Critical theory, the critique of Israel, and capitalism

 [This text expands of the previous blog post and was used for the "teach-in" at Gazaplatsen, the student encampment in front of the main building of the University of Gothenburg, May 22]

Critical theory, the critique of Israel, and capitalism

Carl Cassegård

 

Intro

The horror continues in Gaza. Israel has started its invasion of Rafah. It is telling inhabitants to evacuate, but where should they go? 

I think of Herbert Marcuse, who wrote in 1969, at the time of the Vietnam War: “We know […] that the situation is not a revolutionary one […]. But this same situation is so terrible, so suffocating and demeaning, that rebellion against it forces a biological, physiological reaction: one can bear it no longer, one is suffocating and one has to let some air in” (Marcuse 1999: 123)

When the encampments started at Swedish universities, I felt happy. Not for the Palestinians, who are still suffering. But for the students and for everyone else participating in the action. Because whenever people choose to act in accordance with their conscience against what they’re allowed to do, they’re exercising something magnificent: their power of judgment. Seeing that makes me happy, because that ability proves that people can be more than cogwheels.

Today I want to speak of Frankfurt School critical theory and the accusation of antisemitism that is so easily hurled against anyone criticizing Israel or taking a pro Palestine stance. I will show why, from a Frankfurt School position, it is wrong to equate the criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.

 

What do we criticize when we criticize Israel?

I will start with this: Protests are often seen as self-righteous. But when we criticize Israel, it is not only Israel that we criticize, but something larger in which the entire present world order is implicated. What Western powers have done through colonialism is both terribly similar to and a historical precondition for what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. We know that lord Palmerston laid out the outline of the policy according to which an increased Jewish population in Palestine should be encouraged because it would be in the interests of the British empire. What we are seeing in Gaza is a result of this empire-building logic, which persists today and which explains why the US and other Western powers refuse to give up their support for Israel.

There is also another way in which the West is complicit in the genocide. When people in the West shy away from criticizing Israel, they do so in part to maintain their good conscience: they do not want to be associated with the anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust. That motive is honourable. But today the Palestinians are paying the price for this good conscience, which has therefore become something both immoral and shameful.

 

The categorical imperative

But what are the moral implications of the Holocaust, according to Frankfurt School thinkers?

Here is a quote. In Negative Dialectics, Theodor W. Adorno writes: “A new categorical imperative has been imposed by Hitler upon unfree mankind: to arrange their thoughts and actions so that Auschwitz will not repeat itself, so that nothing similar will happen.” (Adorno 1973: 365)

Similarly, in the essay “Education after Auschwitz” he states: “The premier demand upon all education is that Auschwitz not happen again…Every debate about the ideals of education is trivial and inconsequential compared to this single ideal: never again Auschwitz” (Adorno 2005: 191).

What does this mean? It points to the centrality of Auschwitz: a historical trauma so overwhelming that nothing so far in history can compare with it. It is such a trauma not only to the victims of the holocaust, but also to the European culture and society that produced the catastrophe. Understandably, its uniqueness has been affirmed in repeated debates in Germany and elsewhere, along with a firm commitment that it should never be relativized.

Today this is leading to grotesque outcomes – especially in Germany, where writers, academics and artists (several of them Jewish and belonging to the tradition of critical theory) like Nancy Fraser, Judith Butler, Masha Gessen, Candice Breitz, Adania Shibli and Laurie Anderson have all been censored for their critique of Israel, losing guest professorships or having public events cancelled.

If Israel cannot be criticized under any circumstances, then the country is given a carte blanche to commit any atrocity whatsoever. Where are all the German moral philosophers? It is understandable that Germans feel guilt about their Nazi past, but why should the Palestinians pay the price of their bad conscience?

But we are not just talking about Germany!  In the US, the congress passed a resolution last month banning the slogan “From the river to the sea”, which originated as a slogan by leftist Palestinian nationalists calling for a democratic secular state in the territory of historic Palestine, as anti-Semitic. The White House declared the term “intifada” to be “hate speech”. These resolutions and declarations now form part of the arsenal used to repress students at US campuses (Zunes 2024).  In Sweden, recall the debate around Israel's participation in the Eurovision Song Contest.

 

Never again

It is important to point out that Adorno’s “never again” cannot be used to stress the uniqueness of Auschwitz. On the contrary, the imperative is important precisely because genocide has become a horrifying normality.

In the essay on education, Adorno stresses that the social conditions that produced Auschwitz have mostly remained unchanged. Genocide is not an exception, but rooted in structural conditions: “barbarism continues as long as the fundamental conditions that favored [it] continue largely unchanged. That is the whole horror” (Adorno 2005: 191).

This links up with major themes of his writings – above all the Dialectic of Enlightenment (the entwinement of enlightenment and myth) and the idea of permanent catastrophe rooted in class conflict and the profit motive. Catastrophe is not a future threat that can still be averted, but our present capitalist reality. This idea is inspired by Walter Benjamin: “That things are ‘status quo’ is the catastrophe. It is not an ever-present possibility but what in each case is given.” (Benjamin 1999: 473).

To Adorno, Auschwitz was a symbol for this permanent catastrophe, not a unique occurrence. He universalized its implications by claiming that it formed “a hellish unity” with the atom bomb, American war atrocities in Vietnam, and “torture as a permanent institution” (Adorno 2000: 104). Elsewhere, he also mentions the genocide of the Armenians, European colonialism in Africa, and Cold War anti-communism as part of this catastrophic unity.

The idea that we live in a still ongoing catastrophe is important since it shows that his “imperative” to prevent a repetition of Auschwitz is not conservative. It is not a matter of protected the status quo, which is already catastrophic. On the contrary, the only way to prevent catastrophe is to abolish the status quo, to fundamentally alter the existing state of society.

I think it’s important to point out that Adorno’s imperative cannot be used to justify a carte blanche of the kind mentioned above. On the contrary, for it to have any meaning, it should force us all - regardless of whether we are Germans, Jews or any other nationality - to constantly scrutinize the world and our actions so as to intervene against suffering and catastrophes. As he points out, the imperative not to repeat Auschwitz presupposes that a recurrence is possible. It can therefore not be based on the idea that Auschwitz is wholly, absolutely unique (for a good clarification of this point, see Catlin 2023). Indeed, the idea of such uniqueness would relegate the horror to the past and deflect criticism from our present society.

Criticizing Israel is part of the work needed to halt the permanent catastrophe engulfing capitalist society. It is neither a matter of anti-Semitism nor of self-righteously pointing the finger at another country, but aims at abolishing the system that makes genocide possible. No more Auschwitz means: no more genocide anywhere.

