Posted on 06/14/2002 10:06:06 AM PDT by cornelis
There is no cultural issue more explosive today than race. It is a matter that continually evades any attempt at rational analysis and instead distorts our politics and inflames the passions. A sad consequence is the debasement of our cultural life. Rather than being united by objects of love, by shared and commonly embraced ideals, we are increasingly divided along racial lines by competing objects of desire, all presumed to be of equal value, each demanding its due. Such competing desires, because they make exclusive, universal claims, cannot possibly be satisfied. At the heart of the deep racial divisions in our nation today is the concept of race itself, which wrongly extrapolates from superficial, physical differences (skin color) to conclusions about substantial, moral differences (ways of perceiving the world, values, and ideas).
Consider just a few of the controversies afflicting us recently. Potentially a source of common civic inspiration, the proposed New York City firefighters memorial commemorating heroic responses to the World Trade Center disaster quickly became the focus of an uncivil dispute pitting simple truth and historical accuracy against racial representation and “inclusiveness.” . . .
What makes these disputes so utterly puerile is that, for all their superficial differences, both sides agree on a fundamental assumption: that culture is aesthetic, meaning that it is composed solely of facts and feelings of individual and group experiences. The tragedy is that when culture is viewed as aesthetic, race must necessarily dominate our thinking and our values, with no possibility for improvement. Fortunately, we do have a way out of the conundrum of race, and that is to reject it precisely because it is an aesthetic concept—a development that resulted, rather recently, from the Enlightenment—and return to what Western culture perennially strives for: the apprehension, appreciations and realization of beauty.
Beauty and Aesthetics
The suggestion that racism is an aesthetic-based problem that can be solved by a renewed appreciation for beauty may strike some as odd or naïve. Nonetheless, aesthetics, which came to replace the perennial ideal of beauty, is foundational to the very idea of racism.
Let’s clarify our terms to avoid inflaming further an already contentious debate. Just what do we mean by aesthetics and beauty? The term aesthetic is a relatively recent one, coined only in the eighteenth century by philosopher Alexander Baumgarten (Aesthetica, 1750). It literally refers to that which is immediate to experience, that which concerns facts or feelings. The notion of aesthetics is associated with the rise of what is erroneously called the Enlightenment. It coincides with and is based on the rise of scientism (a belief that facts provide all that we can know of the world and life) and emotivism (the premise that moral judgments are mere statements of preference, not obligatory principles measured against some universal standard; thus, to say, “Murder is wrong,” means only, “I hate murder!”). Today the term aesthetic is widely viewed as synonymous with beauty, just as fact is falsely equated with truth. These are false equations, however, because the words represent very different understandings of reality and life. From an aesthetic point of view, reality and life are purposeless; their meaning is a matter of one’s individual tastes. But according to the perennial conception of beauty, reality and life are purposeful and inherently infused with meaning.
The idea of beauty (in Greek, kalos) refers to that which is intelligibly good. To put it into common terms, whether vanilla ice cream is as good as strawberry is a matter of subjective taste, of aesthetics. But the distinction between wholesome ice cream and poison is a matter of a more profound understanding. For those who embrace beauty, the choice between wholesome ice cream and poison cannot be a matter of aesthetic taste. It is a matter of knowledge of what is objectively true and good. Poisonous food can be aesthetically pleasing, but it is nonetheless bad, and thus ugly.
In numerous works by Plato and in the Book of Genesis (to cite but two obvious sources), what is beautiful is that which makes truth and goodness understandable. By searching for facts and feelings as the ultimate components of knowledge rather than as representations of what is fundamentally true and good, aesthetics impedes the pursuit of beauty. For example, it is clearly superficial to respond only aesthetically to the appearance of a courthouse; what is important is whether justice is being realized within. Aristotle and Confucius agreed that the appearance of the courthouse could parallel the activities within and thereby represent the principles behind them. They argued that aesthetic objects can offer delight by their perfection, that they can make the ideal physically manifest. Perfection, however, ought to be associated with justice, prudence, and the like, not mere technique. For example, a perfect murder is the aesthetic equivalent of a perfect court trial, but civilized people are appalled by the former and rightly pleased by the latter.
