[Lonergan_l] pity and terror
Doug Mounce
I read an interesting idea this weekend, where the author comments to
a friend that Aristotle has not defined pity and terror. Pity is the
feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave
and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the human
sufferer. Terror is the feeling which arrests the mind in the
presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and
unites it with the secret cause.
"The tragic emotion, in fact, is a face looking two ways, towards
terror and towards pity, both of which are phases of it.
...
"The desire and loathing excited by improper esthetic means are
really unesthetic emotions not only because they are kinetic in
character but also because they are not more than physical. Our
flesh shrinks from what it dreads and responds to the stimulus of
what it desires by a purely reflex action of the nervous system.
...
"Beauty expressed by the artist cannot awaken in us an emotion which
is kinetic or a sensation which is purely physical. It awakens, or
ought to induce, an esthetic stasis, an ideal pity or an ideal
terror, a stasis called forth, prolonged and at last dissolved by
what I call the rhythm of beauty."
...
"Rhythm is the first formal esthetic relation of part to part in any
esthetic whole or of an esthetic whole to its part or parts or of any
part to the esthetic whole of which it is a part... We are right to
speak of these things and to try to understand their nature and,
having understood it, to try slowly and humbly and constantly to
express, to press out again, from the gross earth or what it brings
forth, from sound and shape and colour which are the prison gates of
our soul, an image of the beauty we have come to understand--that is
art."
He uses Thomas to define the necessary qualities of beauty, but says
that new terms from "a new personal experience" are necessary for the
phenomena of artistic conception, artistic gestation and artistic
reproduction. Aquinas says: *ad pulcritudinem tri requiruntu,
integritas, consonantia, claritas.* translated: "Three things are
needed for beauty, wholeness, harmony and radiance." These
correspond to the phases of apprehension.
The first phase draws a classification line around an object.
*Integritas* is the apprehension of one whole. Apprehending the
formal lines point-to-point as balanced part against part within its
limits; you feel the rhythm of its structure. Their harmonious sum
is *consonantia.* His use of the term *claritas* is a type of
intersubjective participation of the artist in relation to himself,
his image mediated in relation with others, and the dramatic form
wherein he presents his image in immediate relation to others.
"The dramatic form is reached when the vitality which has flowed and
eddied around each person fills every person with such vital force
that he or she assumes a proper and intangible esthetic life. The
personality of the artist, at first a cry or a cadence or a mood and
then a fluid and lambent narrative, finally refines itself out of
existence, impersonalizes itself, so to speak. The esthetic image in
the dramatic form is life purified in and reprojected from the human
imagination. The mystery of esthetic like that of material creation
is accomplished."
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Doug Mounce
Todd Weir
The Monist Century, 1845 to 1945: Science, Secularism, and Worldview
Monday, Nov. 30, 2009 - 3:30 PM
CMU 202
The term monism was popularized in the 1860s by the marine biologist Ernst
Haeckel, who converted Charles Darwins theory of evolution into a
worldview and directed it equally against natural philosophy and biblical
accounts of creation. Monism encapsulated Haeckels faith that the myriad
forms of the cosmos were expressions of a single substance and that the
realms of culture and biology were governed by a single set of
developmental laws. With the publication of his bestselling Riddle of the
Universe in 1899, Haeckel ushered in an international vogue for monism
that was crowned by the formation of the German Monist League in 1906.
Until 1933, a host of freethinking, feminist, and cultural reform
organizations continued to lay explicit claim to monism, while monist
thought deeply influenced many political movements from socialism to
volkisch nationalism. After a discussion of the history of the monist
movement, this paper will argue that monism can be used heuristically to
illuminate broader connections between popular science, secularism, and
worldview in Germany between the 1840s and 1945. Some comparisons will be
drawn to developments in Britain and Russia. Todd Weir is Lecturer in
Modern European History at Queens University, Belfast. Currently a
visiting scholar at the Simpson Center for the Humanities, he is
completing a monograph on organized secularism in Berlin between 1845 and
1933.
mounce
I recall that Phil had an interesting suggestion, if I correctly
understood, to begin each post with a statement of weakness.
'My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in
weakness
I'm a know-it-all, for example, but that's too easy. Dig deeper.
"Daddy, why do you drink, when you promised that you wouldn't. I
don't want you to die."
"Ah, lassie, I'm commanded by the gods."
cheers, such-as-they-are, Doug
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