To return to the encampments: what we commit to do here is also something that will determine our commitments in regard to other states than Israel. I support an academic boycott, but not only against Israel. The boycott should be against any country, now or in the future, that commits atrocities or war-crimes or violates fundamental human rights. We must have the courage to demand that.

Marcuse said in 1969 that the situation was not revolutionary. The same is regrettably true today. If anything, it is counter-revolutionary, a time of reaction. But revolt and protest don’t need to rely on the idea of progress, on riding with the wave of history. John Holloway writes: “We struggle not because we think we will win, but because we cannot accept that which exists” (Holloway 2022: 17). As Benjamin said: revolution is not riding with the train of progress but pulling the emergency brake.

 

References

Adorno, Theodor W. (1973) Negative Dialectics, London: Routledge & Kegal Paul.

Adorno, Theodor W. (2000) Metaphysics: Concept and Problems (ed. Rolf Tiedeman), Cambridge: Polity.

Adorno, Theodor W. (2005) Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords, New York: Columbia University Press.

Benjamin, Walter (1999) The Arcades Project, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Catlin, Jonathon (2023) “Antisemitism and racism ‘after Auschwitz’: Adorno on the ‘hellish unity’ of ‘permanent catastrophe’”, pp. 203-230, in Marcel Stoetzler (ed.) Critical Theory and the Critique of Antisemitism, London: Bloomsbury. 

Holloway, John (2022) Hope in Hopeless Times, London: Pluto Press.

Marcuse, Herbert (1999) Letter to Theodor W. Adorno 5 April 1969, in Theodor W. Adorno & Herbert Marcuse, “Correspondence on the German Student Movement”, New Left Review I/233 (January/February): 118-136.

Zunes, Stephen (2024) “The Chilling Effect of Equating Criticism of Israel to Antisemitism”, The Progressive Magazine, May 18.

Gaza, encampments, and capitalism

This morning, when I read the news about the encampments at Swedish universities, I felt happy. Not necessarily for the Palestinians, who are still suffering unspeakably, but for the students and for everyone else participating in the action. Because whenever people choose to act in accordance with their conscience against what they’re allowed to do, they’re exercising something magnificent: their freedom and their power of judgment. And seeing that makes me happy, because that’s an ability that proves that people can be more than cogwheels.

I also thought of Herbert Marcuse, who wrote in 1969, at the time of the Vietnam War: “We know […] that the situation is not a revolutionary one […]. But this same situation is so terrible, so suffocating and demeaning, that rebellion against it forces a biological, physiological reaction: one can bear it no longer, one is suffocating and one has to let some air in” (Marcuse 1999: 123)

I also think about the fact that it is not only Israel that should be ashamed. The stereotype of people who protest is that they are self-righteous. But when we criticize Israel, it is not only Israel that we criticize, but something much larger in which the entire Western world and the present world order are implicated. What the West has done through colonialism is both terribly similar to and a historical precondition for what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. We know that lord Palmerston laid out the outline of the policy according to which an increased Jewish population in Palestine should be encouraged because it would be in the interests of the British empire.* What we are seeing in Gaza is a result of this empire-building logic, which still exists today and which makes the United States and other Western powers refuse to give up their support for Israel.

There is also another way in which the West is complicit in the genocide. When we in the West today shy away from criticizing Israel, we do so in part to maintain our good conscience: we do not want to be associated with the anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust. That motive is honourable. But today the Palestinians are paying the price for this good conscience, which has therefore become something both immoral and shameful. Criticizing Israel is not the same as anti-Semitism. To claim so risks becoming a carte blanche for the country to commit any atrocity whatsoever. 

In Negative Dialectics, Theodor W. Adorno writes  that Hitler has imposed a new “categorical imperative” on mankind, namely to prevent a repetition of Auschwitz (Adorno 1973: 365). I think it's important to point out that this imperative cannot be used to justify a carte blanche of the kind mentioned above. On the contrary, for it to have any meaning, it should force us all - regardless of whether we are Germans, Jews or any other nationality - to constantly scrutinize our actions so as to prevent or stop suffering. The imperative not to repeat presuupposes that a recurrence is possible, and can therefore not be based on the idea that Auschwitz is absolutely unique.** Indeed, the idea of such uniqueness would relegate the horror to the past and deflect criticism from our present society. Precisely in order to prevent a recurrence, it is essential to view it as part of the “permanent catastrophe” fuelled by the capitalist system that has become dominant in the modern world. Criticizing Israel is therefore neither a matter of anti-Semitism nor of self-righteously pointing the finger at another country, but part of a critique that aims at abolishing the system that makes genocide possible. 

[Picture taken from ETC]

* See the historical sections of Andreas Malm's essay in Verso Blog. For a response on the conclusions Malm draws from his historical analysis, see Matan Kaminer.

** For a good clarification of this point, see Catlin (2023). 

References

Adorno, Theodor W. (1973) Negative Dialectics (tr. by E. B. Ashton), London: Routledge & Kegal Paul.

Catlin, Jonathon (2023) “Antisemitism and racism ‘after Auschwitz’: Adorno on the ‘hellish unity’ of ‘permanent catastrophe’”, pp. 203-230, in Marcel Stoetzler (ed.) Critical Theory and the Critique of Antisemitism, London: Bloomsbury. 

Kaminer, Matan (2024) "After the Flood: A response to Andreas Malm", Verso Blog, 10 May 2024; https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/on-palestinian-resistance-and-global-solidarity

Malm, Andreas (2024) “The Destruction of Palestine Is the Destruction of the Earth”, Verso blog, 8 April 2024; https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/the-destruction-of-palestine-is-the-destruction-of-the-earth.

Marcuse, Herbert (1999) Letter to Theodor W. Adorno 5 April 1969, in Theodor W. Adorno & Herbert Marcuse, “Correspondence on the German Student Movement”, New Left Review I/233 (January/February): 118-136.

Is the Communist Manifesto a Promethean text?

The Communist Manifesto is often seen as a locus classicus of Marxist Prometheanism. Its opening sections on the bourgeoisie and its capacity to revolutionize the world – accomplishing “wonders far surpassing the Egyptian pyramids” – are usually understood as a enthusiastic paean to the release of humanity’s productive capacities. It goes without saying that this reading of the text fits well with the customary celebration of the development of the productive forces in later, orthodox Marxism – a celebration resting on trust, central to so-called historical materialism, in the progress of technology as a motor of history. It is, however, possible to detect a certain ambiguity in the manifesto, and a case could be made for exercising some caution before equating the undeniable productivist enthusiasm that colours the section on the bourgeoisie with the trust in productive forces characteristic of orthodox Marxism. Consider, for instance, the following lines from the manifesto:

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?  

