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2 Cherry blossoms, the beautiful and
the good By Spengler
creatures, for whom nature is
merely a cloak, to be discarded and made anew when
it wears out, as the psalmist said. Nature to the
Jews is not real; it is a veil, the dark clouds
that obscure the throne of a Creator. Its beauty
is not to be disregarded (the Jews have a blessing
to be said when perceiving natural beauty), but it
is ephemeral, whereas acts of kindness are
enduring.
One might argue that the surface
beauty of nature is of less
import than its recondite
beauty, the inner harmony that is visible not to
the eye, but rather to the mind. That appeal to
the mind's eye over surface perception we
associated with Plato. Albert Einstein and many
other great scientists were Platonists. I was
reminded of Einstein's view of the religious
character of science by the following, quoted by
John Updike in a review of a new Einstein
biography:
The scientist is possessed by the
sense of universal causation ... His religious
feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement
at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an
intelligence of such superiority that, compared
with it, all the systemic thinking and acting of
human beings is an utterly insignificant
reflection. [3]
The harmonies that so
moved Einstein, to be sure, not only cannot be
perceived by the naked eye, but cannot even be
comprehended by more than a tiny fraction of
humanity. That is very different from the song of
the cricket or the colors of the cherry blossom,
which anyone can perceive.
Yet I do not
think that Einstein's invocation of natural
harmonies suffices to define the Good. It
certainly would not do so in Japan, for Einstein's
work aided the invention of atomic weapons, whose
development Einstein personally urged upon US
president Franklin Roosevelt at the outset of
World War II. As the world's only victims of
atomic weapons, surely the Japanese must have
mixed feelings about equating the recondite
harmonies of nature with the Good. For my part,
Mephisto's taunt suffices: man uses the spark of
heavenly light he calls Reason to be beastlier
than any beast.
As it happens, the great
German physicist Werner Heisenberg, a Platonist
like Einstein, led Hitler's program to build
nuclear weapons. It happens that the forces of
evil failed to construct a bomb before the Allies
did so (if the Allies were not quite the forces of
good, they were at least capable of good on
occasion). Things turned out this way not because
one side had a more rapturous perception of the
inner harmony of natural law, for Platonists led
both atomic-bomb programs. The Americans got the
bomb first because Hitler was a monster who drove
away scientific geniuses like Einstein, who had
happily spent World War I in Berlin. As the old
joke goes, there is no way Hitler could have lost
World War II if only he had the Jews on his side.
That is little comfort to the Japanese, who had no
reason to be happy that the United States got the
bomb, but that is another matter.
Neither
Japan's spontaneity before nature nor Einstein's
appreciation of nature's inner harmonies need
coincide with the Good. Acts of kindness are good,
but they are not necessarily beautiful. There is
nothing esthetically pleasing about cleaning
bedpans, but it is a kind thing to do. Unlike
sakura, acts of kindness are not fleeting,
but enduring. The Good is sui generis,
which is to say that it is not derived, but
revealed.
It is beautiful to view cherry
blossoms; in a way, it is even more beautiful to
view the Japanese as they sit under the blooming
cherry trees, for their unique affinity to
nature's moments of beauty constitutes one of
humankind's most exquisite protests against
mortality. But it is not the Good; and thinking
about Professor Fujiwara makes me wish that the
Japanese were better than they are, for example,
in acknowledging various outrages during World War
II.
Notes 1. Why the beautiful is not the
good, Asia Times Online, May 17, 2005.
Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-88) was a Swiss
theologian. 2. In this I rely on Michael
Wyschogrod's presentation in Abraham's
Promise. 3. In The New Yorker, April 2.
Walter Isaacson's biography is titled Einstein:
His Life and Universe.
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