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THE APOSTASY OF MELANCHOLY – Europe on the run

Bert van den Bergh

Conference Proceeding: ‘Ideals and values in European integration’ – The Hague 12/06 It is Christmas 2006, Time Magazine proclaims me person of the year. I look at the cover and raise my eyebrows. What? Me? ‘Yes, you. You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world.’ My world. From this Time-issue I may conclude that this is the earthly heaven of the sovereign individual in an intimate embrace with information communication technology. The fruit of this love affair, according to Time, is a world-wide ‘social experiment’ of energetic, productive, innovative, creative, in short of free spirits. At long last: we are free, we are equals and we are interactive. Adhortations such as those in the Christmas issue of Time, are frequently let loose upon us these days. They are characteristic of a time in which drive and entrepreneurial spirit are considered to be among the highest values. It seems a paradox that encouragement appears to be all the more necessary in this Realm of Freedom. As a consequence this incitement turns into something obsessive, it becomes a somewhat frenetic summons. What is being pursued here and what is it that is being avoided? I hope to address these questions in the following article by allotting a central place to an experience which, in the course of European history, has been understood in various ways and, therefore, has been undergone in various ways, namely: melancholy. A glance at the vicissitudes of this experience may afford a view of the (changing) condition of our culture. Melancholy as a core experience ‘For most of western European history, melancholy was a central cultural idea, focusing, explaining, and organizing the way people saw the world and one another and framing social, medical, and epistemological norms. Today, in contrast, it is an insignificant category, of little interest to medicine or psychology, and without explanatory or organisational vitality.’1 These are words spoken by the American philosopher Jennifer Radden, in her anthology The Nature of Melancholy, From Aristotle to Kristeva. Radden’s work might be called an apology of melancholy. She wrote it as an accolade to this experience: ‘in homage to its past’.2 There has been a number of moments in the history of European thought when melancholy did not emerge as timidity but as an opportunity. During those moments the melancholic state was not regarded as a fixation, as an imprisonment in a hopeless situation, but as an opening, as a movement towards a more elevated or more profound condition. So, in principle: a positive interpretation of an experience which, in the end, is painful at the same time. The fact that this positive view begins to be lost from our consciousness at the start of

1 Jennifer Radden, The nature of melancholy – From Aristotle to Kristeva. Oxford University Press, New York, 2000, p. VII. Besides by this book, the present article w as inspired by the unsurpassed work Saturn und Melancholie by Raymond Klibansky, Erw in Panovsky, Fritz Saxl; see note 8. 2 Idem, p. VII.

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the 20th century and seems to have become entirely lost to European man at the end of this same century, is worth contemplating. In other words, Radden’s retrospection may encourage our introspection. We hardly speak of ‘melancholy’ these days, we usually talk about ‘depression’ –a ‘mood disorder’, which is designated a ‘popular disease’ by many experts, by the way– and prefer to fight this annoying inconvenience with psychiatric drugs, without the desire or the ability to go deeper into its background causes. What is going on here? What is happening to Europe? What has happened to its melancholy? Why has this core experience been marginalised in the course of the last century? Conflicting emotion Core experience? Is this not too weighty a qualification? Let us go back in time for a moment. In 1809 the German idealist philosopher Schelling went so far as to assert that not only man, but even the essence of all life is pervaded with melancholy: ‘Daher der Schleier der Schwermut, der über die ganze Natur ausgebreitet ist, die tiefe unzerstörliche Melancholie alles Lebens.’3 This line is taken from the small but rich little work Über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit, in which Schelling contemplates one of the core themes of the Enlightenment: human freedom, in connection with a philosophical reflection on a religious core issue: the possibility and reality of Evil. According to Schelling man’s freedom does not only comprise self-determination, but also an ‘ability to be either good or evil’. Man has the capability to oppose reasonable order, which, eventually, reality tends to conform to. He can change this tendency and thereby repudiate the ‘Geist’. However, man cannot gauge what it is that enables him to be rebellious like this. In the performance of evil he wants to place himself outside the order of things, wants to become all-powerful, but in doing so, that which makes this step possible, eludes him. All life depends on origins in the abyss, which it will never be able to transcend. ‘Dies ist die allem endlichen Leben anklebende Traurigkeit.’4 Said Schelling. Now, this may be rejected out of hand as ‘dark and gloomy romanticism’ and Schelling may be ridiculed as a ‘romantic thinker’ who, in the words of his former friend Hegel, lost himself at an early stage in the ‘night in which all cows are black’ and eventually ended up, in inimitable vagueness in thinking about mythology and the philosophy of revelation. And carrying rhetorical questioning further, one might add: do not all romantics lose themselves in such obscurity and does not melancholy form part and parcel of this, like a cart horse comes with a cart? This would, indeed, be a very coarse caricature of the complicated whole which is, for the sake of convenience, summarised as ’romanticism’. This term denotes a great deal more than ‘revelling in vague feelings’. And it is just as reductionist to typify romanticism merely as a boundless counterweight to the ruthless optimism of the enlightenment. And this latter ‘trend’, too, is a particularly complex compound, which is often –in a simplistic summary– presented as a uniform monolithic system. It is important that ‘enlightenment’ and ‘romanticism’ are considered in their intertwined relationship. They are counterparts, two conflicting moments in the same historical movement. One of the people who has shown the extent to which ‘romanticism’ and ‘enlightenment’ are interwoven, and thus constitute the core emotion of European (or western) culture, is the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor. In Sources of the self Taylor undertakes a historical quest for the moral sources of the modern subject. The identity of this subject –the ‘self’– is seen by Taylor as active ‘moral orientation’. This orientation is twofold and conflicting; on the one hand it involves detachment, objectifying nature and on the other expressiveness,

