A Relevance of Aristotleby Ed Sarkis
I have spent so much time trying to explicate the philosophy of Aristotle because it seems to me that one can see, if one understands Aristotle's philosophy in relation to the development of Christian philosophy, that Aristotle's emphasis on nature and natural relations is strange only in relation to the Christian philosophy which in the form of science has so corrupted the mind of man that we think only the most pedestrian hopes of man are legitimate.
I mean, isn't this a terrible predicament that we think that by money grubbing, abusing human affairs for the sake of making that extra ten cents, and making a metaphysical principle out of the most trivial passions of man we can find the truth. Imagine how pathetic a philosophy this is that for these people God is the true being of life, and that man is so petty that God has to kick the shit out of him in order to teach him that he should love God. This is a terrible philosophy.
And the fact that Jesus started this, and that St. Paul wrote it up and priests and the Pope and the clergy and ministers have done it for centuries and centuries and the majority of the people believe in God...it's just sad. It's sad because one is refusing to use one's own intelligence. One can't live in ignorance for too long before one says, "You know what, I don't really care what the truth is anymore. I'm not going to indulge my ignorance anymore." Why should I try to understand bad philosophy? Why shouldn't I use my own senses, my own immediate sensations?
Here, what Aristotle has taught me is to focus on what is already working, to look at what you are already successful at, and he starts with friendship. I think that most people instinctively want to be with people that treat them well, in some form or another. So it seems to me that what Aristotle tried to do was not really say these are the commandments given from God almighty, but just that there are ordinary things, that is to say, to notice what is in front of our noses. Would I want to be with people that don't bathe? Would I want to live with people who rob me, with someone who's got a hammer in one hand and is going to hit me over the head? Would I want to be with those people? No, of course not.
Now it seems to me that the force of Aristotle's philosophy is here, to just pay attention to what you want in life, in the most simple sense. Not that we aren't confused or that we don't have confusion, but it's like you want to be with people who are good to you and you want to be good to other people. I don't think that's so difficult to understand. What is difficult for me to understand is why would a loving God want Christians to go around condemning everyone to hell and teaching them that they should feel guilty for being human? It seems to me that before we worry about a God punishing us, let us worry about a God that doesn't want to punish us. That is, let's deal with what is positive and creative in life, not focus on demons, dark forces, self-deceptions, guilty consciences and things of this nature.
So what I've tried to do in talking about Aristotle's philosophy is to say that the reason that Aristotle can talk about God and for it not to be a Christian God, is that for Aristotle art is the place where we present to ourselves what we think we are. Now this seems peculiar because of the Christian teaching that we should know already who we are and to want to inquire into who we are is itself a kind of blasphemy, sin, or pride. Nothing could be further from the truth because my understanding of God is that either what I've been taught about God is the devil or God wants me to be creative. He wants me to love the world, to invent, to explore things, to make up stuff, to reach out to other people and to establish relationships. That seems to me the place of art. And this is what Aristotle's notion of universality is -- that universality carries with it a kind of suggestion, it's suggestive, it indicates: What did you do? Now, in a world which merely conforms to principle, myth is actual creation.
This is what is so paradoxical about the Christian conception of creation -- how does the creation happen historically and yet not for ourselves. Why can't the world's creation be taking place right now? Why does the world have to have its reality pre-established? That seems to me really incomprehensible. That is, there's no way to prove that such a thing exists. There's no way of really talking about the order and the organization of the world before the world existed. Here we can speak very plainly -- if the reality of the world exists before the world, then why bother having the world?
Now this is what I find so exciting about the philosophy of Aristotle because for Aristotle our activity itself is already in some sense a matter of grace, that is, you don't need to earn God's favor. The only way that we earn God's favor is to be doing things, to be active in some way. Now to be active does not mean to be doing things in a sort of means-end manner. To reduce all of our action to effectiveness cuts our spirit off from our action. This is the problem that I have with a certain understanding of action as affecting an end. The question is, What do I want in life? What do I want to be doing? To want to do anything already involves a certain amount of confidence in life, a certain amount of faith. When you don't have faith, you're saying life is not worth living; even though you feel you're doing something, it's more like labor -- you're simply laboring.
In a way, when Satan was God's number two man, he was really a laborer. Not because he was number two or because God was the boss, but because Satan didn't really feel as though he was a producer of his own actions. Because even though he was getting benefits -- one might even say he was getting the most benefits of anyone in the whole world -- Satan's activity was not in a sense self-motivated, and Satan was not completely happy. Now God was very sympathetic to Satan, asking him, "You don't like where you live? You don't have a big enough house? Do you want more money, do you want chicks, some wine, do you want to go on a trip? What do you want?" And Satan, if you can imagine, was a bit frustrated, saying, "You know, God, I don't know if it's something that you're saying. I'm not really sure you're wrong. I really think that you're sincere in wanting me to be happy."
But God didn't understand that what Satan wanted was some kind of separation to find his independence, not just second independence, but he wanted to be his own source of motion, in some sense self-motivated and to have his own arena in which he could operate. Specifically, what Satan wanted was something that literally didn't exist. And God couldn't understand, how can you want something that doesn't exist? That is, what is this thing that you want that doesn't exist yet? And Satan said, "I don't know." And God asked, "If you don't know what it is that you want, why do you want to go away from me?"
