Nature in Nuremberg: A Study
of W G Sebald's After Nature
Chandan Kumar Panda
Chandan
Kumar Panda obtained his Ph.D degree from the EFL University, Hyderabad, India
in the year 2015. He received the DAAD fellowship to pursue a short-term
doctoral research for six months in Germany. Currently he works as Assistant
Professor at the Department of English, Rajiv Gandhi Central University,
Itanagar, India.
Abstract
W. G. Sebald
discusses the Nuremberg tragedy during the Second World War in his book After Nature. This paper makes an
attempt to study Sebald’s perception of the disaster inflicted technologically
on Nuremberg destroying the natural beauty of the said city. The disturbed
geopolitics between England and Germany resulted in damaging nature. Their
technological prowess and scientific might were engaged in crippling nature. The
growing rivalry between two nations led to legitimizing violence as the
befitting medium to settle their antagonism. This legitimization of violence
upon nature seems to have its root in modern science and its promotion of
instrumental rationality. The scientific degradation of nature corroborates with
the Biblical permissiveness towards an exclusively anthropocentric creation. The
European perception of ecology is coloured by the Biblical and scientific
reification of nature. This study therefore tries to trace the root of the
European historical negligence of nature. The Biblical anthropocentrism and the
Cartesian mechanistic rationality inspired by the progressive success of
science seem to have uprooted the human organic faith in nature.
Keywords: Nature, history, Cartesianism, instrumental
rationality, Biblical anthropocentrism, science, violence.
Introduction
It was in the night of August 28, 1943 Nuremberg experienced
a terrible conflagration which devoured the large city as 582 British aircrafts
orchestrated the most dangerous blitzkrieg to subdue the enemy nation by
resorting to retaliatory reaction . Nature, though never a party to the vested human
interest, got crushed in the crossfire of history. It may be said that human
enmity victimized nature. It disfigured nature with an intention to foreground
the European r national animosity and empire building desire. The human,
primarily European and decisively post-Enlightenment, expansionist and tyrannizing
tendencies forced nature to undergo its dystopic vicissitudes. Gruesomeness
replaced grace and barrenness bliss. Sebald nostalgically recollects the beauty
of Nuremberg, primarily of its sublime natural surroundings. But the tragic
intervention of war inspired by the European sinister zeal of flexing each
other’s territorial muscles seems to have found its viciously glaring
manifestation in Nuremberg. The beauty of Nuremberg became mere memory.
Therefore, Sebald writes in After Nature,
“The date is August 26 1943. On the 27th Father’s departure for
Dresden, of whose beauty his memory, as he remarks when I question him, retains
no trace. During the night of the 28th 582 aircraft flew in to
attack Nuremberg” (85-86). The gruesomeness and barrenness is the disfigured
suffix that the air raid has attached to the scenic landscape of Nuremberg. Looking
at such a tragic trajectory Sebald in After
Nature anticipates the possible consequences.
His anticipatory apocalypse gets well-articulated in his
statement that borders on a dystopic prophecy, “In the future death lies at our
feet” (84). In the vicious geopolitics of the modern predatory power-seekers
nature found itself in the position of a prey. Nature in Nuremberg experienced
a demonic example of human mechanical notoriety. The human diabolism deformed
nature. Machine surprised nature with its invasive intervention. The human
conceit enslaved science to enlarge the degree of devastation to immeasurable
amplitude. This paper therefore intends to explore the destructive dimensions embedded
in the human capacity for invention and innovation captured through the
literary lens of Sebald. Moreover, this paper begins with a diachronic study of
the western ecological thinking determined by the Biblical prescription of
anthropological dominance over nature, the Enlightenment philosophy of
instrumental rationality and the mathematically configured mechanistic logic of
modern science. The thesis that this paper attempts to establish is that the
Nuremberg technological massacre on nature is a product of the dominating
streak embedded in the western ecological thinking. The snowball effect of anthropological
dominance over nature found its most aggressive manifestation in Nuremberg in
particular and the Second World War in general. Therefore, before venturing
into the specifics of Sebald’s After
Nature and his argument of disproportionate devastation of nature owing to
war interventionism, it seems pertinent to examine the genealogy of western
ecological thinking which precipitated the large scale damage on nature during
the Second World War.
Modernity and Nature
The urgency for modernity and the
concomitant desire for territorial expansionism and political supremacy have
made nature suffer extensively. The human progress happens in nature not
outside it. There is nothing called outside. Beyond nature human civilization
is impossible. In fact there is nothing human beyond the boundary of nature. Nature
is the embryonic envelop in which the human civilization comfortably advances. In
other wards, it is both the shell and the substance. The human blindness to the
above facts of nature seems to have turned them astray. In the name of progress
the gradual destruction of nature is legitimized. The gaze that is thrown upon
nature is very objective in nature. Profit is its core aspiration. The human
oblivion towards the realities of nature has put nature in the most hazardous
conditions. Time and again with human development nature has received the
maximum hit. The human disfavor towards nature suggests degeneration. Such a
dangerous adventurism does not need to be condoned for the sake of the grand
bandwagon of being modern. The triumph of technology should not be exhibited in
the domain of nature or at the cost of nature. There persists a grand illusion
that wilderness is nature’s habitat. The human civilization has a distinct
existence apart from nature and outside nature. They seem to have become
oblivious of the fact that not only the wilderness is a constituent of nature
but also the human civilization. The human civilization is cultural evolution
in nature.
