Fight Club as Anti-Festivity: An Encounter with Josef Pieper In his books In Tune with the World and Leisure:

The Basis of Culture, Josef Pieper diagnoses what he calls a culture of total work. A culture of total work is one in which the human being has been reduced to a mere functionary and in which the sphere of justifiable human action must be defended with reference to an actions contribution to the overall social utility. In this culture, the human being is conceptualized as worker, which in the deeper anthropological sense refers to a conception of the human person where productivity and efficiency are the hallmarks of being fully human. Pieper laments that this culture excludes spheres of activity that might point to a richer vision of the properly human, including free activities not justified as means to some other end, but that are ends in themselves. Pieper maintains that the only possible cure for the dehumanizing effects of a culture of total work is the recovery of authentic festivity, the heart of which is a fundamental life affirmation. While work is a necessary and even good part of human life, festivity is the truly human activity, transcending the totalizing effects of the work-a-day world. Although written in the context of post World War II Germany, Piepers diagnosis of a culture of total work shares shocking similarities with the diagnosis of contemporary American culture provided by the 1999 film, Fight Club. In its own idiosyncratic manner, Fight Club articulates the general malaise and despair evident in a culture where the human person has been reduced to a mere functionary and is the victim of the dehumanizing influences of the American capitalist bureaucratic machine. In this paper, I will first outline the similarities in the diagnosis of a culture of total work presented by Pieper and Fight Club. Second, I will sketch the differences

between the solutions offered by each. Both prescribe a certain type of festivity; however, the two visions of festivity are radically at odds. Pieper conceives of festivity as transcending dehumanizing forces through the affirmation of existence experienced in worship. Fight Club, on the other hand, focuses on self-destruction, a kind of activity that, despite its obvious differences, similarly resists being reduced to the logic of total work. Finally, I will discuss Piepers distinction between festivity, pseudo-festivity, and anti-festivity, showing that the festivity offered in Fight Club is anti-festivity. I. Less than Human: Diagnosing Despair in a Culture of Total Work Meaningful work is part of a properly human life, but it alone cannot provide us with a fully adequate conception of the human person. In other words, a robust conception of human flourishing or the ultimate fulfillment of human life is not exhausted by the conception of the person as worker. This insight represents the core of Piepers thought and serves as an important reminder for contemporary America, which has an equally truncated view of the human person. Piepers discussion of total work in Leisure and In Tune provides us with the diagnostic tools needed to analyze some ills within contemporary America by sketching for us the salient characteristics of a culture of total work. Anticipating our discussion, a culture of total work is a culture in which the human is conceived primarily as a worker or functionary, where the true dignity of the person corresponds to productivity. As Pieper says, a total work culture is one in which the idea of work has invaded and taken over the whole realm of human action and of human existence as a whole.1

Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, (Indiana: St. Augustine Press, 1998), pg. 6. 2

In order to better apprehend what Pieper means by a culture of total work, it is important to note the three principle characteristics that surface in his analysis of the term intellectual worker. For he maintains that the concept intellectual worker reveals the modern ideal of work in its most extreme foundation.2 The three characteristics that surface in his analysis of intellectual work are: 1) work as activity; 2) effort as the criterion for determining the value of action as such; and 3) untiring insertion into the rationalized program of useful social organization.3 Most important for analyzing the striking similarities between a total work culture and contemporary America will be a detailed exploration of the third characteristic, work as social function. However, before turning to it, we must pause briefly to consider the first two characteristics. a. The Emphasis on Activity In his discussion of the first characteristic of the intellectual worker, work as activity, Pieper turns toward the philosophy of Kant as his chief exemplar. Kant is important for Pieper because in Kantian philosophy the human knowing process is understood from the perspective of the active knowing agent. All human knowing is discursive with the corresponding emphasis on the act of investigating, articulating, joining, comparing, distinguishing, abstracting, deducing, proving all of which are so many types and methods of active mental effort.4 This emphasis on the activity of knowing fits perfectly with Kants conception of philosophy as a form of work. Kant

Ibid., pg. 8. Additionally, Pieper maintains, For, in fully explicating the inner structure of the concept intellectual worker, we come face to face with the world of total work and its real meaning. Pg. 8-9.
3

Ibid., pg. 15, 27. Ibid., pg. 10. 3

dismisses romantic notions of vision or intuition as spurious at best, for this view holds that a simple act of intellectual vision is not work but is experienced as gift. Pieper summarizes the Kantian perspective, saying, Romantic philosophy cannot truly be a philosophy because it is not work.5 This sentiment also makes sense of Kants rejection of Plato as an enthusiast and his acceptance of Aristotle as true philosophy since it is serious work. As Pieper points out, this view of philosophy and human knowing is much different from the Ancient and Medieval conception, which distinguished between two aspects of the human mind: ratio and intellectus. Ratio is the discursive aspect of human knowing along the lines of the Kantian conception discussed above, but the ancients also maintained a place for intellectus, the passive receptive aspect. Pieper explains, intellectus refers to the ability of simply looking (simplex intuitus), to which the truth presents itself as a landscape presents itself to the eye.6 Both aspects of the human mind were crucial for the ancients and the interplay between the two in the knowing process indicates that there is not only work involved in philosophical thought, but also something essential to it, that is not work.7 Against the conception of intellectual worker, Pieper maintains that there is leisure as non-activity an inner absence of preoccupation, a calm, an ability to let things go, to be quiet.8 The crucial insight Pieper wants to uncover is that the habits of mind associated with conceiving the human as

