For Lovers Young And Old Of A Certain Nothingness

René Magritte (1898-1967) - The Treason of Images, 1928-9


'In order to understand Sartre's thought regarding the imagination, it is necessary to examine first an aspect of Husserl's phenomenology, the noetic/noematic structure of awareness. According to Husserl, it is a fact that we can be aware of the same object in different ways, of different objects in the same way, and also of different objects in different ways. For example, with respect to the object, I can perceive a table, a pen, and a framed picture; with respect to the mode of awareness, I can perceive a table, I can imagine a table, and I can remember a table - in each case, the same table. Husserl termed the object of awareness the noema and the mode of awareness of the object, the noesis. To understand Husserl's phenomenology on the problem of the imagination it is important to keep in mind that when I perceive this table or when I imagine this same table, I am aware of the same noema in two different modes. Of course, the image of he table is not the table, but by means of my apprehending the image of the table I have a secondary apprehension of the table itself. Sartre concerns himself with studying the essential difference between perception and imagination with respect to the modes in which each of these presents its object, rather than distinguishing as Husserl does between a primary and secondary apprehension. The object of perception is posited as real; that is, the object perceived is, in virtue of its being perceived, taken to be a real object. But in the case of the imagination either the object is posited as non-existent, as absent, as exiting elsewhere, or, in the neutral case, the object simply may not be posited as existing at all. Thus the characteristic possessed by an image that distinguishes the image from the object of perception is that, according to Sartre, the image ". . . involves a certain nothingness":

Alive, appealing and strong as an image is, it presents its object as not being. This does not prevent us from reacting to the image as if it were before us . . .

Regarding this distinction between perception and imagination, Sartre makes two observations. The first is that, in the case of perception, the object perceived is given against a background of total reality; the object is, as it were, the figure, and reality is the ground. The top of the desk now visible is part of the desk, itself part of what is in the room, and so on. In contrast to this mode of givenness of the perceived object is that of the imagined object. Instead of being given against the ground of the totality of the real, the imagined object is given (to take only one of the four possible modes listed above) precisely as absent, which is to say, the imagined object is given as something which is nothing in relation to the background of real things.

In virtue of this nothingness of the imagined object, it is necessary to take up the question: How is the nature of consciousness to be construed so that it will be possible to understand how consciousness can posit an image; that is, how consciousness can bring before itself an object that is nothing in relation to the contents of reality? It is Sartre's contention that, if consciousness were but one event among others in the world, and if it were also in thoroughgoing casual interaction with these other events, that there could be no awareness of images as images, as representations:

If we assume a consciousness placed at the very bosom of the world as one existence among others, we must conceive it hypothetically as completely subjected to the action of a variety of realities - without its being able to avoid the detail of these realities by an intuition which would embrace their totality. This consciousness could therefore contain only real modifications aroused by real actions and all imagination would be prohibited to it, exactly in the degree to which it would be engulfed by the real.

Sartre's thesis is that, in order for an image to be entertained as an image, consciousness must set the image over against the totality of the real, since the image is not one real item among others but merely a representation. But, in order for the imagination to posit the image as over against reality, it is necessary that consciousness not be "engulfed in the real" and determined in all its aspects by the causal efficacy of reality upon it. Consciousness has to disentangle itself from reality in order to posit the image as nothing in relation to the real, since, if such a disentanglement were not effected, the image could only be one other real item among others. As such, it would not be an image, but merely another item presented to consciousness because of the activity on consciousness of the other events that constitute reality. And it is just this ability to set itself over against the totality of the real that constitutes the freedom of consciousness:

For a consciousness to be able to imagine it must be able to escape from the world by its very nature, it must be able to by its own efforts to withdraw from the world. In a word it must be free.

This freedom from reality, this escaping from the world, is conceived by Sartre as definable correlatively to a (Heideggerian) being-in-the-world. In other words, consciousness can withdraw from the world on the ground of a logically prior being in the world. Consciousness, which has now been shown to be in essence imaginative, posits the image as a nothing in relation to the real in which consciousness is basically engaged but which, in virtue of its imaginativeness, it can transcend . . .