Nature’s infinite patience is taken to be its helplessness. With
the maniacal advance of modernity and the corresponding technological
notoriety, nature has experienced the unregulated and irrational human
atrocity. In the Nuremberg episode, modernity, an aspect of human history,
manifested its violent visage against nature as it treated the latter as a
theatre for experiments and explorations Bringing nature to laboratories and conducting
insane experiments seems to be the trends adopted in the post-Enligtenment
period. The pursuit of similar trends and beyond with competitive rigour and
more scientifically sophisticated manner finds its dramatic surge in the
contemporary time. Here the nature contra human position is not argued. The
scientific methods and its unregulated and in conscientious deployment in
nature to maximize human achievements seem to have exacerbated nature-human
cohesiveness. The distance between the two never proved healthy for none. The
myth of success by using or bruising nature seems to have misled humanity
towards its annihilation. The anthropological triumphalism over nature is
modern delirium. In Dialectic of
Enlightenment, Theodor Adorno argues, “Enlightenment understood in the
wider sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human
beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened
earth is radiant with triumphant calamity” (1). Europe, the self-declared
rational master of the globe and its aspiration to colonise the latter by whatever
means is a product of Enlightenment tutelage. The liberated race became the
master race and legitimized its rational superiority. Adorno and Max Herkimer
criticized these dialectical tendencies of the Enlightenment. The birth of
modern science corroborated with the European domination of the globe. Therefore,
the progressive decline of the importance of nature in human scheme of things
traces its genesis to the development of the scientific doctrine of rationalism
during the Enlightenment period
Heidegger and Technology
Much of Martin Heidegger’s Question Concerning Technology is a
product of his deep understanding of the time. Being a modern philosopher,
modern history helps him to construct many of his philosophical concepts. Technology
offers tools to penetrate the depth of nature. Heidegger strongly claims that
the technological method of revealing the nature of nature is partial and
impoverished. This monstrous method increases the possibility of ‘devastation
of the earth’. What Sebald witnesses in Nuremberg is Heidegger’s precise
suggestion of the devastation when technology replaces the organic human
interaction with nature. To substantiate this theoretical argument Sebald’s take
on technology needs to be mentioned, “Cities phosphorescent on the riverbank,
industry’s glowing piles waiting beneath the smoke trails like ocean giants for
the siren’s blare, the twitching lights of rail and motorways, the murmur of
the manifold proliferating molluses, woodlice and leeches, the cold
putrefaction, the groan in the rocky ribs, the mercury shine, the clouds that
chased through the towers of Frankfurt, time stretched out and time speeded up,
all this raced through my mind and was already so near the end that every
breath of made my face shudder” (112-13). This is what is the visage of the
modern city of Frankfurt. Industry paints the city with soot and smoke. Much of
contemporary distress as understood by Heidegger is a matter of alarming ascendancy
of faith in technology. He wrote “Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to
technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it” (4). The overwhelming pervasiveness
of technology, and the contemporary vigour that informs it, dwindles the
importance of the fundamental and essential human conception of nature . Here the
fundamental difference between tool and technology needs to be highlighted. Tool
pertains to the useful equipment which facilitates the daily human activity.
The daily human activity
constitutes human interaction with nature. The basic human ends and needs are
fulfilled because of the daily human interaction with nature. For instance a
piece of plough, it is made of timber. For the production of one tool many
tools are used efficiently by the skillful hands of a few artisans. These tools
are used to produce something for human consumption from nature. Tools stand
between human and nature. Tools evolve human beings from state of nature to
culture or from the stage of raw to the cooked. But the tool-human-nature
symbiosis got ruptured owing to the intervention of technology. A tool can be a
piece of technology but technology is not just a tool. It is beyond the features
and functionalities of a tool. Technology, as Heidegger understood and in the
modern parlance, is a sophisticated method or a piece of mechanistic
engineering which is used in order to disturb peace of nature. For instance,
mining technology is not just a tool but a whole set of apparatus to disembowel
the earth causing extreme unease to the structure of the earth. Tools
facilitate human efforts to interact with nature in order to make a living. But
technology on the contrary reveals the nature of nature by applying force. This
application of force is a form of violence. That disturbs the organic human
interaction with nature. Here begins domination. Heidegger quite rightly
mentioned in his “The origin of Work of Art” that the nature of nature is to
conceal. In the Second World War it became obvious how nature was used against inflicting
injury upon nature. The argument that is foregrounded here is that of the in-conscientious
use of technology primarily in the 20th century to wreak havoc on
nature. The European expansionist aspiration and the schizophrenic redefinition
of nation-state along the line of racial uniformity bound technology to obtain
these ends.
