Somers-Hall, (Ch.3), Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, ‘Chapter 3. The Image of Thought’, summary

by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary. All boldface, underlining, and bracketed commentary are my own. Proofreading is incomplete, so please forgive my typos and other distracting mistakes. Somers-Hall is abbreviated SH and Difference and Repetition as DR.]

Summary of

Henry Somers-Hall

Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition:
An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide

Chapter 3. The Image of Thought

 

Very brief summary:

Philosophy so far has failed to think about the intensive and differential basis of the world, because it has been using a representational model of thinking that cannot deal with this non-representational level of reality. Deleuze characterizes this traditional image of thought by discussing its eight “postulates”: 1) good sense (reason alone is adequate for thinking), 2) common sense (the faculties cooperatively deal with a common object), 3) recognition (thereby they recognize an object), 4) representation (its means and product are representational, since it has the four features of representation, namely, identity, analogy, opposition, and resemblance), 5) error (as misrecognition), 6) proposition (propositions bear truth), 7) solutions (problems are understood in terms of possible solutions in propositional form), 8) knowledge (as being propositional rather than the learning process). For Deleuze, in order to think about the intensive grounds, our faculties need to operate discordantly while having objects that differ in kind. Kant’s sublime experiences are partly like this, since the faculties have different objects that do not conform to one another. Also Plato’s experiences of inconsistency involve sense data of an imperfect idea and a mental recollection of a pure Idea, which differ in kind. But Kant thinks that reason finally supplies a representation, and Plato traces the origins of thinking to another realm of Ideas rather than to the immediate intensive situation.



Brief summary: 
One of the reasons that philosophy has not thought about the intensive grounds of the world and of ourselves is because it has been using a faulty conception of what philosophical thinking should be. Deleuze characterizes this traditional “image of thought” on the basis of its eight “postulates:” 1) good sense: reason is thought to be adequate for the task of philosophical thinking, 2) common sense: our faculties including reason cooperate to recognize a common object, 3) recognition: common sense processes the data, and by means of good sense we can recognize the thing by forming a proper judgment of what it is, 4) representation: what we come to recognize and as well our means of arriving at that recognition has the four problematic features of representation, namely, a) identity (there is one self-same object that receives determinations), b) analogy (it is recognized when the intuitive and conceptual contents are analogous to each other), c) opposition (we select the object’s determinations partly by knowing what are the opposing determinations), d) resemblance (the selected determinations resemble one another). 5) error: misrecognition is the source of error. 6) proposition: the locus of truth is the proposition and not sense, 7) solutions: the problem is understood in terms of possible solutions, and 8) knowledge: knowledge is taken to be propositional solutions rather than the process of learning while struggling within the problem. These postulates show how traditional philosophy has placed thinking on a level of representation that misses the underlying problems and significances that thinking should attend to. For this, Deleuze thinks that all the faculties should work discordantly, each having objects that differ in kind. Kant’s sublime experience at first creates such a situation, but it is rectified by the reason which supplies the needed idea. Plato’s discussion of the experience of inconsistent properties also seems at first to satisfy Deleuze’s requirement. Here the sense faculties are dealing with for example imperfect equality among sense givens, while the understanding is recalling something that differs in kind, namely the experience of the pure Idea of perfect equality. Yet unlike Plato, Deleuze thinks the Idea should be immanent to the intensive situation and not found in a separate realm of Ideas.