[The] concept of meaning for Sartre rests on his theory of imagination and therefore on the nature of freedom. Although consciousness is a being-in-the-world, there is yet a sense in which the concept of the world is not fundamental but rather derivative from the fact of the imaginativeness of consciousness. Simply stated, Sartre's point is that

The imaginary thus represents at each moment the implicit meaning of the real.

The real is what is simply there for awareness. Therefore, to apprehend the real as world, as a meaningful articulation of data, it is necessary that the real, the simply there, be surpassed toward the imaginary. The sense of this notion of surpassing toward the imaginary is that the situation directly confronted perceptually receives definition by having placed (metaphorically) alongside it an imaginative consciousness which is in an essential respect a reverse of the perceived situation. For example, I note the absence of my dictionary not simply because the dictionary is not perceptually encountered in the bookcase, but also because the imaginativeness of my consciousness places beside what I do perceive in the bookcase the image of the dictionary, an image which presents the dictionary as being absent. The real is what I immediately confront; the world is that same situation, meaningfully articulated by the imagination and set over against the consciousness that is there engaged:

. . . imagination, far from appearing as an actual characteristic of consciousness turns out to be an essential and transcendental condition of consciousness.

As well as of freedom in the world . . . '

F. Molina

Obituary: How Do You Say Goodbye To A Grasshopper?

Fig. 1. David Carradine (December 8, 1936 - June 3, 2009) - Kung Fu, 1972-1975

Finally, There Is Only A Queer Divine Dissatisfaction*

Fig. 1. Vivienne Shark LeWitt - Diners Club, 1992

'A moment of complete happiness never occurs in the creation of a work of art. The promise of it is felt in the act of creation but disappears towards the completion of the work. For it is then the painter realises that it is only a picture he is painting. Until then he had almost dared to hope the picture might spring to life.'

Lucian Freud

* 'No artist is pleased. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.' (Martha Graham)

Addendum: The Sunday Six

Six different translations of the opening lines of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations:

1. It is in the nature of every advance, that it appears much greater than it actually is. (Malcolm, 1984)

2. It is in the nature of all progress, that it looks much greater than it really is. (Baker and Hacker, 1980)

3. The thing about progress is that it appears much greater than it actually is. (Barker, 1985)

4. In general, it is characteristic of progress that it looks much bigger that it really is. (Spielberg, 1978)

5. It is a thing about progress: it generally looks bigger than it really is. (von Wright, 1982)

6. Motto: 'Anyway, the thing about progress is that it looks much greater than it really is.' (Stern, 2004)

Where Banality Is Measured In Degrees Of Glamour

Fig. 1. Lucy Skaer - Die Belagerung, 2008


'One of the greatest satisfactions of the philosopher is to expose the fallacy in what has hitherto been accepted as a conclusive argument; and I suppose this can be as selfless as any satisfaction in making a contribution to general welfare. Equally satisfying, and equally altruistic, is to expose the fallacy in the fallacy - to demonstrate that it is not a fallacy after all, or not the sort of fallacy it was claimed to be. By this turn of the wheel, what was worth saving in the original argument gets rehabilitated, though it will never look quite the same.'

Monroe C. Beardsley

Further Conjugations In The Vast Grammar Of Being*

Fig. 1. André Kertész - Underwater Swimmer, 1917

'What does learning consist in? Here is a traditional view: learning is a matter of memorising something that somebody else knows. It sounds simplistic, if we put it that way. But who among us has not attended high school and college and has not been subjected to this view of learning? A teacher, a professor, stands before the class, chalk or transparencies in hand. There are things you need to learn, items you need to know. Before the class period is over, these things will be transferred from the teacher's lecture notes, the professor's transparencies, to your notebook. From there, these things will be transferred to your brain. When those transfers are successful, you will be said to have learned what the teacher, the professor, has taught you.

It is a meager model of learning. It is also the most common one. It is a model that operates on some surface assumptions and a slightly deeper one. Its surface assumptions are, first, that the teacher knows what there is to know about a subject and you do not. Second, there is the assumption that the way that you learn what the teacher knows is to listen to the teacher and commit to memory what he or she has to say. Last, on the teacher's side, there is the assumption that by talking or using other media to substitute for talking, the teacher can impart to the student what needs to be known.