Heidegger suggests that
technology not only alters the organic and primordial human conception of
nature but also makes human beings oblivious of the fact of the existence of
such a conception in human history. The temporal break from the organic
civilization towards the technological one may have started when the rational
and scientific world view promoted by the Enlightenment became convincingly the
cardinal civilizational ethos in Europe. Therefore, to counter such a
mechanistic and methodical conception of reality there emerged the romantic
reactionary thinking. If that organic bonding with nature had not ruptured,
another retaliatory epistemic movement would not have emerged. Much of modern
derangement springs from this forgetfulness. This oblivion destroys the
intimate human companionship with nature.In Heidegger’s view in Being and Time, the question of meaning
of being is forgotten by the western philosophical tradition, and also it has
forgotten the fact of forgetting, “...
the question of the meaning of being was not only unresolved, not only
inadequately formulated,but in spite of all interest in "metaphysics"
has even been forgotten” (19). The same oblivion of the importance of syncretic
nature-human relation seems to have fallen upon the technologically empowered
humanity. As conceived by Heidegger, the asymmetry that the intervention of
technology causes poses the supreme danger to the prevalent symbiotic structure
of the nature-human relations. This technological conception of nature is
derivative and secondary which further complicates the prevalent primordial perception
of nature and facilitates faster forgetting. The transition in the human
thinking from the organic to the technological seems to have occurred because
of the triumphalistic tendencies of science and technology. Modern technology offered
the most surprising results. It enhanced human comfort. It reduced human
efforts. The ease with which it functions and the comforts that it provides,
though at a certain cost, attracts human attention.
The instrumental
conception of technology engages technology as a means to an end. The
increasing circulation of the instrumental notion of technology coinciding with
the outbreak of the Second World War seems to have replaced the anthropological
definition of technology. Technology as a human activity and not just a means
to achieve some utilitarian or malicious ends seems to have lost its conceptual
and empirical relevance. It sounds more alarming that the technology serves as
the medium to encourage the will to mastery. Therefore, Heidegger points out,
“The will to mastery becomes all the more urgent the more technology threatens
to slip from human control” (5). The deployment of technology and its
instrumental makeover during the Second World War serve the human will to
mastery. . Heidegger concludes the essay with a great deal of optimism obtained
from the prophetic pronouncement of Hölderlin,
who wrote in “Patmos”, “But where danger is, grows the saving power also” (54).
The optimism of Heidegger as enshrined in the concluding passage of his essay
“Question Concerning Technology” is not Sebald’s reality, “The closer we come
to the danger, the more brightly do the ways into the saving power begin to
shine and the more questioning we become. For questioning is the piety of
thought” (35). Sebald does not emphasise on the recovery aspect in the
post-disaster temporality. He demonstrates the finality of loss. This sense of
finality is well explained in his statement, “In the future death lies at our
feet” (84). The ‘piety of thought’ as a
consolatory conclusion or a mystical compensation for Heidegger does not corroborate
with Sebald’s line of narrative demonstration. For Sebald, Dresden is
disfigured. The English technological prowess has left its sinister imprint on
the landscape of Dresden which can never be recovered. Its beauty is reduced to
memory. Therefore, Sebald makes it evident in his statement, “...Dresden, of
whose beauty his memory...” (85).
The notion of the world as material substance meant to aid
and advance human activity is precisely, in Heidegger’s understanding, a
teleological assumption. Nothing in nature exists without a purpose. Existence
implies purpose in the teleological sense of things. Therefore, in the same
logic, nature has purpose. It is, as it is commonly understood, to serve and
sustain the species. The human species being the superior to all other
entertains this misconception that nature serves the human. Such an assumption
supersedes the primordial and organic consciousness of the world. The human
instrumental reason that promotes the above assumption replaces the human
intuitive anchorage with nature. But with this replacement there occurs the
human self-divorce from the biotic unity with nature. The technological
perception equimentalises nature and applies utilitarian gaze into it. Nature
is defined by its use value not by the life-giving potentiality and actuality
that it naturally is.
Cartesian Mechanistic Naturalism
The modern positioning of nature as mere commodity destroys
the human-nature balance. In the absence of that indispensable balance the
human-nature relation suffers. The Nuremberg incident is the most violent
demonstration of this altered attitude towards the human relation with nature. The
diabolic exhibition of technological terror in the skies of Nuremberg defines the
British technological ego and the retaliatory rampage against the Duetsche air
raid in England. In this section an attempt is made to study the Cartesian rational
philosophy which develops a rational ecosystem. This rational ecosystem stands in
opposition to nature. It promotes rational individualism. Nature therefore
seems conquerable by application of human reason. The Enlightenment epistemological
foregrounding of supremacy of human reason seems to have offered the necessary
stimulus for the emergence of modern mechanistic science. It is therefore
argued here that Nuremberg technological notoriety seems to be the effect of Cartesian
rationalist absolutism and rational individualism. Such a massacre was committed
with impunity and without hurting the collective moral architecture of Europe.
