Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy vol 4-1

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a

journal

of political

volume

philosophy

4/1

winter

1974

page

1

leo

strauss

preliminary

observations of

the

gods

in

thucydides'

work

17

howard

38

jerry

h.

the human

white

rembrandt and

combee

nietzsche as cosmologist:

condition

the idea

of

the

eternal recurrence as a cosmological

doctrine

and some aspects of

its

relation

to the doctrine of the will to power

48

marvin

arnold

perry

"false

martinus

nijhoff, the

toynbee:

nationalism as a

god"

hague

edited at

queens college of

of new york

the city university

interpretation a

journal

volume

of political

philosophy issue 1

4

editors seth g.

benardete

consulting

howard b.

-

white

hilail

-

gildin

-

wilhelm

michael oakeshott

leo

-

hennis

strauss

-

erich

hula

(1899-1973)

-

-

kenneth

hilail

ann mcardle

gildin

interpretation is

its

a

journal devoted to the study

three times

w. thompson

of political philosophy.

a year.

from

editors welcome contributions

interest in

-

editor

managing

a serious

h. horwitz

arnaldo momigliano

executive editor

appears

robert

editors

john hallowell

it

-

political

all

those who take

regardless

philosophy

of

their orientation.

all manuscripts and editorial correspondence should

be

addressed

to the

executive editor

interpretation

building

glOl

-

queens college

-

flushing,

11367

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-

u.s.a.

subscription price

for institutions one guilder

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and ab.

for individuals Guilders 28.80

libraries Guilders 36.

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subscription and correspondence

therewith should be

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connection

to the publisher

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martinus nijhoff

9-11 lange

voorhout

-

p.o.b.

269

-

the hague

-

netherlands.

PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS ON THE GODS IN WORK THUCYDIDES'

Leo Strauss

These I have

be

served

some

modify,

The

which

observations

City and Man.

No necessary stressing the differences between the first and

by

of

second statements.

For Thucydides the as

was,

he

expected

war

between the Peloponnesians

from the beginning, the

to speak, the greatest

He

i.e.,

in the Thucydides-chapter

made

purpose would

the

"repeat,"

observations

motion of all

most

(1.1-19)

extensive

times which

his

gives a two-fold proof of

contention.

it

proves

and

the Athenians

noteworthy motion so affected all human beings.

most

The first bare the

by laying

far the

by

and

the

of

weakness

therewith the strength, the surpassing strength, of the men,

ancients and

especially the Greeks, of the present. Apart from a seemingly casual reference to the Delian Apollon (13.6), the first proof is silent regarding gods; this

silence

to be connected

seems

the fact that the most

with

famous speakers about antiquity are the poets, and the poets are in the habit of adorning their subjects by magnifying them (10.3): tracing happenings to the gods means precisely adorning the happenings by magnifying them. The the sufferings brought especially

the sufferings

with

tacitly distinguishes the one another and

the

Following Athenians,

as

it is best

then turn to a

consider

our

on

the god in

on

the

he

of

of

speeches

the brief

Athenians in

did. On the

revealing in

whatever

53.2-9.)

the

and

four

The

other

happening

the

or

suffering

word always

more

signifies,

to

narrative of

his

characters

in his

speaks

and

so

in the

hand,

gods

let

us

on

or

the

of

concerning

narrative

without

of

making it

same manner as so

the first

to

pair of speeches

(1.32-43)

to sacred things. (The same

between the Korinthian embassy

is

(such

"natural."

generally,

the Korinthians in Athens

situation

speeches

plague.

Perikles addressing the

or,

In Book One he

exchange

earthquakes,

Thucydides'

accepts or reveres them

no reference

by

least the

understood as synonymous with

oracles, temples,

Korkyraians

of the

of

not

non-human or super-human origin

Perikles'

other.

Delphi,

speak everyone else

is true

kind

difference between

possible

clear whether

contain

Thucydides'

the one hand and the speeches

subject

those

by

them

upon

last but

and

open whether

the work, happenings of

us

inflicted

second

(II.64.2), leaving it

Let

deeds

the

call

or whether

contrasted

due to the Persian War (23.1-3). Thucydides which human beings inflicted upon

which were

omens)

of

greatness

as

sufferings

drought, famine,

may

the

on

Peloponnesian War

the

guidance supplied

we

"daimonic"

within

those

the sun,

eclipses of

by

on

concentrates

proof

second

somewhat

delivered in Sparta

more

by

the

and

complex

the and

Korinthians,

2

Interpretation

the Spartan

king Archidamos,

Korinthians,

emphatically to the than the

singles

next

gods

here

out

assembly

who

the

Sthenolaidas (68-86). The

ephor

watch

The only

other speakers.

the gods is

on

and

the accusers par excellence of the

Archidamos, the by an explicit,

speaker

here

appeal more of

oaths

is completely silent here whom Thucydides

who

only speaker if somewhat qualified,

the Peloponnesians

of

Athenians,

the performance

over

which again

praise.

In the

takes place in

Sparta,

there occurs only a single speech; in that speech the Korinthians refer to the oracle of the god (123.1). There follows a narrative of the final exchanges

which

pollutions

from

abstains

deal

chiefly

by

contracted

judging

the

with

two

mutual

recriminations

regarding concerning gods; Thucydides the two cases; he merely notes

sides

on the merits of

that the Spartans held their polluting action to be responsible for the Thucydides' great earthquake that happened in Sparta (128.1). account

the final fate

of

Spartan

of the

and of the

Athenian leaders in the Persian

War

King Pausanias and Themistokles contains literal quotations from the letters by the two men to the king of Persia, i.e., something approaching speeches by Thucydidean characters; those quotations contain no to gods. On

references word

he

was

We

There

gods; only Archidamos

for the time

of

"the

being

addresses a speech without ever

speech addressed

goddess,"

supreme commanders of the

referring to

to the Athenian

the gods

Assembly

(11.11). Yet in Thucydides

which

quote

for he is setting forth there in detail

Athena,

Before the first inva

unchanged.

to the

it, he makes that outstanding leader meaning thereby the most valuable statue of

claiming to

reports without

speeches, the Periklean (1.140-44, 11.35-46

next

speeches

is, just like Archidamos, completely silent on the (38.1) does he refer to sacrifices.

remains

Attika he

Periklean

such

in the Funeral Speech

Peloponnesian troops

speak

of the

are altogether three

60-64). Perikles

sion of

the god in Delphi had a weighty Spartan king, traitor though

hand,

burial

for considering the

are now prepared

once

a

fitting

(134.4).

speeches. and

the other

to say about the

the

financial

resources

of

the city (13.5). On the other hand, Thucydides has to say quite a few things about gods and sacred matters in his narrative of the plague which

follows

immediately

conflict

exchange of speeches after

between the Spartans

Athenians. The two (or

three)

exchange

calling

witnesses which

has

on

Speech,

king

and

is based

the on

Perikles'

to say nothing of his

last

a

speech concerns

solemn

oath

still

binding

is particularly worthy

the

of note

Archidamos begins his final reply to the Plataians

the gods and heroes who possess the Plataian land

to the justice of the Peloponnesian

the reader

the

who were allies of the

Plataians,

to the conflict. It

parties

that the Spartan

by

Funeral

early Athens (15.2-6).

narrative about

The first

Perikles'

on

might

find

rather

dubious: the

undergone a profound change since

cause

(79.2)

a

to be

justice

moral-political situation

the debate in Sparta.

Preliminary

observations on the gods

Thucydides'

We learn from

narrative

Thucydides'

in

3

work

that after a

victorious naval

battle

Peloponnesians the Athenians consecrated a captured enemy ship to Poseidon (84.4). In the ensuing speech of the Peloponnesian naval commanders to their troops, who were understandably disheartened by their preceding defeat caused by their insufficient naval training or against the

is

no reference

experience,

made

to the gods (87). Yet the Athenian

the Peloponnesian ships were more numerous

soldiers were also afraid:

than the Athenian ones. The Athenian commander Phormion restored their courage

In the

by

is likewise silent regarding gods (88-89). battle the Peloponnesians fought better than in the

a speech which

second naval

first but the final

result was again a complete

Athenian

victory: experience

decisive. Toward the end of Book Two Thucydides tells a story, without vouching for its truth, about Alkmaion, a matricide, who, thanks to Apollon's oracle, found a safe refuge in a district which did not yet exist at the time of the murder (102.5-6). and skill were again

The

next speech

is the

Mytilenian

one which the

ambassadors address

to the gathering of the Peloponnesians and neutrals at Olympia in order to solicit help for their intended defection from the Athenian allies; the

Mytilenians are compelled to show that their intended action is or ignoble (IH.9-14). Toward the end of their speech they their would-be new allies to

be

held

allies are

by

be

awed

by

the respect in

the hopes of the Greeks and

which

by

not unjust admonish

those

would-

the respect of the

Olympian Zeus in whose temple they appear, as it were as suppliants. Mytilenians' request and in As Thucydides shows by his narrative, the the last-minute

particular effect.

He does

to some extent after the

appeal

the two

by

Athenians'

speeches

conquest of

of

Mytilene the Peloponnesian

to

his troops

only

brief

a

one prefaced

that

might add

to the Olympian Zeus remained

Mytilene. Prior to

commander

commander

failure

Assembly

by having

after

quoted

passionately

grown-up

counsel

Alkidas, obviously Peloponnesian

which

takes

opposes

male

of

Elis

addresses

is, according to Gomme (ad loc), the tade, instead of the usual toiade (29-30). (One

Teutiaplos'

of the

the actual conquest

Teutiaplos

speech which

that Teutiaplos had said tosauta

frequently.)

without

The reply is given by deed or exchanged in the Athenian Assembly

not give a speech of reply.

the

the brief speech, Thucydides notes an

was

expression

rejected

a stupid man who

enterprise.

place

after

In

the

a

which

his

he

uses

Spartan

quite

fellow-

thus contributed to the

meeting

conquest

reconsideration of

Mytilenians

by

of

the capital

of

the Athenian

Mytilene Kleon punishment of all

of a punishment resolved upon a

few days

inexcusable injustice and must be dealt with accordingly. Kleon does not refer to the gods: he has no reason to refer in any way to the gods (37-40). The case for gentleness or rather for discrimination is made by Diodotos, who had already stated earlier:

the Mytilenians are simply guilty

it in the preceding meeting

of

the

in the

most enigmatic speech

pletely

silent on

the

of an

Assembly (42-48); his whole work.

the gods. But it is possibly

not

speech

is

perhaps

Diodotos is likewise

inappropriate to

com

note that

Interpretation

4 he

the weakness

speaks of

as

compared

84.2).

cf.

Seen

"the force

with

Partly

Mytilenians had

hair's-breadth

a

laws

of

Diodotos'

thanks to

the context

within

the passionately

of

"human

excited

or anything else intervention the majority

whole, the fate

Mytilene

of

accompanying it are the foil of the fate of Plataiai the Peloponnesians an event illumined likewise by an The Plataians

speeches.

are

(45.7; of the

escape.

of the

speeches of

nature"

awful"

compelled

eventually

to

at

and the

the hands

exchange of

their

surrender

city to the Spartans, who accept the surrender with a reservation which, to me at least, is not a model of good faith. The Plataians know starved

that the Spartans will give in to the demands of the

of course

the

Plataians'

deadly

enemies, but

the Spartans of what the Spartans

to the gods,

appeal

naturally

anti-Persian alliance

in

remind

the Spartans

respect

the graves,

fathers

who

Plataian

which

the

of

always

sacred

honored

They invoke

the same altars in

the

order

to

the

are

imply,

persuade

silent

completely

the

Plataians'

narration of the

fate

pious

of

in the

cities

nearest of

temples

in

and

rather than

always

its

nor what

doubt that the

the

about

Mytilene account

unjust

(lV.67.1);

gods

invocations do

hateful reply is (61-67): hence

and

deserve

not

Plataiai

and of that of of

as

the

an answer. prepares

the rising of the demos

in

demos

the place of

friendship

to the

to complete disregard of the sanctity

of asylum

in

wars

between the mighty

Cruel hatred took

not explain what

the precise ground

of

the

the divine law

(or commands) are, but he leaves both sides lost all piety (82.6-7).

specific prohibitions

partisans on

When Thucydides, comes to speak of

first

hard been

to utter disregard of "the divine law": partnership in crime respect for the divine law became the bond of good faith.

Thucydides does

is

had been buried in

and the

general.

kin, led

latter to Spartans'

whom

Thucydides'

sufficiently for Korkyra and of the fratricidal us

and

the

They

the Greeks worship on the Spartans not to give in to the

gods

Thebans'

Thebans

consecrated

duty incumbent upon the by the Plataians, of the

demand (53.5-9). The to show that the Plataians have

Thebans The

in the Persian War

the Plataians distinguished themselves.

had fallen in the Persian War

ground.

Thebans,

the manly effort to remind have to do as good men. They

make

would

who

Thebans'

meant

they

compelled or excused

the first Athenian

by

no

the sequence of events,

expedition against

Sicily, he

speaks

daimonic things, one of them a small volcano near Sicily; in the opinion of the local people the outbreaks are due directly to Hephaistos (87-88). Immediately thereafter he speaks at somewhat greater length than before of earthquakes, this time giving his own opinion of a number of

about a related

The Spartans

foundation although

of a

the

successful,

(92.5-93).

event; his on

own opinion contains no reference

to gods (89).

the other hand ask the god at Delphi regarding the

city; the

god

approves of the plan

modifications are accepted

by

properly modified;

the god, the foundation is not

the least owing to the ineptitude of the Spartan magistrate Shortly thereafter Thucydides avails himself of the opportunity not

Preliminary

Thucydides'

in

observations on the gods

5

work

to mention the violent death of Hesiod in the temple of the Zeus of Nemea: he had received in Nemea an oracle to the effect that this would happen to him there but Thucydides does not vouch for the truth of the story (96.1). Thucydides would have misled us greatly about Athens and

hence his

about the

Peloponnesian War if he had Athenians'

thereafter

not added soon

Apollon's island of Delos, the purification having been ordered by "some oracle or The truth about the original form of the Delian festival is vouched for by no less a man than Homer himself (104). the

account of

purification of

other."

The

the first part

end of

the

of

is

war

decisively

by

prepared

the

Athenian victory, due primarily to Demosthenes at Pylos (or Sphakteria), Brasidas' and by victorious march to Thrace. Near the beginning of the Demosthenes

section

which

situation,

is

addresses

rather

the hoplites

grave,

his

under

In the

command.

desperate, he

to say

not

them to

urges

hope and not to be too greatly concerned with the calculation of chances. He does not mention gods (IV.9-10). His tactics prove to be highly successful. The Spartans are now willing to conclude an armistice

be

of good

treaty in

and even a peace

the Athenians and

Athenian whether

Assembly

promised

naturally do

they

to come to the

is

said

by

to Athens. In their

Before turning to

go

to the

from the

Brasidas'

so

far

not mention

help

win

the

Apollon had

called or uncalled

Athenians

the

by

to the

i.e., broke

god:

any

cut off

speech

to leave it open

as

the war,

started

Peloponnesians'

anyone

or received permission

back the Spartiates

get

the Athenians

or

II.54.4). Thanks chiefly to Kleon

Nothing

to

those ambassadors

the Spartans

treaty (IV. 17-20);

order

send ambassadors

(1.118.3,

a splendid victory.

that the Spartans had asked for

effect

to

oracle

send ambassadors

expedition, Thucydides

to Athens.

speaks

of

three

particularly noteworthy with a view to our present purpose. The first is the pan-Sicilian gathering at Gela, which has at its high point the speech of Hermokrates that he quotes (IV. 5 8-64). He actions which

warns

are

his fellow-Sicilians

of

the danger

threatening

the Athenians: the Athenians intend to come to their Ionian

help

the wealth their silent

desire,

the Dorians but in

Sicily. He does belongs to human nature

the gods,

thus

Meios. The

on

against

whole of

which

about

Athenians

the

of

kinsmen

silently

second

Athens,

to Sparta

by

He

the Spartans as the liberators

and

he disposes

that the Spartans might

has

received

desired

from

the

of

any fear

misuse their

effect: what stronger proof of

order

He is completely winning

of

of

the

over

the

(IV. 8 5-8 7).

the Greeks from servitude the Akanthians might feel

telling his

the most

Spartan

to

to acquire

argument

a clever speech

which

rulers

in

Brasidas'

victory,

Spartans'

not order

blame the Athenians for

universally.

is

action

allies of

to Athens

not

anticipating the

Akanthians, presents

them at the hands of

Sicily,

good

audience

solemn

faith

that he

oaths

could

be

to the given?

In addition, he counters a possible Akanthian argument that the Spartans have no right to liberate the Akanthians from the Athenians by force,

by

calling

as witnesses

the

gods and

heroes

of

the

Akanthians'

land: to

Interpretation

6

Akanthians to be free and to contribute their share towards of Greece as a whole by the use of force for this purpose Athenians' occupation and fortification unjust. The third action is the

force

the

the liberation

is

not

Delion,

the

of

a

temple of Apollon near the border of Boiotia and Attika.

The Boiotian leader Pagondas delivers tells

them

that the

occupied will

be

god

ends of course with

the

actions of

Athenians,

are

address

a

Athenian defeat. The impious

severe

very

in fortifying,

living in,

and

When Brasidas

comes to

whom

the

they think, to demand from the the temple before they can claim the surren as

Athenians the evacuation of der of their dead. In the ensuing debate the Athenians claim that allegedly impious action would be forgiven as an involuntary action by the god (98.6). citizens, to

he

lawlessly

favorable (IV.92). The Athenian to his troops is completely silent

which consisted

Boiotians,

the

enable

sanctuary,

which

things (1V.95): we could not expect differently. The

on gods and sacred

battle

offered

Hippokrates in his

commander

to his troops in

Athenians have

the

the side of the Boiotians and that the sacrifices

on

the Boiotians have

which

a speech

temple

whose

he

says

Toronte, he things

arranges

similar

their even

there a meeting of the said to the

to those he had

Akanthians (114.3-5) but his speech to the Toronaians is only reported, Brasidas' not quoted. Thucydides did not need a further proof of Brasidas' rhetorical ability. In addition, action in Akanthos had established his

credit

Athens'

among

Finally,

allies sufficiently.

vacillating

we cannot

the possibihty that the Spartan authorities did not entirely approve Brasidas' of making solemn promises in their name (108.7; cf. 132.3). exclude

In the

report of the speech to

reference

In 1.72-78 Thucydides first

Athenians in Sparta: mentioned

delivered gods.

the Toronaians there naturally

to the gods. Let us remind ourselves here of two

in the the

on

quoted

Archidamos'

occasion

to the Athenian

a consequence of

conclude

an

sanctuary order is

observed

reports

Brasidas'

not reinforce

successes the

The first

article

of

report

of

speech

but they

is

silent

about the

contradistinction

his

speech

Spartans

and

by

to the

threats of

the Athenians

the armistice concerns the

the oracle of the Pythian Apollon (IV.118.1-3). The

in the solemnly

sworn

are

the four speeches

then quotes Phormion's

and

troops; but Phormion, in

armistice.

and

in the

speech; the result is that

Peloponnesian commanders, does punishment (II.87.9).