Summary

(3.1 Introduction) Deleuze is critical of the traditional image of thought, because the foundations of thinking cannot be found within the structure of judgment. (3.2 Feuerbach and the Postulate of the Principle) There are eight postulates of the dogmatic image of thought. 1) good sense: rational thought is adequate for thinking. Descartes’s method of doubt for example leads us to a basic act of reason, the ‘I think’, which can be a stable and reliable basis for all other thinking. Hegel also begins with thought itself. Feuerbach criticizes this notion, since the methodologies assume things other than rational thought, for example, the assumption that the philosopher is speaking the truth, which is required for understanding what they say in the first place. Instead, Feuerbach thinks that philosophical thinking must go outside itself and have an encounter with pure sensuous intuition. Deleuze also wants such an encounter, but instead with the transcendental ground for the passive synthesis of sensuous intuition. (3.3 Descartes and the Postulates of Common Sense and Recognition) 2) The second postulate is common sense. There are two meanings for common here: a) all our faculties cooperate to recognize a common object, and b) all people in common have such faculties that work this way. In cases of misrecognition, our reason might incorrectly judge the organized givens of our faculties as something it really is not. (3.4 Kant and the Postulate of Representation) 3) The third postulate of recognition. By means of the common sense operation of the faculties, we may recognize the object. 4) The fourth postulate is of representation. The faculties recognize the object under the form of a representation, which means it has the four problematic qualities of representation: a) identity: it is a self-same entity to which its determinations are predicated, b) analogy: the object’s determinations are grasped as belonging to the object by means of an analogy between their intuitive and their conceptual manifestations, c) opposition: the object’s determinations are selected in part by knowing which ones are opposed to those, and d) resemblance: the determinations are selected also on the basis of their resemblance to one another in their shared belonging to a common object. Kant’s model of recognition shows all the first four postulates. (3.5 Plato and the Encounter) Deleuze would prefer instead that each faculty’s object be different in kind and that all faculties worked discordantly. Plato might have a model that would satisfy Deleuze. For Plato, we have faculties for our sense experience and faculties for our conceptual thinking. Sense experience can give contradictory properties of the same object, as when two things appear as equal in size under certain conditions and not equal under others. Plato thinks this experience causes us to recall a prior experience of the Idea of pure equality that we had before our bodies were born. Thus in such experiences our faculties have objects that differ in kind, since the senses are dealing with impressions of imperfect equality and our minds with a pure Idea of perfect equality. But really they are not different in kind, since both the bodily experience of imperfect equality and the experience of the Idea of pure equality are both the same sort of experience, only with the prior one being better. Also, his model has the four problematic properties of representational thought, since the Idea is self-same (identity), the objects have opposing properties (opposition), our knowledge of things is analogous to our knowledge of ideas (analogy), and the sense experience resembles and thus recalls the pure experience (resemblance). (3.6 The Kantian Sublime and the Discordant Relation of the Faculties) In Kant’s mathematical sublime, there is a discord of the faculties. They cannot agree on what what the object is, since it is too great to be processed, and yet they are forced to come to some conclusion about it. The reason then supplies the Idea of totality. Deleuze is not satisfied, since he would prefer that the Idea come from the discord itself and not from one faculty, especially not from the reason. (3.7 Descartes on the Postulate of the Negative or Error) 5) The fifth postulate of error, which is the notion that error results simply from misrecognition. Descartes sees error as happening when the faculties together process a common object, but the reason fails to make the proper judgment about what it is and in that way misrecognizes it. For Kant, we want a total system of knowledge. But for him, all knowledge needs both concepts and intuitions from sense experience. However, many things we need to know cannot be experienced, like the temporal origin of the world. So reason supplies concepts without the necessary intuitions, in order to have a more complete system of knowledge. On the one hand, this makes us think that we can have knowledge without intuition, while on the other hand, this is not true. Thus Kant calls it the transcendental illusion, and this for him is error. (3.8 The Postulate of the Proposition) 6) The sixth postulate of the proposition or of the logical function. A sentence has both a sense and a denotation. Its designation is the true objective state of affairs it refers to. Its sense is subjective belief, which is not dependent on truth and falsity, since a proposition can make sense even if it is false. Sense is broader than denotation, since it refers to possible states of affairs (either that it is or is not raining), but denotation can only refer to one state of affairs, the true one. But still the tendency in philosophy has been to give denotation the primary status, and then sense is understood in terms of how it can take propositional form. This leads to a number of problems. One is that sense is broader and thus more fundamental than the proposition, so we cannot make the proposition the ground for sense. The second problem comes when we try to explicate the sense of a proposition in propositional form. It only produces a new proposition, which will have a new sense. This regress could terminate in a fundamental proposition like Descartes’ cogito, which has problems that we already noted. Or the regress might be infinite and thus fail to find a solid ground. (3.9 The Postulate of Modality or Solutions) 7) The seventh postulate is of solutions or modality. Under this view, problems are understood propositionally and in terms of their possibility of being solved. So for example, a referendum deals with a problem, but it is understood as a possible policy change that is formulated as a proposition that takes the form of a questions, like “Yes or no, should this possible change be made?” But such an understanding of problems as propositions only tells us what conditions them, since we try to know, under what conditions can it be solved? But such a focus on solutions cannot help us know what generates the problems, and thus it is not adequate for a model of thinking the grounds of reality. (3.10 Conclusion: The Postulate of Knowledge) 8) The eighth postulate is of knowledge. It regards knowledge as being constituted of propositional solutions to problems expressed in propositional form. For Deleuze, what is more important for knowledge is the process of learning, which for him is the active engagement with the problems when we are still trying to grasp them and solve them.

Citations from:

Somers-Hall, Henry. Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University, 2013.

Or if otherwise noted:

DR:
Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994/London: Continuum, 2004.

 

 

 

 

Somers-Hall, (3.6), Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, ‘3.6 The Kantian Sublime and the Discordant Relation of the Faculties (145–6/183–4)’, summary

by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary. All boldface, underlining, and bracketed commentary are my own. Proofreading is incomplete, so please forgive my typos and other distracting mistakes. Somers-Hall is abbreviated SH and Difference and Repetition as DR.]

Summary of

Henry Somers-Hall

Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition:
An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide

Part 1
A Guide to the Text

 

Chapter 3. The Image of Thought

3.6 The Kantian Sublime and the Discordant Relation of the Faculties (145–6/183–4)

Brief summary:
Deleuze wants an account of thinking where Ideas are a product of the discordant operation of our faculties. Kant has something similar in his analysis of the sublime. Consider if we are standing before a gigantic mountain. We have a stream of intuitions, but our imagination cannot retain enough of them and process the information sufficiently to take in the whole mountain at once. But our faculty of reason has the idea of totality, and so it forces our other faculties to keep working even though they will never succeed. Each faculty has something different as its object, and they continue communicating with each other in their effort to synthesize a common object, so they are working discordantly. However, Deleuze is not fully satisfied with this model, since the Idea comes from one particular faculty, the reason, rather than coming from the discord itself between the faculties.