3 ’Hence the veil of gloom w hich has been spread across all of nature, hence the profound and indestructible melancholy of all life.’ F.M.J Schelling, Über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1975, p. 91. 4 ‘This is the sadness w hich is germane to all f inite life.’ Idem.

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externalisation of the inner self. It is the disengagement from everyday experience as well as the deepening of it. It is, in other words: ‘enlightenment’ and ‘romanticism’. ‘These two facets of modern individuality have been at odds up to this day.’ 5 Taylor claims that the core ideal in our conflicting moral orientation is that of ‘authenticity’. We Europeans, (or westerners), are driven by the triplet of self control, self exploration and self realisation. With very strong emphasis on self. I shall return to this issue shortly. Sublimity and melancholy Now, to carry on with our dip into the history of the European frame of mind. Within ‘romanticism’ melancholy is re-assessed in a positive sense, but it is certainly not a romantic invention. In the heart of ‘the enlightenment’ another such moment of positive appreciation can be found, namely with Immanuel Kant, pre-eminent enlightenment thinker. Kant is famous for his three critical undertakings: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft and Kritik der Urteilskraft, written at the end of the 18th century. In this trilogy he provides an imposing and normative description of the conditions that make human knowledge and judgement possible. To Kant human reason is limited and it is from this very limitation that it should manifest itself in all its glory. Primacy lies with the ‘practical reason’; to Kant there is nothing more awe-inspiring in man than his moral potential. As early as in Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen (1763) he wrote about this. The sublimity surpasses the beautiful, and true virtue is sublime. This virtue is all about ‘moral sense’, that is to say an inner contact with moral principles which, as they are more general, make this virtue more noble and more exalted. And who among men, according to the young Kant, comes closest to this awesome core of life? The melancholic. Melancholic man, writes Kant, is not capricious but consistent. He is indomitable, independent and free: ‘Er erduldet keine verworfene Untertänigkeit und athmet Freiheit in einem edlen Busen. (…) Er ist ein strenger Richter seiner selbst und anderer und nicht selten seiner sowohl als der Welt überdrüssig.’6 At times the melancholic loses control over himself, but usually he is the one who knows best what it is all about in life: having a sense of moderation. Melancholy opens the door to the core of human freedom and in so doing to the heart of human finiteness, or rather to the opposite of over-confidence, obstinacy, insolence, immoderation. The exceptional mind and its melancholy. Let us go back in time a little further. In the Kritik der Urteilskraft (which includes thought on beauty and sublimity) Kant uses the notion of ‘the genius’. This notion, happily adopted by the romantics, emerges quite prominently long before Kant, viz. during the Renaissance, in Marsilio Ficino. In 1482 his famous medical trilogy De vita triplici was published. And the state which, in these books, is linked to the genius, is that of melancholy. Starting out from a humanist context, melancholy in Ficino emerges as a painful but more lofty condition, which belongs to an exceptional mind. ‘Aus dem BewuBtsein eines tragisch erlebten Freiheit [erwächst] die Vorstellung eines Genies, das immer unverhohlener den Anspruch erhebt, in Leben und Leistung nicht mit der normalen Moralgesetze und Kunstregeln gemessen zu werden. Und diese Vorstellung erwächst in engem Zusammenhang mit dem Begriff einer