As

then quotes the speech of the

gods are not mentioned

only In 11.88-89 Thucydides first

speech

and

reports

occurs no

earlier parallels.

so-called

peace

of

same

Nikias

(V.17end-18.2). Book V

Athenians

opens

with

Thucydides'

account

of

the correction

by

the

they had become guilty when they purified Delos. There soon follows the battle of Amphipolis with Brasidas in command of the Peloponnesians and their allies and Kleon in command of the Athenians; the battle leads to a severe defeat of the Athenians; the leaders of both armies are killed. Before the battle Brasidas addresses of

a

neglect

of

which

Preliminary his speech,

observations on

10.5);

also

the

on

to Athena (10.2). We note that no

Kleon is too

quoted. of

as

Brasidas'

between

army, to a

busy speak

Spartan

honor Brasidas

(7.3-4, 9.3,

fighting

10.2):

gods

alone

observing the movement

doings

a strange reversal of

Athenian

Pylos. The

at

referring to

prepares a sacrifice

Kleon is reported, let

with

leading

without

hand, he

speech of

"seeing,"

the then

and

to the

of comic equivalent

with

other

7

work

to his troops

by Thucydides,

quoted

things (cf.

or sacred

Thucydides"

the gods in

demagogue,

citizens of

kind

a

Amphipolis

his death with the honors of a hero. The death of the two commanders increased the influence of those leading men in Sparta and Athens who favor peace. To bring about this result in Sparta, after

the cooperation of the priestess in Delphi was important. This does not

necessarily contradict Apollon's promise at the beginning of the war that he would come to the help of the Spartans called or uncalled, for the regarding the war which lasting 27 years (V.26.3): the

oracle

only war's

Spartans of

be

would

god

in "the first

victorious

the fact that the armistice

proved

to be true

had

not

war."

or peace was at

concerned

promised

the

that the

This is to say nothing great help for

that time a

Sparta. Brasidas'

Between last speech (9) and the dialogue on Meios at the end of V (84ff.) there occur no quoted speeches but only a few reported speeches or references to them. of

gods

(45.4, 50.5), broke too

off

and of unfavorable operations

military

was not

It is easy for

us

sacrifices

(54.2, 55.3, Spartans'

that the

makes clear

done "for the

Thucydides'

which

sake of

the

divine"

most

important

most

passing. against

chance:

of the

theology

importance;

theion)

the

revealing It is

as the gods are concerned.

that the

In

the

say nothing

to come to the

Athenians,

and

statements

cf.

in

to the

and

occurring in his

all the more

Melian dialogue is in

II.53.4)

law"

the Athenians are the work

necessary to realize

one sense of subordinate

the Melians remind them of the role

of

to battle

is brought up by the Athenians as it were in to show the Athenians that they may have some hope

they trust, will not

prior

subject

order

hope,

flute playing

(III.82.6;

account of the civil wars

or

earthquakes

why the Spartans 116.1). But the Athenians

as causes

to find that the references to "the divine

in the dialogue between the Melians

far

occur mentions

count

may

(70).

gods

as

one

the oracle of the Delphic god (32.1). Above all,

of course obeyed

Thucydides

But in that twilight there

divine things, among

and

as

far

as chance

disadvantage them,

played

is concerned, that "the given

can count on

war

the justice of the Melians

the fact that the Spartans are forced Melians'

in

divine"

by

sheer

by (to to

shame

The Athenians reply that they, the divine," will of "the for they act within

assistance.

the good

believe regarding "the divine," for the Athenians (or all sensible human beings) believe as regards "the divine" what is generally thought about it and as regards the human they know clearly, namely, that the strong rules the weaker by nature and hence sempiternally with necessity. Thereupon the Melians drop the the limits

of what

human beings hold

or

Interpretation

8

only of their manifest or human hopes, i.e., the hope from their relation with Sparta. We note that in the derive they divine," are not mentioned but only "the Melian dialogue "the Of "the divine which is more general and more vague than "the divine," law" Thucydides speaks in his own as distinguished from "the subject and speak

which

gods"

gods."

name; but he is in the case

of

the divine

law,

as

in that

of

the

divine,

the precise meaning of the expressions. He clearly equally disapproves of breaches of the divine law, whereas he refrains from silent

about

passing judgment sadors on Meios. Books VI

and

VII,

Athenians'

theology

by

as stated

Thucydides'

which contain

to the Melian dialogue

related

are

expedition,

the

on

their ambas

account of the

as

his

account

Sicilian of

the

Pericles'

Funeral Speech. In his archaeology of Sicily he is to his indicates the untrustworthy character of what is said about the Kyklopes plague

(2.1-2). The first

and others

is

and

Alkibiades in the Athenian

by

pertaining to the Sicilian expedi by Thucydides, between Nikias

great event

tion

the exchange of speeches, quoted

Nikias

by

and one

in retrospect, endangering

a

reversal

they

what

Assembly;

Alkibiades. In of

roles

possess

there are two such speeches

what could seem

Nikias

for the

warns

sake

be, especially

to

the Athenians

immanifest

of

and

against

future

(9.3), just as the Athenians had warned the Melians; there is this difference that the Melians were not, or at least not in the same way as

things

Athenians, in love

with the faraway (13; cf. 24.3). But Nikias is not Alkibiades in dexterity; he is defeated in the debate, in a way that resembles (or his comrades') defeat by Kleon in the debate regarding Pylos. Neither Nikias nor Alkibiades mentions gods but Alki biades refers to the oath which obliges the Athenians to come to the

the

to

equal

Nikias'

assistance of their

Sicilian

the effect that the fate cannot

the

be

and hitherto Hermai which

and even on

allies

the

(18.1;

19.1).

cf.

expedition will

Nikias'

depend

last

on

word

chance,

is to

which

by men, rather than on human foresight (23.3). While being prepared according to the proposal of the sensible always lucky Nikias, unknown individuals mutilate the

mastered

expedition

and other

of

is

stand

in front

impious deeds for the

Alkibiades

of private

houses

are regarded as a

established

and quite a

bad

as well as omen

for

temples;

this

the expedition

democratic regime; a strong suspicion falls others. In spite of this Alkibiades is left

few

together with Nikias in command of the expedition; the Athenians have the greatest hope for future things as compared with what they already

(31.6). This hope was not unconnected with piety; when every ready for the departure of the armament, the customary prayers libations were offered (32.1-2). As httle as in the debate in the

possessed

thing and

was

Athenian

Assembly

are

the

gods mentioned

Assembly. It is hard to say cast

by

the

unsolved

mystery

whether of

the

this

in the debate in the Syracusan is one of the shadows

silence

mutilation of the

Hermai

and similar

impieties. The

considerable

disappointment

which

the Athenians

with

the

excep-

Preliminary tion

be

Nikias (46.2)

of

experienced

minor compared with

to be proceeded

in

observations on the gods

Thucydides"

their arrival in

after

against on

to tell the true story

Peisistratos

in

of

Aristogeiton. We

and

and

his

account of

alleged

of

proves

impiety. The

the alleged tyrannicide committed note

family

in

was

two

particular on

Spartans

tyranny

law-abiding

and

tyrant

pious;

later from Athens

action

Harmodios

by

the

things:

the whole mild

to

now

forces Thucydides

or

Hippias, the man who was in fact his father, Peisistratos, survived and after his

particular

death

his

Sicily

the recall to Athens of Alkibiades who is

the Athenian demos against Alkibiades enables

of

9

work

of

and

after the

expulsion

few

a

Athenians found

by king and fought on the Persian side at Marathon (54.5-6, 59.4), thus foreshadowing in a manner the fate of Themistokles. In the first battle, Nikias defeats the Syracusans after having encouraged his troops by reminding them of their military superiority to the enemy: years

the

Nikias'

army is inferior to army in regard to knowledge 69.1). There is no need for him to refer to gods and hence he

the enemy

(68.2,

not refer armies

to them. This is perfectly compatible with the fact that in soothsayers bring the usual sacrifices prior to the battle

the

(69.2). The battle

experience while

the more

frightening

effect of the

those

of

year

(70.1):

daimonic things.

Any

had

who

experienced men

the

heavy

a thunderstorm and

increased the fear

as a consequence of the season of

the

by

was accompanied

phenomena which

battle

some

Persian

refuge with the

does both

and

regarded

simply

rain

no previous

them

diminishes discouragement which experience

the Syracusans may have suffered on account of their defeat is removed

by

a speech of

Hermokrates in their

Assembly

which

Thucydides

reports

is not encumbered by an explicit reference to gods (72). Hermokrates is also the speaker for Syracuse in a gathering at Kamarina in which both belligerents sue for the favor of those Sicilians who have and

which

not yet

taken sides; the

Euphemos. Both gathering

of

speaker

speeches

for Athens

carries

are quoted and are

the anti-Athenian cities

at

the

characteristic name

silent on the gods.

Sparta Alkibiades

convincing the Spartans of the soundness of a broadly Athenian pohcy and strategy and at the same time of the itude on

of

his high treason.

the gods; its

being

Alkibiades'

its

conceived perfect

a

in

anti-

correct-

is silent have the Korinthian relief force is already of the Athenians on Sicily looks

speech

quoted and

In

succeeds

being

is

also quoted and

silent on

the

gods

While the Spartan and its way to Syracuse, the situation quite favorable: Nikias is quite hopeful. Yet the only mishap which befell the Spartans was that they had to interrupt a military operation which they had started against Argos, because of an earthquake (95.1). As it seems to me, Book VT, which is rich in quoted speeches, also abounds same reason.

on

in

reported speeches.

in the his half-Spartan turn of mind to the much more daring commanders Gylippos of Sparta and Hermokrates of Syracuse (cf., e.g., 3.3 and 8.3). The Book VII

can

be

fight for Syracuse

said

shifts

to

bring

the

peripeteia:

from the Athenian

the

leadership

gentleman

Nikias

with

Interpretation

10 Athenians'

situation in Sicily becomes grave; Nikias is compelled to send letter to Athens with an urgent request for additional troops and supply. Apart from the fact that the letter was accompanied by oral messages, it has the status of a quoted speech (8.1-2, 10-15) to a greater degree

a

letters

than the excerpts from the

king

Athenians

Pausanias

of

(1.129.3, 137.4). Nikias does

Persia

of

he thinks

what

their "difficult

of

and

Themistokles to the

not

hesitate to tell the (VII. 14.2

natures"

4).

and

The reversal of fate which has taken place in Sicily resembles that at Pylos: while Athens has ceased to be the preponderant naval power, the anti-Athenian combination's naval power has increased (11.2-4, 12.3). Gods

the

and

For the

holding treaty,

sacred

things are not

things

other

now

among in the first

whereas

power

least

not explicitly.

by

caused

was

their

Athenians had broken the

that the

it had

war

at

mentioned

Spartans'

increase in the

greatest

been the Spartans

rather

who

had

begun the war; the Spartans therefore believed that their misfortunes in the first war, like that at Pylos, were deserved or reasonable (cf. 18.2);

they believed

that good or bad fortune in

injustice

belligerents, i.e., on the rule of is ascribed by Thucydides to

This

thought

that it

accident

letter; it is The

follows

small

recommended

urgently

suffered was of

in the pay fiscal

as

of

Athens

although

his

quotation

or

justice.

but it is

Spartans,

the

at

and

by

no

Nikias'

of

Alkibiades begin to hurt

for the time

compared with

nothing

Mykalessos

the hands whom

Thereafter through

reasons.

the justice

on

Nikian thought.

also a

operations

city

depends

gods concerned with

immediately

almost

the Athenians considerably,

Athens

war

the

of

being what

Thracian

of

the harm

the

mercenaries who were

the Athenians had to an

which

happened to send

improvement in their

home for

naval

tactics

the Syracusans defeat the Athenians unmistakably in a naval battle; this Athenians' was the turning point (41). Yet for the moment the situation seems to be greatly improved by the expeditionary force that is commanded

daring

attempt

or else

to

Athenian

to win

either

start at once with

armament

is

a

arrival

by

of

the

second

Demosthenes.

Athenian

Demosthenes'

decision practically at once return home of the

victorious

the preparation for the

spoiled

in the first

place

by

enemy

resistance.

there is disagreement among the Athenian commanders and the army: there seems to be no longer any hope. Demosthenes

Secondly, within

for immediate

voted not

be

tions

he

He he

a

as

with

frank the

speedy

voted

as

return to Athens. In the deliberations Nikias could Demosthenes since he was engaged in secret negotia

influential, wealthy Syracusans,

end of

therefore against

his

desired as much as still has some hope. The reason by which

who

the enormously expensive war; he Demosthenes'

proposal.

he thought

of the difficult nature Athenians: the very soldiers who clamor now for the immediate to Athens will say after their return, when they have come again

supported

the influence

bribed

by

of

vote was what

the

demagogues,

the enemy:

he for

that the

of

the

return

under

Athenian generals have been

one would not prefer

to perish unjustly at

Preliminary the hands

observations on the gods

Thucydides"

in

11

work

the Athenians rather than perishing at the hands of the i.e., not unjustly. He does not consider the fact that

of

"privately,"

enemy

his

death

unjust

The

ment. most

to the

salvation of

between Demosthenes Thucydides'

in

example

striking

work of

the Athenian arma

Nikias (47-49.3) is the

and

an exchange of reported

Nikias'

speech, though, does not simply express his thought Thucydides makes clear, his hope prevents him from being

speeches. as

since,

would contribute

exchange

completely frank. He clings to his opinion because he is swayed by hope based on his Syracusan connections rather than by fear of Athenian revenge, and his

The

opinion wins out.

postponement of

Athenians'

the

departure is due entirely to him. But at the time everything was ready for the departure of the whole armament by sea, an eclipse of the moon took place. Thereupon most of the Athenians and not the least Nikias himself, who was somewhat too much addicted to divination and the like, demanded further postponement of the departure: Nikias decided according to the interpretation given by the soothsayers one ought to deliberate about the date of

even

had

passed

In the

not

days

meantime

Syracusans

the

gained a splendid naval

from the harbor

exit

victory, thus of

Syracuse.

Athenians'

The their

regret

effort

his

leaving

nine

(50.4).

closing to the Athenians the

almost

before three times

that

discouragement increased correspondingly and still more about the whole expedition. Before they make a last desperate

to break the Syracusan

them there is Nikias'

their

blockade, Nikias

together and addresses to them

command

still

is

speech

hope,

they have

troops:

the

given

by

paralleled

power of

a speech

better

much

of

all

calls

a speech

in

chance

soldiers

under

he

shows

which

especially in

the enemy

for hope

grounds

war.

commanders whereas

to the

Athenians

are reduced to putting their reliance altogether on fate (61-68). In these speeches, both of which are quoted, gods and sacred things are not mentioned, but the extreme danger in which the Athenians find them selves

induces Nikias to

and remind

battle

him, among

which

follows

Athenians to

address

and

achieve

which

be

of

single

commander of

consisted

The Athenians

spectators of

in the futile

they on

from the

could see

their

the life-and-death

the enemy,

the gods; in the opposite case,

attempt

blockading struggle.

happened to

place where each

own men vanquish

trireme

of

the

enemy navy

who could not embark were

tion was hmited to their passionate response to the part

saw

a

the ancestral gods (69.1-2). The

breakout through the

a

was of unrivaled violence.

compelled to

every

things,

other

they

they lost

Their

of

participa

the fight which

stand: when

they

caught courage and called

their

courage and

apparently

also their willingness to call on the gods (71.3). Hope ceasing, piety Athenians' disaster prevents them from taking ceases (cf. also 75.7). The

loving

the customary victors with

for the

the

circumstances

overpowering.

care

surrender

in

of

of

their many

dead,

even

from asking the

the Athenian corpses (72.2):

which

the contrast

Perikles delivered his Funeral Speech is

Retreat into the interior

of

Sicily

is

rendered

difficult

and

Interpretation

12 eventually impossible

by

Hermokrates to

a ruse of

to have recourse because the Syracusans

during

they just happened

the night:

tion

its

and

forced

was

fighting

to continue

to celebrate a festival in honor of

Herakles (73.2-74). Thucydides has described Athenian army

he

which

refused

the miserable end of the

descrip

an event which surpasses

commanders

adequately as possible. Shortly before the very end Nikias addressed a speech of encouragement to his troops which is quoted by Thucydides in full and which is the last as

speech

hope, is

in full that

quoted

his

exhorts

in the

occurs

than his comrades in

rather worse off

work.

Nikias, still filled with truthfuUy that he

to be hopeful. He declares

soldiers

he has fulfilled

arms although

the customary duties toward the gods and has always been just and modest towards human beings. The Athenians may have provoked the

envy

of

punished

(77.1-4).

the

god

expedition but they have been sufficiently they deserve the god's pity rather than his envy theology obviously differs from nay, is opposed to

by

for this; Nikias'

their

now

theology stated by the Athenian ambassadors on Meios. According to Thucydides himself Nikias would have deserved a better fate than the one which fell to his lot, for he had applied himself more than any other of

the

Thucydides'

the

contemporaries to

exercice of

that virtue

which

is

praised

held up by the law (86.5) as distinguished from another, possibly kind of virtue but his higher, theology is refuted by his fate. It is almost and

Athenians'

unnecessary to say that the of

Sicily

seasonal, to

come

interpreted

were

hopeless

retreat

thunderstorms and rain

Athenians

the

as

into

which,

interior

the

while

being

pointing to misery

still

(79.3).

Thucydides'

if it is

theology located in the Book VIII,

(in

permitted

to use this

expression

Aristotelian sense) between that Athenian ambassadors on Meios.

mean

and that of the

the character

been plausibly

the

last Book, is

the

depends obviously on

by by

was accompanied

on

of

anticlimactic.

the character

Books

VI-VII

of the

and

What this

climax,

of

is

Nikias

expression means

i.e., in

the first place

then of the whole

work.

It has

incompleteness,

that the peculiarity of Book VIII is due to its perhaps to Thucydides having died before he was able

to complete his

work.

The peculiarity

of

are

But this is

Book VIII

or peculiarities

peculiarity

peculiarity

suggested

of

quoted

the bulk

in full

of

the

be

the bulk

of the work

and

not more than a plausible

must

of

is the

way in

the

hypothesis.

in the hght

understood work.

The

most

of

the

striking

speeches of the characters which

which

they

are

interwoven

with

the

the deeds as well as with the speeches which are merely reported. There are no speeches quoted in full to be found in Book VIII. There is account of

however a large section of Book V which has the same character: V.I 0-84. The absence of quoted speeches from this section heightens the power, the

impact,

of

the

dialogue

on

Meios (V.85-112) and Is that power, that

the Sicilian expedition (VI-VII). more

heightened

by the

absence of

fully

quoted speeches

of

the account of

impact,

not

still

from Book VIII?

Preliminary

observations on the gods

in

Thucydides"

13

work

Let this

question also not be more than a plausible hypothesis. It has at least the merit of protecting us against the danger of mistaking a plausible hypothesis ratified by an overwhelming majority for a demonstrated verity.

Since the Athenians

and

their zealous quickness

their enemies preserve their turns of mind

their cautious slowness, respectively happened in Sicily, the Athenians were able to build up a new powerful force and to protect the largest part of their empire. Their initial anger when they learned of their disaster in Sicily was directed also against the diviners and soothsayers who had confirmed them in their hope that they would conquer Sicily. But the long-range reaction was rather in favor of thrift and moderation and of some form of rule by

despite

and

what

older men.

One may

the Athenians

would

been frictions

or

instigation

by

an

or

became

an

have been

important

part of

Agis'

Attika

by

commanded

a mortal

Spartan army

authorities

sound

by

to his

Owing

power

in Sparta had increased

which

the same stroke

saved

the

with

was

Alkibiades'

and

and

division

incredible

made the

was

king

authorities.

other

who was condemned

had

Agis

he had thus

and

these

of

another

Athens

Sicily

part of

command of a

Spartan

other

the support

Alkibiades,

Athens. The Athenian defeat in

to

king Agis,

enemy

on

the

was under permanent occupation

the Spartan

(5.3-4, 12.2, 45.1). But it

combination

Owing

enemies.

Alkibiades.

aroused

enemy

effort on

any

to them if there had not

avail

of

dissensions Alkibiades therefore had to depend or

whether

of

any dissensions among her

enemy army

increased

doubt, however,

of

Spartan

within

the

it may to death by as

Persia (and

therewith his satrap Tissaphernes) and the Spartans the actual or potential heirs to that part of the Athenian empire which was located in Asia

Minor and the islands nearby. Tissaphernes wished to use those rich Athens' financial resources, which were hitherto at disposal, for the king's services. This state of things naturally led to a Spartan-Persian alliance that was strongly

less its

more or

Athenians

by Alkibiades.

urged

old

fury,

the demos

of

While the Samos rose

war

continued

with

the

help

with

of

the

fellow-citizens, killing or expelling them and confiscating their property (21). Furthermore, the war still dragging on, the Peloponnesians felt that their treaty with Tissaphernes their

against

oligarchic

less than they were alliance between the two

gave them of

Spartan

into

command

the open.

found it restored

to the ever

king

to expect; accordingly, a new

powers

brought the latent

The Spartans

unbearable

ancestors

entitled

concluded.

was

conflict

who were now

A

between Sparta

negotiating

with

treaty in the

change and

Persia

Tissaphernes

that the two treaties between Sparta and Persia of

Persia

possessed,

i.e.,

the

right to

above all

all countries which

the Greek lands

he

which

and

his

Greeks

had liberated from Persian domination. Tissaphernes became angry and unwilling to continue paying the large sums of money which he had

was

spent

hitherto for

Alkibiades order

saw

to find

the

himself

Peloponnesian compeUed

protection against

his

navy.

to take

Precisely

refuge

numerous and

at

this moment

Tissaphernes in powerful enemies in

with

Interpretation

14

Sparta. He took resolutely the side of Tissaphernes He became the teacher of Tissaphernes in all things moderation: Tissaphernes ought to reduce the pay to

hybris is

high pay induces them to commit every kind of mischief bodies (45.1-2). Alkibiades, who was notorious for his incontinence, as teacher of moderation and continence: if this

and

or

greatest

work, it is surely the with regard to

most

most

the lion laughed

can

be

peripeteia

moving

account of

an ancient critic observed

least

here

(I.126.2ff.)

the Kylon affair

applied with at

Thucydides'

in

equal right

to

Alkibiades'

conversion.

PoliticaUy

the

Tissaphernes

make a choice

Athens,

which constituted

Poloponnesians. In

Alkibiades

gave

to

Peloponnesians

or

easily be controUed by Persia. Greek powers she ought

could

between

which

of either the

victory

divided Greece

a

If Persia had to to prefer

important instruction

most

was to prevent the

the Athenians:

the two

less

of a

danger to Persia than the

way Alkibiades prepared at the same time his Athenians. For he held that the Athenians might

this

reconciliation with the

be his friend. But this

turn to him if Tissaphernes appeared to required the change

the Athenian regime

of

from

Persian

the

to recaU Alkibiades

could not

to the plan was sUenced

independent

highest

of

it,

the hope for the pay

by

Alkibiades'

Connected

would give.

as

there developed

a

over

an

anti-democratic

Athenian army whole favored the

Alkibiades. The Athenians

on

on

Samos,

any

an

to the plan opposition

some

king

extent

conspiracy among

with the consequence

abolition of

Samos

into

reliance

the Persian

which

conspiracy but to

with

strata of the

that that army recaU of

put

to abolish the democracy. The popular

and

solution

democracy

a

be expected to king democracy. Very influential Athenians were won

oligarcy:

the

recorded

What

one.

astounding

Thucydides'

on a

especiaUy regarding the Peloponnesian

of

their

ruin

not the

timely

the Spartans.

whose

saUors, and

against

democracy

and the

embassy to Athens considerable opposition in sent an

Peisandros as its leader. There was Athens to the recaU of Alkibiades, not the least on the ground of the fact that he had been condemned to death because of impiety. Yet the with

opponents were unable to suggest an alternative which might save

Thereupon Peisandros told the

government

more

Athens.

except to make clearly "there is oligarchic (53.3). This utterance of Peisandros none"

them

lines

is the only direct speech quoted in Book VIII. This necessarily mean that it is the most important utterance of a Thucydidean character that occurs in the last Book. But it clearly under lines, especiaUy if taken in conjunction with the absence of any quoted roughly

does

six

not

speech

by Alkibiades,

anticlimactic relative

character,

abundance of

contrasted with

the most as

striking

previously

fuUy

quoted

else

they

could

One

of

fully other

quoted than

that Book: its

might also note the

treaties of alliance

the complete absence

The oligarchicaUy minded Athenians altogether inimical to him, established wherever

characteristic of

explained.

