Philosophy and Crisis
Philosopher and curator Roy Brand in conversation with writer and psychologist Amalia Rosenblum
This text was originally published as part of BIDUD, an experimental online residency that operated during the Covid-19 lockdown period.
The brainchild of artists Tamir Erlich and Noy Haimovitz, BIDUD featured one project a day and was followed by “Timed Act” a physical exhibition by the participants at the Hansen House in Jerusalem.
On April 9, BIDUD featured a conversation between Roy Brand, a philosopher and curator, and Amalia Rosenblum, a writer, journalist and a psychologist, both based in Tel Aviv. Amalia is the author of a widely-read weekly column in Haaretz, in which she discusses insights from her work with couples, broaching hotly debated topics from polyamory to the use of psychedelics in couples therapy. Roy Brand is a senior lecturer at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, and Tel Aviv University. He currently heads Parterre Institute for Philosophy and Art. His book Art and the Form of Life is forthcoming from Palgrave Macmillan.
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Amalia Rosenblum: According to the cliché, “When the cannons are heard, the muses are silent.” But philosophers are hardly silent at times like these. I recall your Hebrew translation and editing of Philosophy in a Time of Terror, a dialogue with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida following the attacks on 9/11. Does philosophy have anything to offer us today as well?
Roy Brand: There are two questions here. One of them is whether or not philosophy can tell us anything concrete. But before we dive into that, I believe we should first ask why is it that at times like these there is such urgency or eagerness to hear what philosophy has to say.
Obviously, this makes me happy. Normally, when we’re not dealing with a global pandemic and apocalyptic scenarios, we’re less drawn to philosophy and its calling.
“Know thyself”, the directive inscribed in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.
Exactly. For the Greeks, philosophy isn’t something you’re suddenly induced to do, like setting up a bomb shelter in preparation for another round of rocket attacks from Gaza. For Socrates, the need to know oneself originates in a yearning for inner consciousness, a longing to know who we are and what our lives should be like. It’s something that accompanies us from the moment we become aware of our existence and right up until the end. Most of the time, however, it gets lost amid the clatter of everyday life.
Is the answer to that timeless? That is, would the answer that was true for Socrates be just as true for us, who are dealing with the coronavirus, 2400 years later?
No. The answer is not timeless and the hiatus that was forced on us by the outbreak is an opportunity for doing philosophy in the present. In that sense, it is an invitation for us to contemplate on how we conduct our lives in the here and now. Philosophers, most often, did not consider themselves as theoreticians of the eternal who offer explanations of existence or morality as something separate from life itself. Philosophy is an observation and reflection on life as we live it, while searching for and studying the right way to do so. In other words, philosophy and life are fused together. And this open-minded approach to the practice of philosophy goes hand in hand with the unraveled reality we’re experiencing today.
Are you saying that the fact that we have no idea what’s going on, this state of unraveled reality, is in fact part of what’s driving us toward philosophy today?
That’s right. Because we’re not talking about an insignificant gap in our body of knowledge. Our entire medical, economic, governmental, social and technological infrastructures are collapsing precisely because they’re built on knowledge and control. And alongside all that actual knowledge and control, we are now confronted, quite cunningly, with just how close these concepts of absolute dominance are to fantasy; just like in Hollywood movies, where humanity eventually manages to overpower the meteor, the alien, or the virus. Now we really do not know. We’re talking about a deep, fundamental state of unknowing. All that’s left for us to do is duck down and quietly wait for it to pass. I hope that this philosophical moment of recognizing the limitations of our knowledge – knowing unknowingness – will help us, as a society, to shape a new socio-political system that operates based on our profound understanding of the human capacities as well as limitations. After all, the hardest thing is to just be what one is -a human being.
I hope that this philosophical moment of recognizing the limitations of our knowledge – knowing unknowingness – will help us, as a society, to shape a new socio-political system that operates based on our profound understanding of the human capacities as well as limitations.
Did philosophers have similar expectations after 9/11?
It is true that this happened once before, earlier in this century - after the 9/11 catastrophe. You mentioned the book Philosophy in a Time of Terror, which includes dialogues with Habermas and Derrida. During my PhD studies in New York, I was very lucky to be the student of these two eminent philosophers of the 20th century, and even so lucky as to work on editing and translating their conversations into Hebrew. In the book, they discuss the new philosophical-political structure that was formed in the wake of global terrorism. They address questions of solidarity and the principles of acting in times of crisis. It is interesting that back then it also seemed that we were confronted with a faceless enemy that was threatening our world order. In my opinion, their analyses of the situation and their proposed exit strategies are still relevant.
