Philosophy/writings
In defence of illusion
27/12/2024
Nietzsche, Science, illusion. Truth and illusion.
In this piece, I attempt to investigate the illusion and object in Art, and look at its disappearance within the progression of art movements. I hope to explore corollaries with the project of science and the implications for the human subject. I
We will be employing a number of philosophers to help us on our way.
“You cannot go on seeing through things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it…if you see through everything then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To see through all things is the same as not to see.”
In the Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche’s first book, he sets out two opposes forces at work in humankind. The Dionysian, the instinctive, chaotic, creative force, and the Apollonian, the controlled, symbolic illusory force, making sense of the chaos of the Dionysian. Both work sitogether, connecting us to the world. Nietzsche argues that early Greek tragedy performs and links the people to their natural world, and makes sense of the sufferings of existence. The sense made here is the acceptance of suffering as an immutable aspect of living, and indeed the substantial aspect of meaning and positivity.
The illusion created in tragedy appears as a pessimistic tale of woe,but, in its final acceptance as overcoming, it becomes, in its transcendence, supremely positive. There is nothing more affirmative than this, than standing up to reality, reality which is necessarily painful, and saying yes. Nietzsche regards a healthy culture( and that he considered the ancient Greeks), one which deals with its sufferings with acceptance and bravery.
Nietzsche in the Gay science develops this concept as Amor Fati, which he builds into his doctrine of the eternal recurrence. He offers a thought experiment, proposing that if you were to live your same life over and over again, infinitum. How would this make you feel? Although his exact meaning is ambiguous, I understand his meaning to be thus, especially in light of his Greek tragedy influence. It is clear the importance of our own choices throughout our life, and Nietzsche urges the presence of mind to understand the urgency of living, and affirm ourselves within the world. More importantly, and we can assume this from his stance against Schopenhauer and the Buddhist tradition, he urges an aesthetic approach to pain and suffering. Misfortune, physical discomforts, and bad choices will necessarily be part of our evolution. These are not to be considered the evils of our life, but intrinsic to all that we feel and become. To turn away from these sufferings is to turn away from life itself. This attitude he maintains works in the past present and future. Nietzsche uses the tradition of science as the anthesis to this, beginning with Socrates, as the the tradition of doubt. Doubting appearance altogether. As not real, and looking for reality and truth beneath the surface or beyond somehow. Instead of affirming yourself in reality, one doubts appearance and reality itself. The condition of existence is in the negative, and he proposes if we see see the world as a doubt in this sense it will be. Recently in the 2021 book Humankind, the author draws up a similar a antithesis between the logical position of Bertrand Russel and the mysticism of William James. Briefly russel posits doubt as the will to truth, and James posits hope as the creator of truth.
Nietzsche’s position is complex as he employs many tools of a logician as he dismantles illusions in his polemic works. His respect for science and logic is clear. To be sure his suspicion of appearance, and use of genealogy, shatters illusions from within.
What happens when we destroy the illusion. The Apollonian object, the dream illusion, that stands between us and the thing in itself, the real. It is in this thing of Apollonian subjectivity, of utter individuation, that the artist attempts to ascribe a universality, a feature of the thing in itself, some transcendent aspect, and present to the world.
Are we mistakenly eradicating the illusion in favour of a truer world which is on
Y a more fundamental illusion. What we want to know, is what happens when we grow tied of this object and do away with it. What do we call it then? Can we get rid off f it?
Art as tragic. Pessimistic. As a doubt. Yet a universal understanding of the opacity of the self and existence.
Science logic( as eliminatiive materialism- all is quantifiable material, and there is no reason why at some point in time it will be known to us) as optimistic, in its belief that all is ultimately transparent,solvable.
It is important to make a distinction between the logic of scientific method and it’s clear use in technological advancement and the more fundamental idea of science ideology, which maintains a belief that all is material, and all knowledge can be discovered in the material, whether it be the brain or whatever. Eliminative materialists such as Patricia Churchland, scientists such as Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins fall into this category. Can we trace this back to Descartes’ foundationalism- his insistence that there is a foundational truth - an essence.
So here we must look at the very intention of art. What is it for?
If we are to look at the myriad of representational visual art created over the centuries, what common element can we suggest exists amongst them?. What is the purpose of the illusion, the justified lie, the error. It is not the will to truth as employed by the scientists and philosophers.
propose, all successful art explores the existential opacity of our existence. Our contradiction. Our tragedy. Our pessimism. And it is on this opacity the illusion appears.Although this pessimism maybe considered a negativity. Here too we must see the contradiction. The absurd quality of its necessity. In the fact that it recreates itself as positivity.
