Role models and personal responsibility
There is reason to dwell a little on these words of the Roman historian Tacitus, not least because of the theme in this issue of Axess: the importance of good role models – but also their opposite: the cautionary examples.
Today, many people probably believe that it is an unpleasant elitism at the root of Tacitus’ opinion. Does it not suggest that one course of action is better and more desirable than another? And does he thus not condemn, indirectly, all those who for various reasons do not want or have the potential to act in an exemplary way?
And does Tacitus not lay out a black-and-white view of people and the world, when he implies that it is possible to distinguish exemplary decisions from reprehensible ones? Is not the intellectual historian’s task to highlight the nuances and grey areas: for example, to show that the bad leaders’ and regimes’ opponents were not themselves thoroughly upright? Does Tacitus’ attitude not risk leading to even greater intolerance? To the creation of hierarchies in society? To an authoritarian outlook on people?
But before we dismiss Tacitus on these grounds, we should perhaps remind ourselves that even the contemporary criticisms of his conception of history are a consequence of cultural factors and socio-economic structures and that today’s relativistic cultural views have not been particularly widespread, either historically or geographically. In The Originof the Work of Art (1936) Martin Heidegger tells of how the ancient Greek temples of his contemporaries provided a way to handle the big questions of human life: birth and death, disaster and blessing, victory and disgrace, power and weakness, and so on.
Similarly, this most powerful expression of culture – in architecture, painting, poetry, drama and sculpture – has since served as an exponent of what is worth striving for in life. Western culture’s great creations work, like so much art from other cultures, in an exemplary fashion: as a kind of non-human authority that offers meaning and purpose to those who embrace the works.
This changed however, to some extent, with Kant, from whose self-sufficient entity it is only a short step to Nietzsche’s nihilism.
With Kant, the self sets its own laws and acts in accordance with them. Nothing outside of us – no gods or habits or governmental decree or parental control – has the mandate to guide our actions; instead, the ego itself creates the guiding principles in life. Which makes role models, for whom Tacitus claimed such importance, lose their status.
At the same moment as Kant makes us accountable for our actions, it is also up to the individual to decide what is most meaningful. Which brings me to Nietzschean nihilism in which ideas and beliefs are casually created and abandoned, and therefore never have a significant force in our lives.
It is this that constitutes the cornerstone of the 1900s’ bloody European experience, as expressed in the context of Nazism, communism and fascism. Violence and destruction are the obvious consequences of the nihilistic doctrine where no timeless truths are said to exist, where careful reflection is considered obsolete (and, in 19th century terms, backward-looking), where nothing is qualitatively better than anything else, where youthful immaturity is prioritised as well as the passion for creativity; it is based more on a break with the past than on continuity, that which breathes impulsivity, physical strength and intensity, and so on.
This experience has forsaken the insights out of which Tacitus’ quotes are born: that civilisation is derived partly from timeless distinctions between good and evil, and partly from the realisation that humans derive their dignity and true identity not from what they are as flesh and blood, but by their spiritual quest for what they should be.
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One of those who, during the 1900s, most consistently recognised the need to resist this trend was Thomas Mann. In his essay ”Vom zukünftigen Sieg der Demokratie” (“Democracy’s Future Victory”) (1938), he writes:
“In a democracy that does not respect intellectual life and which is not guided by it, demagogy has free play, and the level of the nation is reduced to the ignorant and uncultured. But this can be avoided if the principle of education is allowed to dominate and the trends may prevail that raise the lower classes to appreciate culture and to accept the leadership of better actors.”
Unfortunately, today it is encroaching into the university system and the media sphere, which highlights the importance of Mann’s analysis of the importance of aesthetic cultivation, spiritual maturity and intellectual role models.