Cultural Renewal

Restoring the Liberal and Fine Arts

Arthur Pontynen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781412854658
• eBook ISBN: 9781351524520
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Antropologia culturale e sociale

The decline of interest in the liberal and fine arts is widely lamented. At issue is why this decline happened and how we might restore qualitative standards by which to live. Arthur Pontynen argues that cultural decline is the consequence of a tragically anti-intellectual academic tradition—and its alternative is the cosmopolitan pursuit of wisdom and beauty.

Pontynen writes that the liberal and fine arts are justified by their attempt to understand the material realization of wisdom, of that which is true and good in reality and life. The current decline marks a denial that such qualitative aspirations are realistic. Instead of understanding art as the intellectual pursuit of ontological perfection, perfection is subjectified as willful preference or experience. Consequently, the liberal and fine arts have been displaced by a naturalistic social science and a relational existentialism. This reduction denies qualitive thoughts, words, and deeds.

Pontynen establishes that the arts are not obsolete, merely subjectivist, or limited to a brutal (de)constructivism. He argues for a renewed idealism that is neither reductionist, trivializing, or brutalized. Pontynen offers an alternative, global narrative that is both realistic and idealistic; one that permits us to distinguish between the trivial, the brutal, and the profound.

1

The Cultural Crisis

In West and East it was once commonly understood that in our personal, social, and professional lives we ought to be cultured. To be cultured is to evidence superior character, and key to attaining good character is education dedicated to the pursuit of wisdom. In the West the Classical/Judeo-Christian tradition uniformly confirms the importance of seeking knowledge of what is true and good in reality and life. In the East examinations in the Confucian classics were institutionalized in the Han dynasty (206 BC to AD 220) and continued until 1905. The cosmopolitan goal of wisdom-seeking education was to facilitate our becoming better persons (in China, to become wenren, or cultured people) in our private, social, and professional roles. It was viewed as essential to establishing a moral society in which humanity could flourish. Until recently, the major universities of the West had curricula that served the same purpose. The goal of education was to produce educated persons capable of governing themselves and others. The charter of Harvard University affirms this view of education, as does the seal of the University of Pennsylvania, which depicts the Liberal Arts—the trivium and quadrivium—accompanied by the motto Leges sine Moribus vanae (“Laws [or learning] without character are in vain”).¹

Until the nineteenth century, the majority of curricula in Europe, America, and China were primarily oriented toward Wisdom-seeking. Subsequently, this educational and social model was radically challenged in the West by the German research university model and the influence of Deweyan instrumentalist philosophy. In the early twentieth century this positivist and instrumentalist movement prevailed over the proponents of wisdom-seeking education.

Historically, the economic and social prerequisites to obtaining a wisdom-seeking education were prejudicially in favor of males, often those enjoying some degree of economic prosperity. In West and East candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds might become influential,² but the odds were often against them. Nonetheless, the traditional existence of wisdom-based curricula in West and East evidences a commitment to education that was neither merely technical, utilitarian, or socially elitist. It was widely recognized that whatever our social and economic situations, our personal intellectual, political or spiritual beliefs, to be educated was not enough unless that education involved a qualitative content. A substantively good education was acknowledged as essential to improving our state of being, whereas a false education would do great damage.

The perennial and cosmopolitan admonition is that cultured people ought to do what is genuinely right and good rather than what is merely expedient or profitable. They ought to treat others with dignity rather than as tools to be manipulated. The goal of education is not to provide instrumentalist techniques in the efficient pursuit of power or profit, but to make persons capable of responsibly managing themselves, other people, and technology.³ The educated and cultured were seen as better able to avoid not just ignorance but also folly, arrogance, and violence. They could grasp some degree of knowledge of reality and life not just as they are, but also as they ought to be. To be cultured is not just to know what is, but also to aspire to rise to Perfection in thought, word, and deed. It is to pursue a practical Idealism that permits us to be optimistically realistic. The educated and cultured rightly aspire to realize a qualitatively better knowing (science), doing (ethics), and making (art). There was then a cosmopolitan recognition that cultured people admirably contribute to the vital task of realizing civilized society. Uncultured people (including thuggish aristocrats or mandarins) were recognized as living qualitatively deficient lives and adversely affecting the lives of those around them.

At the turn of the nineteenth century two historically innovative attempts to democratize culture flourished: by denying entirely a qualitative understanding of culture, or by making it a possibility for all. As discussed below, the denial of a qualitative understanding of reality and life is characteristic of the Modernist-postmodernist cultural trajectory. That tradition tragically concludes in the trivialization and bureaucratization of society. Alternatively, the democratization of culture is central to traditional American society, is found significantly in Confucian societies, and was being pursued by various societies in transition from being class-oriented.

Democratized or not, it is the pursuit of qualitative thought, word, and deed that permits us to rise above personal or group preference, identity, or advantage. Consequently, cultured people are traditionally lauded for basing their personal and social relationships on the conscientious realization of lofty principles. As an act of responsible freedom, as an act of refined character, cultured persons would strive to materially realize a laudable qualitative condition. They would strive to escape ignorance, folly, and violence by the idealistic goal of realizing degrees of ontological Perfection.

