Beautiful Indian Summers - But to What End?

A little while ago my wife and I began watching Indian Summers, a show about the British Raj's annual move to Simla, in the foothills of the Himalaya, where it sheltered from Delhi's summer heat. The show is visually stunning, marked by the natural beauty of the landscape (actually shot in Malaysia) and the pomp of the Raj. For a historian of the British Empire, the draw is obvious. But we've been on an Indian Summers hiatus of late. By tacit agreement, we just started doing other things in the evening.

The show's characters, though interesting, may have missed a certain je ne sais quoi. The plot, though intriguing, was not quite compelling. But my disquiet about the show was something else. Something more fundamental.

Friedrich Nietzsche, in his Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life, described three kinds of history. Monumental history glorifies the past; it holds up the heroes of yesteryear as models to be imitated. Critical history highlights all that was wrong in the past, and in so doing spurs us on to do better today. Antiquarian history is less dynamic: it describes the past as essentially the same as the present. It takes comfort in the great continuity of human society.

Viewed through this lens, Indian Summers is puzzling. It is not monumental. Although the splendor of the Raj is on display, the show clearly conveys that the Raj was oppressive, dishonest, and generally out of touch with the people it governed. And yet I would hesitate to describe the show as critical. The Indian nationalist movement - at least in the episodes we watched - comes off as morally justified, but not dramatically so, not enough to decisively turn our sympathies against the British characters. Given the enormity of the questions at stake, there is a surprising amount of moral ambivalence.

So Indian Summers must be antiquarian, right? Here we come to the crux of my complaint. At first glance, the show would not seem to fit the basic antiquarian mold: its power struggles, deceptions, and unbridled lust for power and the pleasures of the flesh bear little resemblance to my own life. Is this essentially the same as the present day?

Indian Summers is a mirror reflecting many of the worst qualities of 21st century America. The quest for power is taken as a given. Fornication and adultery are essentially no different from a good meal: if the cost is not unreasonable, well worth enjoying. Truth and justice, though not entirely banished, have become moral garnishes. For those who live in this version of modern society, Indian Summers conveys the message that the Raj looked much like the present. That which is enjoyed or feared, valued or despised today was held in similar regard in every age, was it not?

But for those of us who still inhabit those corners of contemporary society where desires are subordinated to duties, where power has value only in relation to the ends it accomplishes, where fidelity is not merely a burden to be carried but a virtue to be celebrated, Indian Summers is a depressing scene. That these shortcomings are not even recognized is more depressing still.

Empire, Brexit, and the Historical Imagination

Today is Queen Victoria's birthday, a public holiday in Canada (observed on the preceding Monday) and the anchor point for the moving Empire Day holiday (which subsequently morphed into Commonwealth Day).

Debates about the British Empire - was it a monument of civilization or a system of global oppression? - have reminded me of debates about a more contemporary question: Brexit. Does Britain belong in Europe or not?

In a recent Financial Times article, Gideon Rachman examined the claims of two rival camps of historians as they argue about whether Britain has, historically, been part of Europe. Historians for Britain, the euro-skeptic party - led by David Abulafia, professor of Mediterranean history at Cambridge - contend that Britain has a long tradition of political continuity and moderate reform (unlike Europe, with its revolutions and reactions, not to mention Fascism, Nazism, and Communism), as well as physical separation from the European continent.

The pro-European party - which lacks a handy label, but did put out an article titled "Fog in Channel, Historians Isolated" - takes issue with these claims, noting that Britain has a long history of close interactions with the Continent. Not least among such linkages is Christianity, integral to Britain's identity, at least until quite recently, but also something to which Britain has no unique claim, but instead shares with the rest of Europe and regions beyond. Moreover, the critics note that Britain had a civil war, which, though several centuries ago, was no less nasty for its antiquity.  So Britain is not immune to such upheavals. And then there's the Empire. "Expropriation, slavery, massacres, oppression, anyone?” asks Neil Gregor, professor of modern history at Southampton.

