Buch Art – Ethics – Education

Abstract

Western civilisation developed through agreements on those actions that should be abstained from, and events that should not happen. I am calling this Western ban on destruction and self-destruction by means of a claim to validity the “proscribed extreme case.” If we want to take up the experiences of the 20th century to formulate an ethics for the 21st, we have to make it clear for ourselves that the rules we are establishing operate only by means of abstention. In the following text my aim is to show, that in the 21th century we must organise our behaviour around preventing or abstaining from actions which we consider particularly noxious, evil, counter-productive, or unhealthy. It is impossible to scientifically, philosophically, theologically, or otherwise justify a norm to be accepted by all humanity. But it is very easy to discover what everyone considers undesirable and worth abstaining from, such as evil, theft, or corruption.
I am arguing, that therefore it is necessary to develop a system of judgment—and every ethics is a system of judgment—which replaces irreversibility, the inability to erase the consequences of our actions, with reversibility, in other words, with a lack of consequence. And, as I argue, there is only one historical example for this: art.
In my text I try to develop an ethics of abstention for art. Artists must always arrive at an endpoint—a point at which they abstain from continuing their work, or from believing that they can still produce something better, more perfect, more beautiful, more fitting. Apart from that, the artist can only be judged according to his own example. He has no punitive power and can neither reward those who listen nor punish those who look away. So he speaks as an individual. But most important, no effect is more reversible than that of art. Artistic effects are always reversible: you don’t have to look at art! Look away from the work; don’t look at the work; don’t let yourself be taken in. You are under no obligation to go to a museum. Art can therefore be generalised as the theory of the proscribed extreme case. If we take the artistic example seriously we can perhaps demonstrate that we don’t need progress anymore, and that we can live by an ethical code which is not normative, but non-normative. My aim is to make the case for developing the act of abstention and creating rules for non-normative decisions and abstentions by explicitly taking up the model of the artist.

When we examine the history of human culture, norms, and laws, something odd becomes apparent. Norms are not, as we might think, codes that demand something be done in a certain fashion, like humanism (do this, follow these teachings). Instead, they demand that something not be done—in other words, that we abstain from action. For example: do not covet another’s property, do not lie, do not steal.

Abstention—the act of not doing something—is incredibly active. It requires far more willpower than accomplishing a goal. Critical Theory, which gave us a critique of humanism, also gave us compelling reasons for paying less attention to the things we achieve through action, and more to the incredible amounts of energy we exert in abstaining from action. With enough money, any average Joe can build a plutonium economy. Doing this requires neither reason nor willpower—only sufficient capital. But creativity and imagination are necessary for preventing others from endangering the world through their actions. The truly challenging mode of action is that of abstention. All laws in all cultures throughout history indicate how action and abstention are to be understood, i.e. what I will find out about abstention by analysing the parameters of action. Humanistic traditions have given us a framework of norms, expectations, and goals: progress, improvement, reaching higher, moving faster, etc.

Critiquing humanism means critiquing the expectation that these norms can be fixed in some fashion, that consensus is divinely given. This is Critical Theory’s real contribution to the critique of humanism.

We cannot establish a substantial relationship to given norms, even if we call on Gods or other sources of inspiration and authority, such as highly intelligent people or experts who have achieved consensus. If we accept this critique of norms, which humanism considers deadly—after all, if I criticise the norms shaping my world, I’ve lost my goal—then the opposite is true: if I criticise norms, I will gain a notion of praxis beyond the ideology of norms, beyond ethics in a classical sense. Why? Because this reveals what I must actively abstain from, and I can formulate this positively as in the following famous quotes:“There is nothing good in this world unless one does it” (Erich Kästner). Or: “This much is clear: goodness, my friend, is always the abstention from evil” (Wilhelm Busch). It is impossible to scientifically, philosophically, theologically, or otherwise justify a norm to be accepted by all humanity. But it is very easy to discover what everyone considers undesirable and worth abstaining from, such as evil, theft, or corruption. People of all cultures know this. One can easily accept these non-normative precepts.

I have tried to develop an ethics of abstention for art. But my main point is that these insights derive from the simple practice of artistic work. Most people hold the naïve belief that artists have something in their head that they transfer onto a canvas. They translate their thoughts into a finished image. But real artists work in opposite fashion: they do not follow pre-given norms or try to reach a predetermined goal. Instead, they develop a justification for their end result by means of their artistic practice.