Commentators like to remark that Marx and Engels here unwittingly seem to express admiration for the bourgeoisie. Yet for all their magnificence one wonders if these lines really amount to a celebration of either the bourgeoisie or the productive forces. Isn’t the bourgeoisie rather portrayed as a demoniacal, hellish force, impressive in the same way that Satan is impressive? Marshall Berman (in All That Is Solid Melts into Air) catches this demoniacal side of the manifesto’s portrayal of the bourgeoisie when he compares it to Faust, the prototypical modernist who can only remake the world with the help of Mephisto. The relentless whirl of destruction and creation that capitalism sets in motion would then not so much be a feat to be repeated and emulated by socialism, as a bewitching spectacle of an unfolding catastrophe – something akin to what happens in Goethes’ poem about the sorcerer’s apprentice who is unable to control the powers that he has unleashed (“Die ich rief, die Geister, / Werd’ ich nun nicht los”). Just a few lines below the quoted passage, Marx and Engels in fact explicitly refer to this poem when they write that bourgeois society, which “has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells”.

To be sure, there are other passages in the manifesto that counterbalance the impression that the forces of production are demonical and not to be trusted. It seems quite clear that while Marx and Engels deem the bourgeoisie unable to control these forces rationally, they are quite optimistic about the prospects of mastering these forces rationally in a socialist society. It is significant, however, that only two very brief sentences can be found in the entire manifesto that clearly celebrate the productive forces as something that the proletariat too, after its victory, should promote (they thus write that once the proletariat has become the ruling class, it will “increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible”, specifying on the next page that this involves extending factories, cultivating waste-lands, and improving soil). Furthermore, one should note that even as they make these pronouncements, they never portray the proletariat as compulsively obliged to follow such a course. While “[t]he bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production”, the proletariat may choose to do so freely but unlike the bourgeoisie it is never forced to do so by any heteronomous logic or lawlikeness in society. It is thus only in a very qualified sense that the manifesto can be read as “prometheusian”. In view of its ambiguities, a more reasonable interpretation might instead be that Marx and Engels caution against an uncontrolled release of these forces and call for a society capable of their rational mastery.

With these remarks, my aim is not to deny the enthusiasm or even fascination that colours the manifesto’s portrayal of the bourgeoisie’s transformative powers. But I do question whether this enthusiasm is really based on an embrace of the productive forces per se. Marx and Engels are in fact quite open about the existence of another, quite different source of their glee, namely the fact that the “everlasting uncertainty” and “constant disruption of all social relations” would be so destructive of religious and other traditional beliefs that people would finally be forced to “face with sober senses the real conditions of their lives”. In other words, what appears to be praise of the productive forces may very well be better understood as praise of their disruptive power, of the shock they deal to traditional culture, which awakens the mind and dispels religious and ideological haze.

It was for this reason that Walter Benjamin too would later celebrate modern technology – namely because of the shock effect of modern techniques of reproduction, of photography, and glass architecture, and its power to bring about an “awakening from the nineteenth century”. As the example of Benjamin shows, celebrating technology for its shock effect is not at all the same thing as endorsing its continuous growth or any idea of continuous “progress” resting on the development of the productive forces. On the contrary, that idea of such growth or progress was always anathema to Benjamin. Appreciating the shock effect of technology is thus quite compatible with rejecting productivism or Prometheanism.

The manifesto, then, points in two directions. Apart from the passages that anticipate the glorification of productive capacity typical of later orthodox Marxism, there are also passages that, in my reading, make more sense as a paean to the shock-effect and that emphasize the demonic rather than the beneficial side of technology. Whereas the former passages affirm the domination over nature by means of technology, the latter seem rather to stress the need for a rational mastery, or taming, of technology itself - a mastery that the bourgeoisie is incapable of but which the proletariat might accomplish. In Benjamin’s words, such rational mastery would not be over nature per se, but rather over the relation to nature. Crucially, such mastery is not necessarily productivist or Promethean, but can equally well take the form of abstaining from exploiting nature: rather than increasing our reliance on technological progress, it might try to decrease it. Rather than promoting growth, it might aim for degrowth, or, in other words, for an economy that would be free from the compulsive acceleration and accumulation typical of capitalism.

Goethe'z Zauberlehrling, by Erich Schütz

Roadside picnic and not being able to think

The Strugatsky brothers' Roadside Picnic (Orion House, 2012) is very good. This is an early example of a sci-fi novel in the postapocalyptic mood. The scientists helplessly try to understand an alien technology, but it remains a riddle. A mood of resignation sets in. The zone around the mysterious object is shunned and quaranteened. Left as a landscape of poisonous ruins, dangers, death. Stalkers gather the stuff illegally. 

Reading the final scene I had the sensation of reading something quite new, something rarely expressed in literature. What was it? It's not about the religious language, which is commonplace. It has to do with the protagonist, Red, and the sudden inability to think which he experiences. To start with, I think its clear that he embodies an experience and a longing that is easy to recognize for anyone who's been to elementary school, in particular in a class where many have a working class background. I am reminded of the "lads" in Paul Willis' Learning to Labour, whose very rebelliousness gets them stuck in low-wage jobs or unemployment. Red is similar: stuck in unfavorable structural conditions and constantly chased by moralizers and the police. He is tough, violent and courageous but at the same time a humiliated underdog – just listen to this passage

But how do I stop being a stalker when I have a family to feed? Get a ob? And I don’t want to work for you, your work makes me want to puke, you understand? If a man has a job, then he’s always working for someone else, he’s a slave, nothing more… (p. 192).

One of his primary experiences is that of constant humiliation. He is forced to pretend, bend and bow, try to say pleasing things to people in authority, humiliated by life, by bad luck, by being "born as riffraff." His forays into the zone has thrown his family life into disarray: his daughter Monkey is a mutant and his undead father has risen from the grave to live in his apartment. He spends time in prison, drinks heavily and often uses violence (but only against other men). But he is not broken: he has his toughness, his hatred and his will to get even, and above all he has moments of generosity, compassion and courage - even though he berates himself for those moments. Despite knowing how dangerous it is to be kind in a hard, unfair and ungrateful world, he instinctively helps people around him, like Kirill and even the undeserving Gutalin. He's "good," as his friend Noonan says. 

Near the end, when he and Arthur, after hellish hardships, aching and death-weary, arrive at their goal — the golden sphere in the zone that is said to to fulfill one's innermost desires — he is confronted for the first time with the need to think, and discovers that he cannot. He cannot think in the sense of really finding the right words for what needs to be done and that need to be said. I recognized myself in it. That was well described. Before his eyes, the young Arthur has just died, after foolishly running towards the sphere while jubilantly shouting: "Happiness for everyone! Free!"