In the landscape we long for ourselves, and in nature, in the wilderness, our individuation is most at threat from obliteration. In these areas we feel our subjectivity most sharply, as the indifference of the universal “will” clearly underpins us. We sometimes literally feel we have to hold ourselves together. We find painters such as Turner, Van Gogh, constable explore this territory.
As we witness the March of the art world, we see more the artist becoming increasingly adopting, the role of scientist, philosopher historicist, preoccupied in “getting to the truth”. We witness forms of this technically in the rise of the illusion to the surface of the object(canvas), a focus on flatness, and material and then the eventual removal of the object altogether. As a grand metaphor, or statement on a state of affairs. It is clear, and is my argument that this endeavour was a philosophically motivated movement to eradicate the lie of illusion of art and recreate a purified, more real Art.
In some sense the art- product we want is one without inherent meaning. Didactic meaning. Rationality. Reason. Logic We want it to inspire meaning. I s
The concept is one of ambiguity, it cannot form, and in some sense is unsymbolised. Hence analogy in painting always seems to be a step down for the viewer, as they are taken to the prescribed world of the concept. A thing that arrives with its own limit. What would an artwork be as a schoolmaster. To be work8ng on logic.A sea painting is not an investigation into the properties of water. The logic of water. In a contradiction I consider the purpose an exploration of our relationship with phenomena, and indeed the thing in itself underpinning that phenomena. Is it not our inability to capture the phenomena, or ourselves as phenomenem which sustains us.?.. the artistic purpose is not one of conquest or even knowledge. The purpose there force runs contrary to
In David Lynch lost highway, nature as with the xxx character might say- you will never have me.
To investigate further I will bring together two very unlikely bedfellows, C.S Lewis and Fridrich Nietzsche, in the books the abolition of man and The Birth of Tragedy. Both writers propose universal elements in mankind attacked by scientific ideology. Both writers set out to criticise aspects of logic which claim to free human kind but as they suggest destroy him. I will attempt to refer this to ART in a very general sense to elucidate these ideas.
Lewis although seems diametrically opposed to Nietzsche’s subjectivism, I think shares the same concerns that Nietzsche outlines, illustrating the advent of the theoretical man(the objective man), in the figure of Socrates, one led by his conscious mind, as the father or emblem of science as the, the man of Knowledge as the new hero(virtue as knowledge), and saviour and justifier of existence.
Nietzsche proposes and warns that science and logic threatens to engulf all in its logic become doctrine. All becomes science. This he maintains is because science clearly considers itself of the highest utility, an unselfish and, objective( toward truth) and therefore amorally good practice. The only true way. It is clear he aims not to denounce science as such, but to highlight its potential, in its incessant drive for truth to destroy necessary untruths delivered to us. Myths and illusions which have possibly helped to preserve the species through the ages are the inevitable victims. Nietzsche’s question is how much can we understand/ trust this pathology to truth, and the dangers today when hypothesis and exploration in Science are allowed to be interpreted as truth and indeed especially in theoretical physics act as a metaphysics. In other words how can we trust the idea of truth, of concrete reality, of explanation, through the interpretation of logic, our construction, constructed from our interpretations. It is true
When Stephen Hawking claimed that philosophy was dead, and the meaning of the universe would one day be explainable in materialist terms( albeit by unprovable mathematical models), was strangely ignoring the fact that he was philosophising. The eminent scientist Robert Feynman, is quoted to have said when asked, what science is, in his Cornell lecture 1964 said, “ first we guess it.. then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what, if it’s right, if this law that we guessed is right, to see what it would imply, and then when compare the computation results to nature, or we say compare the experiment to experience, compare it directly to observations to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment. It is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.” No wonder Hawking did not appear once in Cox’s book.
It is the conjuring trick of contemporary physics which creates this “ sublime metaphysical illusion”, and science in general which maintains the guise of “knowing”. people are so hungry for. ( including myself)Extraordinary numbers and comparisons, quantum realms, multi dimensions, gene science,climate science, genderisation(chromazones). The re-creation of reality on the level of the Kantian thing in itself. A reality which is us but we cannot access, cannot see naturally or understand. A chipping away of the phenomenal world- our world, the world of appearances, the world of meaning. Nietzsche, in his time, was aware of the strength of science in its re creation of the world and the inability of “science” to understand its’ subjective stance, it’s new morality. Think vaccine science and climate science and the massive morality debate outfall. Nietzsche levels this argument at philosophers as well, proposing it to be an illusion itself to think that anything can be done in human reality without judgement and therefore moral purpose. Recently in a Netflix series- Midnight mass secular science was lauded in the throws of death- sublime descriptions of the cosmos, and our essence as recreated stardust were a comfort to the dying girl. This was held in sharp distinction with Christianity which was illustrated as an attractive but absurd illusion given over to the fearful and ignorant. The source of comfort in the words of the dying girl are the material itself. Not just stuff. But material as a kind of cosmic, eternal, sublime thing, which is us and on our demise would return again to the cosmos. Is this not religious? Dust to dust etc. The illusion created here just as material becomes the new God.. Secular science, let’s also say eliminative materialism ,says, there is no God, or any non physical intelligent entity, including your mind, or soul or spirit. but you are the culmination of a billion years of evolution, you live on a planet situated in a galaxy amongst an indefinite amount of galaxies, in a universe which extends beyond the visible horizon, 46 billion light years away. You are surrounded by stars which number more than all the grains of sand on all the beaches in the world. You are the totality an arrangement of atoms which are made from smaller particles, of which we have little to no understanding as they do not obey Newtonian physics. Additionally it has been observed that the known universe is made of what we know as dark matter, which we cannot observe of understand.
