Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 14:03:48 +0100
From: Henk van Tuijl <Henk.van.Tuijl-AT-net.HCC.nl>
Subject: Re: philosophy and poetry


Allen,

You write:
> My sense is that the use of the term "religious" 
> here means to capture the commitment to cultivating, 
> FORMing the absolutely human human being. This 
> Bildung is moving torwads the Bestimmung which 
> reflects back the "Idea" to show the way. Isn't the 
> Idea here a more realized version of the pars por
> toto chacacter of the fragment? And doesn't the part 
> played by Bestimmung here find an echo in the 
> "movement" generated by the hermeneutical circle,
> which also requires a religious orientation?

Before he came up with the name _Idees_, Schlegel considered to call
these new "fragments" _Pensees_ (Thoughts) or _Vues_ (Views).
Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy seem to be very adamant - but perhaps unjustly
so: "[...] les idees, jamais l'Idee" (187).

Roughly: ... ideas, never the Idea.

The _Idees_ are indeed a further development of the _Fragment_.
Following Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy even a negative one, in the light of
what one the romatics tried to achieve: "[l'art] ne cherchait pas cet
absolu de facon systematique, il cherchait bien plutot a l'inverse a
saisir le Systeme de facon absolue" (67).

Roughly: ... art didn't search for the absolute in a systematic way, on
the contrary it sought to do this by getting a grip on the System in an
absolute way.
  
The problems of the _Idees_ are evident: the "absolute" don't match with
the auto-centric and pluri-centric character of the _Idees_ - but the
"absolute" matches very well with the anonyimity of the _pars pro toto_,
by implying The Work of Art as a whole.
  
You write:
> I still find the positing of an "esoteric 
> initiation" here a romantic step too far. The 
> moment which requires the formation into a society 
> can be overly mystified, but here I think the notion 
> of hermeneutical conversation can serve just as well 
> to bring all the necessary combinations into the
> Bildung (so to speak). 

Nevertheless, the question of art and religion is not simply Schlegel's.
It is also Schelling's, Hegel's and Heidegger's. Besides, it is not
simply a question of art and religion:

"Ce qui [...] ne revient pas du tout a dire qu'il s'agit simplement
[...] d'une religion de l'art - ni pas davantage, d'une religion
"esthetique". Non, ce dont il s'agit ici est tout autre chose: c'est
proprement _l'art comme religion_" (201)

Roughly:  
This doesn't mean that it is simply a question of a religion of art, nor
of an "esthetic" religion. No, what matters here, is something
completely different: it is, to be precise, _art as religion_.

For the moment I cannot see how the hermeneutic conversation can be the
equivalent of art as religion. 

You write:
> Lecoue-Lebarthe report the important programmatic
> part played in the whole project by Schlegel's 
> letter "On Philosophy." This letter to Dorothea 
> seems to have chosen the "cultivated woman" as the
> ideal interlocutor to play the "other" in the Bildung 
> that would penetrate deepest into the resources of 
> human being. Following upon this letter, there were 
> some other interesting attempts at such epistolatory
> conversations, and then finally Blanchot's l'entriene 
> infini which seems to obviate the need for both the 
> letter and the woman, by taking more risks with the 
> formal possibilties of conversation.

It is an endearing trait of French intellectuals that they prefer a good
conversation above anything. Since intellectual conversations are about
what is important in life, accounts of one's relations with or - in a
more sublimated form - one's letters or _carte postales_ to or about
woman are often important forms of the _entretien infini_ (endless
conversation). It would certainly be taken a risk if one tried to change
the formal possibilities of such a conversation.
   
Besides, I cannot see how taking these risks would be of any help. The
System of the romantics (with the exception of Hoelderlin, says
Heidegger) is the System of German Idealism. Heidegger gives the
following description of Schelling's planned revolution:

"Schelling glaubt vielmehr, die Frage des Systems, d.h. der Einheit des
Seienden im Ganzen, sei gerettet, wenn nur die Einheit des eigentlich
Einigenden, die des Absoluten, recht gefasst werde." (_Schelling_ 194)

Roughly:
Schelling tends to believe that the question of the System, i.e. the
unity of being in its totallity, is saved, when the unity of the
authentic Unifiying, of the Absolute, is well understood.

The romantic _Fragment_ and the _Idees_ may be seen as attempts to get
an absolute grip on the System. And the way to do this is God. Because,
such an undertaking is not for "Normalmenschen" (common men), as
Heidegger 
calls them, but for Hoederlin's "Andrer" (Other):

"... Denn weil
Die Seeligsten nicht fuehlen von selbst, 
Muss wohl, wenn solches zu sagen
Erlaubt ist, in der Goetter Nahmen
Theilnhemend fuehlen ein Anderer,
Den brauchen sie ..." (_Der Rhein_)

Very inadequately:
Because even the most blessed don't feel of themselves, there must be,
if to say so is allowed, in the name of the Gods an Other feeling
empatically. They need him ...

This is the "exemplarite" Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy mention - an example
given as it were by a "Stellvertreter" (substitute), an intermediary
between man and gods. 

The question is, of course, in what way the "Fuersprecher" and
"Stellvertreter" differ - and - if both can be reduced to the more
prozaic "entretien indefini", and if they represent different kinds of
"entretien"? 

Kindest regards,
Henk




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