Well, that’s done, he thought unwillingly. The road is open. He could even go right now, but it’d be better, of course, to wait a little longer…. In any case, I need to think. I’m not used to thinking – that’s the thing. What does it mean – “to think”? “To think” means to outwit, dupe, pull a con, but non of these are any use here…

All right. The Monkey, Father… Let them pay for everything, may those bastards suffer, let them eat shit like I did… No, that’s all wrong, Red. That is, it’s right, of course, but what does it actually mean? What do I need? These are curses, not thoughts. He was chilled by some terrible premonition and, instantly skipping the many arguments still lying ahead, ordered himself ferociously: Look here, you redheaded asshole, you aren’t going to leave this place until you figure it out, you’ll keel over next to this ball, you’ll burn, you’ll rot, bastard, but you aren’t going anywhere.

My Lord, where are my words, where are my thoughts? He hit himself hard in the face with a half-open fist. My whole life I haven’t had a single thought! (p191)

Yet, ever the tough guy, he drags himself towards the sphere, dizzy and sweaty, as his thoughts go into overdrive.

And he was no longer trying to think. He just kept repeating to himself in despair, like a prayer, “I’m an animal, you can see that I’m an animal. I have no words, they haven’t taught me the words; I don’t know how to think, those bastards didn’t let me learn how to think. But if you really are – all powerful, all knowing, all understanding – figure it out! Look into my soul, I know – everything you need is in there. It has to be. Because I’ve never sold my soul to anyone! It’s mine, it’s human! Figure out yourself what I want – because I know it can’t be bad! The hell with it all, I just can’t think of a thing other thant those words of his – HAPPINESS, FREE, FOR EVERYONE, AND LET NO ONE BE FORGOTTEN!” (p. 193)

And what exactly is thinking if not this?

So what - whose - predicament is being addressed here? The working classes? Not only them. The book is science fiction, but not of the "hard" kind. There is no trust in progress here, no naive belief in humanity's mission to conquer the stars. Humanity as such is humiliated. Hence the title, the "roadside picnic". Whatever arrived didn't even bother to try to make contact, didn't perhaps even notice human civlization. It left its refuse behind, just like picnicers leave their dirty garbage behind on the roadside, for insects and other lifeforms to explore. So in a sense, a more general audience is intended here. The mass of humlliated people? And today, in view of the dead end of our industrial civilization, maybe that is us. 

Moshe Dayan and Girard

This is an extraordinary document. I am reminded of René Girard’s argument that culture is founded on a denial of mimetic, fratricidal violence that perpetuates the violence. The opening words are important. Moshe Dayan says: “Let us not hurl blame at the murderers. Why should we complain of their hatred for us? Eight years have they sat in the refugee camps of Gaza, and seen, with their own eyes, how we have made a homeland of the soil and the villages where they and their forebears once dwelt”. That was written in 1956. Since then, not eight, but 76 years have passed. Dayan’s acknowledgment that the Palestinians are right to hate seems as true today as it was then. 

But then, the speech goes on to argue that precisely for that reason – precisely for the reason that the Palestinians are so justified to hate – Israel must never ever be lulled into thinking that peace is possible with them. The surging sea of hatred behind the walls, he writes, means that “without the steel helmet and the maw of the cannon we shall not plant a tree, nor build a house.” The speech turns into a grim paean for “the barbed wire fence and the machine gun”, and the ones to blame, he suggests, are not the Palestinians so much as “the ambassadors of conspiring hypocrisy, who call for us to lay down our arms”. 

Why is this document so extraordinary? Not just because it is a “defining speech of Zionism”, as the commentator points out, but because it is so totally bereft of any moral justification of the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. The reference to “millions of Jews, murdered without a land” certainly justifies Jewish hatred of Germans and Europeans, but hardly of Arabs. And the reference to “children” who “shall not have lives to live if we do not dig shelters” of course immediately invites the objection: how about Palestinian children? 

So what the speech amounts to is an asounding self-acknowledged barbarism: a grim affirmation of unceasing, ruthless struggle, despite the knowledge that the victims are in the right. It does away with denial, but not with violence. What Israel must do, it suggests, is to face the violence on which the state is founded and affirm it, despite its horror and its immorality. I can’t help thinking, while reading it, that Dayan must have realized how repulsive his own stance was, as well as the stance of Israel.

The antinomy of hope

Just some thoughts here about Rebecca Solnit's article. It made me think of Kant, in whose writings the disconnect between freedom and the empirical world is mirrored in a similar disconnect between hope and the empirical world. To both him and Solnit, hope is obligatory in whatever circumstances: it is never too late.

The paradox is that, to inspire hope, we must always think that it is not too late to act. But empirically, it is self-evident that things can be lost that one had hoped to keep and preserve. And not only material things, but also living beings, relations, and ways of life. So situations where it is “too late” can certainly exist.

Against Benjamin’s idea that redemption must include the dead, Horkheimer replied that the dead are dead.

The disconnect is stubborn: it is true that it is never too late – in whatever circumstances, there will always be meaningful things to do, small actions that can make a difference, if not saving the world then at least make things a little less bad. But it is equally true that we often experience that it is too late. The disconnect has emotional consequences: shock, grief, traumatization, depression.

Even when the earth turns into a wasteland – Beckett’s rubbish heap – it will not be too late. This is the vindication of the Panglossian hope ridiculed by Voltaire. Even if we do not claim that the world is the best of all possible ones despite all catastrophes, we are obliged to think that things can always improve, regardless of how bad they are. We end up in Solnit’s: “I respect despair as an emotion, but not as an analysis”.

But at the same time, such an attitude is both cruel and cynical, especially in view of those who mourn what has been lost. Those insisting on hope – like Kant or Solnit – can easily appear unfeeling.

Can the paradox be overcome? No side is right: we are confronted with an incompatibility, or antinomy.

To hope is fine, but this must be a hope that proceeds through despair and through a loss of hope, a “hope beyond hope”. A hope that can bud even in the rubbish heap.

The problem with Kant and Solnit is that they never allow for giving up hope. For hope to be meaningful, it must be disappointable, as Bloch writes. Only a hope that can be lost is respectful of what people hold dear.

A sensitive creature: On thinking

My thinking, when its fruitful and rich, seems to run on two tracks. Apart from the conscious thoughts, which are like a kind of flotsam, there is an underground current. The latter is not thought in the sense of being conscious, but it is mind working. I feel it as something dark and moving, something that is active although it is opaque. It’s like when you’re on a boat: you can only feel the sea indirectly, but you know that it’s powerful. Now here comes the important thing: you must acknowledge and respect the movements of this sea and enhance your sensitivity to it! Conscious thoughts on their own are seldom interesting. They’re like a melody without accompaniment; a melody that is banal and sterile on its own. The unconscious current that carries them, by contrast, is always productive, pregnant with things that you feel, in time, will appear in the form of splendid conscious ideas. It is this feeling of something taking shape that makes thinking enjoyable. For you to think well, the interplay between the conscious and unconscious elements is indispensible.