5 Charles Taylor, Sources of the self - The making of the modern identity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989 (1998), p. 182. 6 ’He does not tolerate depraved submission and breathes freedom in a noble breast. (…) He judges himself and others severely and is not seldom fed up w ith himself and the w orld.‘ Immanuel Kant, Vorkritische Schriften bis 1768. Insel-Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1960, p. 842.

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Melancholie, die den Musarum sacerdos 7 zugleich schlägt und begnadet.’8 Opening up in stead of locking up. A ‘freedom experienced in tragedy’. Behold, again the European core theme. With melancholy at its heart. The brilliant melancholic, melancholy as a characteristic of the man of genius. Where is the origin of this elevated interpretation of morbidity? Reply: from the ancient Greeks. From our ‘cradle’, then. There is in existence an influential text in ancient Greek, dealing with melancholy –in the past it was attributed to Aristotle, but today it is identified through its title only: Problema XXX.19–, which opens with the following words: ‘Why is it that all men who have been extraordinary in philosophy or in politics or in literature or in arts, turn out to be melancholics…?’ and ends with the conclusion: ‘As this inconstancy10 may also be in a state of equilibrium and may constitute a favourable condition in a certain way (…) all melancholics are extraordinary, not because of an illness but by virtue of their nature.’11. This cannot be misconstrued. The opening sentence and the closing sentence, in a way, say different things, they contradict each other to some extent, but they also say one thing very clearly and loudly: melancholy leads somewhere, the effect of the ‘black bile’ may be quite extraordinary. The author of this text, who moves in the footsteps of Aristotle, does not regard melancholy as a sign of weakness. From melancholy to depression And today this does seem to be the very sign which shows this experience or mood in its guise of ‘depression’. ‘Stress’, ‘burn-out’, ‘chronic exhaustion’, ‘depression’: this seems to have become a (psycho)logical sequence in our way of thinking. Those who can no longer keep up with today’s tempo, those who are less at ease within the contemporaneous constellation of dynamic entrepreneurship, are beginning to falter, fall silent, drop out, willy nilly. And next, this dropping out is fought tooth and nail. The depressed person himself desires this as well, because his experiences (or moods or ‘mood disorders’) have been presented to him in a very specific manner by science, the media, literature and through reading matter. One of the people who have analysed the mutual dependence of such experiences and their specific conceptualisation, is the French sociologist Ehrenberg. In La fatigue d'être soi - Dépression et société12, the third part of a trilogy in which the outlines of the modern subject are drawn, Ehrenberg concentrates on the phenomenon of depression. The individual he is scrutinising here, is not so much determined by prohibition and guilt (as in the time of Freud), but by commandment and shortcoming, by the ethos of self-realisation and responsibility. Seen in this light, depression is the ‘disease of responsibility’, of its failure, of inadequacy in terms of a certain cultural ideal, that of self-realisation.