The slightly deeper assumption has to do with the dogmatic image of thought. It is the assumption that what is to be learned comes in discrete packets of identities. There are particular somethings that need to be known. These somethings may be related to one another or they may not. In either case, they are independent enough from one another to be isolated each to a sentence, a paragraph, or a chapter. These somethings are then represented by the sentences spoken by the teacher or professor, and then arrive at your ear or on your paper. If the learning us successful, there will have been no alteration, no damage, of any of these somethings along the way. Their identities will retain their integrity. And if you do your job you will be able to repeat or manipulate these identities when test time comes around.

There is another view of learning that does not start with the assumption that what is to be learned has the character of an identity or group of identities. It starts instead from the assumption that what there is to be learned has the character of difference rather than identity. If what is to be learned does not have the character of identity, then the learning itself is not a project of transferring identities from the knower to the one who seeks to know. It is instead a project of experimentation.

Swimmers do not learn facts about the water and about their bodies and then apply them to the case in hand. The water and their bodies are swarms of differences. In order to navigate their bodies through the water they will need to acquire a skill: to "conjugate" their bodies with the water in such a way as to stay on its surface. This skill involves no memorisation. It involves an immersion, a finding one's way through things, coming through one's body to understand what one is capable of in the water. There is no one way to do this, and different ways may lead to different kinds of success. There are also failures; water may be composed of differences, but not every path through those differences will keep one afloat.

Swimmers apprentice themselves to the water. They get a feel for the water, for how it moves and what possibilities it offers them. They get a feel for their bodies in the water. And they conjugate one against the other. The couplet body/water is a problematic field ... Particular ways of swimming are solutions within that problematic field. They do not solve the problem of swimming. For there is no single problem of swimming. There is instead a problematic field of body/water, of which particular ways of swimming are solutions. They are experiments in conjugation of this problematic field, much of which takes place below the level of conscious thought, beneath the identities representation offers us: "'learning' always takes place in and through the unconscious, thereby establishing a profound complicity between nature and mind." [Deleuze, Difference and Repetition]

What does learning how to think consist in? Unlike learning how to swim, it first requires the abandonment of bad habits. These habits are the ones instilled in all of us by the dogmatic image of thought and its representational view of language and the world. We must discover this image and this view; we must see what roles they play in preventing us from really thinking.

But that is not all. That is only the negative task, the clearing of the ground. Alongside this abandonment we must also experiment in ways of thinking. We must conjugate our thought and our world, our thought and our language.

There are those who have gone before us, who have swum in this water before: Spinoza, Bergson, Nietzsche among them. They may help ease us into the water, teach us some of the strokes, so we don't drown before we get started. We can apprentice ourselves to them. Sooner or later, however, we must push off from the shore and conjugate things for ourselves ... [We] must do it for ourselves, each of us ...

There are two mistakes we might make in considering the prospect of learning to think. The first mistake would be to assume that thinking, unlike swimming, is a purely conscious activity, that thinking is a manipulation of thought. That mistake is our inheritance from the dogmatic image of thought. We feel our way into thinking in much the same way as we feel our way into swimming. Thinking is at least as unconscious as it is conscious, and it is no less an experiment ... The second mistake would be to assume that each of us must face this task alone. In fact, we can face it in groups, conjugating ourselves with one another as well as with the world. Thinking does not need to be a solitary activity, and it surely does not take place in a world which we do not share with others ... [We might] consider our place among others in the world, to think about it, or with it, or in it."

Todd May (from Gilles Deleuze: An Introduction)

* 'To learn is to enter into the universal of the relations which constitute the Idea, and into their corresponding singularities. The idea of the sea, for example, as Leibniz showed, is a system of liaisons or differential relations between particulars and singularities corresponding to the degree of variation among these relations - the totality of the system being incarnated in the real movement of the waves. To learn to swim is to conjugate the distinctive points of our bodies with the singular points of the objective Idea in order to form a problematic field.'