Later writers such as Augustine advanced two propositions: that beauty is intelligible, and that the elements of aesthetics (facts and feelings) also can, to varying degrees, embody that which is true and good, eventually rising Thus, some buildings more profoundly evoke our sense of justice than others, just as some court proceedings are more just than others. According to this view, the greater the degree of goodness in a person, place, or thing, the less aesthetic it is and the more beautiful it is. Baumgartner’s—and the Enlightenment’s—aesthetics broke with this tradition and made the appreciation of a person, place, or thing a matter of willful interpretation. For Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Confucius, aesthetic taste is secondary at best; the wholesomeness of ice cream, the character evidenced by the activity, is primary.
In relying on facts and feelings to make sense of the world, aesthetics are subjective and accountable to no objective criteria, and hence can offer only a materialistic or relativistic worldview. Such a worldview is dreadfully reductionistic because an aesthetic framework has no criteria by which to establish fundamental principles. Moreover, because everything can be analyzed as a matter of fact or feeling, there is no escaping the aesthetic trap once one accepts its main impulses. Aesthetics thus reduce our thinking about the subject of race and of individual rights: the temptation to see these as matters of facts and feelings is nearly irresistible.
Aesthetics and Racism
It might surprise some people to learn that the intellectual and cultural ancestry of aesthetics parallels that of race. The concept of race came to exist as a result of the Enlightenment’s misguided reliance on facts and feelings as the means by which to eradicate ignorance and superstition. The attempt to classify facts about humanity resulted in categories such as species and race. The rise of scientism then initiated the notorious “science of race.” In the mid-eighteenth century, the Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus divided humanity into four racial categories: African, European, North American India, and Asian. In his text, Systema Naturae, he associated the groups with unflattering personality and character traits.Another “scientific” foundation stone of the Enlightenment’s use of race categories to establish the abilities and worth of human beings is, of course, found in Charles Darwin. The full original title of his famous book on evolution is often forgotten: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life 1759). The phrase, “survival of the fittest” was coined by Herbert Spencer, a contemporary of Darwin, and although Darwin did not originally use that phrase, in a later edition of his famous work he stated his regret for not having done so. Darwin posited that there is one human species but many races; consequently, he has been quoted both in defense of human rights and in support of a racial struggle for the survival of the fittest. Karl Marx found in Darwin’s work a foundation for his premise that the history of culture was a history of class struggle; a different Karl, Pearson by name, found in Darwin’s writings succor for imperialism, seeing civilization as based entirely on “the struggle of race with race, and the survival of the physically and mentally fitter race” (see Gertrude Himmelfarb, Victorian Minds, 1995, 323). Darwin’s influence was central to what was then considered the “good racism” of eugenics , and to a rising tide of nationalism, militarism, and colonialism>
Of course, so-called racial categories can be appropriate in some instances, such as in medicine where different groups of people evidence different susceptibilities to particular diseases. But they are utterly indefensible in determining, for example, the value of human life and individual rights, as has been done in the past in the institution of slavery and at present in the case of affirmative action and other “race-based remedies” intended to eradicate the ignorance and superstition inherent in the race-based hatred of some people toward others. (Although slavery has existed throughout human history, it took on a distinctively racial cast in the West during the Enlightenment.) To base such matters on aesthetic feelings and unevaluated facts is to invite tragedy.
