On Art and Benefit

Over two centuries ago, Friedrich Schiller wrote the following in the Second Letter from his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man: “Utility is the great idol to which all powers pay homage, and which must be honoured by all talents. On this coarse scale, the spiritual merit of art has no weight; deprived of all encouragement, it disappears from the noisy circus of this century.” It seems as though the end of Romantic idealism had already arrived as soon as it had begun.

In the introduction to ‘The Human Condition’ of 1958, Hanna Ahrendt describes the revolution in the human condition brought about by the launch of the first human satellite a year earlier, the Sputnik 1; humanity could indeed start focusing on a life detached from the earth. Additionally, “for some time now, a great many scientific endeavors have been directed toward making life also ‘artificial’.” Ahrendt refers to things like test tube fertilization and manipulating human cells — at that time, these techniques were still in their infancy, but by now we know what is already possible and what will be possible in the not-too-distant future. She then talks about scientific ‘truths’, which, “though they can be demonstrated in mathematical formulas and proved technologically, will no longer lend themselves to normal expression in speech and thought.” And with this, a fundamental problem arises because language is essential for how we, as humans, relate to each other. Not only on a personal level, from one person to another, but also concerning humanity as a whole.

In the first chapter, she discusses the human activities she distinguishes: the ‘vita activa’: labouring (roughly: biologically determined activities), working (associated with ‘non-natural’ aspects of existence), and acting (activities that occur directly between people, detached from matter). Going back to the origin of the term, she reaches Aristotle, who distinguishes between different ways of life: one of them concerns the ‘vita activa’, in Greek ‘bios politikos’ (‘politikos’ is derived from ‘polis’, life in the city-state). With some flexibility in our thinking, we could translate this term as ‘benefit’; the life that provides us with the means of existence. Aristotle opposes this form of life to the ‘bios theoretikos’, in Latin: the ‘activa contemplativa’ or ‘reflection’. In that reflection, the ‘rest’ compared to the ‘unrest’ of the vita activa, lies our space for freedom.

That reflection is not only a private matter (one person compared to another) but above all a public matter (humanity as a whole). It carries a societal significance (which is not the same as ‘benefit’), and a society that understands and takes responsibility will assign this reflection its due value, i.e., providing the space and the means.

This reflection can take place on various levels, as in our ‘speaking and thinking’: in text, image, and sound (music); and thus in science, education, and art. Not understanding (or refusing to understand), and stating that societal resources should exclusively serve ‘benefit’, is the same as wanting to reduce life to ‘roof, water, and bread’: life in a prison.

— Cornelis de Bondt, 6 augustus 2020