Abstract
In this article Stiegler’s political ideal, the new otium of the people, is investigated. It is argued that this ideal reveals his philosophical project ultimately to be not the consideration of “the pursuit of life through means other than life” (technics) – but the pursuit of Christianity through means other than Christian. As is also shown, of these means, art and the aesthetical are crucial for Stiegler. Thus, he becomes a successor to one of his famous fellow Kantians who, like Stiegler, in his own time reacted to the political impasses of his social order by putting his faith in art and the aesthetical: Friedrich Schiller and the book he published in 1794 as the result of his disappointments with the French Revolution, namely Letters on the Aesthetical Education of Man.
For Stiegler, the central crisis of Western modernity is of a theological nature, namely its loss of faith in its social order and in its future. Stiegler takes the restoration of Western modernity’s faith in its social order and its future to be the main political challenge of today. In this article it is shown how Stiegler wants to meet this challenge with his proposal of the creation of the new otium of the people – a proposal that draws heavily on medieval Latin Christendom and the broader Christian tradition, and that ultimately hinges on Stiegler’s attempts to execute two questionable moves.
The first of these moves is his attempt to hold up the 20th century’s “cult” (his term) of art as a substitute for Christianity that can do socially, politically and spiritually for the contemporary Western social order what Christianity did for this social order before the so-called death of God. As will be shown, this move rests on a questionable attempt to interpret the creation and experience of art with reference to Christian liturgy. The aim of this move is to legitimate art as the successor of Christianity, which can stamp its authority on the contemporary social order and thus equal the authoritative example of Christianity in previous Western social orders: Christianity is used to authorise art.
The second of these moves is Stiegler’s attempt to extend his techno-anthropology to an aesthetic anthropology whereby the aesthetical is construed to be pivotal not only to the constitution of individuals and groups (what he calls psychic and collective individuation), but also to religion and politics. Religion, especially Christianity, is interpreted by Stiegler as first and foremost an aesthetic phenomenon, while the aesthetical is interpreted as the ground of politics. Here, the authority of Christianity is made to rest on its claimed aesthetic contribution to individuation and politics in previous Western social orders: art is used to authorise Christianity.
In order to assess Stiegler’s ideal of the new otium of the people, section 1 begins with a critical overview of a number of crucial conceptual refinements of his diagnosis of the ills of Western modernity, including his restatement of the theological crisis of Western faith as the result of the negotium’s (historically, activities related to business and subsistence) encroaching on the otium (historically, leisure of the kind that favours activities related to education, artistic creation, intellectual work and spiritual contemplation). In this section it is shown how Stiegler refines his diagnosis of the ills of Western modernity through the conceptual development of the interdependent triad of subsistence, existence and consistence, with the atheological notion of the consistent that does not exist being to Stiegler what God is to Christianity. It is also shown how Stiegler identifies the threat of disindividuation and the loss of participation, leading to symbolic misery and the extension of the proletariat from producers in the industrial society to consumers in the hyper-industrial society. This process Stiegler recasts with reference to the negotium and the otium to argue that the tendency of the negotium through the industrialisation of leisure now dominates its counter-tendency, the otium.
Then, in section 2, a closer look is taken at Stiegler’s new otium of the people with regard to older Roman and medieval Christian conceptions of the otium. Hence, first, a brief overview of the otium for the Romans and medieval Latin Christianity is given. It is shown how from Cicero and his contemporaries onwards, the otium was understood as activities pursued away from war, subsistence and public life, in the service of the common good. Such activities included study and scholarly writing. After Augustine, the otium came to be seen as practices such as prayer and meditation which furthered the contemplation of God, but which also simultaneously served as the precondition to embody the Christian version of the common good, that is, neighbourly love. By the high to late Middle Ages the otium as freedom from manual labour and the pursuit of dignified leisure was the privilege of the aristocracy and clergy (with the exception of monastics), providing spiritual support for those that physically supported the otium through their manual labour in the negotium. At the same time, prayer, meditation and liturgical participation as practices of the otium were open to all, while monastic and eremetic practices of the otium were seen as preparation for the highest form of the otium, heaven, where all would unceasingly contemplate God free from material and physical concerns.
This is followed by a brief overview of Stiegler’s definition and historical overview of the (Western) otium, of his preliminary suggestions on what the new otium of the people must look like, of what promise contemporary mnemotechnologies hold for the new otium, and of what examples of the tentative realisation of this promise he identifies. It is argued that he sees it as something to be cultivated through disciplines as practices, that it cultivates attention, that it facilitates community, that it commemorates tradition and thus gives hope for the future, and that it offers an experience of time where the participants in the otium experience moments of synchrony. Last but not least, Stiegler considers the otium as being in principle open to all, and as the road to the aristocratic practice of the spirit, with culture being the content of the otium.
Then, in section 3, what I call Stiegler’s aestheology is considered, that is, his attempt to make a case for the cult of art as the successor of Christianity and, hence, as the spearhead of the new otium of the people and its politics. It is shown how Stiegler sets out to make art the main vehicle of the new otium of the people. This leads him to creating an aestheology, that is, a theology of art constituted by classic Christian theological motifs – belief, love, hope, the promise, liturgy, participation and community. In the process, on the basis of his utilisation of the medieval Latin Christian otium as a model, Christianity is used to authorise art as the vehicle of the new otium of the people, something that Stiegler can execute only if he can argue the case that art can repeat everything done by Christianity. In order to do the latter, he not only develops his theological account of art, but, in turn, he is bound to refigure the aesthetic, affective experience as the heart of Christian belief.
Keywords: aestheology; attention; BernardStiegler; modernity; new otium of the people; new proletariat; re-enchantment; techno-theology; theological-philosophical critique; Western modernity
Lees die volledige artikel in Afrikaans: Bernard Stiegler se esteteologie en die nuwe otium van die volk.