On leisure and culture: why human things exist and why they are "unimportant"

Modern Age, Fall, 2004 by James V. Schall

LET ME BEGIN by citing two passages that graphically underscore the themes that I wish to consider here--the things of leisure and culture, of what is and its surprising origins. The first lines are from Gregory of Nazianzen, the great Eastern theologian:

  What benefactor has enabled you to look out upon the beauty of the
  sky, the sun in its course, the circle of the moon, the countless
  number of stars, with the harmony and order that are theirs, like the
  music of a harp? Who has blessed you with rain, with the art of
  husbandry, with different kinds of food, with the arts, with houses,
  with laws, with states, with a life of humanity and culture, with
  friendship and the easy familiarity of kinship? (1)

The second is from the Dutch philosopher Johan Huizinga:

  Real civilization cannot exist in the absence of a certain
  play-element, for civilization presupposes limitation and mastery of
  the self, the ability not to confuse its own tendencies with the
  ultimate and highest goal, but to understand that it is enclosed
  within certain bounds freely accepted. Civilization will, in a sense,
  always be played according to certain rules, and true civilization
  will always demand fair play. Fair play is nothing less than good
  faith expressed in play terms. ....To be a sound culture-creating
  force this play-element must be pure. (2)

In each of these citations, we are admonished to do things that seem utterly useless, things not necessarily senseless, but still impractical.

Beholding the beauty of the sky or counting, as Gregory calls them, the "countless stars," is really not good for much. No doubt, it can prod us to wonder why things are in this way, in this order, rather than in some other arrangement. It might even impel us to send up a few space ships to have a look about. Yet, Gregory obviously thinks that what we gain from this contemplation of the heavens is well worth our efforts. And what is this about civilization "always presupposing limitation and the mastery of self?" Surely Huizinga is being ironic?

Yet, the things of civilization are also mentioned--art, houses, harps, food, laws, and "the life of humanity and culture." Gregory understands that these latter things, except for the rain, have a human component. But we still should wonder why we are said to be "blessed" with such humanly-fashioned things, almost as if they were "intended" for us to bring forth. They obviously refer us to a source not ourselves. We realize, at least implicitly, that we did not cause ourselves to be, to stand outside of nothingness. If cultural artifacts exist in some abundance, still they had to be brought forth by a being who had the capacity to create or develop them. But we did not give to ourselves this artistic or craft capacity to make or order things, any more than we created the beauty of the heavens or the countless stars.

In order that something higher might be achieved among us than just our essential being, we need to act. Rules and limitations, as Huizinga paradoxically tells us, therefore, need themselves to be discovered, formulated, and, more importantly, "freely accepted." So our limitation and our freedom are not necessarily and always at loggerheads, as we are sometimes told. We need one for the other. Our freedom is directed to what is; we do not make or create either reality or our capacity of free will. To make a choice to have this thing is simultaneously to make a choice not to have that thing. We are only free to play the game if we agree to abide by its rules that limit us to play in the way the game is played. Otherwise, with no rules freely accepted, it is not a game and no one will play with us on any other terms. What the game is, its truth, limits our freedom to play it, that is, makes us free to play it because we accept the rules.

What is implied here is that our human life in the universe reveals something of this same structure, of knowing what we are, of learning the measure or rules of our being, of freely accepting them in order that we might be what we are intended to be, human beings, not toads or gods. We seem, by being what we are, as Plato taught us, to be ordered to "play" or to participate in some transcendent game or design whose rules we do not ourselves fashion. (3) Huizinga also observes that civilization itself requires a sense of limit and self-mastery. We cannot play a game while changing its rules in the midst of the playing. We cannot create a human culture while changing the structure of what it is to be human. "Man does not make himself to be man," as Aristotle told us. He is already man, not of his own making. This fact itself is cause, in our souls, of the most curious of self-reflection. What is the ground of our being if we are not? The very faculty by which we consider what we are is already present in us, almost as if to say that we are meant to reflect on how we could ever come to exist since we did not cause the sorts of beings we are to come to be in the first place.