Rachman concludes that "I do not entirely agree (or disagree) with any of the historians I have met... [but] I agree with Abulafia and the Historians for Britain in one important respect: their argument that the UK has been unusually good at creating successful political institutions and that this is an inheritance worth cherishing and protecting." However, Rachman adds: "But I do not think that this adds up to an argument for Britain leaving the EU."

I would like to pull the lens even further back, so to speak. Ever since Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886), the father of the modern historical craft, we - I say this as a member of the historical guild - have focused on history wie es eigentlich gewesen (as it actually happened). This is a perfectly reasonable and laudable standard for historians to pursue. But as Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) reminds us, history also has advantages and disadvantages for life. I would not go so far as to say, as Nietzsche might, that we should falsify the historical record for the sake of the impact it has on the present. But we would be fools to overlook the role that perceptions of the past have in shaping our imaginations, which in turn shape our actions.

In this context, I would argue that emphasizing Britain's long history of evolving, moderate, and generally freedom-loving political institutions is useful, even inspiring, for Britain's present, whether that be within or outside the EU. In a similar vein, I think a case can be made that emphasizing the British Empire as a global effort at fostering trade, harmonizing law, ensuring security, and spreading the Gospel is a worthy means of inspiring the men and women of today to deeds of virtue.

You might contend that these visions of Britain's past are as much romance as fact; I would suggest they are simply the product of particular emphasis. But what about all the failures that went along with these positive elements? Ah, you are putting on your critical history hat, as Nietzsche would say. As I pointed out five years ago, we can do that tomorrow. Today we celebrate the good.

Today's image comes from the Canadian War Museum.

The Everlasting Yea

Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus is like Thus Spake Zarathustra, but with a sense of humor.

Sartor Resartus is the effort of an imaginary English translator/editor to describe the life and opinions of a solitary, mysterious German writer named Diogenes Teufelsdröckh ("God-born Devil-dung"), professor of Things-in-General at the University of Weissnichtwo ("don't know where"), residing in his rooms on the Wahngasse ("Madness Street"), and author of the treatise Clothes: Their Origin and Influence. The book, containing pompous "translations" and summaries of Teufelsdröckh's autobiographical scribblings--literally scraps of paper sorted in bags by symbols of the zodiac--and of his magnum opus, is in part a parody of German philosophy in the first half of the 19th century, but also a vehicle for Carlye to expound some of his own opinions.

Carlyle himself seems to have been a proto-existentialist, a branch of philosophy generally associated not with him but with the later Nietzsche. Both the men and their works share important similarities. Both Carlyle and Nietzsche grew up in sternly religious families and were expected to become ministers, but both rejected the faith of their youth. And yet the writings of both men retain a strongly religious feeling. The most striking evidence is that both men make use of hermits to stand for wisdom-seekers in their philosophy. Teufelsdröckh, after being rejected by his true love Blumine roams the world like the Wandering Jew, pursued by his shadow. Zarathustra, on the other hand, remains in solitude on a mountaintop before deciding to re-enter the world. (Interestingly, Nietzsche also used the figure of the wanderer and his shadow, as witness his dialogue Der Wanderer und sein Schatten.)

The most important similarity between Sartor Resartus and Thus Spake Zarathustra, though, is the message at the heart of their existentialist philosophy: each individual must need for affirm the goodness of the world, say yes to it. This is a message that can and should be taken up by Christians, albeit with some modifications, as it was by Josef Pieper in Zustimmung zur Welt. [1]

In the biographical section of Sartor Resartus, Carlyle sets out three states of soul through which Teufelsdröckh passes: The Everlasting No, the Center of Indifference, and the Everlasting Yea. Only in the Everlasting Yea, when he affirms the goodness of the world, does he attain spiritual perfection. The "everlasting No" is not simply rejection of the world, but is also profound defiance. It can best be given in Teufelsdröckh's own words from his conversation with himself during a quasi-mystical experience on the Rue Saint-Thomas de l'Enfer in Paris, when he was sunk in misery after Blumine forsook him to marry a mutual friend:

Despicable biped! what is the sum-total of the worst that lies before thee? Death? Well, Death; and say the pangs of Tophet too, and all that the Devil and Man may, will or can do again against thee! Hast thou not a heart: canst thou not suffer whatsoever it be; and, as a Child of Freedom, though outcast, trample Tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee? Let it come, then; I will meet it and defy it!"