It is our ability to recognize this short coming of the mindset that makes the race problem so intransigent. The resulting racial conflicts involve easily identifiable antagonists. They divide people essentially into two aesthetically based groups: those with the favored characteristics and those without them. They also tend to divide people into two aesthetically minded groups: those who believe that race does not matter, and those who think it matters very much. Within each of these two groups today are representatives of both the political Left and Right. Their definitions “good” and “bad” racism vary, but the aesthetic relativism upon which they depend remains constant. And like all relativistic assumptions, this aesthetic relativism is fundamentally an aesthetics of violence: if all moral statements are just preferences, the only ting preventing me getting what I want is, well, you. Hence, the solution is to get you out of the way. Thus, to hold that race is an important distinction between human beings is to implicate oneself in this aesthetics of violence. The last two centuries have provided numerous bloody examples of the consequences of this aesthetic. Like a bad habit that remains impervious to change because it cannot be seen, the aesthetics of race must be recognized so that their effects can be reversed.
Racism and Postmodernism
Nevertheless, on both the Left and Right, the aesthetic conception of race is still passionately defended by those who view it as a positive and fundamental social force. Both sides variously cite race as essential to a full understanding of human identity, morality, and culture. Many on the political and cultural left, for example, affirm the importance of race by heralding diversity, multiculturalism, and sensitivity. The premise behind these concepts is the same as that behind those on the Right (including black nationalists in the United States) who advocate radical distinctions in the name of nationalism and cultural cohesiveness: the idea that race matters. Those who fancy themselves to be moderates attempt to strike a balance between the two, but they fail because a compromise between two incoherent positions is simply more nonsense. All these positions mask a sadly conformist and incoherent confusion of competing and unqualified desires. Be it in the name of diversity and multiculturalism or for the sake of nationalism and cultural cohesion, each such view follows from a singular commitment to a dogmatic relativism. Moreover, that relativism makes aesthetic distinctions between good and bad racism baseless and incoherent. As in all aesthetic matters, what constitutes good and bad racism depends on one’s arbitrarily selected criteria. In the recent past, “good racism” in the West advanced the prospects of the majority. The dominant position in contemporary Western culture, by contrast, is that any racism which advances the prospects of the disadvantaged is a social good, and any racism tat advances the rights of the privileged classes is judged evil.
This peculiar scheme is evident in the fine arts. It is historically indisputable that some Westerners have produced racist works of art denigrating persons of non-European background. It is also indisputable that Westerners now routinely produce racist works of bad racism baseless and incoherent. As in all aesthetic matters, what constitutes good and bad racism depends on one’s arbitrarily selected criteria. In the recent past, “good racism” in the West advanced the prospects of the majority. The dominant position in contemporary Western culture, by contrast, is that any racism which advances the prospects of the disadvantaged is a social good, and any racism tat advances the rights of the privileged classes is judged evil.
This peculiar scheme is evident in the fine arts. It is historically indisputable that some Westerners have produced racist works of art denigrating persons of non-European background. It is also indisputable that Westerners now routinely produce racist works of art denigrating persons of European background. The once-prestigious biennial exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art are a prime example of this phenomenon. What is curious, and indeed tragic, is that “bad racism” (however it might be defined at the moment) is routinely condemned, whereas “good racism” (however it might be defined at the moment) is historically applied with a smug and violent self-righteousness. The believers in the political and cultural doctrine that there can be bad and good racism refuse to acknowledge the historical variability and intellectual incoherence in their stance. Instead, they continually offer new rationales justifying it.
The current rationale for racism is grounded in the tradition of Western liberalism, and as just mentioned, the difference between good and bad racism is determined by whether the prejudice in question advances prospects of the less advantaged in society. This idea was advanced by modernist liberals such as John Rawls (see his A theory of Justice, 1971). The modernist liberalism has in turn by reevaluated by postmodern liberals who variously emphasize the rights of the autonomous individual (such as Robert Nozick in his Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 1974) or the rights of groups identified in terms of race, gender, or economic class (Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, 1996). That reevaluation marks a confusion with liberalism, between its modernist origins, where race is affirmed as a reality but denied moral importance, and its postmodern position, where race is denied as a factor in determining people’s success but as seen as having paramount moral importance. These conflicting understandings of race are evidenced by the modernist (and Christian) vision of Martin Luther King Jr. and the postmodernist vision of Malcolm X. The identification of race with culture, which is inescapable racist (as we shall see later), is today seen as essential to the promotion of civil rights.