Such character-building ideals are obtained not just by science and reason (which can be variously understood)⁴ but instead by science and reason operating within the context of the Ideal. With the help of philosophy or religion the quality of our thoughts, words, and deeds is nurtured by the Liberal Arts and objectified via the Fine Arts. In particular, the Liberal and Fine Arts are recognized as essential to the substantive improvement of our character and of our personal and social condition.

The pursuit of wisdom is necessary to the pursuit of principled behavior. Nonetheless, it is also clear that when wisdom-seeking traditions become ideological and ossified, they become oppressive. We will refer to that situation as ontological scholasticism. But are all wisdom claims oppressive (for example, as Michel Foucault claims)? Indeed, how liberating is the empirical scholasticism so prominent today? The following pages will establish that the pursuit of an instrumentalist or immanentized perfectionism (based on race, gender, economic class, or sheer individualism) constitutes a different type of oppressive ideology. It is the failure of the Postmodernist pursuit of an instrumentalist or immanentized perfectionism that is the critical factor in the current collapse of the Liberal and Fine Arts, and of a life-enhancing humanism.

As discussed below, numerous studies from a variety of intellectual and political perspectives lament the decline of interest in education not leading to specific professions or to obtaining marketable skills. Now suspect is the idea that education has intrinsic value, that the improvement of the mind realistically leads to a qualitative improvement in the condition of our lives, of our state of being. Fields of study perceived as clearly leading to employment are favored (be they in science, business, medicine, law, or commercial art, etc.,) but those dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge leading to a qualitatively better existence are deemed suspect. We are now encouraged to seek factual scientific knowledge while being socially tolerant or pursuing practical or authentic lifestyles. But neither facts nor feelings admit to qualitative distinctions in what we know and do. The substantive linkage of knowledge and culture (as more than sociological or existential facts and feelings) is denied. But as knowledge is denied a qualitative content, knowledge dangerously becomes unintelligible—yet instrumental.

Our understanding of reality and life is thus limited to facts and instrumental or relational power. There is then a corresponding decline of influence and interest in the humanities, and in the Liberal and Fine Arts. The difficulty is that as the Liberal and Fine Arts are shunted aside, the corresponding denial of qualitative knowledge and action appears irrelevant. What desperately needs remedy sadly becomes invisible to our consciousness and dangerously lacks urgency.

Enrollment trends present clear evidence that the Liberal and Fine Arts are commonly deemed nonessential to the quality of our personal, social, and professional lives. Is college education rightly the critical pursuit and implementation not just of vocational skills, or of relational feelings and power, but also of realistic, objective ideals by which to live nobly? Can and should we attend concerts, or visit museums, with a profound determination to obtain glimpses of that which is qualitatively meaningful in reality and life? Even if we are so inclined, do many institutions, even those ostensibly dedicated to the Liberal and Fine Arts, actually remain dedicated to the realization of a principled, qualitatively better way of living? How many employers today seek to hire the cultured rather than those adept at manipulation of factual and emotion-based data?

Qualitative knowledge of reality and life constitutes wisdom, and wisdom-seeking societies around the world characteristically value-at least in principle—the cultured candidate over the manipulative and willful. However hypocritical or flawed those societies might have been, they still maintain that being cultured is necessary to the advancement of civil social, economic, political, and intellectual institutions. It is understood that being governed by thugs has terrible consequences; to have a qualitative society, persons evidencing a qualitative condition ought to be influential. That qualitative condition is not merely ornamental, emotional, or self-aggrandizing. It is recognized as more than the trivial—or determined—realization of a lifestyle. It is concerned with more than having tolerant relationships with those around us, and more than achieving authenticity as a matter of race, gender, economic class, or individual willfulness. It centers on an actual conditional improvement in our thoughts, words, and deeds. Cultured people in all walks of life freely and realistically aspire to pursuing civilized activities in a civilized fashion. As such, required is the humility and integrity to put aside personal or group preferences, identity, or advantage, to publically recognize and strive to realize the genuinely good.

To this view, culture as lifestyle (even if informed by a Kantian deontological morality) is trivial, and culture grounded in the empirical facts of existence is brutal—indeed, anti-cultural. Being cultured is not just relational; it is also principled. The desire to have a good life and good relationships is coupled with the intellectual means of discerning what is genuinely good. The good life is not simply a matter of achieving material well-being, or of self-expression and self-realization. It cannot be a matter of feeling good about ourselves as a matter of preference or identity, or feeling good about our relationships with those with whom we associate. Rather, being cultured is recognized as the realization of a qualitatively better state of being. It is to individually and socially do what civilized human beings ought to do. To do what is right and good is then not simply a matter of opinion or taste, or of trying to be tolerant or nice. Nor is it a matter of willful intention or authenticity. It involves a qualitative improvement in our character, and in the character of our intellectual, economic, and political institutions.