 

 

 

Summary

 

As we saw previously, while at first it may seem with Plato that the faculties work discordantly,  in fact they do not. Deleuze then turns to Kant’s sublime “to find the first instance of a model of the faculties operating apart from common sense” (SH 117).

We have sublime experiences when what we are trying to grasp goes beyond “the ability of our imagination to understand them as | a totality” (117-118). [Kant distinguishes the mathematical and the dynamic sublime. Regarding the mathematical sublime:] “‘We call that sublime which is absolutely large’ (Kant 1987: §25)” (SH 118). And so, “For Kant, situations that engender a feeling of the sublime are those in which we encounter something that shows the limitations of our powers of sensation, such as ‘shapeless mountain masses piled on one another in wild disarray, with their pyramids of ice or gloomy raging sea’ (Kant 1987: §26)” (SH 117). But note that it is the experience which is sublime and not the things themselves. For, no matter how large the mountain or ferocious the storm, they are really not absolutely great, as another of greater magnitude is possible (118).

While we might be able to use mathematics to determine the height of such mountains, we are unable to “bring together the object into a single intuition – to see it all at once. Either it is simply too big, and so we apprehend the object through a series of moments that appears to go on to infinity, or else the size of the object means that the parts of the object that we began by apprehending fall away from the imagination before we are able to reach the final elements” (118). So it is on account of our imagination’s inability to estimate the object’s magnitude that we are supplied with the idea of it being infinite. But reason demands that we grasp the thing in its totality, even though our imagination is incapable of it. “What therefore generates the feeling of the sublime is not the object itself, but the fact that the failure of the imagination to synthesise the object into unity points to the fact that reason is capable of thinking a unity that transcends any presentation, thus pointing to our own transcendence of the phenomenal realm” (118). What interests Deleuze in this analysis of the sublime is that the faculties are communicating, but not a common object. [I am not absolutely certain I know exactly what the different objects are, but it seems that the reason has as its object ‘totality’, and the imagination something infinite (thus something not total, since the infinite is unlimited), and perhaps we might guess that the intuition has as its object something ‘continuously fractured or partial’, but I am not sure. What seems important and interesting are the mechanics of this breakdown. The intuition supplies the imagination with the endlessly partial series of fragments, but the imagination has certain limits to how much it can retain and process. So it synthesizes images that never reach completion and are thus in a sense unlimited or deformed. At this point I am not sure if we are to distinguish the understanding and its concepts on one side with the reason and its ideas on the other. Suppose they are distinguished. The understanding is not able to supply the appropriate concept, which would be something like the concept for a giant mountain. Instead it can only supply the concept of the infinite. But our reason has the idea of totality and on its basis forces all the other faculties to keep communicating as best they can until they can totalize the manifold as a commonly experienced object, even though none share the same object, and even the reason has as its object something none of the other faculties are dealing with. While the specifics of the mechanical relations are uncertain to me, what is obvious is its discordant and distressed operation.] SH then notes something similar with regard to the three syntheses of time. Memory and habit are different in kind, but they can communicate, “with memory able to inform our practical life through the structure of habit” (119). SH continues, “As we also saw, what allowed the communication between these faculties was not the legislation of one faculty in particular, but rather the field of intensive difference, which in turn was different from either memory or habit, but nonetheless was expressed in terms of the virtual planes of co-existent memory, or the actual succession of impressions” [I do not recall how this worked, with the field of intensive difference allowing the communication between memory and habit, but he discusses it, it seems, in section 2.8, the final two paragraphs on pages 82-83. There it had something to do with the eternal return being the pure form of time in the form of intensive difference. But I am not sure how to put all this together. It could be that there is a field of intensive difference between the planes of memory, and there is also a field of intensive difference from moment to moment (and this affects habit somehow), and then somehow the fields of intensive difference in each case allows them to communicate. But I am really unsure how all this works.] [The next idea ideas is that for Kant, even in the sublime perhaps, what is being communicated is an Idea of reason. So on the basis of the idea of totality, the reason pressures the other faculties to continue operating in parallel even though they will never succeed at attaining a totalized notion for the experience. For Deleuze however, the Idea does not come from some particular faculty, but rather from their discordant exercise itself.]

Deleuze here therefore differs from Kant in that Kant associates what is communicated with the Ideas of reason, whereas Deleuze claims that we need to associate the Idea not with any particular faculty, not with, for instance, ‘the pure cogitanda but rather [with] those instances which go from sensibility to thought and thought to sensibility, capable of engendering in each case, according to their own order, the limit- or transcendent-object of each faculty’ (DR 146/183). We will have to wait for the next chapter to see exactly what the nature of these instances is.
(SH 119)

 

Citations from:

Somers-Hall, Henry. Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University, 2013.

Or if otherwise noted:

DR:
Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994/London: Continuum, 2004.

 

Kant, Immanuel (1987), Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.

 

Beauty All Too Human, in Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 19

by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary. The original text is reproduced below.]

