"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."

Albert Einstein

Search This Blog

Thursday 23 January 2014

Why Two Cultures? (draft)

1. The "Two Cultures" debate in perspective

1.1 The Snow vs. Leavis controversy

Soon after C.P. Snow’s “Two Cultures” controversial thesis was published, his most callous critic, the literary critic F. R. Leavis launched a particularly vicious personal attack with his Two Cultures? The Significance of C. P. Snow (Richmond Lecture, 1962, at Downing College), which shocked an otherwise well behaved English audience. It turned into a battle of "clans", missing completely the deeper questions raised by Snow: should science or the humanities be given precedence?

Leavis heaped derision on Snow's “embarrassing vulgarity of style,” his “complete ignorance” of history, literature, the history of civilization, and the human significance of the Industrial Revolution. Leavis wrote:

“Snow is, of course, a — no, I can’t say that; he isn’t: Snow thinks of himself as a novelist,” but in fact “his incapacity as a novelist is… total [...] as a novelist he doesn’t exist; he doesn’t begin to exist.” Leavis concluded: “not only is he not a genius [...] he is intellectually as undistinguished as it is possible to be.”

Leavis lost his legendary English-refrained temper. But why such rage?

1.2 The T. H. Huxley vs. Matthew Arnold controversy
The Snow-Leavis controversy was just a repeat of a very similar debate that took place some 80 years earlier between an English biologist; Thomas Henry Huxley after he published his 'Science and Culture' (1880) and an English poet and cultural critic; Matthew Arnold who replied in his own Rede lecture in 1882 with 'Literature and Science'.
Such controversies also took place earlier during that century in America as this was documented by William Todd Timmons in his essay Older Than Snow: The Two Cultures And The Yale Report Of 1828. Timmons noted:
He (Snow, note) maintained that Western intellectuals, outside of scientists, had not understood—even rejected—the Industrial Revolution. Calling the literary intellectuals “natural Luddites,” (1) Snow went so far as to accuse the establishment of using the wealth produced by the Industrial Revolution to train young men for the purpose of perpetuating the culture.
From http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/-The-Two-Cultures--today-4882)

2. Sciences vs. Humanities?


C.P. Snow's Rede Lecture was entitled “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution”. Indeed the Scientific Revolution (and the Enlightenment ideas) are central in this "Two Cultures" question.

This chasm between scientists and non-scientists (the Humanities, “literary intellectuals”, artists, etc.) was not new. In fact it is recurring. This gulf of reciprocal distrust has existed at least since Science and its effects revolutionized our Western society. It coincided with the so-called "Age of Enlightenment" (or "Age of Reason",) a cultural movement of intellectuals beginning in the late 17th- and 18th-century. Much of he "Enlightenment philosophy" was premised on the successes of scientific method after Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton. “Natural philosophy” as it was then called ceased to be a curiosity confined to an “intellectual elite” but impacted upon our society socially and culturally during and after the "Industrial revolution”.

Typically, the education curriculum in Britain today presents  the "Industrial revolution” to an entire generation in its History classes very darkly. Focusing on the children's and women's labor conditions in factories, or pollution... (as if their conditons were much better when they were starved in their original "idyllic" countryside), english History teachers "forget" or simply "dismiss" all the benefits of the "Industrial revolution”: higher pays, sanitation or even compulsory education system for children!  (2)

Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of one of the world's biggest technology companies (Google) said Britain needed to look back to its Victorian age when it held the sciences and the arts in equally high esteem. He said:

You need to bring art and science back together, [...] Think back to the glory days of the Victorian era. It was a time when the same people wrote poetry and built bridges. Lewis Carroll didn't just write one of the classic fairytales of all time, he was also a mathematics tutor at Oxford.
See Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google, condemns British education system. Schmidt criticises division between science and arts and says UK 'should look back to glory days of Victorian era'; The Guardian, Friday 26 August 2011.
Quite indeed.

3. The Enlightenment and the idea of Progress: "Dare to Know!"

Originating about 1650 to 1700, the Enlightenment (Lumières in French, Aufklärung in German) was a revolutionary intellectual movement which saw the maturation of the humanist belief in Reason rather than Faith as the supreme guiding principle in the affairs of mankind. For the enlightened mind, freed from the restraints of ignorance, a whole new exciting world opened up. Enlightenment opposed superstition and intolerance. It was called the "Age of Reason".

It is a period in the History of western thought and culture, characterized by dramatic revolutions in science, arts, philosophy, society and politics. These revolutions swept away the medieval world-view and ushered in our modern western world. This had all been set in motion by the 15th and 16th century Renaissance, a time when Humanists like Leonardo da Vinci flourihed.. 
In honor of the Enlightenment the eighteenth century was commonly known as the century of lumière, or light. Its advocates viewed themselves as the “party of humanity”: they sought to represent the “general will” rather than the standpoint of particular interests, estates, or castes. The champions of Enlightenment counterposed reason as an analytical solvent to dogma, superstition, and unwarranted social authority. (3)
Enlightened individual thinkers were active in many countries. In Scotland:, there were  Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, David Hume. In England: Thomas Hobbes, John Locke. In Prussia and the German States, writers and philosophers such as Christian Wolff,  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller or Immanuel Kant. Even in America (Thirteen Colonies), there were Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin. In France, it was more "organized" around "salons" where French philosophes like Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot or Rousseau were invited to "educate" the upper-class. They primarily critiqued the Roman Catholic Church and its power, the political system in place, and social inequalities.

In 1784, enlightened German philosopher Immanuel Kant published a brief essay : Was ist Äufklarung? (What is Enlightenment?) Kant began the essay in the following way:

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's mind without another's guidance. Sapere Aude! Dare to Know! Have the courage to use your own understanding is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment.
A new optimism pervaded the age.

4. The Scientific revolution

Leonardo da Vinci: Arm and Shoulder, 1515
Andreas Vesalius from his
Humani Corporis Fabrica,1543





















Galileo tried by the Italian Inquisition
The Enlightenment's  immediate stimulus came from the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries when men like Galileo Galilei or Isaac Newton, through their successfull application of reason to the study of Nature, had made spectacular discoveries revealing truths which were not written in the sacred books of Aristotle or in the Bible. These new discoveries therefore challenged the authority of the Church as the "Trial of Galileo Galilei" in 1633 illustrates this.

Two worlds came into ideological conflict. By proving Copernicus theory of heliocentrism  (i.e. planets like Earth and Jerusalem are orbiting the Sun, not the other way around) Galileo's new world of science and humanism collided with the old world of scholasticism, dogmatism and absolutism of the Catholic Church. The result was a tragedy that marked the end of the Italian Renaissance.

Isaac Newton (1643 - 1727) also had a huge impact on the Enlightenment. His theory on universal gravitation helped to prove Copernicus' and Galileo's theory heliocentrism. This success of Reason over Faith became an inspiration and basis for Enlightenment ideals.

4.1 Birth of the scientific method: the "Plato-Aristotle Controversy"


 Newton's scientific method originated during the 15th and 16th centuries Italian and Northern Renaissances. It was the result of a deep philosophical debate (and controversy) regarding our understanding of the world. A debate between the partisans of Aristotle and those of Plato, two ancient Greek philosophers. The question was: are the spritual ideas we have about our world the only reality (Plato) or is our tangible world the only reality (Aristotle)? The two philosophers's stances could be summed up as "Top-down" in the case of Plato's who considered that knowing the (mathematical) truths or "ideas" doesn't require knowing tangible facts which he considered as mere projections on our senses (illusions). On the other hand, his student Aristotle considered the only way to access to truth was (empirical) obervation  ("Bottom-Up") which is exactly what Galileo did with his telescope.... to validate (or not) the theory of Copernicus ("Top-down")!

In fact, this quarrel began some two centuries before Galileo's trial, when one Gemistus Pletho, a Greek Byzantine who had access to Plato's (barely known in Europe then) visited Florence in 1438. He wrote, at the command of Cosimo de Medici a small book defending Plato in which he reproached Aristotle with holding the notion of an inactive and impersonal God, and with being too attached to "terrestrial things." In other words; Aristotle was not consistent with Christianity! Bear in mind that  Aristotle was then Vatican's absolute authority regarding "terrestrial things" the Bible didn't cover. This called forth a swift and strong reply from one Georgius Scholarius, a countryman of Pletho's, and this started an international controversy in the academic world. In 1450, an important established theologian Nicholas of Cusa who was known for his "Union of the Opposites" stance, tried to find an agreement between both parties in his Idiota De Mente where he wrote that:
"...there seems no difference between them (Plato and Aristotle, note) except in the way they considered the matter". 
A "battle of the books" raged on however. 

4.2 Solution

Neo-Platonist Pico della Mirandola, a member of the "Platonic Academy", wrote in his Of Being and Unity (1491) a defense in reconciling Plato and Aristotle's philosophies.

This reconciliation between the two philosophers was celebrated by Raffaello Sanzio's "School Of Athens" fresco painted between 1509 and 1510. This fresco seems to settle the so-called controversy, very much along the lines of "Neo-Platonists" like Pico della Mirandola, Bessarion or Nicholas of Cusa.

The School of Athens, is one of the most famous paintings 
by the Italian Renaissance artist Raffaello Sanzio (1509 -1510.) 
Plato (as Leonardio da Vinci) is pointing "up" to the world of "Ideas".

Indeed, both Plato and his student Aristotle are walking while discussing philosophical matters. This was the typical method of the peripatetics (aka Aristotelians)! Rapahel's "message" was that there was no contradiction between the two philosophers.

Top-down (Plato): 
Starting from a hypothesis (a theory, a belief, an "idea") the scientific method demands objective experiments (facts) to predict, verify the theory.

Bottom-up (Aristotle):
Theory is based on observations (experiments, facts) which require an explanation.