Therefore, it leaves enough space for retrospection as to why such a massacre
happened. It not only happened once but continues to happen. It seems there is
no end to it. The trail of terror and the production of the resources of terror
find no moral boundary in Europe.
The absence of moral scruple or ethical compunction against the
mindless application of technology to wreak havoc is presumed to have its
origin in the Cartesian dialectical thinking. The European civilization owes
substantially its epistemological inheritance to the Cartesian model of
thinking. Therefore, Nuremberg tragedy reflects the European commitment to the Cartesian
rationalist paradigm. This attitude is a consequence of the human acceptance of
the indifferent modern Cartesian conception of nature which militates against
the primordial Greek conception of nature as ‘self-blossoming’ physis. The divorce from the Greek
conception of nature which emphasizes on the human essential relation with
nature deranges humanity to objectify nature for pure profit. Nature is taken
to be the storehouse of profit. It is through the application of technology more
profit can be made. The human greed for more
and more destroys nature. The irrational and insensitive adherence to the
Cartesian thinking in modern times engages human beings to introduce machines in
order to confront nature and if needed to destroy it. The Cartesian foregrounding
of reason and doubt seems to have deconstructed the theory of divine inherence in
nature. The process of objectification of nature corroborates with the human
alienation from the organic unity with nature. The technological massacre in
Nuremberg is a mere miniature in comparison to the mammoth in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. The notion of objectified Cartesian construction of nature leaves no
apprehension or remorse to stop the injury doggedly inflicted upon nature. The
human aspiration for disclosing the untouched depth of nature happens to have
been the cause for the invention of technology.
However, here no attempt is made to question the historical
and epistemological importance of Cartesianism. It is in fact a monumental
milestone in the evolution of the European critical thinking. It is arguably
the most formidable intellectual tradition that has given rise to many
socio-political and philosophical theories. But what seems problematic here is
that of the Cartesian claim of the absolutism of reason and rational paradigms.
That which is humanly impossible is made possible through the sinister machine.
The human intelligence invents technology that is precise and clinical and
rigorous to percolate the anonymous interiority of nature. With the relative
success of technology the human monstrosity seems to have been heaped upon
nature in order to multiply their gain. Nuremberg is just one such tragic case
of technological terror. The world has seen many more technological assault from
the beginning of the 20th century. The human instinctual need for violence
received more sophistication and depth with technology. The technology here
pertains to the weaponry which holds potentiality for massive and mass
destruction. A retrospective look at the 20th century offers enough
demonstration of human monstrosity with the aid of technology. The trail of
that monstrosity seemingly gains prominence in the contemporary time too. And
technology has also evolved into extremely precise and more sophisticated
stage. Sebald disturbed by the fact of human predilection for violence downpours
his disappointment in the line, “What is this being called human? A beast,
shrouded on deep mourning, in a black coat lined with black fur” (57).
The mysterious process of physis
which made the ‘blossoming forth’ possible becomes progressively redundant
because of the introduction of technology and the Cartesian tools. The radical
methodological change that René Descartes employed to understand nature seems
to have metamorphosed the very existing approaches to study nature. For
Descartes there is nothing that we know without doubt. So, it is doubt that
makes us know what we know. The existing approaches to nature are doubted. With
Descartes and Bacon the mechanistic and scientific naturalism as the system of
approaching nature is not only introduced but also is reincarnated in the
subsequent centuries of studying nature. The Baconian dictum ‘knowledge is
power’ seems to have applied on nature to know its processes and programmes in order
to control and use it. The objective empirical science strives to disclose
nature not just for the human desire for knowing in the Aristotelian sense but
to use as and when needed. The modern mechanical science is characterized by
its instrumental value. It does not search for truth. It accumulates knowledge.
With the unbridled advancement of technology, the green cover on the earth is
reduced to the wastelands of industrial and concrete districts. The
uncontrolled atrocity of technology on nature has dimmed down its beauty and
exuberance. Technology guarantees nature’s subservience to science. Therefore,
much of modern decadence and human degeneration seem to have happened due to
the contemporary vigour and flair for technology. Technology does not blossom
forth as does a phenomenon of nature in the domain of nature. In the field of
nature, the events of nature blossom forth. Nature does not act compulsively.
There is inherence of design which governs the events of nature. Nature does
not have design. It itself is that design. Spontaneity is nature’s nature. It
does not have that subject-object taxonomy. It is what it is. A rose blossom
because it blossoms. It knows no why and no because. It is its nature to
blossom.
But in the domain of science there are many causes and ‘becauses’.
Science is not governed by the character of spontaneity. There is always a
human design involved in it. There has to have a hypothesis or a problem. In
the absence of a hypothesis or problem, science loses its mileage to move.