Ibid. Ibid., pg. 11. Ibid., pg. 13. Ibid., pg. 31. 4

worker have penetrated our deepest notions of how we conceptualize the way in which we grasp or understand reality. According to the Kantian view, receptive beholding not only ignores the subjectivity of all knowing, but worse, it is lazy and as such has no place or value. The truly valuable human activity is working, and for philosophy to have legitimacy, it also must justify itself as active work. b. Effort: The Criterion of Valuable Activity This emphasis on philosophical work as activity brings us to the second characteristic of the intellectual worker, effort as the criterion for determining the value of action as such. On this view, an action gains value depending on the amount of effort it takes to carry out. Pieper again returns to Kant on this score, for Kant pictures philosophy as a Herculean labor, additionally maintaining that philosophy is genuine only insofar at it is difficult and requires great effort. The level of difficulty makes a given task more or less worthwhile. This position contrasts significantly with St. Thomas Aquinas who declares, When something is more difficult, it is not for that reason necessarily more worthwhile, but it must be more difficult in such a way, as also to be at a higher level of goodness.9 Any position emphasizing effort as the criterion determining the value of an action leads to attitudes of mind that are fundamentally suspicious of conceptions of grace or gift. A culture of work, as epitomized by the intellectual worker, can never accept that true insight comes as a gift, and at times without effort. Pieper maintains the opposite position: illumination through contemplation can come as a gift to the person who opens herself to receive it. In this second characteristic of the intellectual worker,

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, Q. 123, a. 12, ad 2um. 5

Pieper illuminates how deeply the anthropological category of worker has influenced the way we value human activity, even intellectual activity. c. Social Doctrine: Justifiable Action Must Contribute to Common Utility After having briefly examined the first two characteristics of Piepers intellectual worker, we are now in position to unpack the final characteristic in further detail. For, the third characteristic the untiring insertion into the rationalized program of useful social organization is the characteristic that will be of most help to us as we analyze the parallels between Piepers total work culture and contemporary American culture. In many ways, the social doctrine that lies concealed in the concepts of intellectual labor and intellectual worker10 represents the culmination and heart of the total work culture that Pieper sketches. In fact, after his discussion of the first two characteristics, he asserts, But there is a third element involved as well, which appears to be even more crucial than the first two and seems to comprehend both of them within itself.11 Simply stated, this social doctrine maintains that work means contribution to the common social utility. This doctrine means that the justifiable sphere of human activity ultimately must be defended with reference to its contribution to common utility. Legitimate activity must be useful activity within the social system. In the realm of intellectual activity, this doctrine maintains that all intellectual work is bound to the function it serves for the state. No arena exists for academic freedom where inquiry can be pursued freely; that is, in a

10

Pieper, Leisure, pg. 20. Ibid. 6

11

manner not subordinated to utilitarian purposes outside itself.12 Any area of human activity that has meaning in itself becomes increasingly difficult to formulate, much less to justify, in a context so dominated by the logic of social utility. At this point, Pieper raises a question of protest: Is there still an area of human action, or human existence as such, that does not have its justification by being part of the machinery of a five-year plan? Is there or is there not something of that kind?13 And Piepers answer to this question brings us near to the heart of the despairing malaise evident in cultures dominated by this conception of the human. He says, The inner tendency of the concepts intellectual work and intellectual worker point to the answer: No, the human being is essentially, and with his whole existence, a functionary, even in the most noble forms of his activity.14 Here Pieper laments that we have lost something fundamental, namely a conception of certain kinds of human activity that are meaningful in themselves. If there are activities of this sort, what are they and where can we look to get a better idea of their nature? Pieper answers these questions by returning to the classical distinction between the liberal arts and the servile arts, a distinction he fears is continually threatened in a total work culture. One way to reveal an essential aspect of a total work culture is to depict it as the overall narrowing of human existence and activity to the realm of the servile arts.15 Simply put, the servile arts refer to human activities that are performed for some useful See Piepers essay The Philosophical Act where he recovers the classical sense of academic freedom. In Leisure, pg. 75.
13 12

