NATURE / AC GRAYLING
Here is an annotated edition of AC Grayling's vignette on Nature. Pleased to note that he brings the essay to a close by citing Turgenev.
Fragile human life often finds itself confronting nature's larger gestures - earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, floods, droughts, pestilences and plauges. Nevertheless, we choose to assume that, generally speaking, nature's ordered ways are benign. The power of natural disasters is a reminder that they are not.
Nature is as unyielding in defending itself as it is in exploding our expectations. A man is frail when a mountain falls on him, but give him the slimmest chance of survival - for example, a fissure to crawl into as an escape from the engulfing rock - and he will survive. This illustrates the tenacity of life, which Schopenhauer described as an instance of the general metaphysical will underlying all things - the continual struggle for continuance. Schopenhauer thought that the will to exist is a bad thing, because it pointlessly perpetuates suffering. But others are not so pessimistic, and redescribe nature's neutrality as even-handedness. 'Why should we fear to be crushed by savage elements', Emerson asked, 'we who are made up of the same elements?'.
People who enjoy opportunities for reflection - for which leisure is a condition, and a condition for leisure, in turn, is wealth, or at least freedom from necessity - tend to occupy areas of the world with temperate climates, fertile soil, and low frequencies of natural disasters. For them, natures is an amenity and an enjoyment: blossom-filled woods in Spring; sparkling snows at Christmas are not matters of life and death, but aesthetic delights. Nature in these guises elicits poems and songs, watercolour paintings and afternoon walks. No one writes an ode to a tsunami, or strolls in a storm - though he might, like Turner, paint one. It was a Romantic affectation to seek out the sublime and awful in nature; poets took pains to be overwhelmed by Alpine chasms and brooding forests. Such is the mental mark of urban civilisation. Rural civilisation is never so impressed. The shepherds who graze their sheep in Alpine chasms find them much less amazing than a city street. For them, nature - earthquakes and all - is merely natural, neither especially beautiful nor especially significant.
To view nature aesthetically, and even romantically, is better then to view it with such workaday indifference, because then it retains its power to refresh the town-wearied spirit which prompted Wordsworth to complain 'Getting and spending we lay waste to our powers/Too little we see in nature that is ours'. But the romance requires a tincture of realism to take account of the truth in Turgenev's observation that 'Nature cares nothing for our human logic, she has her own which we do not acknowlege until we are crushed under her wheel'.
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Agreed that there is a price to be paid for urban civilisation ("such is the mental mark of.."). But he's clearly writing from an urban/monied point of view when he writes "To view nature aesthetically..is better..."
Of course it is, it's bleedin' obvious that this is better - and necessary - if you live in a city and have the "leisure" and "weath" to do so. I'm not sure whether I rate AC Grayling. These essays were published weekly in the Saturday Guardian (where else?) before they were collected in a book which I picked up recently for £1.99.
Also, I don't understand the point made by Emerson which he quotes. Can it really be said that humantiy "is made up of the same savage elements" (presumably fire/earth/water/air??) which are so devastating in nature?
AC Grayling. A bit rubbish? Overrated? A publishing phenomenon first and foremost? Or is it just me?
Here is an annotated edition of AC Grayling's vignette on Nature. Pleased to note that he brings the essay to a close by citing Turgenev.
Fragile human life often finds itself confronting nature's larger gestures - earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, floods, droughts, pestilences and plauges. Nevertheless, we choose to assume that, generally speaking, nature's ordered ways are benign. The power of natural disasters is a reminder that they are not.
Nature is as unyielding in defending itself as it is in exploding our expectations. A man is frail when a mountain falls on him, but give him the slimmest chance of survival - for example, a fissure to crawl into as an escape from the engulfing rock - and he will survive. This illustrates the tenacity of life, which Schopenhauer described as an instance of the general metaphysical will underlying all things - the continual struggle for continuance. Schopenhauer thought that the will to exist is a bad thing, because it pointlessly perpetuates suffering. But others are not so pessimistic, and redescribe nature's neutrality as even-handedness. 'Why should we fear to be crushed by savage elements', Emerson asked, 'we who are made up of the same elements?'.
People who enjoy opportunities for reflection - for which leisure is a condition, and a condition for leisure, in turn, is wealth, or at least freedom from necessity - tend to occupy areas of the world with temperate climates, fertile soil, and low frequencies of natural disasters. For them, natures is an amenity and an enjoyment: blossom-filled woods in Spring; sparkling snows at Christmas are not matters of life and death, but aesthetic delights. Nature in these guises elicits poems and songs, watercolour paintings and afternoon walks. No one writes an ode to a tsunami, or strolls in a storm - though he might, like Turner, paint one. It was a Romantic affectation to seek out the sublime and awful in nature; poets took pains to be overwhelmed by Alpine chasms and brooding forests. Such is the mental mark of urban civilisation. Rural civilisation is never so impressed. The shepherds who graze their sheep in Alpine chasms find them much less amazing than a city street. For them, nature - earthquakes and all - is merely natural, neither especially beautiful nor especially significant.
To view nature aesthetically, and even romantically, is better then to view it with such workaday indifference, because then it retains its power to refresh the town-wearied spirit which prompted Wordsworth to complain 'Getting and spending we lay waste to our powers/Too little we see in nature that is ours'. But the romance requires a tincture of realism to take account of the truth in Turgenev's observation that 'Nature cares nothing for our human logic, she has her own which we do not acknowlege until we are crushed under her wheel'.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Agreed that there is a price to be paid for urban civilisation ("such is the mental mark of.."). But he's clearly writing from an urban/monied point of view when he writes "To view nature aesthetically..is better..."
Of course it is, it's bleedin' obvious that this is better - and necessary - if you live in a city and have the "leisure" and "weath" to do so. I'm not sure whether I rate AC Grayling. These essays were published weekly in the Saturday Guardian (where else?) before they were collected in a book which I picked up recently for £1.99.
Also, I don't understand the point made by Emerson which he quotes. Can it really be said that humantiy "is made up of the same savage elements" (presumably fire/earth/water/air??) which are so devastating in nature?
AC Grayling. A bit rubbish? Overrated? A publishing phenomenon first and foremost? Or is it just me?