Nature does not involve itself in hypothesis-making or problem-solving
pursuits. Things happen in nature as they happen. There is no normative prefix
or suffix attached to it. But the domain of science stands completely contrary
to nature. Science is a study of nature to know nature’s nature. By virtue of
the knowledge of nature’s nature, the forces of nature are used for human
development. Science offers methods to use the vast field of forces that is
nature. But forces of nature can only used by sheer obedience to the nature of
those forces. For instance, constructing a dam across a river requires the
construction of outlets to allow the force of water to pass when in excess. This
urgency of obedience seems to have been forgotten. The technology-driven
civilization seems to have accepted this misconception that by the deployment
of technology nature can be tamed. The over-emphasis on modern pragmatism
diminishes the significance of human reverential perception of nature. With the
popularity of modern instrumental science, the scientific and the natural fail
to complement each other. They stand contrary to each other. Not
complementarity but contradiction becomes the underlying reality of their
relation. A pure instrumental and technological gaze is thrown at nature. It is
a kind of gaze that hides the will to power.
The essential and theoretical underpinnings of the scientific
and the natural militate against each other. The former is determined to reveal
whereas the latter seeks to hide. Much of human awe and indebtedness towards the
vastness and variety of nature by virtue of commonsense and convention seem to
have mitigated with the universality of the scientific view of nature. The deep
human attachment with nature as one integrated and organic unity gets radically
replaced by the objectified supposition of nature and the detached
spectatorship of nature reducing it to tourism, and adventure. The concretized
and technologized contemporary civilization has pushed nature to the margins of
city boundaries or even further. Visiting nature seems to be a contemporary pastime.
Here nature is understood as rivers, mountains, seas etc.. It stays away from
the city-dwellers. Those places of nature have been highly commercialized.
Commercial interests have also destroyed the beautiful scenic grandeur of those
places. The tired city-dwellers make seasonal tours to the hill stations or
sea-side beaches. Nature- human companionship is intersected by commercial considerations.
Science and Instrumental Rationality
Science is indubitably indispensable for the rational
development of human history but not the science that dominates. For a
syncretic civilization attention must be given towards the preservation of
biodiversity and respect for nature is a minimum necessity. The modern tendency
to proliferate the likes of Nuremberg would reduce human civilization to empty
burial fields. What seems to be advancement in modern human history with the
success of science may prove in the long run a mere human regression. Through
the monstrous means human history would never move towards a safe future. It
would move, as it inevitably moves, with apprehension and pretension. A
pretentious advancement, which is otherwise called the metonymy of success in
the modern idiom, seems to be a necessary signifier for the movement towards a
technological tragedy. The Cartesian scientific picture of nature deludes
humanity to nurture an imagination of nature being controlled, noosed and
triumphed over. But to develop trust in that awkward imaginative conception of
nature peddled by science would be a disastrous decision for the human beings
ever to take. Its consequence would require the Herculean energy to bear the burdens
of human miscalculation.
The ‘revealing’ that is done by technology, as Heidegger
suggests in Question Concerning
Technology, is of a partial kind. Technology cannot reveal the being of
nature. It is a set of structures and each has certain specific function to
perform. They may merely scratch the surface but do not have that infinite
potentiality to disclose the depth of nature. Technology seems to have
disclosed certain aspects of nature which remained unknown to the
pre-technological people. The term ‘pre-technological’ is perhaps not the right
expression because the person who invented wheel is as much an engineer as his
modern counterpart. Therefore, Levi Strauss in Structural Anthropology writes, “… man has always been thinking
equally well; …” (31) The terms such as ‘pre-modern, pre-scientific’,
‘pre-technological’ and ‘pre-logical’ are the coinages made by the moderns to declare
their superiority over the ancients. But such categorizations or nomenclatures
are absolutely reductionist. Such reductionism is not the outcome of a proper
evaluation but mere conjectures.
To give credit to science for inventing the most
sophisticated tools to reveal the essence of nature seems to be a dangerous
move. Science is a human attempt through tools and clinical observations to
understand nature. But to consider this attempt a potential instance of human
victory over nature is pure puerility. To take this fallacy for truth and to resort
to blind experiments on nature based on this truism engenders sinister
consequences. Such a scientific reality seems to be the mood of time. The
modern scientific tendency towards the objectification of nature creates the
Nuremberg situations. Nuremberg is the consequence of the human acceptance of
the objectified view of nature. The scientific advance into the depth of nature
seems to have tampered the ethical or spiritual content of nature. In the
absence of the ethical and mystical underpinning in the world of nature, nature
gets isolated and reduced to mere physical reality. The technological
triumphalism is the outcome of human abstinence from the perennial perception
of nature as the manifested divinity. Not only such a perception has been
compromised but also there is seen alienation in the human symbiotic relation
with nature. This alienation springs from the forgetfulness of the organic
human-nature unity as one totality. Human beings as microcosm are a micro
reality of the greater reality that is nature. Owing to the increasing human
reliance upon the instrumental rationality, the human beings have gradually
alienated themselves from the constitutive and integrated nature-human
perennial self. The oneness with nature seems to have ceased to exist. The
syncretism does not work anymore as the increasing distance between them seems
unbridgeable. Human beings are inseparable from nature because they are one
necessary aspect of nature and not necessarily the most exclusive. The sense of
exclusivity springs from the fact of human forgetfulness of the inevitable
unity.