Friedrich Nietzsche

Twilight of the Idols

Skirmishes of an Untimely Man

19

Nothing is beautiful in itself. Things are beautiful only to humans. And we see ourselves in what we deem beautiful.

In the beautiful, man posits himself as the measure of perfection; in special cases he worships himself in it. A species cannot do otherwise but thus affirm itself alone [allein Ja sagen]. Its lowest instinct, that of self‑preservation and self‑expansion, still radiates in such sublimities. Man believes the world itself to be overloaded with beauty — and he forgets himself as the cause of this. He alone has presented the world with beauty—alas! only with a very human, all‑too‑human beauty ... At bottom, man mirrors himself in things; he considers everything beautiful that reflects his own image: the judgment "beautiful" is the vanity of his species.

The world is beautiful to us only be cause we humanized it.

But nothing, absolutely nothing, guarantees that man should be the model of beauty. Who knows what he looks like in the eyes of a higher judge of beauty? Daring perhaps? Perhaps even amusing? Perhaps a little arbitrary?

Text from the Nietzsche Channel:

19

Beautiful and ugly ["Schön und hässlich"="Fair and foul"].— Nothing is more conditional—or, let us say, narrower—than our feeling for beauty. Whoever would think of it apart from man's joy in man would immediately lose any foothold. "Beautiful in itself" is a mere phrase, not even a concept. In the beautiful, man posits himself as the measure of perfection; in special cases he worships himself in it. A species cannot do otherwise but thus affirm itself alone [allein Ja sagen]. Its lowest instinct, that of self-preservation and self-expansion, still radiates in such sublimities. Man believes the world itself to be overloaded with beauty—and he forgets himself as the cause of this. He alone has presented the world with beauty—alas! only with a very human, all-too-human beauty ... At bottom, man mirrors himself in things; he considers everything beautiful that reflects his own image: the judgment "beautiful" is the vanity of his species ... For a little suspicion may whisper this question into the skeptic's ear: Is the world really beautified by the fact that man thinks it beautiful? He has humanized it: that is all. But nothing, absolutely nothing, guarantees that man should be the model of beauty. Who knows what he looks like in the eyes of a higher judge of beauty? Daring perhaps? Perhaps even amusing? Perhaps a little arbitrary? ... "Oh Dionysus, divine one, why do you pull me by my ears?" Ariadne once asked her philosophic lover during one of those famous dialogues on Naxos. "I find a kind of humor in your ears, Ariadne: why are they not even longer?"

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Twilight of the Idols. Based on Walter Kaufmann's translation. Available at: http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/twi.htm

Sublime Intoxication. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 1

by Corry Shores
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Friedrich Nietzsche

The Birth of Tragedy

1

Art continuously evolves. It does so on account of the Apollinian-Dionysian duality. By evoking these deities, we will better characterize two sorts of art:

a) the plastic Apollinian arts, and

b) the nonvisual art of music inspired by Dionysus.

These two different tendencies run parallel to each other, for the most part openly at variance; and they continually incite each other to new and more powerful births, which perpetuate an antagonism, only superficially reconciled by the common term "art"; till eventually, by a metaphysical miracle of the Hellenic "will," they appear coupled with each other, and through this coupling ultimately generate an equally Dionysian and Apollinian form of art — Attic tragedy. (33c, Kaufmann translation in Basic Writings.)

Nietzsche elaborates. We associate the Apollinian with dream, and the Dionysian with intoxication.

The gods appear to poets in dream. Good poets and plastic artists produce dream-like illusions.

Here we enjoy an immediate apprehension of form, all shapes speak to us directly, nothing seems indifferent or redundant. (Nietzsche Channel)

Even though these dreams are vivid, they still seem like illusions.

Consider how many philosophers believe that our everyday reality is an illusion that hides another more basic reality. Both the artist and the philosopher consider what they see an illusory vision. They enjoy what they observe. And they interpret life by means of these illusory images.

He experiences not only the agreeable and friendly images with that universal understanding: but also the serious, the gloomy, the sad, the dark aspects of life, the sudden inhibitions, the teasing of chance, the fearful expectations, in short the whole "divine comedy" of life, including the Inferno, passes before him, not only as a game of shadows — since he participates in the life and suffering of these scenes — yet also not without that fleeting sense of their status as appearance. (NC, emphasis mine)

Our innermost being delights in dream. And we think it necessary. The Greeks expressed dream's necessity in Apollo. He is the god of all "plastic powers." And he is the soothsaying god.

He who is etymologically the "lucent" one, the god of light, reigns also over the fair illusion of our inner world of fantasy. (NC)

Dreams and images seem perfect in comparison to our waking reality. We also know how restorative sleep and dreaming are. The plastic arts are analogous.

But Apollo may never leave the illusory world. And there can be a storm of confusion around us, but we can maintain our sense of individual selfhood. Such illusions remain untouched. Through his "gestures and eyes all the joy and wisdom of 'illusion,' together with its beauty, speak to us." (Kaufmann 36a)

But we also sometimes lose our faith in the cognitive form of things. We feel terror when we have sublime experiences that lead us to believe that there is no cause for something. Somehow, the principle of sufficient reason seems suspended. But at this moment we lose our sense of individual self-hood. And this causes us blissful ecstasy. This is the Dionysian.

