With his minimalist glasses, dressed in black and an elegant white blazer, Rob Riemen (Netherlands, 1962) has a resemblance to Michel Foucault, one of the great philosophers of the 20th century. Riemen is one of the 21st century. He speaks of Socrates, Thomas Mann, Albert Camus, or Friedrich Nietzsche as if they were alive, explains anecdotes as if he had witnessed them or they had told them to him (and they have: in his books). Since he published his debut in 1995, Nobility of Spirit, Riemen has been trying to recover classical wisdom, the inherent spirituality of the human being under Cicero's maxim that philosophy is the cultivation of the soul (in Latin it sounds better - Cultura animi philosophia est - especially because it introduces the etymology of the word culture as cultivate, care for).
Founder of the Nexus Institute in Tilburg, the city where he studied Theology and Philosophy for ten years, Riemen stands as one of the last classic European intellectuals, in a Platonic sense. His latest essay The Word That Defeats Death (Taurus and Arcàdia in Catalan) begins with a prologue in the Homeric style, with the Greek Muses confronted with an absurd theater of the absurd with a vain Trump, a Putin in heels to appear taller (he is 1.70 meters, only five centimeters taller than Angela Merkel), a Jeff Bezos as Uncle Scrooge, or an Elon Musk dressed as Superman with an X on his chest...
In an era of fragmented identities, you advocate for humanism. However, the humanities are disappearing from schools, even universities.
Yes. And they are also committing suicide. We live in an era where science, technology, and economics dominate everything. They have become the Holy Trinity. The humanities are, I quote, the essential education you need to navigate life, allowing everyone to question themselves. I refer to the big questions: who am I? Where am I going, what is the destiny of my life? Wittgenstein already said in his Tractatus that when all scientific problems have been solved, the problems of life have not even been touched. Science won't do it. Technology? No, of course not. Artificial intelligence? Forget it. You need philosophy, arts, poetry, music! Everything related to your inner self. And when all that is disappearing, don't be surprised to have a Generation Z or Y, or whatever, feeling insecure, empty, with depressed youth, suicidal tendencies, and so on. We stupidly decided that the humanities are no longer important.
In your book, you denounce the concept of false Greatness. And you do it through the ghost of Simone Weil and a disturbing quote: "Our notion of greatness is exactly what inspired Hitler throughout his life. Don't forget it!". Are we doomed to repeat History?
It is the famous idea of George Santayana, the Hispanic-American philosopher: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." He is very right. That's why I wanted to write a book dictated by Clio, the muse of History. As a simple reminder. You really don't need a high education or a university degree to deal with the meaning of life. Nietzsche understood it perfectly and called it nihilism. It means that there is no longer an answer to all your questions of "why?" and life becomes meaningless. If you feel that your life is completely empty, you have two options: either you commit suicide or you start looking for substitutes like drugs, entertainment, the kitsch, false greatness... One of those drugs is nationalism.
Nietzsche proclaimed that God is dead. Have we replaced Him with "new political religions," as you call them? Citing ideologies like nationalism, Bolshevism, fascism, Maoism, Islamism...
Yes, they became new religions that promised heaven but brought hell on Earth. The 20th century proved it. The Dutch philosopher Spinoza already explained that as a society we must aspire to democracy, but it comes with conditions. The key condition is that people must be educated: not in the sense of knowing many things, but being able to think for themselves, to present arguments and then try to find the common good. Without that condition, democracy will disappear.
Man is a dual being, rational and spiritual. Have we amputated our metaphysical part?
That word has become taboo. In too many places, I can't even talk about metaphysical issues. Johan Huizinga, a Dutch historian who analyzed the decline of the Middle Ages, said that a culture must have a metaphysical dimension or it is not a culture. We are humans, we have a metaphysical dimension. But try to explain that to Elon Musk or all the engineers focused on AI...
The Iliad, War and Peace, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Brothers Karamazov, The Magic Mountain... Reading one of these masterpieces has become "impossible for many," as you say in your book. Are we experiencing a certain literary illiteracy in the West?
