In Love With Logos: Essays on Greek Philosophy

By Jeremiah Reedy Ph.D. and Thomas M. Robinson

"[In this book]…believers in the value of reasoning will find themselves in very hospitable territory, where they will have the pleasure on confronting ideas that are defined with argument, and to which, should they on occasion disagree with one or the other of them, they will always feel that nothing less than a carefully reasoned response is called for. And that is the highest praise that I can think of for its author. Like Socrates, he is in love with reason; and like Socrates, he finds that other lovers of reason sense a kindred spirit and engage." Thomas M. Robinson, University of Toronto.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 19, 2001
• ISBN: 9781462827244

Jeremiah Reedy Ph.D.

Jeremiah Reedy, a native of South Dakota, earned an S.T.B. degree at the Gregorian University in Rome, an M.A. in Classics from the University of South Dakota, another M.A. and a Ph.D. in Classical Studies from the University of Michigan, where he specialized in classical philology and Indo-European linguistics. He taught Classics at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, from 1968 until he retired in 2004. He currently teaches Latin and Greek at the University of St. Thomas School of Divinity as an adjunct professor. For the past 25 years, most of his time and energy has been devoted to studying and writing about Greek philosophy. Besides essays on philosophy, his publications include translations and editions of both ancient Greek and medieval Latin works.. An activist in efforts to reform education, Dr. Reedy was the chair of the founding committee of the New Spirit School in St. Paul and the founder of the Seven Hills Classical Academy in Bloomington, Minnesota.

Book preview

ONE

POSTMODERN ART AND THE

REJECTION OF REAS`ON

The term postmodern, as far as is known, was first used by the Spanish author Federico De Onis in l934 and then by the historian Arnold Toynbee in l938.1 It did not catch on, however, until the 1970s when it came to be used first in the field of architecture and then in art whence its use spread to other fields such as literary criticism, sociology, anthropology and law. One authority says that the postmodern period began in 1989, modernity having lasted from l789 to l989, that is from the fall of the Bastille to the fall of the Berlin wall.2 Another says that the postmodern period began, as far as the United States is concerned, at 3:32 p.m. on July l5, l972 when the Pruitt-Igoe housing development in St. Louis, Missouri was demolished.3 Pruitt-Igoe was a valiant attempt to solve a housing shortage in a ghetto; it was a monument to modern architecture—rationally planned, rationally designed and constructed, but it became uninhabitable and had to be destroyed. Nor was the demolition of these slab blocks of housing unique.4

The motto of modern architecture was Form follows function and since most buildings have one function, unity was a result. The glass and steel skyscraper is typical of modern architecture. A postmodern building, on the other hand, may be a hodge-podge of different styles without cohesion or meaning. Pluralism is stressed rather than unity. Hence a postmodern building might have gargoyles, Greek columns and art deco ornamentation. The AT & T building in New York is a thirty-seven story skyscraper with a baroque entryway and a classical pediment on the top with a hole in it. As a result it resembles a gigantic Chippendale chair. Others have seen it as a hybrid of a high-rise and a grandfather clock.5 The University of Minnesota’s Weisman Art Museum has an exterior of burnished stainless steel with what appears to be untreated plywood trim. One critic compared it to an airplane crash. Another told the architect it looked like a tin can that had been crushed; the architect replied that that is where he got the idea.

Some postmodern buildings deconstruct the inside/outside dichotomy and have trees, pools and fountains inside and ducts, plumbing and escalators on the exterior. One thinks of the Pompideau Center in Paris—a very ugly building, in my humble opinion. Nevertheless postmodern buildings can be interesting, exciting, humorous and even beautiful while modern architecture was often boring, dehumanizing and sterile. For the champions of postmodern architecture, its evolution was a necessary consequence of the failure and death of modern architecture. For those who do not like it (such as Clement Greenberg, the theorist of American Modernism) it is aimless, anarchic, amorphous, self-indulgent, inclusive, horizontally structured and aims for the popular.6 Still I have no quarrel with postmodern architecture.

Traditional art generally sought to produce works that would be beautiful, pleasing and lasting. Postmodern works can be ugly and disgusting. One artist displayed his own bowel movements.7 Andres Serrano, one of whose works is the notorious Piss Christ (a crucifix upside down in a beaker of the artist’s own urine) uses dead animals, brains, blood and used sanitary napkins in his works. In postmodern art there is often no final product. A Minnesota artist spray paints designs on snow banks. Christo wraps islands, bridges and buildings and then promptly unwraps them. A work by the Austrian artist Joseph Beuys entitled Fat Corner consisted of cones of grease and margarine which the artist set up in the corner of a gallery where they were allowed to melt.8 An American government official spoke with chagrin of a work of art called Beetles Gnawing a on Turkey Carcass that was sent on a tour of Brazil at the expense of American taxpayers. When the carcass began to smell foully, it was cooked; then the beetles refused to eat it!9

Postmodern artists deconstruct the dichotomy between what is art and what isn’t. Ordinary manufactured objects such as Coca Cola bottles and toilets are displayed as art works.10 Paintings of soup cans and brillo pads are hailed as masterpieces.

