Dear At, Artur, and other quiet tacititions, and dissipations,
"In order to be truly spiritual humans must have bodies." Thomas Aquinas
;-) Here then, in a mood of agitation we are heard to knock at the gates
of the present and the future. Will that transforming lead us to ever new
configurations of genius, and especially of the music practising
Socrates;-)? Will the net of art which is spread over the whole of
existence, whether under the name of religion or science be knit ever more
closely and delicately? Or is it destined to be torn to shreds under the
restless barbaric activity and whirl which calls itself, "the present"?
Anxious, yet not despairing, we may stand apart for a brief space, like so
many spectators allowed to be witnesses of these tremendous struggles and
transitions. Alas, (Andrew;-)it is the magic effect of these struggles
that he or she who beholds them must also participate in them. Anon
Croce wrote in -INTUITION AND EXPRESSION.
-One of the first problems to arise, when the work of art is defined as
"lyrical image," concerns the relation of "intuition" to "expression" and
the manner of the transition from the one to the other. At bottom this is
the same problem which arises in other parts of philosophy: the problem of
inner and outer, of mind and matter, of soul and body, and, in ethics, of
intention and will, will and action, and so forth. Thus stated, the
problem is insoluble; for once we have divided the inner from the outer,
body from mind, will from action, or intuition from expression, there is
no way of passing from one to the other or of reuniting them, unless we
appeal for their reunion to a third term, variously represented as God or
the Unknowable. Dualism leads necessarily either to transcendence or to
agnosticism. But when a problem is found to be insoluble in the terms in
which it is stated the only course open is to criticize these terms
themselves, to inquire how they have been arrived at, and whether their
genesis was logically sound. In this case, such inquiry leads to the
conclusion that the terms depend not upon a philosophical principle, but
upon an empirical and naturalistic classification, which has created two
groups of facts called internal and external respectively (as if internal
facts were not also external, and as if an external fact could exist
without being also internal), or souls and bodies, or images and
expressions; and everyone knows that it is hopeless to try to find a
dialectical unity between terms that have been distinguished not
philosophically or formally but only empirically and materially. The soul
is only a soul in so far as it is a body; the will is only a will in so
far as it moves arms and legs, or is action; intuition is only intuition
in so far as it is, in that very act, expression. An image that does not
express, that is not speech, song, drawing, painting, sculpture or
architecture - speech at least rnurmured to oneself, song at least echoing
within one's own breast, line and colour seen in imagination and colouring
with its own tint the whole soul and organism is an image that does not
exist. We may assert its existence, but we cannot support our assertion;
for the only thing we could adduce in support of it would be the fact that
the image was embodied or expressed. This profound philosophical doctrine,
the identity of intuition and expression is, moreover, principle of
ordinary common sense, which laughs at people who claim to have thoughts
they cannot express or to have imagined great pictures which they cannot
paint. Rem tene, verba sequentur; if there are no verba there is no res.
This identity, which applies to every sphere of the mind has in the sphere
of art a clearness and self evidence lacking, perhaps, elsewhere. In the
creation of a work of poetry, we are present, as it were, at the mystery
of the creation of the world; hence the value of the contribution made by
aesthetics to philosophy as a whole, or the conception of the One that is
All. Aesthetics, by denying in the life of art an abstract spiritualism
and the resulting dualism, prepares the way and leads the mind towards
idealism or absolute spiritualism. (End;-)....
"And that is where we start. We die with the dying."
- The essential challenge of our time is to LEARN how to integrate intuition
with reason - Jonas Salk.
(Jonas Salk was the man who <largely> defeated the disease of polio)
[[" Andrew, I cannot do this, I have polio." "You can. You will and then,
when you have, *they* will say to your face that there was no impairment
within their experience." Conversation from another world.]]
Love,
Andrew
PS.
We were walking by the brook and a bare tree was in leaf;-) closer and one
third of the leaves lifted up in flight, closer still another third, and
closer by still the final third and all of the leaves wheeled and
chattered over the flat fields in the sunlight and then it was three
thirds and one immense whole.
--Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <Richard@Karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>
"Learning-org" and the format of our message identifiers (LO1234, etc.) are trademarks of Richard Karash.