The important thing to note here is secular science believes it unchains us from illusion, as it observes the truth of the world. As we have somehow made our way out of Platos cave. When in reality, only another illusion appears and a new morality. ( as Kant superimposed)But this is our fate. Our mistake would to believe the illusion as real, as it was once before us. Why is it that Science wears such a positive mask? Why is it so pleased with itself?
here we begin to enter the dangerous area of solipsism. We must reign ourselves in and believe that our new found phenomena , the things out there are responsible for our illusions at least, at least so far. Why not replace the old
. Nietzsche illustrates the point in an exploration of tragic art-Greek tragedy and the opposing forms of Dionysius and Apollo. Dionysius as the formless, chaotic drive, represented analogously by drunken revellers. This force represents the universal drive of existence, the blind drive, the thing in itself as Kant conceived it, the Will as schophanuer expressed it. Apollo, in contradiction is the controlled symbolised form. The individualising force which can carve sense from the Dionysian, which experienced in isolation would be intolerable . Both work in opposition but together as a force of creation. Nietzsche argues, The rise of logic, with Socrates as its ancestor, displaced the myth, giving rise to the will
It was Schopenhauer who set out the idea of music as the embodied form of the will/ the thing in itself.
Although Lewis cites Nietzsche as a arbiter of aberrant values, or at least promoting the allowance for the creation of such; but we find in Nietzsche writing an overarching concern for devaluation and a concrete form of what he thinks those values are. What are those values Nietzsche wishes to protect expressed in The Birth of Tragedy??
“Tragedy is able through the tragic hero, to deliver us from the intense longing for this existence, and to remind us with warning hand of another existence and higher joy, for which the struggling hero prepares himself presentiently by his disstruction not his victories..”
The subjectivism that Nietzsche urges is not arbitrary invention of values or perspective, but utter involvement in life, even at its worst. To live is to accept suffering, as does the tragic hero, not in victory, but ultimately in failure. Amor fati.But, crucially, failure not as resignation, but as a source of power, transcendence. Albert Camus in the myth if Sisyphus, illustrates this with the picture of Sisyphus embracing his absurd, futile existence not with defeat but intensity and passion. However Nietzsche does qualify these values as aesthetically produced as opposed to the Kantian idea that morality lies in a universal categorical system in our make up. This idea is taken up by the. Existentialists.
We see echoes of this in Sartre and DeBeauvoir, at an ontological, structural level as the non identical self. A split self which longs to be itself, a unity, but is necessarily obstructed from this fulfilment.
We
To live as a the subject and object , as opposed to the critic who objectifies this spectacle of existence( the Socratic way). Much like an observer watching surfers and kayakers in the ocean from a tower, but never setting foot in the ocean itself. But as the critic, able to talk at length on the activities, without actually experiencing it. Such is the metaphysical illusion of science(ideology). Of course, in the pursuit of truth our adventurous man of science may necessarily find himself far out in stormy seas. Risking reality in many greater forms than any artist ever did.( as Newton did)
So, the destruction of the illusion in modern art, began as the pursuit of what?. Truth?, reality, scientific truth. Marxist truth? As the object had been infected by the bourgeois lust for commodity. A fetishistic love for the thing.We witness the illusion make its way further and further to the surface, as honest material, first as abstracted form, as simplified geometric shape. Faithful to a Platonic quest for the forms, for a purity of existence found beyond appearance. We find the human form pulled apart, fractured and distorted, in a move to approach closer to the essence of our humanness, our psychology. Our essence?
I also suggest the manifestation of materialism and the appetite for the surface, for material itself, was at play, additionally with the rise of Marxism and dialectical materialism, we see a clear departure from illusion. In the pursuit of illusion we look in the world for our objects, or in the phantasmagoria of our imaginations, or a mixture of both. The world of appearance is the source.In the departure from illusion we look for reality in material or in the idea itself( we will broach conceptual art later.Even before with the impressionists, we witness the demise of the object within the illusion as clear delineation of objects is replaced by fracturing light, creating form with light and tone alone. As the object disappears into abstraction, so in some sense do we. Van Gogh with his overt, feverish psychology puts the objects firmly back in the illusion, and with it himself.