If the experiments (facts) refute, contradict the theory then the new results of the experiment(s) force the theory to be modified. This process involving hypothesis, prediction, observation, verification (or refuting) is repeated, continually testing and modifying the theory until it fits all possible experimental observations. Only then the theory is considered a scientific law until challenged by newer facts...

Sir Isaac Newton, 1710 
by Sir James Thornhill
Trinity College, Cambridge
Newton merged these two opposing aspects of "natural philosophy": the empirical inductive (bottom-up) method and the rational deductive (top-down) method. Through the proper dynamic between the two, Newton created a basis for scientific methodology which exists in all sciences to this day. In doing so he uncovered many such laws regarding gravity or motion still valid and taught in schools today. 

Newton's synthesis of previous scientific knowledge and work into a consistent mathematical theory of the world was the crown jewel of the Scientific Revolution and a key argument for the 
Enlightenment.

5. Political revolutions

Among Enlightenment proponents, there was a great emphasis upon liberty, democracy, republicanism and religious tolerance. Enlightenment thought culminated historically in the political upheaval of the 1789 French Revolution, in which the traditional hierarchical political and social orders (the French monarchy, the privileges of the French nobility, the political power and authority of the Catholic Church) were violently destroyed and replaced by a political and social Republican (4) order informed by the Enlightenment ideals of freedom and equality for all, founded, ostensibly, upon principles of human reason. They were similar to a Florentine humanist Pico della Mirandola's defense of the dignity and liberty of the human being, set forth in his Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486), which has been called the "Manifesto of the Italian Renaissance", now known as "Humanism". 

These new ideas spread to cities across Europe, notably England, Scotland, the German states, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Italy, Austria, and Spain, then jumped the Atlantic into the European colonies, where it influenced Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, among many others, and played a major role in the American Revolution. The political ideals of the Enlightenment inspired the 1776 American "Declaration of Independence," the 1789 French "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen," or the 1789-91 United States "Bill of Rights."

The Enlightenment idea of Liberty (as "Enlightening the World") is universal.


6. Enlightenment in the Arts

The Age of Enlightenment is reflected not only in science or the philosophy of the era but also in the arts, music, architecture, and literature. Art style deviated from the beginning of the century when baroque and rococo were the dominant artistic expression of the "ancien regime" (absolutist monarchies).

In those pre-revolutionary times, there was a return to Neoclassicism, to the Greco-Roman traditions as developped during the 15th century Italian Renaissance. It exhibited order, beauty, balance, harmony, and realism. Also, a number of women painters emerged at this time.

Experiment on a bird in the Air Pump (1768) by Joseph Wright of Derby.
This painting by Joseph Wright shows a family group gathered round one of Robert Boyle's scientific experiments: a pump is extracting air from a bubble which contains a cockatoo. As the air is pumped out the bird will eventually pass away. Around the presenter we see various members of the household: the father of the family comforts, and explains the experiment to his two young daughters, who are dismayed and upset... The painting departed from convention of the time by depicting a scientific subject in the respectful manner formerly reserved for scenes of historical or religious significance. The picture's features reflect some ideals of the Enlightenment:
  • Science enlightens - almost literally! Wright's use of light is also symbolic: it seems to radiate from the scientific apparatus itself, illuminating the people who are otherwise living in the shades. 
  • The fact that the family are gathered for an evening's entertainment watching a scientific experiment reflects the Enlightnment preoccupation with increasing human knowledge. It was thought that by understanding the natural world and ourselves we could come closer to controlling them. 
  • It is not class-bound: knowledge, understanding and education were political social weapons.
  • People are still people: the young man and woman on the left of the picture are utterly absorbed in each other - to them the emotional world is more significant than the scientific.
Francisco Goya (1746 - 1828)

"The sleep of reason produces monsters" (1797-98)
Republican Francisco Goya (1746 - 1828) came to artistic maturity during this age of Enlightenment. His first series of etchings, Los Caprichos ('The Caprices,' 1796-99), were a satirical critique of the vices, superstitions, and injustices of the society of his time, in which he presents his liberal Enlightenment ideology.

Goya's The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters etching (see picture on the right) was a proclamation of his adherence to the values of the Enlightenment. Without Reason; evil and corruption prevail. Goya added a caption for the print:
“Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with her, she is the mother of the arts and source of their wonders.”
This message is still relevant in today's arts world!


7.  Napoléon : "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others" (*)

Because of this comment, Goya is often defined by art historians as a transitional figure between the end of the Enlightenment and the emergence of Romanticism which values emotion above and against reason. This is because most art historians don't know much about the political History of society.

Another example to illustrate this point: Ludwig van Beethoven is often classified by these art historians as "romantic", i.e. opposed to the ideals of Enlightenment. The fact is Beethoven first dedicated his 1803-04 Symphony No. 3  to Napoléon Bonaparte as he admired the ideals of the French Revolution. Indeed, during the 1789 revolution in France one general in particular began to outshine all the others. This general was Napoléon Bonaparte, considered one of the geniuses in military history. His skillful leadership helped to crush rebellions within France, and also greatly expand the territories of France, including a surprising victory over the more powerful Austrian army. He then negotiated a general European peace which established French power on the continent.

In 1802, Napoléon victoriously brought to an end the "Revolutionary Wars" started ten years earlier when France declared war on Austria, with only Great-Britain remaining formally at war. Two years later Napoléon used a plebiscite to name himself Emperor of France.

So when in 1804 Napoléon crowned himself Emperor, Beethoven turned angry and according to the legend went to the table where the completed score of his Symphony No. 3 lay to change its original deication to "Bonaparte" out of admiration for Napoléon, to give the piece its current name Eroica.

The fact is Beethoven, like Goya and many other artists were fervent supporters of the French revolution's and the Enlightenment's ideals. No "counterenlightenment Romanticism" here as yet.

8. The "Empire Strikes Back" 

Newton's 3rd Law of motion says: "To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction"... and yes, to the revolutions and the Enlightenment ideas, there was a (bloody) reaction! Europe was at war for a decade.

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against the French Empire by four different opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1814 and led by Britain.Isolated, Britain reluctantly agreed to end hostilities under the Treaty of Amiens, but unlike its many partners in the preceding Coalitions and protected by naval supremacy, Britain remained at war.

In 1805 Britain inflicted a naval defeat on the French and Spanish Navies at Trafalgar. Nelson‘s victory established Britain as the dominant world naval power for a century.

Here is Nelson's column at Trafalgar square, London:

This bright blue symbol of France is staring at Nelson's column
on the square commemorating the thrashing of  Napoléon's navy.

In 1812 Napoléon and his 600,000-strong “Grand Army” marched into Russia, where he expected an easy victory. Yet every time that a battle would begin, the Russians simple retreated. Napoléon took Moscow, yet Moscow was a city in ruins when the city was set on fire by the army of the Czar. Napoléon decided to withdraw his army in one of the most famous retreats in military history.

This retreat/defeat sparked the War of the Sixth Coalition (Austria, Prussia, Russia, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Sweden, Spain and a number of German States). It was the largest coalition in Western history before the First World War!

They finally defeated France, and the Allies entered Paris, forcing Napoléon’s abdication who went in exile.


Here is my video on this:




9. Congress of Vienna: Restoration of the 'Old Order'


The French Revolutionary Wars started with a war against Austria. So Vienna, the capital of Austria, seemed an obvious choice to put an end to… The 1815 Congress of Vienna was one of the most important international conferences in European history. It reorganized Europe after Napoléon’s defeat. European monarchs were determined to create a lasting peace based on the restoration of the “old order”: to erase the legacy of the French Revolution, of the Enlightenment ideas and all of the revolutionary fervor that had spread throughout Europe, to make sure that democratic, egalitarian and liberal ideals or nationalism, be totally erased. It brought about the restoration of an ultra conservative and reactionary order in Europe trying to turn back the clock to before 1789.

Objectives of the Congress: restoring the interests of the old absolutistic monarchies in Europe before the French Revolution and in doing so legitimising the ruling monarchies and fiefdoms.

To make sure it wouldn't ever happen again, another goal was to weaken and contain France. The Allies therefore restored the Bourbon Monarchy in France. A last goal was re-structuring German-speaking fiefs which will contribute to the rise of German nationalism.  Having started and won the “Napoleonic Wars”, the British Empire became the foremost world power for the rest of the 19th century, thus beginning the Pax Britannica of the Victorian era.

10. Counter-Enlightenment Reaction in Culture

Counter-Revolutionary writers Edmund Burke, Joseph de Maistre and Augustin Barruel all asserted a close link between the Enlightenment and the Revolution, as did many of the revolutionary leaders themselves, so that the Enlightenment became increasingly discredited when the Revolution became bloody and Napoléon crowned himself Emperor.

Unsurprisingly the restored (Counter-Enlightenment) French Bourbon monarchy favored pre-revolutionary Neoclassicism, a return to the old Greco-Roman tradition, which exhibited order, stability and harmony.
The linear simplicity of the Neoclassic movement lasted well into the 19th century until new revolutions took place in France.

10.1 William Blake vs. Isaac Newton

Newton (1795-1805) by William Blake
This picture shows Isaac Newton, painted by William Blake in 1795.

Blake’s painting is a criticism of Newton’s world-view; he is shown turning his back upon the beauty of the natural world (brightly colored flora and fauna). His sole interest being in his scroll and compasses. To the left of the picture is , the complexity of the natural world. To the right is order, the precision of geometry and the compasses which Blake abhorred.

Blake is considered part of what art historians labeled as "Romanticism", an artistic, literary and intellectual reaction to the Enlightenment.

"Romantics" such as Blake feared the coming of a godless world and the loss of natural idyll, the rural and the picturesque. The deistic view of God as a distant creator who played no role in daily affairs was anathema to Blake. He opposed his "four-fold vision" to the "single vision" of Newton, whose "natural religion" of scientific materialism he characterized as sterile. Newton was incorporated into Blake's infernal trinity along with philosophers Francis Bacon and John Locke.

