This is the second in the final week's posts which aim to present a critical discussion of the book as a whole. In yesterday's post, I discussed Esolen's methodology. In today's post, I want to discuss some of the content of that vision of a Catholic society I suggested he was aiming to pass on.
A striking feature of Esolen's presentation has been his emphasis on aesthetics: not only has he continually engaged with the artistic in most of the chapters, but he has frequently focused on images. Indeed, the whole work could be perhaps be described as trying to show the integritas, consonantia and claritas (wholeness, harmony, radiance: the three aspects of beauty according to Aquinas) of a Catholic society. Rockwell's images above are but one example of the paintings considered by Esolen.
Now although in the post (post 4) I considered Esolen's remarks on Rockwell I admitted I disliked the paintings intensely, Esolen has a point in claiming that they do capture something right: roughly, the tenderness of young not-quite-yet-sexual love between the sexes. You might, if you prefer and have a stronger stomach than mine, consider Donny Osmond's Puppy Love as a further popular example of this theme:
Whatever is wrong with these artworks (and I'll go on to discuss that) their popular appeal on the theme of innocent love ought to give us some pause for thought. Esolen praises the way that Rockwell's images gesture to a life beyond the immediate: the children are situated in a social world of small town America; they are situated in the natural world accompanied by other species etc etc. But there is also a completeness: the children themselves- or at least the adult selves they gesture towards- also form a complete world between them, the world of the primary society which is the family.
A lot of Esolen's images have this completeness. In the final chapter, his imagining of a community at peace with itself at Mass as the perfect society is the paradigm of this completeness. The problem for actually existing societies -whether these are marriages, businesses or States- is that this degree of completeness seems impossible. Whether it is the bickering of even a happy marriage or the political antagonisms of the nation state, incompleteness and strife seem hardwired into actually existing societies. Moreover, it might be claimed, such an eristic atmosphere is necessary. Returning to the Rockwell images, whatever else might be said about them, they seem to fit Roland Barthes' category of readerly texts which have a closed, single message, rather than the more open writerly texts which invite numerous different interpretations through their incompleteness. Just as Rockwell's images are aesthetically inadequate because of their straightforwardness and (relative) hermetic completeness, so Esolen's images of perfect societies are politically inadequate because of their ignoring of complexity and indeed disharmony as necessary ingredients of modern (and indeed ideal) social life.
What might be said on behalf of Esolen in response to these criticisms? First, Esolen is not committed to the aesthetic defence of Rockwell: it is perhaps precisely in the lack of depth and complexity that the American Protestant/secular view of society is lacking. Indeed, once you take God and the community gathered round the sacrifice of Christ at the Mass out of society that it becomes trite and ultimately unrealistic. Something like Rockwell's view of small town American life is a fantasy (and not in the end even a terribly inviting fantasy). Something like Dante's Divine Comedy (about which Esolen has also written) is, whilst imaginative, both complex and deep. It is that sort of deep image that Esolen is claiming Leo XIII is presenting in his writings rather than the superficial image of Rockwell.
Secondly, there is the role of the coherent ideal even in the midst of disharmony and complexity. Reclaiming Catholic Social Teaching is a relatively short book and it is an introduction to Leo's writings. (And Leo's writings themselves might be seen only an introduction to the full body of Catholic thought in this area.) But by presenting a relatively short, focused work which itself presents merely the sketch of an ideal, we are better able to orient ourselves when it comes to the nitty gritty of social life and politics. When all is in flux, a simplified, clear ideal may be of more use that a detailed, realistic representation. The London Underground map, for example, by simplifying and abstracting, is much more useful as a guide than a more realistic map of the rail network would be:
[There'll be a final post this week on Friday 18 September 2015!]
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