(18, 37, 58)

as

speeches proper.

Alkibiades,

if

not

oligarchy in Athens and in the Athenian empire. But the allies or an

Preliminary

in

observations on the gods

Thucydides'

15

work

Athens were less eager for oligarchy than for being independent Athens. The regime now established in Athens was the government 5,000 who were most able to help the city by their property and by

subjects of

of of

This

themselves.

entitled

violent rule.

At

in 400

achievement, the

Athenians. The

the

provisions made under who

had been

in

exiled

They

the

oligarchic

of

this regime in Athens

work of some of the most able and

oligarchic

prayers and sacrifices to

particular.

of

the actual government was vested

proposal

the 5,000. The establishment

men out of

exceUent

members

to participate in the government and exercised a

Peisandros'

was a remarkable

by

in fact that only

meant

clique were

naturally fortified their

rulers

the gods (70.1).

They

changed

rule

the

of

many

but they did not recall the men to be forced to recall Alkibiades in

democracy

order not

tried to start negotiations with

Agis; peace with Sparta they achieved nothing.

than with Tissaphernes was their aim. But

rather

In addition, the Athenian army on Samos put down the oligarchy there. The democratic leaders obliged the soldiers and especially the

were

King

and continue

in favor

soldiers on

the

Samos,

island. He

recaU and

proposal

with

the

was

greatest

its implication:

by

adopted

addressed a speech

They the

alliance with

the

Assembly

of

the

Assembly

to that

which

Thucydides

the case for Alkibiades and his pohcy as

(81.2-3). Thereupon he

as possible

to accept the

oaths

the Peloponnesians (75.2).

that Alkibiades joined the Athenians

result

reports and which overstated

strongly

the

war against

Alkibiades'

Persia. This

of

on that

of

by

among them

minded

ohgarchicaUy

democracy

to

was elected general

serve

together with the previous ones. He was now in a position to frighten

the Athenians

Tissaphernes

grave situation that

his

alleged

true influence

or

Alkibiades

of

from him

Tissaphernes

seemed

It

was

and

in this

for the first time to have benefited

no

into the Peiraeus. In fact there

straight

on

the Athenian army.

over

power

less than any other man by preventing an ill-conceived the Athenians on Samos to leave that island and to sail

his fatherland attempt

his

with

with

was

at

that time no one apart

to restrain the multitude. He abolished the rule of

as capable

the 400 while preserving or rather restoring the rule of the 5,000. lust at

this

time,

Athenians city; the on

whUe

situation was

Sicily. But they

rule of

the

the

graver

defeat in the

even

showed again

5,000, i.e.,

conflict

civic

sharpest

suffered a severe naval

than

immediately

regime:

Simultaneous

(96-97)

a

right

the rule of the

with this

and therewith

kind

of

salutary

hoplites,

mixture

revolution

the hope for

came to nought, as other

hopes

in

Athens,

the

proximity to the after the disaster

their old courage and resilience. The

Then the Athenians had for the first time good

raged closest

during

of

firmly

Athens'

established.

Thucydides'

oligarchy Alkibiades was

spoken of

Alkibiades'

was

and

a

formaUy recalled

salvation restored.

by

life

democracy. The hope

Thucydides had

come

to

fault. How it came to nought is told nought, but not through Hellenika. the There seems to be a connection, not in Xenophon by

16

Interpretation

by Thucydides, during

made explicit

that

existed

predominance.

between the first

Thucydides'

lifetime

and

good

Athenian

Alkibiades'

regime

unquestioned

REMBRANDT AND THE HUMAN CONDITION Howard White

The quest of this paper is the quest for the human soul, as I believe Rembrandt understood the human soul to be. As I am not an art historian, I shaU have to show that one may find the human soul as a painter saw

it

by relating history of

the

art

history

pohtical

to the

history

phUosophy

yet each pohtical phUosopher must

be in the

history

art.

There

be

regions, times,

one

in his

is, however,

and

as

in

influences,

right, so it may important difference.

own

an

has known but one revolution in its tools: a methodological Of course, there is the invention of the printing press; but

PhUosophy "logical"

of

Just

of pohtical philosophy.

there are

one.

has probably enabled men to pass as phUosophers who, as Rousseau fanatics." said, "in the days of the League would be known only as Art has known several, perhaps many revolutions: canvas, chiaroscuro, the that

use of shadow to make a rounded

figure,

and

so

Seldom is there

on.

Perhaps Cezanne has something in common with antiquity, but not technically. Perhaps Cezanne is closer to the classics than Rembrandt, which does not make him a better least

at

reversion,

formal

a

one.

painter.

We So to

it legitimate to

consider speak

is

to

not

deny

Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes,

right, aU

that and

so

and

like Machiavelh, in their own

were phUosophers

to

political philosophy.

Yet they

markedly from Plato and Aristotle and other from medieval political thinkers, that it is today

strongly,

thinkers,

classical

phUosophy."

pohtical

pohtical phUosophers

Spinoza

who made original contributions

differed

"modern

speak of

so

a commonplace to refer to modern and pre-modern political philosophy.

There

need

However,

by

one

art

knows."1

century, modern

not

be the

same

break in the

the deft use of shadows to create a

historian "the

Strange the

or

century

phUosophy,

most

decisive

Descartes,

of

place

which

in the

sometimes considered

and a man whose

portrait,

pictorial

figure is

rounded

revolution

not, the fact that it took of

history

as we shall

art

arts.

called

history

seventeenth

the founder of

see, Rembrandt

drew, is

worthy of notice. I hope that the above wUl

It is

century

was

alien and

conquest,

1

a

incomprehensible

often causes

those who equate and take

stiU

p.

suffice as an introduction to my approach. easy for serious men to understand why the seventeenth time of high hopes. Today the view that the universe is

not always

and

therefore the

great

despair. Granted that there hope from the

comprehension,

of

the

Heinrich Wolfflin, Principles of Art History, trans. M. D.

21.

prospect

of

are

the

incomprehensible

Hottinger, 7th

ed.,

Interpretation

18 universe, there is you

can;

a more thoughtful view:

you wiU

never

find God. There

to the moon; find

go was

a

time, however,

what when

To Francis Bacon, fantasticum. coelum fifth it meant the end of Aristotle's essence, the From Machiavelli to Descartes, it was a time of soaring hope, the hope men

in the

took delight

alien character of the universe.

fantasticum

that the coelum

might

be

by

replaced

a universe

of man's

making.

There is seemed

the

same

soaring hope in Rembrandt.

to Bacon and Descartes to forge chains,

could not

be free,

Rembrandt,

to

binding

so the classic art patterns seemed to

restrictions which were

Just

as

Aristotle

man so that

he

impose restrictions,

graduaUy removed by Titian, by Caravaggio, by for color and hght. For hope one paid a price.

make room

Bacon knew that, and the wise men he created are fuU of compassion. Rembrandt implicitly raises the question as to why, in response to the development of universality, in the face of the great metaphysical systems like that of Descartes, it was necessary to turn to the soul and the self. John Donne wrote:

And new PhUosophy caUs aU in doubt, The Element of Fire is quite put out; The Sun is lost, and th'earth, and no man's Can weU direct him where to look for it.2

wit

Both Donne

and Rembrandt seem to suggest that the truth about the (or self) is not essentiaUy related to the truth about the whole. In a Rembrandt painting, it would be difficult for us to see the difference, if he saw one, between the soul and the self. Stand in gaUery after gaUery, and watch hght and shadow play upon the youthful face, the aged face, soul as soul

the ageless face of the painter himself. Jakob exhibit of aU the self-portraits.

"We know

Rosenberg

postulates

altogether,"

says

an

he, "about

sixty painted self-portraits by the master, in addition to more than twenty drawings."3 This gives us a total of ninety, perhaps etchings, and about ten a few more. There wiU have been some losses. Of course there probably were precedents. Durer made self-portraits, one in the likeness of Christ. Then there were furtive portraits in group paintings. Rembrandt may have done that too (see the Samson and Delilah in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). Since it is doubtful, I assume that self-portraits in group portraits are not included in Rosenberg's computation. Among great men there is nothing like Rembrandt's concentration on the self except, perhaps, in the abundance of confessional literature in Rousseau, and that comes much later. There are no concern with the soul and the self.

hypothetical compassion,

exhibit and

see?

real

What

Growth,

of

precedents

would

course,

often, though Rembrandt led

World,"

2

"An Anatomie

8

Jakob Rosenberg, Rembrandt: Life

of

the

Donne

and

and

a

growth

life

Blake (New

Work,

for Rembrandt's

the visitor to

rev. ed.

Rosenberg's

in wisdom

of much

and

deprivation

York), p. 171. (London, 1964),

p.

37

Rembrandt

and

the Human Condition

in happiness. Perhaps Rembrandt painted his first self-portrait. And

could not

19

have known

that when

he

he because it was economical, because he found it successful, or because there was a genuine philosophical interest, whether perhaps, in either creating or seeking the self, he might find the soul. Something of the last may be suggested by Kenneth Clark's statement: "We know from Rembrandt's early etchings that one of his we perhaps cannot

know

whether

continued with the style

chief exercices was the

observation of

his face in

a

every violent emotion that he was likely to need in his This does not seem to suggest that Rembrandt's self so much as that

unique,

human. Of course,

it

was

individuahty

mirror, expressing

narrative

pictures."4

was autonomous or

the easiest object in

which

in painting developed

long

to find the

before the

became phUosophicaUy problematic. I have not seen the early self-portraits, except for one drawing in the Louvre, which is quite The portrait of 1634 (Berlin-Dhalen) shows an elegant

existence of the soul

engaging.6

engaging young man. The portrait of 1640 (London, National GaUery) is simUar but statelier. In 1650 (Washington, National Gallery), Rembrandt became a thinker, as seen in The Scholar in his Study. In the many later self-portraits Care grows. Insight also grows. The faces are fuU of wonder, and wonder, to Aristotle, is the beginning of wisdom. What the portraits and

show, in hght, to

spite of

the suffering, is the ascent of the

soul and

the strange

which we shaU return.

that Rousseau had a similar absorption with the self. time Rembrandt painted his first self-portrait, around 1630, to the time Rousseau completed his last work, Reveries d'un promeneur solitaire (1776) about a century and a half intervened. These two men, different as they were, had two things in common, a concern for the

I

mentioned

From

the

deep compassion. It seems probable, however, that Rembrandt, Rousseau, was entirely free of amour-propre. His reasons for presenting a long series of self-portraits are probably not the same as Rousseau's reasons for writing a large body of confessional literature. Rousseau gives a reason at the begining of the Confessions. He wants to self and a

unlike

in

show

"a

deny

selectivity, and it is

man

aU

Confessions. The

the truth of weU

reference

nature."8

Such

a claim

to Rousseau is not

does

not necessarily selectivity in the intended to suggest that

known that there is

some

possibly have had in mind himself as a natural man in Rousseau's sense. If Rembrandt painted two self-portraits a year, even these may be selective, as there may be gaps which his brush did not capture. Selective or not, however, his large and continuous output of Rembrandt

could

self-portraiture

4

p.

does

suggest

that,

at

some

time,

his

concern

with

the

the Italian Renaissance (New

York, 1964),

F. Lugt, Inventaire des dessins ecole Hollandaise (Paris), 1149. (Euvres completes "Un homme dans toute la verite de la

(Paris, 1952),

Sir Kenneth Clark, Rembrandt

and

4. 5 6

vol.

nature,"

1,

p.

5.

Interpretation

20

became permanently fixed as a concern, legitimate and responsible, to be to exhibit to the world. In other words, the expression of self had spiritual growth. mental and proper to what is of one means showing Rembrandt one can anticipate Jakob Burckhardt's criticism of self

Already

for employing this

whether

Burckhardt

themes.7

vulgar

his

constant examination of

"One

writes:

own

features

can

with the

wonder

help

of

for him. Maybe the strange blinking of the eyes which his portraits such a dreadful expression came from this

a mirror was good of

some

gives

habit."8

Yet the

self-portraits

have

confessional pleadings

the

none of

St. Augustine. Rembrandt has

of

precedent

Rousseau or, for that matter, of not the enough in portrait painting, in Durer, in Franz Hals. That is the through self, the point. The point is the search for the self, and, the bothers which gtult with the to do human, a search which has nothing ahke. confessional natural confessional and the Christian The search for the human in Rembrandt must take us occasionaUy to Descartes. Descartes hved the greater part of his mature life in HoUand, and wrote

in 1631, "You

Amsterdam for

must excuse

my

if I invite

zeal

it

your retirement and prefer

not

only to

you

aU

to choose

the Capuchin

Carthusian monasteries, to which many worthy people retire, but Italy."9 finest residences in France and Rembrandt, as I have

and

also to the

"Cartesius."

noted,

Its

of

portrait

a

made

present

whereabouts

are

have

for

What is compelling is that Descartes Rembrandt, and the leading phUosopher of his time and the painter of his time may have had something to say to one Descartes wrote, "Mais, tout de meme que les peintres ne must

unknown.10

sat

leading

another.11

pouvant

dans un tableau plat toutes les diverses faces d'un corps sohde, en choisant des principaux qu'Us mettent seul vers le This statement is somewhat paradoxical. jour et ombrageant les "faces" It says that painters cannot present in a painting aU the different egalement

bien

representer

autres."12

"surfaces"

of a solid

or perhaps

art,

"Rembrandt,"

7

body,

Ibid.,

p.

seems to refer

to seventeenth-century

in Kulturgeschichtliche Vortrdge (Leipzig,

Burckhardt's essay have been 8

it

and

to Rembrandt in particular. The statement appears in a

made

by

my

n.d.).

Translations from

wife.

118.

9

Letter to A. Balzac, Amsterdam, May 5, 1631, (Euvres completes, pp. 941-42. 10 J. Bolten, ed., Dutch Drawings from the Collection of Dr. G. Hofstade de

(Utrecht, 1967). A footnote refers to the handwritten "catalogue of the There library of the Municipal University, drawing in the Louvre, not in the Lugt inventory, which is a portrait, apparently

Groot

Amsterdam."

Valerius Rover collection,

is

a

of a 11

philosophe,

There is

with a globe at

his feet. This may be Descartes. Descartes and Rembrandt had

another relationship.

in Constantijn Huygens. The letters Descartes friendly. Huygens mend

who 12

him to

was also

royal patrons.

the first to

Huygens,

certainly knew both Descartes

"Discours de la

recognize

the father

and

5,

of

a mutual

friend

to Huygens were warm

Rembrandt's

Rembrandt

genius and

and

to recom

the physicist, was the one person well.

(Euvres complites,

methode,"

pt.

wrote

p.

154.

Rembrandt

and the

Human Condition

21

in which Descartes refers to "un trait que quelques considera tions m'empechent de This is generally taken to be a reference to Le Monde, and the principal "consideration" is believed to be the

paragraph

publier."

fate

Gahleo. Hence perhaps what a painter could not do Descartes do if he could. However, a friend suggests the possibihty that chiaroscuro is a form of concealment or ombrage, that the painter's of

would

concealment

form

of

was

and

concealment,

Descartes'

to

related

Rembrandt,

Chiaroscuro is

concealment.

like Descartes,

a master

was

a of

concealment.

We

the

should see

relation

Rousseau

another way.

was

Descartes'

with the self.

between Descartes the first

not

Discours de la

Rembrandt in

and

philosopher

methode

may be

considered an

seen his his own way with that of seventeenth-century painting. in the Discours he says he will "be glad to show, in this

though

autobiography,

not

a

confession.

We

have

quite

to be concerned

already

comparison of

Much

earlier

discourse, my life a

painting

self-portrait,

an and

[tableau]."13

or a series of

followed,

If his life is

self-portraits.14

and

ascent,15

represents an

represent

painting, it is obviously Insofar as the Discours is of

Cartesian thought,

Rembrandt,

with

inteUectual

ascent.

The

the

question

subjectivity perhaps common to Rembrandt and Is Cartesian morality purely subjective? Is it

a

subjectivity,

Descartes, may be

yet an

here to

a

autobiography, it deals with the development it is therefore a series of self-portraits. As

Discours of

the ways that I have

what are

as a

raised.

idiosyncratic? Yet in the Discours II, Descartes tells who are the people who should not imitate him in the rash ("ni avoir assez de patience pour conduire par ordre toutes leurs pensees") and the By implica tion, we can teU who should imitate him. In part 6, Descartes adds that modest.16

"perhaps the

public

morahty, then, has

beginning houses,18

of part

the one

constructed.

has

3, Descartes in

Here is

interest in

His following. Publication begets imitation. At the

a

some

which

he

presents must now

a morale par

knowing

these

things."17

the famous analogy of the two hve, and the one that is being

provision, and, again

by imphcation,

morality is just for himself, the introduction of subjectivity into philosophy bears a close relation to Rembrandt's self-portraits. As mentioned above, that is probably not the case. However, there is something else that is new, and that is the a

definitive

morahty.

emphasis on solitude

its

is

ibid.,

14

Gregor Sebba

own

p.

If the

for

provisional

philosophic reasons.

refers

to himself

127.

substantial

writes:

"The

nature.

.

.

self as res cogitans can

"Time

Beckett."

IB

(Euvres completes, pp.

16

Ibid.,

p.

135.

17

Ibid., Ibid.,

p.

167.

p.

140.

is

Descartes

126,

179.

and

and distinctly know Descartes, Rousseau,

clearly

the Modern Self:

Interpretation

22

"qui

as a man

is the a

desert.20

That

His

praise of

HoUand

solitude, where he can live as in has something to do with the task of modern

country that

praise of a

tenebres."19

dans les

marche seul et

solitude

permits

strangely with the acts of the citizen-phUosopher Phaedrus.21 It is not with the remarks Socrates is made to utter in the Descartes show that to our concern here to develop this point, but merely has an affinity with Rembrandt in subjectivity. We are stiU a long way

This

phUosophy.

from the A

promeneur solitaire.

is

self-portrait

"Not

a

few

securahst

escape

such, and

art

affinity if

having been

without

society,

sentence,

necessarily a soul portrait. Leo Strauss writes: have come to despair of the possibUity of a decent

not

people who

secularism as

that

contrasts

into the

have

self

necessarUy

strong.

The

traditional

joining

of

the

that

joining

imitation

One

understand

can

in

individuality

self contrasts

Strauss

and soul.

Note that, in this

art."

of

role and

art

of

their despair to question

by

into

affinity.

peculiar

a

realizes

one

induced

self and

with

.

it is

in the

originate soul

as

wrote

the

Rembrandt, to his

a work

Some

soul.

and

It is

modern

to the

weU

in particular,

was

the "passions de

on

phUosophers stiU

relation

of

man

stiU a soul

known

replaced

an

philosophy

the person

and

order which

continued to

not

purely

l'ame,"

do.23

there is no easy answer to

Descartes. There is soul.

a part of

predecessors, hke Titian

own

happening

Yet

self."22

asserting that

soul,

Descartes wrote of

it is

not certain whether

Caravaggio,

.

The

.

of

the

does

not

treat the

autonomous.

and

even

Whatever the

that, it is

is

'self'

"The

continues:

is obviously a descendant of the soul; that is, it is not the soul. soul is a part of an order which does not originate in the soul; self

art

the more

Locke

soul

is in

somehow related

and to what was

to the cosmos, from Machiavelli to

in Rembrandt, but it is not the Platonic phUosophy in general, and Descartes

that modern

the supremacy

of

virtue

over

the passions with

the supremacy of the Rembrandt certainly had a hierarchy of the passions, wherever he got it. He either replaced virtue by passions passions.24

or

identified

chical

Rembrandt, touch,

is

Before

and passions.

the

of motion

soul, and

we

rest,

must

of

the

am

aware

Ibid., Ibid.,

of

the rashness

questions.

p.

136.

p.

146.

I hope I

21

Plato Phaedrus 230D-E.

22

Leo

23

Kurt

of

the hierar

we can understand

first treat

of

instrumentality

biblical picture, of the transformation light into the terrestrial or diurnal.

philosophical

20

of

of the

supernal

I

virtue

structure

of

things

in

sense

of

celestial

or

other of

the

the

suggesting that Rembrandt

can

show that the

suggestion

raised

is less

Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern (New York, 1968), p. 261. Riezler, Man Mutable and Immutable (Chicago, 1950), p. 111. 24 See esp. Richard in Leo Strauss and J. Cropsey, Kennington, History of Political Philosophy (Chicago, 1963), pp. 379-95. "Descartes,"

eds.,

Rembrandt it

rash than

to be. I think that

appears

just

Goethe,

or

Coleridge,

23

study certain painters, have studied the phUosophy of Shakespeare. It stUl remains to establish this the whole. In one respect we are not plowing

including Rembrandt, or

the Human Condition

and

as

one might

scholars

in the perspective of virgin soil but treading beaten paths. There is a distinction between is caUed in art-historical jargon the "painterly" (das malerische) and view

is

caUed

"linear."

the

in

was understood what

According

In the

antiquity.25

had previously been

indeed,

historian,

to one art sixteenth

They

rejected.

century chose

what what

this distinction

some artists chose over

motion

rest,

appearance over reahty.