Try to encourage this interplay! This goes for all thinking; also for the thinking you engage in while reading a book, talking to others, playing chess, watching a film or listening to music. Don’t focus too much on what is explicit or foregrounded. To focus only on the words, tones or conscious thoughts is a mistake that will prevent you from doing them justice. They are important but insufficient on their own. For them to be fruitful, they must be like raindrops falling into the vast sea of your unconscious. There must be a dialogue between them and this sea. This dialogue may seem bizarre, like a dialogue in a movie where you can only hear the words of one of the persons speaing while the words of the other person have been silenced, but don’t fear these silences. They’re active silences, and they need to be there for thinking to be worthwhile.

The dark undercurrent of the unconscious is a sensitive creature. It easily gets scared. Try to be kind to it, invite it and encourage it. Find places that it likes, such as the cemetery where I sit and read books in the summer or the road by the canal in Kyoto where I used to walk so many eveings when I lived in Japan.  

A problematic novel: Stamboul Train

Yesterday I finished reading Graham Greene's Stamboul Train, published in 1932. Yes, it’s been criticized for its antisemitic stereotypes. But no, it didn’t prevent me from appreciating the book. Greene calls it “entertainment”, but it’s a far cry from the infantile formula of fast-paced adventure, wholesome heroes, and villains who get what they deserve. Clearly, the book is not anti-semitic in a conventional sense, despite what some commentators seem to claim. The Jewish character, Carleton Myatt, is sympathetically portrayed; he is certainly not a caricature, but a complex character that one gets to know as one keeps on reading. Possessing conscience and acting as decently as anyone can expect, he is a better man than most. Furthermore, Greene consistently portrays anti-semititism as a trait of unlikable characters, while the good and sympathetic ones are free from it.

Yet the book is problematic. Metaphorically it fuses anti-capitalism, a sort of anti-semitism and Orientalism on the one hand, and Christianity and socialism on the other. Let me start with Orientalism, which may not be very foregrounded but which is metaphorically present in the journey itself, which takes the passengers from Ostende to Constantinople. This journey, I suggest, is a descent into Hell. Each trainstop marks a new and deeper hellish circle. Occasional moments of happiness – mostly connected to the squalid love story of Myatt and the sickly dancing girl Coral Musker – only serve to thicken the sense of impending calamity. Clear premonitions tell the reader that the girl’s dreams of happiness will be dashed. Meanwhile increasingly repulsive people board the train. The vicious and hateful journalist Mabel Warren boards the train in Cologne, only to be replaced by the cold-blooded murderer Josef Grünlich in Vienna.

The book is pervaded by the squalor, insecurity and restlessness of the interwar years. But above all, it’s pervaded by a Catholic sense of sinfulness. This sinfulness, I suggest, is key to understanding the book as well as one of its central characters, Dr Czinner (pronounced “sinner”). Czinner is an emigree revolutionary, a former medical doctor brought up by poor parents who devoted himself to helping the poor in the slums of Belgrade before turning to communism. Five years ago he barely escaped the police and has been living in exile in Great Britain ever since. Now he is tormented by guilt and is returning incognito to his homeland. Along the way he learns that the revolt in Belgrade he had hoped for has failed but he nevertheless decides to continue his journey and stand trail (a good sentence here: “I am afraid, he told himself with triumph. I am afraid”).

Please stop reading here if you don't want spoilers. Mabel Warren recognizes Czinner in Cologne and by telegraphing the news brings about his arrest at the bordercrossing of Subotica. Czinner’s trial and death are clearly modelled on those of Christ. His self-doubt and vacillation bring Getsemane to mind. He bears his verdict with serenity and relief ("There was no need to decide anything. He was at peace... He was powerless now and happy" ). Two “Roman” soldiers accompany him as witnesses. Grünlich, who is imprisoned together with him, is a Barabbas-like figure who gets away unscathed. There are even faint suggestions that the doctor’s political message might spread despite his death in almost total obscurity, since one of the soldiers seems receptive to it and since Coral, who was with him before he died, will be interviewed by miss Warren who wants “exclusive” rights to the story.

After the horror of Subotica, the book ends with a seemingly incongruous idyllic chapter on Constantinople. Here Myatt, who during the entire journey had been the victim of anti-semitic slurs, is at home. Excelling at money and negotiations, the despised Jew turns princely. Fortune smiles at him. He resolves his businesses successfully and finds a beautiful prospective wife, Janet Pardoe, who unlike Coral is a lady of “genuine worth”. This last chapter is the most lighthearted in the book and at first sight offers a happy ending. Yet in terms of the book’s structure, it is the culmination of Hell, its innermost pit. The happy ending is made possible by forgetting. Myatt forgets Coral, just as Janet forgets her previous attachments to miss Warren and the writer Savory (whom she had met on the train). If the train ride was suffused by squalor and insecurity, here the narrative emerges into a sunlit zone of capitalist triumph. The happy ones are the rich gathering at the luxury terraces of Pera Palace, joined by the murderer Josef who is seen waving his hand from one of the tables. If there is anti-semitism in the book it consists in the metaphorical designation of this blissful and faithless paradise, clearly a fallen world, as a Jewish world. Here Greene taps into an ancient anti-semitism, which is not racist in a modern sense but has religious roots: the Jew is the one who closes his ears to God and enjoys life as usual – despite the crucifixion and despite the suffering of the poor going on around him. Myatt forgets his entire journey and by doing so merges metaphorically with the Orient as well as with Hell and capitalism. Yet in condemning this forgetfulness, the novel commits its own. Despite its seeming anti-capitalism, it displaces the object of its criticism, capitalism, from its home in the west to its geographical and cultural Other.  

Kant, the sublime, and catastrophe

I want to write down some thoughts about the relation between the sublime and catastrophe that struck me when reading Kant’s Critique of Judgement last year. While reading, I kept looking for ways to make his argument fruitful for thinking about ecological catastrophe. That quest seemed justified firstly by the fact that Kant himself uses natural phenomena as his primary examples of sublime things, and secondly by the fact that the sublime refers to experiences that surpass our ability to grasp them through our senses or our understanding – and that, surely, is an important quality of many catastrophes.

I will first present what I see as the (provocative) core of Kant's argument, namely that natural forces that appear to overwhelm us can give us pleasure since they confirm the superiority of reason. I will then argue that his analysis can be made fruitful for thinking about ecological catastrophes, but only if we drop his assumption that sublimity can only be appreciated from a contemplative standpoint where we don't need to fear for our safety. I will also underpin my argument by briefly discussing how the concept of the sublime relates to history, morality and feelings such as grief and humliation. 

Reason and the pleasure of the sublime

First, here is how Kant describes the experience of the sublime. It's a vivid description that brings out how pleasurable this experience can be.

