pondering the theme of this essay, I went on retreat to the monastery of Maria Laach (Monasterium Sanctae Mariae ad Lacum). Walking the paths lined with ancient beech trees or sitting in the quiet of the old liturgical library, I found that the topic troubled my thoughts. It seemed like a violation of the peace of the monastery to study torture and terrorism inside the walls, and yet those walls gave my reflections a hopeful and dignified frame. We have been given the world as a setting in which to practice virtue and to attain self-knowledge; we are also bidden to study the world and the human tradition. Only this can open the prospect of contemplative happiness, to which the whole of political life seems directed. In periods of disturbance and change, personal constancy and discussions with like-minded friends become more important. If we can remain true to our friends, then new paths will appear . . . .” ~Michael Edward Moore, Wolves, Outlaws, and Enemy Combatants, https://academia.edu/235696/Cultural_Studies_of_the_Modern_Middle_Ages
Posted on: Thu, 25 Dec 2014 21:11:31 +0000