Postmodern art minimizes or eliminates the artist as creative genius. Andy Warhol called his studio The Factory and hired other artists to help him mass produce works. Joseph Beuys signed sugar packets and distributed them as his own works. In the postmodern period everything is art11 and everyone is an artist. Traditional art and modern art had depth. Critics see in postmodern art contrived depthlessness.12 Postmodern artists try to be superficial; think of Andy Warhol’s soup cans. Collages are common; they are chaotic and lack unity.

Often postmodern art displays a playfulness that can be humorous. Beuys had himself wrapped in felt and flown from Vienna to New York. There he was transported to an art gallery where he was locked in a room that had a live coyote tethered in the middle. The artist strode around the coyote gently poking it now and then with a stick. The work was called I Love American and America loves me.13 In another work, if that’s the right term, he cradled a dead rabbit in his arms and walked through a gallery explaining the art works to it.14 The members of a dance troupe, to turn to another art for a moment, instead of performing for their audience, invited the patrons to sit by windows and watch pedestrians walk by.15 Not only is everyone an artist, everyone is a dancer! However, not all audiences are treated so well. So-called performance artists often ignore or insult their audiences. Annie Sprinkles, a performance artist, calls her act A Public Cervix Announcement. She puts her feet in stirrups, inserts a speculum into her vagina and invites members of the audience to come on stage and peer inside.16 Shocking and infuriating the audience is part of the act. Postmodern art is squarely in the epater les bourgeois tradition.

What are we to make of these strange and often outrageous goings-on in the art world, goings-on that have led some to speak of the end of art and the death of art?17 To understand them we must turn to postmodernism as a philosophy or ideology.18

The consensus of scholars who have devoted attention to this matter is that postmodernism is a rejection of the Enlightenment project. The phrase was coined by Habermas who describes the effort thus:

The project of modernity, formulated in the eighteenth century by the Enlightenmentphilosophes, consists of a relentless development of the objectivating sciences, the uni-versalistic bases of morality and law and the autonomous art in accordance with their internal logic … and their utilization in praxis; that is, in the rational organisation of living conditions and social relations. Proponents of the Enlightenment … still held the extravagant expectation that the arts and sciences would further not only the control of the forces of nature but also the understanding of self and world, moral progress, justice in social institutions, and even human happiness.19

Francis Bacon (l56l-l626) had anticipated the Enlightenment project. He envisioned humans discovering nature’s secrets in order to exercise power over nature. He anticipated the enterprise of harnessing the scientific method as a means of altering our environment for our benefit.20 Postmodern thinkers believe the Enlightenment project has failed; consequently they have abandoned it and the belief in progress that it implied.

The distinguished American philosopher John Searle sees a larger scale repudiation than that of the Enlightenment project. For him postmodernism is a rejection of the whole Western rationalistic tradition which has its origin in ancient Greece. One might say quite simply that postmodernism is the rejection of Greek philosophy. What exactly does this mean? Searle provides an answer, conceding, of course, that any attempt to characterize the Western rationalistic tradition (or Greek philosophy) will inevitably suffer from some degree of oversimplification or even distortion.21 Searle’s characterization of the tradition takes the form of six principles:

1.    Reality exists independently of human representations. This

he calls the foundational principle of the whole tradition.22

2.    "At least one of the functions of language is to communicate

meanings from speakers to hearers, and sometimes those meanings enable the communication to refer to objects and states of affairs in the world that exist independently of language. Language is thus both communicative and referential."23

3.    Truth is a matter of the accuracy of representation.24 Searle

then provides a defense of the correspondence definition of truth.

4.    Knowledge is objective. A corollary of this would be that the

race, gender, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, age, weight, etc. of the speaker or writer are irrelevant when evaluating truth

claims.25

5.    Logic and rationality are formal. This means, as Searle explains

it, that Logic and rationality provide standards of proof, validity and reasonableness but the standards only operate on a previously given set of axioms, assumptions, goals and objectives.26

6.    " … There are both objective and intersubjectively valid criteria

of intellectual achievement and excellence."27 This principle enables us to say that some arguments are valid and some are fallacious. It also enables us to say that Plato and Shakespeare are more deserving of study than Madonna and Walt Disney.

To these principles could be added the self-critical quality of Western philosophy for which Socrates is our model.28 All of the above principles are rejected by postmodernists. Let us take a look at the first four. Textualism or social constructivism, which it is also called, denies the existence of a reality that is independent of human perceptions and representations. It is the idea that language or culture constitutes or constructs the world according to its own internal principles.29 This doctrine seems to have evolved in the following way, to put it as plainly as possible: Kant distinguished between phenomena and noumena declaring that we have no direct knowledge of noumena.30 The self constructs knowledge by means of [innate] transcendental categories which all humans share since they are a part of human nature.31 Next Fichte dismissed the noumenal realm as philosophically insignificant since it is unknowable.32 Did they then denied that Kant’s a priori categories were innate. Rather, they arise out of and derive … from experience.33 Since every individual’s experience is conditioned by his/her culture, we are left with worldviews" that are historically and socially constructed and no knowledge of an independent reality.34 Postmodernism is a form of neo-Kantianism; hence the historicism and cultural relativism.

