Via Cornelius Castoriadis — Dimitris Eleas

A writer and a political scientist: Tell us briefly about yourself and your work.

My name is Dimitris Eleas and I am a writer, political scientist, and public commentator based in New York City. My work moves between literature, political thought, and history, and I write in both English and Greek. I have pursued this work independently, without academic or government funding. Having lived and worked in Athens, London, Warsaw, and New York, I have come to see ideas as travelers rather than permanent residents of any one country. I am currently completing/re-editing The Black Birds of Warsaw, a long-term novel-essay project exploring memory, history, and moral responsibility, while continuing to write short essays, commentary, and letters on politics and society. Of course, as I often say, “I don’t write to preach; I write to light small fires in quiet minds.” If there is one thread connecting everything I do, it is a belief that good writing should make us think more deeply, laugh often, and leave us a little less certain than before we started reading.

I have developed –in fragments and aphorisms, I would say…– something that I call “the eccentric-erotic element” (an older example would be: how a Homo sapiens first started a fire or invented the wheel [“the eccentric”] and then shared these innovations [“the erotic”] with others in the community, etc.), and “the role of personality in history” (a more recent example would be: Ronald Reagan’s humour, which helped him win elections; Habermas’s idea of the public sphere, through which he himself became a major European intellectual; Edgar Morin’s life is another good example; Professor Alon Ben-Meir’s public engagement is yet another, etc.). I have an odd habit of placing a question mark after every idea I read, and after every new idea that comes to my own mind. I have been fortunate that some of my lines have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and, more recently, the Washington Examiner.

What is your understanding of "humour" proper; or, at least, of those features thereof to which you have paid the keenest attention? And how does your work merge with, or is influenced by, your quotidian encounters with a potentially ubiquitous and ambiguous phenomenon such as humour? 

To me, humour is one of humanity’s highest forms of intelligence. It has the precision of mathematics (4 + 1 = 1 + 4), the curiosity of science, the rhythm of Jean-Michel Jarre’s music, and the drama of ancient Rome – all at the same time. (Perhaps it also requires at least one slightly loose screw!) It is not the opposite of seriousness; it is often the shortest road to it. Shakespeare –whose life I have explored in a novel-essay– understood that fools sometimes speak the deepest truths, and Cornelius Castoriadis –whose work I have examined in several essays– reminded us that free citizens must also be capable of laughing at themselves. And I have come to believe that the opposite of humour is not seriousness but fanaticism, for the fanatic fears every joke that questions their certainty. (A Taliban fighter with a long beard will always be the opposite of Charlie Chaplin, with his tiny moustache.) The years I spent researching the Holocaust taught me another difficult lesson: even people capable of immense cruelty could laugh, tell jokes, listen to classical music, and cherish their families. Humour, therefore, is not automatically virtuous; like language, it depends on the ethos, the integrity, and the parrhesia of the person who uses it. Perhaps, in the end, behind everything lies what I would call “the four H’s”: humour, humility, hope, and humanity. (1) Those four companions have guided both my writing and my understanding of the world, and I believe they will continue to do so.

Thinkers as different as Nietzsche, Judith Shklar, and Derrida have argued that cruelty is baffling because, even if we want to eliminate it from human life, it always finds a way to re-emerge therein, almost as if it were part and parcel of the same human life. Has cruelty ever played a significant role in your work's purview, and/or your understanding of social and economic phenomena? 

Very much so. In the past, I devoted years to researching antisemitism and the Holocaust, hoping to better understand how ordinary people can become participants in extraordinary evil. One lesson has stayed with me above all: cruelty rarely announces itself as cruelty. It often appears disguised as obedience, indifference, kind gestures, ideology, or even efficiency. That realization has shaped not only my writing but also my understanding of politics, economics, social media, and everyday life, where “the temptation to dehumanize others” is never far away. (Have you ever seen the kind of comments some people leave under the posts of people they dislike? Dreadful, really. They reveal how easily contempt can turn into dehumanization.) Cruelty can be viewed as the permanent danger of losing humanity, and the darkness of the past remains a never-ending warning. Is there an antidote? Humour can’t start “a revolution” alone, but it can whisper dangerously in the ear of one. (2) If my work has any ambition, it is to remind readers that civilization is not a permanent achievement but a fragile moral choice we must make, and remake, every day. Today’s America is a good example of how a society can drift down the wrong path; a process I often describe as “galloping authoritarianism.” In one case in Florida, even Michelangelo’s masterpiece David was treated by some as though it were pornography capable of damaging children’s souls.

Are there two or three works that, when it comes to addressing any of the themes fuelling my own philosophical and literary production, you would describe as true "classics" and, therefore, advise the reader of this blog to familiarise themselves with — the way, say, Plato's Republic or Machiavelli's Prince can be said to be "classics" in politics? And are there any works from the past ten years that you would equally recommend? 

Before turning to Humour and Cruelty –Professor Baruchello’s series– I will mention a few things. Choosing only a handful of works is always a dangerous exercise for any reader, but I would begin with Shakespeare, whose plays remain an inexhaustible laboratory of humour, power, and human contradiction. I would mention Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, for its exploration of freedom and morality –and, as someone named Dimitris, I cannot ignore the suffering of Dostoevsky’s Dmitri!– and George Orwell’s 1984, which reminds us how language and power can quietly reshape reality under the spectre of fear. Among more recent works, I would recommend Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny and On Freedom, which speak with clarity to our own political moment.

When it comes to Giorgio Baruchello’s own work, especially his essays on humour and cruelty, I believe he has opened a particularly fertile philosophical path: one that refuses to treat humour merely as entertainment or cruelty merely as an absence of humanity, but instead examines their complicated relationship within the human condition. (Human beings are complex creatures, like Hamlet, capable of goodness with a healthy dose of humour, but also capable of evil – and, of course, capable of laughing in the darkness while holding a knife in their hand.) His work belongs to a tradition that understands laughter as both a form of wisdom and a way of questioning power, certainty, and our own limitations. As for Baruchello’s work, I would not hesitate at all to say that it deserves serious attention and admiration – although classics are ultimately chosen by posterity. But let us speak loudly in support of our friends, before the cemeteries with their tall cypress trees! What I can say with confidence is that his reflections on humour and cruelty belong to one of philosophy’s bravest conversations. I look forward to seeing what further ideas emerge from the fertile land of “Baruch-ello Estate” – a name that, at least etymologically, seems to smile in the direction of Baruch Spinoza.

(1) I had previously described it as “the three H’s”: humour, humility, and humanity. For Mr. Baruchello’s mini-interview, I add a fourth word: hope.

(2) I had previously written: “Literature can’t start a revolution alone, but it can whisper dangerously in the ear of one.”