William Blake
From a young age, William Blake claimed to have seen visions. Blake believed that he was personally instructed and encouraged by Archangels to create his artistic works, which he claimed were actively read and enjoyed by those same Archangels.
Aware of Blake's allucination, Romantic poet William Wordsworth commented, "There was no doubt that this poor man was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott."

Blake's opposition to the Enlightenment was deeply rooted. He wrote in his annotations to the Laocoon: "Art is the 'Tree of Life.' Science is the 'Tree of Death.'"

In essence William Blake shows the early signs of what C.P. Snow will later call the "Two cultures".

11. Towards an Age of Unreason ? 

Romantic poet William Wordsworth considered William Blake was "mad". So turned German philologist, philosopher and cultural "romantic" critic Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900) at the end of his life: while staying with a friend in Turin, Italy Nietzsche suffered a mental collapse. 

Nietzsche in a madhouse
After an initial defence of the Enlightenment during his so-called 'middle period', Nietzsche turned vehemently against it and subscribed to the earlier view of conservative Counter-Revolutionaries like Burke and Maistre, who blamed the French Revolution (which Nietzsche always hated) on the Enlightenment. Nietzsche used the term Gegenaufklärung ('Counter-Enlightenment' in English). He has become the major intellectual reference for Counter-Enlightenment since his death.

Nietzsche defined his theoretical position in relation to one of the most important intellectual figures of the Enlightenment, namely Immanuel Kant. This German reaction to the imperialistic universalism of the French Enlightenment and Revolution, which had been forced on them first by the Francophile Frederick II of Prussia, then by the armies of Revolutionary France, and finally by Napoléon, was crucial to the epochal shift of consciousness that occurred in Europe at this time, leading eventually to German Romanticism and nationalism.

During the few days after Nietzsche's mental breakdown, he wrote seemingly psychotic letters to a number of friends and various figures of European royalty. These letters are called the Wahnbriefe ('Madness Letters'). He signed them alternatively as “Dionysus” or “The Crucified.” 

This plunge into madness impressed some Counterenlightenment intellectuals in France. Such was the case of French writer Georges Bataille and his circle who launched the Acéphale review before the Nazis' invasion of France.

11. Nietzsche's "eternal return"?

This cover of Acéphale is a clear attack on Leonardo da Vinci's humanism which was marrying art and science.
The name Acéphale is derived from the Greek akephalos, literally meaning "headless." It is a documented fact thios review was yet another French 'secret society' whose members had sworn to keep silent.

This review and Bataille's literary work had a great influence on a revival of Nietzsche's in France and postmodern intellectuals after the Second World War despite the appropriation of Nietzsche's work by the Nazis.
   
As an important Counterenlightenment and anti-French intellectual figure, Nietzsche became the 

quasi  offical philosopher of the Nazi regime.  
One shouldn't be then surprised by this quote from this leading Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels:
For one of fascism’s avowed goals was to put an end to the Enlightenment-derived nineteenth century worldview: the predominance of science, reason, democracy, socialism, individualism, and the like. As Goebbels pithily observed a few months after Hitler’s rise to power, “The year 1789 is hereby erased from history.”  (3)
The era of Nazi rule saw Nietzsche's writings widely studied in German schools and universities and especially his "Will to Power" despite Nietzsche's disgust with plebeian-volkist anti-Semitism and German nationalism! Phrases like "the will to power" became common in Nazi circles.
One will have to wait until the early 1960s when some Bataille's adepts returned. Such was the case of postmodern philosopher Gilles Deleuze whose most significant work was his 1962 highly influential study "Nietzsche and Philosophy", the first book in France to systematically defend and explicate Nietzsche’s work, still suspected of fascism. Other Postmodern intellectuals such as Michel Foucault, Pierre Klossowski, Jean-François Lyotard, among others, were involved in rehabiltating Nietzsche in their postwar writings in France. This "trend" is sometimes  described as the "French construction of  Nietzsche". Regarding "unreason", postmodern intellectual Michel Foucault denied, through madness,  the existence of a conscious, knowing subject, thereby pulverizing concepts of power, oppression or ideology. For him, there is only relativism. Madness is the way of the world...

Consequentially Nietzsche's influence on continental philosophy increased dramatically after the Second World War, especially amongst the French intellectual Left and postmodernists.

Ironically, in the 18th century French philosophes were amomgst the first in the world promoting Enlightenement ideals whereas these contemporary philosophes (aka "intellectuels") started to destroy these very same ideals!

12. Contemporary Counter-Enlightenment: the "literary intellectuals" 

Two polar groups: at one pole we have the literary intellectuals, who incidentally while no one was looking took to referring to themselves as 'intellectuals' as though there were no others. (6)

Although C.P. Snow never explicitely refers to them, this new brand of "literary intellectuals" were then in the 1950s a social phenomenon associated to postmodern "philosophers".

The Enlightenment, of course, always had its critics. The Enlightenment has enemies on all points of the ideological compass, from the far left to the far right, and all points in between. Beginning with the Restoration of 1815 and the new philosophical reaction to the French Revolution, however, they were almost exclusivelyconservatives right wing like Edmund Burke, elitists like Joseph de Maistre, or racists intent on viewing world history as a battle between aryans and Jews like Houston Stewart Chamberlain.

Interestingly enough, however, a critique of the Enlightenment has now become part of the philosophical and polemical stock in trade of many on the left such as Marxist critiques Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno with their "Dialectic of Enlightenment" (1947), a marxist view trying to associate Enlightenment to... bourgeois and capitalism... hence to fascism. Indeed Marx considered the French revolution as "bourgeois". But on the left, most of the Counter-Enlightenment comes in guises such as "Postmodernism," i.e. as "Left Nietzcheans."

The term "postmodernism" comes from its critique of the "modernist" scientific mentality of objectivity and the progress associated with the Enlightenment (or "positivism"). Lyotard characterises postmodernity as a severe 'réexamen' (re-examination) which is imposed on 'la pensée des Lumières'  (Enlightenment) (8). Postmodernism (Post-structuralism), particularly as an academic movement, can be understood as a reaction to "modernism" within the Humanities. It is a philosophical movement in reaction to the tendency to accept any "objective truth", much inspired by Nietzsche's philosophy of "perspectivism" (subjectivity, relativism, etc.). It claims that there is no such truth and that the way people understand the world is always subjective and plural. Everyting becomes subjective and relative... even "postmodernism"! (7)

13. Postmodernism:


  • Anti-science
  • Anti-art
  • Anti-humanism

13.1 Anti-science

As part of the Humanities, Postmodernism grew out of literary criticism and the focus on the uncertainties of language. Postmodern "deconstructionism" and its turn to rhetoric and textualism is now being employed as a strategy to counter the political and intellectual dominance gained by the sciences over the last few centuries." As far as "language" is concerned (eg  literature, advertising, propaganda, sociology, psychology, politics or education, etc) it is a useful analysis. But Postmodernists try to apply their semantic? method to Science, considering it is a mere "language". For postmodernists, science is just a "discourse", one system among many, maintained by a closed community as a means of holding onto power. Science is considered just as a tool invented by the current elite to maintain power.

13.2 Anti-art


Postmodernist philosophy not only expresses hostilities against objective truth as known in science but has also inspired "anti-art" since Nietzsche has become a very fashionable philosopher among artists as early the times of Braque, Picasso and their mentor poet Guillaume Appollinaire (who coined the name "cubist"). Indeed Nietzsche’s views on art had significant influence on artists in the years following his death in 1900, a crucial period of development in the visual arts. Already, the anti-art movement Dada (1916-22) was also inspired by Nietzsche's dark nihilism. Even artist Picabia, buddy of  Marcel Duchamp (whose anti-art "ready mades" are still inspiring today's art scene) claimed that he had met Nietzsche. (Picabia was also a fantaisist.) 

 Pierre Klossowski (1905 – 2001), an important member of the "Acephale" Nietzschean review. He exerted a strong influence on French postmodernism, particularly in the late 1960s and early 1970s,
“The criminal fight against culture is only the reverse side of a criminal culture” (9) 

13.3 Anti-humanism

C. P. Snow wrote:
"Yeats, Pound (10), Wyndham Lewis, nine out of ten of those who have dominated literary sensibility in our time-weren't they not only politically silly, but politically wicked? Didn't the influence of all they represent bring Auschwitz that much nearer?"
In the 20th century, this "humanist view" of Humanities was challenged by the "postmodernist movement," which sought to redefine them. Under the influence of "literary intellectuals" adept of Postmodernist philosophy; the Humantities became... "anti-humanist" with dangerous political consequences. 

Israeli historian, political scientist, one of the world's leading experts on Fascism Prof. Zeev Sternhell also wrote on the connection between the Counter-Enlightenment tradition and fascism:
It is often said that nationalism grew out of the French Revolution, but the opposite is true. The Revolution was possible because the nation was already a reality and the transference of sovereignty could take place in a natural way. But the writers of the Encyclopédie wanted the nation to be conceived as a collection of individuals: they did not wish history and culture to make man prisoner of any kind of determinism. This was the birth of rationalist modernity. 
Let us turn now to the answer provided by the anti – Enlightenment tradition. Since Edmund Burke in England and Johan Gottfried Herder in Germany at the end of the 18th century, to the 1920's and 1930's, society, which means the nation, was considered as a living organism, not a collection of individuals, it had a soul, and this soul was both a natural phenomenon and entirely individual. All cultures were organic and unique totalities, with unique and inimitable languages, values, traditions, institutions, customs. All values, therefore, were individual and historical: as such they were relative values. It follows that people who are the product of the same historical and cultural heritage possess a mentality which is unique of its kind. They have a "character" – and this notion of a variety of national characters inevitably destroyed the idea of a universal human nature based on reason. (11)
In his The Seduction of Unreason, the Intellectual Romance with Fascism: From Nietzsche to Postmodernism (2006) Richard Wolin reached the same conclusion as Ternhell's. He has traced the modern descendants of the Counter-Enlightenment in nietzchean postmodernism’s deep suspicion of “universalism,” (e.g. Human Rights). Postmodernists endorse “identity politics” rather than universal rights.

