Timothy deVries, “The Point,” 2016, Acrylic and House-paint on Canvas, 44” x 52” inches, Chedoke Estate, Hamilton, Canada (Artwork © Timothy deVries; photograph by Timothy deVries)
The Point is a painting that I made in 2016 to reflect on the nature of revolutionary impulses. It contains a reference to The Third of May 1808, a painting completed in 1814 by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya, depicting Spanish resistance to French occupation. Wearing a white shirt, and hands upraised, the key figure on the right is about to be executed (at least in the original painting) by a firing squad. In The Point, the firing squad is replaced by a new figure on the right, who is pointing at the doomed figure with great gestural force.
As a depiction of revolutionary violence, another significant input to the painting was a Comment magazine issue published in the fall of 2016 with the title: ‘Join the Anti-Revolutionary Party’. In his editorial, then editor-in-chief, the philosopher James K.A. Smith reflected on the contemporary ubiquity of this term, revolution, and wondered if Groen Van Prinsterer’s anti-revolutionary writings from 1845/46, later realized in political practice by Abraham Kuyper through the establishment of the Dutch Anti-Revolutionary Party, could provide a different way of understanding human instincts for militant opposition and change.
It took a number of years following the Comment magazine issue, not only before the painting was sold, but before I had the opportunity to situate these reflections on revolutionary impulses in relation to the entire tradition that started, in a way, with Groen Van Prinsterer’s intellectual and political critique of revolution. Now, Groen Van Prinsterer’s critique of revolutionary impulses was not a theoretical abstraction: when he wrote Unbelief and Revolution, the French revolution was scarcely sixty years past, and a new revolutionary ideology had taken hold of Europe – both points which James K.A. Smith makes in his editorial.
But the critique of revolution was not merely a conservative impulse to preserve the Christian character of 19th century civic life, or to prevent rebellious instincts from overturning Dutch traditions and institutions. Certainly, it reveals that Dutch leaders like Groen Van Prinsterer and Abraham Kuyper held historic social and cultural values in high esteem. But its roots were admittedly religious; the critique, like the antithetical relation explored by Reformational philosophers in the 20th century, was directed toward a specific philosophical attitude that begins with the distinction – and difference – between naïve experience and the attitude of theoretical thought.
This is readily apparent in Roots of Western Culture, Herman Dooyeweerd’s text about the foundations of Dutch political life. Written following the devastation of the second world war, Dooyeweerd states that the French Revolution was God’s judgment on the overextension of the power sphere in the natural sciences. This invites a reconsideration of the entire empirical tradition, long celebrated in French and English theoretical thought, particularly insofar as it is harnessed to what Dooyeweerd identifies as the subject-making-function. As I see it, the anti-revolutionary tradition resists subjectivizing forces by de-throning reason and the supposed autonomy of theoretical thought, and placing thought instead in submission to the wisdom of God for life. The anti-revolutionary tradition envisions a political state that serves the individual interests of free citizens, not individuals harnessing the power of the state to subjectivize or enslave unsuspecting believers.
As you can likely imagine, the thinkers in this tradition are critical of Marxism, not only because of its revolutionary content, but because it makes a fundamental mistake in regard to the question of justice. In the Marxist view, capital is the enemy, since it is viewed as the instrument through which lower socio-economic classes are oppressed. In distinction, the reformational tradition affirms the economic foundation of the legal aspect, and is content assigning the state to the role of balancing legal interests within a society. Thus, in the words of Dooyeweerd scholar Jonathan Chaplin, the state justly prevents the excessive satisfaction of individual interests at the expense of others, whereas in the Marxist reading, the state’s frugality in the case of individual legal interests is understood as a pretext for revolutionary impulses.
Thinkers in the anti-revolutionary tradition are therefore more likely to speak about the reformation of culture, in contrast to the overcoming of established order. This is not simply a concession for non-violence. Unlike the ‘transmutation of values’ that is celebrated in Nietzschean thought, the anti-revolutionary school affirms tradition and continuity in civil society institutions, including the state. Revolutionary thinking is criticized by the likes of Hans Rookmaaker for its anti-Christian tendencies, and in a public document like the De Stijl Manifesto, signatories like Piet Mondrian petition for the reformation of traditions and dogmas to attain “the new wisdom of life in an exact manner.” This reformation of culture is international in scope and employs a diasporic strategy.
What’s interesting about a pointing finger is that it is analogous in the gestural realm to the looking or searching eye. There is a lot to be learned from the revolutionary figure, not least being the extent that he or she is willing to go in the name of liberty. In reality, getting swept up in a revolutionary movement represents a huge gamble, and unlike Pascal’s wager, the Reformed approach to matters of faith is premised on God’s sure promises, not on the spirit of defiance. With a high view of the state, Abraham Kuyper and the philosophers active in this tradition are quick to affirm that the state does not bear the sword in vain.
There is nothing in our time that is as anachronistic as a young man preparing for war. Goya boldly painted the Third of May 1808 as a sensational testimony of the Spanish resistance to French occupation. It is a modern painting because it does not presume to pass judgement on the political forces involved in this conflict; its purpose is to identify the destiny of revolutionary fervour with the moment of death. The man in white is an example: the point, in my view, was to determine what he could teach me, and to discern what he could have stood to learn himself.