Nuremburg: Its Final Cry
The increasing adherence to the instrumental nature of human
rationality seems to have disturbed the constitutive oneness with nature. In
the absence of that primordial bonding and creative anchorage between nature
and human beings, the crisis becomes evidently visible. Nuremberg happened
owing to the human refusal of the significance and indispensability of that
bond. Nuremberg is the expression of human separation from the benediction of
and federation with nature. Looking at such a tragic trajectory of human greed
and uncalled for adventurism Sebald perceives of an impending disaster, “In the
future death lies at our feet…” (84). The contemporary humanity deluded by the
sheer technological power breaks the limit.
Sebald describes the city of Dresden whose unparalleled
natural beauty attracted many. The exciting curvature of Elbe River and its
scenic mountains and forts and the grandeur of nature experienced a shocking
devastation by the British Air Force in order to weaken the neurotic advance of
Hitler. The unstoppable militaristic juggernaut of Hitler brought disaster to
his nation. The British retaliatory action against Hitler hit Nuremberg until
its last cry. Nature suffered irreparably in the clash of egos between
Churchill and Hitler. The British sinister exhibition of its technological
prowess in terms of causing massive decimation in Dresden cautioned the world
of its technological superiority. In other words, to prove itself as
technologically powerful England used the opportunity provided by Hitler. The most
primitive human proclivity for power struggle was thus realized, and nature,
Sebald notes, received the brunt of this. The underlying parody of the ego
battle was indicative of human ignorance. The competitive exhibitionism
destroyed nature.
The need for a protective attention towards nature was
forgotten. With the technological sophistication the ethical urgency towards a
syncretic existence was neglected. Much of modern competition for being
technologically superior seems to have promoted the human aspiration towards
producing, procuring and proliferating weapons of mass destruction. In the name
of civilizational growth, nature is destroyed. The human technological
creativity is invested towards making preparation for destruction. Nuremberg is
the expression of such a consistent human preparedness to pour terror if
provoked. Therefore, Sebald seems shocked by the greyness of the sky and its
expansive visibility and writes, “… this sky so grey? So unremittingly grey and
so low, as no sky I have seen before” (109-110). For Sebald’s father who left
Dresden on 7th August 1943, the exuberant city with its
breath-taking and picturesque natural envelop remained just a memory or a
dream. The following day of his departure the city seemed skeletal and was
reduced to swirling smoke, charred stumps, and the human cries. Such an
infernal appearance of the city was being technologically painted by the
British imperial ego and Hitler’s obsession for absolutism. Both Hitler and
Churchill employed technology to destroy each other. In the battle between a
neurotic and a maverick, nature got crushed. Sebald, therefore, rightly
suggests in After Nature that after
nature is death. Without the immediate reparatory or restorative attention
towards nature, nothing can avert destruction.
Sebald refers to the painting of Altdorfer which hangs against
the wall in the Vienna art historical museum. It expresses the image of the
burning city. The painting attempts a pictorial depiction of the burning city:
On the horizon a terrible
conflagration blazes, devouring a large city. Smoke ascends from the site, the
flames rise to the sky and in the blood-red reflection one sees the blackened
facades of houses. In the middle ground there is a strip of idyllic green
landscape, and closest to the beholder’s eye the new generation of Moabites is
conceived. (86)
With
the aid of militaristic machine, human beings could expand the length and
duration of devastation unimaginable in human terms and capacities. The
destructive streak ingrained in human instinct seems to have reincarnated in
modern times under the auspices of technology. The new-found trust in
technology seems to have restrained human beings not to rely on dialogues to
resolve conflict but to resort unconscientiously to the instrumental intimidation.
This modern method of conflict resolution victimizes nature.
Churchill found the retaliatory air raid against Hitler
appropriate. Nature therefore suffered the most. The military confrontations
during the Second World War bruised nature pitilessly. The decision to drop
atomic bomb and the subsequent execution of the same devastated nature though
it was directed against the Japanese people and Japanese imperial ambition. But
nature was crushed in the crossfire of history. The methods of conflict
resolution always inflicted injury on nature. The moderns weaken the protective
gear of nature in order to prove their technological heroism. This kind of
accomplishment invites danger not only to nature but paradoxically to them. The
underlying contradiction of such deluded heroism is that human beings do not
realize that harming nature is equal to harming themselves. Ironically it is an
attempt to break the foundation on which one stands with solidity. The human
race cannot exist outside the protective envelop of nature. The Nuremberg
incident is therefore the triumph of human ignorance.