What do we perceive when we behold illusionist paintings. Paintings of recognisable objects. The ambiguity of experience. Like in life we allow the object to communicate to us. We want it to. We want a link to the world. We want that ambiguity of subject/object. We want to me motivated to meaning. Not have meaning
If with think for a moment in existential terminology, let us say that a work of art is a transcendental object. We consider a human to be a being for itself, in that it is self reflecting and non identical. Non identical as it fails to match what it is, to its projection of itself. A being that is transcendent as it continually attempts to become itself. An object is in the category of the in itself. It is not self regarding. So an object imbued with the qualities of the for-itself can be said, technically at least, to be a a transcendent thing(as artifact.). It tries to become.
In all forms of Art where we see the artist clearly substituting subjectivism for historicism. can we not say that they have become critic, a journalist. But we must not trap ourselves in purity of a single definition, and must be careful to consider the effect, and overall use.
Tattoo analogy.
We can safely say that the spirit of the age can be expressed in the use current use of the tattoo. That is freely chosen by the individual, to somehow reflect their valuation. We can distinguish this from the traditional purpose of the tattoo- Celtic, Maori, military.Which would be ascribed/bestowedto an individual from a higher power. That is a universal power/value speaking through the human in symbolised form. I.e tattoo for courage etc. The symbol will express the this transcendental element on this phenomenon, the mortal human.
This is where misinterpretations of Nietzsche have occurred, and rightly so, in that the creation of values could be conceived of the whim of an individual, like a child God, a pharaoh, of decrees that this is that or so and so.
The whim of an individual is not powerful enough in its dialectic form to create anything of any worth. As old Hume proposed, reason serves the passions, not the other way round. The silent driver steering our chattering consciousness. Who mistakenly takes the credit.
Is this the contradiction in Nietzsche, or mis judgement. In that Nietzsche’s revaluation of values, really means a return to a Natural valuation system.
An affirmation.The real problem of the dialectic, is that we lose the transcendental guide, and begin to use “rationality “as a guide, which in itself seems reasonable. But rationality can detaches itself and becomes mad, like the chatterings of social media. Example - nazi logic, woke logic,cultural war. etc etc.
So Art, in the sense we have described, is inextricably linked with the experiencing, suffering( as a necessary state of the experiencing being), the subjectivity of being an object, in existential terminology transcendence and immanence.; being on the edge of opacity, as an expression of this.
In a purely rational world, there is no reason for art( as Plato- suggested, because as illusion, as a representation of a representation, it is a lie). Strange, however, he develops a system of truth based on an imagined realm of pure forms. Another unprovable world. Hannah Arendt believes Plato departed from the reality of the world in angered response to the execution of Socrates.
In a purely rational world, art would be rational, possibly created to serve of senses, against irrationality. A narcotic. Not to enliven us but to send us to sleep. The opposite of the Dionysian form, not the Apollonian, but a dream state without illusion.
A rational/science world that holds itself to be the metaphysical dream illusion of itself wants to destroy all illusion, all myth, all Art.( think terminator) It has no use for this in its own illusion. Apart from as narcotic, when it tires of its own logic, as we have described,
If logic conceives non-logic to be an obstruction to its own limits. Is this an error? Has quantum observations affected this.?
Is this the logic presented in the history of Art?. From a number of philosophical angles we will consider the disappearance of the illusion and object from the art world.
Returning to the Abolition of man by C S Lewis.. Does the trend in the progression of art movements , mimic or reflect the general trend in scientific/ biological materialism in its dismantling of the human and with it -meaning.
Subjectivity and hyper subjectivity, - that only refers to itself.
In scientific terms- to destroy illusion and then the object which carries the illusion is this scientification of art.? In that it sees the utility of illusion, the lie as a problemThe problem for conceptual art, is that once the idea is communicated, ( linguistically), any visual or oral experience follows as nostalgic baggage, after it has destroyed art as the primary function. We are now hav.
Considering the success of science, it seems unfair, even ridiculous, to shed doubt on it as a project. But maybe it is indeed a victim of its own success, and now after a decent run in the last two centuries it is beginning to become more acquainted with failure and doubt. Recently during the pandemic we have seen how data, predictions, models can can confuse and mislead humans as much as help. Climate change also features here. It is not the data which is in question, but the interpretation which can be manipulated for political and emotional reasons. The human reaction to risk is very diverse.
Art self aggrandisement - quote cioran page 30.
Art which only takes itself as the subject matter. The epitome of clique, as it enjoys its own jokes, scorns the past, in its ignorance. Scorns the world in its ignorance. An intellectual episode in the hands of idiots.