Postmodern theoreticians deny in the second place that language is communicative and referential. This is the doctrine of indeterminacy which identifies all meaning as ultimately self-contradictory. 35 Fredric Jameson puts it this way: Poststructuralism … is at one with the demonstration of the necessary incoherence and impossibility of all thinking.36 Language would be referential only in the sense that words refer to other words (which in turn refer to other words ad infinitum). To deconstruct a text apparently means to show how, as it appears to assert something, it simultaneously undermines it. I say apparently because due to the obscurity of the works of Derrida and his followers, one can never be sure. Thus according to the French deconstructionist Rodolphe Gasche, all Americans have misunderstood deconstruction.37

Thirdly textualism undermines truth as correspondence between propositions and reality.38 Truth becomes whatever the ruling elite says it is. Objective truth is impossible because there is no knowledge of an objectively existing reality.39

I am inclined to think that the skepticism, nihilism and pessimism of postmodern ideology with its rejection of the Western rationalist tradition are responsible for the decadence, the absurdity, and the outrageous character of much of postmodern art, but it is impossible to say. Perhaps artists and philosophers, being more sensitive than hoi polloi, are merely giving expression to a Zeitgeist that is the result of some vast, underlying cultural or historical change. Putting it another way, was Nietzsche a cause or a symptom? In any case artists are giving expression to a bitter and desperate detestation of the world of today as Maritain said of an earlier era.40 Is there anything that can be done? There is little that can be done regarding postmodern art itself. Artists have been and will continue to be independent and rebellious. Censorship does not appear to be a solution in free societies, but I would urge citizens to oppose the use of taxpayer funds for works that are deemed obscene and offensive by the majority. There are, however, a number of things that philosophers could do regarding postmodern aesthetics and literary theory. Let me first outline briefly the tenets of postmodern literary theory which, mutatis mutandis, apply also to the interpretation of the visual arts, dance and theater. I will then propose five directions reform could take.

It is not an exaggeration to say that postmodern literary theorists do not have aesthetics. They do not make aesthetic judgements. Instead texts are praised or blamed on the basis of their politics. The crucial question asked is, Will this text advance a radical left-wing political agenda? Texts are often chosen for study because of the author’s race, gender, sexual orientation or class rather than for any perceived intrinsic merit. I shall refer to this as race-gender-class criticism. Regarding the canon of Great Books of the Western World one student of the current scene sees two trends and two factions, both committed to race-gender-class analysis. One group advocates study of the great works of Western literature but interprets them using the new postmodern creed. The other, more radical group, recommends eliminating the classics from the curriculum and studying instead literature of the downtrodden and oppressed.41 In either case, the masterpieces of Western philosophy and literature are seen as the sacred scripture of white males who have used them to perpetuate the tradition of exploitation, imperialism, colonialism as well as the marginalization and oppression of women and minorities.

This approach to the study of literature and art has reigned supreme for more than two decades in English-speaking countries and shows no signs of abating.42 Not surprisingly a number of serious charges are regularly leveled against humanities faculties, e.g. that they are using classrooms to indoctrinate rather than educate, that they are more interested in theory than literature or art, that students and others who question the regnant orthodoxy are denounced as racists and/or sexists, that, having rejected rational discourse, they are attempting to make ad hominem arguments seem avant-garde and sophisticated43 rather than the logical fallacies they are, and finally that doctrines that are trivial and/or absurd are hidden beneath a torrent of obfuscation, mystification and postmodern jargon.

During bleak periods, and we humanists are certainly in a bleak period, philosophers always return to the sources, as Ralph Mclnerny has observed.44 Another way to put it would be to say that during periods of confusion people always turn to the Greeks. Scholars should thus reexamine the teachings of Plato, Aristotle and other ancient thinkers for insights regarding the nature and purpose of the fine arts, as in fact many have done and are doing. But I am urging rationalists and realists of all stripes to unite in a grand effort to expose the errors of postmodernism, thereby refuting and discrediting it definitively. As for the use of ancient Greek principles for constructing a philosophy of the fine arts, there are fortunately excellent models for this from earlier decades of this century. I shall discuss two such efforts that derive ultimately from

Aristotle and then propose three other strategies for dealing with postmodernism.

The twentieth century French philosopher Jacques Maritain (l882-l973) studied at the Sorbonne, but, disillusioned with the scientism of the faculty, he began attending the lectures of Henri Bergson at the College de France.45 In l906 both he and his wife were converted to Catholicism, and Maritain spent the rest of his life as a student and follower of Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle. Among his fifty-some books are three important works on aesthetics, Art and Scholasticism, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry and The Responsibility of the Artist.46 Maritain begins his Art and Scholasticism by observing