How can these experiences be translated into an account of abstention? Artists must always face crucial moments in which they choose to stop their work. Every artist knows that the defining experience of making work is stopping. Artists will go mad if they continue to daub lines, forms, and shapes on the canvas, or endlessly throw their work in the garbage. They must always arrive at an endpoint—a point at which they abstain from continuing their work, or from believing that they can still produce something better, more perfect, more beautiful, more fitting. Those who have tried, even Michelangelo or Raphael, know that this isn’t possible. There is no progress to be made here; the term ‘progress’ doesn’t appear in art. Every artist is part of history insofar as he or she has arrived at a point that is insurmountable, and which presents a problem at its most difficult. Raphael’s artistic problems could not be solved by Michelangelo, since Raphael had posed an artistic question that is not solvable on principle. Raphael confronts every viewer, every fellow artist, and every student with the fundamentally unsolvable nature of his artistic problems, such as those of normativity.

Michelangelo, in turn, poses the challenge that no one can make anything better, more beautiful, more perspectivally correct—from two-point, not just one-point perspective. Art history is a singular domain in which optimisation or progress are irrelevant terms. Yet general opinion would still consider it a history of unquestionably great deeds, based on perception and attraction. Besides, art history is exemplary in many ways. Ecologists, take note: no effect is more reversible than that of art. Artistic effects are always reversible: you don’t have to look at art! Look away from the work; don’t look at the work; don’t let yourself be taken in. You are under no obligation to go to a museum. If one gathers all of these examples together, one arrives at the precept of abstention which was developed in the eighteenth century. The aesthetics of abstention is, in my opinion, the most clear and useful theorem of all. In the eighteenth century this theorem had great importance for certain regions of Europe. In Austria, this imperative was formulated particularly clearly as “Tu felix austria nube,”(1)  and was later transformed in the twentieth century by Woodrow Wilson. Why is this important? Because Wilson was a Kantian; at least, he studied Kant. This is why he declared that a modern democracy, such as the United States, should only wage war to end the World War, or even to end all wars. This means that Wilson knew what ethics was. Ethics are systems which gauge the actions of the individuals within a group or a culture. They assume that one can measure, judge, and assess the actions of a person in context.

The proscribed extreme case

Remember that Western civilisation only developed through agreement on which actions should be abstained from, and which events cannot happen. I will call this Western ban on destruction and self-destruction by means of a claim to validity the “proscribed extreme case”. (2)

Until the beginning of the twentieth century, cultures only obeyed one single system of judgment which culminated in a final decision: off with his head or not. Judgment was existential: it decided on life and death. A system of dictates, norms, judgments, and ethical ideas was built up by invoking the gods, existence, the group, the state, the federation, etc.

All systems of dictates functioned in this manner. In our humanistic tradition, this means that the most holy building is not in fact the temple or church but the city wall. Fortification walls defined living space, and were therefore sacred architecture. This became a tried and tested practice—remember how it achieved its expression in the political, theoretical, and social realms prior to the eighteenth century. Think of Hobbes’s Leviathan, in which all of the small citizens become little monads or atoms that make up the ruler’s body. It was clear what was at stake: do you accept or reject this legislative system; will you obey or be excluded; will you agree and accept or face decapitation; and so forth and so on.

But by the twentieth century, this system had ceased to work. There’s a certain tragedy to the fact that the reason for its failure was discovered by the most conservative thinkers of the twentieth century, such as Carl Schmitt and Ernst Jünger, who regretted the move away from capital punishment. Now, what did Wilson the Kantian have to say about this system of judgment?

In terms of collective action, this meant that Americans suspended the act of war. They went to Europe in the First World War under the assumption that they were waging war in order to end war. Americans could no longer wage war to kill other people, rape women, annex territory, etc. War could only function to prevent war. Then there was another attempt to ban the extreme case in Kosovo. The German people did not understand the declarations of the minister of the interior and the minister of defence that NATO was going to Kosovo to wage war to end the war between the Serbs and the Albanians. We didn’t know whether they were making fun of us or playing games with us. After all, what kind of a strange reason is that? I’m waging war to end war? What is that really supposed to mean?

It means gauging an action based on the proscribed extreme case rather than gauging an action based on the prescribed extreme case. The script of the prescribed extreme case said, You don’t want to subject yourself and recognise the rule of law? Off with your head and out with your guts, you individual, you subject, you can’t live for yourself alone. Once you’re out, you’ll be condemned to social death. But Wilson wasn’t the only one to think like this. Parallel to Wilson, Joseph Schumpeter, one of the most significant economists of the twentieth century, developed the economic theory of creative destruction. (3) 

Schumpeter said that industrial capitalism wasn’t useful anymore. We can’t measure the economic activity of individuals against the extreme case of destructive competition, because this endangers the entire system. Instead, competition no longer seeks to destroy competitors, but rather attracts and engenders further competition. This kind of creative destruction is no longer about destroying, eliminating, or marginalising the competitor, but about the generative aspects of competition: the possibility of gauging one’s own success in relation to others. The stakes are still market dominance, but not at the cost of eliminating all competitors. This was Schumpeter’s postulate, and this postulate, to name only one example, was deployed in the most clever fashion when the Bundesliga, of all things, was founded.

