Date: Tue, 25 Nov 1997 11:54:06 -0800
From: goya-AT-uvic.ca (Michael Chase)
Subject: Re: PLC: Art and truth


>Michael Chase wrote:
>
>> (...) What do y'all think?
>
>That you can be a reasonable and learned 20th century man, and still be
>a neo-platonician.

M.C.: I suppose that's true, but I don't see its relevance to my post. I
suppose you're referring to the feeling of oneness with the cosmos as
"Neoplatonic"; but apart from the fact that such feelings were Stoic half a
millennium before Neoplatonism, it's quite possible to have such an
experience  independently of one's metaphysical beliefs. Hadot quotes Klee
and Cezanne; he might have added Kandinsky's _Art of Spiritual Harmony_
(London 1914). Epicureans practiced aesthetic contemplation of the cosmos
without so much as a smidgen of Neoplatonism; see Lucretius with the
commentary of B. Frischer, _The Scupted Word_.

        In fact the realization of mankind's oneness with the universe
seems to be a universal experience; poets and artists seem especially
susceptible to it; compare e.g. Whitman with Levin's vision in _Anna
Karenina_.
>

Michael Chase
(goya-AT-uvic.ca)
Victoria, B.C.
Canada




     --- from list phillitcrit-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---