Let us delve further into the realm of truth in Art as a motivation and a function.
In this piece, I attempt to investigate the illusion and object in Art, and look at its disappearance within the progression of art movements. I hope to explore corollaries with the project of science and the implications for the human subject. I
We will be employing a number of philosophers to help us on our way.
“You cannot go on seeing through things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it…if you see through everything then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To see through all things is the same as not to see.”
In the Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche’s first book, he sets out two opposes forces at work in humankind. The Dionysian, the instinctive, chaotic, creative force, and the Apollonian, the controlled, symbolic illusory force, making sense of the chaos of the Dionysian. Both work sitogether, connecting us to the world. Nietzsche argues that early Greek tragedy performs and links the people to their natural world, and makes sense of the sufferings of existence. The sense made here is the acceptance of suffering as an immutable aspect of living, and indeed the substantial aspect of meaning and positivity.
The illusion created in tragedy appears as a pessimistic tale of woe,but, in its final acceptance as overcoming, it becomes, in its transcendence, supremely positive. There is nothing more affirmative than this, than standing up to reality, reality which is necessarily painful, and saying yes. Nietzsche regards a healthy culture( and that he considered the ancient Greeks), one which deals with its sufferings with acceptance and bravery.
Nietzsche in the Gay science develops this concept as Amor Fati, which he builds into his doctrine of the eternal recurrence. He offers a thought experiment, proposing that if you were to live your same life over and over again, infinitum. How would this make you feel? Although his exact meaning is ambiguous, I understand his meaning to be thus, especially in light of his Greek tragedy influence. It is clear the importance of our own choices throughout our life, and Nietzsche urges the presence of mind to understand the urgency of living, and affirm ourselves within the world. More importantly, and we can assume this from his stance against Schopenhauer and the Buddhist tradition, he urges an aesthetic approach to pain and suffering. Misfortune, physical discomforts, and bad choices will necessarily be part of our evolution. These are not to be considered the evils of our life, but intrinsic to all that we feel and become. To turn away from these sufferings is to turn away from life itself. This attitude he maintains works in the past present and future. Nietzsche uses the tradition of science as the anthesis to this, beginning with Socrates, as the the tradition of doubt. Doubting appearance altogether. As not real, and looking for reality and truth beneath the surface or beyond somehow. Instead of affirming yourself in reality, one doubts appearance and reality itself. The condition of existence is in the negative, and he proposes if we see see the world as a doubt in this sense it will be. Recently in the 2021 book Humankind, the author draws up a similar a antithesis between the logical position of Bertrand Russel and the mysticism of William James. Briefly russel posits doubt as the will to truth, and James posits hope as the creator of truth.
Nietzsche’s position is complex as he employs many tools of a logician as he dismantles illusions in his polemic works. His respect for science and logic is clear. To be sure his suspicion of appearance, and use of genealogy, shatters illusions from within.
What happens when we destroy the illusion. The Apollonian object, the dream illusion, that stands between us and the thing in itself, the real. It is in this thing of Apollonian subjectivity, of utter individuation, that the artist attempts to ascribe a universality, a feature of the thing in itself, some transcendent aspect, and present to the world.
Are we mistakenly eradicating the illusion in favour of a truer world which is on
Y a more fundamental illusion. What we want to know, is what happens when we grow tied of this object and do away with it. What do we call it then? Can we get rid off f it?
Art as tragic. Pessimistic. As a doubt. Yet a universal understanding of the opacity of the self and existence.
Science logic( as eliminatiive materialism- all is quantifiable material, and there is no reason why at some point in time it will be known to us) as optimistic, in its belief that all is ultimately transparent,solvable.
It is important to make a distinction between the logic of scientific method and it’s clear use in technological advancement and the more fundamental idea of science ideology, which maintains a belief that all is material, and all knowledge can be discovered in the material, whether it be the brain or whatever. Eliminative materialists such as Patricia Churchland, scientists such as Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins fall into this category. Can we trace this back to Descartes’ foundationalism- his insistence that there is a foundational truth - an essence.
So here we must look at the very intention of art. What is it for?
If we are to look at the myriad of representational visual art created over the centuries, what common element can we suggest exists amongst them?. What is the purpose of the illusion, the justified lie, the error. It is not the will to truth as employed by the scientists and philosophers.
propose, all successful art explores the existential opacity of our existence. Our contradiction. Our tragedy. Our pessimism. And it is on this opacity the illusion appears.Although this pessimism maybe considered a negativity. Here too we must see the contradiction. The absurd quality of its necessity. In the fact that it recreates itself as positivity.
In the landscape we long for ourselves, and in nature, in the wilderness, our individuation is most at threat from obliteration. In these areas we feel our subjectivity most sharply, as the indifference of the universal “will” clearly underpins us. We sometimes literally feel we have to hold ourselves together. We find painters such as Turner, Van Gogh, constable explore this territory.