Critiquing humanism, no problem, they said, we’re playing sports not to push them further, higher, or better, but to make money. But if we play sports like football to make money, then this logic contradicts our actions when we buy up all the best players because we have the most money. These actions break apart the league, which unites sports and commercialisation, because no audience wants to pay to watch the best people play on two teams only. This is creative destruction. Schumpeter triumphed in the Bundesliga when they said, You’re buying the best players for business reasons, but we’ll let you do it if you give us money to buy the best players from everywhere else. These are the notorious transfer fees. This made competition between clubs possible without business interests leading them into destructive competition, since destructive competition on this level would mean that the Liga would have fallen apart, and no one would have paid for tickets or sponsorship anymore.

Then this principle was applied to medicine, where it was even turned into law. Uta Würfel, a member of the Free Democratic Party, was immortalised when she suggested the following formulation in 1973: “Please ask your physician or pharmacist about possible risks and side-effects.” She had realised that in medicine, every proscribed extreme case reveals that treatment always causes illness. If a doctor uses certain means to treat a heart problem and treats it successfully, this will lead to a one hundred percent certainty of renal failure in six to eight months. In other words, medical cases which end in the survival or death of the patient reveal that treatment only functions when it produces effects, but these effects produce new illnesses.

This meant that medical practice could no longer be determined with respect to the extreme case, but instead had to account for the proscribed extreme case. You, as a doctor, must follow this dictate: avoid making someone sick through treatment. The notorious expression, “Please ask your physician or pharmacist about possible risks and side-effects,” had the last word in defining the stakes of the proscribed exception. The doctor is responsible for avoiding extreme situations, and it is particularly tragic to make someone sick by healing them. Every effective treatment has side effects that cannot be controlled, and if there are several side effects, because the patient has several conditions, then the side effects eventually become the main effect. This paradox reveals that one can no longer use the extreme case as a gauge, but must gauge actions based on the proscribed extreme case.

But why was this problem even discovered in the first place? Because, when Wilson, Schumpeter, and others came up with these theories between 1911 and 1921—which led to the League of Nations, by the way, and are still commemorated in the preamble, as the war to end all wars—Carl Schmitt and other conservatives asked themselves, why humanism isn’t working anymore, whatever happened to the hierarchy of values and the threat of the death penalty? Carl Schmitt was the first to systematically examine this question, and Meyer, one of his students, developed a clear answer to the problem.

So why, then? Because the gravest category of judgment—death and the death penalty—had come under discussion. If the highest category within a culture’s system of judgment is no longer the esteemed, sacred city wall, which fundamentally determines the structures of life, then the system no longer holds. The gravest crimes, which were supposed to bring the punishment of the gods down upon us, are now murder mysteries on TV. We can watch as 20,000 corpses are produced each day across the globe. How is this still supposed to function as the ultimate rationale behind a system of judgment? Since judgment over the extreme case—off with his head—is useless now, we can now only measure all cultural activity against the proscribed extreme case, the case that is no longer possible, and that is what is happening now.

If we look back at the war in Kosovo again, this means that NATO could only enter Kosovo by stressing Wilson’s dictum: we will justify our behaviour through a prohibition on war; we are waging war in order to prevent war. Every rocket or bomb which Germany launched on Yugoslavia had a small insurance certificate attached, which said, sorry, friends, but in order to prevent war, we have to wage it. We’re dropping a few bombs that will destroy some bridges, but our people are already on their way, we guarantee that everything will be rebuilt much better and newer and more modern in the future. None of our actions are meant seriously, it’s not what it looks like.

This military operation was clearly not oriented toward an extreme case of destruction—destroying the lives of one’s enemies—but instead toward the impermissibility of losing people and things. Germany pledged to fix damages where they could not be avoided. For the first time, the citizens of countries in NATO clearly realised that gauging war by the proscribed extreme case did not just mean avoiding the deaths of soldiers and civilians on both sides, but that it also meant restoring the status ante quo.

This example reveals that if we want to take up the experiences of the twentieth century to formulate an ethics for the twenty-first, we have to make it clear for ourselves that the rules we are establishing operate only by means of abstention.

Second, we must recognise that we are not establishing new norms, but following the example of Wilhelm Busch. This much is clear: goodness, my friend, is always the abstention from evil. We must organise our behaviour around preventing or abstaining from actions which we consider particularly noxious, evil, counter-productive, or unhealthy.