7 ‘Priest of the Muses’, a self-reference by Horace. 8 ’From the aw areness of a freedom experienced in tragedy, the image springs forth of a genius that demands more and more frankly that, in his life and in his w ork, he should not be judged according to normal moral principles and esthetic norms. And this image grow s, closely connected w ith the notion of a melancholy w hich at once overpow ers and blesses the musarum sacerdos.’ Raymond Klibansky, Erw in Panovsky, Fritz Saxl, Saturn und Melancholie. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1990, p. 367. 9 This is chapter 1 of book XXX of the Problemata Physica, a motley collection of pieces of information in the areas of physics, biology, medicine and others. 10 Here the instability of one of the bodily f luids, the ‘black bile’ is referred to, called melaina cholê in Ancient Greek. The doctrine of the four bodily f luids (black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm), has a long history and w as long decisive for our thought about changes in moods. The doctrine dates back to the 6th century BC, w as prepared by the Pythagoreans, elaborated in Hippocratic circles and it w as not until the Middle Ages that it w as turned into a systematic doctrine of the temperaments: the melancholic, choleric, sanguine and phlegmatic types. The sanguine type is usually given the highest appreciation, the melancholic type the low est. This basic tendency, now , is breached at the historical moments w hich are referred to in this article. 11 Aristoteles, Over melancholie. Historische Uitgeverij, Groningen, 2001, p. 28 en 39. 12 Alain Ehrenberg, La fatigue d’’être soi – Dépression et société. Éditions Odile Jacob, Parijs, 1998.

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Ehrenberg further clarifies the change he refers to by discussing the history of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, DSM for short, of the American Psychiatric Association. In Mental Health Care the DSM functions as a guideline in treating psychiatric disturbances, including ‘mood disorders’ such as depression. In its development from the first version of 1952 to the version which is currently used, the DSM-IV-TR from 2000, this guideline has turned its back on the causes of psychological disorders and has concentrated on their symptoms. That which can easily be seen, has become increasingly important. In the end, there is no more room in the DSM for the investigation of underlying structures. And the notion of shortcoming has become increasingly more important if this disease is to be understood. This dominant framework encourages the application of pharmacological treatments, whilst ignoring inner conflicts. For this reason depression is more and more often regarded as a psychomotor disturbance: enfeeblement through psychological distress is no longer the issue, but the reverse: psychological distress springs from a certain weakness. There you have it: a psychopathology which fits in with a new phase of subjectivity. A phase with new norms: those of the self-fulfilment gone mad. The enterprising subject The following are our present-day maxims: ‘Be yourself, look for the Authentic’. ‘Act yourself, draw from your inner sources!’. ’Express yourself, be outgoing!’, and especially: ‘Do something, undertake things!’ We are living in a society in which the notion of enterprise has assumed an obsessively central position. To-day’s key words are terms such as responsibility, motivation, innovation, personal development, self-direction, project-orientation, communication.13 We are constantly encouraged to mobilise our mental capabilities and affects, put them to use and propagate them. And within this context, depression is more and more the lack of what is required: it is inadequate motivation and failing communication, too little development, too little responsibility, lack of project, lack of entrepreneurial spirit. Psycho-stimulants or ‘mood improvers’ such as Prozac and Seroxat are more than welcome in a culture like this. They carry the promise of strength to the weak, entrepreneurial spirit to those without initiatives. Prozac, writes Ehrenberg, is not a pill to create happiness but a pill to bring initiative. The subject which, in the present globalising constellation, is put in the limelight by high-tech capitalism as an incarnation of the good life, is an individual full of self-confidence, energy, flexibility, alertness, in short, an enterprising subject. However, this alleged sovereign individual appears to suffer more and more often from resistant, recurring chronic depressions. And from addiction and dependence. And from stress, burn-out, chronic exhaustion. What is wrong with us? What drives us? What are we after? We have introduced anti-depression courses in secondary schools, so that pupils who are ‘gloomy’ can be subjected to a curative programme so they may be protected against ‘sliding down into a depression’. Courses like these have titles such as Lose your blues (Grip op je dip – for youngsters), In the dumps, out the dumps (In de put, uit de put – for adults) and Light days, dark days (Lichte dagen, donkere dagen – for ethnic minorities). With a degree of fanaticism we are trying to discover the physiological and genetic causes of our psychological disturbances and irregularities. During such research dichotomies become apparent, such as: ‘inspired employees’ who are emotionally stable, versus ‘people with a burn-out’ who are emotionally unstable.14. Without claiming that courses like these are nonsensical or that the research

13 In education, too –w hich, nowadays, should be especially ‘activating’– such emphasis (or pressure), is becoming more and more apparent. Not only does ‘project driven education’ assume a more and more prominent place, students themselves are more and more turning into ‘projects proper’, w hich, by w ay of Personal Development Plans, Personal Action Plans, etc. must encourage themselves to achieve further execution and completion. After which, once they have taken up jobs as professionals, the PDPs and PAPs are resumed. 14 Ph.D. research by psychologist Saar Langelaan at the University of Utrecht, see NRC 14/2/07: A burn-out is something in your genes.