As we witness the March of the art world, we see more the artist becoming increasingly adopting, the role of scientist, philosopher historicist, preoccupied in “getting to the truth”. We witness forms of this technically in the rise of the illusion to the surface of the object(canvas), a focus on flatness, and material and then the eventual removal of the object altogether. As a grand metaphor, or statement on a state of affairs. It is clear, and is my argument that this endeavour was a philosophically motivated movement to eradicate the lie of illusion of art and recreate a purified, more real Art.
In some sense the art- product we want is one without inherent meaning. Didactic meaning. Rationality. Reason. Logic We want it to inspire meaning. I s
The concept is one of ambiguity, it cannot form, and in some sense is unsymbolised. Hence analogy in painting always seems to be a step down for the viewer, as they are taken to the prescribed world of the concept. A thing that arrives with its own limit. What would an artwork be as a schoolmaster. To be work8ng on logic.A sea painting is not an investigation into the properties of water. The logic of water. In a contradiction I consider the purpose an exploration of our relationship with phenomena, and indeed the thing in itself underpinning that phenomena. Is it not our inability to capture the phenomena, or ourselves as phenomenem which sustains us.?.. the artistic purpose is not one of conquest or even knowledge. The purpose there force runs contrary to
In David Lynch lost highway, nature as with the xxx character might say- you will never have me.
To investigate further I will bring together two very unlikely bedfellows, C.S Lewis and Fridrich Nietzsche, in the books the abolition of man and The Birth of Tragedy. Both writers propose universal elements in mankind attacked by scientific ideology. Both writers set out to criticise aspects of logic which claim to free human kind but as they suggest destroy him. I will attempt to refer this to ART in a very general sense to elucidate these ideas.
Lewis although seems diametrically opposed to Nietzsche’s subjectivism, I think shares the same concerns that Nietzsche outlines, illustrating the advent of the theoretical man(the objective man), in the figure of Socrates, one led by his conscious mind, as the father or emblem of science as the, the man of Knowledge as the new hero(virtue as knowledge), and saviour and justifier of existence.
Nietzsche proposes and warns that science and logic threatens to engulf all in its logic become doctrine. All becomes science. This he maintains is because science clearly considers itself of the highest utility, an unselfish and, objective( toward truth) and therefore amorally good practice. The only true way. It is clear he aims not to denounce science as such, but to highlight its potential, in its incessant drive for truth to destroy necessary untruths delivered to us. Myths and illusions which have possibly helped to preserve the species through the ages are the inevitable victims. Nietzsche’s question is how much can we understand/ trust this pathology to truth, and the dangers today when hypothesis and exploration in Science are allowed to be interpreted as truth and indeed especially in theoretical physics act as a metaphysics. In other words how can we trust the idea of truth, of concrete reality, of explanation, through the interpretation of logic, our construction, constructed from our interpretations. It is true
When Stephen Hawking claimed that philosophy was dead, and the meaning of the universe would one day be explainable in materialist terms( albeit by unprovable mathematical models), was strangely ignoring the fact that he was philosophising. The eminent scientist Robert Feynman, is quoted to have said when asked, what science is, in his Cornell lecture 1964 said, “ first we guess it.. then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what, if it’s right, if this law that we guessed is right, to see what it would imply, and then when compare the computation results to nature, or we say compare the experiment to experience, compare it directly to observations to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment. It is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.” No wonder Hawking did not appear once in Cox’s book.
It is the conjuring trick of contemporary physics which creates this “ sublime metaphysical illusion”, and science in general which maintains the guise of “knowing”. people are so hungry for. ( including myself)Extraordinary numbers and comparisons, quantum realms, multi dimensions, gene science,climate science, genderisation(chromazones). The re-creation of reality on the level of the Kantian thing in itself. A reality which is us but we cannot access, cannot see naturally or understand. A chipping away of the phenomenal world- our world, the world of appearances, the world of meaning. Nietzsche, in his time, was aware of the strength of science in its re creation of the world and the inability of “science” to understand its’ subjective stance, it’s new morality. Think vaccine science and climate science and the massive morality debate outfall. Nietzsche levels this argument at philosophers as well, proposing it to be an illusion itself to think that anything can be done in human reality without judgement and therefore moral purpose. Recently in a Netflix series- Midnight mass secular science was lauded in the throws of death- sublime descriptions of the cosmos, and our essence as recreated stardust were a comfort to the dying girl. This was held in sharp distinction with Christianity which was illustrated as an attractive but absurd illusion given over to the fearful and ignorant. The source of comfort in the words of the dying girl are the material itself. Not just stuff. But material as a kind of cosmic, eternal, sublime thing, which is us and on our demise would return again to the cosmos. Is this not religious? Dust to dust etc. The illusion created here just as material becomes the new God.. Secular science, let’s also say eliminative materialism ,says, there is no God, or any non physical intelligent entity, including your mind, or soul or spirit. but you are the culmination of a billion years of evolution, you live on a planet situated in a galaxy amongst an indefinite amount of galaxies, in a universe which extends beyond the visible horizon, 46 billion light years away. You are surrounded by stars which number more than all the grains of sand on all the beaches in the world. You are the totality an arrangement of atoms which are made from smaller particles, of which we have little to no understanding as they do not obey Newtonian physics. Additionally it has been observed that the known universe is made of what we know as dark matter, which we cannot observe of understand.
