Você está na página 1de 8

1

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 J ennifer Radden, in her anthology The
Nature of Melancholy, From Aristotle to Kristeva. Raddens 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
J ennifer Radden, The nature of melancholy From Aristotle to Kristeva. Oxford University Press, New York, 2000, p. VII.
Besides by this book, the present article was inspired by the unsurpassed work Saturn und Melancholie by Raymond Klibansky,
Erwin Panovsky, Fritz Saxl; see note 8.
2
Idem, p. VII.

2
the 20
th
century and seems to have become entirely lost to European man at the end of this
same century, is worth contemplating. In other words, Raddens 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 ber die ganze Natur ausgebreitet ist, die tiefe unzerstrliche Melancholie
alles Lebens.
3
This line is taken from the small but rich little work ber 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 mans 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 gloomwhich has been spread across all of nature, hence the profound and indestructible melancholy of all
life. F.M.J Schelling, ber das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt amMain, 1975, p. 91.
4
This is the sadness which is germane to all finite life. Idem.

3
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 18
th
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 ber das Gefhl des Schnen 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 Untertnigkeit und athmet
Freiheit in einem edlen Busen. () Er ist ein strenger Richter seiner selbst und anderer und
nicht selten seiner sowohl als der Welt berdrssig.
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
[erwchst] 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 erwchst 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 freedomin a noble breast. () He judges himself and others
severely and is not seldomfed up with himself and the world. Immanuel Kant, Vorkritische Schriften bis 1768. Insel-Verlag,
Wiesbaden, 1960, p. 842.

4
Melancholie, die den Musarum sacerdos
7
zugleich schlgt 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.1
9
, 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 inconstancy
10
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 todays 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'tre soi -
Dpression et socit
12
, 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
Fromthe awareness of a freedomexperienced in tragedy, the image springs forth of a genius that demands more and more
frankly that, in his life and in his work, he should not be judged according to normal moral principles and esthetic norms. And
this image grows, closely connected with the notion of a melancholy which at once overpowers and blesses the musarum
sacerdos. Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panovsky, Fritz Saxl, Saturn und Melancholie. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt amMain,
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 fluids, the black bile is referred to, called melaina chol in Ancient Greek. The
doctrine of the four bodily fluids (black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm), has a long history and was long decisive for our
thought about changes in moods. The doctrine dates back to the 6th century BC, was prepared by the Pythagoreans,
elaborated in Hippocratic circles and it was not until the Middle Ages that it was 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 lowest. This basic tendency, now, is breached at the historical moments which are
referred to in this article.
11
Aristoteles, Over melancholie. Historische Uitgeverij, Groningen, 2001, p. 28 en 39.
12
Alain Ehrenberg, La fatigue dtre soi Dpression et socit. ditions Odile J acob, Parijs, 1998.

5
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-days 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 which, 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, which, by way 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.

6
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 whats 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 Drer to the
creation of his famous engraving Melancolia I (1514). Consider, for example, Robert Burtons
copious collection The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), consider Dowlands 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 whats 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 Aristotles 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 J uan 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 J ob, 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
14
th
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 ones obstinacy in order to be able truly to surrender to

15
Quotation froman interview with Saar Langelaan, NRC 14/2/07.
16
J oannes van het Kruis, Mystieke werken. Uitgeverij Carmelitana, Gent, 1992, p.511.

7
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. Hadewychs work is permeated by a both passionate and painful
desire to become one with the Godhead, or, in Hadewychs 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 depressions 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, Antwerpen, 1947, p.132 (16e brief, 17ev).
19
Hadewych, Visioenen. Uitgeverij Prometheus/Bert Bakker, Amsterdam, 1996, p.86 (8e visioen, 37ev).
20
Hadewych, Strofische gedichten. Uitgeversmaatschappij W.E.J . Tjeenk Willink, Zwolle, 1961, p. 224 (Lied XXXI, 25ev).
21
Idem, p. 226 (Lied XXXI, 52).

8
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

Você também pode gostar