That obnoxious postmodern position is itself now being reevaluated by the left by Paul Gilroy (Against Race: Imagining Political Culture Beyond the Color Line, 2000) and others. Gilroy notes that, for many people, race is now affirmed as a primary source of identity and moral authority. It provides a means of knowing one’s self or one’s place within an empirically confirmed group and hierarchy of groups. Gilroy sees this assumption as intellectually suspect, just as it appears to Ward Connerly in the political arena and to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in legal circles. Gilroy notes that the historical origins of the (now commonplace) identification of culture with race are fascist. This gives him pause. And rightly so.
In contemporary academic circles, however, it is hazardous even to mention that the postmodern identification of race with culture has such a dubious historical and political ancestry. Nonetheless, the association of such major postmodern figures as the philosopher Martin Heidegger and the literary critic Paul de Man with Nazims is indisputable. (See, for example, Victor Faria Heidegger et le nazisme, 1987, and Hugo Ott, Martin Heidegger, A Political Life, 1993) Postmodernism accepts moral claims based upon an identification of people not by their sheer humanity, nor by their shared ideals, nor by the content of their character (to use Martin Luther King Jr.’s felicitous phrase), but instead by their aesthetic characteristics. Those attributes can be of a group (race, gender, economic class, etc.), or they can be individualistic, as in moral claims that rely on the overriding premise that the individual ought never to be “oppressed” by the majority. In any case, the conclusion remains the same: our values are the product of our nature and our environment, not a result of personal choices though the exercise of responsible freedom. Culture is, then, according to postmodern theory, the sum total of our aesthetic experiences—of our genes and our socialization. As such, culture has no standards of value by which to measure its moral status, and hence is identifiable with our ability to do as we will, seeking to satisfy our desires via the pursuit of power.
This line of thinking, in turn, justifies narcissistic and sociopathic behavior in the name of the individual, race, and culture. The argument is as follows: if culture is based on power, then success must indicate dominance; and dominance, because it overcomes the will of an individual, race, or culture, is oppressive and evil. Thus the idea that justice, beauty, and culture are lofty and noble pursuits must be a mask, a sham, an embarrassment. Therefore, it is the transformation of culture that matters, and, this vision being aesthetic, the means toward that transformation are necessarily violent. But rest assured, we are again told, it is a good violence.
Postmodernism and Despair
Little wonder, then, that a culture and politics centering on discussions of race (or gender or economic class) remains both aesthetic and miserable. It is aesthetic in that it makes culture merely a matter of taste; it is miserable in that reducing culture to a matter of taste necessarily reduces it to the willful pursuit of power—and that will to power has historically adopted a dizzying variety of different criteria for what constitutes good and bad racism.
Hence, there is good cause to be concerned about the consequences of race within an aestheticized culture. Rather than contributing to the pursuit of a common ideal, the politics of race lead to racist and violent ends. The association of democracy and aesthetics rightly worried Plato and Augustine (and for that matter twentieth-century philosopher Walter Benjamin as well). That is why, as I suggested earlier, it is necessary to abandon the present aesthetically arbitrary and utilitarian vision of race and culture for a better one. It is time to rise above the aesthetics of race and power to obtain a glimpse of beauty.
For this purpose, we must regain our concern for the soul, no longer being satisfied to pretend that human beings are just body and mind. The latter two accord with the aesthetic categories of facts and feelings, respectively, but the concept of the soul transcends them—which is why the Enlightenment swept it away. According to Aristotle (On the Soul), psychology is the study of the soul, a study which falls within the science of discerning a purposeful Nature. It is the soul that strives for beauty. But to view our souls as nothing but repositories of experience, and not as clues to the purposeful Nature at work behind them, is to deny the possibility of a culture beyond narcissism, sociopathy, and race. It is easy to see the kind of world to which this aesthetic way of thinking has led in the past century, and the frightful prospects ahead.