Note: it shouldn't be surprising that the most recent anti-art offensive in Britain was led by thatcherite British advertising executive Charles Saatchi via his YBA (Young British Artists) operation.



As Goya had warned us: the sleep of Reason produces monsters...

14. Humanities or Humanism?

This reciprocal distrust of the "Two Cultures" can be traced way back in Western history. From Roman to Medieval  times, the education comprised two groups called Trivium and Quadrivium. The first group Trivium focused essentiallly on "language studies "; grammar, rhetoric, dialectic and of logic. The second group Quadrivium focused essentiallly on "sciences"; arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, i.e. the mathematico-physical disciplines, known as physicae. Together they constituted the "Seven Liberal Arts" of the medieval university curriculum.

This medieval divide between Trivium (Language) and Quadrivium (Sciences) is comparable to the divide between C.P. Snow's "Two Cultures" today.

But in the 15th century Renaissance, the Italian humanists renamed the old Trivium with a more ambitious curriculum and name: Studia humanitatis, which gave us the term "Humanities". They excluded logic and added not only history, Greek, and moral philosophy (ethics), but made poetry, once a sequel of grammar and rhetoric, the most important member of the whole group. The educational curriculum of humanism spread throughout Europe during the sixteenth century and became the educational foundation for the schooling of European elitespaving the way for the Enlightenment.

Scholars working in the humanities are sometimes described as "humanists" but some refuse this "label" as they consider themselves as "antihumanists". What happened?.

The Postmodernist's criticism of Science is an attempt to "de-construct" it from a literary (linguistic) point-of-view, that of Trivium over the Quadrivium.

15. Two Cultures?... Two diverging histories: Relativity or relativism?

Our story starts at the turn of the previous century in a very quiet place in Switzerland witnessing two separate events that will deeply affect both the artistic and the scientific worlds, and our society...

Zürich
On one hand, we have this then young and (yet) unknown German scientist Albert Einstein who worked from 1902 through 1909 in the patent office in where he was appointed technical expert. Einstein's 1905 was his
Annus Mirabilis ("miracle year" in English or Wunderjahr in German). While still in this office he completed four articles contributing substantially to the foundation of modern physics and changed views on space, time, mass, and energy.

Einstein’s 1905 paper on "Brownian motion" was an essential contribution to the foundation of modern "atomism" by  demonstrating  the existence of atoms (a theory defended by Democritus nearly 2,500 years earlier). No wonder Democritus was laughing! One of Einstein's papers  announced his special theory of relativity, superseding the traditionally held Newtonian views of space and time. In 1909, having resigned his lectureship and his job in the patent office, he became professor of physics at the University of Zürich, Switzerland before leaving Switzerland in 1914 to move to Germany and then to the USA.

On the other hand, two years after Einstein's departure from Switzerland , the nihilist Dada anti-art movement started in the same city Zürich in a place called the Café Voltaire. The Dadaists sometimes used "found objects" as Duchamp will use with some success a few years later in the USA. This "anti-art" drive was an expression of the so-called "lost generation" during this tragedy called the "Great War" (World War One). This attitude towards society (and art or science)  was essentially nihilistic. (Heraclitus) Dada defended a form of relativism: "everything is art" (a concept still very popular in today's art schools).

Hostility towards Enlightenment reason is a theme which again links many of the Dadaists, both those who opt for non-rational alternative paradigms, as well as those who reject all structures. Dadaists also said "Dada is never right!" Here again the "Liar paradox" revisited: "There is no truth". Not only is opposition to reason one of the major defining features of the work of many Dadaists, but it is also an important factor linking them with the poststructuralists.

Anecdote: At the same time (1916) Vladimir Lenin wrote his revolutionary plans for Russia in a nearby apartment near the Cabaret Voltaire where the Zurich Dadaists made noise. Tom Stoppard used this coincidence as a premise for his play Travesties (1974), which includes Tzara, Lenin, and James Joyce as characters. 

So we have two stories, two roads heading to different directions yet "revolutionizing" both science and art...The "heraclitean / nietzschean" anti-art (and anti-science) Dada movement. In contrast, a "democritean" Albert Einstein who revolutionized science not by rejecting it but by superseding  Newton.

These two stories started in Switzerland. They drifted apart ever since.

They are C.P. Snow's Two Cultures." the same time (1916) Vladimir Lenin wrote his revolutionary plans for Russia in a nearby apartment near the Cabaret Voltaire where the Zurich Dadaists made noise. Tom Stoppard used this coincidence as a premise for his play Travesties (1974), which includes Tzara, Lenin, and James Joyce as characters. 

16. To laugh or to cry? Is this a Comedy or a Tragedy?


See To laugh or to cry? That is my question... from my blog.
 Pessimistic Heraclitus and optimistic Democritus by Donato Bramante (1477)
On the left: Heraclitus of Ephesus, who was known as the ‘Dark’ or ‘Obscure’ and was reputed to be melancholic or the "weeping philosopher". Heraclitus is famous for his insistence on ever-present change in the universe, as stated in his famous saying, "You cannot step twice into the same stream" or "everything flows". To contrast with his melancholy is often flanked next to Democritus (Greek: "chosen of the people") , a pre-socratic Greek philosopher, also known as the "laughing philosopher" because he found amusement in the folly of mankind. He is renowned for formulating what is considered to be the first atomic theory. Some people consider him to be the father of modern science. The two philosophers are widely represented in European painting of the Renaissance and Baroque period. Humanist Bramante painted himself as Democritus. He was also portrayed by Raphael in his "The School of Athens" fresco as Euclid.

C.P. Snow  wrote:
The non-scientists have a rooted impression that the scientists are shallowly optimistic, unaware of man's condition. On the other hand, the scientists believe that the literary intellectuals are totally lacking in foresight, peculiarly unconcerned with their brother men, in a deep sense anti-intellectual, anxious to restrict both art and thought to the existential moment. As a group, the scientists fall into that trap less than others. They are inclined to be impatient to see if something can be done: and inclined to think that it can be done, until it's proved otherwise. That is their real optimism, and it's an optimism that the rest of us badly need. (6)
This optimism, this belief in Progress is an echo of Enlightenment's and Renaissance's optimisms, still alive in the scientific community today.

In contrast, as we will see, Heraclitus' pessimism was conveyed in the arts world, and the Humanities in general via Nietzsche's and Postmodernist philosophy.

16.1 Pessimism (Nihilism) in Contemporary Arts

Saatchi's creature; conceptual YBA artist
Damien Hirst has banked on his "death theme."
Heraclitus believed everything was formed of fire, one of the four "elements" (Earth, Water, Air, and Fire ) ancient Greeks believed formed all matter. As it might be expected, Heraclitus believed in war. He said:  "We must realize that war is universal, and strife is justice, and that all things come into being and pass away through strife." Now, if this sounds like Nietzsche, it doesn't come as a surprise, in fact Nietzsche had been a great admirer of Heraclitean philosophy!

Nihilism is often and rightly associated with Nietzsche, who provided a detailed diagnosis of nihilism as a widespread phenomenon of Western culture. Nietzsche characterized nihilism as emptying the world and especially human existence of any meaning, purpose, comprehensible truth. This observation stems in part from his "perspectivism," (i.e. "everything is relative, subjective"). There are no  "objective facts or truths".

"What has happened, at bottom? The feeling of valuelessness was reached with the realization that the overall character of existence may not be interpreted by means of the concept of “aim,” the concept of “unity,” or the concept of “truth.” Existence has no goal or end; any comprehensive unity in the plurality of events is lacking: the character of existence is not “true,” is false. One simply lacks any reason for convincing oneself that there is a true world. Briefly: the categories “aim,” “unity,” “being” which we used to project some value into the world—we pull out again; so the world looks valueless. " (12)
In his Ecce Homo, Nietzsche defends Heraclitus:
I still had some doubt about Heraclitus, in whose presence I feel warmer and happier in general than anywhere else. The affirmation of flux and destruction, the decisive element in a Dionysian philosophy, the yea-saying to contradiction and strife, the notion of Becoming, along with the radical rejection ofeven the concept, “Being” — therein I am forced to recognize in any event that which is closest to me of all that has previously been thought. The doctrine of the “Eternal Recurrence,” that is, of theunconditional and endlessly repeating circulation of all things — thisdoctrine of Zarathustra’s could possibly in the end also have been taught by Heraclitus. At least the Stoics (13), who derived all their fundamental ideas from Heraclitus, possessed traces of it. (14)


Likewise Postmodernism is "nihilist" as it emphasises that there is no objective ruth. Only subjective (personal) truths. But if this statement is true, then, Postmodernism (or nihilism) is ultimately self-defeating because it cannot be true that there is no truth. Thus, Postmodernism (or nihilism) is neither true nor false. This pertains to the "liar paradox."  ;)

Yes, like Heraclitus, nihilists or postmodernists are weeping. Their "perspective" is very bleak, very depressing and sad. Pessimism. :(

17. Eidetic Art as a Solution?

Eidos (εἶδος) is a Greek term meaning "form," "shape", "essence," "type," or "species".
It was the basis for Plato's theory of Forms ("ideas") and Aristotle's theory of universals. Ultimately it comes from the Indo-European root *weid- meaning “to see”. This is the reason why we can ask: "Do you see what I mean ?"