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mentioned is faulty, I believe that a large question mark should be placed when it comes to such methods of searching (and, consequently, finding) and acting (or rather: treating). The discours surrounding this type of phenomena seems to be aiming for a confirmation and perpetuation of something. Or, rather, its seems to aim for the bringing about of something. A separation of minds: people who are able to keep up versus people who cannot keep up so very well. Quotation: ‘I wondered if people who are burned up are composed differently from people who are inspired in their work.’15 The animated versus the anaemic. The latter are the weak, by nature. It is their lot. Where does this all lead? And what’s happened to melancholy? Is there no time left for it, in a constellation which is moved by haste and ‘chilling out’, the dizygotic twins from a probably none-too-happy marriage? If you arrange all things systematically –admittedly in a nutshell– questions abound. What does it signify that, shortly after the great change in our European cultural history –the one towards modernity– melancholy briefly occupies the core of our thinking and feeling? Before now, I mentioned Ficino, who inspired Albrecht Dürer to the creation of his famous engraving Melancolia I (1514). Consider, for example, Robert Burtons copious collection The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), consider Dowland’s musical tears Lacrimae (1604). And what does it signify that in the present great change –that of globalisation– the mood disorder ‘depression’ has been designated a core problem by the World Health Organization, but, at the same time, we seem no longer able to place it? We repair ourselves, so to speak, without knowing what’s broken. It was Kant already who said it: we are living in an era of enlightenment, but surely not in enlightened times. We run the risk of losing melancholy. We tend to run away from it. If the enlightenment is our profane belief, melancholy is our apostasy. Melancholy and religion Our culture is often called a culture of enlightenment, it may be typified as ‘rational-humanist’. But it is also characterised as ‘Christian-humanist’. Starting out from this twofold characterisation, it could be a challenge to investigate what the state of melancholy was and is in both provinces –the ‘secular and the ‘regular’– and how these vicissitudes do or do not correspond. I make bold to put the following question, as a variant of ‘Aristotle’s’ line: –Why is it that many men and women who have been extraordinary in the field of religion, turn out to be melancholics?– Three examples to illustrate: a man, an anonymous person and a woman. The first lived in early modern times, he is the Unshod Carmelite Juan de la Cruz, spiritual leader, mystic and poet, canonised in 1724. His work hinges on, as it were, a darkening of senses and mind. This ‘Dark Night’ is a transitional situation, an opportunity to achieve a spiritual breakthrough. But, unfortunately, this opportunity is usually misunderstood and is declared to be timidity. ‘For it may happen that God moves a soul to a very high road of dark contemplation and barrenness. It seems to her (this soul) that she is getting lost along this road. And, thus filled with darkness and suffering, fear and temptations, she should meet people who, like those who comforted Job, tell her that this is melancholia or despondency or a natural state of being; or that there may be some hidden vice within her and that this is why God has abandoned her. This is how they usually stand at the ready with their judgement, that the soul cannot but have been very evil, for such things to happen in her.’16 The experience of a ‘weakening’ which turns out to be a ‘strengthening’ also becomes apparent in the works of the following authors from the later Middle Ages. Sometime in the 14th century an anonymous English monk wrote an very readable advisory text, in which profound experiences of ‘unbeing’ are dealt with: The Cloud of Unknowing. In chapter 44 the crucial question is asked how to lose one’s obstinacy in order to be able truly to surrender to

15 Quotation from an interview w ith Saar Langelaan, NRC 14/2/07. 16 Joannes van het Kruis, Mystieke werken. Uitgeverij Carmelitana, Gent, 1992, p.511.