And that was in a sense the second creation. This is why there is the process of creation and why there is no precedent for creation. Because creation, in a sense, always has a starting place ex nihilo, from nothing. No, I don't want this other thing and I'm not rejecting you; I'm not leaving you for this other thing, and I'm not just saying I don't want to be with you. I'm saying there's something not profound happening here, and I want to be fulfilled.
This is precisely Aristotle's philosophy of art. That in a way art indicates to us ambivalent desires, that a definite desire for self-fulfillment doesn't exist yet and may never exist. Aristotle uses the word 'energeia' to indicate motion, activity or work. We desire activity as an end in itself, as a kind of actualization, a bringing about of something. Here then, God was saying, "Hasn't everything been brought about already. Isn't everything here already?" And Satan was saying, "No it hasn't." Here, it would seem to me, is the place where faith comes in because faith is really the relation of our sense of history and identity to a kind of nothing that indicates to us that we want to do something, don't know exactly what it is, and yet have a confidence that there is a something to be done by us. Thus, a confidence is required to be able to live with this lack of definitive understanding. But oddly enough it seems to me that part of our confidence comes from being able to live without complete confidence. This I think is courage. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is the ability to act and to be fearful at the same time. Thus, courage is the ability to recognize a kind of self annihilation that takes place in our activity.
This is theater. This is what I'm trying to talk about in Aristotle's idea of art, that art does not tell us how to act or what we should be doing, but it places the wholeness of the human world on the stage so that it can see someone who isn't quite sure of what they are doing, but never denying that person's own fear and feeling that the whole thing is a kind of vanity or annihilation. It seems to me that one of the conceptual problems of Christianity and science is that there's such a division between so-called theoretical activity and so-called practical activity that one never realizes that it's one and the same, that there is just one activity of life. And that a lack of understanding is in fact our lives. It is absurd for us to have lost so much control in our lives, to let religion tell us the truth of the spirit, science to tell us the truth about material bodies, and to let practical action be determined by capitalism or business activity. It seems there's no place for human life anymore.
These are still our problems and it seems to me that why many people instinctively desire art is that whether they are consciously thinking it or not, they don't believe that the last word on human life has been said, even though they might be a devout Christian, a committed capitalist, and a practitioner of science. Somebody could still look to art, not just for entertainment, but for the understanding that we may not have figured everything out. That there might be something that no one has figured out yet, that could be presented on the stage of art, as it were, in the theater of art. And that we still believe that our hopes for the world are no less real than our history, that we believe enough in ourselves. Here it's not about subjectivity, but we seem to understand that our hopes for the world, our hopes in life are not really in vain. Even though we don't have what we want or have what we need, that by being articulate and particular and giving some expression to those hopes, they themselves will constitute a reality that is unprecedented and will tell us something about the world that is not merely referential or descriptive, but creative.
One of the most profound achievements in painting, in the Renaissance, came through the simple realization that, "You know, I don't really think I understand how the human body works. I've seen you, but I don't really know as much about you as I thought I did." All of a sudden, the human body appeared in these paintings in a way which was unprecedented. Yes, the human form had been depicted before, and to a certain extent, very realistically anatomically. But it was a very specific realization, or desire, to just put the human form up on the paintings. To simply show somebody and not have a commentary about them, not put them in a biblical story, a narrative or historical pose, or costume, but just put the human form up there and see if that did anything. As if someone might say, "What if me just naked, me without any justifications, I wonder if that's enough." That's what was unprecedented.
I think the difference between art that maintains a continuity, and great art, is that it has more to do with an ability to really trust one's instincts, to trust that however bizarre and unprecedented one's hopes are, that is what one imagines and dreams about, that in a way, by taking them less seriously and letting them have more of an appearance, that something might come of it. That is what confidence is, that you know you don't have it, you know it's apparent, like a ghost, it's floating somewhere. And you wonder if you make it more substantial, substantiate it, if something will come of it. That to me is the greatest confidence in life and if faith has any meaning at all, it is that and only that. You just say, "I don't know anymore. But what else do I have but my hopes." I wonder about that. I wonder what sort of thing this is. See, when we wonder about something, in a way we're sort of challenging perceived opinion. If you're really thinking, you're ultimately challenging authority. Not on purpose, not even directly. You're challenging somebody who has some kind of social position based on being an administrator of that idea.
For example, try going to any member of the Christian clergy, and saying, "You know, I'm an atheist and I don't believe in God, but can I talk to you about God?" You will not be able to carry on a conversation with that person because their first response is, "If I take you seriously, I'm out of a job." They believe, and they might be really sincere about this, that you're saying, "Please explain to me your doctrine." They feel that your uncertainty about the affair indicates that their conviction should be dominant. It's unfortunate, but this seems to me to be the situation. There is not going to be a dialogue that takes place because they think that your position is illegitimate.
That's what makes art really a secret. That's why art is a secret doctrine because art is really for people who are not hostile to other's beliefs and doctrines, who aren't out to prove that their doctrine is correct, that is to say, that don't need a doctrine to be correct. They want something to be true, certainly. But they have a sense that it's not the most important thing to be right about things.
Ed Sarkis lives in New York City.
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