In the Everlasting No, the individual is totally alienated and is thrown back upon his own freedom. In the midst of his despair, he decides to face death with nothing but his own will power to aid him.

The Center of Indifference marks an intermediate stage through which souls pass from the everlasting Yea to the everlasting No. The soul is still sick, but is also recovering from the defiant despair by which he has been afflicted up until now; the worst symptoms are now in remission. Or, as Teufelsdröckh's English editor describes it, in terms of demonic possession:

We should rather say that Legion, or the Satanic School, was now pretty well extirpated and cast out [of Teufelsdröckh], but next to nothing introduced in its room; whereby the heart remains, for the while, in a quiet but no comfortable state.

Only the everlasting Yea marks the decisive break with despair and defiance. Teufelsdröckh's account of his conversion bears quoting in full in his hyperbolic, exaggeratedly Germanic and professorial style:

Es leuchtet mir ein, I see a glimpse of it...there is in man a Higher than Love of Happiness; he can do without Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessedness! Was it not to preach-forth this same Higher that sages and martyrs, the Poet and the Priest, in all times, ahve spoken and suffered; bearing testimony, though life and through death, of the Godlike that is in Man, and how in the Godlike only has he Strength and Freedom? Which God-inspired Doctrine art thou also honoured to be taught; O Heavens! and broken with manifold merciful Afflictions, even till thou become contrite, and learn it! O, thank thy Destiny for these; thankfully bear what yet remain: thou hadst need of them; the Self in thee needed to be annihilated. By benignant fever-paroxysms is Life rooting out the deep-seated chronic Disease, and triumphs over Death. On the roaring billows of Time, thou art not engulfed, but borne aloft into the azure of Eternity. Love not Pleasure; love God. This is the Everlasting Yea, wherein all contradiction is solved: wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him.

What is noteworthy about this passage is that Teufelsdröckh preaches something higher than happiness, for happiness would be too selfish. Instead, he preaches blessedness in the form of annihilation of the self. Love of God, and affirmation of the world, are one and the same thing, but they entail annihilation of the self. The result of this affirmation is to be "borne aloft into the azure of Eternity." The sense of disappearing into God and nature--if there is even a distinction in Carlyle's mind--is palpable here.

However, even though all three writers believe that affirmation of the world is necessary, they all differ from each in exactly how they affirm the goodness of the world. Nietzsche sings the glory of affirmation in poems and rhapsodic prose in Zarathustra, and even states in one of his posthumously published aphorisms: "To have joy in anything, one must approve everything." But in his post-Zarathustra writings it is not quite clear whether he actually can affirm the goodness of the world. He writes his autobiography and calls himself the "Antichrist." Nietzsche may claim that he just wants to affirm the world, but it seems that he is really more of a rebel, defiant in his despair, and angry at the Christian God. As Romano Guardini says of Nietzsche, his portrayal of the perfect man as a "man who can dance" on the surface of nothingness is a Sehnsuchtsbild, a projection of his longing to attain a freedom of spirit and affirmation of the world that he could never actually achieve himself. [2] The man who wanted to overcome himself tragically could not overcome the Everlasting No.

Carlyle reaches a more authentic affirmation than Nietzsche, but he is so full of irony that it can sometimes be hard to tell whether he secretly harbors reservations. On the positive side, his humor can be seen as a sign that he has come to accept the world. He can call the young Teufelsdröckh by the diminutive "Gneschen"! Nietzsche never could have written about a spiritual hero and called him by the nickname "Thustralein." Carlyle's English "editor" can also point out flaws in his author's style and organization, and even criticize some of his opinions. The sometimes flippant humor shows that he is not in continuous agony, like Nietzsche.