Jakob Burckhardt

writes of

it was,

Rembrandt, "He

subordinated

the subject,

two elementary powers: light and air. Rembrandt does not care about the true form of things. Their appearance

no matter what

is

One may

everything."26

reahty.

On the

be

should rest

That or

clear.

likely

interpretation

may be

of appearance and

Ulusion. On the other, why

an

than motion?

Artists have tried to

God, any

The

sense.

question this aU art

have beheved that there

anyone can paint

Platonic

hand,

one

more real

people

in being, is

under the

higher reahty, in God,

a

God. It is doubtful

than one can

more

is the

visible world

was

paint

paint

whether

"being,"

becoming. What

world of

in the seems

to be new is not so much the relation between appearance

reahty, in

what

Wolfflin

history

knows."27

shade,

and

caUed

"the

and

decisive revolution which art techniques in the rendition of light and

There are new in these things Titian

most

Caravaggio

and

were

Rembrandt's

teachers.

If baroque

thought that

artists

something in common with be objectivity in taste, to

they had found

modern philosophy.

compare

Titian

and

the

"truth,"

they have

Though there may Rembrandt, Plato

weU

and

the province of us professors. To say that is not to deny that any reasonable man wiU prefer Shakespeare to his con temporaries. He would be a rash man indeed who compared Shakespeare

Aristotle, is beyond

and

Homer. Since Wolfflin

judges artist,28

otherwise we must

must

(apparently

stay for

have it, however, that "the

without

a moment with

investigation) the

than

historian"

the

baroque

relative merits of appearance

and reality. For appearance to be superior to reahty, reahty must be incomprehensible. That is certainly, though oversimplified, what Bacon believed. In discussing the portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels (Berlin-Dahlen),

Wolfflin writes, "We on

becoming If Wolfflin

and

see

that the

emphasis no

means

History,

p.

20.

"Rembrandt,"

p.

21.

Wolfflin, Principles p.

of Art

112.

27

Wolfflin, Principles of Art History,

28

ibid.,

pp.

29

Ibid.,

p.

158-59.

52.

on

being

but

this distinction in the Platonic sense, I have said

26

25

longer hes

change."29

Interpretation

24 it is doubtful

above that a painting.

whether

this is certainly

However, that Aristotle, in

"being"

Platonic not an

could

universaUy

be imitated in

accepted principle.

Poetics, did not mean to suggest that a great tragedy, with a catharsis of pity and fear, would be an imitation of being. Wolfflin should have asked first, "What was Rembrandt's view I

am not sure

the

reality?"

of

reaUy talking about is motion and rest, the Greeks So did Michelangelo. Rembrandt was certainly a master of change, if that is becoming. Recession gives an impression of move ment, but it is not recession alone. There is movement in the Descent If

what we

are

sought motion.

from the Cross (National GaUery of Art, Washington, D.C.). There is the impression of movement in the Night Watch. There is the man rising from his that

in the Syndics (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). It is

chair

Rembrandt is giving

modern

thought,

to

expression

incomprehensible

the alien and

the

of

one

leading

character of

of

the universe.

It is possible, but not hkely. Since I think it unlikely that he a notion from Bacon, could he have gotten it from Titian? Rest is

possible

tenets

got

such

to moderation and motion to daring. Valuable is traditionaUy held to be, there is a level at which it is a negative quahty. "However ambiguous that daring, that mania which transcends the limits of moderation on the political plane alone, it comes into its own, or is in accordance with nature on the plane of sometimes related

as moderation

thought,"

Leo

Strauss.30

Daring in thought, however, need not mean daring Often it does not, as Strauss, in his studies of writing and "mania" in reading between the lines, has shown us. Daring, or frenzy, Platonic thought, is supplemented by extreme care in construction of a dialogue. Rembrandt was not careless, but he was extremely bold in execution. He did not innovate "slowly, hke as Bacon urged. says

in

expression.

time,"

His treatment Whether

bold

of motion was

is

innovation.31

closer to

reality than rest, whether the tactile is to reahty than the visible, a higher reahty is still possible. The roles faith and skepticism in the High Renaissance are moot, and there is motion

closer of

a great

deal to be

however,

for example,

said about

the piety

about

appears to

expression of a

behef in

and chUd contributes

of

be

them. I suppose that there is no question,

Giotto. Madonna a

and

genuinely devout

a spiritual reahty.

to the expression

of

The

the Child

picture.

Enthroned,

I take it

as

an

central position of mother

piety, but

there

is

much more

to give the impression of profound rehgious conviction that many pictures, even of biblical subjects, do not.

Apollonius

Tyana

of

of

animals

than gods.

3"

The

rather

City

and

Egyptians why Egyptian pictorial representing irrational When asked what Greek statues were like,

asked a

group

the gods were

representations

Man (Chicago, 1964),

of

so

p.

grotesque,

299. But

"Boldness is ill in counsell, good in 31 Cf. Rosenberg, Rembrandt, pp. 139, 146.

execution."

see

Bacon's essay

on

boldness:

Rembrandt

ApoUonius be

should

in terms

rephed

encouraged

by

the Human Condition

and

25

reverence, the reaction which, he said, of a god. When then asked whether

of

the statue

Phidias and Praxiteles and the others went up and saw the gods, so that they knew what the gods looked like, Apollonius replies that that was done by creative imagination. In other words, Apollonius, in defending Greek

sculptural representations of

imitation for

that art was

view

a

the gods,

doctrine

abandoned

the traditional

imagination.32

of critical

We

here concerned with the origin of this view or its relation to Aristotle's discussion of imagination in the De Anima.33 A view that imagination is nobler than imitation because it presents what the artist are not

does

not

a

see,

view

ApoUonius, seems For Rembrandt,

to that

similar

essential

the question of the

though more can be said about the

He

a

in the face

and

hands

clearly Christian

piety?

evident

Son

Philostratus

which

attributes

to

to rehgious representation.

higher reality remains doubtful, Is not the compassion so

subject.

the father in the Return of the Prodigal

of

Certainly Rembrandt knew his Bible well. in Calvinist Holland, though Calvin opposed of imagination to give a visible shape to God

painted religious pictures

rehgious painting.

The

use

or, apparently, to Christ to the eye. In

presented

was unlawful. other

What

lawful

was

words, imitation

was

was what was

lawful.34

Rembrandt did

not foUow in Calvin's steps, at least in this respect. interested in pointing out profanities and jokes in the treatment of biblical subjects, as Balet and one of the art historians he cites seem to be.35 I am seeking the human soul. The subject matter may tell us

I

am not

something alone and

the

is

hardly

holiness, subject

replace

artist sees

sufficient.

there is

matter.

virtues, but

writes of virtue.

the

of what

a

In not

In the serenity

all

see,

generaUy

passions

as

in

with

the ladies

hydra. Yet

as

all

and gentlemen of

to

be, but

the subject matter

in Descartes, equaUy

rich in figures action,

and so

on,

of evU as

Burckhardt

in figures

of

Discord, Envy, Hate, while

the

court and

tend to

passions

pervasive.

these figures blend the

of virtue

the impression of

strengthens

are

violent

Deception, Rage, Ignorance, Slander as a many-headed

soul

which

Rembrandt,

Rubens: "Rubens is

We

the

quattrocento's representation

Rebellion

most

appears

harmoniously

aristocracy.

.

.

.

they

part, introduced with unerring Panofsky says something simUar about Titian: "Titian's world extended all the way from the idyUic to the tragic, from tenderness to brutality, from though the seductive to the repulsive, from the sublime to the almost

are, for the

never

quite

propriety."36

most

vulgar."37

Seldom is

a

contrast

between

great

32

Flavius Philostratus Life of Apollonius of Tyana 6.19.

33

Bk. 3.3

84

Institutes 1. 11.12.

35

Leo Balet, Rembrandt and Spinoza (New York, 1962), pp. 173-78. Jakob Burckhardt, Recollections of Rubens (London, n.d.), p. 117.

36 37

Irwin Panofsky, Problems in Titian (New York,

1969),

p.

91.

masters

Interpretation

26

teUer,"

"Along

striking.

so

says

Rubens.38

of

His

Rembrandt

greatest vision was

the

Homer,

with

the

greatest

a

not

was

He had

storyteUer.

visions.

the good life. He denied himself

of

vision

Burckhardt

story

is inclined to say, dehberately Titian's range. Figures of evU were not his wont. They do exist. There is David in David arid Uriah (Hermitage, Leningrad). The cruelty is unmistakable. Yet even David one

and

Saul (The

Hague)

are

lonely

than evU, and arouse compassion.

rather

There are those who see prurience in Susannah, but you have to look tried his hand at the very hard to find it. That is perhaps not aU. He unsympathetic passions, but they did not stay long with him. There as

far

you

I

or

can see.

identify

love

two

are

as

love

four

four because it depends

or

and compassion or

frequently

compassion

and

dominate Rembrandt's painting,

passions which

I say two

curiosity

and wonder.

upon whether

In

Rembrandt,

together, as in The Return of the whom he was so fond, in the blind

go

Prodigal Son, in the old men, of Homer (Mauritshaus, The Hague), in the

Anna

of

pictures

Tobit

and

from the Apocrypha. The compassion which is expressed by the father in the Prodigal Son, compassion for the prodigal, is shared by Rembrandt and surely by nearly everyone who looks at the painting. Compassion imphes a certain inequality. Love, of course, does not. The was

other

hke

the

had "eyes but it is

Rembrandt is wonder, or, perhaps, Solomen's House, in Bacon's New Atlantis, who There is compassion in the self-portraits, if he pitied curiosity.39

passion

father

of

man."

as

with happiness and thoughtfulness. Moreover, in the it is Rembrandt who shows compassion. He is not the compassion; if he were, he would be guUty of self-pity, which

mingled

self-portraits, object of

would

be

difficulties,

absurd. so

speak of care.

As

father. The three passions

of

The

problem

they do

the father. The

men

they do

express, older

the right are

on

the

spectator.

humility

of

In this he

distraught, in

the

Leningrad). Love

not

resembles

Parting

to the

goes out

Burckhardt, Recollections

of

in Aristotle,

not

by

a

share

the

Whatever

compassion

beard

a red cloak and a

The

upright

face is

posture not

contrasts

turned to the

the figures, clearly the more Jonathan (also in the Hermitage,

p. at

and the

father. It

goes

out

157.

least

accompanies

not

the wonder

ignorance.

quick conversion

but

of

the Meta

Nevertheless,

rather

it leads

through study and Descartes, the first

It is, therefore, a habit. Wonder becomes, with discussed in the Traiti des passions de I'dme (Paris, 1952),

contemplation. passion

Rubens,

It is partly painful, because it

to philosophy, obviously

the

penitent

Wonder is

physics.

to

and

of

arid

39

a passion

shows the care of shaded.

prodigal's

one

of David

presents

compassion

somewhat

seem

prodigal.

kneeling. The

and

the noble care. The beards contrast

38

not

love

brother, if it be he, has not

inequality

and

equality

above, the Prodigal Son

noted

hke his father, but apparently with the shaven head of the with

of

that perhaps we should unite

pp.

723ff.

Rembrandt in

the Human Condition

and

27

returning, in the other, to the

one picture to the

away to the East ViUage, passion? The father could,

ran

parting. If your son him with such sympathetic Rembrandt knew that this was no

would you greet and

ordinary father. Let us return to the Jewish Bride (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). We may here recaU that many, perhaps most, of the titles are not Rembrandt's. This fact is until one

in the

significant

that "perhaps

has

better

a

The love in the and

The

spectator

name

of

some

pictures.

of

The

sensuality.

experiences

fact that happiness is compassion as weU as

it,"

for

could

caUed

be

wonder.

rningled

love. Or

with

of are

passions

Burckhardt

the Jewish

called a genre

is tender. The touch

picture

devoid

hght

case

the master's last picture,

even

the

picture.40

groom's

intense but

says

Bride,

hand is subdued.

The mystery is enhanced by the shyness. Therefore one may feel

consider

the head

of

Christ (Metropolitan

inexplicably, Jesus is suffused with care. What of the visitor to the museum? Does he feel compassion for Jesus' compassion for humanity? Perhaps both, Jesus, or does he share the former being the key to the latter.

Museum

There

Art, New York). Not

of

portraits of old and elderly people. There are One is labeled Portrait of an Elderly Man and The other is caUed Old Man in Red and shows over The hands are heavily veined. The brow is wrinkled.

are numerous

two in the Hermitage. shows

sorrow.

powering care. Older and sadder than the cares,

and

one

in

an old man

Elderly Man, he wears a skull cap. He for him. In London (National GaUery) there is armchair. He is also careworn and tired. His head

cares an

his hand. The hand caUs witness to care, as it does in the Prodigal Son and the Jewish Bride. The man in the armchair seems to "probably" be more weU-to-do than the figure in the portrait marked Rembrandt's brother in The Hague (Mauritshaus). There is a simUar rests upon

careworn

face,

the bright red

in London, and

but the drabness

is

there

the picture is

There

Anna

the cloak contrasts strangely with

an

old man

in

Also

red.

Eighty-Three-Year-Old Woman. She is withered,

compassionate.

other

are

of

the man in the armchair or the

of

instances: the

pictures

of

Anna

and

Tobit, like

(London). There is

Blind Tobit in the National

Gallery Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). Again, Jeremiah's face is resting on one of his hands. In the Woman Taken in Adultery (National GaUery, London), the and the

Jeremiah

is

atmosphere

on

what

judgment where

one

appears of

one

of

Jesus takes

would

the place

expect

Paris). The Apostle Paul

40

"Rembrandt,"

p.

122.

The light is

pity.

to be

vacated

on

throne

the

penitent

woman

and

of

the high

priest.

The

below the throne. One finds compassion it, in the Good Samaritan (Louvre,

to find

(National Gallery,

Washington)

sits,

again

Interpretation

28

his head supported by his hand, his pen idle in his right hand, his brow full of perplexity. He is singularly unlike the phUosopher on with

the other side of the gallery.

Let

add

me

precaution.

one

art, in tragedy, in many forms The way we feel towards these

Care is

feel towards Durer's

we

stress

is

old men

his

of

portrait

many showing care, indicating The second point is that the

Is it true

are excluded.

the

artist eschews

propriety Rembrandt did

expression

of evil,

hate,

envy,

not

that

his primary

Burckhardt know

That he had the wrong kind

subjects?

certain

discord,

with such

is it

invent it.

Rembrandt paintings,

was perhaps

things

in

enough

not

different from the way The point I want to

of

that care

Rubens handled

great

not

mother.

concern.

for

Rembrandt did

is twofold. First, there are, in the totality

a great

common

passion

a

of expression.

so on

enough

anatomy But if a

of models?

likely

not

that

notes

and

that

he

was

saying, "This is not my way"? Something I think Burckhardt misses is the possibihty that Rembrandt did certain things deliberately, and for Rubens'

If Rembrandt knew

phUosophical reasons.

Rape of the Daughters not choose to imitate

of Leucippus or the Rape of Hippodameia, he did them. If rape is in the Italian classical tradition,

right to

much

But that but he

was

belong

But

commandments.

by

his

expected

exempter

et meme

avait assez

dont la

Something

whom

son

Dutchman has

was

a

as

rash

as

Fleming.

a

young

man,

taken in adultery broke one of the

Rembrandt has

blindness

time,

all

that the sin was

as

or

he

by

compassion are people

hke

circumstance,

must

have known he

poverty.

did,

he

profound

peut-etre

connaissance

nature nous

something

prodigal

woman

a

tradition

human sympathy to touch the hearts He may have known that Descartes wrote "qu'on d'une infinite de maladies tant du corps que de

aussi

de

Did Rembrandt did?

for

painted

centuries.

on

for

old age,

for

l'esprit,

The

classical

that no one cast the stone shows

pourrait

of men

The

way.

of people nature

If Rembrandt

have

the Italian

enough.41

The kind troubled

se

his

not

was not a rapist.

widespread

must

to

de Paffaiblissement de la vieillesse, si causes et de tous les remedes

de leurs

pourvus."42

a

see an end

to the suffering he

depicted,

as

took place between the High Renaissance and

of a philosophical

nature, but

we must see more

Descartes

Rembrandt, clearly

what

dealing

with

that was.

We

must next

address the question

Rembrandt drew

wonder or curiosity. penumbral.

Bride is should wonder

an

He

further

drew

also

object

of

make

that is the

a

and

painted

"Discours de la

and

the

painted

are

the mysterious, the

commonplace.

The Jewish

wonder, the Slaughtered Ox of curiosity. One distinction between two kinds of wonder, the

end of

art and

the

John 8:3-12. 42

of whether we

m6thode,"

pt.

6,

p.

169.

wonder

that

is the

beginning

of

Rembrandt phUosophy; the

Metaphysics; he

refers

to

Tempest,

the

wonder of

Human Condition

and the

Aristotle's Poetics, Horatio sees

the wonder that

"woe or incipient

wonder"

the

and

or phUosophical

and

the

29 Aristotle's Hamlet when

wonder of

at the end of

that

wonder

wonder.

the

permeates

It is the

phUosophical

Rembrandt was concerned. the room from the Apostle Paul, we see the portrait labeled The Philosopher. He may not be a philosopher at all, but he seems to be wondering. The lips are slightly parted; the gaze is intent. wonder with which

If

we walk across

He wears a blue chain, but the colors are far from garish or prodigal. His identity is apparently obscure. If this portrait was painted in 1650, Spinoza was eighteen, and Descartes was dying in Stockholm. One may

however,

wonder, to

at

obvious

perplexities

without

that

wonder

leading

phUosophy.43

Burckhardt writes, "Sometimes he [Rembrandt] past period to great

dress:

matter of

Turks, in

their

There is do

Jews,

not

the corpse

ask

for

and

uses

throw

colorful,

costumes

more

light

or rags.

of

a

on

the

There

are

beggars, draughtsmen

cripples,

with

and perhaps

for the

care

for the lesson

and

rich

Anatomy Lesson

the

did

not care

men,

etchings

absorbed

It will suffice Burckhardt's great authority for "perhaps To Rembrandt's philosophical concern we must return.

also

painter

The

extremely

finaUy thinkers being to accept

work,

phUosophers."

the

either

strange old

for the time

advantage.

either.

intense

of Professor Tulp. It is said that

Among

picture.

Yet

at

the

least three look

students, at

the

some

professor

Would any contemporary professor (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). Eyes

curiosity.

There is the Syndics

more?

philosophers."44

are aglow with interest and concern. There is Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer (Metropolitan, New York). We have seen touch used to show compassion or care. Here we see contemplation through the fingers. Julius S. Held writes of Aristotle's hands, "One rests on Homer's

head, at

the

whUe

Homer

other

nor at

countenance and objects."45

Aristotle

Held

far-away seems

that

wrote

were melancholic.

It is

cited

by

touches the chain.

.

the chain. Yet we cannot glance are

to be

aU

This

Cicero.46

right

.

.

The

philosopher

looks

neither

help

seeing that this melancholic in some way linked to both these

that the countenance is melancholic.

truly outstanding remark was

Rembrandt

men,

widely could

including

philosophers,

in the Renaissance. have known it and applied current

it to Aristotle himself. The notion of Aristotle as melancholy was widespread. One possible suggestion is that Aristotle was melancholy in contemplating the Poetics because he knew that he could not complete it,

43

Aristotle Metaphysics 982B.

44

"Rembrandt,"

45

Julius S.

46

p.

123.

Held, Rembrandfs Aristotle (Princeton, N.J., 1969), p. 39. Aristotle Problemata 30.1; Cicero Tusc. 1.33, 80: "Aristoteles quidem

omnes

ingeniosos

esse."

melancholices

ait,

Interpretation

30 he

that

It is

discuss comedy,

could not

but

possible

Homer is

highly

Plato had done in the Symposium.

as

speculative.

like the Homer in the

much

Mauritshaus. He is apparently blind, but, in the hands show Homer's wonder; the bust,

but

is in

wonder

the right

hand

companion

of

Aristotle,

of

in

piece

the

in The Hague, course, has no hands, weU as in the eyes.

the portrait

as

The mingling of care and contemplation is visible in A Franciscan Monk in the National Gallery (London). In one of several pictures of the Holy FamUy, this one in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, there is dozing. apparently no manger. The furnishings are Dutch. Joseph is suppose to be The baby is sleeping. Mary is reading a book, which I

Testament, lighted by

the Old

to have no on

source.

One

the

phUosophers shah

or

picture

savants

again

hght which, as face, but

suggested.

bears

some

show

which

turn to those later. Wonder

so

the Virgin's

cannot see

her book. Wonder is

cavernous,

the strange

is

Because

relation

to

light in

a

the

the

often, seems

the

hght

setting is pictures

cavernous

shines almost

treating

setting.

