Today we’re talking with Dr. Daniel McInerny, philosopher, author of fiction for both children and adults, and keen proponent of the “Catholic tradition of the arts.”

Perhaps you didn’t notice the name over the door. This is an online journal about politics. Why have you come here to talk about the arts?

I’d like to invite you to read Book VIII of Aristotle’s Politics. Or, for that matter, Plato’s Republic.

Your point?

Art, in particular fine art, is a political and moral consideration. It is not extrinsic to the discussion of the good life in a good polis. Keep in mind that the arts, especially stories and music, help form our character long before we reach the age of reason.

You mean I can become good by listening to Gregorian chant and watching movies about the saints?

Works of art do not make us good; our choices and our character determine what we are morally. However, works of art allow us to contemplate compelling images of human beings on their quest for happiness, and so can help persuade us to imagine the human good in a particular way.

Art is contemplative?

Absolutely. Imagine what you’re doing sitting at home on Saturday night watching Rise of the Planet of the Apes on your HD flatscreen. You’re soaking up images of human beings in action working out their happiness or the reverse. It’s a peculiar kind of contemplation, but contemplation nevertheless.

But I’m contemplating apes, too.

Yes, but notice that what makes this story interesting is that the apes are given language, the ability to use signs in order to make meaning, which ability Walker Percy argues is the signature of homo viator. If the apes couldn’t speak we’d have Godzilla or Starship Troopers—something far less interesting.

Let’s move on to this so-called “Catholic tradition of the arts.” What is it?

It is that tradition of craftsmanship in the fine arts in which work is informed by the Catholic faith.

Can you give us some examples of particular works in the tradition?

Homer’s Iliad, Virgil’s Aeneid—

Wait. What? Are you saying Homer was Catholic?

He wasn’t. But he is now. You might enjoy reading Dante’s Inferno, Canto IV.

I don’t understand. You’re saying Homer and Virgil are part of this “Catholic tradition of the arts?"

I’m saying, first, that the Catholic tradition of the arts, like any tradition, includes works that somehow influence or prepare the ground for the works that most define that tradition. Without the Iliad there would have been no Aeneid, and without the Aeneid there would have been no Divine Comedy.

So you don’t have to be a Catholic artist to belong to the Catholic tradition of the arts?

Not if the non-Catholic artist’s work profoundly influences seminal works in the Catholic tradition, or somehow inhabits the Catholic imagination.

Can you give us an example of the latter—work by a non-Catholic that somehow inhabits the Catholic imagination?

I can think of two novels by Willa Cather, Shadows on the Rock and Death Comes for the Archbishop. Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town might also qualify.

It doesn’t sound like the Catholic tradition of the arts refers only to sacred art?

Not at all. The tradition includes both sacred and secular works.

Just to clarify the boundaries here, who doesn’t belong to the Catholic tradition of the arts? Samuel Beckett?

Beckett shares with the Catholic tradition the idea that life is a narrative. Beckett’s narrative, however, is one of hopeless atheism (as is that of Woody Allen), while the Catholic narrative is one of, well, divine comedy. Here is Catholic philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre making this point in an interesting way:

So Beckett doesn’t belong to the Catholic tradition of the arts?

No. But Beckett is an important interlocutor for the Catholic tradition. Meaning that for the Catholic artist to defend the narrative of divine comedy he must seek to engage the counter-narrative of hopeless atheism. In the context of theater, the Catholic dramatist must find ways to engage the Beckettian narrative, just as in the world of science the Catholic scientist must find ways to engage the scientific materialist.

Whoa! This seems to indicate that a play can somehow “triumph” over another play. That it can be more true, just as one scientific theory can be more true than another.

It does. Works of narrative art do manifest truth, and some works manifest more truth than others.

That’s you, a Catholic, saying that.

Of course.

So why are you not begging the question in favor of your own tradition?

When one artistic tradition engages with another, it does so from its own set of assumptions. This is as true for the Catholic tradition as any other. But this does not mean that it is impossible for an adherent of one tradition to imagine what it would be like to inhabit the world of a rival tradition.

Kind of like how Willa Cather inhabits the Catholic imagination in Death Comes for the Archbishop?

Exactly. And like how, in turn, Shakespeare inhabits the outlook of a political thug crashing into nihilism in Macbeth. Indeed, drama makes this work of the narrative imagination particularly vivid, embodying as it does the outlook of the rival narrative right before our eyes.

Okay. But how does this lead to one narrative “triumphing” over another?

When entering imaginatively into the narrative outlook of a rival tradition, it is always possible for one to detect “unresolved issues and unsolved problems—unresolved and unsolved by the standards of that tradition ... and to inquire how progress might be made in moving toward their resolution and solution.” For example, in inhabiting a rival tradition one might find ways in which it fails to put its own assumptions adequately to the test. One thus can detect a rival tradition failing on its own terms. (The quotation is from the prologue to the third edition of Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue, pp. xiii-xiv. These pages provide a succinct statement of MacIntyre’s understanding of the engagement between rival traditions of inquiry. For the full treatment, see his Three Rival Traditions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy and Tradition, University of Notre Dame Press, 1990.)

You lost me. Could you make this a little more concrete?

A plausible and customary reading of Sophoclean tragedy, for example, is that it portrays the inherently conflicted nature of the human good. Tragedy occurs not always because of some human flaw (as in Aristotle’s Poetics and in Shakespeare), but because the pursuit of the human good itself sometimes leads us into tragedy no matter what the nature of our prior choices. This is problematic, to put it mildly. But notice that this view is based upon the assumption that human beings are in the pursuit of the good. What a proponent of a rival tradition has to do, then, is show how the tragic outlook misunderstands what it means to pursue the human good. He has to show that goodness is not inherently conflicted, and thus that the tragic narrative cannot be the true narrative of the human quest. In so doing, the tragic outlook will be shown to fail by its own standards. (For more on this, see Daniel McInerny, The Difficult Good: A Thomistic Account of Moral Conflict and Human Happiness, Fordham University Press, 2006.)

So Shakespearean tragedy is “more true” than Sophoclean tragedy?

Yes, insofar as we’re talking about how each understands the human good. Works of art, however, are also judged on other, more aesthetic considerations. A maudlin movie about a saint might manifest the full truth of the human person yet fail utterly as a work of art.

So the Catholic tradition of the arts is not just about advocating art that cheers for the Catholic narrative?

The Catholic tradition of the arts is about beauty, truth, and goodness—all three together. The craftsmanship required for the creation of beautiful works of art is a key part of the tradition and should never be neglected.

Where should be people go if they want to continue this conversation?

Come visit my blog at danielmcinerny.com and sign up for my free email newsletter.