Pieper, Leisure, pg. 22. Ibid. Ibid., pg. 44. 7

14

15

purpose outside themselves. They are used as a means to some further useful end and do not have their meaning in themselves. The servile arts always find their meaning in contrast with the liberal arts, which in the classical world are considered to be of a higher order and more properly human. The liberal or free arts are precisel y those areas of human activity that are not subordinated to some useful end. For they are the type of actions that are meaningful in themselves and are not forced to fulfill some function. In his Commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics, Thomas Aquinas succinctly captures this distinction. He explains, Every art is called liberal which is ordered to knowing; those which are ordered to some utility to be attained through action are called servile arts.16 Another way of uncovering the difference between the liberal and servile arts is to consider the difference between training and education. The servile arts are aimed at training a functionary in certain specialized skills so that she will be able to carry out some specific kind of useful work to some end. The liberal arts, on the other hand, are aimed at educating the whole person. A liberal education should be concerned with forming the entire human person and that persons orientation to the whole of existence. Pieper explains, Education concerns the whole human being, insofar as he is capax universi, capable of the whole, able to comprehend the sum total of existing things.17 At this point, it must be insisted that Pieper is not trying to minimize vocational training nor the importance of functionaries and work in general. He is merely at pains to show that a full and rich conception of the human person and the human world cannot be comprehended by the world of work. Toward this end he raises a litany of questions:

16

Quoted in Ibid., pg. 21. Ibid., pg. 24. 8

17

[C]an the world of man be exhausted in being the working world? Can the human being be satisfied with being a functionary, a worker? Can human existence be fulfilled in being exclusively a work-a-day existence? Or, to put it another way, from the other direction, as it were: Are there such things as liberal arts?18 A total work culture effectively reduces human activity to the servile. The liberal arts have no proper place in this scheme. In its most extreme formulation, the culture of total work denies legitimacy to any sphere of activity that would be considered liberal. Pieper says, The liberality or freedom of the liberal arts consists in their not being disposable for purposes, that they do not need to be legitimated by a social function, by being work.19 But a culture of total work demands precisely this, that an action must always be legitimated with reference to some social function. This rendering of the total work culture raises a fundamental question for those who think the conception of the human as mere worker or functionary is insufficient, that is, less than fully human. Pieper formulates the question: [W]ill it be possible to keep the human being from becoming a complete functionary, or worker?20 The answer to this question turns on whether or not we are able to recover an authentic sense of leisure, the heart of which is festivity. However, before I turn to Piepers account of festivity, I will outline the similarities between Piepers diagnosis of a total work culture and Fight Clubs diagnosis of the despair characteristic of contemporary American culture. d. Worker-Malaise in Fight Club

18

Ibid. Pieper, Leisure, pg. 22. Pieper, Leisure, pg. 37. 9

19

20

Like Piepers concern with post-World War II Germany and its total work culture, Fight Club is concerned with the worker-malaise evident within late twentieth century America. The deep discontent felt by the unnamed protagonist-narrator comes as the result of having been reduced to a mere functionary within the dehumanizing context of modern American work culture. Fight Club opens with a gun stuck in the narrators mouth (we will call him Jack although he is unnamed in the movie), immediately followed by a flashback to his despair ridden experience with insomnia. It is noteworthy that Jack contextualizes his insomnia within the work-a-day world of managers, young professionals, business trips, plane rides, office life, corporations, and consumerism. Something about Jacks insomnia, that is, his inability to experience true rest or leisure, is deeply connected to this culture of work. Jacks underlying despair manifests itself in a number of different scenes, each connected with some aspect of American work culture. Take the scene where his managers mode of interaction demonstrates its fundamentally means to end character. Jack has just been sketching an apocalyptic vision of the future where corporations dominate. He laments, When deep space exploration ramps up, it will be the corporations that name everything: the IBM Stellarsphere, the Microsoft Galaxy, Planet Starbucks. The scene then transitions to Jacks cubicle. His manager walks in on Jack, who is obviously feeling unwell with fingers massaging his temples. The manager ignores Jacks state of mind, sits on his desk in a mock-familiar manner, and launches straightaway into a conversation filled entirely with technical work jargon: Im gonna need you out of town a little more this week. Weve got some red flags to cover. The overdubbed narrator voice comments, It must have been Tuesday, he was wearing his

10

cornflower blue tie. Then Jack the character, like a perfect drone, responds, You want me to de-prioritize my current reports until you advise on the status upgrade. To which the ever efficient manager officiously replies, Make these your primary action items. Heres your flight coupons. Call me from the road if theres any snags. The narrator summarizes, He was full of pep. He must have had his grande latte enima. Two things are particularly striking in this scene. First, the manager treats Jack entirely as a functionary. His behavior makes it clear that he is entirely concerned with the use he can get out of Jack; he is not concerned with Jacks obvious discomfort. His familiar manner of sitting on Jacks desk is conspicuously disingenuous in a relationship that is obviously utilitarian. Even his mock-familiarity plays into the overall logic of manipulation. Finally, he interacts with Jack entirely in managerial jargon. The second reason this scene is striking is that Jack fully participates in the manager-functionary complex. He has become an expert in the technical language and he has gained the fairly pedestrian skills needed to fulfill his job. At work, Jack functions on autopilot. Both characters are fully submerged in a means-to-end mode of interaction where people are considered entirely in utilitarian terms. Another scene in which Jacks malaise is manifest is when he is describing his job as a recall coordinator for a major American car company. His job basically boils down to calculating whether or not his company should initiate a recall in cases of product failure. On a plane ride speaking to another business professional, Jack says, My job is to apply the formula. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field; A. Multiply by the probable rate of failure; B. Then multiply the result by the average out of court

