On 9 May 1996, robert scheetz wrote:
> H lists three ways traditionally used to expose the truth
> of a "thing": 1) substnace/accidents, 2) matter/form, and
> 3) physis (i.e., concrete presence). I abridged the list
> slightly to correspond with the dialectic: abstraction-intuition.
> H uses a list of pejoratives: metaphysical, derivitive,
> etc., in re the former, pronouncing them a "covering"
> of being. He restricts authentic truth to the latter,
> which he later illustrates with his his little expositions
> on the Van Gogh and the Gk temple.
In that sense I suppose H. does restrict aletheia to physis,
although your rendering of 'physis' as "concrete presence" led me to
equate it with "ousia". (Am I right in supposing that the meaning of
'physis' was not originally restricted to 'ousia'?)
> I didn't mean to suggest any H'ian position here, only to illustrate
> with a notorious example of bad art how a non-dialectical aesthetic
> (i.e. absent the perception of abstract forms) approach leads to
> gross error, as in the mistaking the pre-eminently ontical Eros
> for "ek-stasis". Which I take to be the case with Wagner enthusiasm...
> mysticism generally...and H putatively.
Since I do not agree at all that Wagner is to be appreciated by a
mere surrendering to a wash of sound, I can hardly concur that Wagner's
music dramas are a "notorious example of bad art". As I tried to
suggest, such an interpretation seems to come merely from Nietzsche's
crudest parodies of Wagner, not from a genuine experience of his art.
> He speaks of the "world" embodied in a work of art
> and illustrates with his little impressionistic disquisition
> on the temple, assuming the perspective of the living context
> of the work. ... isn't this dubious classicism?
> (1) He claims it is a non-representational work....
> Isn't it originally a mausoleum, a house for the dead parent?
> (2) He indicates that the temple produces or brings the god
> to residence. But isn't this backward? Doesn't the "cleft
> rock", i.e. the sign of the presence of a deity, determine
> the location and precipitate the building of the temple?
> as it were, we've found the residence of a preternatural agency,
> let's build him a commodius dwelling to ingratiate ourselves
> (perhaps "meritricious" would better capture the utilitarian
> essence of the beauty of the work) and
> provide ourselves a locus for accessing this agency? And (3) he
> views it ontologically, opposite to "equipmentality"; where
> it was precisely in the same utilitarian category
> as the peasants shoes and plow: the god who cleft the rock
> when properly treated provided rain and sun, made the cows
> calve, etc
What I was trying to suggest was that originally religion was not
about belief in a special kind of god-person who hid behind nature, as
modern "common sense" would have us think it. This kind of
objectification of the divine (and perhaps of everything else) was alien
to pre-metaphysical thought. Your treatment betrays the desire to think
of temple-building in terms of scientific causality, which is precisely
the spirit that killed western paganism.
Martin Weatherston,
Philosophy & Religious Studies Dept.,
East Stroudsburg University,
East Stroudsburg, PA 18301.
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