Spring 2001#1
Getting to Modern Culture
1) the punctuating the chronology of history in modern times
middle ages: 5th--->15th century
early modern era: 16th--->18th century
modern era: 18th--->mid-20th century
post-modern era: mid-twentieth century --->
2) the relationship between ancients and moderns
The distinction between the "ancient" and the "modern" as a way of punctuating time began only in the Renaissance of the 15th century.The notion of the modern emerged against the ancient as a frame of reference for evaluating the quality of civilization. The notion of a "Renaissance" is bound up in this distinction, as is that of a "Middle Ages" interjected between ancient and modern times.
A key figure in this formulation was the 14th-century Italian humanist Petrarch (1304-74).Petrarch extolled the Latin language of ancient Roman civilization.Educated people had used Latin through the middle ages, but Petrarch for the first time commented self-consciously on its beauty, in contrast to the modern vernacular languages that were displacing it in everyday life.Like the Roman writers they so admired, he and other humanists stressed the importance of rhetoric, which included elegant writing and speech.They also reaffirmed the importance of the art of memory, now a studied technique of organizing knowledge in places of memory. This modern art of memory contrasts with the more intuitive, poetical memory of the Homeric rhapsodes of ancient Greece.Because of the intellectual prestige accorded ancient Roman culture, Latin remained a lingua franca among educated people (clerics, academics, statesmen) until the 18th century, and among clerics until the mid-20th century.
Petrarch also admired Roman culture for its ideal of civilization.He especially praised the republican civic ideal, and the wisdom of public-spirited Roman citizens such as Cicero. For Petrarch, the Roman ideal of living well was summed up in the notion of virtu, which included such values as moderation, self-confidence, intellectual refinement, and courage in dealing with adversity. Cicero's notion of virtu is not far removed from Seneca's stoic ideal. Both are philosophies of self-care that focus on human autonomy.This interest in a humanist (man- centered) as opposed to a theistic (God-centered) conception of the human condition appealed to many of the Renaissance humanists as well.
All of these Renaissance humanists judged antiquity superior to the modern age in its wisdom and accomplishments. They stressed what modern man could learn from the ancients, much of whose learning had been forgotten, ignored, or at least misunderstood during the intervening middle ages.Hence the importance they ascribed to studying the classics of Greek and Roman culture.
The focus of the Renaissance humanists upon antiquity concerned not only literature and philosophy but also politics.Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), the Florentine diplomat who wrote with such acumen about the nature and workings of political power from a human standpoint, was a student of Roman history, and turned to it for many of the examples he used to illustrate his arguments about statecraft.
The 18th-century Neapolitan rhetorician and historian Giambattista Vico gave the ancient/modern distinction a new turn and a new depth in his New Science of history (1744). He was the first scholar to recognize the differences between oral and literate cultures in antiquity, and the first to argue that Homer was a collective term for rhapsodes.Vico exposed the poetical nature of thought among ancient people, and so explained that the mindset of the ancients was not better but different from that of moderns.
3) the waning of the martial ideal at the end of the middle ages
The decline of medieval culture is identified especially with the declining role of the aristocracy as a warrior class.The martial prowess of the nobility was still honored and their social status highly valued, but they were beginning to lose their economic power, and sensed that their way of life was passing.Like a supernova about to expire, the culture of the late middle ages displayed intensity and exaggeration.
Johan Huizinga, the cultural historian who coined the phrase "waning of the middle ages," remarks upon the violent tenor of life in that era, and seeks to explain how medieval people coped with it.Given the precariousness of life, its ongoing miseries and constant dangers, people wore their emotions on the surface of their psyches far more than they do today.They were given to emotional mood swings, characterized alternately by compassion and cruelty, sweet nostalgia and somber pessimism.They might adopt one of three stances toward life:
1) forsaking the world for the religious life. Many took this option;
2) making efforts to improve the quality of life in the world.Almost no one saw this as a realistic alternative;
3) escaping into their fantasies, a world of dreams in which they could imagine the perfect life they could not expect in their actual experience. Faced with realities that were ugly or frightening, they desired to transfigure them into an aesthetic vision of beauty and harmony. This desire is made manifest in three elemental realms of human experience:
a) the ideal of chivalry, which transfigured human aggression.It was a sublime ideal that gave an aesthetic mask to the realities of warfare.It veiled its tediousness, its petty hardships, and its life-threatening combats.The chivalric ideal lingered long after the waning of the middle ages, domesticated in the modern code of manners.The elements of chivalry included:
personal heroism - an exaggeration of martial virtues, as Huizinga called it "pride aspiring to beauty"
asceticism - a heroism that displays self-discipline. Chivalry was ascetic, but also erotic.One would claim to fight and suffer for one's lady love.One might wear some memento of one's lover while in combat, or better still fight in the cause of defending virgins or saving maidens from dragons. St. George was especially popular.
a religious sanction - an identification of martial prowess with religious purpose or social virtue.Knights sometimes organized their martial orders along monastic lives.They took vows of fidelity, if not chastity.The archangel Michael began to get more play.
personalism - the investment of individual combat with high purpose on which might hinge the fate of nations.