11

settlement; C. A x B x C = X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we dont do one. After hearing about this horrifying calculus, the business professional asks, What car company is this? And Jack, through a self-satisfied smile says, A major one. In this scene, Jack demonstrates that his job as a recall coordinator forces him to adopt a most inhuman kind of reasoning. Human persons are thought of according to the logic of exchange, and tragic deaths are reduced to a mere economic equation. As a representative of his company, Jack is forced to adopt a crass and dehumanizing mode of evaluation: the cheaper way is the right way. Another workplace scene takes place in the office conference room. Jack, his manager, and a handful of other employees are at a meeting where a software salesman is trying to sell the newest office software upgrade. His sales pitch reveals the shared values of office culture as clearly as anything might. He explains, The Basic premise of cybernetic anti-office is: Make things more efficient. The manager asks, Can I get the icon in cornflower blue? And the salesman enthusiastically responds, Absolutely. Efficiency is priority number one people, because waste is a thief. The obvious point here is that in a managerial office context, the more efficient is always better because, in the end, being efficient means making more money. The logic of work-place efficiency seems fairly benign in relation to software; however, when the logic works its way into managing people efficiently, as evidence in hiring and firing practices in a total work culture, money and efficiency replace the dignity of the worker in importance. Like the second characteristic Pieper outlines, people are treated as objects for efficiencys sake, or rather, the distinction between people and objects is effaced by the cold mechanics of efficiency.

12

In this total managerial society, labor becomes meaningless and there is no room for a deeper conception of work as a dignified expression of human creativity. Iris Murdoch formulates this problem well. She explains, [T]he problem [is] of the transformation of labour from something senseless which forms no real part of the personality of the labourer into something creative and significant.21 The managerial society, therefore, reduces and suppresses human personality, creativity, and imagination. Human personality, as we have already seen, is transformed into functionary behavior, authentic creativity is reduced to mere cleverness, and imagination dwindles to the point where there is an alarming lack of true curiosity. Fight Club highlights the reduction to cleverness particularly well. In the scene where Jack first meets his alter ego, Tyler Durden, they are sitting next to each other on an airplane. Tyler has just finished a diatribe on the illusion of control suggested by the airplane emergency procedure brochures. Jack then turns to Tyler and quips, Tyler, you are by far the most interesting single-serving-friend I have ever met. See, I have this thing, everything on a plane is singe serving, even the Tyler cuts him off saying, Oh, I get it. Its very clever. Jack, thinking this is a compliment, responds with a self satisfied, Oh, thank you. Tyler then brilliantly provokes the issue asking, Hows that workin out for you? Jack asks, What?, to which Tyler responds, Being clever. Jack replies, Great. Tyler, with the obvious implication that Jack shouldnt be satisfied with clever conversational exchanges on planes with other business professionals, says, Keep it up then.

Iris Murdoch, A House of Theory, in Existentialists and Mystics: Writings of Philosophy and Literature, (New York: Penguin Books, 1999), pg. 184. 13

21

In addition to the reduction of authentic creativity, the managerial society needs functionaries who have lost the imaginative abilities to raise truly penetrating questions about final aims. Two scenes illustrate this lack of a deeper curiosity particularly well. First, the narrator Jack is commenting on what occupies his thinking when he goes home at night after work. So, what are the pressing questions he wrestles with when not occupied with office matters? After commenting that he has become a slave to what he dubs the IKEA nesting instinct, the penetrating question he is able to formulate is, What kind of dining set defines me as a person? This paltry form of curiosity, so at home in the managerial society, dovetails nicely with crass consumerism. What Jacks question actually illuminates is that the managerial society and the consumerist society are mutually supporting. For, the managerial society cultivates habits of mind solely accustomed to utilitarian questions, and the consumerist society keeps the functionary continually distracted by the amassing of material goods. Both are perpetually distracted by what Murdoch has called the fascination of the means.22 The second scene illustrating the truncated curiosity within a managerial society takes place after Jack moves into the dilapidated house on Paper Street with Tyler. As they are grooming themselves in preparation for the next fight club, the conversation turns to their fathers. Tyler says, My dad never went to college. So, it was real important that I go. So I graduate, I call him up long distance. I say, Dad, now what? He says, Get a job. Now Im 25, I make my yearly call again; say, Dad, now what? He says, I dont know, get married. It doesnt take a great effort of the imagination to realize that the type of question Tyler is actually asking his dad is of the order, How and