The aesthetic vision brought on by the Enlightenment requires that we accept a purposeless metaphysics: that life is at best brute experience. That brute experience requires adherence to one alleged “aesthetic truth”: Gustibus non disputandum, that there is no disputing taste. Like the relativism upon which it relies, this phrase can be understood in contradictory ways. It argues both for an indifference to culture and race, and a demand that our taste in such matters prevail. The modern, Enlightenment based mentality incoherently demands that we entertain both possibilities at once, with no promise of relief. But regardless of whether we deny or affirm the aesthetic concept of race, we ramain trapped in a violent, aesthetic conversation . . .
Now there's a surprise -- NOT!!!
What really has me worried these days, cornelis, is that Hitler smuggled his delightful brand of "aesthetics" into social effectiveness in the clear light of day, via the democratic process. No wonder Plato and Aristotle were leery of democracy....
Fine post, cornelis. Thank you!
*perhaps* a new evolving configuration of social units, complete with adjustable infinities, will give us a new plotting diagram for a more successful future. Until then we will indifferently accept our position of demos + kratos as the legitimate status quo fact-on-the-map to endorse all further plotting. Man blesses scientia, scientia blesses man (loose translation of asinus fricat asinum).
Fat chance. Seems to me that all man can do, if left to his own devices exclusively, is to screw things up.
Man blesses scientia, scientia blesses man (loose translation of asinus fricat asinum).
Thanks for the translation, cornelis. I was wondering what all those durned asses were braying about.
Inter-racial marriage: is it biblical?
It is a very positive article, and very encouraging. Hope you enjoy it.
Anyhoot, the context was a comparison of "Northern" vs. "Southern" values and sentiments. But it seems to me we could substitute the terms "liberal" (in its connotation of "socially-progressive") vs. "conservative" respectively and the observation, which IMO directly relates to "race theory," would stand just as well:
"The South hates the abstraction, but loves the individual. The North hates the individual, but loves the abstraction."
Thinking that through, I realized that an abstraction can never be a "neighbor" in the Christian meaning of that word. And although Christians may speak of the Mystical Body, this is not to suggest that they are referring to an abstraction. For a Christian, there are only neighbors, not abstractions. And a neighbor is any human individual with whom one comes into contact. Race is absolutely irrelevant here.
All bearers of the Image of Christ are members of the Mystical Body. And I daresay that non-Christians (and people of different race than our own) are equally bearers of the Image of Christ.
The Fatherhood of God makes all men brothers. And the sacrifice of the Son further clarifies this, and restores us to the Father. For Our Lord said He came for "Jews and Greeks" (or "gentiles") both. (Which statement seems to stand for the concept of "universal humanity" as understood in the historical and cultural milieu at the time of the Incarnation.)
Destroy that foundation, and the Law of the Jungle -- the "survival of the fittest" -- seems to become the operative law for men by default.
Cornelis, the exigencies of human life intrude here: This is Fathers Day weekend. And I have two fathers. The schedule is SET, and not entirely by my own making.
Which is to say I'll reply earliest I can. Meanwhile, any guidance you can provide that explicates the basic problem confronting us on this question would be much appreciated.
Beauty, not aesthetics --- he explained the distinction with originality and in a highly illuminating way.
My pleasure.
Obviously there is more to the Enlightenment than the discovery of economic man. As the article noted, our good friend Karl Marx figured man was nothing but economic, and all of his politics was economic and all his class warfare was enlisted on the road that led in the struggle from capitalism to the great beyond. We are now in that great beyond, according to Fukuyama. You might like reading him.
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