The Question of Age
Robert Pogue Harrison, Juvenescence: A Cultural History of Our Age
University of Chicago Press, 224pp, £17.50, ISBN 9780226171999
reviewed by Peter Marshall
In the preface to his new book, Juvenescence: A Cultural History of Our Age, Robert Harrison states that the question his book intends to examine, ‘How old are we?’ specifically refers to the ‘we’ of post-war America, and sets readers up for what we can assume will be a cultural critique by way of a philosophic and historic reflection on the phenomenon of age. There are plenty of instances when one should trust the work more than the author, and this is one. Though Juvenescence is deeply involved with contemporary American culture, Harrison has written a book that is far more expansive than his preface or the publisher’s dust jacket would have us believe.
Juvenescence is an investigation into the relationship an individual has to the many histories, cultures and ages that inhere within and beyond them. Even for the best minds and the most talented writers, time is a difficult topic to tackle. Through an array of imaginative and erudite readings of history, literature, philosophy, and biology, Harrison weaves together a richly suggestive work that brings further dimensions to his lifelong concern of how to value and care for the world that we have been thrown into, that has existed without us and will continue long after we have died. Juvenescence is a philosophic prose poem that celebrates the solitary individual and belongs on the same shelf as Emerson, Thoreau, and Nietzsche.
Harrison begins by examining ‘the curious phenomenon of age,’ and embarks on a course that might be crudely summarised by saying that though limited by the finite measures of time, an individual inhabits many ages, or as Shakespeare wrote, plays many parts. But more than how our perspectives change as we age, Harrison is concerned with how our experience of the world is determined by an individual’s relation to a historic inheritance, to the age or ages which both precede and transcend one’s finite experience. In such a relationship, the past is not an abstraction, it is something that is very much present and in a dynamic fashion, colours our lives:
As an old man will look at a giant redwood differently than a young child, so will a Christian, believing in the immortality of the soul and God’s eternity, have a different experience of time than a modern physicist. Wound up in each individual, in their relationship to the ages that preceded them, are knots of assumptions and attitudes that, whether they know it or not, have been inherited, rejuvenated and then unfolded into their present experience of the world.
The modern human being belongs to the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens. Harrison imaginatively considers that this redundancy in our name points out two fundamentally different drives: wisdom and genius. Wisdom is linked to old age, to tradition and memory, to the archives. Genius is the creative impulse, the drive to invent, explore, imagine and discover; it is our youthful spirit. These terms are not meant to be taken as hard divisions. Wisdom always has something of genius to it and genius depends upon wisdom to stand. The interplay between genius and wisdom bring forth what Harrison calls neotonic revolutions, ‘a highly variegated process of rejuvenation whereby older legacies assume newer or younger forms, thanks to a synergy between the synthetic forces of wisdom and the insurgent forces of genius.’ In a series of remarkable case studies involving Socrates, StPaul and the founding of the American Republic, Harrison offers examples of such revolutions, where wisdom and old age were renewed, and likewise, the usurping genius of youth could only survive in the world because it was placed on the foundations of wisdom.
From these historic considerations, Harrison brings us into the more intimate space of an individual’s engagement with genius and wisdom. It is the purpose of education, he argues, to prepare people to take their place in a world that exists beyond one’s own prejudices, ‘to assume ownership of the world they were born into.’ This ownership begins with an individual’s solitary retreat ‘toward those subterranean regions where the dead speak in their own untimely voices.’ Alone with a book, encountering thoughts, ideas, modes of being and expressions that have been erased or hidden by the prejudices and habits of their world, a young person gathers past ages, possibilities and voices, into their own life. True education, for Harrison, is a process of bringing the unknown life into our conscience.
But Harrison sees that the contemporary American age is one of anti-silence, anti-inwardness and anti-attention. Our devices mesmerise, entertain and invade the silent space needed for individual thought and retreat, the solitary spaces where one can build a mature relationship with the world beyond themselves. Harrison resists pronouncing doom on our society, and his book is not an overt defence of the canon or the cultural inheritance of the West (though, after reading this book you may become such a staunch defender). Harrison’s central concern is one that readers of his other works will recognise: how are we to put our feet on the earth, to cultivate and nourish our genius so that it is at home in this world?
Rather than take the more predictable route of a 60-year old professor polemicising against his age, Harrison ends Juvenescence as a paean, not to any of the numerous works and authors he has called upon to bring life to his thought, but to the inner lamp that shines light on the pages of those books and thereby accesses that capacity which binds together past, present, and future.
However one might characterise our digital age, it is safe to say that such moments of withdrawal have become increasingly rare. Whether she is young or old, the hero of this magnificent book is the individual who resisted the pomp and sirens of our hyperconnected society, and in those silent hours spent alone, awoke to the many ages she contained and saw these ages expand and renew the world that was larger than she could imagine. It is a world that will outlast her, but in her time, the world she made into her home.
