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Can art lead us to virtue, or how has the European tradition led to the formation of political identity? European cultural identity is a paradox; the more we discuss it, the more we are in need of it. We believe, with Aristotle, that art as well as political practice is an instance of imposition of form, that is, a formative activity. The decline of European arts then stems from the metaphysical divorce of the good from the true and the beautiful and by adopting ugliness and desecration almost as its final goals (cf. gr. miaron, “disgusting,” literally “dirty” or “polluted”). Aesthetic experience emerging from a representation of human action, however, can lead to virtue if (and only if) we learn to feel emotions rightly, that is, towards the right object, to the proper degree, and at the right time. Visual arts, music, literature, and drama especially can contribute to the formation and education of mature citizens; a disposition to feel emotion correctly is essential to the development of a good character and eventually to forming political identity. Emotions have a cognitive component, but neither unrestricted emotionalism nor dry cognitivism are the adequate responses to an artwork. The modern concept of aesthetic experience (that superseded the lost transcendentals of the good and the beautiful) is often too vague. Proper education is the key; both Plato and Aristotle see education in the arts in the realm of the political (Republic X, Politics VIII); educative entertainment (diagógé) is for the adults what play or amusement (paideia) is for children. Giotto represented virtues and vices in Padua in paradigmatic pairs, thus emphasizing (to a penitent viewer) an inevitability of his own existential choices. Both Dante and Shakespeare see their own art in relation to building virtue by providing a speculum virtutis et vitiis, or by holding, as it were, “the mirror up to nature,” that is, to the second human nature of becoming (not that of being). Our academic curricula teach students, at best, to force themselves to act justly, but in fact they long to act otherwise and then are frustrated; they are self-controlled (enkrateis) but seldom virtuous, i.e., becoming good by habitually doing good. Courage is not told at all; examples of history are suppressed, while it is a virtue for which there is no substitute and without which any political identity remains heavily crippled. Successful elimination of the question of the truth, that is, of veracity of thought and speech, made our academic curricula and political practices “a school for hypocrites” (Chesterton). Besides the mimetic arts, schools, and academia, it remains to reignite the deserved appreciation of the Latin language and the practice of the Latin Roman liturgy, which always had and still has the potential to bestow an artistic form of the highest inspiration to music, architecture, decorative arts, literature, etc. Throughout European history it was the Church’s rites and commissions that created political identity through religious identity and formed the aesthetic experience in accord with the religious consciousness. That is why the demolition and desecration of the shrines (Notre Dame, Canterbury, and St. Peter') are the ultimate penalties for and warnings against our long-term indolence, disinterestedness, and non-identity.
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