Eidetic art is therefore not a new style, it is a new point of view using artistic metaphors which contain many apparently contradicting views. It is a complex "idea" (Eidos). In practice, it is creative by combining reason and imagination as Goya suggested. This art aspires to inspire and doing so hopefully bridging the gap between C.P. Snow's "Two Cultures."
“Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with her, she is the mother of the arts and source of their wonders.” (Goya)

I will write more on this.





Notes and references:

1.The Luddites were a social movement of British textile artisans in the nineteenth century who protested – often by destroying mechanised looms – against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, which they felt were leaving them without work and changing their way of life. It took its name from Ned Ludd. Source Wikipedia.
2. This was one of the reasons I home-educated my daughter.
3. The Seduction of Unreason, the Intellectual Romance with Fascism: From Nietzsche to Postmodernism by Richard Wolin (2006)
4. On "Republicanism," read Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
5. This famous quote was shouted by Napoleon character in Orwell's "Animal Farm" .
6. “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution” (1959) by Charles Percy Snow
7. This is the fundamental intellectual fallacy of postmodernism. Question: Is saying "There is no objective truth" an objective truth ? This pertains to the "liar paradox."  ;)
8.  "Le postmodernisme expliqué aux enfants : Correspondance, 1982–1985".
9. "Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle" by Pierre Klossowski (1969).
10. On Ezra Pound, read the excellent research by Dr. Matthew Feldman "Ezra Pound's Fascist Propaganda, 1935-45"  (2013)
11. Anti-Enlightenment to Fascism and Nazism: Reflections on the Road to Genocide by 
Prof. Zeev Sternhell
12. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power
13 On the "Stoics" read my ARE YOU INDIFFERENT TO “INDIFFERENCE”?
14. Ecce Homo, pp. 3-4, F. Nietzsche, 1888.



 More to read:

The Arts Catalyst commissions contemporary art that experimentally and critically engages with science. 

Symphony of Science
 is a musical project headed by John Boswell, designed to deliver scientific knowledge and philosophy in musical form. 


Art meets science (in German)



+++++++++++++++++THE END

MORE HERE (4. Post-Modernism : relativism (perspectivism))


Georges Bataille (Foucault's main inspirational source) G. Bataille assailed the modern conviction that people function for the most part as rational beings, while in fact the whole realm of our existence is violence. He wanted to restore the `Dionysian frenzy' even in its extreme form (like Aztec sacred sacrifices) by breaking the power of the `authoritarian nightmare', the modern State with its thrift and capitalistic accumulation. His means were intellectual destabilization, eroticism and its subversive nature, the squandering of the economic surplus (potlatch) and attacks on all traditional taboos (sex, murder, excretion, holocausts, intoxication). But seeing that his `Dionysian dream' had no chance in a Liberal State, he championed separatism (individualism) and tried to undermine `the compassionate tradition'.

Michel Foucault Bataille's Dionysian violence became Foucault's `madness'. His madmen were not those human beings who we now consider as ill, but homosexuals, blasphemers, libertines, alchemists or venereal patients. Their madness of desire, their most unreasonable passions were, for him, wisdom and reason for they were of the order of nature. The true sin was the attempt by religion, morality and State intervention to neutralize that `dark rage in man's heart.' Through madness, Foucault denied the existence of a conscious, knowing subject, thereby pulverizing concepts of oligarchy, power, oppression or ideology. There is only relativism. For him, we should cease to ask: who has power? What is the aim of the powerful? It doesn't matter who exercizes power. Madness is the way of the world.

Jacques Derrida antihumanist discourse by way of Jacques Derrida, who recycled Bataille’s polemic in the eighties. from Lyotard, Hardt and Negri, Baudrillard For J. F. Lyotard, science is only a sort of discourse. Power is given and there is no pure alternative to the present system. The delirium went to a new nadir with `Hardt and Negri' pretending that `marketing has perhaps the clearest relation to postmodern theories.'
But, the ultimate scandal was J. Baudrillard's thesis that `the Gulf War didn't happen'.  Kojève, Strauss, Jünger (other inspirational sources) Alexander Kojève gave a new interpretation of Hegel by stressing that the game of life was man's desire for recognition and prestige (cfr. F. Fukuyama). Leo Strauss supported the right of the strongest and proclaimed the necessity of tyranny. Ernst Jünger saw in the the rabble and its violence the purest form of Carl Schmitt's `Partisans'. G. G. Preparata shows us clearly and perfectly how postmodernist narcotic verbiage is a devilish doublespeak. It masks the real power structures (social control, wealth distribution, empire policy). It embraces violence and the cult of war, oligarchic and tyrannical domination and the necessary clash of civilizations.

Postmodernism against the Enlightenment:
During the period of the Eighteenth century known as the Enlightenment (Newton, Kant!), many intellectuals began to conceive of the world in a new manner. Spurred by the rise of science, philosophers came to see nature as an entity which man could actively control through technology and reason. Additionally, this confidence coincided with a rise in the stature of the self as an autonomous being, free to shape his or her personal world. Thus the possibility for emancipation from institutions like government, religion and commerce, which had suppressed the public for centuries, lay within the free and rational individual. Since the Enlightenment, reliance upon reason has "held that modern science and technology contributed to the larger... project of greater economic and political freedom in a democratic polity. Lyotard, describes modern culture's "incredulity toward metanarratives" as a definition of society's inability to form a coherent understanding of its current conditions. Instead, he champions the ability of smaller narratives, such as those belonging to marginalized groups, to undermine Western hegemony. Enlightenment : Freedom (French/amricn revol.), Reason, Justice (Human Rights)

As the concept matters more than the way it is represented (ie the artist’ “intention“), traditional art objects such as paintings and sculptures are commonly rejected as mere commodities.  It rejects the idea that art could be “useful”, ie has any place in our society. It is an “anti-art” art movement.

Nihilism is often associated with the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who provided a detailed diagnosis of nihilism as a widespread phenomenon of Western culture.

NO REALITY
Nietzsche characterized nihilism as emptying the world and especially human existence of meaning, purpose, comprehensible truth, or essential value. This observation stems in part from Nietzsche's perspectivism, or his notion that "knowledge" is always by someone of some thing: it is always bound by perspective, and it is never mere fact. FROM

Therefore no truth...



But as soon as man finds out how that world is fabricated solely from psychological needs, and how he has absolutely no right to it, the last form of nihilism comes into being: it includes disbelief in any metaphysical world and forbids itself any belief in a true world. Having reached this standpoint, one grants the reality of becoming as the only reality, forbids oneself every kind of clandestine access to afterworlds and false divinities—but cannot endure this world though one does not want to deny it.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power




(sciences) >< new iconoclasm (con art, postmodernism): NIHILIST DESTRUCTION (Nietzsche)  IN ARTS/ HUMANITIES



Review by Grieve-Carlson Fascism: A Precursor to Postmodernism by Bill Crouse, President of Christian Information Ministrie Title < Hamlet (Copernicus and Shakespeare!) ;)

 TODAY: ANTISCIENCE/REASON IN ENVIRONMENTALISM USING SCARE (superstitious) TACTICS. 





A BRIEF HISTORY OF ART

 The postmodern Nietzsche rejects the notion of truth. He is primarily concerned with aesthetics and issues of style, and is ethically and politically a tolerant relativist
According to Wolin, the postmodernist strategy has thoroughly failed. The movements that brought down the Soviet bloc were inspired by precisely that tradition of reason and civil rights that postmodernists usually regard as "a fundamental source of tyranny and oppression" con-art is cut off from our contemporary realities- unlike most artistic disciplines it has become a “world onto itself”, a “closed society” (by the “enemies of the Open Society” as Karl Popper has developed it). During this last century Visual art has become a battlefield of ideas which led to worse political regimes in human history (communism, fascism)- it was hijacked by “intellectuals” and ideologues as it is well documented in historians books… Eidetic art as TRUE modernism Modernism roots come from Renaissance’s ideals. Renaissance Art historian and artist Giorgio Vasari referred in his writings to the art of his own period (16th-centuryItaly) as "modern." For historians (but not art historians) the modern period actually begins with the Renaissance. A discussion of modernism might easily begin in the Renaissance period when we first encounter secular humanism, the notion that man (not God) is the measure of all things, a worldly civic consciousness, and "utopian" visions of a more perfect society The modernist thinking which emerged in the Renaissance began to take shape as a larger pattern of thought in the 18th century. Mention may be made first of the so-called "Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns," a dispute that dominated European intellectual life throughout the century. The crux was the issue of whether Moderns (i.e. those living in 18th century) were now morally and artistically superior to the Ancients (i.e. the Greeks and Romans). The argument introduces an important dichotomy that is to remain fundamental to the modernist question.

The 18th century, the Age of Enlightenment, saw the intellectual maturation of the humanist belief in reason as the supreme guiding principle in the affairs of mankind. Through reason the mind achieved enlightenment, and for the enlightened mind, freed from the restraints of superstition and ignorance, a whole new exciting world opened up.

Postmodernism, fascism, communism etc were all  ><  Age of Enlightenment, the “Age of Reason” (book…) This was a logical consequence of the historical pathway towards “art for art’s sake” Art is about communication and creativity- It is not our intention to attack, condemn “modern art”. It is like shooting at an ambulance…(??)