Third, we must clearly determine what form of action prevention or abstention actually is. Until now, the attempt to reach humanistic goals through norms has always been undertaken under the assumption that one should succeed better, aim higher, further, etc. This was humanism in a nutshell. So how do we get out of that? We get out of it by developing a system of judgment—and every ethics is a system of judgment—which replaces irreversibility, the inability to erase the consequences of our actions, with reversibility, in other words, with a lack of consequence. And, as I’ve said, there is only one historical example for this: art.

With this, I mean Western art from 1400 to the present. Completely reversible, completely without consequence, although most artists are naturally upset if you tell them that the highest virtue of their work is that it has no consequences. Then they say, “What are you talking about? I want to make the world better, I’m a humanist.” They side with the extreme case, and thus condemn themselves to failure.

Fourth, there should be no legitimation through degrees, appointments, rankings, etc. If an artist says, I don’t have a degree, everyone laughs, and if someone says, I’m doing the same thing as a million other people, everyone laughs as well. That means that an artist should only be judged on his own example. He has no punitive power and can neither reward those who listen nor punish those who look away. So he speaks as an individual. If you look at it like this, I think it presents an opportunity. Art, generalised as the theory of the proscribed extreme case, was called “play” by Schiller, and was only allowed insofar as it was play. This was called aesthetic semblance; it is decidedly different from the sphere of irreversibility.

If we do this, we can perhaps demonstrate that we don’t need progress anymore, and that we can live by an ethical code which is not normative, but non-normative.

No one would ever think to claim that art history is determined by a drive towards progress—to be better, higher, faster, push farther. In all time periods, artists were always individuals whose problems were formulated such that no one could simply overcome them.

I’ve now come to my final point. The problems we have discussed should no longer be examined with the intent of solving them, but instead so that we can show people that questions on the nature of death, the existence of God, and so on are fundamentally unsolvable. Only when we no longer attempt to find solutions to these problems will we confront people with a reality they can no longer delegate to experts.

Our humanist culture of experts is largely responsible for creating the expectation that if there is a problem, there must be a solution. But as art shows, humanity has never managed to solve even a single one of its many important problems. Problems have only ever been solved through the creation of new problems. There is just one rule: if the new problems are smaller, then the new rule is permitted; if they are bigger, it is not. World history shows that there has never been a single problematic solution which could not have been solved through the creation of bigger problems than the initial one. From this perspective, I believe that art history provides us with an example of how we can come up with non-normative rules.

By the way, the only political and military geniuses who understood this were American and Russian generals who calculated that detonating a bomb with a theoretically seventyfold destructive capacity would not lead to the extinction of human life on earth. The only grievance of the Russian and American leaders was that, in their own words, there would still be “a few idiots” left, somewhere in Oceania or Africa. What an outrage! We, the makers of this energetic source, will annihilate ourselves; the most powerful human brains will be destroyed, and these idiots will still be there. This was why the bomb was never detonated; they could prove that it wouldn’t fully destroy humanity. This was the great deed of the mathematical experts—what a wonderful story. This is a form of sovereign behaviour, since it no longer relies on expert knowledge of norms. We may not know the norms and we may not know the goal, but we know what actions should be avoided, and all humans know this equally. All cultures share this knowledge. Uexküll addressed this point in his discussion of a comparative study. All groups share a notion of what to avoid, which risks are too big, which actions might endanger their group existence or their survival, etc.
Since these ideas are shared, we can lean on them. I would like to make the case for developing the act of abstention and creating rules for non-normative decisions and abstentions by explicitly taking up the model of the artist. The history of art has it all: no solved problems, the virtue of reversibility, a casual attitude. And it has no waste problems: museums make wonderful storage containers – everything is shoved in the box, closed up, no consequences, no water damage, nothing. This lack of consequences is art’s highest expression in gauging the proscribed extreme case.

In light of this example, we must give up our ideas of normativity for the sake of the non-normative. This also means giving up a critique of humanism, and its goal of perfection and progress, for the sake of effective abstention. And it means understanding this abstention as the impermissibility of judging by the extreme case.

I believe we can do this without knowing better, without pretending we are God, without having power. Then, we can effectively gauge the behaviour of individuals and groups. For ethics is nothing else than gauging the behaviour of individuals from the perspective of those to whom they are bound, within a group and within a culture.

References

(1) The House of Habsburg proclaimed, “Bella gerant alii, tu felix austria nube”—“Others may settle their feuds through war, but Austrians settle matters through marriage politics.”

(2) See ‘Der verbotene Ernstfall’ in: Bazon Brock, Lustmarsch durchs Theoriegelände (Cologne: Dumont, 2008), p. 64 ff.

(3) See: Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York/London: Harper, 1942).