There are two ways these Dionysian sentiments awaken.

1) we get drunk, or

2) spring arrives.

So stirred, the individual forgets himself completely. (NC)

Such singing and dancing impulses are found much later throughout Christian history. Some people think it is unhealthy to partake in such drunken revelous dancing.

But of course such poor wretches have no idea how corpselike and ghostly their so-called "healthy-mindedness" looks when the glowing life of the Dionysian revelers roars past them. (Kaufmann 37a)

In Dionysian ecstasy, man is united with fellow man and with nature herself.

If one were to convert Beethoven's "Hymn to Joy" into a painting, and refuse to curb the imagination when that multitude prostrates itself reverently in the dust, one might form some apprehension of Dionysian ritual. Now the slave emerges as a freeman; all the rigid, hostile walls which either necessity or despotism has erected between men are shattered. Now that the gospel of universal harmony is sounded, each individual becomes not only reconciled to his fellow but actually at one with him.

Man now expresses himself through song and dance as the member of a higher community; he has forgotten how to walk, how to speak, and is on the brink of taking wing as he dances.

Each of his gestures betokens enchantment; through him sounds a supernatural power, the same power which makes the animals speak and the earth render up milk and honey. (NC)

In these states, we feel like gods. For, all the cosmos' creative power concentrates within us.

No longer the artist, he has himself become a work of art: the productive power of the whole universe is now manifest in his transport, to the glorious satisfaction of the primordial One. (NC)

From the Nietzsche Channel translation:

The Birth of Tragedy

**** Kaufmann, following the precedent of Crane Brinton's Nietzsche (1965), George A. Morgan, Jr.'s What Nietzsche Means(1941) and the English version of Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West (1926-28), translates "Apollinisch" as "Apollinian"—rather than "Apollonian." Accordingly, here, Golffing's "Apollonian" has been changed to "Apollinian." ****

1

Much will have been gained for aesthetics once we have succeeded in apprehending directly—rather than merely ascertaining—that art owes its continuous evolution to theApollinian- Dionysian duality, even as the propagation of the species depends on the duality of the sexes, their constant conflicts and periodic acts of reconciliation. I have borrowed my adjectives from the Greeks, who developed their mystical doctrines of art through plausible embodiments, not through purely conceptual means. It is by those two art sponsoring deities, Apollo and Dionysus, that we are made to recognize the tremendous split, as regards both origins and objectives, between the plastic, Apollinian arts and the nonvisual art of music inspired by Dionysus. The two creative tendencies developed alongside one another, usually in fierce opposition, each by its taunts forcing the other to more energetic production, both perpetuating in a discordant concord that agon which the term art but feebly denominates: until at last, by the thaumaturgy of an Hellenic act of will, the pair accepted the yoke of marriage and, in this condition, begot Attic tragedy, which exhibits the salient features of both parents.

To reach a closer understanding of both these tendencies, let us begin by viewing them as the separate art realms of dream and intoxication, two physiological phenomena standing toward one another in much the same relationship as the Apollinian and Dionysian. It was in a dream, according to Lucretius [De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), v. 1169–82], that the marvelous gods and goddesses first presented themselves to the minds of men. That great sculptor, Phidias, beheld in a dream the entrancing bodies of more than human beings, and likewise, if anyone had asked the Greek poets about the mystery of poetic creation, they too would have referred him to dreams and instructed him much as Hans Sachs instructs us in Die Meistersinger [III. ii]:

The poet's task is this, my friend,
to read his dreams and comprehend.
The truest human fancy seems
to be revealed to us in dreams:
all poems and versification
are but true dreams' interpretation.

