Chronicles of a Liquid Society by Umberto Eco

  What has Catholic theology always claimed so as not to identify itself with materialistic evolutionism? Not just that all of this is the work of God, but that there is a qualitative leap in the evolutionary ladder when God introduced an immortal rational soul into a living organism. The battle between materialism and spiritualism is based on this point alone.

  One interesting aspect of the debate taking place in the United States for its inclusion in school curriculums, alongside the Darwinian “hypothesis” (don’t forget that Galileo escaped conviction in his trial by admitting that his was a hypothesis and not a discovery), is that, so as not to make it sound like a conflict between religious belief and scientific theory, the discussion focuses not so much on divine creation as Intelligent Design. In other words, we don’t want to impose on you the embarrassing presence of a bearded and anthropomorphous Yahweh, but you have to accept that if there was an evolutionary development, this didn’t happen by chance but in pursuance of a plan, and this plan can only come from some form of Mind, which means that the concept of Intelligent Design could allow a pantheistic God in place of a transcendental God.

  What I find curious is that no one has considered that Intelligent Design doesn’t rule out a casual process such as Darwin’s, which occurs, so to speak, by trial and error, so that the only creatures to survive are those that best adapt to the environment. Let us think of the noblest concept we have of “intelligent design,” namely, artistic creation. It was Michelangelo who told us in his famous sonnet that the artist, when he finds himself in front of a block of marble, cannot at first picture the statue that will emerge, but he proceeds by trying, testing the resistance of the material, getting rid of the “surplus” in order gradually to let the statue emerge from the waste matter that imprisoned it. But the artist discovers what the statue is, and whether it is Moses or a slave, only at the end of the process of continually trying.

  Intelligent Design can also be seen through a series of acceptances and rejections offered by chance. First, of course, it needs to be decided whether there is a Designer capable of accepting and rejecting, or whether it is Chance that, in accepting and rejecting, shows itself to be the only form of Intelligence—in other words, that it is Chance that makes itself God. And this is no small question. Clearly it’s rather more philosophically complex than the fundamentalists suggest.

  2005

  The reindeer and the camel

  In these weeks before Christmas the controversy over nativity scenes rages. On the one hand, several large stores have stopped selling nativity figures for Christmas crèches because, they say, they’re no longer in demand. This has aroused the ire of many pious souls who, rather than railing against their fellow citizens for having lost interest in the tradition, have attacked the storekeepers, even a chain store that, it later transpired, had never sold nativity figures in the first place. On the other hand, it has been argued that the loss of interest in the Christmas crib is due to excessive political correctness, the example being cited of schools that have stopped making them to avoid offending the sensibilities of children who belong to other religions.

  As regards schools, even if it were a limited phenomenon, this would be a bad sign. A school must not erase traditions but should instead respect them all. If it wants children from different ethnic backgrounds to live together in peace, it must allow each child to understand the other’s traditions. So the nativity scene should be there at Christmas, and the symbols and ritual implements of other religions or ethnic groups should be displayed on occasions that are important to them. Children would learn in this way about the plurality of traditions and beliefs, each would take part to some extent in the festivities of the others, a Christian child would find out about Ramadan, and a Muslim child would learn about the birth of Jesus.

  As for the news that figurines are no longer for sale, I have the feeling this is journalistic hype. In the San Gregorio Armeno district of Naples, the sale of the most remarkable figures and models continues. Two years ago, I went through the whole floor of a Milan department store devoted to nativity scenes; it was packed with customers. A weekly magazine conducted a survey among politicians showing that the more left wing or rabidly anticlerical they are, the more they like nativity scenes. This makes me wonder whether the Christmas nativity scene is a symbol more dear to nonbelievers, now that churchgoers have been converted to the Christmas tree, putting Father Christmas in the place of Baby Jesus or the Magi, who in my time used to bring the presents, which is why children joyfully celebrated the King who came down from the heavens with their toys.

  But the question is ever more confusing. We think that the tree and Father Christmas represent a Protestant tradition but forget that Santa Claus was a Catholic saint, Saint Nicholas. His name originates from a distortion of Nicholas or Nikolaus. And the evergreen tree is a pagan legacy, since it recalls the Yule, a pre-Christian festival of the winter solstice: the Church had established Christmas on the very same day so as to absorb tradition and take the place of previous celebrations. The final ambiguity is that neopagan consumerism has entirely secularized the tree, which has become a piece of seasonal ornament, like the Christmas lights in city streets. Children and parents enjoy decorating it with colored balls, but I certainly found more enjoyment helping my father build the Christmas crib at the beginning of December, and it was a joy to see gushing fountains and waterfalls operated by hidden virtue of an enema pump.

  The practice of building the nativity scene is being lost because it requires work and inventive skill. All Christmas trees look much alike, whereas every nativity scene is different. Those who spend their evenings so preoccupied are in danger of missing television shows important for the preservation of the family, as we are forever warned that parents must be present while their children watch naked women and brains being smashed to pulp.