Juvenescence is an investigation into the relationship an individual has to the many histories, cultures and ages that inhere within and beyond them. Even for the best minds and the most talented writers, time is a difficult topic to tackle. Through an array of imaginative and erudite readings of history, literature, philosophy, and biology, Harrison weaves together a richly suggestive work that brings further dimensions to his lifelong concern of how to value and care for the world that we have been thrown into, that has existed without us and will continue long after we have died. Juvenescence is a philosophic prose poem that celebrates the solitary individual and belongs on the same shelf as Emerson, Thoreau, and Nietzsche.
Harrison begins by examining ‘the curious phenomenon of age,’ and embarks on a course that might be crudely summarised by saying that though limited by the finite measures of time, an individual inhabits many ages, or as Shakespeare wrote, plays many parts. But more than how our perspectives change as we age, Harrison is concerned with how our experience of the world is determined by an individual’s relation to a historic inheritance, to the age or ages which both precede and transcend one’s finite experience. In such a relationship, the past is not an abstraction, it is something that is very much present and in a dynamic fashion, colours our lives:
Every phenomenon has its age, or better, ages. Why the plural? Because entities become phenomena only where they are perceived, intended, or apprehended. Hence the phenomenon brings together at least two independent yet intersecting ages: the age of the entity and the age of the apprehender.
As an old man will look at a giant redwood differently than a young child, so will a Christian, believing in the immortality of the soul and God’s eternity, have a different experience of time than a modern physicist. Wound up in each individual, in their relationship to the ages that preceded them, are knots of assumptions and attitudes that, whether they know it or not, have been inherited, rejuvenated and then unfolded into their present experience of the world.
The modern human being belongs to the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens. Harrison imaginatively considers that this redundancy in our name points out two fundamentally different drives: wisdom and genius. Wisdom is linked to old age, to tradition and memory, to the archives. Genius is the creative impulse, the drive to invent, explore, imagine and discover; it is our youthful spirit. These terms are not meant to be taken as hard divisions. Wisdom always has something of genius to it and genius depends upon wisdom to stand. The interplay between genius and wisdom bring forth what Harrison calls neotonic revolutions, ‘a highly variegated process of rejuvenation whereby older legacies assume newer or younger forms, thanks to a synergy between the synthetic forces of wisdom and the insurgent forces of genius.’ In a series of remarkable case studies involving Socrates, StPaul and the founding of the American Republic, Harrison offers examples of such revolutions, where wisdom and old age were renewed, and likewise, the usurping genius of youth could only survive in the world because it was placed on the foundations of wisdom.
From these historic considerations, Harrison brings us into the more intimate space of an individual’s engagement with genius and wisdom. It is the purpose of education, he argues, to prepare people to take their place in a world that exists beyond one’s own prejudices, ‘to assume ownership of the world they were born into.’ This ownership begins with an individual’s solitary retreat ‘toward those subterranean regions where the dead speak in their own untimely voices.’ Alone with a book, encountering thoughts, ideas, modes of being and expressions that have been erased or hidden by the prejudices and habits of their world, a young person gathers past ages, possibilities and voices, into their own life. True education, for Harrison, is a process of bringing the unknown life into our conscience.
But Harrison sees that the contemporary American age is one of anti-silence, anti-inwardness and anti-attention. Our devices mesmerise, entertain and invade the silent space needed for individual thought and retreat, the solitary spaces where one can build a mature relationship with the world beyond themselves. Harrison resists pronouncing doom on our society, and his book is not an overt defence of the canon or the cultural inheritance of the West (though, after reading this book you may become such a staunch defender). Harrison’s central concern is one that readers of his other works will recognise: how are we to put our feet on the earth, to cultivate and nourish our genius so that it is at home in this world?
Rather than take the more predictable route of a 60-year old professor polemicising against his age, Harrison ends Juvenescence as a paean, not to any of the numerous works and authors he has called upon to bring life to his thought, but to the inner lamp that shines light on the pages of those books and thereby accesses that capacity which binds together past, present, and future.
Such access requires a daily measure of withdrawal, silence, and solitude, for most of the essential things that come to fruition later in life are nourished in the hours a young person spends alone –reading, learning, wondering, observing, dreaming, imagining, and pondering.
However one might characterise our digital age, it is safe to say that such moments of withdrawal have become increasingly rare. Whether she is young or old, the hero of this magnificent book is the individual who resisted the pomp and sirens of our hyperconnected society, and in those silent hours spent alone, awoke to the many ages she contained and saw these ages expand and renew the world that was larger than she could imagine. It is a world that will outlast her, but in her time, the world she made into her home.