The fair illusion of the dream sphere, in the production of which every man proves himself an accomplished artist, is a precondition not only of all plastic art, but even, as we shall see presently, of a wide range of poetry. Here we enjoy an immediate apprehension of form, all shapes speak to us directly, nothing seems indifferent or redundant. Despite the high intensity with which these dream realities exist for us, we still have a residual sensation that they are illusions; at least such has been my experience— and the frequency, not to say normality, of the experience is borne out in many passages of the poets. Men of philosophical disposition are known for their constant premonition that our everyday reality, too, is an illusion, hiding another, totally different kind of reality. It was Schopenhauer who considered the ability to view at certain times all men and things as mere phantoms or dream images to be the true mark of philosophic talent [The World as Will and Representation, I.1, 5]. The person who is responsive to the stimuli of art behaves toward the reality of dream much the way the philosopher behaves toward the reality of existence: he observes exactly and enjoys his observations, for it is by these images that he interprets life, by these processes that he rehearses it. He experiences not only the agreeable and friendly images with that universal understanding: but also the serious, the gloomy, the sad, the dark aspects of life, the sudden inhibitions, the teasing of chance, the fearful expectations, in short the whole "divine comedy" of life, including the Inferno, passes before him, not only as a game of shadows—since he participates in the life and suffering of these scenes—yet also not without that fleeting sense of their status as appearance; and I imagine that many persons have reassured themselves amidst the perils of dream by calling out, "It is a dream! I want it to go on." I have even heard of people spinning out the causality of one and the same dream over three or more successive nights. All these facts clearly bear witness that our innermost being, the common substratum of humanity, experiences dreams with deep delight and a sense of real necessity. This deep and happy sense of the necessity of dream experiences was expressed by the Greeks in the image of Apollo. Apollo is at once the god of all plastic powers and the soothsaying god. He who is etymologically the "lucent" one, the god of light, reigns also over the fair illusion of our inner world of fantasy. The perfection of these conditions in contrast to our imperfectly understood waking reality, as well as our profound awareness of nature's healing powers during the interval of sleep and dream, furnishes a symbolic analogue to the soothsaying faculty and quite generally to the arts, which make life possible and worth living. But the image of Apollo must incorporate that thin line which the dream image may not cross, under penalty of becoming pathological, of imposing itself on us as crass reality: a discreet limitation, a freedom from all extravagant urges, the sapient tranquillity of the plastic god. His eye must be sunlike, in keeping with his origin. Even at those moments when he is angry and ill-tempered there lies upon him the consecration of fair illusion. In an eccentric way one might say of Apollo what Schopenhauer says, in the first part of The World as Will and Representation [I:1, 3], of man caught in the veil of Maya: "Even as on an immense, raging sea, assailed by huge wave crests, a man sits in a little rowboat trusting his frail craft, so, amidst the furious torments of this world, the individual sits tranquilly, supported by the principium individuationis [principle of individuation] and relying on it." [The World as Will and Representation, I:4, 63] One might say that the unshakable confidence in that principiumhas received its most magnificent expression in Apollo, and that Apollo himself may be regarded as the marvelous divine image of the principium individuationis, whose looks and gestures radiate the full delight, wisdom, and beauty of "illusion."

In the same context Schopenhauer has described for us the tremendous awe which seizes man when he suddenly begins to doubt the cognitive modes of experience, in other words, when in a given instance the law of causation seems to suspend itself. If we add to this awe the glorious transport which arises in man, even from the very depths of nature, at the shattering of the principium individuationis, then we are in a position to apprehend the essence of Dionysian rapture, whose closest analogy is furnished by physical intoxication. Dionysian stirrings arise either through the influence of those narcotic potions of which all primitive races speak in their hymns, or through the powerful approach of spring, which penetrates with joy the whole frame of nature. So stirred, the individual forgets himself completely. It is the same Dionysian power which in medieval Germany drove ever increasing crowds of people singing and dancing from place to place; we recognize in these St. John's and St. Vitus' dancers the Bacchic choruses of the Greeks, who had their precursors in Asia Minor and as far back as Babylon and the orgiastic Sacaea. There are people who, either from lack of experience or out of sheer stupidity, turn away from such phenomena, and, strong in the sense of their own sanity, label them either mockingly or pityingly "endemic diseases." These benighted souls have no idea how cadaverous and ghostly their "sanity" appears as the intense throng of Dionysian revelers sweeps past them.

Not only does the bond between man and man come to be forged once more by the magic of the Dionysian rite, but nature itself, long alienated or subjugated, rises again to celebrate the reconciliation with her prodigal son, man. The earth offers its gifts voluntarily, and the savage beasts of mountain and desert approach in peace. The chariot of Dionysus is bedecked with flowers and garlands; panthers and tigers stride beneath his yoke. If one were to convert Beethoven's "Hymn to Joy" into a painting, and refuse to curb the imagination when that multitude prostrates itself reverently in the dust, one might form some apprehension of Dionysian ritual. Now the slave emerges as a freeman; all the rigid, hostile walls which either necessity or despotism has erected between men are shattered. Now that the gospel of universal harmony is sounded, each individual becomes not only reconciled to his fellow but actually at one with him—as though the veil of Maya had been torn apart and there remained only shreds floating before the vision of mystical Oneness. Man now expresses himself through song and dance as the member of a higher community; he has forgotten how to walk, how to speak, and is on the brink of taking wing as he dances. Each of his gestures betokens enchantment; through him sounds a supernatural power, the same power which makes the animals speak and the earth render up milk and honey. He feels himself to be godlike and strides with the same elation and ecstasy as the gods he has seen in his dreams. No longer the artist, he has himself become a work of art: the productive power of the whole universe is now manifest in his transport, to the glorious satisfaction of the primordial One. The finest clay, the most precious marble—man—is here kneaded and hewn, and the chisel blows of the Dionysian world artist are accompanied by the cry of the Eleusinian mystagogues: "Do you fall on your knees, multitudes, do you divine your creator?" [Quote from Schiller's "Ode to Joy"] —

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. in Basic Writings of Nietzsche. Transl. & Ed. Walter Kaufmann. New York: The Modern Library, 1966.

Nietzsche Channel version available online at:

http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/bt.htm

[Above link might not work. Also try:
http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/nietzsche/tragedy_all.htm]

Schlegel, On the Study of Greek Poetry, Selective Summary

by Corry Shores
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[The following summarizes only parts of the text regarding the ugly.]