Moreover, Carlyle recognizes that our very existence is a miracle. This is one of Carlyle's core beliefs, and one which forms the basis of his affirmation of the world. He repeats this belief in clearer form in his essay on Odin in On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History: "This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think it." (Carlyle also holds that wonder at the divinity of nature is the chief characteristic of paganism--strikingly similar to G.K. Chesteron's views.)

On the other hand, Carlyle's irony may signal that he still feels some detachment from the world. One wonders at times whether the irony really indicates that Carlyle cannot but view the wanderings and despair of Teufelsdröckh with quiet ridicule. He may still be stuck in the Center of Indifference.

Furthermore, Carlyle was strongly influenced by German Idealism and its undercurrent of pantheism. While he was not a full-pledged pantheist, there are times when Carlyle blurs the distinction between God and nature. Moreover, in the tradition of earlier mystics, Carlyle also views happiness as an annihilation of self. In a later essay on Mohammad (also in On Heroes), he states: "Islam means in its way Denial of Self, Annihilation of Self. This is yet the highest Wisdom that Heaven has revealed to our Earth." This equation of denial of self--what Christ has called all his followers to practice--with annihilation of self--a false form of immanentism rampant in German Idealism--sets up a contradictory relationship to the world. If one hopes for one's self to be annihilated, how can one also affirm the goodness of the world? The two are not compatible--so long as one wishes to remain part of this world. An orthodox Christian, on the other hand, denies himself so that he can follow Christ more obediently and ascend to the source of this beautiful world with Him, not to be annihilated, even in the beatific vision. [3]

Only Pieper, with his characteristic serenity--remarkable for a man who lived through some of the most turbulent times in a country at the center of the last century's upheavals--seems to have actually assented to the world and reached the truly Everlasting Yea. And it is obvious from the types of books he wrote: a Theory of Festivity as well as Happiness and Contemplation; he wrote about affirming the goodness of the world without the rancor of Nietzsche or the irony of Carlyle. In a world turned upside down and full of fashionable sophists like Sartre who called being born absurd, he undertook the difficult task of explaining why the world was good, and why we should say "yes" to it. What made it possible for Pieper to attain the everlasting Yea was his belief in a transcendent God who does not demand self-annihilation as a prerequisite to happiness (or blessedness), as opposed to the quasi-Spinozan God of Teufelsdröckh and Carlyle. For Pieper, who saw himself as developing the key concept of Kreatürlichkeit ("creatureliness") he found in St. Thomas Aquinas, existence was even more of a miracle than for Carlyle--the free act of a Creator who was under no compulsion to make the world. Only with his belief in a transcendent God who created and redeemed the world could Pieper say, "Lord, it is good that I am here!"

The Everlasting Yea, in its sublimest form, is a fundamental affirmation of the goodness of the world and of its Creator. And for each of these authors, the Everlasting Yea is the source of any spiritual serenity they experienced.

[1] Pieper's book is available in English translation as In Tune with the World, but I hesitate to call it by that title because it is a mistranslation of the German: Zustimmung means affirmation, assent, agreement, or approval; it implies an active decision to say "yes" to something, not a passive surrender.

[2] Romano Guardini, Vom Sinn der Schwermut (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 2003), p. 24.

[3] Readers interested on the question of pantheism should consult Thomas Molnar, God and the Knowledge of Reality (New York: Basic Books, 1973).

Nietzsche: Erudition vs. Wisdom

Back in April I wrote a post about the Great Books as a system of education, and argued that education should be about the formation of the individual within a tradition, and not just the amassing of knowledge.

Just the other day, though, I re-read a passage from Nietzsche's Schopenhauer as Educator and was struck by its relevance to the contemporary debate over the value of the Great Books. In section eight of the essay, Nietzsche denounces those philosophers, especially those in the Kantian tradition in Germany, who had let the state buy them off with cushy jobs as tenured university professors and thus became unwilling to question, much less criticize, the existing order. This easy accommodation with the state led to a grave danger:

This is actually the third, and the most dangerous, concession made by philosophy to the state, when it is compelled to appear in the form of erudition, as the knowledge (more specifically) of the history of philosophy. The genius looks purely and lovingly on existence, like a poet, and cannot dive too deep into it;—and nothing is more abhorrent to him than to burrow among the innumerable strange and wrong-headed opinions. The learned history of the past was never a true philosopher's business, in India or Greece; and a professor of philosophy who busies himself with such matters must be, at best, content to hear it said of him, "He is an able scholar, antiquary, philologist, historian,"—but never, "He is a philosopher."