We

seen, but the setting implies

hardly

wonder. clear that any great work of art induces wonder, the wonder is self-sufficient, the wonder in the Poetics, the wonder in Horatio's "woe or It is perhaps rarer for incipient wonder, the wonder of the Metaphysics, to be one of the leading sympathetic passions in

It is

that

wonder."

an artist's corpus

Uriah,

imaginative

loneliness

Saul (Saul

of

might suggest a

I

and

so

with

dominates the Rembrandt the

cruelty

of

David

and

(London, National GaUery), the David, Mauritshuis), or anything else that

likeness to Rubens

as

Rubens

in

appears

the passage

from Burckhardt.

quoted

We

Yet it

presentation.

to eliminate any comparison the terror of Belshazzar's Feast as

must

turn to sight and touch.

makes use of sight and

It is

obvious

that every

painter

touch in order to paint a painting. We are not

here attributing a Zeitgeist to the seventeenth century, as is sometimes "tactile." done in the aUeged diversion from the We are talking about

touch,

or

the

tactile,

as

Rembrandt

understood

In Belshazzar's Feast, Daniel is reproduced and so

understanding.

book

the

it,

as

an

instrument

of

hand from the

mysterious

are the Hebrew characters. The is a way of enhancing and understanding Belshazzar's terror. In Lucrezia (National Gallery, Washington) the right hand, holding the dagger, appears to be resolute, though the eyes are sad. Old men of

writing

on the wall

show tiredness, resting their faces on their hands, as in Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem or the Old Man in an Armchair, mentioned

above.

Jewish Bride

The hght

gives

the

and

viewer

a

tender sense

of

touch

of

the

tenderness,

groom

and

the

in

the

shyness

only in the face but also in the touch of the bride The father lays his hands upon the Prodigal Son. Compassion is in the touch as in the sight. If hands are instruments of compassion, hands are also instruments which

shows not

arouses compassion.

Rembrandt of wonder or curiosity.

hands

are

equaUy

his

hands,

on

the bust

and the

If touch is

31

Human Condition in the

conspicuous

Anatomy Lesson,

in Homer, where the blind poet extends with them. And Aristotle lays his right hand

conspicuous

as though

he

saw

one sage contemplating another sage with his clearly than with his eyes. make this a little clearer, let me refer to the classical belief that was the noblest of the senses and to the essay of Hans Jonas on

hands To sight

"The

Homer,

of

more

of Sight,"47 where

Nobihty

for the

in

move

classical

also notes the

the

nobUity of probably only in the human hand, in the fact that in his hand, man

and there

is

more

than

tactile organ

a

possesses

take over some of the distinctive achievements of his mental

to the use that is made of its and

it is the

hands,

information,

mental use which

of the achievements of sight. not

the

reasons

eye.

coincidence which

because they

are

.

.

.

Blind

devoid

that transcends

brings touch

of

within

'see'

men can

by

can

There is

to the highest performance of the tactile sense, or

side

sentience,

of

some

author gives

antiquity from sight to phUosophy. Yet Jonas touch: "An organ for real shape-feeling exists

a

rather

aU

mere

the dimension

means of their

their eyes, but because

they

are

'vision'

and only happen to be beings endowed with the general faculty of deprived of the primary organ of Such a statement helps us to understand Rembrandt's portrait of sight."48

Homer. To Aristotle, however, touch senses

and

the necessary count for very the blind mole has touch. Necessity is touch a member of the opposite sex. We

much.49

nor

may

not

the most

was

the most necessary. But to Aristotle

sexual

need

intercourse,

the

Pervasiveness is

of

the

pervasive

clear.

Even

We touch food; we food and, whUe individuals clear.

also need

the

pervasive

neither

human

race

does.

But

the

unnecessary things, hke thought, are, to the classics, higher. I do not know that the first to repudiate this teaching was MachiaveUi, but I do know that MachiaveUi did repudiate it. "Men in general [universali],"

says MachiaveUi, "judge more by the eyes than by the hands, because each judges by seeing, few by feeling. AU see what you As Leo Strauss says, "in order appear to be; few feel what you to the deceptive things and must be close one be not to deceived, are."60

immune to false

imaginations."51

There is

also

a

flight from

reason.

included among the deceptive things, and cannot Obviously be touched. So too is the Platonic eidos. I cannot say how far Rembrandt followed MachiaveUi or whether he had even heard of this passage. He was not particularly pohtical in the narrower sense of the term, though he cared for the independence of visions are

4T

In The Phenomenon of Life (New York, 1966),

48

Ibid.,

49

De

so

The Prince,

bi

Thoughts

pp.

anima

pp.

135-56.

141-42.

422B-28ff. ch.

on

18 (near the

Machiavelli

end).

(Glencoe, DI., 1958),

p.

203.

Interpretation

32 HoUand.62

He

Certainly

MachiaveUi

hands. Let human

was

as a source

his

of

effect

eyes

touch, in

he

some ways

is

was stUl a modern man.

the

admittedly tender and admittedly beyond what the classics would have done.

diurnahty and

its

of

the

source

supernal

is usuaUy

and etchings where

mystery is or

the

remain aU

he

it

spirit

mysterious.

stUl

we

must

hght,

a strange

There

but

are a

the

of

cavernous

"Rembrandt,"

cap one

elevates

the

eros

far

understand

the

sexual

knows, drawings,

as everyone

of

painter

hght

of

aU

structure

of

the room

Burckhardt, "wiU probably

says

time, because

Burckhardt adds, "We can through the artist how beautiful

see

the

that is reaUy

hght, but

transfused

and

we

with

is."54

Of course, Rembrandt had forerunners. One of the hght effects of Titian are quite different from Radiances of divine hght may appear in diagonal the

or a

Certainly

few paintings,

be."

to

understand

only

universality,

hght. It is

because

factor.

greatest

wanted

the

did.

the light comes through the window, but here the

retained

other

some

another

seek

can

hat

Jewish Bride. Through touch it restrained

we

of

others

Whether Rembrandt foUowed MachiaveUi regarding

greatest pictures

Before

few

as

make them shine under the shadow of a

fire."53

with strange

Rembrandt's understanding

on

"Rembrandt knew the

eye:

sight and

Burckhardt

me quote

He knew how to

of

concerned with how men should live. have for him the universal validity it has for of understanding. I have mentioned the use of

passionately

touch does not

three

ceiling

pieces

those of

Titian, but Rembrandt.

form, for instance in Santa Maria deUa Salute in Venice.

the

at

them was

out that "from an iconographical point of view the called a trilogy of homicide: homicide condemned by God be may homicide prevented (Cain), by God (Abraham), and homicide approved

Panofsky

points

series

by

God (David

but

the

hght is

and not

Goliath)."35

usuaUy, in

Titian certainly influenced Rembrandt, presented in such diagonals.

Rembrandt,

This is not a study of influences, but a word must be said about Caravaggio. There is nothing new in this; it is widely accepted in the literature. It is not so much the hght, however, as the substitution of the human for the transcendent. La Vocazione di San Matteo (The

Calling

of St.

Matthew) is

[key

paintings]

"the

choice

52

He did

of

of

the

the extracts of life

paint

at

"one

by Guttoso history of

caUed

entire

least two

art."66

a

significant

the dipintichiave

not casual

choice

political

of

Here, Guttoso

paintings,

The

Julius Civilis (in Stockholm), a tribute to liberty, derived from Concord of the State (in Rotterdam). 53

"Rembrandt,"

p.

118.

64

Ibid.,

65

Problems in Titian,

56

Renato Guttoso, Caravaggio (Milan, 1971),

p.

113. pp.

33-34. p.

7.

carries

adds,

itself

Conspiracy of Tacitus, and The

Rembrandt

and the

the constructive and significant office

out through

is the

33

Human Condition light."

the

of

I doubt

light in Rembrandt. The object of the strange light is varied. In the Woman Taken in Adultery, the hght shines on the woman clad in white and on an empty throne (perhaps the high priest's), for which I can find no biblical authorization. The hght is not on Jesus. In the Prodigal Son, the hght that this

the tattered clothing of the

shines

on

hands

and

hght

usual use of

face

beneath

streams

returned

and

(Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam),

the light is

bodice

high

the

of

maid

floor. In

the

the

another

hght is

Mary is reading. The help us to understand to

and

on

the

on the

picture

St. Peter's

on

priest.67

In

Christ the

of

one

chUd

robe and on the of

picture

but

also

the

Holy

on one part

Holy Family (Rijksmuseum,

the sleeping Christ child but also on Joseph's on large sections of the wall behind Joseph, and on the book

Amsterdam), turban,

the

of

the hght is

Family (Louvre), of

prodigal

father. In Jeremiah Lamenting the behind the prophet. In St. Peter's Denial

of the compassionate

on

light blends

the shadow,

with

and

each particular picture and what

the light may

the

artist chose

emphasize.

Not

shading is umbral;

aU

mysterious

character

darkness is

profound

of

an

much

not quite

it is penumbral, enhancing the as Burckhardt says, "the most

of

Or,

object.

black."68

What is important here is that

secular objects are sometimes penumbral and mysterious and sometimes

lighted, in

one

suggesting picture,

hands best

Often the

same

objects

are

lighted

Often, in portraits, the face and the hght. Not, however, in Homer (The Hague) or in Armchair (London), where the hght seems to come

show

Old Man in

enlightenment.

in

shaded

an

another.

The play of light and shadow is lifelike enough. Rembrandt may have had no other design than to make use of the light to iUuminate the simply human. Rembrandt never heard of the Enlightenment, and from

when

the robe.

he died (1669) the siecle des lumieres had and even Bacon may be considered

not yet

Descartes

Enlightenment, if hght

with

light, fruit,

the

a

does

one

not

insist

on

as

arrived.

Yet

to

the

belonging

the French identification of

Bacon talked continuously about light: the light in contradistinction to experiments

century.

experiments with

the merchants of

light,

and

the lamps of the New Atlantis.

dry with

Bacon,

d'Alembert said, "born in the depths of the most profound night, Rembrandt need not have read believed that philosophy was not as

yet."59

Bacon. He

need not

have

read

Descartes,

though

he

made

Descartes'

a

portrait

Meditations Scientific reasoning is known in The metaphorical use of light is much older. as the "hght of does not refer to human progress. But "let your light so shine before phUosopher uses light figuratively, but the painter may the Obviously of

that

philosopher.

nature."

men"

67

Mark 4:66.

68

"Rembrandt,"

69

"Discours

p.

113.

preliminaire

de

l'Encyclopedie."

Interpretation

34

it both

use

and

hteraUy. There is

Did

a problem.

what was

in painting from Titian to Rembrandt have a in phUosophy from MachiaveUi to Descartes? relation

happening what was

figuratively

happening to me likely

with

difference between the High Renaissance coincidence and Rembrandt can be traced to his agreement or at least to difficult with Bacon and Descartes, but it is extremely say exactly in philosopher. a not was Rembrandt that what way that is so. It is true

It

He

that the

seems

was

to be

not compeUed

consistent.

Yet

Panofsky

of

speak

can

a

like Leonardo Rembrandt. Let

several

peintre

savant, naming He should, it seems to me, have named us see first what Rembrandt did not accept. Much of the High Renaissance was skeptical. It can be seen in Raphael's paintings, in Leonardo's writings. But the classical-pagan element in the Christian tradition, the peintre and

a

or

philosophe

Durer.60

at aU. Order cosmos, Raphael certainly does not seem to have rejected liness is conspicuously present in the High Renaissance. Orderliness is united with skepticism. It is probably different with Rembrandt.

does not demand the kind of belief in a weU-ordered universe that Raphael's does. Yet there is something in thought that Rembrandt did contribute. Long before Rembrandt, Hugh Latimer had said, it was chiefly through His

work

yeomen's sons that the and

Gospel

Caravaggio. It is

said that

With Caravaggio

as with

and

kept

was

the humble found its way into

of

hagiology

Perhaps the

The

That is

was

influenced

by

St.

Philip of the

Neri. Bible

transcendent which is predominant

rather

than

the

ends

here,

except

for the

use

of

hght, for in

a

Samaritan,

was also a man

the woman taken

thoroughly

seriously.

the Christian order? a

lowly

the link with

side

in adultery

command

compassion, and, even if Rembrandt was a modern man, the stream of Baconian-Cartesian thought had somehow the Bible

to the

appeal

perhaps

strong element of violence, even brutality. There this in Rembrandt. The compassion which the prodigal son,

of

the Good

Caravaggio

alive.

Rembrandt it is the human

resemblance

Caravaggio there is

is httle

art.

wisdom

which

Can

conversant with the

one accept

Certainly accepts

there

Bible

Christian

a

kind

of

of wisdom

compassion,

impressed, he

and a man who took

the Christian way

is

is Christian

a man whom

life

and reject

in Rembrandt,

coupled

with

the

possibihty that the need for that compassion may some day be obviated. What was said at the beginning of the discussion of the hght is that

Rembrandt deal

of

for

fun

made the of

supernal

hght diurnal. Burckhardt

Rembrandt for choosing models a hard time getting models, as they

as

makes

a great

experiments

in hght

wanted to be something instrument for iUumination.61 Perhaps this is so. But it helps to indicate that hght, both literaUy and metaphoricaUy, is of supreme importance to Rembrandt. The hght appears to be heavenly or divine

and

besides

having an

so

Problems in

61

"Rembrandt,"

Titian,

p.

passim.

88.

Rembrandt hght. It has the

the

and

Human Condition

35

quality of heavenly light. Its source is not its objects are not only varied but apparently indis usuaUy shown, criminate. It can shine from the body of a slaughtered ox. It seems to have divine origins, but it can be brought into the everyday. Essentially, its universality is a universality of this world. When I first embarked upon the journey that took me outside my own field of political philosophy to the relations between the history mysterious

and

of pohtical phUosophy and of art, I believed that I could establish Rembrandt's affinity with Descartes. I realize that that was an over simplification. Richard Kennington writes, "In some part of the soul arises spontaneously the desire to esteem oneself highly."62 Yet why should one esteem oneself highly? Kennington quotes Cartesian passages about the "mastery and and the "enjoyment of ownership of the fruits of earth in this life without The highest passion or virtue in Descartes, generosite, is a form of self-love, but it is directed towards what Bacon caUs the "relief of man's Despite the great differences, did Rembrandt here have something in nature"

pain."63

estate."

with Descartes? Let us look again at the play of light and The spirituahty of hght the Dutch painter found in Titian. So, I suppose, did Vermeer. The relation of light to realism he found in Caravaggio. And this would be true if Rembrandt had never had Descartes sit for him. However, the works of Rembrandt show strong

common shadow.

affinity with hght, in the metaphorical as weU as the hteral sense. The mingling of hght and shadow in the Jeremiah noted above is different from the sharp contrasts in the cavernous pictures. The Holy Family in Amsterdam is a cavernous picture. The light comes through the window, us

reminding

of

the

pictures

of

phUosophers.64

Why did

Rembrandt

those dark

backgrounds, light coming through the windows, and figures apparently enchanced by the light chiefly as representatives of

paint

phUosophy?

blackness,

Dark backgrounds

sunhght,

and

are not uncommon.

cavernous

appearance

It is the mingling of is special. It is

which

belongs to phUosophers, particularly old philosophers. Age But one does not pity the old philosopher contemplating the truth. As I mentioned, pictures sometimes go by this

which

may be

an object of compassion.

different titles. The

cavernous picture of

Louvre is labeled Le Philosophe. He

gives

the

same

numerous other

title to

iUustrations

a

simUar

of

the

Rosenberg

the

savant or philosophe calls

in the

it Scholar in His Study.

London.66 There are painting in for truth and its relation to

search

hght. One is an etching, sometimes caUed Faust. This picture is not cavernous, but it has a dark background, a scholar rising to look at a

62

"The Teaching 26 (1972): 117. 63 64 65

of

Nature in

Ibid., p. 87. Lugt, Inventaire, 1 128. Rembrandt, pp. 266-67.

Descartes'

Soul

Doctrine,"

Review of Metaphysics

Interpretation

36

disc,

hght streaming through the window. That in these pictures hght is less mysterious than in others, seems to indicate a

and

the source of

lumiere

naturelle.

In putting forth the

I am about to express, I must I can, including one picture that I have not seen. the London and Paris paintings are massive

radical view which

gather such evidence as

The

of

characteristics

darkness

by

relieved

phUosopher,

difficulty, hke

some

with

in Stockholm

picture

appearance, and the

cavernous

in the dark

light shining from the

the

presence of articles

the

A Scholar in

caUed

window on the savant or

to a print, this picture is not cavernous, but it

Room.66

Lofty

a

in

There is

Amsterdam,

Here too there this

to

is

are

that

for

there

seen

St. Jerome in

with

a

variations

a

staircase, darkness.

darkness

is

relation

a

darkness

According

Dark

other

Chamber.67

GeneraUy

foreground

between

in

in the Rembrandtshuis

a

or

speaking, corner

It is

pictures of phUosophers or scholars.

of

confrontation

pecuhar

spiral

sunlight,

reserved

suppose

etching

I have

which

which purports to show

of quasi-total

contrast

sunlight

also an

a

shares the other characteris

tics of the Paris and London paintings. There are some pictures.

identifiable There is

staircase.

spiral

and

contemplation

of

proper

this

hght.68

and

in Plato's Republic, the philosopher then is forced back into the cave light and goes from the cave to the the hght with him. The cave and he cannot take rule. He does not to

is

In the famous

myth of the cave

the world,

at

for

or,

men

most

wiU

least,

the

pohtical world.

and

see

only shadows, In the Enlightenment, however, light is brought back into the cave of the dispeUed.

one of

the

pohtical

The darkness

cannot

be enlightened, wiU never be

Allan Bloom says, the This distinction is

as

world.69

important distinctions between

most

Whether Rembrandt knew

thought.

know. Yet

not

It

the darkness

pre-modern and modern

of

this

distinction, I do

his work, I beheve, could be created a new myth. man's world remains, but one may suppose that, as

out of of

iUuminate

progress

continues, the

but

the fruits of his work, and that the sorrow and care,

also

seen

of

by Rembrandt,

sunhght would

would

day

some

be

not

only

dispelled,

the

like

phUosopher

so

the

clearly darkness

the cavernous chamber.

There is

a certain

relation with

Descartes,

though it would be hard

To Descartes, the leading passion, and also the highest virtue, is generosite. As Kennington points out, generosite is a kind of Descartes himself points out the simUarity of generosity to the Aristotelean virtue of magnanimity, adding that it to

estabhsh

an

affinity.

self-esteem.70

(generosite) is "comme la 66 67

clef

de toutes les

autres vertus et une remede

A. Bredius, The Paintings of Rembrandt (New York, 1942), Hind, op. cit., 201. See also 202.

68

See

69

Allan Bloom, trans., Republic (New York, 1968),

70

also

Bredius, Rembrandt,

"Descartes,"

p.

117.

nos.

423-24. p.

103.

no.

430.

Rembrandt generate contre

is

have to know

would

replace

hardly

Descartes'

study,

Plato's

whether

myth of

know. AU

man

of

or

Rembrandt's

generosite!

the myth

which

say is that Rembrandt

the tradition of Bacon and Descartes which is now

caU

Enlightenment

contemplation

became

fi

"Traite des

passions

72

Ibid.,

art.

156,

p.

To

that

with

him

as

generous man savant

answer

Rembrandt

the cave presents a kind of

we can

The

passions."71

Is Rembrandt,

things.72

37

Human Condition

tous les dereglements des

capable of great

cavernous

and the

We

de

l'ame,"

art.

161, (Euvres

to

can

something from

associated with what we with

them, the

goal

practical.

770.

one

created

self-esteem.

accepted

in the

that,

completes, pp. 773-74.

of

NIETZSCHE AS COSMOLOGIST: THE IDEA OF THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE AS A COSMOLOGICAL DOCTRINE AND SOME ASPECTS OF ITS RELATION TO THE DOCTRINE OF THE WILL TO POWER

Jerry H. Combee In

the

last

speech of part

2

teUs his friends that there is

Zarathustra,1

Thus Spoke

of stUl

he

more

something

Zarathustra them.

could teU

been revealed; perhaps Evidently Zarathustra's final teaching has itself. In Ecce it is that teaching is incomplete by Homo, Nietzsche reports III" and he also he was Zarathustra "found that when he is work conception of this fundamental "the says that not

"finished,"

(Zarathustra)"

"the idea

recurrence."2

of the eternal

Spoke Zarathustra

the

a much grander scale of

the

of

speech

of part

though

Zarathustra

and certain

the

that

in

his teaching

Relying

works,5

other

finding

Homo;3

on

of

Thus

re-creation on of

the idea

in

the

second

on

the

eternal

this

in

passage

the essence of the

idea

may be distilled into the following proposition: have occurred and wiU recur in the same

occur

infinite

succession an

1

can

friends.4

his

others

eternal recurrence

things

aU

to

not

dramatic

Nietzsche's

reveals

3

speech of part

a

described in Ecce

3, Zarathustra first

recurrence, of

to be

occasion of

as

recurrence

eternal

The first

contains what appears

number of

times.6

Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Walter Kaufmann, The York, 1954); hereafter cited as Zarathustra. 2 Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York, 1966), 295 ("Thus Spoke Zarathustra, A Book for All and 1); hereafter cited Friedrich

Portable Nietzsche (New

None,"

p.

Ecce Homo. It has been

as

argued

Nietzsche;

see, e.g., Karl

Revival

the Doctrine of Eternal

of

and refuted

1972), 3

in Joan

that this doctrine was really

Lowith, Meaning

Stambaugh,

in

not

new

with

History (Chicago, 1949), "Nietzsche's

Recurrence."

