[Classics, Arts, and Kitsch. New Notes towards a Definition of Western Culture]

While Nietzsche described his experience of the ‘Herbst der Kultur’, Steiner describes his experience of ‘postculture’. He notes that a knowledge of the classics, and classical virtuosity, have become irrelevant. No longer is there ‘le dur désir de durer’ (Paul Eluard), the longing to create something that will endure. The silence without which the vita contemplativa cannot exist has become a scarce commodity in a world that cultivates noise. Steiner writes that today’s society renders people infantile and dulls their minds. A counter-culture has arisen, partly because there is no answer to the crucial question: ‘Why labour to elaborate and transmit culture if it did so little to stem the inhuman, if there were in it deep-set ambiguities which, at times, even solicited barbarism?’