The distinction Nietzsche draws between studying the history of philosophy and doing philosophy, between attaining erudition and wisdom, is what should guide the debate about the Great Books. Knowledge--or, as we say today, information--is of course necessary, but without a tradition to give form to that information, it will only become, as Nietzsche said On the Use and Abuse of History, "indigestible knowledge-stones." Without a coherent philosophy we will not be able to digest all the information and historical knowledge we already have and be nourished with wisdom.

Nietzsche on Marriage

A friend recently directed my attention to the 20th chapter of Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which pertains to marriage and children. I reproduce it here in its entirety because it is that interesting:

I have a question for thee alone, my brother: like a sounding-lead, cast I this question into thy soul, that I may know its depth.

Thou art young, and desirest child and marriage. But I ask thee: Art thou a man ENTITLED to desire a child?

Art thou the victorious one, the self-conqueror, the ruler of thy passions, the master of thy virtues? Thus do I ask thee.

Or doth the animal speak in thy wish, and necessity? Or isolation? Or discord in thee?

I would have thy victory and freedom long for a child. Living monuments shalt thou build to thy victory and emancipation.

Beyond thyself shalt thou build. But first of all must thou be built thyself, rectangular in body and soul.

Not only onward shalt thou propagate thyself, but upward! For that purpose may the garden of marriage help thee!

A higher body shalt thou create, a first movement, a spontaneously rolling wheel--a creating one shalt thou create.

Marriage: so call I the will of the twain to create the one that is more than those who created it. The reverence for one another, as those exercising such a will, call I marriage.

Let this be the significance and the truth of thy marriage. But that which the many-too-many call marriage, those superfluous ones--ah, what shall I call it?

Ah, the poverty of soul in the twain! Ah, the filth of soul in the twain! Ah, the pitiable self-complacency in the twain!

Marriage they call it all; and they say their marriages are made in heaven.

Well, I do not like it, that heaven of the superfluous! No, I do not like them, those animals tangled in the heavenly toils!

Far from me also be the God who limpeth thither to bless what he hath not matched!

Laugh not at such marriages! What child hath not had reason to weep over its parents?

Worthy did this man seem, and ripe for the meaning of the earth: but when I saw his wife, the earth seemed to me a home for madcaps.

Yea, I would that the earth shook with convulsions when a saint and a goose mate with one another.

This one went forth in quest of truth as a hero, and at last got for himself a small decked-up lie: his marriage he calleth it.

That one was reserved in intercourse and chose choicely. But one time he spoilt his company for all time: his marriage he calleth it.

Another sought a handmaid with the virtues of an angel. But all at once he became the handmaid of a woman, and now would he need also to become an angel.

Careful, have I found all buyers, and all of them have astute eyes. But even the astutest of them buyeth his wife in a sack.

Many short follies--that is called love by you. And your marriage putteth an end to many short follies, with one long stupidity.

Your love to woman, and woman`s love to man--ah, would that it were sympathy for suffering and veiled deities! But generally two animals alight on one another.

But even your best love is only an enraptured simile and a painful ardour. It is a torch to light you to loftier paths.

Beyond yourselves shall ye love some day! Then LEARN first of all to love. And on that account ye had to drink the bitter cup of your love.

Bitterness is in the cup even of the best love: thus doth it cause longing for the Superman; thus doth it cause thirst in thee, the creating one!

Thirst in the creating one, arrow and longing for the Superman: tell me, my brother, is this thy will to marriage?

Holy call I such a will, and such a marriage.

Hat tip to ClassicAuthors.net for posting this and other passages and to Paul Heimann - who is himself getting married today - for recommending it.