22

Ibid., pg. 185. 14

for what should I live? However, neither Tylers father nor Tyler, even after a college education, can really formulate his search for meaningful activity in these terms. (Incidentally, we might take it as a sign of the deep failure of our educational institutions if, after four years of a university education, a student is unable to formulate questions not to mention attempting an answer concerning proper ends of a human life.) Tyler is essentially inquiring about the sort of activity that would be worthy of a life project. It is noteworthy that both Tyler and his father, embedded as they are in a total work culture, think of college in a servile or utilitarian fashion. People go to college so they can get a good job. Work is the next step in the means to end chain, but when Tyler asks his father about the next step, his father is at a loss to suggest anything truly meaningful. Tyler is looking for some sort of answer that is an end in itself, and not a mere means to some other end. The type of answers that can indicate meaningful activities are absent, while the amassing of more and more consumer goods becomes a sad substitute and perpetual distraction, anesthetizing the person. In a consumerist society, the character of work is transformed. It becomes the means whereby we are perpetually distracted by the latest gadget, the bigger TV, the nicer house, or for some of us, the faster computer, the bigger bookshelf, or the next line on the CV. Lacking a

satisfying answer to his sons question about what to do now that he has a job, Tylers father, grasping for whatever he can, merely suggests the first thing that jumps to mind, marriage. One may want to maintain that Tylers father gets closer to a proper answer with this suggestion; however, he is not at all working from a rich conception of marriage or thinking in terms of final aims. He is merely a mouthpiece for the conventional at its most shallow, pedestrian level. If we wanted to translate his reasoning here, it would be

15

something like: A lot of other people get married after going to college and getting a job. That seems to be the thing to do. Why dont you try that? This scene illustrates the poverty of imagination and curiosity evident in a managerial society, which is continually distracted by means. Fight Club presents a picture of American culture as one that: 1) reduces the person to mere functionary, 2) forces people into adopting dehumanizing modes of evaluation, 3) underwrites a logic of pure efficiency, 4) shrinks authentic creativity to mere cleverness, and 5) anesthetizes true curiosity. It is no wonder, in the face of cultural forces so detrimental to human flourishing, that a person ravaged by them should despair. This despairing, malaise filled person is who we meet in the figure of Jack, and he has obvious similarities with Piepers functionary trapped in a culture of total work. Pieper and Fight Club are both concerned with diagnosing the fundamental reduction of the human at the hands of a total work culture; however, neither leaves us with just the diagnosis. Both are concerned with offering a solution to this most inhuman way of being human. Both prescribe festivity as the antidote to this sickness. II. Transcending the Work-a-Day World: Two Accounts of Festivity As a response to a culture of total work, Pieper and Fight Club are both concerned with developing an alternative culture or community that transcends the work-a-day world and resists the reduction of the human to pure functionary. Both attempt to recover a culture of festivity as the antidote to the despairing malaise brought about by the dehumanizing forces within a total work culture; for, a chief mark of festivity is that it resists the reduction wrought by the logic of total work. To see how this works, we need to explore the conceptions of festivity at work in Pieper and Fight Club. As we will see,

16

their accounts of festivity are radically at odds. Piepers account focuses on festivity as a deep affirmation of existence experienced most profoundly in the worship of God, whereas Fight Club offers an account of festivity rooted in self-destruction. Despite their radically different foundations, both accounts of festivity notably offer a human ideal deeply subversive of a total work culture. a. Piepers Account of Festivity: Transcendence Through Affirmation If the work-a-day world is dominated by activity that has its purpose outside itself, then the distinctly human activity that transcends this region would be activity that is meaningful in itself. Pieper argues that activity that is meaningful in itself is an important component of festivity. In the total world of work, it is just this kind of human activity that is rendered incomprehensible, causing true festivity to wither. So an important question asserts itself in this context, one with which we must wrestle if we are to recover a conception of the human as more than mere functionary: What sort of activity is actually meaningful in itself? To answer this question, Pieper makes three closely connected points, moving from 1) contemplation, 2) to love, 3) to universal affirmation. When we inquire into questions like What kind of activity is meaningful in itself?, Pieper rightly indicates that we cannot answer unless we have a conception of man.23 In other words, this question presupposes some account of the fulfillment or flourishing of human life. Pieper, wary of originality with respect to these kinds of questions, suggests that in seeking an answer here we need to consider what the tradition of humanitys wisdom, into which the thought of whole generations has entered, has to

23

Pieper, In Tune, pg. 15. 17

tell us.24 The traditional answer he proffers as the utmost fulfillment of a human life is the beatific vision or contemplation. Briefly rendered, the beatific vision is an awareness or seeing oriented to reality as a whole, which imparts bliss to the knower. Traditional wisdom maintains that the highest fulfillment of a properly human life takes the form of contemplation,25 a kind of simple intuitive apprehension of what is. Thus, the ancient answer to the question, What kind of activity is meaningful in itself?, is the contemplative gaze of the loving knower. Pieper says, Whenever anyone succeeds in bringing before his minds eye the hidden ground of everything that is, he succeeds to the same degree in performing an act that is meaningful in itself, and has a good time.26 With this comment, Pieper reveals the close connection between contemplation and festivity. He does this by suggesting that contemplation, as an act meaningful-in-itself, transcends the servile logic of the work-a-day world and carries us beyond it into a realm of true festivity. [F]estivity, he says, is inconceivable without an element of contemplation.27 With a poetic flourish, Pieper describes the beatific vision saying, the field of vision widens, concern for success or failure of an act falls away, and the soul turns to its infinite object; it becomes aware of the illimitable horizon of reality as a whole.28 So, contemplation is an activity meaningful-in-itself; it is an important