Such

arguments are well considered

Nietzsche's Thought of Eternal Return

(Baltimore,

passim.

Nietzsche found the idea

he

while on a walk when

stopped

before

a powerful

pyramidal rock.

4

He

some

reveals

sailors

it to

were

a

group

riddle in

of

sailors,

depicted

earlier

he

shooters

calls of

bold

searchers and researchers;

rabbits.

What he

reveals

is

a

dwarf, who is the spirit of gravity, about the eternal recurrence. See Zarathustra, pp. 241-42, 267-70 (pt. 2, aph. 18; pt. 3, aph. 2). 5 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York, 1967), p. 549; hereafter cited as Will to Power. Also see Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, The Portable Nietzsche, aph. 2.

vision and

6

which

he tells

whom

as a

As Arthur C. Danto has emphasized, the doctrine is

things

recur, but

Philosopher (New

rather

that the

York, 1965),

p.

exact

204.

same

things

recur.

that very similar See his Nietzsche as

not

Nietzsche

Cosmologist

as

39

I Nietzsche had

an intention, which he never fulfilled, to write a book The Eternal Recurrence. In a note of this title, made in connection his plan to write a book entitled The Will to Power, Nietzsche

entitled with

the

presents

foUowing

outline:

The Eternal Recurrence. A 1.

Presentation

2.

Proof

3.

Probable

4.

of the

consequences of

enduring

of

it;

b) Means

of

disposing

of

it.

Period

in history

of greatest

Foundation

of an

universally human

Counterpart

This

its

Prophecy

theoretical presuppositions and consequences.

its being believed (it

of

place

and

the doctrine.

of

a) Means

Its

makes

everything break

open).

as a mid-point.

danger. oligarchy

peoples

above

and

their interests:

to a

education

politics.

of Jesuitism.7

not unenigmatic outline

eternal recurrence as

doctrine

is

does

just

not

thing

make one

a moral

doctrine,

clear:

but

The idea

of the

a cosmological one

weU.8

As

doctrine, hope, for

the

a moral or

project,

recurrence

"moral,"

I

is bound up with Nietzsche's By calling the idea of eternal that Nietzsche presents the eternal wUl for aU things that can happen

eternal recurrence

Superman.

the

mean

fust

of aU

something to be to have happened and to happen again an infinite wUled:9

recurrence as

Phrased

imperatively,

the

one's affirmation of what

doctrine is. One

number

to a test

amounts who wiUs

eternal

of

the

of

times.

degree

recurrence

has

of not

immanent being via otherworldly visions. By caUing "moral," I mean, second of all, that idea of eternal recurrence Nietzsche presents the eternal recurrence as something to be believed. As a behef, it bestows cosmic significance upon the particular of the present. In order to act in a manner consistent with belief in eternal sought to escape

the

recurrence, it

be imperative to

would

7

Will to

8

This distinction,

Power,

pp.

so

"act (or

so

be)

that you would

544-55.

although

not

in these

exact

terms, is

common

in secondary

Philosopher, p. 203, also Nietzsche: Philosopher, Walter with pp. pp. 203-9 209-13; Kaufmann, contrasting Psychologist, Antichrist (Princeton, N.J., 1950), contrasting pp. 279-87 to pp. 287-88; and Lowith, Meaning in History, p. 222. treatments

9

that

The

of

adjective

"willing

Nietzsche, (pt. 1,

the doctrine.

"moral"

Danto,

Nietzsche

as

is hence justified if only because Nietzsche himself says See Friedrich be included "within the sphere of

should

Beyond Good

aph.

e.g.,

morals."

such"

as

See,

and

19); hereafter

Evil,

cited as

trans. Walter Kaufmann (New

Beyond Good

and

Evil.

York, 1966),

p.

27

Interpretation

40 be willing to act exactly the an infinite number of times

way (or be exactly

same

the

thing)

same

over."10

This differs from wiUing

recurrence, for it involves acting

eternal

fact beyond

recognition of eternal recurrence as a

the idea

he to any

of eternal recurrence gives the

final

with

As behef,

wiU.11

one's

the world

notion of

any kind; consequently, the for whatever the universe is to have must be meaning responsibility borne by man, whose every act has occurred and wiU occur again an

having

a

infinite

or

purpose, meaning,

state of

As behef, then, the

number of times.

idea

aspect of the

moral

doctrine.

verges on the notion of the eternal recurrence as a cosmological

By caUing the idea of the eternal recurrence a cosmological doctrine, I mean, first of aU, that the idea is a theoretical idea; it is one which has theoretical presuppositions and consequences, an idea for which one least try to

can at

be

can

give

spoken of as

is

proofs12

much

more

has traditionally been

i

Danto, Nietzsche

objects

the

he

passage

to Kant's

some sense

as

an account of ah things

meant:

as

an

one,

Philosopher, p. 212. Kaufmann (Nietzsche, pp. 283-84) doctrine, but Danto appears to reflect accurately

from

quotes

Nietzschean fragment. Kaufmann

a

urging the misleading

seems

correct,

Nietzsche's doctrine

character of a comparison of

imperative, whatever the superficial formal resemblance may be. (Meaning in History, p. 222) argues that wherever Nietzsche "tries to

categorical

Lowith

develop his doctrine

rationally, it

breaks

asunder

mathematics, and in

to be demonstrated the above

then there is willing of

also

a

for it happening,

the doctrine

contradiction within

a contradiction.

nor

the

Willing it

need

it

as a subjective

If there is

by

in

a

physics

hypothesis,

a contradiction and

if

doctrine is correct, moral, i.e., between the

of eternal recurrence as a moral

eternal recurrence and

necessarily is

pieces:

to be demonstrated

presentation of

consequences."

ethical

the ideal

analysis of

different

a quite

by its

in two irreconcilable

fact,

presentation of eternal recurrence as an objective and

in

to this understanding of the

however, in n

which

therefore,

reahty.13

This

clear

idea,

an

aUegedly true description of objective "cosmology" from the outline. But by something an

belief in it. It is

as

not

clear,

however,

the

entail

that there

the necessity

eternal recurrence need not entail "willing"

opposite;

could

mean

simply

"wishing."

12

Danto

(Nietzsche

argues

receive evidential

support, it

as

Philosopher,

must

the doctrine

Eternal

which

then

proof

for the doctrine is deductive.

inductively. Others

established of

entail

noncontradiction; see, e.g., 13

The

Nietzsche, miss

287-88.

that Nietzsche

his day. It immanent

would

critique

example, was conception.

(3)

of

as used

the doctrine in pp.

point

"Theoretical"

be of

is

perhaps

the existing

science

to of

the

of

p.

are

45 below.

Philosopher,

p.

preferable

if it

view

premises

through avoiding the law

synonymous with

simply appealing to the

much more accurate

a rejection of

i.e.,

the summary on

as

of premises

It is true that Nietzsche's some

only

priori,

here is

Danto, Nietzsche

was not

evidential support

Recurrence."

However,

that if the doctrine "is to

204-5)

some

are established a

"theoretical"

adjective

analyses of

of

pp.

be through

"scientific"

203,

and

in the

Kaufmann,

enables one not

to

established science of physics

in

in this

an

his

effort

physics; involved in his

the Second Law of Thermodynamics

and

regard

as

doctrine, for

the mechanistic

Nietzsche intrinsic

account of the

41

As

order which makes the world a whole.

fits the idea

description, too,

Cosmologist

the doctrine is explored, it

cosmological aspect of

this

as

the eternal

of

wiU

become

the

that

clear

recurrence.14

n In the first again16

speech

to

speaks

of

Aphorism 212 The

with the concept of greatness.

in their

Thus Spoke

of

Zarathustra,

an

hour

asserting that Zarathustra is now going

Zarathustra,

"greatness."

his way to

3

part

Beyond Good

of

and

greatness of philosophers

Evil deals

has

consisted

horizons for man; in this task, they have taken their bearings by the concept of greatness on the horizon of their times, defining the new in opposition to the old. Nietzsche gives a brief statement of the new idea of greatness as a philosopher of the future would define it; it is a statement which takes its bearings in part by opposing the herd creation of new

of modern

morahty the He

be

shall

this

evil, the

good and

be

shall

almost a recapitulation of

greatness:16

be loneliest, the most concealed, the most deviant, the master of his virtues, he that is overrich in will.

greatest who can

human beyond

Precisely

on

it is

and

egalitarianism,

the hour

speech of

called greatness:

being

capable of

being

as manifold as

whole,

as ample as full.17

This emphasis on manifoldness, wholeness, ampleness, and fullness is in opposition to the specialization or compartmentalization which Nietzsche believed

it has been the decline

directly

1.

modern physics.

according to

in

14

In part, this becomes

explicates

the

relate the

An hour

16

To

see

the

it is necessary to

being

in

The

clear

by

of

seeing the

the will to

Ibid.,

and

Evil,

the

p.

seen as

It

having

relation

power

as

the

that

was

certainty

three

certainty

to be sought

by

the consequent

and

between the idea

of

the

an alternative ontological

Danto (Nietzsche

as

Philosopher,

strange

that he

ch.

8)

neglects

to it.

to Zarathustra in the last

read more of

Beyond Good

be

insisted

physics.

goal of

eternal recurrence

a sign of

This decline is

physics:19

physics

sought

aphorism as a recapitulation of

18

also

the

of

17

p.

can see an obvious

spectacularly successful part of in the sixteenth and seventeenth

to power doctrine as ontology; it is

also speaks

the

One

speculation.

relation might

mechanistic-materialistic.

will

idea

15

19

be

the idea

recurrence and

most

modern

of

mathematics

conception of

to

The

physics mathematical.

making

the

into

one view of modern

founders

The

attained

eternal

of

science which came

centuries aspects:

cosmological

of

to the rise

related

the new

times.18

characterizes modern

this trend in the modern theoretical sciences;

manifestation of

aphorism

speech of pt.

the speech of the

2.

hour

on

greatness,

than is quoted here.

139 (aph. 212).

137 (aph. 212). Natural Right

See Leo

Strauss,

Richard

Kennington, "Rene

(Chicago, 1963),

pp.

379-96.

and

History (Chicago, 1953), pp. 169-77. See in History of Political Philosophy

Descartes,"

Interpretation

42 of

making

teleological

previous

to require,

seemed

physics

the

of

conceptions

least,

at

the

It

world.

of

abandonment

felt

was

that

such

in large part accounted for the faUure of traditional phUosophy certain knowledge and to combine knowledge patterned after

conceptions

to attain

a teleological

mathematics with a

conception, with

material

as

universe

another

one

and

in

Now this

teleological

a

a

by

collision

inexorable laws

of

the

of

view

transferred

motion

aimless

of

place

substituted

was

describable in terms

statement.21

of mathematical

capable

is indeed

mechanistic conception

conception, but it tended to become unquestioned,

cosmological

a

atoms

In

conception.20

conception

mechanistic

hence

the

demand for certainty

the

status of a methodological axiom.

and

as

achieved

a mathematical approach

Mathematics, it was thought, owed its certainty to being a human i.e., we can know what we make. But this meant that

2.

construct:

mathematical

physics was

its certainty precisely to traditional sense,

of

fundamentally

the object (or reahty) could no longer be the

and

conclusion

also

eliminated

aU

foUowed from

mind

from the

nature.

The

which the

goal

substituted

goal of

made

conception

of nature

tested; in

notion

of

a

reality incompre mastery

of

experiments

in

was

goal, in turn, demanded

theoretical constructs could be

the

physics; this

any

mind and

for knowledge

achievement of this

owed

(or mind)

subject

mechanistic

hence

and

world

interaction between

correspondence or even

hensible. The

fact that the

the

and

construct

between the

correspondence

a

human

a

Consequently, knowledge, in

fact.

that

experimental situations

the senses could be used to determine whether one could indeed control nature

to achieve the results that had been hypothesized

bearings from "sensed"

of the

in

the

this

3.

A true cosmology

beings,

in

even

way, cosmology, a not

which

entirely must

be

the

by taking

whole

redefinition as

some

of the scientific

goal

one's

be

cannot

mastery

endeavor,

respectable one methodologicaUy.

be

after all are part of

mechanistic conception

Since

constructs.

whole, ceases to be a meaningful

least becomes

or at

theoretical

extended

capable

comprehending human

of

the whole in some sense. Could the to

man?

In hght

of certain attempts

in that direction, it seems safe to say that the answer is no, unless it be bought at the price of a monstrous distortion of the phenomena. made

But this

its

If then

20

for mastery, much less any depiction of modern science

this

it

should not seem strange

its

as

to try to

doings

own

anti-cosmological

view

not even

"knowledge."

sort of

Nietzsche

as

is accurate, in

some

way

See Strauss, Natural Right and History, pp. 171-72. In ancient times, of course, very similar conceptions had been developed

2i

the

meant that science could not explain

passion

Democritean-Epicurean

and productive of

conception

Right

and

with

schools.

vastly different

mathematics

History,

pp.

169-72.

as

What

made

consequences was

the

modern

conception

by

unique

the combination of a mechanistic

the pattern for knowledge.

See

Strauss,

Natural

Nietzsche the bad cosmological conscience to hear the hour

surprise us

43

Cosmologist

as

of

science,22

modern

nor

it

should

the first speech of part 3 of Thus Spoke

of

Zarathustra say to Zarathustra: One

must

learn to look away from

necessary to every

But the lover

in

order

knowledge

who

is

obtrusive with

his

things than their foregrounds? But you, O

of all

background

ground and

up

of

oneself

to

see

much:

this hardness

is

climber of mountains.

of all

things; hence,

until even your stars are under

how

eyes

Zarathustra,

could

he

see more

to

wanted

you must climb over yourself

see

the

upward,

you.23

Zarathustra soon reveals that such hard maxims as the above are his own, i.e., Nietzsche's. It is perhaps surprising to hear a say such things; but Nietzsche was a peculiar kind of psychologist and would have himself been guUty of his charge against modernity of if he had not been more than a psychologist. Nietzsche as psychologist explains aU psychic phenomena in terms of the psychologist24

specialization25

wUl

to power; he reduces aU psychic phenomena to the self, the

body,

and the

enables when

body

him to

to the

avoid

wUl

to

the crudities to which

to account for the human

trying

It is that last

power.

materialism

self

to the

reduction which succumbs

usually

"materialism"

things; i.e., his

is

"spiritual."

peculiarly a materialist

best us

at

aU.

In the final analysis, however, Nietzsche is not He regarded materialistic atomism as "one of the

maintaining that "Boscovich has taught fast' part of the earth that 'stood the

are,"

theories there

refuted

to abjure the behef in the last

belief in

'substances,'

'matter,'

in

in the

earth-residuum

and

particle-

atom."26

FoUowing Boscovich, Nietzsche consisting Boscovich in that he tries to as

wiU-force,

explanation ball"

of

as wiU

to the

causality.29

nothing but

Under

nothing but then he would be able to

spirit.31

and

22

See Beyond Good

23

Zarathustra,

24

See Ecce Homo,

25

Beyond Good

26

Ibid.,

27

See

28 29 so

Ibid.,

31

pp.

aphs.

p.

is

is If Nietzsche which

succeed where

and

Evil,

par.

aph.

1,

and

36

of

Beyond Good

Ibid.,

47-48 (aph. 36).

Ibid.,

pp.

29, 48 (aphs. 21, 36).

and

all

motion)

caUed "bUliard-

however, out

that it

this program,

mechanistic conception

inanimate (if these

2.

Evil.

48 (aph. 36); Will to Power, p. 550. See aph. 12 of Beyond Good and Evil. p.

reahty as beyond

goes

world would consist

carry

266-69 ("Why I Write Such Good Evil, p. 137 (aph. 212).

pp.

all

He

1).

19-20 (aph. 12). 12

the

to say,

could

pp.

and

has been

not

the

sentence

see

force (aU energy,

nonhuman, animate and

265 (pt. 3,

to

force.27

an alternative mode of causal

interpretation,

such an power,30

to

consists of

faUed. The human

which

mechanistic mode of what

wiU

try

of centers of

understand all

power,28

to

to

wants

but

not of material atoms

Books,"

5, 6).

had

words

Interpretation

44

have any meaning), could be explained in the same terms. What is important is that now science could explain its own doings, its drive for mastery of nature, in the same terms as those in which nature would be explained namely, wiU to power for Nietzsche had already stUl

most

attempted

to

that the doctrine of the

show

comprehend ah science or

Nietzsche capable of

accepted

explaining

ever, that the

that

provisionaUy or

wiU

to power can

explain or

phUosophy.32

interpreting

wiU-to-power

the

sense

mechanistic

might

conception

conception

is

experience; he thought, how prove

equaUy

successful

it tried.33 But ultimately he could not take this ability to explain or interpret sense experience as the final test, for materialistic atomism is more consistent with sense experience, which does indeed teU in

this regard were

"substance"

there is

that

us

Nietzsche's

whereas

necessary for Nietzsche to

by

conception

According

showing

to

modern physics

argued

denies just

it is

view, the

one

this.34

dialectical

make a

that

because it

"matter", sohdity or impenetrability, Consequently, it was

or

conception

mechanistic

was thought

conception

to be

was

adopted

non-teleological.

the mechanistic conception does have the

that

to a final state

the mechanistic

attack on

self-contradictory.

by

Nietzsche

consequence

of

involves duration, leading the once-and-for-aU. He seems to had in mind the have immutabihty, second law of thermodynamics, which asserts that the universe is moving death" in which aU differences of inexorably towards a state of "heat temperature wiU be leveled and cosmic energy, though indestructible the

goal of an equUibrium that

quantitatively the same, wiU be uniformly dissipated throughout Nietzsche accepts as decisive against the mechanistic conception

and

space.36

the fact that

final

has

been

"That a state Nietzsche's argument on this point is not altogether clear, but perhaps it can be expressed and elaborated as foUows: he maintained (as did mechanistic physics) that time is infinite, that "the concept 'temporal infinity of the world in the is not self-contradictory, and that its opposite cannot such

of equilibrium

is

a

state

never

never reached proves that

it is

reached:

not

possible."36

past'"

be

This means that there have already infinite number of chances for a final state to be reached. If a final state is possible, it has a probabUity greater than zero. Given an maintained without

been

contradiction.37

an

32

See ibid.

33

Ibid.,

34

See ibid.,

pp.

19-20, 30, 47-48 (aphs. 12, 30, 36). 12, 14.

aphs.

35 Reliance for this statement of the law is placed upon Milic Capek, Philosophical Impact of Contemporary Physics (Princeton, N.J., 1961), p. 128. Capek argues (p. 129) that since this law is only a statistical law, given an infinity of chances a decrease of entropy is not impossible. But does not the once-for-all character of

the law

36

Will to Power,

37

Ibid.,

p.

548.

contradict

pp.

547-49.

Capek's

argument

?

Nietzsche infinite

as

Cosmologist

45

chances, any event whose probability is greater than how slightly greater, must occur and indeed must occur an infinite number of times.38 Since a final state has not occurred, it is not possible i.e., its probabUity is not greater than zero. If a final state is not possible, then there are only two possibilities left: either the world has the requisite energy, motion, and force for number of

no matter

zero,

infinite novelty or it does not, in which case one is left with a concept of infinite repetitiveness or Nietzsche circularity i.e., eternal claims that "the law of the conservation of eternal demands energy He maintains that the very concept of force is incompatible with the idea of infinite force: "the world, as force, may not be thought of as unlimited, for it cannot be so thought It foUows that infinite novelty is not possible; by process of elimination, eternal recurrence is recurrence.39

recurrence."40

of."41

And the mechanistic conception, in that it entaUs the notion of final state, is proved false. The superiority of the will-to-power con ception, at least when it asserts that reahty consists of force and only of force, is established because it is consistent with the idea of the eternal

proved.

recurrence.

summarized as follows:42

AU this may be 1.

The

world

stands

is

definite quantity of force and contains a of force. (It is necessary to see the as consisting of force or centers of force, which Nietzsche under as will to power, instead of matter or material atoms; the former

certain

world

definite

a certain

number

is

consistent with eternal

of

the

mechanistic

of centers

recurrence; the latter is not because it, as part conception, has the consequence of a final state which

is

not possible. It is necessary to see the world as consisting of a certain definite quantity of force or containing a certain definite number of centers of force because the idea of infinite force is a contradiction.)

2.

There

tions, from

are a calculable number of possible

or arrangements of

the concept of

the force in the

infinite force

being

a

and

that

the

opposite

(Again,

configura

this follows

contradiction.)

3. Time is infinite. (This is maintained its coroUary, the temporal infinity of the contradictions,

combinations,

universe.

on

the grounds that it and

world

cannot

be

in the past, maintained

are

not

without

contradiction.)

38

See

89

Will to Power,

40

Ibid.,

41

Ibid.. Perhaps Nietzsche's

energy

Philosophical Impact of

Capek,

we

p.

do

pp.

pp.

126-27.

547.

so

See Will to

argument

meaningfully only

energy to do what, meaning

infinite force, it 42

Contemporary Physics,

546-47.

a

definite

be argued, is Power, pp. 548-49.

might

is that

when we speak of

when we can and

force,

specify force for what,

power,

therefore finite thing: thus the idea

contradictory.

or

power or of

Interpretation

46 4.

Every

realized, and

possible

be

infinite

Between

its

is

recurrence

infinite

an

therefore every combination occur in the interval.)

6.