[C]onsider bold, overhanging and, as it were, threatening rocks, thunderclouds piling up in the sky and moving about accompanied by lightning and thunderclaps, volcanoes with all their destructive power, hurricanes with all the devastation they leave behind, the boundless ocean heaved up, the high waterfall of a mighty river, and so on. Compared to the might of any of these, our ability to resist becomes an insignificant trifle. Yet the sight of them becomes all the more attractive the more fearful it is, provided we are in a safe place. And we like to call these objects sublime because they raise the soul's fortitude above its usual middle range and allow us to discover in ourselves an ability to resist which is of a quite different kind, and which gives us the courage [to believe] that we could be a match for nature's seeming omnipotence. (Kant 1987[1790]: 120)

Kant contrasts the sublime with the beautiful. The sublime, like the beautiful, is pleasing. But while beauty relates to the object's form, the sublime is connected to formlessness and unboundedness. Unlike the beautiful, the sublime is not playful and not compatible with charms. It not only attracts but also repels the mind, meaning that the pleasure of the sublime is a "negative pleasure" (ibid. 98f). Rather than with lawful movement, it is "in its chaos that nature most arouses our ideas of the sublime, or in its wildest and most ruleless disarray and devastation" (ibid. 99f). More specifically, "nature is sublime in those of its appearances whose intuition carries with it the idea of their infinity" (ibid. 112). 

But how can something that humiliates the mind's powers of understanding give rise to a feeling of pleasure? Kant's answer is stimulatng but provocative: while the sublime (unlike beauty) exceeds our sensibility and understanding, our very ability to feel it confirms reason's superiority over nature. This is because the capacity of thinking it requires a faculty in the human mind that is itself supersensible. 

If the human mind is nonetheless to be able even to think the given infinite without contradiction, it must have within itself a power that is supersensible [...]. For only by means of this power and its idea do we, in a pure intellectual estimation of magnitude, comprehend the infinite in the world of sense entirely under a concept (ibid. 111f)

Our appreciation of the sublime in nature is similar to how, in mathematics, the mind masters phenomena that exceed our capability of sensation, such as the infinite, by forming concepts about them. The pleasure in regard to the sublime thus arises from the superiority of reason over the faculty of sensibility. While for the imagination, the sublime appears "like an abyss" in which it fears to lose itself, for "reason's idea of the supersensible" it is "not excessive but conforms to reason's law to give rise to such striving by the imagination" (ibid. 115).

Kant's solution to the riddle of why the sublime can be pleasurable rests on his division of the mind in two faculties, understanding and reason, where the former refers to judgements about the empirical world (as we experience it through our senses) while the latter refers to the power of inference (which is not limited by our senses). Whereas the beautiful refers us to understanding, the sublime refers us to reason. This explains why the sublime both attracts and repels. While humiliating our senses and our understanding, it "is at the same time also a pleasure, aroused by the fact that this very judgment, namely, that even the greatest power of sensibility is inadequate, is [itself) in harmony with rational ideas" (ibid. 115). Or more concisely: “Sublime is what even to be able to think proves that the mind has a power surpassing any standard of sense” (ibid. 106). 

Indeed, who would want to call sublime such things as shapeless mountain masses piled on one another in wild disarray, with their pyramids of ice, or the gloomy raging sea? But the mind feels elevated in its own judgment of itself when it contemplates these without concern for their form and abandons itself to the imagination and to a reason that has come to be connected with it - though quite without a determinate purpose, and merely expanding it - and finds all the might of the imagination still inadequate to reason's ideas. (ibid. 113)

Thus any spectator who beholds massive mountains climbing skyward, deep gorges with raging streams in them, wastelands lying in deep shadow and inviting melancholy meditation, and so on is indeed seized by amazement bordering on terror, by horror and a sacred thrill; but, since he knows he is safe, this is not actual fear: it is merely our attempt to incur it with our imagination, in order that we may feel that very power's might and connect the mental agitation this arouses with the mind's state of rest. In this way we [feel] our superiority to nature within ourselves, and hence also to nature outside us insofar as it can influence our feeling of well-being (ibid. 129)

Imagination figures in two roles here. In its first, it makes us see our dependence on physical things. But the sublime gives it a new role, namely "to assert our independence of natural influences, to degrade as small what is large according to the imagination in its first [role]" (ibid. 129). 

The extent of Kant's provocativeness should be clear by now. Today, the environmental movement has taught us to be wary of Enlightenment reason and its belittlement of nature, but his argument unabashedly aims at driving home how triflingly little nature means in producing the sensation of the sublime. To Kant, the awe that sublime natural phenomena evoke is actually a disguised awe for the ability of our own reason to elevate us above the violent natural forces. Indeed, he goes out of his way to argue that it is actually the mind that is sublime, rather than the natural objects themselves (ibid. 105). 

Hence the feeling of the sublime in nature is respect for our own vocation. But by a certain subreption (in which respect for the object is substituted for respect for the idea of humanity within our[selves, as] subject[s)) this respect is accorded an object of nature that, as it were, makes intuitable for us the superiority of the rational vocation of our cognitive powers over the greatest power of sensibility (ibid. 114)

Hence sublimity is contained not in any thing of nature, but only in our mind, insofar as we can become conscious of our superiority to nature within us, and thereby also to nature outside us (as far as it influences us). Whatever arouses this feeling in us, and this includes the might of nature that challenges our forces, is then (althougb improperly) called sublime. (ibid. 123)

So: the sublime humiliates part of us (understanding and sensibility, the part of us that is tied to our status as empirical beings) but at the same time elevates another part (reason, our capacity to think independently of the senses). A surprising volte-face has occurred: the tremendous might of nature only serves to fuel the pleasurable sensation of reason's superiority to the senses. In worshipping storms and mountains we worship reason. Instead of elevating the object, the sublime elevates the subject. 

Isn't this hubris? 

But what is this, we may ask, if not blatant, unabashed idealism? Isn't it precisely the kind of hubris that the environmental movement has warned us against - the hubris of a reason conceited enought to congratulate itself for its superiority to nature? As usual, Kant defends himself well. He himself takes up the objection that it is presumptuous to claim superiority for reason. Isn't the proper attitude to the sublime, he asks, one that should be borrowed from the religious attitude to God, an attitude of prostration, submission, and humility?  

[I]n tempests, storms, earthquakes, and so on [...] we usually present God as showing himself in his wrath but also in his sublimity, while yet it would be both foolish and sacrilegious to imagine that our mind is superior to the effects produced by such a might [...]. It seems that here the mental attunement that befits the manifestation of such an object is not a feeling of the sublimity of our own nature, but rather submission, prostration, and a feeling of our utter impotence [...]. It seems that in religion in general the only fitting behavior in the presence of the deity is prostration, worship with bowed head and accompanied by contrite and timorous gestures and voice; and that is why most peoples have in fact adopted this behavior and still engage in it. (ibid. 122)

Here it is easy to associate with today's ideas of the wrath or revenge of nature and the environmentalist call for humility and contrition. Kant's counterargument, however, is that contrition and fear of punishment is not intrinsically connected with sublimity.