Friedrich von Schlegel

On the Study of Greek Poetry

Selective Summary

Modern poetry strives. But either

1) it has not reached its goal, or

2) it never had one to begin with: "its striving has no established goal, its development [Bildung] no specific direction, the sum of its history no regular continuity, the whole no unity." (217)

However, there are some cases where poetry has achieved an aim, namely in supremely great works.

But even these overpowering works leave us dissatisfied. They do not unify our minds. They tear it apart.

We are satisfied only by the complete pleasure resulting when our expectations are fulfilled and our concerns answered. All longing ends. But,

This is what is missing from the poetry of our age! (18b)

Modern poetry does not satisfy us with harmony and completion. Many artists escape the "intolerable expanse of their existence" by filling the "infinite emptiness of their minds" with "everything that is unusual or new." (18c) Poetry should not merely cater to our fancy and senses.

Some still have not experienced genuine culture. Their art is vulgar and purely sensuous.

However, there is a better class of art. Its works hover high above vulgar ones. Its creators are like gods.

Every now and then in the recent history of art we come across poets who, in the midst of a oblivious age, appear to be foreigners from a nobler world. with all the strength their minds can marshal, they seek the eternal.

Even if they fall short, they inspire us to believe that other art forms might succeed.

Modern poetry does not come close. But at least it harbors noble and good things that schools had banished. However, truth and morality is their aim. Beauty it is not. Nowhere in modern poetry is beauty the fundamental principle. In fact, beauty is so devalued that modern poetry's best works are displays of the ugly. The only time we experience beauty in modern poems is in "unsatisfied longing." They have blurred the boundaries between science and art, and between the true and the beautiful.

Philosophy poeticizes and poetry philosophizes: history is treated as poetry and poetry is treated as history. (18d)

Even poetic genres have blurred.

A lyrical mood becomes the object of a drama, and dramatic material is forced into lyrical form. This anarchy is not confined to the outer limits; rather, it spans the entire realm of taste and art. The creative force is restless and fickle. (18-19)

Theory no longer has a "fixed point in the endless flux." The public taste or fashion is the only guide. Each artistic 'idol' is worshiped then overthrown by another empty idol.

Artists either

a) strive for sensuousness, even if it leaves our soul feeling empty and offends our sense of propriety,

b) aim too much for perfection, when in fact there is none, and it is irrelevant to beauty,

c) try to replicate things with absolute fidelity, even the obscure peculiarities.

Poetic theory aims for

1) charm

2) correctness, and

3) truth.

Sometimes modern works are presented as eternal models of imitation, at other times as absolute originality.

Either it demands strict submission to arbitrary rules, or it considers artistic genius in a mystical sense, and thereby makes anarchy the fundamental principle. We cannot use theory to make art. Theorems and concepts cannot construct beauty.

Theory has lost favor because it

a) never succeeded in explaining the nature of the poetic arts,

b) never gave a satisfactory classification of types of arts, and

c) has not come to an agreement on what art is in general.

If theorists can be said to agree on anything, it is that there is no universally valid law of art and no constant goal of taste. The beauty of art relies solely on coincidence.

We have seen this anarchy through poetry's history. We see no enduring peculiarity among all the many poets throughout history.

The common background for the modern poets' spirit is the desire to capture the 'beneficent effects' of a great maser or of a felicitous age. But they do not believe there is one spirit for all modern artists. That would efface the individual's peculiarity, injure her rights, and cripple her inventive power.

An endless swarm of the most wretched imitators follows every great original artist -- as long as he is born by the time of fashion -- until finally the originary image has become so common and loathsome because of the eternal repetitions and distortions that, in the place of deification, there enters abhorrence or eternal oblivion. (20c)

Modern poetry's only characters tic is lack of character. The common theme running through it is confusion. The spirit of its history is lawlessness. The result of its theory is skepticism. Its peculiarities do not have specific and fixed boundaries. So French, English, Italian and Spanish poetry exchange their national characters like a masquerade. German poetry represents all cultures except German.

The public only demands interesting individuality from its artists. It wants an effect, and it wants it to be strong and new. How that effect is obtained is of little interest. And each time their demands are satisfied, their expectations for the next satisfaction are raised.

The new becomes old; the unusual becomes common; the frisson of what is charming becomes dull. (21b)

Art descends into crudity and void. Satisfaction is always immediate, but never entire. So the hunger never subsides.

Each of modern poetry's parts by itself might be excellent. But the whole of it is purposeless and lawless. The sum of these two factors "appears like an ocean of warring forces." In it, the shattered pieces of beauty move confusedly through each other.

One could call it a chaos of everything sublime, beautiful, and charming, which just like the Chaos of old out of which, according to legend, the world emerged -- awaits a love and a hatred in order to separate the different parts and to unify the similar parts. (21)

There seems to be no guiding thread. But modern poetry's origin, interrelation, and ground should somehow be explicable. Perhaps by examining its history we can determine the meaning of its current efforts, its direction, and its goal. Often times the anarchy was the means for a better state. "Cannot the aesthetic anarchy of our age expect a similar felicitous catastrophe?" Perhaps now either art will advance or further decline. We have these questions:

1) What is the task of modern poetry?