Each

these

of

in

combinations

the

the next

principle

indeed

and

must

(This is

future

the

other

zero must

sequence

entire

if the

because

true

aU

than

greater

is known for any

and

aU

combination

time instants or changes, and

conditions

the universe aU

recurrence

next

probabUity is

series.

same

and

infinite

than zero,

greater

point,

(Between every

occur.

number of

whose

combinations

forces in

combination of

its

and

have to

possible combinations would and

an

times.)

of

combination

every

some

be

another

or

times. (Given

probabUity is at

occur

must

time

some

at

number of

event whose

number of chances, any however slightly greater, occur an infinite number

5.

must

combination

realized an

one

moment,

combinations

past

of

exact

in

be

can

predicted.43)

7.

Therefore there is

circular

a

itself

an

absolutely identical

of

movement

has repeated itself an infinite infinite number of times.

series that

times and

number of

wiU repeat

IV

According the

Nietzsche, "The

to

and

mechanistic

recurrence:

both

mechanistic

in

are

ideals."44

the sense that

two most

Platonic

the

it,

The idea

and

the

extreme

are

modes

in

reconcUed

of

the

of

thought

the

eternal

requisite wiU-to-power

conception,

more adequately meet the ideal standard of no teleology which founders of modern science laid down and for the sake of which, in

view, the

mechanistic

hat

conception

does

eternal recurrence

deny

not

blind chance,

was

Also,

adopted.

is

recurrence

eternal

idea

the

the place of certainty in

of

science.

the one

the

Out

it were, Nietzsche has pulled the utmost happens happens of necessity, and happens of necessity an infinite number of times. Thus Zarathustra affirms in " the fourth speech of Part III of Thus Spoke Zarathustra: 'By of the

necessity

of

everything

as

that

chance'

that is the ah things:

most ancient nobUity of the world, and this I restored to I dehvered them from then bondage under Purpose."45 A place

for certainty

indeed, for

mathematical

certainty its laws.

could

be

by way probability The idea of the eternal recurrence is Platonic in the

science

of

and

presupposes or entaUs

the most radical denial

"substance"

to the reahty of sense that it is an account

43

44

of

and

"matter."46

Zarathustra,

46

See Beyond Good

p.

278 (pt. 3, and

aph.

Evil,

p.

4).

22 (aph. 14).

the senses,

It is

the intrinsic order

See ibid., p. 547. ibid., p. 546.

45

of

also

retained

in

that

it

sense which

testify

Platonic in the

which makes the world

Nietzsche

as

Cosmologist

47

Nietzsche finds such an intrinsic order by assuming the have thought to be the very principle of disorder

a whole.

what one would

If the

as

is as it is by chance, then it must be as Nietzsche says it is by Nietzsche achieves, it might seem, what was for Plato unattain

world

necessity. able

rule of chance.

but

the

nevertheless an

principle

hostile to

of

ideal,

a comprehension of

the whole,

by

assuming

the whole that which would appear to be the most

a rational account of

the

whole.

GOD"

ARNOLD TOYNBEE: NATIONALISM AS A "FALSE Marvin Perry

was a principal force shaping European history from French Revolution to World War II, and it has spread to the nonWestern world with predictably disastrous results. In A Study of

Nationalism

the

History to the

and other works

Toynbee's

his

and

conception of modern

estimation of

Toynbee defines the whole

its future

that

of

"outsiders,"

false

of

Western

attention

considerable

discussion

this

focus

we shah as

nationalism

"false

a

on

god"

course.

as

nationalism

"a

which

spirit

feel

people

makes

states

Toynbee, man

nationalism

gods with

humanity: this

vision

Toynbee's

by

regression

a

represents

to

'association'

idolatry

the monstrous

As God is One,

held

and

as

people

to worship his local community, it is the

counterpart of polytheistic God."2

"insiders"

By designating

society."1

tribalism; by compelhng "political

In

think about a part of any given society as though it were

act and

and

Arnold Toynbee devotes

phenomenon of nationalism.

too is there

so

a

unity

of

is

at

the prophets of aU higher religions

By

corrupting this vision of universalism and by causing men to hanker after false gods, says Toynbee, nationalism has perverted man's spiritual development; by provoking fratricidal warfare among people that share a common civilization, it has hampered the center of

thought.

After studying aU of Sumeria, Toynbee concludes

man's social progress. with

ancient

for "the death

responsible

certain,

and

civUizations

perhaps

of

of

no

that had come

no

man's civilizations

that

nationalism

less than fourteen

less than sixteen, into

out

beginning has been

civUizations

the

of

for

twenty-one

existence."3

Humanity's finest achievement, says Toynbee, has been the inspiration the prophets of higher religions. Adherence to prophetic ideals enables man to overcome his natural self-centeredness and to uplift himself

of

formidable

moraUy.

HistoricaUy,

of these

ideals has been the lower

and

its deification

from the

i are 2 3

humanity

of

conception

the

spiritual

of

most

has

the

set

religion

man

obstacle of

against

to

man

Ibid., TV, Ibid., DC,

pp. p.

407-8.

442.

narrow

community has turned men away behind the universe. If twentieth-century

parochial

presence

paperback edition.

realization

its

in unholy warfare,

Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (New York, 1962-64), I, to the

the

nationalism:

p.

9. All

references

Arnold Toynbee: Nationalism man

does

not extricate

himself from

as a

"False

God"

49

tribal, neo-pagan, morally

a

repeUent

nationalism, Toynbee, it is doubtful that he wUl survive. Modern nationalism sprouted on soil fertilized by the wreckage of Latin Christendom during the era of Renaissance and Reformation. The Renaissance revival of classical culture, one of whose elements was a fierce devotion to the city-state, "raised Western nationalism to concludes

of

intensity."4

and

Romans,

a new pitch

the Greeks

Modern

has

man

infatuated

remained

with

Toynbee, because the ancients taught with patriotic fervor, organize armies, and

says

him how to infuse citizens build a powerful state. For Toynbee the Greek devotion to his city-state was a form of idolatry; the Greek citizen drew the moraUy sinful and

inteUectually

his polis, a man-made institution, Since God alone is worthy of worship, this act of hybris had to end in disaster. Idolization of the local community, a false god, raised the psychological temperature of city-state warfare and culminated in the ruinous Peloponnesian War that precipitated the deserved

breakdown This

arrogant conclusion that

worship.

HeUenic

of

the citizens

civilization.

deification

the parochial community was imitated by Florence, MUan, Genoa, and the other Italian cities, loyalty to their local city to predominate over allegiance to

pagan

of

of

who aUowed

Respublica Christiana. MachiaveUi gave intellectual expression and moral approval to this new outlook. From Machiavelli, says Toynbee, was derived the principle that if the worship

of a parochial

then any community absolute moral

a

moral

law in its

community

which

universe

was

the

constituted

object

in itself

which

of

could

duty

the whole

such

be

worship

of

must

its subjects, be

a

moral

to no transcendent

subject

physical collisions with other representatives

of

its

own

species.5

In absorbing and surpassing HeUenic parochiahsm, the modern West has behaved according to the Machiavellian precept that the state is a non-moral institution. The revival of HeUenism, says Toynbee, ministered to Western man's "insatiable lust for power which was the inevitable ruling passion in hearts that had relapsed from Christianity Humanity," and Western man into a pagan worship of a CoUective pushed

"this

that had

immolation

on

been the

approached

altar

ideology of HeUenism to extremes by HeUenes themselves in their

political

resuscitated

never

of

an

self-

idolized

Leviathan."6

In elevating the a defiance of its

Christian morality, the West expressed Christian heritage while conveniently ignoring the principal lesson of HeUenism, namely, "that this inordinate divisive mindedness was the state

over

chief

cause

Arnold

5

Arnold

7

HeUenic

civUization's

downfaU."7

And the

same

Toynbee, Change and Habit (New York, 1966), p. 109. Toynbee, Survey of International Affairs, 1933 (London, 1934), A Study of History, IX, p. 3.

*

6

of

Change

and

Habit,

p.

109.

p.

fate

116.

Interpretation

50 befaU the

wiU

demon A

modern

world, insists

to "exorcise this

Toynbee, if it fails

resolutely."8

HeUenism

revived

fuel

one

was

fed

has

that

furnace

the

of

Modern Western nationalism, asserts Toynbee, has also been by Christian fanaticism. The terrible ferocity of the wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries alienated humane

nationalism. overheated

of religion

from Christianity. The devotion withdrawn from Christianity was technology and secular ideologies nationalism, individual

people

transferred to

ism,

Of the three

communism.

Nationalism is the

At any rate, Nationalism usually prevails over conflict with it. The devotion that has been

obsessive.

most

others

when

these

transferred

from

Christianity

the

come

into

ideals

love,

of

self-sacrifice,

Christianity's virtues; it has

what

is

mankind

Judaic family, and this sour wine, constricting bottle, has fermented there with explosive religions

Toynbee

power

instead

higher

a

of

is the

that

are

whole

the

into Nationalism's

effects.9

lower

regards modern nationalism as a

human

coUective

what

repudiated

common vice of

poured

the

of

a

as

the fanaticism that is the

retained

itself from

in it. It has

evil

for

concern

and

detached

has

Nationalism

to

in Christianity but has clung to

good

ideologies,

post-Christian

religion

spiritual

that worships

reahty.

That

man

has been willing to sacrifice himself for this modern cult is an indication that nationalism "was in truth a rehgious revival in the spiritual vacuum As a left in human hearts by the evaporation of a higher religion."10

One God,

that mistakenly

religion

neo-pagan

has

modern nationalism

Leviathan instead

worships

undermined

Western

spiritual

development; it has led him away from Christianity,

Toynbee

regards as the soul of

Western

of

the

man's moral and which

civilization.

Because modern nationalism has been power-driven by a fanaticism inherited from Christianity, it "is tribalism with a difference. The Convinced primitive religion has been deformed into an enormity."11

that

they

in

were

possession of the

true

the wars of religion sought to impose

the

nation as

national

the highest good,

unity The fusion of aggravated states

a

god,

a

9 io n

12

nationalist

and

warfare

"to

ruin

gave

into

heretics,

a

holy

citizens

Western

p.

sovereign

by ruining one human community into atrocities into pagan sacrifices,

crusade,

into true believers.

that religion

Study of History, VHb, Ibid., V, p. 161. Ibid., DC, p. 443.

parochial

the

is

a perennial need of

Arnold Toynbee, Hellenism (New York, 1959), Change and Habit, p. 1 10. A

during

their common civilization

Nationalism had transformed

Toynbee beheves

8

fanatics

persecuting minorities and regimenting the population. revived HeUenic parochiahsm with Christian fanaticism

fratricidal

warfare

traitors into

rehgious

unity by force; regarding fanatics have sought to impose

by

the capacity

another."12

faith,

spiritual

521.

p.

253.

man,

a component

Arnold Toynbee: Nationalism

human

of

he

of

he

and

higher

rejects a

that

religion

stresses

selflessness,

only embrace a lower religion that innate egocentricity. Thus Toynbee interprets modem a lower religion, for it selfishly worships the coUective

universalism,

heightens his as

nationalism

and reconcUe

death. A human being, whether reality not, insists Toynbee, cannot hve without some form

When he

and

human

or

life

51

tries to comprehend

religion man

awesome

it

admits to

of religion.

love,

Through

nature.

himself to the

God"

"False

as a

wiU

power of an expanded tribe at the expense of the rest of

Whereas

higher

a

ness, nationalism intensifies the

human

Nationalism

nature.

has

Christianity

from his innate

religion emancipates man

and

to free

sought

brutal, irrational,

selfish

and

side

of

competing faiths. from the self-destructive idolization

higher

man

humanity.

self-centered

religions

are

human power; by deifying the state, a human creation, nationalism has enmeshed man in sin. Christianity aspires to a brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God, whUe nationalism represents the "lamentable of

13

ecumenicalism."

parochiahsm

of

victory

higher

message of

infinitely

superior

Although the

spiritual

to the sin and

idolatry

by

in my

belief,

human

race

words

is the

superseded

into touch

the worship

of

the collective human

the expense of the

at

real

only

converting the

today

religion

nominally

by

whole of mankind

religions

Nationalism has

or

other

of

a

of

of people.

majority

almost

of

a

fraction

of

nationalism, in

the

other

Nationalism has been of

each

religions,

to its

in

power

the human race

'higher'

aims

which

at

for putting the individual to be followers of one of the

own prescription

Whether

not,

surpassed

communism, the

rest

the

with ultimate reality.

historic higher

and

is

religions

nationalism, the power nationalism exercises over man has been broken by the higher religions. In 1971 Toynbee concluded:

evoked not

over

we profess

all

of

are

us

power and

under

nationalist

skin.14

influence both individualism ideologies. And in

post-Christian

the

common

ideologies it has been a poor substitute for Christianity, for it is "incapable of helping human beings to preserve their person which is a basic need of aU men. Both competitive individualism and ant-like coUectivism deprive the individual of his dignity by regarding with

these

other

alities,"16

him

So too does tribal-minded

as an object.

nationalism.

force that has increased the intensity of modern nationalism. At first glance, observes Toynbee, it appears that democracy and nationalism stand in opposition. In essence democracy represents universalism, not parochialism, the rights of man, not the

Democracy is

special

destiny

a spirit of

a

potency

another

of a people.

fraternity

Democracy is spiritual

stiU

which

field that

Democracy

knows

no

embraces

is beneficent. But

is

bounds.

all

.

.

.

Mankind;

when

this

The

natural

and

it is

potent

field

on

this

spiritual

i

Ibid.

14

Arnold Toynbee, Surviving the Future (New York, 1971), Arnold Toynbee, Experiences (New York, 1969), p. 325.

is

by

characterized

p.

of

action

range

driving-force

65.

for

that its

is

Interpretation

52 diverted into the

into

By turning democracy

system poisoned the pohtical

It is in the With the sixteenth

that

By

the

breakup

and

low,

and

forced to that

during

eighteenth

bouts

of

for

indecisive. struggle,

Once

the

During

and the

worthy

states

of

characterized

devoid

and

did

live

not

the

the

raUy

people regarded war

peace

the

map.

off

wiped

Rehgion.

guerre

effort.

In the

much the same manner

Democracy

dissipating. It

ferocity

transformed

the

of

the

The hmited

totale.

no

existed

that restored to war the

democracy of

in

total

a

that was rapidly

curse

ancient

were

the countryside;

not

to

nation

kings,"

Annies

of passion.

off

of

wars

the "sport of

warfare, for there

warfare

out

had become

people

could

warfare

flames

of

Toynbee, young

worship.

"nation in

longer

no

hatred fanned

which made war

human

a

French Revolution

the

by the rational and Compounding the danger of

and

the

reduce

to be only a brief interlude between two the earlier wars of religion and the later wars of

survival,

mUitarism,

to

in Western history.

were

extinguished

of

was

moderate

la

into

fanaticism,

national

enormity."17

countries

century turned

nationality.

a

which attained

fanaticism

divorce between

achieved

had

that

stakes

Wars

the

kings"

of

in the

religious

and

was the spiritual power of

"sport

havoc.

the

wage

could

century many they did slavery an

displayed

most

Christendom

caused

transformed into

was

conscription and

eighteenth

as

state

unprecedented

an

had been

emotions

for limited

by

passion

great

parochial

and the civilian population remained uninvolved.

mass

terms were not crushing were

states

"temperate century was relatively civilized Gibbon. Wars were waged from limited aims,

said

were

a game played

Princes

War into

immediate effect of to the lowest level ever

ended, as warfare

not recruited

democracy has

the

parochial

eighteenth

moderate,"18

rehgion

of the modern world.

there

century

of warfare

casualty rates The ferocity

agent of nationalism

hfe

of

evil

to be beneficent

ceases

only

an

the

religion

Warfare in the

not

Democracy imprisoned in

.

unity of Western became infused with a sectarian

"the

eighteenth

intensity

.

of the rehgious

war

century,

and

.

area of warfare that

magnified

war

state, it

mechanism of a parochial

but becomes malignantly subversive. degenerates into Nationalism.16

war

by

remain

became

arms"

fighting

temperate an

and

ideological

mass emotions could not

be

universal spirit of the philosophes.

democratic into

warfare

was

the

emergence

cult, something desirable in itself In the years from von Moltke to Hitler, a

men embraced the

military

virtues

because they

had been starved of other

of

the

"military

kinds

of spiritual

virtues"

are

the "Christian virtues";

and

16

A

"

Ibid.,

18

Quoted in Experiences,

Study p.

of

History, IV,

the

bread.

they began

pp.

162-63.

143. p.

.

epigoni

203.

.

.

of

These

latter-day Western

generations

which

were

worshippers nurtured

in

to be starved of the traditional Christian

Arnold Toynbee: Nationalism

God"

"False

as a

53

their forebears had been brought up, when, at the turn centuries, the unbelief of a cultivated minority in the Western World began to infect the less sophisticated masses.19 morality,

upon

which

the eighteenth

of

Rejecting could

and

the creed of Isaiah and Jesus for

there be a more

Toynbee has of

nineteenth

modern

depressing

caUed attention

in

nationalism:

to

a crucial

the

cult of

the

sword

backsliding? development in the evolution

process

destroys democracy's

nationalism

barbaric

a

example of spiritual

feeding

of

democracy,

off

ideals. In the first half of the nineteenth century many liberal inteUectuals identified nationalism with hberty. Liberal nationalists believed that a unified state free of foreign subjugation was in harmony with the principle of natural rights and insisted that love of country led to a love of humanity. "With all stated Frantisek Palacky, the Czech my ardent love of my essential

nation,"

patriot, "I

learning

always

esteem

Mazzini declared: "We national

But the of

your

purpose of our mission

itarianism, the

the good

ourselves

right,

is the

nationalism

it

of

Addressing

and

arisen

to

offer

mankind

and

of

Slavs, Giuseppe

the

in the

help

name

you

to

of

our

win

it.

permanent and peaceful organization

stressed

individual freedom, human

cosmopolitanism; it sought to society throughout Europe. But

and

open

intensity,

Liberal

highly

nation."20

have

who

right, beheve in

Europe."21

and

more

than the good of the

extend

constitutionalism

in liberal ideals, and few liberals hesitated for nationalist goals. as nationalism gained

soon clashed with

to sacrifice liberal principles

During and after the revolutions of 1848 liberals demonstrated an increasing fascination for nationalism and the power-state and a decreasing to liberalism. The link between liberalism and nationahsm completely severed in the last decades of the nineteenth century integral nationalists who not only glorified state power but also

commitment was

by

insisted that liberahsm was an obstacle to the achievement of nationalist ends. In the early part of the century liberals had stressed the close connection between nationalism and individual freedom, considering the liberation

nationalist goal of of man.

In the last

liberalism

as

the process,

human

the all

dignity

part

principal restraints

and

of

unity to be in

native

by liberal As

and exalted reason.

became

soil, the

the cult of the state.

19

A

20

Quoted in Hans

21

Quoted in ibid.,

Study

of

entranced

heroes,

cult of

By

the

History, IV,

Kohn, p.

44.

with

the

principles that

nationalism embrace

goals

the cult

cult of

became

sanctified

increasingly

mythical

modes

and

reason,

ancestors,

the

cult

leader,

the cult of

century

a

of

force,

narrowminded,

644-45.

Pan-Slavism (South

of

freedom

of

of

the

end of the nineteenth

pp.

the rights

to national greatness, removing, in

menace

imposed

dissociated from hberalism, it began to thought. No longer committed to liberal nationalists

accord with

the century, integral nationalists attacked

Bend, Ind., 1953),

pp.

66-67.

Interpretation

54

European absurdly raciahst chauvinism stalked the thinkers masses. Some attracting both the ehte and the that 1902 in phUosopher wrote the danger: an astute German

openly beUicose, continent, recognized

and

nationalism

supersensitive

has become

a

very

serious

danger for

peoples

all

of

Europe; because of it they are in danger of losing the feeling for human values. Nationalism, pushed to an extreme, just like sectarianism, destroys moral and even logical consciousness. Just and unjust, good and bad, true and false, lose their meaning; others,

they

done to

foreign

a

World War I had

and

in the

and

Nazism

contributed

could not

be

same

disgraceful

breath to their

inhuman

and

done

when

by

something to be

own peoples as

country.22

in European

trends

as

condemn

men

what

recommend

were the terrible

nationalism.

fulfUhnent

Liberahsm had

to its success, but the

liberal

by

contained

these dangerous

of

nurtured

nationahsm

of

nationahsm

momentum

principles.

has contributed to nationalism's "demonic is industrialism. Like democracy, industrialism is ecumenical in spirit, for it "wiU not work freely or effectively or beneficently except in so far as the world is organized into one single field of economic But when industrialism made its appearance, the Western force

Another

that

dynamism"23

activity."24

already broken up into a multitude of petty that erected barriers to economic integration.

world was

units

trammels

been

of

unable

the Parochial to fulfiU

its

State,"25

Instead

order,

industrialism, like democracy, has fortified

seeks

to promote its

of

own economic

interests

at

"Caught in the

democracy, has buUding a world

like

industrialism,

nature.

essential

politico-economic

of

the parochial state which

the

expense of

the rest

humanity. Toynbee

the

views the

Industrial Revolution that began in the West

during

century as the "unmistakable counterpart of the economic that had overtaken the HeUenic World in the sixth century

eighteenth

revolution B.C."20

At that time the Greek

interdependent created

whUe

city-states were

remaining

politically

intolerable tensions that triggered

With the Peloponnesian War the Hellenic

becoming

divided.

economically

This

incongruity

interstate warfare. entered its time of

endemic world

troubles; it never survived them, despite the reprieve granted it by the Roman Empire. The Western world has also become economicaUy

interdependent, but, remaining politicaUy fractured, it has fratricidal

The

parochial-minded

context, was

22 23 24

waged

ferocious

warfare.

not prepared

national

state,

created

in

a

different

to cope with the ecumenical forces

Meinecke, The German Catastrophe (Boston, 1963), Habit, p. 109. A Study of History, TV, p. 169. Friedrich

Change

and

25

Ibid.

