JeffreyW wrote: ↑Sat Nov 27, 2021 12:34 am
2. Heidegger did say that, and it is a point of disagreement I have with him. Heidegger had no understanding of music, and that perhaps impeded his understanding of Zarathustra. The deep bells that brought Zarathustra to his understanding of the abyss did not come from beyond, but from the bowels of Earth. And his midnight revelation of truth came not from beyond, but the moon seen through the spider web. The truths that accompanied him as snake and eagle. Nietzsche’s use of hinüber was not a beyond into a metaphysical realm but a beyond our current mentality within this world.
When I taught Nietzsche in graduate seminars, I always urged them not to read too much Schopenhauer into these works, and especially not into Zarathustra, which was a significant departure.
We are getting deep into the core disagreements here. I believe we are looking at the exact same aesthetic phenomena, including thought-systems like that of Nietzsche's Zarathustra, and coming to completely different conclusions. Again, the only reason which makes sense of this to me is the underlying metaphysical assumption. I think you are subconsciously importing dualism, but maybe we can 'circumambulate' that particular issue by way of these other points.
The "beyond" of Wagner (and many similar artists) should not be confused for "trascendental divine" of Kant. For ex., his understanding of the "beyond" was informed by ancient German folk myths, which conveyed truths of the spirit-soul imagistically. I think that is a major modern prejudice these days - all spiritual
thinking is lumped into the abstract transcendant category. Nietzsche's Zarathustra is perfect example of his intuiting an
immanent spiritual reality. The "bowels of the Earth" are nothing other than the 'collective unconscious' of Jung, which is nothing other than the currently imperceptible spiritual realms (imperceptible to normal intellectual cognition). Everything that remains as
fuzzy intuition, inspiration, or imagination is perceived as 'dark forces'
within ourselves, just as we perceive 'dark matter', 'dark energy', and 'black holes' outwardly in the Cosmos.
But when the light of Reason and
fully conscious Imagination is shed on these subconscious realms, they are perceived in their higher spiritual essence. The spiritual ideals of Wagner are consciously recovered as immanent, concretely perceived imaginations, inspirations, and intuitions which give rise to the world of appearances. That is what Jung referred to as "individuation", whereas Freud simply left it as dark realms of the human psyche, precisely because of his rationalism and implicit dualism. I think this is perfectly clear in the mythopoetic narrative of Nietzsche's Zarathustra (who, in esoteric Western tradition, is intimately connected to Christ incarnte). To what extent Nietzsche himself was aware of what higher spirtual essence was flowing through him onto the pages is a matter for reasonable debate.
JW wrote:3. I vaguely see your point, but of course completely disagree. I should clarify that I resolutely do not see representations as totally created in the mind, but conditioned by the energy impeding our senses, with its own character. We perceive blue, for example, only in response to a narrow band of of the electro-magnetic spectrum, although this blue does not exist outside our subjective sensation. There is a formal and mathematical correspondence between our conceived objects and what they represent. But these remain superficial and reductive for their intended practical purpose.
Perhaps our difference can be shown in how we approach words. Most people today approach words as something to define; to borrow from T S Eliot: something formulated and fixed with a pin. I see that as a misappropriation of the meaning, which cannot be defined but is to be explored, much as Heidegger does with “Grund”, or “Eigen”. By rethinking poetically the manifold revelations of words, we recover their originating revelation and the history of Being they collect over time. Reasoned analysis can do no such thing, nor can this meaning be systematized. It is organic.
To repeat: we have two modes of knowledge evolved for two different purposes: Representational knowledge for practical control of our environment, and esthetic knowledge for exploring the essence of Being and our own nature as derived from it. Both are necessary in their proper realm. As Hölderlin wrote: Voll Verdienst, doch dichterisch wohnet der Mensch auf dieser Erde.
Well, I think how the bold conclusion is connected with Cartesian-Kantian dualism should be obvious, but I will approach it in direct response to what you said.
