Dispose of your surplus energy (Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
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Education, writes Roberto Calasso in The Ruin of Kasch, comes with a paradox: “it consists above all of things that cannot be learned — or of things that represent what cannot be learned.” Calasso drops the remark almost in passing, and without much further explanation. While he himself was an eminent product of the Italian system of humanist education (still one of the best anywhere), and lectured at major universities around the world, throughout his life Calasso held a fundamental distrust towards the university as an institution. He would advise youth of intellectual promise not to go to university, because “a sterile academic imprint could be dangerous to the more open-minded”. While formal education may play a role in formulating the big questions, it is unable to answer them. Indeed, these questions are of such a nature that we cannot learn their answers from someone else; we need to discover them within ourselves.
For about 40 years, between the early Eighties and his death in 2021, Roberto Calasso produced a body of bewilderingly interdisciplinary work combing such fields as literary studies, political theory, religion, anthropology, philosophy, and art history, and dedicated to topics as diverse as Kafka, Tiepolo, Baudelaire, the French Revolution and the Bible, not to mention the Indian, Greek, and Sumerian mythologies. One wonders if there is anything Calasso did not write or know abundantly about. The result is a series of over a dozen closely interrelated books, starting with The Ruin of Kasch (1983) and ending with Under the Eyes of the Angel, which he was still working on when he died and was published in 2022. When the former came out, Italo Calvino, in an attempt to summarise it, observed that the book was about two main subjects: the first was the French diplomat and politician Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, and the second, tutto il resto (“everything else”). Calvino failed in his attempt, then, but he does get his point across succinctly: that it is almost impossible to state what exactly the book is about. And that has been the case with most of Calasso’s work ever since.
Nevertheless, whatever they may focus on, Calasso’s books very often revolve around one central topic: sacrifice. For him, sacrifice is what ties humans to the gods, what brings order into the world and meaning into our lives. In the many mythological traditions that he explores, the cosmos — and the humans within it — came into existence through a primordial sacrificial gesture. That act needs to be constantly re-enacted, through ritual and ceremonies, for the ties between Earth and Heaven to be maintained. Christians partake in such a ritual every time they attend Mass.
Yet for Calasso, sacrifice is not only religious. Indeed, before being a religious event or sacramental practice, sacrifice is life at its most fundamental. In an illuminating interview for The Paris Review, Calasso sketches a philosophy of sacrifice that casts a helpful light on some of the main arguments of his work. The fact is, observes Calasso, that we have “a surplus of energy” which we have to “dispose of”. It all starts with that excess.
“That surplus is simply life. There is no life without surplus. Whatever one does with that surplus, that decides the shape of a culture, of a life, of a mind. There were certain cultures that decided they had to offer it in some way. It is not clear to whom, why, and how, but that was the idea.”
Calasso’s books act as so many signposts on one’s way to the kind of true knowledge that formal education promises but cannot provide — knowledge that will eventually redeem us. That road is long, solitary, and arduous because we are so remote from where we should be. (If this sounds Gnostic, that’s because it probably is.) The problem with our secularised world is that, while sacrifice lies at the heart of life itself, we are no longer willing to accept it. In an age where everything is done for a clear reason, or for certain profit, sacrifice as a supremely gratuitous act has become “entirely useless and obsolete”.
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SubscribeGreat article. I was vaguely aware of Roberto Calasso, probably from some passing reference in this magazine, but this has promoted me to read him. Thanks for pointing me in his direction.
Great article. I was vaguely aware of Roberto Calasso, probably from some passing reference in this magazine, but this has promoted me to read him. Thanks for pointing me in his direction.
“While formal education may play a role in formulating the big questions, it is unable to answer them. Indeed, these questions are of such a nature that we cannot learn their answers from someone else; we need to discover them within ourselves.”
How true this is. Reading and learning as much as possible is best done outside formal education. Some may need the framework of a specific course to point them in a particular direction, but as often as not, that course will be engineered to a fairly narrow curriculum and as we see today, captured by a reductive ideology.