Human creativity is not engaged in inventing the constructive
procedures of peace or enduring possibilities of arriving at the mature and
permanent mutual agreements through open-hearted discussions. Such time-tested methods
of resolving human conflict is substituted by the silent preparation for destruction
of enemy territory and people through the manufacture of lethal weapons. The
uncanny aspects of modern modalities of addressing the human conflict emerge
inarguably out of the persuasiveness towards war and destruction. At Nuremberg
humanity experienced the similar human predilection for extermination. The
unscrupulous application of scientific and instrumental rationality on nature
in order to be a part of modernising venture seems to have invited more trouble
for nature. The earth, the only planetary home where life exists is perennially
characterized by fullness, profusion and variety. But the asymmetry that we see
today on the earth is caused by the human greed. The desire for accumulating
more beyond the human needs and the tendency to prove the human and national
superiority seem to have decimated the balance in the biosphere. The ecological
crisis that we experience today seems to have been engendered by the
technologically fanatic and exploitative experiments. The schizophrenic
situations that humanity has arrived at by seriously abusing nature beyond the
tolerable limit is owing to the utter disregard towards nature. Paradoxically
such a human adventurism seems to have ruined the home that shelters. To break
the house that shelters is to expose oneself to the known as well as the
anonymous dangers. If this be called progress, it is mere reverie. By breaking
the eco-system that protects, no progress of any sort can be attained. The
awakening from the arrogance of ignorance should not be deferred. The speed
with which the disintegrating mechanism is at work, it is not that far to witness
the retaliation from nature. Ecological awareness need to be dawned upon the
humanity before the ongoing technological damage reaches the irreparable
height.
To diagnose the underlying causes that altered the human
perception and treatment of nature is to arrive at certitude that the
objectifying and deductive methodologies of modernity seem to have imparted
enough confidence to alter the perennial ethical imperatives embedded in the
world of nature. This ethical clearance helped science to hurl assault on
nature. The anthropological invasion into the domain of nature aided by the
instrumental rationality seems to have disturbed the balance in the biosphere. The
growing acceptance of the objectified view of nature promoted by modernism may
have ensured the shift of perception and understanding of nature. The Nuremberg
technological pogrom appears to have engendered from that obsessive adherence
to the doctrines of modernism. The contemporary ecological crisis is
anthropogenic in nature. The Nuremberg massacre of the human civilization and
nature is a not a feat orchestrated by any supernatural agency. It is a
deliberate and organized human misconduct. The intent is apparent. It is to
dominate. Much of western attitude towards nature is conditioned by the
Biblical command to dominate and to multiply as enshrined in the Book of
Genesis. The western ethos is much influenced by this theological injunction which
is overtly anti-nature. In the western thinking asymmetry in the eco-system is
theologically sanctioned. Such a theological permissiveness seems to have
abandoned nature as mere protective envelop designed to serve the higher
species. Therefore, the Semitic or Abrahamic religions scarcely promote nature
worship. Animism is heresy. The monotheistic faiths of the Abrahamic parentage
hardly sanctify the cultural viability of animism. Therefore, the
pre-Judeo-Christian faith systems are looked down upon and declared primitive. Such
an underlying theological normative principle seems to have determined the
western thinking. The Cartesian doubt and the nihilistic streak of modernism
are the effect of prolonged association with such a structure of thinking. The
ruthless and systematic assault on nature by modern science does not surprise
them as their theology proscribes the possibility of divine immanence in
nature. The Nuremberg tragedy seems to be just the fulfillment of the Biblical
injunction.
The clinical rigour with which modern science advances into
the domain of nature makes it evident that the underlying impetus behind such a
reckless advance is nonetheless the western thinking. The monotheistic belief
in the transcendental world neglects the phenomenal world. The western mind due
to its firm anchorage in the theological doctrines seems to have treated nature
inferior in comparison to the superiority of the transcendental home. The
Platonism embedded in the Christian theology appears to have transformed the
western thinking towards transcendentalism. The ecological woe that we
experience today is a result of the consistent attempt made by the western
scientific tradition to demystify nature. The modernism of the west, which is
so characteristically scientific, has given rise to three distinctive principles,
which add woe to nature, as suggested by Joshtrom Isaac Kureethadam in The Philosophical Roots of the Ecological
Crisis – ‘an exaggerated anthropocentrism’, ‘a mechanistic conception of
the world’ and ‘the metaphysical dualism between humanity and the rest of the
physical world’. (5) Such tripartite foundations of modernism seem to have
impacted adversely the ecology.