2) Can it be attained? and

3) What are the means to this?

To answer them we need to determine modern poetry's

a) character,

b) principle of development, and

c) the original traits of its individuality.

Modern poetry does have a common element, a characteristic trait, and common inner foundation. Modern poetry makes-up a coherent whole, even if there are no universal principles.

Consider how diverse Europe is. Nonetheless, there is still the European character. All its cultures share a common spirit and origin. As well, the different parts mutually influence each other. It has a common goal. So in this sense Europe is a whole.

As well, modern poetry is such an interrelated whole. We see for example the reciprocal imitations between cultures. At certain points in history, one natural character spread through the rest. Germany is the only culture that has been influenced by other cultures, but not an influence back to them. Hence the original national character becomes increasing diminished. Then, all of European poetry homogenizes, making the gradual transition from the original unique national character to the character of an artificial culture.

But despite these original differences that homogenize, all European cultures have a common origin. And we see archetypal narratives.

So first European culture was homogeneous. Then after a total revolution they dispersed and diversified. But their common origin remained. This similarity has influenced poetry.

We may also distinguish modern poetry from the other sorts preceding it in history. It

1) insists on imitating antiquity's art

2) demands that theory explain it and tell it how to proceed

3) is internally divided into high and low art.

[skip to page 66]

We may consider Greek poetry as a maximum and canon of natural poetry.

With bold certainty the outlines are simply sketched and then filled and completed with exuberant vigor; every formation is the complete intuition of a genuine concept. (66c)

Greek poetry:

a) contains the entire cycle of the organic evolution of art is concluded and completed

b) contains the entire gamut of taste,

c) is not constricted by the boundaries of its poetic types. Rather, these boundaries are produced through its formative nature. And through its development all the poetic types developed.

d) is an eternal natural history of taste and art.

e) contains the pure and simple elements that make-up the chaotic organization of modern poetry. For example, we may describe Goethe's style as a combination of Homer, Euripides, and Aristophanes.

But the moderns will reject Greek poetry. They will consider it immoral. It is too sensuous. Its comedies glorify folly. And they defame the noble.

Schlegel will not give a single, valid, objective principle of aesthetic criticism. Then he can explain the subjective origin of modern poetry's misconception of Greek poetry.

All assessments must meet two conditions:

1) the standard must be universal,

2) the application of the standard must be conscientiously faithful.

Our current philosophy of taste and art is incompletem because it has not established a theory of ugliness.

Beauty is the pleasing appearance of the good. Ugliness is the displeasing appearance of the bad. Beauty rouses the mind by means of sensuousness to pursue spiritual pleasures. So a hostile attack on sensuous causes ethical pain.

Thus life in all its charm invigorates and refreshes us, and even terror and suffering is fused with grace; while here the disgusting, the grievous, the horrible fills us with revulsion and abhorrence. Instead of graceful ease, a clumsy awkwardness oppresses us; instead of lively vitality, dead weight. Instead of a symmetrical tension in a beneficent alternation of movement and calm, a painful rending pulls one's interest to and fro in opposite directions. Where the mind longs for peace it is tormented by a destructive rage; where it yearns for movement, it is fatigued by languorous weariness. (68c.d)

When we represent ugliness, animalistic pain is the only source of the ethically bad. We do not posit anything positive or absolutely bad against the absolutely good. Instead, we merely negate pure humanity, which encompasses totality and multiplicity. Ugliness is an "empty pretense" within real physical evil. Yet, it is without moral reality. "Only in the sphere of animality is there positive evil -- pain.' In pure spirituality, there is only pleasure and painless limitation. But in pure animality there is only pain and gratification of need without pleasure. Man has a composite nature. In him are blended the negative limitations of the spirit and the positive pain of the animal.

The opposite of plentiful abundance is emptiness, monotony, uniformity, spiritlessness. Disparity and struggle are the opposite of harmony. Wretched confusion is opposed to actual beauty in the strict sense. Beauty in the strict sense is the appearance of a finite diversity in a conditioned unity. The sublime, however, is the appearance of the infinite--infinite abundance or infinite harmony. It has thus a twofold antithesis: infinite deficiency and infinite disharmony. (69a)

The degree of negation determines the level of baseness. However, the level of ugliness is determined by the intensive quantity of the drive that is being contravened. So for there to be ugliness, there must be a deluded expectation and an aroused and then frustrated yearning.

The feeling of emptiness and struggle can grow from mere discomfort to the most raging despair, even though the degree of negation remains the same and only the intensive strength of the drive increases. (69b)

Sublime beauty gives us absolute pleasure. Sublime ugliness is the delusion that comes about through and exertion of the drive. So it is despair, which is an absolute unmitigated pain. It also causes the displeasure or pain that results when we perceive ethical incongruities.

There is no ultimate in beauty. Likewise none in ugliness. So even within the highest level of ugliness there is something beautiful. Hence to bring about the ugly sublime, we must create the utmost abundance of strength.

Artists should obey both the laws of beauty and ugliness.

From:

Schlegel, Friedrich. On the Study of Greek Poetry. Ed. Stuart Barnett. Albany: SUNY Press, 2001.