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

Modern Age, Fall, 2004 by James V. Schall

Nonetheless, Aristotle himself did tell us, in a famous passage, not to follow "those who advise us, being men, to think of human things, and, being mortal, of mortal things, but [we] must, so far as we can, make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us; for even if it be small in bulk, much more does it in power and worth surpass everything" (1177b31-78a2). Human things are political and economic things. While not to be neglected, they are not of highest importance. We must "strain" ourselves to seek the highest things. Aristotle clearly thinks that we can miss knowing what is important by concentrating merely on what we are in this world and its mortal activities.

We cannot, however, forget that haunting passage in The Brothers Karamazov in which we are warned that ultimately men would prefer bread to freedom. "For the mystery of man's being," we read in Dostoevsky, "is not only in living, but in what one lives for. Without a firm idea of what he lives for, man will not consent to live and will sooner destroy himself than remain on earth, even if there is bread all around him." Such are indeed somber, yet also hopeful, words in these days of rapid population decline in Europe and in America, the effects of the culture of death. But these words remain apt commentary on the notion that man does not live by bread alone, a remark addressed to, of all people, the devil himself by Christ in the desert. The man who lives "by bread alone" is the man who lacks both culture and leisure.

To entitle, as I have, a book, On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs, leaves one open to certain obvious charges of denigrating the ordinary affairs of men, affairs most people take to be precisely "serious," the ones on which they spend the most time. While both accepting the validity of the point being made, the first two reviews that I saw of this book, both written fairly soon after September 11, 2001, mentioned in fact the paradox of a book suggesting that human affairs were "unserious" over against the obvious dangers and perils of a new war and numerous signs of cultural decay. The book was written before September 11, though it was not actually brought out until December of 2001. In the meantime, I had written a number of hawkish analyses of the current war against "terrorism," as it is called, the general outlines of which I approved. I likewise agree that many signs exist of--again to use that pressing word--"serious" civil decay, signs from rapid loss of population in the West, to the disorders in the family, to the legal reversal of many former sins so that they become "rights."

But, to put things in perspective, I had come across C.S. Lewis's famous lecture "Learning in Wartime," given at Oxford in October of 1939, in which he said

  The war creates no absolutely new situation. It simply aggravates the
  permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human
  life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture
  has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more
  important than itself. If men had postponed the search for knowledge
  until they were secure, the search would never have begun. We are
  mistaken when we compare war with "normal life." Life has never been
  normal. (4)