The point is, to lead oneself towards self-knowledge. That can indeed involve sacrifice, such as distancing oneself from attractive but negative influences, having understood their significance. It also, i believe, requires us to live as full a life as possible rather than absenting ourselves from the world. Only in that way can we really test ourselves and broach the imperative moral issues central to self-knowledge. This is often where academic careers fall down. In the process of moving from school, to university, to a fellowship, life goes on around that passage but not necessarily within it. It’s telling, for instance, how someone like Wittgenstein gave up his academic work for periods of time to take up gardening. It’s fair to assume he felt the need to live too, among organic, growing things.
Mercifully, the author of this essay, although a distinguished academic, seems to have escaped the confines that such a career might involve sufficiently to bring us this enlightened piece at the start of 2023. Unherd is undoubtedly on the right track.
“While formal education may play a role in formulating the big questions, it is unable to answer them. Indeed, these questions are of such a nature that we cannot learn their answers from someone else; we need to discover them within ourselves.”
How true this is. Reading and learning as much as possible is best done outside formal education. Some may need the framework of a specific course to point them in a particular direction, but as often as not, that course will be engineered to a fairly narrow curriculum and as we see today, captured by a reductive ideology.
The point is, to lead oneself towards self-knowledge. That can indeed involve sacrifice, such as distancing oneself from attractive but negative influences, having understood their significance. It also, i believe, requires us to live as full a life as possible rather than absenting ourselves from the world. Only in that way can we really test ourselves and broach the imperative moral issues central to self-knowledge. This is often where academic careers fall down. In the process of moving from school, to university, to a fellowship, life goes on around that passage but not necessarily within it. It’s telling, for instance, how someone like Wittgenstein gave up his academic work for periods of time to take up gardening. It’s fair to assume he felt the need to live too, among organic, growing things.
Mercifully, the author of this essay, although a distinguished academic, seems to have escaped the confines that such a career might involve sufficiently to bring us this enlightened piece at the start of 2023. Unherd is undoubtedly on the right track.
I’ve just started reading this article and can I just say the ‘animated’ advert at the side is extremely off-putting, constantly distracting my eyes. I don’t mind if you want to put up adverts – I’d prefer if you didn’t, as I’m a paying customer – but if you must then please make them so that they don’t interfere with the reading experience.
I’ve just started reading this article and can I just say the ‘animated’ advert at the side is extremely off-putting, constantly distracting my eyes. I don’t mind if you want to put up adverts – I’d prefer if you didn’t, as I’m a paying customer – but if you must then please make them so that they don’t interfere with the reading experience.
Joshua Mitchell might disagree (that ‘sacrifice has lost its significance’) when he argues that the New Order has appropriated the invisible (Christian) economy as part of the visible (material) economy where transgressions are now measured and assigned to a specific group that must be sacrificed in perpetuity for the sake of the innocent. See Mitchell, J. (2020). American Awakening: Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time accessible online via YouTube.
Rene Girard spent his career arguing that sacrifice was the foundation of *all* culture – whether we are aware of it or not. I’ve not read Calasso – and so wonder how he matches up. Excellent article/introduction.
Thank you for your reply. Indeed. I did a close study of Girard’s Things hidden since the beginning of time and sense Mitchell has too. The Mitchell (Napa Institute) presentation to which I referred helped me join all the dots. The next book I order (I live off grid in South Africa) will be Mitchell’s American awakening, thereafater, possibly, a Calasso.
Thank you for your reply. Indeed. I did a close study of Girard’s Things hidden since the beginning of time and sense Mitchell has too. The Mitchell (Napa Institute) presentation to which I referred helped me join all the dots. The next book I order (I live off grid in South Africa) will be Mitchell’s American awakening, thereafater, possibly, a Calasso.
Thanks, I will look up the video. Sounds like the analysis Tom Holland provides in Dominion. We need to learn from our past without being captured by an obscuring nostalgia for it. It is important to allow Sumerian myths to resonate with us today but still recognise the singular momentousness of our contemporary world.
For the first time in humanity’s existence, we are eight billion people in an instantly and globally connected world society whose everyday life is operationalised through Artificial Intelligence, and which is poised to settle on the Moon and Mars and discover intelligent life on some far exoplanet.