A person who is actually afraid and finds cause for this in himself because he is conscious that with his reprehensible attitude he offends against a might whose will is at once irresistible and just is not at all in the frame of mind [needed] to admire divine greatness, which requires that we be attuned to quiet contemplation and that our judgment be completely free. (ibid. 122)

In the same way, we cannot appreciate the sublime in nature if we are afraid. "For we flee from the sight of an object that scares us, and it is impossible to like terror that we take seriously" (ibid. 120). Kant, then, defends himself by claiming that our appreciation of the sublime never rests on real fear. It always presupposes a "safe place" from which we, as spectators, can contemplate the forces of nature. Just as we only appreciate beauty when we approach it in a contemplative frame of mind - without "interest", as he puts it - so we only appreciate the sublime when we are safe from danger.

This argument may sound plausible, but it raises questions. Is it true that we don't appreciate the sublime in moments of thrilling risk and danger? Aren't those the moments when we, in fact, have the strongest and most intense experiences of the sublime? To the extent that "being safe from danger" is part of Kant's definition of the sublime, it is of course impossible to refute him. One can argue, however, about whether it is an appropriae and fruitful definition. What reasons did Kant have for making it and are those reasons sound?

I can't see that Kant had any good reasons for limiting the sublime to what we can experience in a contemplative state of mind from a "safe place". I even believe that it goes against the overall thrust of his more important argument about how the sublime proves the superiority of reason. To put it in a nutshell, if reason can only prove its superiority when we are in a "safe place", then it doesn't really prove its superiority at all. A reason that needs physical security to operate is hardly superior to natural forces. In other words, whereas Kant usually talks about "us" as beings capable of reason, here he suddenly - and unwarrantedly, I believe - slips into an identification with mere understanding. 

Instead of arguing that sublimity requires an absence of physical danger, wouldn't Kant have been more consistent if he had argued that reason is always in a "safe place" simply by virtue of being reason? That, I believe, would have been in keeping with his overall theoretical edifice, in which the distinction between nature and freedom is fundamental. Nature is defined by causal relations grasped theoretically by understanding, while freedom is grasped practically by reason. Reason operates by principles belonging to a supersensible realm that cannot be reduced to nature. The mere presence of physical danger should not be able to threaten the integrity of reason, since reason is defined by its capacity to operate in a supersensible realm, regardless of whether our physical bodies are safe from danger or not. 

My view is therefore that the assumption that the sublime requires a contemplative attitude can be dropped without hurting the overall thrust of Kant's argument. Dropping it would allow for the possibility of experiencing the sublime even in the midst of catastrophes and moments of great danger. Above, I raised the question whether risks can enhance the feeling of sublimity. Isn't it indeed precisely in the ability to enjoy danger and overcome fear that reason's superiority is shown most clearly? Isn't there even an art of creating or inviting sublimity by playing with risks, as suggested by examples such as mountain climbing, drugs and gambling? If we allow for the idea of sublime courage, which I think we should (and here Kant seems to agree, as seen in his discussion about the veneration for soldiers, ibid. 122), then the idea that sublimity requires physical safety must surely be dropped. Rather than interpreting Kant as claiming that sublimity requires a safe standpoint where we don't need to feel fear, I prefer to interpret him as saying that it requires an ability to overcome fear. 

The latter interpretation would be in keeping with Kant's suggestion that "war" can inspire feelings of sublimity (ibid. 122). This statement is one of the rare instances where Kant finds examples of the sublime in history rather than nature. It helps us relativize the distinction between history and nature which is otherwise a recurring feature of his thinking. Formlessness, excess and violence exist not only in nature but of course also in history, where they are manifested in an endless series of catastrophes, shocks and traumas. Just as nature can give rise both to beauty and sublimity, one may find beauty in history (for instance by its aesthetization in the form of narratives) as well as sublimity, as for instance in the fortitude and spiritual strength that allow people to rise after a crushing defeat or catastrophe.  

Let us return to the objection about humility. My point is not that feelings of utter impotence, fear, contrition and humliation should be made part of the concept of the sublime. I believe that Kant is right that that would be to stretch the concept too far - but right for the wrong reasons. It is not because the sublime requires a contemplative stance or a safe distance that he is right, but simply because such feelings are not a necessary part of the concept of the sublime. The sublime, I suggest, does not require a "safe place" and, contrary to what Kant suggests, it is eminently compatible with feelings of fear, humiliation and so on. It is thus not the absence of such feelings - or the absence of physical dangers that might produce them - that defines the sublime, but the ability to overcome them and rise above them. This overcoming is made possible not by physical safety, but by a shift from the standpoint of understanding to the standpoint of reason. From the standpoint of understanding, we view ourselves as natural beings subjected to the causality nexus of the empirical world. From the standpoint of reason, we view ourselves as free beings capable of thinking and acting independently of that causal nexus. 

Kant as environmentalist 

Following my critical remarks above, I will now defend Kant. The interpretation I suggested above should, I believe, make his position more palatable to environmentalists. In particular it should make it easier to rebut the objection that it represents Enlightenment hubris and insensitivity to nature. Despite his provocative idea that the pleasure of the sublime derives from a realization of reason's superiority over nature, there is little of hubris in this idea. As physical beings and as creatures of understanding we are subjected to nature and other causal forces around us. It is only as rational beings that we have a chance of rising above those forces. The sense of superiority obtained in sublime moments cannot be taken for granted, but is an uncertain and perhaps fleeting achievement that requires us to overcome feelings such as fear and humiliation. Furthermore, this superiority does not connote any actual physical mastery over nature or any other parts of the empirical world, but is at best a mental mastery, an inellectual relief or satisfaction that at least our capacity as free and rational beings is still unharmed by the violent and formless forces around us. 