The important thing to note here is secular science believes it unchains us from illusion, as it observes the truth of the world. As we have somehow made our way out of Platos cave. When in reality, only another illusion appears and a new morality. ( as Kant superimposed)But this is our fate. Our mistake would to believe the illusion as real, as it was once before us. Why is it that Science wears such a positive mask? Why is it so pleased with itself?
here we begin to enter the dangerous area of solipsism. We must reign ourselves in and believe that our new found phenomena , the things out there are responsible for our illusions at least, at least so far. Why not replace the old
. Nietzsche illustrates the point in an exploration of tragic art-Greek tragedy and the opposing forms of Dionysius and Apollo. Dionysius as the formless, chaotic drive, represented analogously by drunken revellers. This force represents the universal drive of existence, the blind drive, the thing in itself as Kant conceived it, the Will as schophanuer expressed it. Apollo, in contradiction is the controlled symbolised form. The individualising force which can carve sense from the Dionysian, which experienced in isolation would be intolerable . Both work in opposition but together as a force of creation. Nietzsche argues, The rise of logic, with Socrates as its ancestor, displaced the myth, giving rise to the will
It was Schopenhauer who set out the idea of music as the embodied form of the will/ the thing in itself.
Although Lewis cites Nietzsche as a arbiter of aberrant values, or at least promoting the allowance for the creation of such; but we find in Nietzsche writing an overarching concern for devaluation and a concrete form of what he thinks those values are. What are those values Nietzsche wishes to protect expressed in The Birth of Tragedy??
“Tragedy is able through the tragic hero, to deliver us from the intense longing for this existence, and to remind us with warning hand of another existence and higher joy, for which the struggling hero prepares himself presentiently by his disstruction not his victories..”
The subjectivism that Nietzsche urges is not arbitrary invention of values or perspective, but utter involvement in life, even at its worst. To live is to accept suffering, as does the tragic hero, not in victory, but ultimately in failure. Amor fati.But, crucially, failure not as resignation, but as a source of power, transcendence. Albert Camus in the myth if Sisyphus, illustrates this with the picture of Sisyphus embracing his absurd, futile existence not with defeat but intensity and passion. However Nietzsche does qualify these values as aesthetically produced as opposed to the Kantian idea that morality lies in a universal categorical system in our make up. This idea is taken up by the. Existentialists.
We see echoes of this in Sartre and DeBeauvoir, at an ontological, structural level as the non identical self. A split self which longs to be itself, a unity, but is necessarily obstructed from this fulfilment.
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To live as a the subject and object , as opposed to the critic who objectifies this spectacle of existence( the Socratic way). Much like an observer watching surfers and kayakers in the ocean from a tower, but never setting foot in the ocean itself. But as the critic, able to talk at length on the activities, without actually experiencing it. Such is the metaphysical illusion of science(ideology). Of course, in the pursuit of truth our adventurous man of science may necessarily find himself far out in stormy seas. Risking reality in many greater forms than any artist ever did.( as Newton did)
So, the destruction of the illusion in modern art, began as the pursuit of what?. Truth?, reality, scientific truth. Marxist truth? As the object had been infected by the bourgeois lust for commodity. A fetishistic love for the thing.We witness the illusion make its way further and further to the surface, as honest material, first as abstracted form, as simplified geometric shape. Faithful to a Platonic quest for the forms, for a purity of existence found beyond appearance. We find the human form pulled apart, fractured and distorted, in a move to approach closer to the essence of our humanness, our psychology. Our essence?
I also suggest the manifestation of materialism and the appetite for the surface, for material itself, was at play, additionally with the rise of Marxism and dialectical materialism, we see a clear departure from illusion. In the pursuit of illusion we look in the world for our objects, or in the phantasmagoria of our imaginations, or a mixture of both. The world of appearance is the source.In the departure from illusion we look for reality in material or in the idea itself( we will broach conceptual art later.Even before with the impressionists, we witness the demise of the object within the illusion as clear delineation of objects is replaced by fracturing light, creating form with light and tone alone. As the object disappears into abstraction, so in some sense do we. Van Gogh with his overt, feverish psychology puts the objects firmly back in the illusion, and with it himself.