24

Ibid. Ibid., pg. 16. Ibid., pg. 16-17. Ibid., pg. 17. Ibid. 18

25

26

27

28

component of festivity; and it is characterized by its fundamental orientation to the whole of existence. Pieper links contemplation with love simply by pointing out that The achievement of contemplation [is] the intuition of the beloved object.29 The reality we come into contact with in contemplation is an object of love. We experience contemplation, or the beatific vision, as the receiving of something we love; and when we receive something we love, we experience joy, a festal joy. With this conception of love and joy in the foreground, we are close to the core of festivity. However, in order to get to festivitys deepest foundation, we need to know what underlies this festal joy. This foundation, as we have seen, must be characterized by some sort of orientation to the whole of existence and by the kindling of that festal joy experienced by the lover receiving what he loves. Thus we come to Piepers insight into the true nature of all festivity. Underneath all festivity lies the universal affirmation of all existence, an affirmation that rests on the goodness of existence. True festivity or celebration flows from the conviction that reality as a whole is good and that it is good that I exist. With Augustinian overtones, Pieper says, By ultimate foundation I mean the conviction that the prime festive occasion, which alone can ultimately justify all celebration, really exists; that, to reduce it to the most concise phrase, at bottom everything that is, is good, and it is good to exist.30 Elsewhere he says, But a festival becomes true festivity only when man affirms the goodness of his existence by offering the response of joy. So for Pieper, the ability to celebrate a festival means that existence as a whole is good, that we

29

Ibid., pg. 20. Ibid., pg. 26. 19

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are able to apprehend it as such, and that we respond with some joyful expression of our universal affirmation of existence. Summarizing his discussion of festivitys essential core, Pieper indicates, To celebrate a festival means: to live out, for some special occasion and in an uncommon manner, the universal assent to the world as a whole.31 Once Pieper has defined the essence of festivity in this manner, he draws a three part conclusion: First: there can be no more radical assent to the world than the praise of God, the lauding of the Creator of this same world. Second: since festivity always finds expression publicly and outwardly, the ritual festival is the most festive form that festivity can possibly take, especially the ritual worship of God. Third: the refusal of ritual worship is the deadliest way to subvert authentic festivity.32 One additional aspect of Piepers conception of festivity needs to be explored before we turn to festivity in Fight Club. Pieper argues that a true festival can never be fully organized; it must be experienced as a pure gift. Just as we receive our existence as a gift, so we receive the awareness of the goodness of existence as a gift. We cannot technique authentic festivity. We can prepare ourselves for the hoped-for-gift, but we can never will a festival through human effort and determination alone. We cannot work for a festival. We must assume a posture of relaxation, slackening effort, letting ourselves go.33 Pieper concludes, Thus, when a festival goes as it should, men receive

31

Ibid., pg. 30. Ibid., pg. 31-32. Ibid., pg. 40. 20

32

33

something that it is not in human power to give.34 For Pieper, it is impossible to have a festival without the gods. If God is dead, so is the possibility for festivity. b. Fight Clubs Account of Festivity: Transcendence Through SelfDestruction Fight Club begins with the despair-ridden worker, imprisoned within the ennui filled office culture of the late twentieth century American young professional. The film is predicated on the fact that there is something deeply wrong with this sort of existence; humans were meant for something nobler. Jack is initially unable to identify his despair, but what he does know is that something needs to change. At first his insomnia drives him to a doctor seeking a drug to fix his problem; however, he soon comes to realize that the source of his insomnia lies much deeper. Jacks insomnia is only a manifestation of his deeper worker despair, and this is brought on as a result of an overall way of existing in the world. American office culture with its efficiency-rooted-practices and managerial-habits-of-mind creates a social context in which the human becomes less than human. The human is reduced to pure functionary. Because he is human, Jack senses the poverty of this mode of existence and it bubbles to the surface as despair, which is inevitable in a life without festivity, a life that finds nothing beyond the work-a-day world. Jacks first attempt to find a social context that transcends the total work culture lands him in the midst of an unlikely support group for men with testicular cancer called Remaining Men Together. This group is strange for Jack since he does not actually have testicular cancer. He immediately becomes addicted to frequenting groups where

