For Cynics, as for Romantics, especially Novalis, truth is to be found just as much in the infinite universe as in our infinite interior. In his incomplete novel, “The Disciples at Sais” he shows different ways to approach the truth of our nature. The cynical love of truth, parrhesia, coincides with the romantic search for truth.
Keep reading: What ist parrhesia?
Novalis novel is a response to the Enlightenment poet Schiller, who warns that we must not tear down the veil of sais, otherwise we would go insane, because we are not up to the truth (about ourselves). The novel remained incomplete. So it has no conclusion. But that’s not what I’m interested in here. Also not about the many interesting details in it. I thoroughly recommend to follow the link above and read the novel for free.
But I am concerned with an attitude in truth-seeking that can also be helpful for us in the practice of Parrhesia. I summarize briefly:
Novalis first describes two fundamentally different ways of encountering nature. The first he calls childlike: Nature is there for us, like a laid table. The plants, the animals and everything else are created for us humans, that we help ourselves to them quite innocently and that means at the same time recklessly, enjoy them, eat them.
On the other hand, he sees courageous naturalists who recognize that nature is hostile to us humans and who are willing to engage in this struggle with nature so that we humans can survive and grow.
Between these two extremes he sees the, we would say today, eco, who meets nature with love, but also wants to use it, knows how to take it, who curiously lets himself be guided by nature etc.. Today, we immediately think of the “organic farmer”, of sustainability, etc..
And now comes the crucial thing, the point I’m trying to make here.
After listening to all the variations of how we can, may, or should encounter nature, the apprentice concludes:
All approaches somehow convince him as the reasonable, right way.
The inner contradiction of the ecology movement
While in the ecology movement every disturbing tree, every dangerous wolf, every inconvenience is to be put up with, even loved, for an approach that knows no such thing as weeds, no such thing as pests that have to be dealt with using weedkillers, the ecos exclude humans here. Both the children who just want to have fun and eat their hamburger from the nearest Mc Donald or like to accelerate their big fat BMW to speed 300, no matter how much energy it consumes, and the brave ones who want to go fully armed and put nature to the torture1It was Francis Bacon who was convinced we must put nature on the torture so that it reveals the truth to us. Bacon was also a prosecutor at the witch trials, where he also relied on torture, are rejected, are to be canceled, that is, destroyed.
Ecos refuse to shoot wolves because of their dangerousness to people and animals. But they regularly have no qualms about humans who they consider dangerous.
They are not interested in the truth, in the respective strengths of the diverse groups. Instead of accepting their respective power and not exploiting their weaknesses for destruction, they fight positions that deviate from what they consider to be the right way. However, we do not only annihilate attitudes in others that seem strange or wrong to us, but also proceed with the same will to annihilate against ideas, feelings, thoughts, that originate from our own selves. The romantic search for truth requires as its foundation the love of truth, of what is, instead of wanting to improve it, which is to destroy it.
Novalis is convinced: if we meet nature with love, if we let ourselves be guided by it instead of wanting to fight it, then it will quite voluntarily give us , what we need and it will always show us new ways to use it and to live in and with nature in love.
It will be exactly the same with other people and in dealing with ourselves.
Keep reading: Why romantics are real cynics
- 1It was Francis Bacon who was convinced we must put nature on the torture so that it reveals the truth to us. Bacon was also a prosecutor at the witch trials, where he also relied on torture