Gilles Deleuze (from Difference and Repetition)

Five Ecstatic Skins: Or, To Our Bodies Turn We Then*

Fig. 1. Tanatos Banionis Creative Group - Divine Wind, 2008

'[By] an aesthetic idea I mean that representation of the imagination which induces much thought, yet without the possibility of any definite thought whatever, i.e. concept, being adequate to it, and which language, consequently, can never get quite on level terms with or render completely intelligible. It is easily seen, that an aesthetic idea is the counterpart (pendant) of a rational idea, which, conversely, is a concept, to which no intuition (representation of the imagination) can be adequate.'

Immanuel Kant

* John Donne (The Ecstasy)

You Too May Think The Amen Of Nature Is A Flower*

Fig. 1. Henri Matisse - Fruit, Flowers, and The Dance, 1909


'First, the colours of beautiful bodies must not be dusky or muddy, but clean and fair. Secondly, they must not be of the strongest kind. Those which seem most appropriated to beauty, are the milder of every sort; light greens; soft blues; weak whites; pink reds; and violets. Thirdly, if the colours be strong and vivid, they are always diversified, and the object is never one of strong colour; there are almost always such a number of them (as in variegated flowers) that the strength and glare of each is considerably abated.'

Edmund Burke

* 'The Amen of nature is always a flower.' (Oliver Wendell Holmes)

Addendum: Not long ago, Katie (politely, as always) took umbrage at a joke I'd made at the expense of sport and, by implication, lovers of all things sporty:

Lucio, all sports can be made to sound completely ridiculous when broken down like that. But like art, I think there’s a place for it in the world.

She is right, of course - which is why I replied:

Never fear, Katie, I can make art (and most other things cultural) sounds just as absurd!

And I can. Only there are times when no such effort is required from me, as is amply demonstrated by the following extract from Edmund Burke's self-parodying musings on beauty (imagine it being read by a member of the Monty Python team and you'll see what I mean):

The next property constantly observable in such objects is Smoothness. A quality so essential to beauty, that I do not recollect any thing beautiful that is not smooth. In trees and flowers, smooth leaves are beautiful; smooth slopes of earth in gardens; smooth streams in the landscape; smooth coats of birds and beasts in animal beauties; in fine women, smooth skins; and in several sorts of ornamental furniture, smooth and polished surfaces. A very considerable part of the effect of beauty is owing to this quality; indeed the most considerable. For take any beautiful object, and give it a broken and rugged surface, and however well formed it may be in other respects, it pleases no longer. Whereas let it want ever so many of the other constituents, if it wants not this, it becomes more pleasing than almost all the others without it. This seems to me so evident, that I am a good deal surprised, that none who have handled the subject have made any mention of the quality of smoothness in the enumeration of those that go to the forming of beauty. For indeed any ruggedness, any sudden projection, and sharp angle, is in the highest degree contrary to that idea.

In other words, the smelliest baby bum is preferable to the finest bouquet of natural crystals!

(By the way, the remaining conditions Burke insists must be met in order for something to qualify as beautiful include smallness, variation, and delicacy.)

Thanks for the prod, Katie! {:-})

There Is No Science Of The Beautiful, Only Critique*

Fig. 1. Kutlug Ataman - Frame, 2009


'Frame is a lightbox of an enlarged replica of a photograph taken during the early 20th century in Eastern Turkey, when photography was a still a new medium. Because of the way in which it is framed the photo reveals more than its original subject - an army general with substantial political power at the time. The anonymous photographer ignored the logic of classical framing which is rooted in the rules created during the Renaissance in the West. Instead, the framing follows the rules of pre-Renaissance representation typical of Byzantium, where social status and political power determined the frame and size of the subject. As a result, the army general, as the centre of political gravity and the top of political hierarchy, is framed in the centre. The lower ranks around him are cut off by the frame, which is determined not by rationalism but power.'

Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz

* 'There is no science of the beautiful, but only a critique.' (Immanuel Kant - Critique of Judgement)

So, How Long Is A String Of Novelties? (Per Valeria)

Fig. 1. Cai Guo-Qiang - Fetus Movement II: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 9, 1991


'The first and the simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is Curiosity. By curiosity, I mean whatever desire we have for, or whatever pleasure we take in novelty. We see children perpetually running from place to place to hunt out something new; they catch with great eagerness, and with very little choice, at whatever comes before them; their attention is engaged by every thing, because every thing has, in that stage of life, the charm of novelty to recommend it. But as those things which engage us merely by their novelty, cannot attach us for any length of time, curiosity is the most superficial of all the affections; it changes its object perpetually; it has an appetite which is very sharp, but very easily satisfied; and it has always an appearance of giddiness, restlessness and anxiety. Curiosity from its nature is a very active principle; it quickly runs over the greatest part of its objects, and soon exhausts the variety which is commonly to be met with in nature; the same things make frequent returns, and they return with less and less of any agreeable affect. In short, the occurrences of life, by the time we come to know it a little, would be incapable of affecting the mind with any other sensations than those of loathing or weariness, if many things were not adapted to affect the mind by means of other powers besides novelty in them, and of other passions besides curiosity in ourselves.'

Edmund Burke

Feeling (And Seeing) The World As A Limited Whole*

Fig. 1. Desiree Dolron - Xteriors VIII, 2004


'Death changes the facts qualitatively but not quantitatively.'

John Berger

'Feeling the world as a limited whole - it is this that is mystical.' (Ludwig Wittgenstein)

The Limits Of The World Must Always Be Sought Out*

Fig. 1. John William Waterhouse - Ulysses and the Sirens, 1891

'The artist is meant to put the objects of this world together in such a way that through them you will experience that light, that radiance which is the light of our consciousness and which all things both hide and, when properly looked upon, reveal. The hero journey is one of the universal patterns through which that radiance shows brightly. What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, and the fulfillment or the fiasco. There's always the possibility of a fiasco. But there's also the possibility of bliss.'

Joseph Campbell

* 'Everyone takes the limits of their own vision for the limits of the world.' (Arthur Schopenhauer)

Your Ears Will Orgasm #42a: Olivier Messiaen - Oraison (MixPod Player)

Your Ears Will Orgasm #42b: Gustav Mahler - Symphony No. 2 ("Resurrection") (MixPod Player)

Addendum: How wonderful! And how apt, too! You outdid yourselves last time, ladies: now, amazingly, you have outdone your outdoing!

I will set my sails to take full advantage of the breezes blown by your inspirational words.

Thank you, Katie (and Edna):

Today is as good as any other day (!) to set yourself free to embark on a hero journey. The possibility of bliss is definitely worth danger and fiasco.

ESVM also thinks it's time for you to test your limits:

On Thought in Harness

My falcon to my wrist
Returns
From no high air.
I sent her toward the sun that burns
Above the mist;
But she has not been there.

Her talons are not cold; her beak
Is closed upon no wonder;
Her head stinks of its hood, her feathers reek
Of me, that quake at the thunder.

Degraded bird, I give you back your eyes forever, ascent now wither you are tossed;
Forsake this wrist, forsake this rhyme;
Soar, eat ether, see what has never been seen; depart, be lost,
But climb.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

No, Reality Doesn't Unfold - It Is The Unfolding Itself

Fig. 1. Andreas Gursky - Tokyo Stock Exchange, 1990

'[Philosophy] must constitute itself as a theory of what we are doing, not as a theory of what there is.'

Gilles Deleuze

Everything That Is And Isn't In A Name, Idea Or Thing

Fig. 1. Joseph Kosuth - Titled (Art as Idea as Idea, Nothing), 1967


'Singularities are the true transcendental events. . . . Far from being individual or personal, singularities preside over the genesis of individuals and persons; they are distinguished in a 'potential' which admits neither Self nor I, but which produces them by actualising or realising itself. . . . Only a theory of the singular point is capable of transcending the synthesis of the person and the analysis of the individual as these are (or are made) in consciousness. . . . Only when the world, teeming with anonymous and nomadic, impersonal and preindividual singularities, opens up, do we tread at last on the field of the transcendental.'