By its own nature, Art, as a creative process, is modern or it is not Art. Art is expected to bring new ideas. Con-Art has become an embarrassing joke. Important date is 1863 where Edouard Manet’s “Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe” (“Luncheon on the Grass) was exhibited at the “Salon des Refusés” in Paris. Manet was reminded of Giorgione's “Concert Champêtre” and determined to repeat the theme in clearer colour and with modern personnel. This was “eidetic art”. The “theme” was the “idea”. The roots of modernism lie much deeper in history than the middle of the 19th century. For historians (but not art historians) the modern period actually begins with the Renaissance. Our concern is where did it go so wrong? What was the banana peel on which the Art world slipped? Modern art with “Salon des refuses” (Manet) Duchanps’ unrinal. To

Avant garde is destructive (“negative” method of Hegelian dialect, Niestzche etc) >< Science: built on construction (on giant s shoulders) Role of intellectuals (Nietszche, painted word etc) as a modern iconoclasm of last century, eg surrealism (Magritte ceci n est pas une pipe, mensonge des images)  postmodern intellectuals as modern scolasts // plato/Aristotle and Italian Renaissance Visual art (artist) I born from Renaissance -> Leonardo etc (art + science) Definition (etymology) Since renaissance, visual artists : art + science Eidetic as memory. My view: as intelligence and imagination + neurobiology of brain Art with substance
+ histoire art et prise de contrôle par les historiens et critiques d'art + théories et idéologies (verbal)  qui ont influencé l'art: psychanalyse, fascisme, communisme... +ex de Kandinsky/Mondrian et Théosophie.... mène a la mort de l'art visuel par ses critiques et historiens... prehistoric caves art: they knew the animals inside out, butchered them hundreds of tuimes, observed them etc so, very close to what Leonardo started: to observe/study  the anatomy -> right-hemisphere… middle ages: left hemisphere: Aristotle’s logic, textbooks ex: le nom de la rose (name of the rose) story by Umberto ecco pictures/images were often considered as “magical” that was the case in middle ages or earlier even after the renaissance… there was a mystique behind the numbers and symbols which led to free masonry (or else) VERY far away from Leonardo’s concerns This mystique is // to superstition and comes from left-h brains // unconscious = intuition = non-verbal etc which is the point of of view of L-H brains (eg : psychoanalysts, freud) history art: reformation: iconoclasm (word/ Gutenberg) arts taken away from churches, towards more secular subjects (Dutch, Rembrandt) iconoclasm: Duchamp, painting as slashed canvas etc… down to Turner prize? Catholic art (after renaissance/baroque) will flourish better than protestant? (spain,france,italy) Is it to do with light? (then what about Arabic art?)England: had  to “import” artists from continent. Literature will flourish better. Impressionism, surrealism… Expressionism is more protestant … ? Kandinsky’s fundamental error: difference between visual arts and music (“abstract”) is that music comes from our spoken language (German, Italian ect musics are directly connected their respective spoken languages) in other words: music does not come from the sounds we hear, it comes from our spoken languages, it is primarily SUNG!!!  Ex: rap music!!! Music comes from the sound of talk!! Unlike painting: our visual language is based on what we see. To deny that is recipe for not being understood. there is only one instance where visual language could become “abstract” as music is: calligraphy (ex: Arabic, Chinese…) Arabic: because islam forbids visual representations. It's called zoomorphic calligraphy and some believe it's developed because of the restriction of illustrating living beings according to muslim traditions. http://creativebits.org/inspiration/arabic_calligraphy So, where does come some “universality” in music? IF there is any… This “universality” comes from the shared roots of all our spoken languages. But this “universality” is therefore very relative. There are different musical scales, depending where you come from… Chinese painting and calligraphy are closely connected to each other. Chinese artists usually learn and practice both. http://blogs.ebay.com/linli888/entry/Chinese-Ink-Brush-Painting-on-Rice-Paper-Bamboo/_W0QQidZ123533019

Autism and Creativity: Is There a 

Link Between Autism in Men and Exceptional Ability? by Michael Fitzgerald http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/reader/1583912134/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-page

NON SENSE (irrational, madness, "anti-authoritarians" etc) = comes from misunderstanding of reason (science) ir-rational is not non-rational! REASON: (assault) from postmodernists  who define science as a "language", ie as verbal, sequential.. from the point of view of (sequential) language (words)!!!! // "ceci n'est pas une pipe"!!!
Postmodernism generator : http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/ Adorno etc : hegel + neo-marxist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School  and « modernism » ? As the growing influence of National Socialism became ever more threatening, its founders decided to prepare to move the Institute out of the country.[11] Following Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, the Institute left Germany for Geneva, before moving again to New York City in 1934, where it became affiliated with Columbia University. Frankfurt School theorists were explicitly linking up with the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant, where the term critique meant philosophical reflection on the limits of claims made for certain kinds of knowledge and a direct connection between such critique and the emphasis on moral autonomy – as opposed to traditionally deterministic scientific theories. In an intellectual context defined by dogmatic positivism and scientism on the one hand and dogmatic "scientific socialism" on the other, critical theorists intended to rehabilitate Marx's ideas through a philosophically critical approach. History, according to Hegel, proceeds and evolves in a dialectical manner: the present embodies the rational sublation of past contradictions. History may thus be seen as an intelligible process (often referred to as Weltgeist) which is moving towards a specific condition—the rational realization of human freedom.[13] However, considerations about the future were of no interest to Hegel,[14][15] for whom philosophy cannot be prescriptive because it understands only in hindsight. The study of history is thus limited to the description of past and present realities.[13] Hence for Hegel and his successors, dialectics inevitably lead to the approval of the status quo—indeed, Hegel's philosophy served as a justification for Christian theology and the Prussian state. This was fiercely criticized by Marx and the Young Hegelians, who claimed that Hegel had gone too far in defending his abstract conception of "absolute Reason" and had failed to notice the "real" (i.e. often undesirable and irrational) life conditions of men. Unlike Hegel, Marx maintained a strong concern for the present improvement and future development of human society. By correcting Hegel's dialectical method, Marx advanced his own theory of dialectical materialism. This established a new dialectical law of history, according to which the social and material contradictions inherent to capitalism will inevitably lead to its negation—thereby replacing capitalism with a new rational form of society, socialism. For their part, Frankfurt School theorists quickly came to realize that a dialectical method could only be adopted if it could be applied to itself—that is to say, if they adopted a self-correcting method—a dialectical method that would enable them to correct previous false dialectical interpretations. Modernism or postmodernism’ common method: REJECTION of the past (“enlightments”, religion etc) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism#Goals_of_the_movement IT IS NEGATIVE, NOT INCLUSIVE (cusa) not like “Standing on the shoulders of giants” the metaphor was first recorded in the twelfth century and attributed to Bernard of Chartres. It was famously uttered by seventeenth-century scientist Isaac Newton The attribution to Bernard is due to John of Salisbury. In 1159, John wrote in his Metalogicon:[1] "Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size."

POSTMODERNISM: AN INTELLECTUAL JOURNEY TO NOWHERE (No Man’s Land) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Man%27s_Land No man's land is a term for land that is not occupied or is under dispute between parties that will not occupy it because of fear or uncertainty. Postmodernists (French intellectuals) = Nietzscheans (against rationality/Hegel etc) // Apollo (Hegel) >< Dionysus (Nietzsche) HEGEL V NIETZSCHE: Apollo V Dionysus Christ (plato) V Dionysus Good V Evil Thesis V Antithesis (Negation) -> “Synthesis” (Neg of Neg) Nietzsche: “Beyond Good and Evil” (subtitled "Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future") + "free spirits" >< (quote) ” the most dangerous of errors hitherto has been a dogmatist error—namely, Plato's invention of Pure Spirit and the Good in Itself.” Basically: Dionysos >< truth, good etc “"HOW COULD anything originate out of its opposite?” “The fundamental belief of metaphysicians is THE BELIEF IN ANTITHESES OF VALUES.” and Zarathustra (Superman) before “Beyond…” // Hegel and Zeitgeist/Napoleon (The Philosophy of History) : the “absolute spirit” (absolutism…) Quote: history does not produce happiness - "history is not the soil in which happiness grows.
The periods of happiness in it are the blank pages of history" (German nationalism):

“World history is the record of the spirit's efforts to attain knowledge of what it is in itself. The Orientals do not know that the spirit or man as such are free in themselves. And because they do not know that, they are not themselves free. They only know that One is free.... The consciousness of freedom first awoke among the Greeks, and they were accordingly free; but, like the Romans, they only knew that Some, and not all men as such, are free.... The Germanic nations, with the rise of Christianity, were the first to realize that All men are by nature free, and that freedom of spirit is his very essence.”

Hegel takes throughout his philosophy of history, namely, "World history travels from east to west; for Europe is the absolute end of history, just asAsiais its beginning."

SO NIETZSCHE WAS A MYSTIC, SO WAS HEGEL… IN ORDER TO SOLVE, SUPERCEDE KANT’S  CRITICISMS OF REASON Constructism: Rodchenko: based on many “no’s” to Art (beauty, creativity etc) -> “death of art”  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Rodchenko#The_end_of_painting) + poet Maiakovsky = “Hegelian negative” phase : tabula rasa, destruction of past (// cults) + Malevitch THEY ALL WERE KILLED BY STALIN: THE REVOLTION DEVOURS ITS OWN CHILDREN (NEG OF NEG) // FRENCH TERROR // KRISTAL NACHT Revolution is like Saturn, it devours its own children. ATTRIBUTION: Georg Büchner (1813–1837), German dramatist, revolutionary. Trans. by Gerhard P. Knapp (1995). Danton’s Death, act I (1835). In the original German: die Revolution ist wie Saturn, sie frißt ihre eignen Kinder. The revolution like Saturn devours its own children. I believe it was a common saying during the French Revolution (1789) and that it was most famously uttered by Danton during his trial. By the period Danton fell out of favor with the Committee of Public Safety and Robespierre, the revolution had become so suspicious of loyalism and foreign intervention (Marat, a popular journalist was killed by a royalist) it set up kangaroo courts throughout the country to purge society of counterrevolutionaries. In the end, the people of Paris took virtual control of the National Assembly and the committee of Public Safety. Successive waves of radicalization (Girondins, Jacobins, Enrages) had followed the ascension of the Jacobins to power, quickly making conservatives out of yesterday's radicals. In the end, the terror killed 7000 people across the country, many of whom had been among the first revolutionaries. Danton, Robespierre and Saint-Just all succumbed to the guillotine. The revolution, much like Saturn, ate its children. Thermidore ended the terror, and dealt with Robespierre and SaintJust.

