Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 19:34:58 +1000 From: Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan-AT-qut.edu.au> Subject: BHA: Kierkegaard commentary Post 3 of 4 Dear Listers, This is the third of my posts on Kierkegaard. The initial impulse was that they were pieces that I could not get into my conference paper as it was way too long. My paper was about the relationship between Bhaskar's alethia and Heidegger's aletheia, or I suppose between the rational and the intuitive mediated through the aesthetic. I completed these posts before the Lancaster Conference but have been unable to get back to them until now. Hopefully some will find it of interest. Regards Gary 'The Arabians say that Abdul Khain, the mystic, and Abu Ali Seena the philosopher, conferred together; and, on parting, the philosopher said, "All that he sees, I know"; and the mystic said, " All that he knows, I see." (Emerson)' Before I comment on Kierkegaard's journal entry for July 29 1835 the thought has occurred to me about my methodology- specifically why these particular pieces? It would be easy, I believe, to answer in terms of the typicality of the excerpts I have chosen. I am convinced that in terms of Kierkegaard's work they are indeed typical. However the real reason for my choice is that in their romanticism the passages selected fit in with my own specific tastes and I suppose needs. Thus I prefer Schubert to Bach though I am prepared to concede that the latter is a greater musician. Still Schubert's Notturno strikes me as being truer to my lived experience than anything I have found so far in Bach. Though I am working on the violin concertos. The passage from K.'s journal raises the question of the ontological status of religious experience, especially of the mystical variety- a question that is of particular relevance at present for the Critical realist movement. For the rationalist, when we read this particular entry in K.'s journal we are in the presence of yet another 'traume eines geistersehers' as Kant remarked dismissively of the mystic, Swedenborg. Religious experiences, such as those of Swedenborg, are accorded little respect today and are generally explained away in terms of personality traits or dopamine flows. To be honest I am anxious to fudge things here, in a desperate effort to hold onto what is left of my reputation for sanity. But I do not think that such a compromise stance can be maintained for long. Last nite over dinner I raised the topic of this post. Emboldened and fortified by several very cheeky reds I said that I believed that when K. spoke of the dead coming to comfort him that they really came. My older son gave me a look, which seemed to say that I had betrayed the cause, and he asked caustically, "From where did they come, dad?" It is impossible to answer that really. Either one believes or one does not. Still let us proceed with the passage. It begins with fairly commonplace geographical detail. However this gives way to a classic piece of romanticism revolving around the solitary experience of an encounter with nature. I am reminded very forcibly here of Wordsworth's sonnet: It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration; the broad sun is sinking down in its tranquillity; The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea; Listen! the mighty Being is awake And doth with his eternal motion make A sound like thunder - everlastingly. Dear Child! Dear Girl! That walkest with me here, If thou appear untouched by solemn thought, Thy nature is not therefore less divine: Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year; And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine, God being with thee when we know it not. In Wordsworth's case the experience of nature is also a religious one though mediated through the 'dear girl' (presumably his sister Dorothy). There is much in this of the Romantic belief that women were closer to nature and that the male could only approach that level of mystical communion through the woman. The same note is struck in Coleridge's Kubla Khan in the ecstatic vision of the 'damsel with a dulcimer.' It is the woman's symphony and song that the poet wishes to draw upon so he can speak to the masses: Could I revive within me her symphony and song To such delight would win me That with music loud and long I would build that dome in air. That magic dome. Those caves of ice And all that heard should see them there And all should cry, "Beware! Beware!' K.'s stance is however a solitary one and the mask of the seducer, which he has worn thoughout Either Or V 1 has been laid aside. When he does achieve communion it is with the dead. Whatever one thinks of the reality of the vision, the ecstatic experience is beautifully evoked and given the context of K.'s life it is very moving. However the achievement of subject-object identity can only be a fleeting one and the vision like all visions is broken and fades. Here the screech of the gulls plays the role that the 'gentleman from Porlock' played in the destruction of Coleridge's vision of Kubla Khan. However unlike Coleridge and Keats in Ode to a Nightingale the breaking of the ecstatic link does not bring despair. More like Wordsworth in this, K. draws upon the visionary experiences to mould them into a religious one. The birds woke him from the dream but the birds also remind him of Christ's promise that he will recognize our very thisness or haecceitas. It is a caring god and our personal fate does matter. This religious affirmation makes way for a healing of the duality of K.'s life. In a way which is very anticipatory of Bhaskar's personal transcendence of alienation in From East to West the duality of pride and humility is absented. Interestingly the ending of this split seems to K. to be the key to power. He can move now outside time and space and lever the world. Such a moment was not to be maintained for long throughout K.'s life and his religious inclinations were to become darker. But for the moment we are with the 22 year old philosopher as he moves from ecstatic mysticism, to religious certainty and then to a personal healing. The experience of healing and a certainty that we matter to a god take K. outside this world as he puts it 'outside the limitations of time and space'. It also takes him outside the experience or the interests of the rationalist, and thus we have come full circle. The aesthetic crafting of K.'s meditation is done with great skill but whether we wish to follow him is another matter. For the moment we content ourselves with saying that the alethia of these passages lies in its expression of a desire for an end to the alienation and splits and dualities that K. laboured under. It is our personal lived experience of the same divided world that lend K.'s visionary writing its power and appeal. --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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