34

Ibid. 21

people are suffering from terminal diseases. After attending, he finds that he sleeps like a baby. Although interesting in their own right, I will pass over these groups, which ultimately fail Jack anyway, to his second strategy, the fight clubs themselves. These fight clubs represent, for Jack, an attempt to move beyond mere work time to festival time. The fight clubs get started after Jack comes home from a business trip to find his apartment with all his possessions blown up. He has no one to call, so he phones his alter ego, Tyler, and they meet at a dodgy tavern for a pint. When they are leaving and Jack has asked to stay with Tyler, Tyler turns to Jack and says, I want you to do me a favor. I want you to hit me as hard as you can. Jack protests, What? Tyler insists, I want you to hit me as hard as you can. Jack asks, What do you want me to do, you just want me to hit you? Tyler says, Come on, just do me this one favor. Jack asks, Why? Frustrated, Tyler says, Why, I dont know why. I dont know. Ive never been in a fight, have you? Jack answers, No, but thats a good thing. Tyler objects, No it is not. How much can you know about yourself if youve never been in a fight? I dont want to die without any scars. So come on, hit me before I lose my nerve. After much protestation, Jack obliges and hits Tyler with an awkward, uncoordinated, overhand, fistchop to the ear. Tyler returns the favor with a decent jab to the stomach. What is particularly striking about this scene is that Tylers request has no way of being comprehended by the logic of the work-a-day world. Dominated by concerns of efficiency and utility, the peculiarity of this request strikes Jack by its incomprehensibility. It is literally a request from another world. Nonetheless, Jack acquiesces and experiences a hope that comes from finding out that there is another

22

possibility for human existence that is different from the total culture of work. In liberated tones, Jack quips, After fighting, everything else in your life got the volume turned down. As Jack and Tyler continue to fight outside the tavern, others observe and eventually ask if they can be next. Jack as narrator comments, We were finding something out. We were finding out more and more that we were not alone. In other words, the worker-malaise is a cultural phenomenon and the lack of festivity is widely felt. Jack says, It was on the tip of everyones tongue, Tyler and I just gave it a name. And the implied name is Fight Club, where the world of work gets left behind to be replaced by a time of festal destruction. Jack says, This kid from work, Ricky, couldnt remember if he ordered pens with blue ink or black. The forgetfulness of work in the context of the fight clubs is a sign that fighting was providing a way of transcending work-a-day existence. Jack again instructs, You werent alive anywhere like you were there. Who you were in fight club is not who you were in the rest of the world. These fight clubs offer self-destruction as a form of festivity that cannot be reduced to the logic of workday efficiency, and therefore, transcend that world. They represent a kind of excess and overflow, we might even say a kind of gratuity, that moves above and beyond the neat, clean, calculated order of managed behavior. One is reminded of Rousseaus noble savage or Nietzsches man of bad conscience who has been domesticated, weakened, and rendered common by the constraints of society. Here we might think of this as forced emasculation, which the support group Remaining Men Together is certainly intended to call to mind. Fight clubs subvert and transcend work

23

culture by offering self-destruction as a human activity that goes beyond utilitarian workplace logic. The self-destructive festive elements of fighting, however, give way to a general and pervasive nihilism. When a new member ingratiates himself with Tyler, Jack ends up facing him in the next fight. Jack knocks him to the ground, punches him out with a subsequent blow, and then continues to strike him time and time again. In the most violent and disturbing scene in the movie, Jack beats the new member to a bloody pulp resulting in the loss of one of his eyes. Immediately following this scene, Jack as narrator says, I felt like putting a bullet between the eyes of every panda that wouldnt screw to save its species. I wanted to open the dump valves on oil tankers and smother all those French beaches I would never see. I wanted to breathe smoke. In response to his violent outburst, Tyler asks him, Whered you go psycho boy? Jack replies, I felt like destroying something beautiful. This scene demonstrates the ultimate foundation underlying Fight Clubs account of festivity. At the core of this violent festivity is the denial of self and ultimately the radical denial of the whole of existence. When confronted with something beautiful, Jack wills its destruction. Jacks response, then, to his worker-malaise is a will to destruction, a will to nothingness. It is better that something beautiful not exist. Through this radical denial of the beautiful we see that universal rejection of existence is at the core of festivity on this ultimately nihilistic account. In its most radical and essential formulation, Fight Clubs account of festivity reveals itself as totally at odds with Piepers account. On Piepers account, we have festivity as the universal affirmation of existence in worship. But on Fight Clubs account, we have festivity as the universal negation of existence through destruction.

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III.