What do we perceive when we behold illusionist paintings. Paintings of recognisable objects. The ambiguity of experience. Like in life we allow the object to communicate to us. We want it to. We want a link to the world. We want that ambiguity of subject/object. We want to me motivated to meaning. Not have meaning
If with think for a moment in existential terminology, let us say that a work of art is a transcendental object. We consider a human to be a being for itself, in that it is self reflecting and non identical. Non identical as it fails to match what it is, to its projection of itself. A being that is transcendent as it continually attempts to become itself. An object is in the category of the in itself. It is not self regarding. So an object imbued with the qualities of the for-itself can be said, technically at least, to be a a transcendent thing(as artifact.). It tries to become.
In all forms of Art where we see the artist clearly substituting subjectivism for historicism. can we not say that they have become critic, a journalist. But we must not trap ourselves in purity of a single definition, and must be careful to consider the effect, and overall use.
Tattoo analogy.
We can safely say that the spirit of the age can be expressed in the use current use of the tattoo. That is freely chosen by the individual, to somehow reflect their valuation. We can distinguish this from the traditional purpose of the tattoo- Celtic, Maori, military.Which would be ascribed/bestowedto an individual from a higher power. That is a universal power/value speaking through the human in symbolised form. I.e tattoo for courage etc. The symbol will express the this transcendental element on this phenomenon, the mortal human.
This is where misinterpretations of Nietzsche have occurred, and rightly so, in that the creation of values could be conceived of the whim of an individual, like a child God, a pharaoh, of decrees that this is that or so and so.
The whim of an individual is not powerful enough in its dialectic form to create anything of any worth. As old Hume proposed, reason serves the passions, not the other way round. The silent driver steering our chattering consciousness. Who mistakenly takes the credit.
Is this the contradiction in Nietzsche, or mis judgement. In that Nietzsche’s revaluation of values, really means a return to a Natural valuation system.
An affirmation.The real problem of the dialectic, is that we lose the transcendental guide, and begin to use “rationality “as a guide, which in itself seems reasonable. But rationality can detaches itself and becomes mad, like the chatterings of social media. Example - nazi logic, woke logic,cultural war. etc etc.
So Art, in the sense we have described, is inextricably linked with the experiencing, suffering( as a necessary state of the experiencing being), the subjectivity of being an object, in existential terminology transcendence and immanence.; being on the edge of opacity, as an expression of this.
In a purely rational world, there is no reason for art( as Plato- suggested, because as illusion, as a representation of a representation, it is a lie). Strange, however, he develops a system of truth based on an imagined realm of pure forms. Another unprovable world. Hannah Arendt believes Plato departed from the reality of the world in angered response to the execution of Socrates.
In a purely rational world, art would be rational, possibly created to serve of senses, against irrationality. A narcotic. Not to enliven us but to send us to sleep. The opposite of the Dionysian form, not the Apollonian, but a dream state without illusion.
A rational/science world that holds itself to be the metaphysical dream illusion of itself wants to destroy all illusion, all myth, all Art.( think terminator) It has no use for this in its own illusion. Apart from as narcotic, when it tires of its own logic, as we have described,
If logic conceives non-logic to be an obstruction to its own limits. Is this an error? Has quantum observations affected this.?
Is this the logic presented in the history of Art?. From a number of philosophical angles we will consider the disappearance of the illusion and object from the art world.
Returning to the Abolition of man by C S Lewis.. Does the trend in the progression of art movements , mimic or reflect the general trend in scientific/ biological materialism in its dismantling of the human and with it -meaning.
Subjectivity and hyper subjectivity, - that only refers to itself.
In scientific terms- to destroy illusion and then the object which carries the illusion is this scientification of art.? In that it sees the utility of illusion, the lie as a problemThe problem for conceptual art, is that once the idea is communicated, ( linguistically), any visual or oral experience follows as nostalgic baggage, after it has destroyed art as the primary function. We are now hav.
Considering the success of science, it seems unfair, even ridiculous, to shed doubt on it as a project. But maybe it is indeed a victim of its own success, and now after a decent run in the last two centuries it is beginning to become more acquainted with failure and doubt. Recently during the pandemic we have seen how data, predictions, models can can confuse and mislead humans as much as help. Climate change also features here. It is not the data which is in question, but the interpretation which can be manipulated for political and emotional reasons. The human reaction to risk is very diverse.
Art self aggrandisement - quote cioran page 30.
Art which only takes itself as the subject matter. The epitome of clique, as it enjoys its own jokes, scorns the past, in its ignorance. Scorns the world in its ignorance. An intellectual episode in the hands of idiots.
Let us delve further into the realm of truth in Art as a motivation and a function.