Extract 2 from Saul Bellow's Herzog

Henri Matisse, Le bonheur de vivre, 1905-06

Extract in English from Saul Bellow's 1964 novel Herzog, chosen by Bora Mici

This second extract that has caught my attention from Saul Bellow's Herzog reminds me of Hannah Arendt's Banality of Evil and about Michel de Certeau's emphasis on the everyday tactics and footprints we leave on the grand strategies that those who make policy and lead institutions would have govern us. Herzog is a character who questions the divide between science and morality in our contemporary world as he considers how his ex-wife, a former Jewish convert to Christianity, betrayed him with his best friend and belittled and crushed him daily in favor of what Herzog deems was her ideological penchant. In a Romantic outpouring of emotion and individual struggle, Herzog writes a flurry of letters to all the different people who have influenced him in his journey, trying to break free from ideology in all its forms and learn to be self-sufficient. His unfinished academic work on Romanticism and Christianity informs the content of his letters and his reflections on his relationships. The banality of everyday evil lies precisely in our reliance on various ideologies to conduct our lives when we should try to unite our values and facts without deluding ourselves that we are called to obey a higher authority. We should question ideologies and become conscious of their effect on our everyday choices.        

"Living amid great ideas and concepts, insufficiently relevant to the present, day-by-day, American conditions. You see, Monsignor, if you stand on television in the ancient albs and surplices of the Roman church there are at least enough Irishmen, Poles, Croatians watching in saloons to understand you... But I, a learned specialist in intellectual history, handicapped by emotional confusion... Resisting the argument that scientific through has put into disorder all considerations based on value... Convinced that the extent of universal space does not destroy human value, that the realm of facts, and that of values are not eternally separated. And the peculiar idea entered my (Jewish) mind that we'd see about this! My life would prove a different point altogether. Very tired of the modern form of historicism which sees in this civilization the defeat of the best hopes of Western religion and thought, what Heidegger calls the second Fall of Man into the quotidian or ordinary. No philosopher knows what the ordinary is, has not fallen into it deeply enough. The question of ordinary human experience is the principal question of these modern centuries, as Montaigne and Pascal, otherwise in disagreement, both clearly saw. -- The strength of a man's virtue or spiritual capacity measured by his ordinary life. 

One way or another the no doubt mad idea entered my mind that my own actions had historic importance, and this (fantasy?) made it appear that people who harmed me were interfering with an important experiment."