Yes. But it has been a choice not to educate people to read more. Because we think, again, of the false greatness that science, technology, computers will bring us... Everything has to be useful. Utilitarianism is the paradigm imposed by the political class, the business class, and the power elites. Utility can be quantified with numbers, and the higher the number, the better, right? Everything is numbers. The phenomenon of influencers is the most ridiculous. I hope that in 100 years, historians will recount how stupid those people were. Believing that an influencer talking about makeup, dresses, or video games has something to say is hilarious. But they fit into the utility paradigm. The crime of our century is the education system based on utilitarianism. The younger generation is a victim of the idea that education only serves to provide you with a job and some money, as if there is nothing else. The truth of the matter is, and it is a very old truth, that you need the world of the muses to be happy. You have to read novels and poetry to cultivate your own imagination because without imagination, you live in your own prison. Philosophy and the muses are the greatest gifts. If you do not cultivate your soul and your reasoning, you become a robot or a slave.
This connects with Plato's allegory of the cave. The perverse thing is that now we have built a digital cave. Like with George Orwell's Big Brother: we are the ones feeding it on Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, etc... Is the prison now digital?
Again, it is a choice. There are still bookstores. Go to La Central and forget about Amazon! We are not yet in China. We are not yet in a totalitarian state, and we can decide. The essence of a civilization is the ability to say no. We say no to the use of atomic weapons, to violations, to child abuse or whatever... You can say no to TikTok, no to Amazon, no to influencers, and to the Big Brother Orwell predicted. In this book, I dedicate a long chapter to stupidity and lies... Grab The Little Prince! It is the most beautiful and simple children's book, but with more wisdom than thousands of academic nonsense. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wanted every child to recognize themselves, to learn to bring beauty to their own life, to be fair, to be a true human being. Otherwise, we are nothing but a bunch of robots focused on our false greatness. That's what happens with Trump, Elon Musk, and all those people... They are nobody! To hell with them! They have the ability to destroy, and they are doing it. But when this ends? Zero. They will be nothing. So why hold onto those people as ideals, as if they were the gods of our time? We are no longer in the America of Franklin Roosevelt, and it will not return for a long time. So, it is time for Europe to get its act together.
And the rise of the far right in practically all European parliaments?
In 2010, I wrote my essay on the eternal return of fascism. Everyone laughed at me. But unfortunately, time proved my critics wrong. I was the first to say that Geert Wilders is the classic contemporary fascist. He controlled the government for two years and was a complete disaster. In the 20s and 30s, there was this idea in Germany, also in France, that everything was the fault of the Jews. That if we got rid of the Jews, all problems would be solved. Now the same thing is happening with immigrants. The foundations of fascist policies are lies, hatred, scapegoats... 80 years after World War II, this fascist mentality is back almost everywhere.
And democracy is increasingly being questioned...
Because the true origin of the word democracy has been lost. Mass democracy is no longer based on spiritual and moral values but on greed and fear, which is our economic system. Without moral and spiritual values, a space is created where the mentality becomes antidemocratic, fascist. That's how demagogues and propaganda machines thrive. Like in the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, people are happy to sacrifice their own freedom for obedience to the true leader...
In your book, Clío warns: "The day the muses are silenced, Ares, the god of war, will rule." Isn't it already happening?
Ukraine, Gaza... And more is coming in Sudan or... In America, a civil war is already brewing with all the deportations... [sighs] In my books, I try to convey the things that were taught to me. I find it interesting that all my books are translated and published in Spain and many other countries, but not in the United States. American publishers have already given up. There is also the official fact that 45% of Americans never touch a book. And that will eventually have political consequences. In Europe, we are in a better position. But we are completely dependent on Americans. We can't even defend ourselves or Ukraine.
The Pontevedra Biennial, the oldest in Spain, has been held again this summer. Although it examines the wars of the 20th and 21st centuries, the leitmotiv is based on one of your books: 'Returning to being human'.
Yes! It's something that excited me a lot... In fact, on September 25th, I'm going to Pontevedra to give a conference. We have moral obligations. And the first one is not to abandon hope, right?