Source(s):

If you want an pictorial history...check out the paintings of David. For a good Saturn... how about Goya's "Saturn Devouring its children" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Devouring_His_Son anti-art and its historical precedent, iconoclasm. it was suggested that Art History itself is iconoclastic. By offering interpretation, the critic distances the viewer from the direct experience of the work. Note: Dada was not against the “images”, it was against all art.. (poetry, literature included)

// formalism in Math (Hilbert)? // art for the sake of art (abstraction)- art as its own subject // sophism (subjectivity, no objectivity) Contemporary  art (modern or post modern) has been a history of auto-negation. (Hegels’ double neg), leading to… nothing, emptiness (nihilism, cannibalism). What if Punk rock had won over the music scene? There would have been an anti-Punk Punk mvt etc etc, leading eventually to an emptied scene. !!! THE FIRSTARTCRITICS WERE… POETS.  THEN THEY WERE REPLACED BY “INTELLECTUALS”…  (when?) Nihilism is also a characteristic that has been ascribed to time periods: for example, Jean Baudrillard and others have called postmodernity a nihilistic epoch,[4] and some Christian theologians and figures of religious authority have asserted that postmodernity[5] and many aspects of modernity[3] represent a rejection of theism, and that such a rejection entails some form of nihilism. Logic of the “Antis”: Modern art is a story of anti-mvts: impressionist were against expressionists etc etc This was madness: Mutual Assured Destruction, M.A.D. Circular logic (Hegel’s “neg of neg) and Nietzsche “reversal of values” and the myth of “eternal recurrence” CIRCULAR LOGIC (closed society) will become like a LABYRINTH… when it develops itself, a closed labyrinth. ARISTOTLE (Scholastic method of pro and cons = 2 peri-patheticians) Kant: critics of Reason lead to “impasse” (dead-end): antinomies http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/philosophy/Personnel/susan/Antinomies.html The Visual Arts in What Art Is (PDF)
http://www.aristos.org/editors/booksumm.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_for_art%27s_sake

Gautier, however, was the first to adopt the phrase as a slogan. "Art for art's sake" was a bohemian creed in the nineteenth century, a slogan raised in defiance of those who — from John Ruskin to the much later Communist advocates of socialist realism — thought that the value of art was to serve some moral or didactic purpose. "Art for art's sake" affirmed that art was valuable as art, that artistic pursuits were their own justification and that art did not need moral justification — and indeed, was allowed to be morally subversive. The explicit slogan is associated in the history of English art and letters with Walter Pater and his followers in the Aesthetic Movement, which was self-consciously in rebellion against Victorian moralism. Petrarch? http://medievalhistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/petrarch_and_the_dark_ages
The concept of the Dark Ages is not some postmodern thing or even a 19th century Romantic notion. It is, in fact, contemporary to the period it describes. Strangely enough, it was a term created in the 14th century, by one of the Middle Ages' most brilliant writers-the poet Petrarch (1304-1374). Anti humanism: Renaissance: man/Nature in the image of God (as God’s creation) Academia: study of human body (anatomy, proportions) and Nature in general (light, shadows etc) See  Leonardo’s book on painting So IT WAS NOT MIMESIS (IMITATTION) BUT ABOUT STUDYING/ LEARNING (anatomy, Nature, etc)
[1] The forbidden image: an intellectual history of iconoclasm By Alain Besançon
[2] “The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism” (PrincetonUniversity Press,Princeton andOxford, 2004 )
[3] Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer (1888)
[4] The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement for which the most immediate stimulus was the so-called Scientific Revolution of the 17th and early 18th centuries when men like Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton, through the application of reason to the study of Nature (i.e. our world and the heavens) had made spectacular scientific discoveries in which were revealed various scientific truths. The Age of Enlightenment saw the intellectual maturation of the humanist belief in reason as the supreme guiding principle in the affairs of mankind. Through reason the mind achieved enlightenment, and for the enlightened mind, freed from the restraints of superstition and ignorance, a whole new exciting world opened up. Source: http://www.arthistory.sbc.edu/artartists/modernism.html
[5] “Nietzsche, Prophet of Nazism: The Cult of the Superman--Unveiling the Nazi Secret Doctrine” by Abir Taha (AuthorHouse, 2005)
[6] “Animal Farm” Chapter 10, (1945) George Orwell

+ http://arthistoryresources.net/modernism/roots.html http://www.arthistory.sbc.edu/artartists/artartists.html -----------------



-------------- // Entartete Kunst 1937 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entartete_Kunst = after ww2 victory: Adorno / Horkheimer frankfurt school, anti authoritarian, anti-totalitarianisms etc wiki:

The Frankfurt School (German: Frankfurter Schule) refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory. The school initially consisted of dissident Marxists who believed that some of Marx's followers had come to parrot a narrow selection of Marx's ideas, usually in defense of orthodox Communist parties. Following Marx, they were concerned by the conditions which allowed for social change and the establishment of rational institutions. Their emphasis on the "critical" component of theory was derived significantly from their attempt to overcome the limits of positivism, materialism and determinism by returning to Kant's critical philosophy and its successors in German idealism, principally Hegel's philosophy, with its emphasis on dialectic and contradiction as inherent properties of reality. Since the 1960s, Frankfurt School critical theory has increasingly been guided by Jürgen Habermas' work on communicative reason, linguistic intersubjectivity and what Habermas calls "the philosophical discourse of modernity". The philosophical tradition now referred to as the "Frankfurt School" is perhaps particularly associated with Max Horkheimer (philosopher, sociologist and social psychologist), who took over as the institute's director in 1930 and recruited many of the school's most talented theorists, including Theodor W. Adorno (philosopher, sociologist, musicologist), Erich Fromm (psychoanalyst), and Herbert Marcuse (philosopher). As the growing influence of National Socialism became ever more threatening, its founders decided to prepare to move the Institute out of the country. Following Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, the Institute left Germany for Geneva, before moving to New York City in 1935, where it became affiliated with Columbia University. +Dialectical method: For their part, Frankfurt School theorists quickly came to realize that a dialectical method could only be adopted if it could be applied to itself—that is to say, if they adopted a self-correcting method—a dialectical method that would enable them to correct previous false dialectical interpretations. Accordingly, critical theory rejected the dogmatic historicism and materialism of orthodox Marxism. Indeed, the material tensions and class struggles of which Marx spoke were no longer seen by Frankfurt School theorists as having the same revolutionary potential within contemporary Western societies—an observation which indicated that Marx's dialectical interpretations and predictions were either incomplete or incorrect. Contrary to orthodox Marxist praxis, which solely seeks to implement an unchangeable and narrow idea of "communism" into practice, critical theorists held that praxis and theory, following the dialectical method, should be interdependent and should mutually influence each other. When Marx famously stated in his Theses on Feuerbach that "philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it", his real idea was that philosophy's only validity was in how it informed action. Frankfurt School theorists would correct this by claiming that when action fails, then the theory guiding it must be reviewed. In short, socialist philosophical thought must be given the ability to criticize itself and "overcome" its own errors. While theory must inform praxis, praxis must also have a chance to inform theory. ("falsifiability") The second phase of Frankfurt School critical theory centres principally on two works: Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944) and Adorno's Minima Moralia (1951). The authors wrote both works during the Institute's exile in America. While retaining much of a Marxian analysis, in these works critical theory shifted its emphasis. The critique of capitalism turned into a critique of Western civilization as a whole. Of this second "phase" of the Frankfurt School, philosopher and critical theorist Nikolas Kompridis writes that: “Only a decade or so later (in 1940s, note), however, having revisited the premises of their philosophy of history, Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment steered the whole enterprise, provocatively and self-consciously, into a skeptical cul-de-sac. " Adorno, a trained musician, wrote The Philosophy of Modern Music (1949), in which he, in essence, polemicizes against beauty itself ― because it has become part of the ideology of advanced capitalist society. This view of modern art as producing truth only through the negation of traditional aesthetic form and traditional norms of beauty because they have become ideological is characteristic of Adorno and of the Frankfurt School generally. Horkheimer, from wikipedia: Eclipse of Reason is a book published in 1947, by Max Horkheimer. In it he discusses how the Nazis were able to project their agenda as "reasonable". It is broken into five sections: Means and Ends, Conflicting Panaceas, The Revolt of Nature, The Rise and Decline of the Individual and On the Concept of Philosophy [3] and deals with the concept of reason within the history of western philosophy [4]. Horkheimer defines true reason as rationality[4], which can only be fostered in an environment of free, critical thinking. He details the difference between objective, subjective and instrumental reason, and states that we have moved from the former through the center and into the latter (though subjective and instrumental reason are closely connected). Objective reason deals with universal truths that dictate that an action is either right or wrong. It is a concrete concept, and a force in the world that requires specific modes of behavior. The focus in the objective faculty of reason is on the ends, rather than the means. Subjective reason is an abstract concept of reason, and focuses primarily on means. Specifically, the reasonable nature of the purpose of action is irrelevant - the ends only serve the purpose of the subject (generally self-advancement or preservation). To be "reasonable" in this context is to be suited to a particular purpose, to be "good for something else". This aspect of reason is universally conforming, and easily furnishes ideology. In instrumental reason, the sole criterion of reason is its operational value or purposefulness, and with this, the idea of truth becomes contingent on mere subjective preference (hence the relation with subjective reason). Because subjective/instrumental reason rules, the ideals of a society, for example democratic ideals, become dependent on the "interests" of the people instead of being dependent on objective truths. Nevertheless, Horkheimer admits that objective reason has its roots in Reason ("Logos" in Greek) of the subject. He concludes, If by enlightenment and intellectual progress we mean the freeing of man from superstitious belief in evil forces, in demons and fairies, in blind fate - in short, the emancipation from fear - then denunciation of what is currently called reason is the greatest service we can render. Error: Horkheimer confuses "logical consistency" with Reason... Nazis were "logical" but their logic was based on falsities, contradicted by facts. (falsifiable) CULTURAL MARXISM (see Finland massacre) perceived as "anti-Christian" ("western") < A Gramsci, G Lukacs: destroy  Christianity, cultural western values to take over... = ROOTS OF COUNTERCULTURE