At the time, Habermas called for a multi-participant dialogue and international solidarity. The recognition that none of us, no person, can exist fully and meaningfully without society should form the basis of the new world order. Similarly, no society can ever exist by itself without a widespread network of other societies to the point of creating a unified, cosmopolitan system of human beings, much like the system that is partially manifested in international institutions. Derrida, in contrast to Habermas, emphasized that in building the philosophical foundations of the 21st Century, there is a need to recognize the centrality of the conflict and the critical need to work through it. That is, to accept that conflict isn’t just something that needs to be fixed or rejected, but an essential force of life that needs to be creatively managed.
The recognition that none of us, no person, can exist fully and meaningfully without society should form the basis of the new world order.
But now, allegedly, we’re dealing with a completely different enemy, aren’t we? An inhuman enemy. Are those observations just as relevant now?
Very much so, in my opinion. Like you said, it seems the enemy is not the same. But terrorism and a pandemic share similar attributes. In fact, terrorism is a political-psychological term. It originated in the Reign of Terror that Robespierre led at the end of the French Revolution, which sought to overthrow those in power and those opposed to the revolution. Terrorism is the use of fear for political purposes. In contrast, the current pandemic is not political in nature and has no stated purpose. But it is being used by political forces to sow the seeds of dread. It therefore seems to me that what the two philosophers stressed in relation to the 9/11 events is just as relevant now, as we attempt to redefine the proper way of living in light of the coronavirus. It’s becoming clear that the need for solidarity, expressed by Habermas, and the need to come to terms with conflict, put forth by Derrida, are both urgent today. It’s not a matter of one or the other but rather of both simultaneously – solidarity and working through conflict.
It’s becoming clear that the need for solidarity, expressed by Habermas, and the need to come to terms with conflict, put forth by Derrida, are both urgent today.
How do you see this combination working today, in practice?
On the one hand, it seems that social solidarity is on the rise – it’s one for all and all for one against a strange and unknown enemy. Medical crews are applauded from balconies and social media has become a hubbub ofliberating and lighthearted laughter. On the other hand, everyone’s a suspect. Family members, neighbors, kindergarten children, doctors, each and every one is an existential threat and they don’t even know it.
Unfortunately, I believe that the more the crisis intensifies, the more suspicion hardens, and solidarity dries out. We might revert back to what the English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, referred to as “the natural condition” – a war of all against all or, in the words most associated with Hobbes himself, a state of dog eats dog. In the eyes of the 17th Century Englishman, the natural condition is somewhat like a jungle. According to this political philosophy, this destructive struggle would come to an end only with the election of an appointed leader. To that end, individuals form an alliance, sign a social contract and cede their powers to a sovereign. This way, they turn from a mob into a people.
If that’s the case, then from Hobbes’ point of view, the only way to achieve peace and security to fend off chaos is by making a pact that’s based on the willingness of each of us to relinquish the right to rule ourselves, and on our consent to grant a particular person or group the power to rule over us, provided that every person with whom we make that pact accepts those terms.
Well, yes. But if you look a little closer at this proposed solution, you’ll find that it creates a fragile and problematic situation, because it is conditioned on the consent to obey the ruler, with no exceptions. The sovereign thus soon turns into a tyrant that manipulates fear and the threat of social disintegration to gain more power and control.
In other words, the current crisis echoes modern political philosophy and the struggle to reconcile individual freedom and social prosperity.
Absolutely. Every society faces two threats: anarchy and tyranny. In different times, one of these threats was more pronounced and preoccupied philosophers, in direct relation with historical developments. Hobbes was mainly concerned with civil war, which was a constant threat up till the 19th century. Many of today’s regimes are a complex outcome of the bloody human history of civil wars. But tyranny is just as chronic. Unfortunately, we did not develop quite as sophisticated mechanisms of dealing with it. In fact, many despot rulers came to power while taking advantage of democracies by instilling the terrifying idea that if it weren’t for them, an all-out war will break out. So, we’re back to the conflict between cooperation and solidarity on the one hand, and openness to conflict, on the other. In other words, this is not just a conflict between opposing positions but a conflict between conflict and non-conflict that is at the root of every relationship.
And that applies to the privacy of our homes as much as it does to society in general. In what ways might this crisis affect the discourse on human responsibility for nature?
I’m not sure this blow will motivate us to care more for nature. It is more likely to reinforce the long-standing tradition of being concerned about it, that is, our fear of nature.
Perhaps this will serve as a lesson in humility?
There is definitely a lesson here on the limits of human capacity and knowledge. In Greek tragedies, the basic human sin is hubris – excessive pride leading to destruction. The hero attempts to overcome fate and his downfall is a reminder for us all to accept our humanity and humility in the face of the deities or nature. Whereas now, our pride is left without adversaries, there’s no power but our own and yet again our arrogance will spell destruction since it blinds us to the smallest mutation. This virus, after all, is not that clever. It’s no advanced technology but merely a bio-chemical mutation that unintentionally wreaks havoc.