26

Ibid., DC,

p.

444.

of

pp.

social

democracy

23-24.

Arnold Toynbee: Nationalism

as a

"False

God"

55

industrialism. The attempt to confine these new and dynamic forces the framework of the national state, concludes Toynbee, resulted

and

within

in the totalitarian state. Only a modification of parochial sovereignty have dealt creatively with industrialism and democracy; perverted by their imprisonment within the national state, these two ecumenical forces contributed to the power of totalitarian nationahsm. could

The dangerous tendencies in modern Western nationalism culminated in National Socialism, a repudiation of "the moral and religious essence Western Christian

In rejecting Christianity for their human his goddess, the German state, the German people had adopted a perverse neopagan rehgion. Toynbee believes that Nazism was not a peculiarly German phenomenon but a German expression of the crisis in Western civilization the rejection of Christianity and the pursuit of

god,

of

Hitler,

false

and

gods.

in

culture."27

In the late

seventeenth

century,

enthusiasm

for

began

religion

disUlusioned and disheartened by generations of rehgious conflicts. The dechne of Christianity created a discomforting spiritual vacuum which was fUled by post-Christian ideologies, of which nationahsm was the most powerful and Nazism the most malignant to

wane

expression.

a

Western

The

astonishing ease for a cause. The could not

ism,

force

Society

The truth .

.

.

by liberahsm,

sequence

cannot

that any new

eye, the

stress upon

self-interest,

utilitarian

endure."28

wrote

to be that the

produced

upon a welcome

that emerged with the decline of religion

for its

"seemed to be extinguishing the vision without To many young people National Socialism

faith. Toynbee

seems

had

or propaganda

spiritual vacuum

be fUled

was a new

why Nazism won over the youth with but latent idealism searching

essential reason

was not

and commercialism

which

elite

world

enlightened

immense

an

spiritual

in 1933: skepticism

intolerable

and

force, however

in the house thus

primitive

be

void

and

with

crude,

Viewed

swept and garnished.

neopagan movements might

the eighteenth-century

of

spiritual

the

could

with a sympathetic

regarded as a pathetic effort on

the

part of

twentieth-century Western Youth, to begin again, from the bottom, the ascent spiritual ladder, by setting its foot clumsily on the lowest rung. The tragedy Western World, in this age, was its division an ancestral Church which had lost its hold had

gone

lost

spiritual birthright.29

The

a-whoring

after

experience of

false

of original

delusions

about

in

general.

civilization, the

The

Change

28

A

over the

the "blond

contains

fragility

glorification beast"

of

masses,

of

era

pp.

133-34.

it

was

and

ancestors

indicated that

the the

between

recapturing its

lessons for the West in demonstrated anew the

reason,

Teutonic

a conflict

of of

and a generation which

the delusion that

The Nazi

and Habit, p. 18. Study of History, VUb, p. 520. Survey of International Affairs, 1933,

27

29

sin.

under

National Socialism

particular and mankind precariousness of

gods

itself through

against

con

count

a

the

immutabihty

and

Germany

the racial

disillusioned

Interpretation

56 with

Western

forest from

civUization was

which

retreating into the darkness of the primeval come. The conversion of the

the German tribes had

barbarians to civUization had not rooted out barbarism from the West; in the form of National Socialism, "barbarism was taking its revenge by That a Western finding its way into the souls of its Western people could fall so low indicates that the West had not risen so high that it is continually menaced by a moraUy perverse barbarism that it conquerors."30

harbors in its of

of

breast. For Toynbee, Nazism represented "one phase spirit of Western Christendom and the spirit

own

the struggle between the

European barbarism

had

Christianity

which

sometimes

charmed

had thereby partially tamed, but had never whoUy West abandoned its devotion to God, who is love, it became moral enormity.

every The Nazi

experience

experiments

and that

The

in

capable of

This, for Toynbee, is the true lesson of Hitlerism. reinforced his belief that civilizations are stiU to rise above the level of the primitive,

which man seeks

these experiments often end in failure.

moral catastrophe of

the limitations of

and

When the

exorcised."31

Nazism, insists Toynbee, demonstrates

of reason and

liberty. The

secular

inadequacy

the

values

of

Enlightenment,

the

anew

of a nonreligious conception

by

unbuttressed

Christian spirituality, are insufficient to restrain man's basest impulses. When the West discarded Christian dogma in reaction to the savagery of the wars of religion, it also dispensed with Christian love, a loss After the Nazi

unforgivable and unendurable.

"impossible to

in the inevitable self-perfectibility WhUe Nazism

Christians for

progress of a secularized of a graceless

was

experience

a

latter-day

a vein

Original Sin in human

nature

and

or

a people

was

as

that had been

much

and never secure.

that is

an

opportunity to burst eternal vigilance

a molten mass of wickedness

out.

Civilization

and ceaseless

cannot ever

spiritual

human

to which Hitlerism makes a

everywhere

cake of custom

is

a

Western one, for there lurks

strong appeal. The moral is that civilization is nowhere

overlying

in the

Nature."32

Europe among it

purely German

as

it has become

dogmatic belief

Western Civilization

than a thousand years,

problem of

Human

emerged within

more

it

Modern Western Man's

retain

always

be taken for

It is

boiling

granted.

a

thin

up for

Its

price

effort.33

n The institution have

of

the national state and the

ideology

from their birthplace in Western Europe globe, blazing "a traU of persecution, eviction, and spread

of nationahsm throughout

massacre."34

30 31 32 33 34

Trial

the

National-

A

Study of History, DC, p. 450. Survey of International Affairs, 1933, A Study of History, VIII, p. 289.

p.

202.

Arnold Toynbee, Acquaintances (New York, 1967), p. 294. Arnold Toynbee, The World and The West, published with Civilization

(Cleveland, O., 1958),

p.

280.

on

Arnold Toynbee: Nationalism

ism,

among

"has been

historically

which

civilizations,"35

by

far the

has become the

"False

as a

God"

57

commonest cause of

religion

of most of

mortality

humanity

in

contemporary world. WhUe the problems that threaten human survival can only be solved by a global effort, the number of parochial sovereign states has increased, and the temperature of nationalism remains high.

the

In

race.

desperately

that

a world

to worship

continue

The lower

religion

of

and

train

them

the

of mankind at

nationalism

the

conditioner which enables

thinking,

requires global

fraction

a

to turn

men

ldU their fellow human beings

to

animosity but also without form of violence that did not

compunction."36

exist

prior

War is

we

the human

be "the

to

continues

'establishment'

Toynbee,

says

expense of

into

prime

soldiers personal

without

institutionalized

an

to the appearance of states;

by people who have achieved a large degree of pohtical Regarding war as "a parasite on the institution of local Toynbee insists that only by destroying the host can we

wars are waged organization.

sovereignty,"37

the

eliminate

pressing than poUution,

parasite.

The

world-wide

for

need

today, for the

overpopulation,

death-wish."38 nothing less than "a Toynbee beheves that a pohtical

"to

human

rid

Judged

by

social

this

hfe

centuries

after

27

than half-a-dozen years

has never been more in an age of global

and atomic weapons

system's merit

violence

world-states

standard,

providing a large measure in relatively few wars with the two

the

of

than city-states

successful

a world-state

persistence of nationalism

have been

national

states;

of

domestic

order

states

of

depends

that is the price

or

B.C.

is, for Toynbee, on

of

its ability

anarchy."39

considerably

they have

more

succeeded

in

and

unity while engaging beyond their borders. For example, in

"the Roman Empire

internal

warfare.

.

.

.

endured not more

War

seemed

to have

been banished from the center of civilization to its periphery and to have been transformed into police-operations against barbarians beyond the pale;

and even on the single

Roman Empire of war-years

WhUe

during

pohtical

frontier where, along the Euphrates

marched with another organized

state, the total

fifteen."40

hardly more than the first hunting bands,

these two centuries was

divisiveness is

as

old

as

the

number

world-

mindedness is a relatively recent phenomenon; it made its appearance only after civUization had already been established. World-states were formed when one state dehvered a knockout blow to its competitors. But the age-old habit of divisiveness inherited from the early days of

prehistory persisted long after the establishment of the world-state. defeated peoples rejected the peace and stability imposed by the

35 36

Study of History, DC, Surviving the Future, p.

A

37

Experiences,

p.

38

Change

Habit,

39

Ibid.,

40

Survey

and

p.

p.

442.

116.

84. p.

112.

24.

of International

Affairs, 1928 (London, 1934),

p.

4.

Often, world-

Interpretation

58

in

state and rose

the

of

nationahsm

is

mindedness

than of

without

product

to a

have

served

world-states

loyalty

Rome

be taught to

and

parochial-

have

not

been

from the

received

habit, it is

formidable of

human

stUl

nature.

regard a world-state as a superior

that he

and

mankind

Russian

of

of

empire.

learn to

can

loyalty. Since 1500

world-wide

to push

appeal

greater

ineradicable trait

an

organization

parochial sentiments

ments

not

man can

pohtical

of

and

subordination

to the demands

Yet

the

ingrained

deeply

a

culture

of

Toynbee feels that form

by

that composed the

peoples

the

of

world-mindedness.

While tribalism is a

indication

another

the

day,

own

our

communism

of

their appeal, as evidenced

different

In

nationalist revolt. elements

universal

into the direction

subordinate

certain

develop

of a single society.

which has been notoriously plagued with political been the agent in this movement towards ecumenicalism. parochialism, has Western of spread The technology, institutions, and ideas throughout the globe is bringing the world together in a common culture. Spearheading

West,

Ironically,

the

the

diffusion

global

to

comparable cultural

modern

citizens,

of

Western the

of

unification

intelligentsia, many will

together of a

a world-wide

the

as

Mediterranean already think

of whom social

is

served

who

ancient

"the

as

serve

civilization

heUenizers,

the

cultural

and

inteUigentsia for the

medium

world.

and

cement

Perhaps the

behave

as world

for the

holding

world-state."41

Another promising

sign

for future

unity is the growing economic Europe since World War II. This

world

and political consohdation of western

radically new departure is "a good augury, considering how deeply ingrained is nationalism in the tradition of Western European peoples

If the Western European as

they

on a global

scale, is

The future

for the ment.

not a Utopian

world-state wUl not

peoples of

the world

Moreover, in

states cannot not put

peoples can unite with each other voluntarily,

demonstrating they

are now

be

an

coerced

themselves

era

of

only reluctantly atomic

into accepting

out of

certain prerogatives

be greatly centralized,

will

mankind,

predicts

Toynbee,

support world govern

weapons, might

be

national

recalcitrant

world authority.

business, they

for the

of

can, a voluntary unity

objective."42

While

persuaded

to

states wiU surrender

Realizing

sake of self-preservation.

that the

may be self-destruction, mankind wiU choose a form of world government, but unlike the world-states of the past, which were unitary states imposed by force, the coming world-state will be a voluntary federal alternative

union.

But to be

driven

by

effective

the proper end of 'universal,'"

41 42

Change

must

have the

power

to

prevent

local units,

loyalties,

but if this

and

it

from engaging in war. Toynbee beheves that 'national' and statesmanship is the "harmony between

parochial

Habit,

p.

harmony is

to endure and succeed, "the authority

155.

Arnold Toynbee, "For the First Time in 30,000 1972, p. 9.

Years,"

World View, March

Arnold Toynbee: Nationalism 'universal,'

the

of

Consistent

the

and

loyalty

to

paid

his interpretation

with

as a

God"

"False

it,

must

be

59

paramount."43

history, Toynbee insists that the coming world polity requires a rehgious base, for only by expressing devotion to God can man overcome the limitations of parochialism and live in brotherly unity. Western technology is an inadequate scaffolding upon

to construct world unity;

which

ideologies,

which

offer

man

inadequate understanding to

again

the

Gandhi

true

can man

infusion

of

an

mankind might not

too

so

the

are

post-Christian

humanity and an Only by turning once Isaiah, Jesus, Buddha,

conception

of

the purpose of life.

of

prophets

fashion

limited

a

of

universalism

enduring world order. Without this spiritual succeed in making the leap from tribalism

to ecumenicalism, from idol worship to spirituality. For

a

true as

religion,

lasting

and

in both individuals presence

key

do,

If the future

is, I

am

a sine qua non.

sure,

By

clear, I mean the overcoming of self-centeredness,

by getting into a communion with the spiritual by bringing our wills into harmony with it. I think but we are very far from picking up this key and using

communities,

the

survival of

world-state

that have

conflict

made

universe and

to peace,

and until we

coping

and

behind the

this is the

it,

peace, a religious revolution

I hope I have

the human

manages

traditionaUy

race will continue

to

wrecked

eliminate

the

civUizations

to be in doubt.44 war

and

and

class

succeeds

in

overpopulation, the next problem confronting be the role of leisure in a mechanized world. Toynbee

with poUution and

mankind would

fears that leisure lavished on a proletarian majority wiU lead to cultural deterioration. What irony it would be if the reward for the elimination of war and class conflict

turns out to be the mass

in Plato's "Commonwealth

of

crushing the spirit, the society

Swine."

To

the future

of

of mankind

wallowing from

prevent mechanization must create

an educational

inteUectual growth. But Toynbee recognizes that only a relatively few people possess the intrinsic required for art and thought. Consequently, if man is to use leisure

system also

gifts

"in the selves

that stimulates

service of some able

salvation

to

aesthetic

high calling to

to devote their Religion,"

and

hves,

which

which all men would

then Mankind

provides

"an infinite

find them

turn

again

spiritual

scope

must

for for

Everyman."45

m Toynbee's study of history leads him to conclude that "our greatest is for spiritual improvement in ourselves and in our relations with

need

feUow human beings."46 For man to achieve this spiritual end he must "break out of the prison of his inborn self-centeredness and enter our

43 44

45 46

A

Study of History, XII, p. 619. Surviving the Future, pp. 66-67. A Study of History, DC, p. 618. Surviving the Future, p. 47.

Interpretation

60

into

communion

more

to

.

.

.

with

and more

valuable,

reahty that is greater, more important, himself."47 The way lasting than the individual some

this is to turn once again to humanity's

accomphsh

teachers,

greatest

higher religions, who saw God as One and mankind as recognizing that God alone is the supreme value in the universe,

the prophets of

Unity.

By

hberates himself. He

man

owes no ultimate

to a

loyalty

ideology,

state or

God has sternly warned against only the worship of false gods. Man's ultimate concern is moral growth not on power, fame, or riches, which are also man-made idols. By focusing for they

God, Toynbee

maintains,

person, no human

He

also

feUows

overcomes

higher

religions

it, they

of

no

man

parochial states and even

agent, for no human

moral

is thus

and

love. It is through

his

conscious of

address themselves to

enable

free

a

human tradition

self-centeredness

becomes

man

and

becomes

man

institution,

with respect and even

God that

with

idols

man-made

are

aU

own

enabled

"overcome the

the

cultural

humanity. Because the not

barriers between

just to

parochial civiliza

Without expressing aUegiance to God, men wUl to dispense with their tribal loyalties and dweU together in

A strong

by

a

element of

not celebrate

prophetic

concern

after-life or

Toynbee's

pervades

be

not

able

peace.

religious orientation.

irrational, but insists that reason, uniUuminated for humanity, wiU distort human values with He does

indifference.

computer-like unknown

humanism the

part

a

barriers between

pohtical

tions."48

He does

soul.

to treat his

a spiritual communion

mankind,

to

his

claim

can

not

this

for

world

to the doctrines

dogmaticaUy

chng

negate

some

of a sectarian

church, nor does he retreat into fruitless despair. He beheves that the ideals of the City of God do benefit the City of Man. By setting our

foot

the spiritual path, he states, we can make ourselves better and

on

improve Man is or

our a

relations

with

each

other.

And for Toynbee the

City

of

true cosmopolis; it embraces all mankind, not just Christians

Westerners.

Toynbee's humanism

technology, of

which

he

is

clearly

discerned in

regards as stiU another

his

another example

idolizing his own power, another grievous substitute "shocking vent for Original Sin and a serious threat

man

another

welfare and perhaps even

Toynbee

to his

existence."49

towards

attitude

false god,

for God, to Man's

In the fifth century B.C.,

theories of the natural us, Socrates, finding inadequate for dealing with human problems, turned away study of nature to the study of man and society. Toynbee caUs

the

reminds

philosophers

from for

a

a simUar reorientation.

convince spiritual

so that

ibid.,

48

A

He

yearns

for

p.

a modern

to channel his energies into

potential, who would instruct

it does

47

49

man

not

warp human

souls.

man

Socrates his

who would

developing

moral

how to

technology

utilize

The techniques

and

tools

and

created

46.

Survey of History, VUb, p. 433. Arnold Toynbee, An Historian's Approach

to Religion

(New

York, 1956),

p.

238.

Arnold Toynbee: Nationalism

by

inteUect

man's

be enormously

can

condition, but "we have to

goodness

Both

these

use

not

the

in

power

We

God"

"False

effective

spiritual

right

tools

as a

need

61 the human

bettering or

understanding

or

Socrates."50

another

and nationalism, in contrast to higher religions, care for the individual human personality man's dignity and his nothing need for personal consolation and spiritual uplifting. For Toynbee, man

technology

becomes

fully

human

when

he

the spiritual significance

sees

the moral potential of his own personality.

Technology

life

of

must

and

promote

this end, he says, if we are to avoid either Huxley's Brave New World or the destruction of the planet. And, it should be added, Toynbee warned of

the dangers

technology long before it became fashionable

of

to do so.

Only

through spirituality and universalism can mankind preserve itself

individual fulfiU himself

the

and

His

thought.

is

this

the

one response to the crisis of

was

essence

Western

of

Toynbee's

civUization

that

defined the first half of the twentieth century. Having lost confidence in reason and committed no longer to freedom, some thinkers found a new faith in fascism. Rejecting liberal society and entranced by a Utopian days," vision of the "end of others converted to communism. Shattered

by

the senseless slaughter

World War I, Toynbee became disiUusioned repudiated Christianity for technology ideologies. Because hberalism had dispensed with Christian love

with a

and

Western

Christian

and the

too

was

of

civilization

selfish

that had

precept that man's

and

to

competitive

hberty

came

preserve

the

from God's grace, it sacrosanctity

of

the

personality; because the rationalism of the Enlightenment was spiritually empty, it could not contain the brutal and irrational side of human nature

that

rationalist

constitutes

to provide for his

or

hsten

again

God,

the

ideals

of

man's

tradition alone was

spiritual

of

as

to

wreck

through the higher religions counter the

Holding

who

that

protect man

the

liberal-

from Leviathan

urged

have taught the

mankind

to

presence

of

man, the unity of humanity, and communion with the true purpose of life. If we reject the prophetic

higher religions, he warns,

gods whose power

sin.

needs, Toynbee has

to its religious prophets,

dignity Absolute Reahty

of

original

inadequate to

"demonic

continue to pursue false has been demonstrated. Only mankind find the spiritual strength to we

shall

civilization can

dynamism"

of

nationalism, the

most

dangerous

these idols.

Toynbee has been and

accused of

underestimating the

retorting to myths, escaping into

Ulusion,

narrowmindedness of religion-dominated societies.

critics say, Toynbee's hostUity to all forms of parochialism between varieties of nationalism. For example, differences him to bhnds to caU Zionists disciples of the Nazis seems simplistic, if not grotesque. To some critics, Toynbee's rehgious orientation is fanciful, foolish, dangerous, and hateful. Nevertheless, he cannot easUy be dismissed.

Moreover, his

60

Surviving

the

Future,

p.

43.

Interpretation

62 After of

the experience of the twentieth

of reason

linear

to heal humanity's

progress.

Nor

ills,

to cause

peoples continues

irrational,

to cope with

technologist,

behefs,

and

sentiments

ideologies,

even the staunchest

defenders

regarding the capacity only the naive interpret history as

reservations

and

are we so certain about the

technological growth, and the

the

century

the Enlightenment tradition have

"noble"

efficacy

of unrestricted

principle of self-determination of

much mischief.

Toynbee

compels us to confront

to find a constructive outlet for its creative energies, and

its destructive and

he

have

the

reminds not

capacities.

nationalist a

been

to

secularly

is the

the

oriented

eradicated

of which nationahsm

He forces

ponder

but

the

humanity

have

rationalist,

implications been

most pernicious.

that

of

the

their

rehgious

rerouted

into

Philosophy

Science

of

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Robert Lamb

708

Survivors

and

the Will to Bear

in

The Paradox

Plato

and

of

System Builders:

Hobbes

The Next Stage

of

History?

Table

of

Contents

for Volume 40

and

A. Tilton Daniel Bell

Timothy and

728

Indices After p

.766

Phil OSO D hV /

Advisory Editors Hampshire John Rawls Stuart Hampshire,

I

d

Public

Editor Marshall Cohen

A ff

Associate Editors Thomas Nagel, Thomas Scanlon

** TTO

j l*C *

WINTER 1974

*

VOLUME 3

NUMBER 2

War Crimes and Induction : A Case for Selective NonConscientious Objection

DONALD A. PEPPERS

RICHARD MILLER

Rawls

TED HONDERICH

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