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    In Tune With The World
    In Tune With The World
    In Tune With The World
    Ebook102 pages1 hour

    In Tune With The World

    By Josef Pieper

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    In this stimulating and still-timely study, Josef Pieper takes up a theme of paramount importance to his thinking – that festivals belong by rights among the great topics of philosophical discussion. As he develops his theory of festivity, the modern age comes under close and painful scrutiny. It is obvious that we no longer know what festivity is, namely, the celebration of existence under various symbols

    Pieper exposes the pseudo-festivals, in their harmless and their sinister forms: traditional feasts contaminated by commercialism; artificial holidays created in the interest of merchandisers; holidays by coercion, decreed by dictators the world over; festivals as military demonstrations; holidays empty of significance. And lastly we are given the apocalyptic vision of a nihilistic world which would seek its release not in festivities but in destruction.

    Formulated with Pieper's customary clarity and elegance, enhanced by brilliantly chosen quotations, this is an illuminating contribution to the understanding of traditional and contemporary experience.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSt. Augustines Press
    Release dateMay 7, 2020
    ISBN9781587313912
    In Tune With The World
    Author

    Josef Pieper

    Josef Pieper, perhaps the most popular Thomist philosopher of the twentieth century, was schooled in the Greek classics and the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. He also studied philosophy, law, and sociology, and he was a professor at the University of Munster, West Germany. His numerous books have been widely praised by both the secular and religious press.

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      Book preview

      In Tune With The World - Josef Pieper

      UBI CARITAS GAUDET IBI EST FESTIVITAS

      Chrysostom

      In Tune with the World

      A Theory of Festivity

      JOSEF PIEPER

      Translated by Richard and Clara Winston

      St. Augustine’s Press

      South Bend, Indiana

      1999

      Copyright © 1963 by Kösel-Verlag

      Translation copyright © 1965 by Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.

      Original German title: Zustimmung zur Welt: Eine Theorie des Festes

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of St. Augustine’s Press.

      Manufactured in the United States of America.

      Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

      Pieper, Josef, 1904–

           [Zustimmung zur Welt. English]

           In tune with the world : a theory of festivity / Josef Pieper; translated by Richard and Clara Winston.

                    p.       cm.

           Includes bibliographical references.

           ISBN 1-890318-33-7 (alk. paper)

           1.     Festivals.   I. Title.

      GT3930.P433  1999

      394.26—dc21

      99-14341

      CIP    

      ∞The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

      Acknowledgment is made for permission to use quotations from stanzas VI and VII from Bread and Wine in Hölderlin Poems translated by Michael Hamburger, The Harvill Press Ltd., London.

      ISBN-13: 978-1-58731-391-2 (electronic)

      Contents

      I

      The subject of festivity involves the whole of existence. The exception inserted into workaday life. Meaningful work presupposes full knowledge and acceptance of reality. Just punishment. The festival: something different, for a change. Free activity. Work and play. What is an act that is meaningful in itself?

      II

      The trick of finding people who really are able to rejoice. What is the meaning of having a good time? Seeing as a form of fulfillment. Visio beatifica. The factor of contemplation. Sacrifice of the yield of work. Festivity as an aspect of wealth. The root is love.

      III

      Day of rejoicing. Receiving what is loved. Everything that is, is good. Hidden assent and refusal of assent. The latent everlasting festival. The origin of festivals: praise of God in public worship ship.

      IV

      There are worldly but no profane festivals. The festival as traditum. The relation of festival to ritual. Affirmation as the fundamental form of Christian worship: Amen, Alleluia, eucharistia. The fruit of festivity is pure gift. Well-wishing on a festival. Rapture: escape from the here and now.

      V

      The outward aspect of festivity. Sunday and Easter: the fundamental forms of the Christian holiday. Sabbath and Sunday. The inescapable involvement in theological controversy. The Seventh Day: celebration of the gift of being created and image of the coming age. Easter, the festival of the Church. We have unending holiday.