Is it possible that the tragic tradition is once again leading to the feeling, shared by many, that the earth is punishing us?
Yes. In times of crisis we tend to assign meaning to suffering. Without meaning, suffering is unbearable, which is why we always look for someone to blame and often we blame ourselves. It is a way of regaining agency over the unpredictable. It therefore seems to us that nature is a willful entity that has a heart and mind of its own, and that this entity is taking revenge on us for the many years of neglect, exploitation and extinction. There are those who say that it is Gaia, the goddess of the Earth, who is forcing us to pause. Either way, we are personifying nature and conceptualizing the situation in such a way that makes us feel as though we are facing something truly great – life in all its beauty. And now it reminds us to take time to read, breathe, be with our families and contemplate.
As if Gaia, or Mother Nature, is telling us to once again pay attention, take care of her and consider where we want to go from here, what solidarity is all about and what truly matters.
Yes, like I said, I do hope we survive this and become better people, but the Disney-style personification of nature is a cheap, and ultimately ineffective, trick. Nature does not get mad, nor does it love or educate. This kind of thinking forces nature into a human-like framework and subordinates it to our reasoning. Nature is not a conscious entity with superpowers, and it does not send us messages in the form of viruses. Our challenge is to wake up and face the radical Otherness of nature, which escapes human comprehensibility, and denies the dominance of our social, economic, technological and scientific systems. We must learn to live in and alongside a more radical and powerful nature, which cannot be domesticated or humanized.
Our challenge is to wake up and face the radical Otherness of nature, which escapes human comprehensibility, and denies the dominance of our social, economic, technological and scientific systems.
So the mature philosophical stance would be to learn to live with profound incomprehensibility.
Yes. To live with deep and fundamental unknowingness without being paralyzed by hesitation. This doesn’t mean we should give up on our relationship with nature. On the contrary, the attempt to lead better lives requires that we come to terms with the infinite gap between us.
And what does philosophy have to say about the role of art in times like these?
Culture, in a wide sense of human life in its entirety, is very complex and we need some temporal distance to observe it. For example, looking back, we can identify and characterize the 80s. A crisis such as the one we’re experiencing now is a rare opportunity to awake right now, rather than wait forty years to understand what happened. A crisis is like a mirror of its time. In times of crisis, we suddenly grasp the entirety of life in a flash, as in a photo. The current crisis is presenting us with some of the characteristics of contemporary life. For instance, the tremendous value we place on objects, our constant running about, our attempts to buy happiness, the endless competition and so on. All these stand out in light of the quiet isolation that was imposed on us. This pandemic is like a global Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) and, much like on the Day of Atonement, we fear that silence at first, but then it sinks in like blessed peace. The soul yearns for quiet solitude as well as joyful intimacy, but in our everyday lives we find ourselves producing too much, consuming too much, being too carnal and too loud.
This pandemic is like a global Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) and, much like on the Day of Atonement, we fear that silence at first, but then it sinks in like blessed peace.
So this crisis might awaken the conflict between the external turmoil and the inner longing for peace? What kind of culture might stem from this newly found awareness?
There is an opportunity here to develop a culture of being that is not oriented to production and consumption. Daily experiences can be a source of wonder as we watch them and enjoy them like works of art. These are moments of inner revelation as well as detachment. We observe our lives from the outside, as though they were a film or a book, despite the fact that we are the protagonists. As a society, we need to form new ways of being together or alone, new forms of pleasure that is not material, of social interactions and intimacies that are not based on exploitation or interests. Here, too, we are partners in creating a shared life. In the ancient world, philosophy was referred to as “the art of living” because it teaches us to observe and create ourselves from within.
As a society, we need to form new ways of being together or alone, new forms of pleasure that is not material, of social interactions and intimacies that are not based on exploitation or interests.
This idea raises quite a bit of resistance among many. From the moment the crisis broke out, we’ve been overwhelmed with tasks – a million recommendations on how to spend our days, transitioning to online learning, working from home and more. What you’re saying is that, philosophically, if we want to reach the profound conclusions about the inherent flaws in how we conduct our lives, what we need is actually to learn how not to keep busy.
People don’t keep busy due to a philosophical deficit but, mainly, due to socio-economic conditions. The greatest minds and artists are juggling seven hundred jobs because they can’t make ends meet and they’re concerned about losing their jobs. There is a socio-economic problem here. But idleness does have its merits, as does not knowing, aimlessly wondering around the city or, when quarantined, simply thinking. I’m particularly fond of a saying by Pascal, another 17th century philosopher: “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Now that we’re isolated in our homes, we have an opportunity to remember the joy and peacefulness of being, if we only get passed our crippling anxieties. This, to me, is where art meets philosophy– in the joy of living and creating without preconceived purposes or concepts.