I fully acknowledge the distinction between prosaic and poetic speech and how they function in our experience. The problem is when that is reified into a
division, i.e. they are seen as categories of words with two different essences underlying them. That is a division born of the modern age and abstract intellect. It is our living Reason and Imagination which can redeem that division and put back together what our intellect tore asunder. The discontinuity you are inserting between Reason and Imagination, by way of amorphous "energy impeding our senses", is entirely unwarranted in my view, and it comes from that implicit dualism of "knowing" as recreating with mental images of mind "in here" of sensory reality "out there". It is that one 'tiny' difference in our understanding of what "knowing" is which gives rise to pretty much all of our deep disagreements above, IMO, including what you say about blue color. Consider this:
wrote:Another difficulty in the way of the unprejudiced observation of the relationship between the percept and the concept wrought by thinking, as here described, arises when, for example, in the field of experimental physics it becomes necessary to speak not of immediately perceptible elements, but of non-perceptible quantities as in the case of lines of electric or magnetic force. It may seem as if the elements of reality of which physicists speak had no connection either with what is perceptible or with the concepts which active thinking has wrought. Yet such a view would be based on self-deception. The main point is that all the results of physical research, apart from unjustifiable hypotheses which ought to be excluded, have been obtained through percept and concept. Elements which are seemingly non-perceptible are placed by the physicist's sound instinct for knowledge into the field where percepts lie, and they are thought of in terms of concepts commonly used in this field. The strengths of electric or magnetic fields and such like are arrived at, in the very nature of things, by no other process of knowledge than the one which occurs between percept and concept.
JW wrote:4. As continuation from above, this way holds the risk of metaphysics, and I would see your three examples as something to avoid. Science, on the other hand, is abstracted from observation, and as long as it stays within the bounds of the sensible it is perfectly legitimate. Rather, I see Rovelli as a way forward - scientists who are able to go from representation to poetic thought through metaphor.
To me, Rovelli's approach is like saying we can only escape from the modern abyss by staring into it deeper and further reducing it to the most abstract concept we can possibly imagine, his "emptiness of emptiness" (which he incorrectly adopts from Nagarjuna, precisely because he takes ancient Buddhist philosophy as abstract concepts). Now I may be wrong about Rovelli, in which case my criticism is of the general philosophy that I am assuming he holds right now. It really doesn't matter which individual person holds to it, but rather that it actually exists and is prevalent within the brightest minds of our culture.
That philosophy is completely at odds with all those great poetic thinkers we have been referencing, who
presupposed in their philosophy and art that the abyss only remains dark for us in so long as
we refuse to acknowledge that it can be illuminated through our Thinking. Even if the poetic thinkers didn't realize it, they were engaging in these living thought-processes. There is no logical warrant for separating out what Holderlin writes below, for example, from the process of careful Reasoning of the sort we engage in philosophy and science (without abstract assumptions). The fact that poetic speech can bear these aesthetic qualities in the first place is a direct reflection of what Reason and Idea truly are
in their non-reductive essence, and what we have only temporarily forgotten due to our own flawed abstract assumptions about them and reductions of them.
Holderlin, Bread and Wine wrote:Yes, they say rightly that he reconciles day with night,
And leads the stars of heaven up and down forever —
Joyful always, like the boughs of evergreen pine
That he loves, and the wreath he chose of ivy,
Since it endures, and brings a trace of the fugitive gods
Down to the darkness of those who must live in their absence.
What the sons of the ancients foretold of God's children:
Look, it's us, the fruit of Hesperia!
Through humans it is wonderfully and exactly fulfilled;
Let those believe who've examined the matter. But so much
Goes on, yet nothing succeeds: we are like heartless shadows
Until our Father Aether recognizes us and belongs to us all.
Meanwhile the Son, the Syrian, comes down among
The shadows, as torchbearer of the Highest.
Holy sages observe it; a smile shines out from
The imprisoned soul; their eyes thaw in the light.
Titans dream more softly, asleep in the arms of the earth—
Even jealous Cerberus drinks and falls asleep.