  Remembering that my father, who was so devoted to the Christmas crèche, was a middle-of-the-road socialist, mildly deist, and moderately anticlerical, I feel that to ignore the tradition of the crib is also bad for nonbelievers, and maybe even more so for them. Indeed, the invention of the crib required a character like Saint Francis, who expressed his religiosity above all by talking to wolves and birds: the crib is the most human and least transcendent thing that could be invented to remember the birth of Jesus. In that sacred diorama, apart from the star of Bethlehem and two angels that hover over the cattle stall, there is no reference to theological niceties, and the more populated the cattle shed, the more it celebrates everyday life, helping children to understand what daily life used to be, and perhaps feel nostalgia for a nature that was still uncontaminated.

  While the secular and consumerist tradition of the tree evokes superstitions that are even, dare one say, somewhat national socialist, superstitions that are lost in the darkness of time, the religious tradition of the crèche celebrates a secular and natural environment, with its hillside cottages, sheep, hens, blacksmiths and carpenters, women carrying water, the ox, the donkey, and the camel, which will easily pass through the eye of a needle, while those who leave super-expensive presents beneath the tree will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

  2006

  Watch it, loudmouth . . .

  Fifteen years must have gone by since I wrote that in a few decades Europe would become a continent of mixed races, but that the process would cost blood and tears. I wasn’t a prophet, just someone with common sense who often looks at history, convinced that by learning about what took place in the past we can often understand what might happen in the future. Terrorist attacks aside, I need only see what’s on people’s minds these days. A schoolteacher in France writes critically of Islam and runs the risk of being killed. In Berlin a production of Mozart’s Idomeneo is canceled because it shows the decapitated heads not only of Jesus and Buddha but also of Muhammad. I won’t dwell on the words of Pope Benedict, who at his age ought to have known that there’s quite a difference between a university lecture given by a professor and a
pontiff’s speech broadcast by every television station, and that perhaps he should have been a little more cautious. Yet those who have used a historical reference as a pretext for attempting to stir up a new religious war are certainly not the kind I’d like to have dinner with.

  Bernard-Henri Lévy has written a fine article about the case of the French schoolteacher: we may totally disagree with what he thinks, but we have to defend his right to express a free opinion on questions of religion. Sergio Romano has written about the case of Idomeneo in Corriere della Sera, which I’ll try to sum up in my own words: if a director desperate for novelty stages an opera by Mozart and introduces the decapitated heads of religious founders, when such an idea had never crossed Mozart’s mind, the least we can do is give him a good thrashing, but for aesthetic and philological reasons, in the same way directors who stage Oedipus Rex with characters in double-breasted pinstripe suits should be flogged. Yet on the same day, in La Repubblica, a musician as illustrious as Daniel Barenboim, though wisely asking whether it really was in the spirit of Mozart to attempt such a production, claims that it’s the prerogative of art.

  I think my friend Daniel would regret the tendency years ago to condemn, or ban, Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. It’s a play inspired by an anti-Semitism common at the time and even earlier, from Chaucer onward, but shows Shylock in a human and poignant light. Yet this is what we are faced with: the fear of speaking out. We must remember that these taboos cannot all be traced back to Muslim fundamentalists, who can be rather touchy, but started with political correctness, inspired by a spirit of respect toward others, and which now makes it impossible, at least in America, to tell jokes not only about Jews, Muslims, and disabled people, but also about Scottish, Genoese, Belgians, policemen, firemen, garbage collectors, and Eskimos, who shouldn’t be called that, but if you call them as they’d like to be called, then no one would understand whom you’re talking about.

  Twenty years ago I was teaching in New York, and to demonstrate how to analyze a text, I chose, almost at random, a story in which, on a single line, a foulmouthed sailor described the vulva of a prostitute as “large as the mercy of . . .”—and here I put dots in place of the name of a divinity. At the end of the class I was approached by a student, evidently Muslim, who respectfully reproached me for lack of respect for his religion. I of course replied that I was only quoting someone else’s vulgarity, but that in any case I apologized. The following day, I introduced into my discussion a not very respectful, though playful, reference to an illustrious figure in the Christian pantheon. Everyone laughed, and the Muslim student joined in the general hilarity. At the end of the lesson I took him under the arm and asked why he had showed a lack of respect for my religion. Then I sought to explain the difference between making a witty remark, taking God’s name in vain, and swearing, and I invited him to be more tolerant. He apologized, and I feel sure he understood. What he may not have properly understood is the extreme tolerance of the Catholic world. In a “culture” of swearing, in which a God-fearing believer can describe the Supreme Being using adjectives that do not bear repeating, then who could be scandalized any longer by anything?

  Not all educational relationships, however, can be as peaceful and civilized as the one I had with my student. In other circumstances it is better to keep quiet. But what will happen in a culture in which, for fear of making a gaffe, not even academics will dare refer to an Arab philosopher? It would cause a damnatio memoriae, the elimination of a diverse and worthy culture through silence. And it would not be good for mutual knowledge and understanding.