Sounds like philosophy is just waiting around the corner for crises like these.
Philosophy, as Socrates said, is a preparation for death. He might have meant that it elevates us to a purified state of awareness or consciousness; or he might have meant that ironically. After all, this was said in the context of his trial and his death sentence. There’s great vitality in rubbing shoulders with death. It’s not that I seek death, it’s that life only has meaning when I am faced with its finitude, with my own mortality.
You mean that sensing the danger of death that’s hovering above us has the potential to make us reconsider what’s really important to us.
Much like with hypothetical questions: What would you do if you knew you only had five years to live? Or, from the another point of view: What life story would bring you most pleasure and sense of fulfillment when looking back on it, on your deathbed? Here lies a genuine ethical driving force that can be formulated as a moral imperative: Lead a life that you can take pride in, rejoice in and take pleasure in presenting it as a beautiful, valuable creation to others and to yourself, not just moment by moment, but also, withstanding the test of time, in your final days.
There’s great vitality in rubbing shoulders with death. It’s not that I seek death, it’s that life only has meaning when I am faced with its finitude, with my own mortality.
But not only is the illusion of personal immortality undermined at the moment, so is the illusion of our progress as a society, our idea of progress and where we place ourselves relative to history, is it not?
It’s interesting that crises such as these bring back the mythical dimension to history. The Prophecy of Wrath has a glorious past. The idea of the apocalypse has been with us since biblical times, and probably much earlier than that, and we’ve been playing with it time after time.
In films depicting destruction, in dystopian series, or whenever the Anthropocene is brought up.
And, curiously enough, the term ‘apocalypse’ in Greek means revelation—a revelation of truth that has the power to destruct as well as to renew. As you can often hear nowadays, the world will never be the same again. To your question, I don’t think this upheaval can be thought of in terms of progress. Progress is the modern belief in gradual improvement. The future will always be better than the past, the next generation always more successful, technology is advancing, our social structures are more sophisticated and so on. But the term ‘progress’ does not fit every aspect of our lives. In particular it does not apply to art or to happiness. Is Picasso better than Van Gogh, or a Leonardo better than a cave painting? Progress is not a historical fact, but a way of looking. The idea of progress is actually a form of organizing things so as to grant them meaning. And in the capitalist world, it also serves as an economic engine that convinces me to purchase the new, advanced model of what I already have.
What happens if we stop believing in the God of Progress?
At first, life will seem incomprehensible. Like a purposeless, Sisyphean journey. If we’re not constantly improving, if tomorrow won’t be better and if generations to come will not have better lives, then what’s the point in learning, working, striving and suffering? We can end it all right here, right now. That is a reflex response that follows the bursting of the bubble and the loss of faith. Like Nietzsche’s Death of God, something intrinsic to the world order is severed and we feel abandoned and orphaned. And the fear is that the response would be a rejection of all values that Nietzsche terms nihilism.
But there is potential for renewal, here. For choosing a different path, reorganizing things in a newly meaningful way.
I’m not sure what could possibly replace the faith in progress. I don’t believe we’ll go back to worshipping the eternal, like in the Classical era, or believing in the glorious past as the medieval scholastics. Perhaps what we have left is to delve deeply into the present, which is truly surprising and mysterious. What sets our time apart is that we are intensely interested in the present moment. The now is more interesting than the past or the future, which is something quite new.
What sets our time apart is that we are intensely interested in the present moment. The now is more interesting than the past or the future, which is something quite new.
The web is brimming with meditation and mindfulness groups. Is that what you mean?
Not exactly. It depends on the group, of course, its background and level of commitment. But, to me, the philosophical potential cannot be captured by easy fixes. In moments of crisis, we crave comfort, which is understandable, but we need to keep clear of new forms of knowingness. A deeper sense of comfort comes with acknowledging our boundaries and our commitment to being just human. Philosophy blooms in times of crisis, in the moment of transitioning from one form of life to another, from one era to another, once life itself gapes before us, anew. The history of philosophy is that of a struggle of knowledge and passion, of art and life, of revelation and wisdom. I hope that this is indeed that kind of moment – one of critical, positive awakening that calls on us to ponder our way of life and renew it.
Translated from Hebrew to English by Shira Rivelis
Title image - “Hard, hard to be a baby” by Carsten Höller, 1992. Installation view, Museum on the Seam, “Bare life” exhibition, 2007. Photo: Roy Brand