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divine existence. A ‘special grace’ is needed to achieve this, says the writer, which, in its turn requires a ‘full according ableness’ in order to receive such grace. This ability, he continues, is nothing but a strong and profound ‘sorrow’. True, moderation must be exercised in relation to this sorrow, but happy is he –or should be– who can achieve this truly perfect sorrow. ‘This sorrow, if it be truly conceived, is full of holy desire’.17 In the Low Countries it was Hadewych, spiritual leader and authoress who spoke of similar ‘melancholic’ matters. Hadewych’s work is permeated by a both passionate and painful desire to become one with the Godhead, or, in Hadewych’s terminology, with the ‘minne’ (love). The Middle Dutch word for this communion is 'ghebruken' (use, enjoy). However, what the mystic is struck by, is the absence of this union, a ‘ghebreken’ (failure). And what do we read in one of her letters? ‘Ende dat ghebreken van dien ghebrukene dat es dat suetste ghebruken.’18 : and the failure to enjoy this union is the sweetest delight. And elsewhere, in one of her so-called visions, the following words are found: ‘Dijn grote derven van minnen heeft di ghegheven den oversten wech in mijn ghebruken’.19 : the great failure of this love to occur has given you the supreme way in my delight. The highest way is found in the profoundest deprivation. The enjoyment of love is paradoxical. ‘Troest ende meslone in enen persoen/ Dats wesen van der minnen smake’ 20 Comfort and despondency in one, this is the core of the love-experience, writes Hadewych in one of her strophic poems. In sum, the mystic experience brings a peace which disturbs all peace, ‘een vrede die alle vreden stoert’21. Timidity A peace which disturbs all peace. Does the present ‘neoliberal’ era offer space and opportunity for such experiences of thorough disorder, dismay, change, and deepening to occur? Hardly, it would seem. Indeed, from time to time there are calls for ‘less haste’ and there is a global quest for relaxation, but this only turns the haste upside down. This is the same total mobilisation, the same tyranny. Those things that are difficult and laborious, are preferably avoided. Above all, people want to be ‘inspired’. And our depressions must quickly be rendered harmless. –Be animated, and lose your worry in a hurry. The depression’s success, says Ehrenberg, came into being at the moment when the reference to the conflict declined. A new phase in the era of self-realisation began. If Freud showed us a way out of our inner conflicts at the time, it is Ehrenberg who now draws our attention to the thoroughfare towards the lack of entrepreneurial spirit. If Freud claimed that man becomes neurotic because he cannot summon the degree of repression which society demands, it is Ehrenberg who says that man becomes depressive because it is demanded of him that he should cherish the illusion that he is capable of anything and everything. ‘You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world.’ We can do everything ourselves now. We are forced to do everything ourselves now. The notions of project, motivation and communication dominate our present normative culture. And depression means: lack of project, motivation, communication. Such deficiencies will become more and more visible and common. And more and more thorough and obstinate will our attempts be to fight this deficiency. You could call this a vicious circle. ‘Why is it that all men who have been extraordinary in philosophy or politics or in literature or in the arts, turn out to be melancholics…? Thus spoke ‘Aristotle’. And Ficino continued to speak. And Kant. And Schelling. To mention just a few. What they spoke about is something that we seem to remain silent about, obstinately and grimly. It would seem that we cannot do

17 J. Walsh (Ed.), The Cloud of Unknowing. SPCK, London, 1981, ch. 44. 18 J. van Mierlo (Ed.), Hadewych – Brieven. N.V. Standaard Boekhandel, Antw erpen, 1947, p.132 (16e brief, 17ev). 19 Hadew ych, Visioenen. Uitgeverij Prometheus/Bert Bakker, Amsterdam, 1996, p.86 (8e visioen, 37ev). 20 Hadew ych, Strofische gedichten. Uitgeversmaatschappij W.E.J. Tjeenk Willink, Zw olle, 1961, p. 224 (Lied XXXI, 25ev). 21 Idem, p. 226 (Lied XXXI, 52).

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otherwise. Expressed in terms of ‘value’ and ‘evaluation’ –as we are expected to do in the context of this conference– we have to say that here lies a hidden devaluation, here beckons a suppressed value. It causes eyebrows to be raised. What is the matter here? Why has a wall been built? What is Europe concealing? Is it on the run, by any chance? Is it, perhaps, trying to lose itself? Amsterdam, maart 2007