We are struggling to comprehend this, but to say as the author does that “..our own story — from enchanted, if bloody beginnings, to a disenchanted and awfully bland end” is to lose sight of the present by looking back to the past. Maybe the atavistic urge to sacrifice needs to be transformed.
Rene Girard spent his career arguing that sacrifice was the foundation of *all* culture – whether we are aware of it or not. I’ve not read Calasso – and so wonder how he matches up. Excellent article/introduction.
Thanks, I will look up the video. Sounds like the analysis Tom Holland provides in Dominion. We need to learn from our past without being captured by an obscuring nostalgia for it. It is important to allow Sumerian myths to resonate with us today but still recognise the singular momentousness of our contemporary world.
For the first time in humanity’s existence, we are eight billion people in an instantly and globally connected world society whose everyday life is operationalised through Artificial Intelligence, and which is poised to settle on the Moon and Mars and discover intelligent life on some far exoplanet.
We are struggling to comprehend this, but to say as the author does that “..our own story — from enchanted, if bloody beginnings, to a disenchanted and awfully bland end” is to lose sight of the present by looking back to the past. Maybe the atavistic urge to sacrifice needs to be transformed.
Joshua Mitchell might disagree (that ‘sacrifice has lost its significance’) when he argues that the New Order has appropriated the invisible (Christian) economy as part of the visible (material) economy where transgressions are now measured and assigned to a specific group that must be sacrificed in perpetuity for the sake of the innocent. See Mitchell, J. (2020). American Awakening: Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time accessible online via YouTube.
“Equality only comes into being through initiation. It does not exist in nature, and society wouldn’t be able to conceive of the idea if it weren’t structured and articulated by initiation. Later, there comes a moment when equality is geared into history and thence marches on and on until the unsuspecting theorists of democracy imagine they have discovered it – and set it against initiation, as though it were its opposite”
Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Ch 8
“Equality only comes into being through initiation. It does not exist in nature, and society wouldn’t be able to conceive of the idea if it weren’t structured and articulated by initiation. Later, there comes a moment when equality is geared into history and thence marches on and on until the unsuspecting theorists of democracy imagine they have discovered it – and set it against initiation, as though it were its opposite”
Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Ch 8
I appreciate the insights about formal education, but perhaps the term he uses for sacrifice connotes more service in his culture than it does, say, in the US? I guess I just don’t understand carving up God’s life force into a kind of inventory of energy with surpluses.
First, the majority of humans until very recently had much “surplus energy.” Most females certainly didn’t, particularly in the lower classes/castes or slavery, where their bodies’ “energy” in the form of sexual exploitation and reproductive labor and literal blood and calories most definitely weren’t “surplus.” Most men pressed into labor and/or warfare (and boys who were sexually exploited too) probably didn’t have a lot of extra energy either.
More, his frame as described here (though I gave up half way through) surprisingly differs from non-dualists, Christian mystics, and/or liberation theologists, wherein “energy” in the form of God/universal consciousness incarnates in form, including humans, and to the degree we can get our egos out of the way, we can enjoy acting as an ego-enhanced human channel of God in service to life, while our bodies hold out in this earthly plane.
I appreciate the insights about formal education, but perhaps the term he uses for sacrifice connotes more service in his culture than it does, say, in the US? I guess I just don’t understand carving up God’s life force into a kind of inventory of energy with surpluses.
First, the majority of humans until very recently had much “surplus energy.” Most females certainly didn’t, particularly in the lower classes/castes or slavery, where their bodies’ “energy” in the form of sexual exploitation and reproductive labor and literal blood and calories most definitely weren’t “surplus.” Most men pressed into labor and/or warfare (and boys who were sexually exploited too) probably didn’t have a lot of extra energy either.
More, his frame as described here (though I gave up half way through) surprisingly differs from non-dualists, Christian mystics, and/or liberation theologists, wherein “energy” in the form of God/universal consciousness incarnates in form, including humans, and to the degree we can get our egos out of the way, we can enjoy acting as an ego-enhanced human channel of God in service to life, while our bodies hold out in this earthly plane.