genius - alienation
If genius is removed from art at the same time as the artist is denied the claim to be a genius, art and indeed all culture, ceases to be transcendental and can be assessed only in this-worldly terms. Culture without genius might therefor be understood simply as entertainment. For a repudiation of the aspirations expressed in the ideology of genius might suggest that the most honest, the most satisfactory culture wold be a purely instrumental culture designed to supply various convenient gratifications.
So badly functional a culture would shun all else in order the more effectively to ease man's passage from cradle to grave. After all, given human self-consciousness, there is a problem of how to occupy the mind between inception and extinction.
Yet culture so situated could be allowed another role, close to that of religious culture in religious society. For religious culture, though transcendental in the sense that it turned men's eyes to heaven and to God, was profoundly this-worldly in the sense that it served to maintain a religious cult which took place, and religious doctrine taught and held, here on earth.
Secular culture lacks even the secular equivalent of this second function of religious culture; has remained absolutely committed to the secular transcendental; and has failed (except in philistine perversions) to sustain secular society's procedures, principles, and norms. On the contrary, it ever criticizes those procedures, principles and norms. But once and if secular culture could modify its loyalties to the transcendental, it should be free to sustain secular society and its values more thoroughly than religious culture once sustained a religious cult and its values.
Secular culture's failure to sustain society's fundamental values arises both from its presumption that society is alienated, and from the conviction that this alienated order could and would be transcended. Culture without genius denies that the alienated order can be transcended; and it might also assert the this-worldly order is neither alienated nor alienating. But that assertion would merely substitute for doctrinaire absolute criticism an equally doctrinaire acceptance of the present order, worthy of philistinism at its worst.
Walter Kaufmann's recent essay, 'The Inevitability of Alienation', states that he believes that "alienation is a central feature of human existence", and that "as freedom, education, and self-consciousness increase, alienation grows too." Kaufmann even argues - presumably because he finds alienation inseparable from freedom, education, and self-consciousness - that "Life without estrangement is scarcely worth living". But he admits that this situation raises problems and agrees that "what matters is to increase men's capacity to cope with alienation."
Kaufmann's views resemble those of certain romantics who attribute alienation to man's real and necessary development from the unalienated, naive state; who interpret the contemporary human condition not merely as we advance on, but also as a decline from, the past; and who hope that the future men will preserve and indeed continue their development while transcending their alienation.
Since Kaufmann holds alienation to be inevitable, he excludes the transcendental. But he agrees with the romantics that alienation is both good and evil. Alienation is a good, Kaufmann and the romantics argue, insofar as it represents, or at least is inseparable from, the development of mankind. Alienation is an evil, according to the romantics because it constitutes a degradation that must be transcended; and according to Kaufmann because it forms a disability that must be coped with.
Whitman's words,
So badly functional a culture would shun all else in order the more effectively to ease man's passage from cradle to grave. After all, given human self-consciousness, there is a problem of how to occupy the mind between inception and extinction.
Yet culture so situated could be allowed another role, close to that of religious culture in religious society. For religious culture, though transcendental in the sense that it turned men's eyes to heaven and to God, was profoundly this-worldly in the sense that it served to maintain a religious cult which took place, and religious doctrine taught and held, here on earth.
Secular culture lacks even the secular equivalent of this second function of religious culture; has remained absolutely committed to the secular transcendental; and has failed (except in philistine perversions) to sustain secular society's procedures, principles, and norms. On the contrary, it ever criticizes those procedures, principles and norms. But once and if secular culture could modify its loyalties to the transcendental, it should be free to sustain secular society and its values more thoroughly than religious culture once sustained a religious cult and its values.
Secular culture's failure to sustain society's fundamental values arises both from its presumption that society is alienated, and from the conviction that this alienated order could and would be transcended. Culture without genius denies that the alienated order can be transcended; and it might also assert the this-worldly order is neither alienated nor alienating. But that assertion would merely substitute for doctrinaire absolute criticism an equally doctrinaire acceptance of the present order, worthy of philistinism at its worst.
Walter Kaufmann's recent essay, 'The Inevitability of Alienation', states that he believes that "alienation is a central feature of human existence", and that "as freedom, education, and self-consciousness increase, alienation grows too." Kaufmann even argues - presumably because he finds alienation inseparable from freedom, education, and self-consciousness - that "Life without estrangement is scarcely worth living". But he admits that this situation raises problems and agrees that "what matters is to increase men's capacity to cope with alienation."
Kaufmann's views resemble those of certain romantics who attribute alienation to man's real and necessary development from the unalienated, naive state; who interpret the contemporary human condition not merely as we advance on, but also as a decline from, the past; and who hope that the future men will preserve and indeed continue their development while transcending their alienation.
Since Kaufmann holds alienation to be inevitable, he excludes the transcendental. But he agrees with the romantics that alienation is both good and evil. Alienation is a good, Kaufmann and the romantics argue, insofar as it represents, or at least is inseparable from, the development of mankind. Alienation is an evil, according to the romantics because it constitutes a degradation that must be transcended; and according to Kaufmann because it forms a disability that must be coped with.
Whitman's words,
One's self I sing, a simple separate person,
Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-masse
Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-masse
prefigure the difficulty which confronts a truly social culture.
A truly new understanding of alienation, a truly this-worldly culture would not merely bend upon but stick at these present things: neither abstracting them into transcendental art, like Schopenhauer, nor going beyond them to their transcendental meaning, like Joyce, but accepting them, seriously and critically, as the inescapable phenomena of a world permanently alienated.
A truly new understanding of alienation, a truly this-worldly culture would not merely bend upon but stick at these present things: neither abstracting them into transcendental art, like Schopenhauer, nor going beyond them to their transcendental meaning, like Joyce, but accepting them, seriously and critically, as the inescapable phenomena of a world permanently alienated.