      VI

      Festivals and the fine arts. Both have an insular character. The realization of festivity in the medium of the arts. The place of art is in the festival. Affirmation as the foundation of all arts. C’est l’amour qui chante. The origin of language in festival. Poésie noire. Pseudo-art and pseudo-festivity. What is a period of dearth?

      VII

      Corruption of traditional festivals by commercialism. Artificial holidays established by men. The day the Lord has made. Festivals of the French Revolution. Direct repression of religious holidays. Coerciveness and manipulated rejoicing. Unreality and boredom. Tragic operetta. The people as object of the celebration. The legislator as a priest of social felicity.

      VIII

      Historical origin of the socialist May Day celebration. Day of rest and strikes. Rejection of traditional festivals as bourgeois institutions. The first of May under the dictatorship of the proletariat: a holiday of voluntary work (Maxim Gorky). Labor army and labor deserters. The crucial factor: the complete subservience of men. Demonstration of military power. Approximation to antifestival.

      IX

      War the modern equivalent of festivals? Strike in the realm of the mind (Teilhard de Chardin). The impregnable Goodness of being. Renouncing the evasions of euphemism and slander. Modern nihilism. Poetry, love, the experience of death, philosophizing: indestructible modes for escaping the world of utility. The true festival is always being celebrated. The undecided situation: between everlasting festival and antifestival.

      NOTES

      INDEX OF NAMES

      NOTE TO THE READER

      The German word Fest embraces the meanings of English feast, festival, festivity, fête, holiday, and kindred notions. The German Feier (from Latin feria) also has a broad spectrum of meanings: celebration, solemnization, leisure, time after work, holiday, etc. In this translation, no attempt has been made to establish a consistent terminology based on these words; they are rendered differently in different contexts. It may, however, be helpful to the reader to realize that either Fest or Feier, or its derivatives, underlies the English variants.

      I

      Certain things can be adequately discussed only if at the same time we speak of the whole of the world and of life. If we are not ready to do that, we give up all claim to saying anything significant. Death and love are such subjects. Festivity, too, must be included in that category. This becomes apparent as soon as we try to get beyond mere description of the facts.

      Let us start with what lies nearest to hand. If, for example, we consider the distinction between the festive and the workaday, we soon realize that the antithesis belongs to quite a different category from, say, that of left and right, or day and night. We do not mean only that a working day and a feast day are mutually exclusive; we also mean that work is an everyday occurrence, while a feast is something special, unusual, an interruption in the ordinary passage of time. A holiday every day – even every other day – is an idea that cannot be realized in practice; even though it may not necessarily run counter to the concept of festivity in itself,¹ it is hardly feasible in the lives of men existing here and now. The festive quality of a holiday depends on its being exceptional. A festival can arise only out of the foundation of a life whose ordinary shape is given by the working day.

      An idle-rich class of do-nothings are hard put to it even to amuse themselves, let alone to celebrate a festival. The dolce vita is a desperately unfestive affair. There is, incidentally, considerable testimony that this sad truth applied also to the courtly festivals of the Baroque period, which many an innocent historian has described as highly festive occasions. The probability is that they sprang not from joy in living, but from fear, from horror vacui, because the true prerequisite for festivity was lacking at these courts. They had no everyday life and no work, nothing but time on their hands and boredom.²

      Incidentally, pseudo-festivals exist, as well as pseudo-work. Not all activity, not every kind of expenditure of effort and earning of money, deserves the name of work. That should be applied only to the active – and usually also laborious – procurement of the things that are truly useful for living. And it is a good guess that only meaningful work can provide the soil in which festivity flourishes. Perhaps both work and celebration spring from the same root, so that when the one dries up, the other withers.

      But of course meaningful work signifies more than the mere fact of workaday accomplishment. The implication is that man understands the work and accepts it for what it really is, namely, the tilling of the field which always includes both happiness

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