The Modern Anthropocentrism
The modern anthropocentrism, which prioritizes the subject,
relegates nature to secondary position. It establishes the notion of nature as
the physical and objectified other. In the process of othering the human beings
have alienated themselves notionally from their physical environment. To arrive
at scientific certitude, reason is the tool. In the process the human cerebral
function is instrumentalised. In the Cartesian system this aspect of human
constitution is declared superior. It becomes the engine of human system. And
it is declared to be the most essential and indispensable. In its absence the human
system is reduced to mere bestiality. The Cartesian identification of subject
on the matrix of rationality may have promoted the dualism between mind and
matter. The Cartesian assumption of exploring the unexplored depth of nature
through reason appears to have given the latter the instrumental character. Such
a philosophical assumption seems to have encouraged asymmetry in the human
approach and association of things and events in the world of nature. With the
renewed conceptualization of the world of nature much human sagacity with
nature has been lost. The use of mechanical modalities to study nature seems to
have been encouraged.
The mechanistic worldview peddled by the western model of
modernism practices reductionism. It reduces nature to mere physical phenomenon
and the field and object of experiments. Descartes, being the precursor of such
a world view in the field of philosophy and much of his philosophical precepts
and mathematical deductions are absorbed in the early science, seems to have
removed the immanence of the intrinsic teleology from matter. In the absence of
the teleological inherence, matter becomes inert. The western science embodies
certain methodological and conceptual characteristics from the Cartesian epistemology.
The extension of disenchanted and instrumental notion of nature designed for
human consumption demystifies nature and promotes inattentiveness towards the
essential nature of nature. Animism is replaced by mechanism.
The shadow of Descartes extends from the early modern period
to the high modern and pervades the contemporary outlook towards nature. The
deliberate and the ever-increasing human divorce from the organic nature-human
continuum may have been inspired by the increasing allegiance to the Cartesian
theoretical and mechanistic knowledge system. The ramifications of such Cartesian
theoretical postulations around the nature of nature are felt in the
contemporary time in the form of Nuremberg tragedy. The extent of exploitation
has crossed the bearable limit in the recent times. The human innovation and
progress has happened resorting to savage brutality on nature. In the absence
of any immediate retaliatory response from nature seems to have encouraged the
experimenters to maximize the extent of exploitation. This kind of human
naivety with regard to the consequent repercussions of dangerous experiments may
prove lethal in the long run. .The infinite patience of nature need not be
confused as nature’s passivity. No act of human cognition can determine the
nature of nature. All that human deductionisms are mere assumptions. No
speculative theory is exhaustive and true.
The exploitative and aggressive human parading into the depth
of nature in order to exercise human hubris seems to have been materialized at
the cost of causing injury to nature. The theological and Cartesian license and
scientific motivation to objectify nature have steered humanity towards
derangement by imposing the cleavage between the pre-Christian notion of nature
and the scientific notion. The Biblical injunction of human domination over
other species and the subsequent corroborative philosophical and scientific
rejoinder to the exploitative promotional has resulted in the most horrendous
human savagery on nature. In the Book of
Genesis (KJV) 1:26 it is written as the revealed voice of God, “And God
said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have
dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the
cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth
upon the earth.” In 1:28 of the Book of
Genesis the anthropocentric ascendancy over nature is reiterated, “And God
blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish
the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over
the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”
This divine sanctification of human dominance over other nature appears to have
influenced the modern science. The European ecological psychology seems to have
been determined by the theological permissiveness of dominance.
Nuremberg is one such
story that caught Sebald’s attention. The modern delusion that centralizes
human subject and reason over and above other considerations has pushed nature
to the margins of negligence and unimportance. With the birth of modern subject,
that is scientific and rational, nature is subjugated and delinked. The
significance that it had had in the human scheme of things seems to have lost. It
is no more that inevitable other not to be dispensed with but the other to be
utilized in order to fulfill human needs. Reason is inarguably the most
indispensable aspect of human cognitive field, but its diabolism and
insensitivity emanate from the human over-indulgence in its embedded instrumental
characteristic.
Sebald therefore tries to show the devastation that Nuremberg
experienced owing to the ego-battle to prove the territorial or national
superiority over the competing and rival nations. What Churchill did to Germany
was proportionately responded with the similar scale of violence by Hitler upon
England. In the ego-clash between the two enemy nations nature had to bear the brunt.
They spewed their venom on nature. The technological rampage into nature was
brutally conducted with impunity. The patient and silent nature experienced its
own paralysis owing to this atrociously unethical and unnecessary technological
invasion. The narrow and limited territorial nationalism failed to acknowledge the
importance of the grace of nature for human existence. With the modern
definition of territory or nation-state boundaries there emerged the will to
expansion and annexation through force and control. The virtue of oneness of
nature and with nature was forgotten. The meaningless territorial battles were
fought. The massive manufacturing industries for producing arms and ammunitions
were established in order to confirm human superiority. But paradoxically, from
a vantage point and through a neutral lens all these petty human efforts to
exercise the will to power through destruction appear to be pure human travesty
and the primitivism of the so called enlightened. Therefore, the Nuremberg
tragedy was a consequence of the absence of the ethical underpinning in the
structure of the human-nature relation. The ethical undercurrent is not only
absent but tragically its need is forgotten. The human myopia not to
acknowledge the necessity of that ethical deep structure in the nature-human
relation seems to have encouraged the Nuremberg tragedy.
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