Cultural and political success
A common theme in German cultural thought, especially in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is that a group only flourishes culturally when it is lacking in political power or engagement. For example, in Twilight of the Idols Nietzsche writes,
This line of thought, as I noted, can be found throughout German thought about culture and politics. For example, even today one regularly encounters the idea that the flowering of classical German culture that occurred just before and during the Napoleonic wars was a response to the political impotence of the German middle classes, both at home and abroad, during that period. Unable to take political action at home via the democratic means available elsewhere - the thought seems to go - and just as unable to collectively take action (as Germans) until the very end against the might of Napoleonic France, the German middle classes turned their creative energies toward the forging of a German nation, not by political, but rather by cultural means.
At least in the passage above, Nietzsche seems sympathetic to this line of thought. And he suggests that with the rise of Germany to the status of global political power, the creative energies of the German nation will come to be expressed, not in literature and the arts, but rather in more prosaic (and potentially threatening) political forms.
For all its simplicity, this way of thinking of the relationship between culture and politics has some obvious attractions, at least when one focuses one's attention on certain periods of German history. After all, it fits, not just the German experience during the age of Goethe and Schiller, but also the explosion of artistic creativity during the Weimar Republic, quite well. But nonetheless it is obvious that it is not always the case that politics and culture form this sort of zero-sum game. Frequently an increase in political or economic power will also increase cultural productivity to a corresponding degree. In part, this is a matter of simple economics. Very often, political success brings with it means of cultural production that would have otherwise been lacking. Think of the newly independent Netherlands, France under Louis XIV, or America in the first half of this century. Of course, as some of these examples indicate, this sort of cultural production may not be long-lived. But even so, it is surely common enough for an increase in political power and activity to unleash, rather than restrain, the cultural energies of a society.
So the simple formula Nietzsche's comment suggests hardly stands up as a general law, which raises a number of interesting questions:
First, are there any interesting general laws governing when political success dampens cultural productivity and when it encourages it? Is one sort of political success better than others in this regard? Is democracy to be preferred to other forms of government? Or not? And to what degree is it economic success as opposed to political success that matters most here?
Second, is the sort of art and literature that flourishes under conditions of political strength different in kind from the sort of art and literature that flourishes under conditions of political weakness? Here, it is natural to think that even when political success brings forth a burst of cultural activity, this activity is somehow more shallow or less critical than the cultural activity that accompanies periods in which political success is lacking. (Something of this is evident in the quote I began with.) But does this prejudice hold up upon reflection?
You can't ultimately spend more than you have - that's true of individuals, it's true of peoples. If you spend yourself on power, on grandiose politics, on economics, world trade, parliaments, military interests - if you give away in this direction the quantity of understanding, seriousness, will and self-overcoming that you are, then this quantity is not available in the other direction. .. One lives off the other, one prospers at the expense of the other. All the great ages of culture are ages of decline, politically speaking: what is great in the cultural sense has been unpolitical even antipolitical.The thought here is that a group or society, given the historical conditions under which it lives, has at its command only a limited amount of creative energy, which may be given either artistic or political expression, but not both. Thus the balance between cultural production and political activity is something of a zero-sum game; increase the level of political activity or engagement and one will invariably decrease the level of cultural productivity to a corresponding degree.
This line of thought, as I noted, can be found throughout German thought about culture and politics. For example, even today one regularly encounters the idea that the flowering of classical German culture that occurred just before and during the Napoleonic wars was a response to the political impotence of the German middle classes, both at home and abroad, during that period. Unable to take political action at home via the democratic means available elsewhere - the thought seems to go - and just as unable to collectively take action (as Germans) until the very end against the might of Napoleonic France, the German middle classes turned their creative energies toward the forging of a German nation, not by political, but rather by cultural means.
At least in the passage above, Nietzsche seems sympathetic to this line of thought. And he suggests that with the rise of Germany to the status of global political power, the creative energies of the German nation will come to be expressed, not in literature and the arts, but rather in more prosaic (and potentially threatening) political forms.
For all its simplicity, this way of thinking of the relationship between culture and politics has some obvious attractions, at least when one focuses one's attention on certain periods of German history. After all, it fits, not just the German experience during the age of Goethe and Schiller, but also the explosion of artistic creativity during the Weimar Republic, quite well. But nonetheless it is obvious that it is not always the case that politics and culture form this sort of zero-sum game. Frequently an increase in political or economic power will also increase cultural productivity to a corresponding degree. In part, this is a matter of simple economics. Very often, political success brings with it means of cultural production that would have otherwise been lacking. Think of the newly independent Netherlands, France under Louis XIV, or America in the first half of this century. Of course, as some of these examples indicate, this sort of cultural production may not be long-lived. But even so, it is surely common enough for an increase in political power and activity to unleash, rather than restrain, the cultural energies of a society.
So the simple formula Nietzsche's comment suggests hardly stands up as a general law, which raises a number of interesting questions:
First, are there any interesting general laws governing when political success dampens cultural productivity and when it encourages it? Is one sort of political success better than others in this regard? Is democracy to be preferred to other forms of government? Or not? And to what degree is it economic success as opposed to political success that matters most here?
Second, is the sort of art and literature that flourishes under conditions of political strength different in kind from the sort of art and literature that flourishes under conditions of political weakness? Here, it is natural to think that even when political success brings forth a burst of cultural activity, this activity is somehow more shallow or less critical than the cultural activity that accompanies periods in which political success is lacking. (Something of this is evident in the quote I began with.) But does this prejudice hold up upon reflection?
posted by kds at 9:27 AM
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