  2006

  Idolatry and iconoclasm lite

  Are we living in a world of images in which the culture of the word is lost, or is the word returning in triumph with the Internet? Where do we place television, DVDs, video games? The human relationship with images has always been a difficult one, as Maria Bettetini recalls in her book Contro le immagini: Le radici dell’iconoclastia (Against Images: The Roots of Iconoclasm). It’s only 160 pages long, but I don’t wish to mislead anyone: it’s a dense book aimed at readers who know something about philosophy and theology. Since its density makes it difficult to summarize, I’ll make only a few general observations on the human ability, unknown to animals, of fashioning “simulacra.”

  For Plato, if objects are imperfect reproductions of ideal models, images are imperfect imitations of objects, and therefore pale secondhand imitations. But in Neo-Platonism images become a direct imitation of ideal models, and the word agalma means statue as well as image, but also splendor, dignity, and therefore beauty.

  The ambiguity was present in the Hebrew world, where it was forbidden to make images of God or to utter his true name. Yet God had created humankind in his own image, and if we read biblical descriptions of the Temple of Solomon, we see that there were depictions not only of plants and animals of every kind, but also of cherubs. And since the same prohibition on portraying heavenly things applied in the Muslim world, places of worship used abstract calligraphic forms, though the Muslim culture has furnished us with splendid and highly imaginative miniatures.

  With Christianity, not only had God assumed a “visible” body, but this divine body had left images of its face on veils and bloodstained handkerchiefs. Christianity needed images too, Hegel would later explain, to represent not just the glory of the heavens, but also the disfigured face of Christ in pain and the cruelty of his persecutors.

  At this point, the matter becomes ever more complicated, since Neo-Platonists like Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite tell us that divine things can be spoken about only in the negative, so that if it’s necessary to refer to God, it’s better to use the most outrageously dissimilar imagery, such as a bear or a panther. Yet people who had read Pseudo-Dionysius had formed the idea that every earthly thing was none other than the image of a celestial thing, and every creature of the world is almost a “picture” of things that would otherwise escape our senses, so that it was right and proper to produce pictures of these pictures.

  But for uneducated people it was easy to pass from the fascination of the figure to identifying it with the thing it represented, and to slip from the cult of images into idolatry, the return of the Golden Calf. Which led to iconoclasm and the famous Byzantine campaign against images.

  Conversely, the Church of Rome didn’t relinquish the use of visual representations, since, as would often be repeated, Pictura est laicorum literatura, and illiterate people can be taught through images alone. And yet there was debate over what power was exerted by this multitude of figures that populated abbeys and cathedrals, and a cautious theory was developed in the time of Charlemagne that images were good, but only to stimulate the memory, and that it would in the end be difficult to decide if a female image represents a Virgin to be venerated or a pagan Venus to be abhorred unless it had a titulus, or label. It’s as though the Carolingians had read Roland Barthes, who theorized about the verbal anchoring of images, not for the celebration of God but for the sale of new commercial idols, and who had anticipated the theory of a verbal-visual culture, such as today’s, in which television—image plus word—has simply replaced the cathedral. And it is, I suggest, on television screens that the pope is venerated, and at times idolized, by people who no longer go to church.

  This prompts other reflections that bring Maria Bettetini’s slim but disturbing book to its conclusion. She fears that the beauty of images, including sacred images, makes people forget God (this had already worried Saint Bernard), and complains laically that in new images there is a “loss of aura.” But she also feels that contemporary art first destroys or disfigures traditional images, as with Picasso or informalism, then plays around by multiplying them, as with Warhol, and finally substitutes, jettisons, recycles, re-creates them, in a sort of permanent “iconoclasm lite.”

  So the times in which we live are still more complicated than those that worried Plato.

  2007

  The cocaine of the people

/>   A recent debate on the semiotics of religion ended in a discussion of an idea that goes from Machiavelli to Rousseau and beyond: the Roman concept of a “civil religion,” meaning a body of beliefs and obligations capable of holding society together. It was believed that this notion, in itself virtuous, is just a short step away from the idea of religion as an instrumentum regni, an expedient that a political power, perhaps represented by unbelievers, uses to maintain control over its subjects.

  The idea goes back to writers who had experienced the civil religion of the Romans. For example, in book VI of The Histories, Polybius wrote in relation to Roman rituals that “in a nation formed by wise men alone, resorting to means such as this would be pointless, but since the multitude is by its nature voluble and subject to passions of every sort, from immoderate greed to violent anger, the only alternative is to entertain them with such contrivances and with mysterious fears. I am therefore of the view, not that the Ancients had no reason to introduce religious faith and superstitions about Hades among the multitudes, but rather that those who seek to get rid of them today are foolish . . . The Romans, while handling much larger sums of money in public offices and embassies, remain honest only out of respect for their oath; among other peoples it is rare to find those who do not touch public money, whereas among the Romans it is rare to find someone who taints himself with such guilt.”