Fight Club as Anti-Festivity and the Recovery of Authentic Festival Now that we have discussed the radically different accounts of festivity in Pieper

and Fight Club, and now that we have seen the ultimate foundation for both accounts, it appears safe to conclude that Fight Clubs articulation of festivity turns out to be the worst kind of pseudo-festivity, even anti-festivity. After all, it would stretch our common sense notion of festivity to its breaking point to define festivity as a universal rejection of existence, where the proper response to reality would be destruction, not celebration. For the sake of the theoretical clarification of this common sense notion, I will now turn to Piepers distinction between festivity and pseudo-festivity, showing that the festivity offered in Fight Club is an example of anti-festivity. Pieper makes an important distinction between festivity, pseudo-festivity, and anti-festivity that will take us deeper into the nature of festivity, including the forces that threaten to undermine it. Simply stated, festivity is characterized by assent to existence; pseudo-festivity is characterized by a deceptive and shallow assent to existence; and antifestivity is characterized by negation of existence. One way we can approach these distinctions is by asking what happens when we, for some reason or another, lose connection with authentic festivity. Pieper tells us, For the place in life which should naturally be occupied by real festivity cannot remain empty.35 Festivity abhors a vacuum. So, what sorts of human activity takes its place? One possibility is pseudo-festivity. Pseudo-festivity replaces authentic festivity in the form of entertainment, which masks our loss of real festivity by anesthetizing us with distracting amusements that numb us to our true emptiness. Pieper says, A deceptive

35

Ibid., pg. 69. 25

escape from the narrowness of the workaday utilitarian world is found in the form of entertainment and forgetting ones worries.36 The desire to enter another world beyond the utilitarian world of work is falsely satisfied by paltry amusements that do not contain the true power to lift us into the reality of true festivity and celebration. Instead they distract us for a while so we dont have to think about work. Pseudo-festivity is essentially based on escape rather than true transcendence. Pieper explains that the sham festival is falsified into a smug yea-saying, whose basic element is a desire to fend off reality, so as not to be disturbed, at any price.37 The truly frightening possibility brought into human existence by pseudo-festivals is that we may become so numbed by paltry entertainments that we no longer recognize the true poverty of our lives. In haunting terms, Pieper warns, But the man who by such devices is the more imprisoned within a workaday world now made amusing no longer misses real festivity; he does not notice the emptiness. And thus he even stops grieving over his loss and the loss thereby is finally sealed.38 Through Piepers description of pseudo-festivity, we actually see a hopeful aspect of Fight Club. Whatever else may be said about the men that are participating in the violence of the fight clubs, they are not duped by the sham festivity, which takes the form of anesthetizing entertainments so readily prevalent in a consumerist society. They see through these and are therefore not in the position of one who is finally sealed unknowingly in his depression. For them, contentment cannot be bought so cheaply. In

36

Ibid., pg. 58. Ibid. Ibid., pg. 59. 26

37

38

this sense, these pissed off workers are in a better place than the numbed workers who do not realize their own despair. Fight Club gets the diagnosis right, and this we should applaud. But to see what Fight Clubs solution amounts to, we need to turn to Piepers account of anti-festivity as the other possible replacement for authentic festivity. Borrowing from insights gained by Roger Caillois in Man and the Sacred, Pieper says, [I]n the present world it is war that fulfills the functions of the great festivals. In war, he [Caillois] says, all the attributes of festivals may be found (he considers festivals as essentially a time of excess): the most drastic conversion and consumption of energies, the eruption of stored force, the merging of the individual in the totality, the squandering of resources ordinarily carefully husbanded, the wild breaking down of inhibitions and so on.39 Each of these aspects that characterize war as a time of excess, also characterize true festivity. But in the case of war, in this distinctly modern sense, this excess manifests as the will to destruction, the will to nothingness, the will to annihilation. Pieper indicates, [F]or almost three generations, then, the idea of active nihilism, of the will to nothingness and pleasure even in destruction, has been part of the modern attitude toward life.40 The affirmation of destruction, then, is the deepest contradiction of true festivity, which lives on the affirmation of existence. Destruction is the deepest form of anti-festival. In a truly haunting statement, Pieper maintains, Such antifestive affirmation of negation has to be taken into account. This, too, lies within the nature of

39

Ibid., pg. 80. Ibid., pg. 81. 27

40

man as a historical creature.41 Sadly, there is a form of human existence where antifestivity appears to be the only sane reaction to such a world as our own. This solution is the one offered by Fight Club. In the face of modern worker culture and consumerism, Fight Clubs response is destruction. Thus, at the end, we are left with two radical possibilities for human existence. Pieper articulates this well. He says, Two extreme historical potentialities have equal chances: the latent everlasting festival may be made manifest, or the antifestival may develop in its most radical form.42 This prognosis may seem quite dramatic and dim, and indeed, in some ways it certainly is. Perhaps we should mention again the third possibility of being ever distracted by entertaining pseudo-festivities. But in another way, this prognosis is quite hopeful, at least if the world has been created good and human life can be made whole. If indeed this is the case, as is attested by God calling creation very good and Christs offer of salvation, we should expect that this reality would continually break through the work-a-day world, transforming it and the functionary into something more. If the created order is good, we should expect that the true root of festivity would never perish, but always exist, waiting for our joyous response of gratitude. If the created order is good, true festivity always exists as an everpresent possibility for us. Pieper, poetically simple, concludes, Thus there always remains the festive occasion which alone justifies and inspires celebration. It remains in force, forever undiminished.43

41

Ibid., pg. 83. Ibid., pg. 87.

42

28

43

Ibid., pg. 87. 29