A few thoughts about the primordial poem

July 8th, 2010
By: Paris Ionescu
Topics: Featured Article, Theory and Criticism

“And we inherit that, all at once, as if it were reality…” writes Nietzche in 1881 of the primordial poem which humans created, then proceeded to thoroughly forget they wrote. It seems that Joseph Beuys was somewhat late, then, in his simultaneous proclamation and (as Bill Arning points out) imposition that “Jeder mensch ist ein kunstler,” since perception itself was already the art in question. Perception is always a living-with, the partaking in a common but objectless substance, which Giorgio Agamben, with Aristotle in mind, calls friendship. And when Alan Kaprow observed keenly in 1971 that ‘everything is more interesting than art’ (art in the codified tradition of the mark-maker), it becomes clearer through Nietzche what he meant.

Wolfgang Schirmacher’s portrayal of Nietzche seems to suggest that the most artificial quality of life is its anthropomorphic quality. Artificial life (Schirmacher) is here the epic lie (in the most honest sense) motivated by our will to power, manifested by our emotive capacity with which we map moods and values onto the world, and undersigned later with the forged signature of a Christian God. In the very capriciousness of the story humankind has forged, Schirmacher would have it that the artifice is revealed. For Nietzche it seems that artifical life would show its rangy body nakedly to us after the mask of God has fallen. Schirmacher adds to this that it is the post-technological epoch which is truly chipping away at the patina which conceals our status as Homo Generator (one instance he gives is the post-mortem conflation of Lady Di and Mother Theresa calling natality and mortality into question once again). In the trajectory towards an awareness of Homo generator Schirmacher sets forth, there would have been less autonomy than symptomaticty in Daniel Birnbaum’s titling of the 2009 Venice Biennale, ‘Fare Mondi.’

Regarding the anthropocentricity of artifical life, Nietzche ruminates: “Nothing is beautiful, only the human individual is beautiful,” and one is reminded of Henri Bergson’ theory of humor that: only in the social and the human is there comedy, and that when we see it in the inanimate we are solely making the comparison to ourselves.

“In artifical life, only what my life facilitates to be fulfilled can count as real,” writes Schirmacher. I am not yet clear on Schirmacher’s level of commitment to a materialist world view, but for me one of his most piquant critical twists is that ethics are not ‘what one ought to do’ as traditionally formulated, but the question ‘what am I able I do to make a good life for myself.’ How can I not be reminded of late Wittgenstein’s suggestion that we ask not what something means, but what it is for (it makes me smirk to recall that it was Tiravanija who quoted that line, in interview). Without misreading either philosopher too foolishly, I would like to ask how this notion connects to Spinoza’s concept of free will as merely the knowledge that all our thoughts and actions are the only possible products of those conditions which precede them. I believe Spinoza, in Ethics, made reference to the passage of time as the vessel of the future steadily decanting its liquid into the vessel of the past.

I would also like to inquire into Schirmacher’s assertion that the calculable findings of natural science are instrumental, not artificial, while at the same time they serve as reality substitutes, perhaps heuristics? Does not the progress of science, from Leibniz’ calculus to Darwin’s theory of evolution, Feynman’s quantum electrodynamics, appear to reveal strata of reality without knowledge which calls for unpredictable redefinitions of artificiality in general would be less generative? How do we maintain a stable sense of ethics when the next revelation may negate those ethics?

Finally, regarding Schirmacher’s conception of ethics as self-determined: “Does my life achieve fulfillment? This is the only ethic question,” I agree that freedom is a secondary concern, but I wish to understand what the contingency plan is when two people’s personal ethics must compete over the same resources? If, as Schirmacher quotes from Schopenhauer, society profits from the failure of certain individuals, is Schirmacher’s personally-defined ethics a form of avoiding or shelving the humanistic project of a rescuing into the fold of the less fortunate, as difficult as this may seem.

</pardon me I’m only 23>