Five Questions with Dr. Simon Thornton Art in the Age of COVID-19 ETHAN YU | Contributing Writer
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r. Simon Thornton is a postdoctoral scholar and lecturer in the Humanities and Social Change Center and religious studies department at UC Santa Barbara (UCSB). Last fall, he taught a course on Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger in relation to moral theory. He is currently teaching a class on the philosophy of art. He specializes in ethics and phenomenology and how the two can help us understand human powerlessness and finitude. In an interview with The Bottom Line conducted over email, Dr. Thornton answered a few questions about art in the age of a global pandemic through a philosophical lens. Responses have been lightly edited for clarity. 1. What are your current research projects/interests and how have they been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic? “Recently I have been studying the works of two (fairly) contemporary American philosophers, Johnathan Lear and Stanley Cavell. Both of these thinkers seek to question the power we typically accord to our human capacity for reflection (note that
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they have philosophers in mind in particular). It is natural to suppose that it is possible for us to, say, get our contemporary situation in perspective by ‘stepping back’ and rationally reflecting on it. In this connection, it is often thought that philosophy and the humanities in general are valuable because they can help us gain self-knowledge and find a more profound connection with the world and others. In short, philosophical reflection [provides] us with a clear-sighted view of ourselves, the world, and others. Lear and Cavell, however — each in their own way — challenge the extent to which reflection can afford us with a clear-sighted view of the facts of our situation. Rather, rational reflection can easily put in the service of non-rational ends; we have a tremendous capacity to unconsciously rationalize and justify beliefs and courses of action that sustain illusions we hold about ourselves, the world, and others. As Lear puts it, rational reflection can and often is “used as a defense, blocking the self-understanding it purports to deliver.” I think, generally speaking, that acknowledging the limits of ra-
tional reflection is more important now than ever. But in addition to this I would like to note, during this pandemic, I have witnessed instances of the apparent failure of deep humanistic learning to provide the therapeutic benefits it is often said to provide. I know people who have devoted years to understanding and embracing the facts of human finitude; although theoretically, they become as good as paralyzed in the face of the current crisis. I have been tempted to ask, what good is philosophical and humanistic reflection if it cannot afford us with genuine clarity and insight about ourselves and our situation? I would like to respond: the very raising of the question constitutes its own answer.” 2. “Art is truth setting itself to work,” said German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, in his essay, “On the Origin of the Work of Art." Do you have a certain work of art, book, movie, painting, etc., that you have been thinking about lately that reveals something about the present age? “Heidegger believes that great artworks can help establish and
reveal the implicit sense of reality, and the ethos through which a historical community understands itself and its world. Art, that is to say, has a creative function as much as it can work to set up a world of meaning … it also has a disclosive function … as it can “hold the age in thought.” In his essay, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” Heidegger appeals to the example of a Greek temple in order to illustrate this point. The temple sets up (or, at least, helps to set up) a cosmos (the totality and significance of human exigency): the temple houses the Olympian gods … and the temple also provides a ‘site’ or a focal point which discloses or renders intelligible the cycles of life and death within a community. For Heidegger, the way we experience art today differs markedly from the way he imagined the ancient Greeks experienced the temple. For a start, Heidegger believes modernity, in art and in life, to be much more focused on the individual subject than the ancient Greek world was. To this extent, Heidegger believes modernity to be comparatively impoverished. In this respect, Heidegger’s
views on art fall into broad agreement with those of another famous German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. In his first book, “The Birth of Tragedy,” Nietzsche celebrates ancient Greek tragedy, as represented in the work of Sophocles and Aeschylus, while lamenting the rise of what he sees as a technocratic and moralistic modernity. Modernity, on Nietzsche’s analysis, believes that the world can be accessed and known through reason, and it is optimistic; modern subjects believe that life is fair (if it is not, then it can be fixed) … it pays to be good and … doing the right thing will make you happy. But Nietzsche believes that these modern beliefs sustain a potentially disastrous illusion about the nature of human life. And he thinks that we must re-invent tragic drama in order to disabuse ourselves of this illusion. I believe that Nietzsche’s discussion of tragic drama is particularly relevant amidst the contemporary crisis. Mass unemployment, untimely death, isolation, and the many other terrible consequences of the [COVID-19] pandemic must challenge our sense that the world is (or could be) just. And the difficulties we