Consequently, cultured people are not just different; they are understood to be better than uncultured people. They are not better as a matter of race, gender or economic class, or as a matter of their ability to willfully be true to themselves. Nor are they better in terms of intelligence, ambition, or power, since the three can combine with dreadful effect. Their level of education may or may not be a factor, since we can be educated to believe nonsense and to act accordingly. To be cultured is to actually enjoy a qualitatively better condition. Our character, as the unity of principle and action, to some degree evidences a material realization of Truth and Goodness.

The Practicalities of Culture

All activities entail means and ends, and it is the nature of those ends that determines the quality of that which we know and do. What happens to those qualitative distinctions when those ends are factual and relational? We have discussed how the Liberal and Fine Arts are denied significance by the absence of intelligible Perfection. This denial has practical consequences in daily life. Those working as laborers, in trades, or as professionals may know what is technically required of them, but if the purpose of those activities is merely factual and relational, then they lack the knowledge and commitment necessary to be cultured. Some might be instrumentally effective in completing their tasks; others might be effective as skillful technicians in engineering, jurisprudence, medicine, or education. But if uncultured, they have little or no conscious commitment to distinguish substantively good tasks from bad, or how to civilly pursue them. They might try simply to proceed by being nice, but lacking conscious understanding of what is genuinely nice, their prospects for success are unlikely. Regardless of temperament or intention, uncultured people in all walks of life wreak havoc on themselves and others. Colleagues, employers, employees, or the public are treated crudely, ineffectually, or with manipulative contempt.

In contrast, by definition cultured people aspire to act according to principle. Shared aspiration, rather than instrumental efficiency or dominance, becomes primary. That which is made and done refers to a rational and practical pursuit of Perfection. As discussed below, that pursuit ensures that human dignity is respected. To the current point, being cultured is beyond temperament, instrumental efficiency, or coercion. It consists of being dedicated to the realization of a qualitatively excellent personal, professional, and social life. It is to rise above the foolish, mundane, or corrupt, to the realm of responsible freedom. It recognizes that the freedom to be foolish denies practical freedom, and the freedom to coerce denies social freedom and human dignity. Rather, freedom is realized as the practical and social attempt to engage in qualitatively better actions via conscious choice. Cultured people attempt to realize some degree of wisdom and beauty. To be cultured is to freely seek to do what is right and good, rather than just what we want. Grounded in qualitative knowledge, we aspire to an optimistic realism and idealism.

It is critical to note that acting according to principle is different from acting tolerantly or authentically. It is to strive to do what is right and good despite popularity or inclination. Wisdom-seeking traditions affirm that principled behavior is key to being cultured. Kantian Modernism attempts to defend this position, which Postmodernism summarily rejects. It is not just odd, but dangerous, that such aspirations are now widely neglected, ridiculed, or even deemed offensive (as discussed below). They are treated this way not merely because some now hold philosophy and religion to be antiquated. Nor are they viewed as such because all people have consciously abandoned a concern for being cultured. They are neglected, ridiculed, or denied because they affirm a qualitative understanding of reality and life.

The acquisition of knowledge is the task of science, and we live now in an era in which science is presumed to consist of the pursuit of facts. A fact is an accurate description of things or events, and as such is quantitative rather than qualitative. Consequently, knowledge is presumed to be quantitative rather than qualitative. We can discern distinctions between facts and nonfacts and judge the probability of various data being accurate. But the idea of qualitative differences between facts makes no sense. The dilemma, then, is how to distinguish civilized behavior from the barbaric in the context of factual knowledge. If human behavior refers to that which we factually are and do, then we concern ourselves not only with quantifiable necessity (e.g., food, shelter, and safety) but also with subjective preferences (e.g., what types of food, shelter, and safety can and should be sought, and by what means). Preferences evidence choice, and choice relies upon conscious deliberation of the value of things, needs, and deeds. But if human behavior is understood as factual and relational, then qualitative conscious choice becomes problematic. We fluctuate between genetic and social determinism, while drifting within a sea of data and desire.

We can often attain accurate facts about physics, biology, and sociology, but understanding involves putting those facts together into an explanatory narrative. If we do not engage in an analysis of the veracity of both facts and interpretation, then knowledge is reduced to mere contending data (or hypothetical imperatives). As later explained, facts are accurate descriptions, whereas Truth is objective Perfection, recognized and realized. The pursuit of Truth is the attempt to rise above defective and violent thoughts, words, and deeds. It seeks to realize greater degrees of Perfection. But when Perfection is relationalized, it is reduced to perfections in a v...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 The Cultural Crisis
• 2 Culture, Relationalism, and Idealism
• 3 Culture, Biology, and Sociology
• 4 Culture and Technology
• 5 Nature, Science, and Culture
• 6 Sustainability and Culture
• 7 Hedonistic Ecologism: From Theodicy to Homodicy
• 8 Relationalism, Aestheticism, and Scientistic Racism
• 9 The Aesthetic Crisis in the Liberal and Fine Arts
• 10 Cultural Quality and the Renewal of the Liberal and Fine Arts
• 11 Anselm or Abelard: The Historical (Re)Turning Point
• 12 Perennial or Progressive Art History
• 13 Analogical or Existential Culture: A Case Study in Art History
• 14 Culture and the Meaning and Quality of Life
• Bibliography
• Index