This is well expressed in the following passage:

[T]hough the irresistibility of nature's might makes us, considered as natural beings, recognize our physical impotence, it reveals in us at the same time an ability to judge ourselves independent of nature, and reveals in us a superiority over nature that is the basis of a self-preservation quite different in kind from the one that can be assailed and endangered by nature outside us. This keeps the humanity in our person from being degraded, even though a human being would have to succumb to that dominance [of nature]. Hence if in judging nature aesthetically we call it sublime, we do so not because nature arouses fear, but because it calls forth our strength [...] to regard as small the [objects] of our [natural] concerns: property, health, and life (ibid. 120f)

I would have preferred to write that nature, in sublime moments, both arouses fear and calls forth the strength to overcome fear. But apart from that, I think that this passage dovetails nicely with what many environmentalists are saying. Kant is clear about the fact that nature can be a source of catastrophes, of immense devastation concerning human life, goods and health. The affinity to environemtalism is even more evident regarding how we should respond to the present ecological crisis. The predominant call of environmentalism today is that we should wake up to our responsibility to act as free and rational beings. We need to rise to the occasion and exercise our freedom by breaking out of the passivity of our ordinary routines. In other words, we need to prove the superiority of our reason by breaking free from the seemingly inexorable causal forces driving us towards doom.*

Kant presents the sublime as an eye-opener that can help us achieve this intellectual awakening, a reminder of our capability to act as free and rational beings even when we are confronted with catastrophes so immense that they appear to surpass understanding. That a link exists between sublimity and action is shown by the fact that sublime moments always include such a reminder, unlike moments of beauty which we can enjoy as contemplative spectators. What we enjoy in sublime moments is not so much the self-congratualitory sense of the superiority of reason per se, as its link to the freedom that we can discover within ourselves even in the most difficult circumstances.   

Should we really aestheticize catastrophes?

We can now turn to a common objection to applying the concept of sublimity to catastrophes. The argument is that it is inappropriate and frivolous to apply such a concept to catastrophes since it turns them into aestheticized objects of pleasure. Here, for instance, is the philosopher Günther Anders, writing on the topic of nuclear apocalypse:

I am explicitly avoiding the term ‘the sublime’ here, which Kant uses in The Critique of Judgment to name that which exceeds all proportiones humanas, all ‘human proportions’. […] The instant of the nuclear flash, the view of the annihilated city of Hiroshima, and the prospect of its inevitable repeat are anything but ‘grandiose’ or ‘sublime’. (Anders 2019: 140 n1)

But this objection seems more pertinent to the attempt to find beauty in catastrophes. Regarding the sublime, however, I think that two points can be made that show that it doesn't necessarily involve any frivolity or making light of suffering.

Firstly, unlike beauty, the sublime reminds us of our responsiblity to act as moral, free beings. The pleasure that accompanies it does not disregard suffering. On the contrary, it is a pleasure we feel when we are able to rise to the occasion and act as free and rational beings despite the adverse circumstances. This is not so different from when the eco-philosopher Joanna Macy asserts that even if the future looks bleak, we can still think: “How lucky we are to be alive now—that we can measure up in this way”.

Secondly, although it may seem self-evident it deserves to be pointed out that the sublime doesn't exhaust our possible reactions to catastrophe. Far more common is simply pain, grief and despair. There's nothing sublime or pleasurable about such experiences, which capture the devastating and traumatic impact of catastrophes. It is not catastrophe per se that is pleasurable but our (rarely exercised ) ability to respond to it as free and morally responsible beings, using our faculty of reason. This is also why feelings such as grief or fear should be conceptually distinguished from the sublime. They differ from the sublime, not because we are not in a "safe place" when we feel them, but because the sublime is defined by the ability to rise above such feelings.  

This second point also points to the limits of using the concept of the sublime for understanding our reactions to catastrophes. While it is useful for theorizing a certain response to catastrophes, to many people such a response will not be possible. It presupposes a subject that remains intact, despite the catastrophe. But traumatized people cannot be expected to elevate themselves over the catastrophe. Nor is there any moral obligation that they should do so. No one can tell a person to stop grieving. Grief can, however, be a step towards recovery. The idea of rising after a defeat hints at the fact that sublimity may be the result of a process that requires time and in which feelings of grief, impotence and humliation may be central ingredients. Such feelings are not sublime in themselves, but they are not incompatible with sublimity. As Kant points out, humility can coexist with sublimity to the extent that it is guided by reason: “Even humility… is a sublime mental attunement, namely voluntary subjection of ourselves to the pain of self-reprimand so as gradually to eradicate the cause of these defects” (ibid. 123). This is echoed in the environmentalist call for contrition, which can be seen as a call to human beings to reflect on and atone for the wrongs they have committed against nature. That sublimity can coexist with feelings of this kind is not surprising, considering that we are creatues both of understanding and reason. Kant's argument in nuce is that what humiliates the former provides an opportunity for elevating the latter. 

Is the concept of the sublime useful for thinking catastrophes? 

As physical beings, we are vulnerable to the might and violence of forces that can destroy our lives, our health, our property, and all the things that we cherish. But sublime moments make us see these things as "small", thereby reminding us that we are also rational beings, partaking in the supersensible realm of freedom. This is the core of Kant's argument. It is not an idea of reason's ability to subjugate nature materially. Instead, it accepts the tremendous force of nature in the realm of materiality, but asserts that all is not lost when this material realm is shattered in catastrophe. 

So can Kant's concept of the sublime be made fruitful for thinking about enviornmental catastrophe? The answer is yes, but only if parts of his argument are modified. Firstly, more than Kant we probably need to pay attention to history as an arena of the sublime next to nature. After all, history has a far greater role in producing the natural phenomena that could be seen as sublime than in Kant's days, and the same can be said of the repercussions of environmental destruction on history in the form of a catastrophes. Secondly, we must drop his assumption that the sublime can only be appreciated from a "safe place", as contemplative spectators. In today's ecological catastrophe, no such safe place exists. Thirdly, we probably need to emphasize more than he did that sublimity is an uncertain achievement. Most catastrophes wil simply produce pain, grief, fear and traumatization rather than sublimity. But despite this, the idea of the sublime may well be indispensible for thinking about catastrophes since it indicates the possibility of eye-opening experiences that awakens us to freedom and moral responsibility.      

References

Anders, Günther (2019) “Language and End Time (Sections I, IV and V of ’Sprache und Entzeit’)” (tr. Christopher John Müller), Thesis Eleven 153(1): 134-140.

Hamilton, Clive (2017) Defiant Earth: The Fate of Humans in the Anthropocene, Cambridge Polity Press.

Kant, Immanuel (1987[1790]) The Critique of Judgement (tr. Werner S. Pluhar), Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co.

Macy, Joanna (2014) “It Looks Bleak. Big Deal, It Looks Bleak”, Exopermaculture.com, posted on April 2 2014 by Ann Kreilkamp; https://www.exopermaculture.com/2014/04/02/joanna-macy-on-how-to-prepare-internally-for-whatever-comes-next/ (accessed 2021-02-06).

Sloterdijk, Peter (1987) Critique of Cynical Reason, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.


* This is of course an extremely common exhortation among environmentalists. An eloquent example is Hamilton (2017). Outside of environmentalism, Sloterdijk (1987: 130ff) expresses a similar idea in his idea of the bomb as the Buddha of the West.