The German philosopher and essayist Rüdiger Safranski (Rottweil, 1945), author of books such as El mal , Romanticismo , Nietzsche or Being unique –all published by Tusquets–, has given two conferences these days in Madrid, at the Prado Museum, where he has talked about art and morals, and at the Centro Conde Duque, where he reflected on the art of living. With La Vanguardia he talks about art, freedom and cancellation culture. Not forgetting the war.
Art and morals sometimes seem antithetical terms. They are?
They are different areas. Caravaggio was a killer and he painted wonderful pictures. Gesualdo composed splendid, delicate madrigals, and it seems that he murdered his wife. So is the human being. The work cannot be separated from the artist, it belongs to that person, but an aesthetic activity is different from a moral one. There is a very tense relationship between both aspects within the human being.
Is art threatened today from the economy or politics?
The economy helps art but at the same time dictates how it has to be. And it has always been that way. The painter reproduces a certain motif, realizes that it sells well and promotes his own economy. Botticelli painted the marvelous Virgin of him and at a certain moment he decided that he was going to do it in series. That is not so favorable to art. An art that today is threatened by the moralism of the cancellation culture.
Is there less freedom in art than twenty years ago?
There is no censorship, but there is a certain demand or imposition of what is correct by society. You have to be cautious.
Because right now?
You have to watch the beginning of the trends. I am a son of 68, of the riots, and there we already practiced the culture of cancellation. Art was intended to be a weapon in the class struggle. And even then, with our culture of cancellation, we sabotaged many political and cultural acts that did not seem acceptable to us. At the beginning of the seventies I said goodbye to that current, but I am perfectly aware of how dangerous it can be.
Were they wrong then?
Yes. It was a show of intolerance. We must be able to withstand certain criticism even if our thinking does not coincide with the political agenda of the moment.
Does the culture of cancellation have to do with that moment?
It is always the same stupidity, the same intolerance, each one harbors within himself the temptation to be intolerant. What is perpetuated from 68 to today is the ignorance of the particularities and idiosyncrasy of art. If art has its own political agenda, it must be analyzed from a political point of view. This is what has happened with the great Documenta exhibition in Germany this year, totally politicized. When the works reflect anti-Semitism from a political point of view, we are forced to analyze them politically taking a stand against anti-Semitism.
Today in most contemporary art museums the art you see is political.
Yes. The percentage of political art is large. The world is in a difficult situation, threatened, and we juxtapose to that world in such a tremendous situation an art that seems like a sybaritic thing compared to the bad state of the world. And art experiences a latent bad conscience. He accuses himself of being a luxury freak. What do you do in such a situation? To say that we are not a luxury but a productive and political power. The politicization of art derives from the bad conscience of the artists.
Does art not have to have any function?
Art has renounced creation, adventure, the madness of creation. There is a loss of confidence in what art can be and can produce beyond politics and morals. Before, art was created to praise God and now God has disappeared and it is thought that it has to be a praise to a just society. In a Vermeer painting, where is the politics? In Goya's executions there is a political motive, but it is great art, not a report. Art is an experimental laboratory regarding the different points of view and experiences of reality. And there I don't want any moral, political filter to be put in place, which filters out those possibilities beforehand.
He affirmed that the world situation is very complicated. Has Putin's war surprised you?
I wrote my book on evil against the background of the first collapse of the European peace order due to the Balkan war. My conviction was that in our Western culture we had too much Rousseau and too little Hobbes. The West is called to defend its values. Putin is a threat, he is the representative of a neo-fascist power. It is a lesson: the German energy policy wanted to be an example for Europe regarding climate change and in a very naive way it has placed itself in dependence on the Russian tyrant. Now this childish government has to beg energy from its European neighbors.
What does it mean that Europe has too much Rousseau and too little Hobbes?
There is an image of the human being that is too simple. There is a lack of awareness of the need to defend freedom. In German politics the conviction was reached that enemies no longer existed and the German army was allowed to decimate. It is a kind of Rousseauian innocence.
Is this conflict a mortal blow to the globalized world?
Globalization is an irrefutable phenomenon. But the hope that it would be the path to eternal peace has joined her. And it is not the case. The economy is powerful, but it is not everything. Putin's attack makes no sense from an economic point of view, but power politics and the underlying ideologies can be much more powerful in a conflict than economics or reason. Globalization exists, it is dynamic, but at the same time we have to get rid of the illusion that it automatically brings about peace in the world. Economic reason has to be reinforced by other types of reason.