fidelity - the socialization to heroism through participation in a band of brothers;
Chivalry, therefore, promoted self-deception.One could lose oneself in the illusion of the ideal, and that felt good.At the same time, it meant denying reality.In the end, of course, it led to military miscalculation and contributed to the decline of the nobility, displaced by calculating princes and professional soldiers of the sort that Machiavelli praised.
b) the ideal of courtly love.If chivalry transfigured aggression, courtly love transfigured carnal love.Courtly love lent spiritual meaning to sexual passion, which medieval Christian culture tended to denigrate.
c) the symbolism of everyday life.In the middle ages, religious imagery permeated all aspects of thought. Medieval people thought in terms of signification rather than cause and effect.To understand the meaning of a phenomenon, they would ask what it signified about a transcendental plan ordained by God. This too contributed to the fantasizing that we have mentioned --- everyday experience was considered for its symbolic meaning, as if everything that happened on earth had some hidden purpose in God's providential plan.
3) the cult of manners
The medieval codes of chivalry and courtly love found attenuated expression in the cult of manners that developed between the 16th and the 18th centuries.It was the core of what we characterize as the "civilizing process."The cult elaborated an aristocratic social code of appropriate behavior in everyday life: for e.g.,
at table when eating or when carving meat
when sleeping at an inn
comportment when performing basic bodily functions
The elaboration of this code of manners was a psycho-social process.
In a social sense, it developed out of the aspirations of wealthy bourgeois commoners to enter the aristocracy, who retained their status but were losing their wealth and function in society.Having lost their role as warriors, aristocrats reinvented themselves as "gentlemen." To be an aristocrat was to display "gentle" behavior, and as the aristocracy felt their status ever more threatened they set ever more elaborate standards to exclude commoners who aspired to enter their ranks.
In a psychological sense, permissible behavior was defined by a threshold of shame. As the code became more elaborate and the prohibitions more explicit, the threshold of shame fell lower.When someone transgressed behavior that was expected, others present felt a sense of embarrassment.This is what we mean when we say that civilized people are "sensitive people."Sensitivity is an awareness of one's own behavior.It is a trait of modern culture, and in the self-awareness of emotions that it inspired it contributed in an important way to the rise of a sense of selfhood, and by extension of individualism in the early modern era.Such sensitivity became a high ideal among Romantic poets and writers by the end of the 18th century.
4) the art of conversation.A particular refinement of the cult of manners was the art of conversation. In some ways, the art embodied a perennial wisdom.It found expression in Plato's Symposium in the 4th c (BCE).Cicero had much to say about it in the 1st c. (BCE), and Dale Carnegie reiterates much of it in the 20th century.
But the art of conversation became a topic for studied reflection only in the Renaissance of the 16th century.Savants began to write books about the art, especially in Italy, and then with greater refinement in 17th century France.
Some examples are:
Baldassare Castiglione, Cortegiano (1528)
in ItalyGiovanni Della Casa, Galateo (1558)
Stefano Guazzo, Civil Conversazione (1574)
in FranceJean-Baptiste de La Salle, Les Règles de la bienséance (1695)
Some of the rules of the art of conversation were:
equal participation
spontaneity
repartee
adversarial, but in a friendly way
free of passion; easy-going
These rules had always been part of the art of conversation considered as a perennial philosophy.The new courtesy books strove to make them more explicit.If it was necessary to write the rules down, it meant that some people must have been transgressing them. Also, people were becoming more sensitive about polite speech.This was an age in which the aristocratic ideal was changing. Admiration for the truculent warrior was yielding place to that for the ingratiating gentle person.
In this respect, the art was linked to the ideal of sociability.It bespoke intimacy among the participants in conversation.It was a mode, or register of speech between the informality of conversation in families and the formal discourse of public speaking.The task of the art was to mind a middle ground between gravity and affability.
In this respect in included several prohibitions:
no low jokes
no vulgar language
no malicious gossip
no boasting ----> English ideal of understatement
The art of conversation became somewhat more formalized in the salons of 17th century France. These salons were often identified with well-educated women, for e.g.: the marquise de Rambouillet, Mme de Lafayette, Mlle de Scudéry. These salons contributed to the feminization of conversational standards and represent a first small step toward women's rights.
In its beginnings, the art had been identified exclusively with the aristocracy.In the 18th century, the use of the art was democratized in places where the bourgeoisie socialized, such as literary clubs and coffee houses.
6) the crisis of Christian culture in the 16th century
The Renaissance humanists set new standards for the exegesis of Scripture.
key figures in the crisis of Christian culture in the 16th century were the Dutch scholar Erasmus, the German scholar Martin Luther, and the French scholar Jean Cauvin (John Calvin). Their work prepared the way for the Reformation.
Leaders of the Reformation put a new emphasis on the importance of individual responsibility, and so on the importance of willpower.
we have come to discover that the Reformation was complicated by variations within popular culture. Ordinary people lacked the abstract vocabulary to understand the theological debates of the learned clergy.
The schism within the Church was accompanied by a slow trend toward secularization.On a superficial level, it was made manifest in anti-clericalism.On a more profound level, it was evinced in the redefinition of humankind's relationship to God.God was increasingly understood as a removed God --- a cosmic watchmaker, or a lord of history.