Gilles Deleuze (The Logic of Sense)

Addendum: Coup de Silence (or, The Dictatorship of Dumbness)

John Cage - 4'33", 1952 (BBC Symphony Orchestra - c. Lawrence Foster, 2004)

‘The material of music is sound and silence. Integrating these, is composing. I have nothing to say, and I am saying it.’

John Cage

The Sunday Six: Part Two (Relatively Eclectic)

Fig. 1. Ivan Moudov - Fragments, 2003 - 2004

Fig. 2. Raymond Pettibon - No title (I've often lamented), 2004

Fig. 3. Bill Viola - Without A Shore (still), 2007

Fig. 4. Johanna Calle - Tejido Foliar (detail), 2008

Fig. 5. Phillip Adams (choreographer) - Axeman's Lullaby, 2008 (photo by Jeff Busby)

Fig. 6. Peter Fischli & David Weiss - Parts of a Film with Rat and a Bear, 2008.

'Think like a man of action and act like a man of thought.'

Henri Bergson

All Of The Magic, None Of The Tricks

Fig. 1. Caspar David Friedrich - Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon, 1824

'Longing is the umbilical cord of the higher life.'

Søren Kierkegaard

Your Ears Will Orgasm #9: Olivier Messiaen - Oraison (MixPod Player)

Addendum:

The following poem was sent to me by Katie, a regular reader and commenter, as a response to Caspar David Friedrich's image. I am posting it here for the benefit of those who do not normally peek into the comments box - and, needless to say, as a way of expressing my thanks for her spontaneous contribution.

Mist in the Valley

These hills, to hurt me more,
Than I am hurt already enough,--
Having left the sea behind,
Having turned suddenly and left the shore
That I loved beyond all words, even a song’s words, to convey,

And built me a house on upland acres,
Sweet with the pinxter, bright and rough
With the rusty blackbird long before the winter’s done,
But smelling never of bayberry hot in the sun,
Nor ever loud with the pounding of the long white breakers,--

These hills, beneath the October moon,
Sit in the valley white with mist
Like islands in a quiet bay,

Jut out from shore into the mist,
Wooded with poplar dark as pine,
Like points of land into a quiet bay,
(Just in that way
The harbour met the bay)

Stricken too sore for tears,
I stand, remembering the islands and the sea’s lost sound...
Life at its best no longer than the sand-peep’s cry,
And I two years, two years,
Tilling an upland ground!

E.S.V. Millay

The Incredible Rightness Of Doing

Fig. 1. Sabine Weiss - Porte de Vanves, Paris, 1952


'I can, therefore I am.'

Simone Weil

Last week I discovered something (boxing) through a wonderful old friend (Mischa), then rediscovered something (dance) through a wonderful new friend (Jana). Yes, there has definitely been a sublime symmetry to the asymmetry of my recent experiences - about which I will write more at a later date.

Fig. 2. Flip Schulke - Ali Shadowboxing Underwater, 1960

Fig. 3. Pina Bausch's Wuppertal Tanztheater - Le Sacre Du Printemps (m. Igor Stravinsky), 2008

Your Ears Will Orgasm #8: Igor Stravinsky - Le Sacre Du Printemps (MixPod Player)

I, Ego

Fig. 1. M. C. Escher - Eye, 1946


'Narcissism! There is not narcissism and non-narcissism; there are narcissisms that are more or less comprehensive, generous, open, extended. What is called non-narcissism is in general but the economy of a much more welcoming, hospitable narcissism, one that is much more open to the experience of the other as other. I believe that without a movement of narcissistic reappropriation, the relation to the other would be absolutely destroyed, it would be destroyed in advance. The relation to the other - even if it remains asymmetrical, open, without possible reappropriation - must trace a movement of reappropriation in the image of oneself for love to be possible, for example. Love is narcissistic. Beyond that, there are little narcissisms, there are big narcissisms, and there is death in the end, which is the limit. Even in the experience - if there is one - of death, narcissism does not absolutely abdicate its power.'

Jacques Derrida