 COMMUNISM: CLASS STRUGGLE NAZIS: RACE STRUGGLE (social Darwinism) CRITICAL MARXISM: CULTURE STRUGGLE? Major works
  • Reason and Revolution
  • Eclipse of Reason
  • Dialectic of Enlightenment
  • Minima Moralia
  • Eros and Civilization
  • One-Dimensional Man
  • Negative Dialectics
  • The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
  • The Theory of Communicative Action

-------------

Wellmer has already been seen to define the central experience of postmodernity as 'die vom Tode der Vernunft', while 
--------------

[caption id="attachment_4720" align="alignleft" width="300"]Death of Socrates, by Jacques-Louis David
Death of Socrates (1787), by Jacques-Louis David[/caption] Enlightenment and French and American revolutions Surrealist "revolution" and communism 
STALIN-HITLER PACT // same >< modern art (pro-Academism) Both were against creativity in arts as it requires... Freedom!






Reflexive nihilism is similar to Nietzsche‘s definition of nihilism in that nihilism means. "What does nihilism mean? That the highest values devalue themselves The aim is lacking; “why?” finds no answer.”
According to Nietzsche, the conceptual framework known as Western metaphysics was first articulated by Plato, who had pieced together remnants of a declining worldview, borrowing elements from predecessors such as Anaximander, Parmenides, and especially Socrates, in order to overturn a cosmology that had been in play from the days of Homer and which found its fullest and last expression in the thought of Heraclitus.
FROM

Nihilism was opposed to the ideological norm: to Christianity, nihilism is atheism; to authoritarian ideologies, nihilism is anarchism;

Postmodern nihilism is concerned with the idea that nihilism cannot truthfully say that there is no truth.‘

 philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life.



nihilism is sometimes used to explain the general mood of despair at a perceived pointlessness of existence that one may develop upon realising there are no necessary norms, rules, or laws. Movements such as Futurism (Fascism) and deconstruction, among others, have been identified by commentators as "nihilistic" at various times in various contexts.

Nihilism is also a characteristic that has been ascribed to time periods: for example, Jean Baudrillard and others have called postmodernity a nihilistic epoch,


Postmodern and poststructuralist thought question the very grounds on which Western cultures have based their 'truths': absolute knowledge and meaning, a 'decentralization' of authorship, the accumulation of positive knowledge, historical progress, and certain ideals and practices of humanism and the Enlightenment.

Jacques Derrida, whose deconstruction is perhaps most commonly labeled nihilistic, did not himself make the nihilistic move that others have claimed.




---------------------------------
Snow stands up for the view that exact science is, in its own right, an essential part of civilisation, and should not merely be valued for its technological applications.  Anyone who does not know the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and is proud of it too, exposes oneself as a Philistine. [...] But the law has many faces and interpretations; the comparison to a work of Shakespeare is, in this respect, not inappropriate. (Me: NOT!) [...] Planck, for example, claimed that, were it not for the existence of irreversible processes, ‘the entire edifice of the second law would crumble [. . . ] and theoretical work would have to start from the beginning.’ (Planck 1897, x113), and viewed entropy increase as a ‘universal measure of irreversibility’ (ibid. x134). A similar view is expressed by Sklar in his recent book on the foundations of statistical mechanics (1993, p. 21): ‘The crucial fact needed to justify the introduction of [. . . ] a definite entropy value is the irreversibility of physical processes.’ In this respect, thermodynamics seems to stand in sharp contrast with the rest of classical physics, in particular with mechanics which, at least in Hamilton’s formulation, is symmetric under time reversal. The problem of reconciling this thermodynamical arrow of time with a mechanical world picture is usually seen as the most profound problem in the foundations of thermal and statistical physics; see Davies (1974), Mackey (1992), Zeh (1992), Sklar (1993) and Price (1996). from http://www.physik.uni-augsburg.de/theo1/hanggi/Uffink.pdf

 ------------------------------------------

apollo v dionysus
3d option: NOT opposed but complementary where reason and emotions work together, "marry"


 EXAMPLE OF FEYNMAN!!!
ENLIGHTENMENT AND FRENCH PHILOSOPHES: NEO-CLASSICISM (1750-1850) eg David

Romanticism - from 1780-1850: 
  • narrative: Gericault, Delacroix
  • landscape: Turner, Constable, Friedrich, Barbizon school
  • Modern: 1850+ 
  • Impressionism - from 1865-85 
  • Post-Impressionism - from 1885-1910 The 17th-century scientists made the discoveries. It was for the 18th century writers, known as philosophes to popularise the difficult theories of the scientists. The philosophes made the new marvels of science understandable and exciting for everyone. Leaders in the movement in France included Voltaire (1694-1778), Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). These philosophes, as they were called, primarily critiqued the Roman Catholic Church and its power, the political system in place, and social inequalities. As new ideologies were taking hold, art style deviated from the beginning of the century where baroque and rococo were the preferred forms of artistic expression. 
  • Neoclassicism, a return to the Greco-Roman traditions, exhibited order, balance, harmony, and realism. The art world, particularly in Paris welcomed this change. Portraiture maintained popularity. Gone were the overly flattering flowery portraits of the aristocracy. Portraits were given to more faithful and honest interpretations. Also, a number of women painters emerged at this time. Since they were generally not allowed entrance into the art academies or permitted to paint nudes, rendering portraits was virtually their only option. The linear simplicity of the Neoclassic movement lasted well into the 19th century. 
The Postmodern Turn In Philosophy: Theoretical Provocations And Normative Deficits
What is "Modernism"? Fascism >< (decadence) In "Decadence and the making of modernism". its author David Weir  decadence as a cultural mode of transition from romanti­cism to modernism OR? modernism as heritage of enlightenment? postmodernism: focuses on language (and its rules, as "rhetoric" )




BIN / TRASH





This chasm between "literary intellectuals" and "scientists" goes even further; it encompasses two major "categories": the "humanities" (culture) and "sciences".

Humanists??
The most ominous conflict of our time is the difference of opinion, of outlook, between men of letters, historians, philosophers, the so-called humanists, on the one side, and scientists on the other.

The conflicts’ reasons are complex, but significant among them is the influence that the medieval trivium and the quadrivium continue to exert. In the Middle Ages, in the rediscovered tradition from Greek and Roman times, the trivium and quadrivium embodied what an educated person was expected to know. In the trivium, grammar was a basic foundation, rhetoric encompassed literature and poetry, and logic was primarily Aristotelian. The quadrivium encompassed four subjects, all based on mathematical knowledge—arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. Geometry had its origins in Egyptian and Greek thought, and arithmetic in Indian and Arab thought transmitted to the West. Astronomy dealt with movable objects that were deemed to be permanent and music with movable phenomena that were impermanent (its purpose was to understand polyphonic secular music).

By the thirteenth century, their structure was fairly standardized, with the trivium the basic foundation of university education, and the quadrivium leading to a master’s degree that could be followed by specialized professional education, particularly in medicine, but also the law. The purpose of the medieval trivium and quadrivium was thus to elevate and prepare. In the Renaissance the focus shifted to erudition, with much greater secular—human—emphasis than in medieval times, with their pervasive theological context, hence the label humanities.

MORE HERE




ANCIENTS V. MODERNS

post-moderns as "neo-ancients"?



The Battle of the Books is the name of a short satire written by Jonathan Swift in 1704. It depicts a literal battle between books in the King's Library, as ideas and authors struggle for supremacy.
In France at the end of the seventeenth century, a minor furor arose over the question of whether contemporary learning had surpassed what was known by those in Classical Greece and Rome. The "moderns" (epitomized by de Fontenelle) took the position that the modern age of science and reason was superior to the superstitious and limited world of Greece and Rome. In his opinion, modern man saw farther than the ancients ever could. The "ancients," for their part, argued that all that is necessary to be known was still to be found in Virgil, Cicero, Homer, and especially Aristotle.

This literary contest was re-enacted in miniature in England when Sir William Temple published an answer to Fontenelle entitled Of Ancient and Modern Learning in 1690. His essay introduced two metaphors to the debate that would be reused by later authors. First, he proposed that modern man was just a dwarf standing upon the "shoulders of giants" (that modern man saw farther because he begins with the observations and learning of the ancients).

Swift added a short satire entitled "The Battle of the Books" to the Tale of a Tub. In this piece, there is an epic battle fought in a library when various books come alive and attempt to settle the arguments between moderns and ancients. In Swift's satire, he skillfully manages to avoid saying which way victory fell.
In one sense, the "Battle of the Books" illustrates one of the great themes that Swift would explore in A Tale of a Tub: the madness of pride involved in believing one's own age to be supreme and the inferiority of derivative works. One of the attacks in the Tale was on those who believe that being readers of works makes them the equals of the creators of works. The other satire Swift affixed to the Tale, "The Mechanical Operation of the Spirit," illustrates the other theme: an inversion of the figurative and literal as a part of madness.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_the_Books

In 1333, in Liège, Belgium, Petrarch had found and copied out in his own hand a manuscript of Cicero's speech, Pro Archia, which contained a famous passage in defense of poetry and litterae (letters).

Petrarch referred to this quotation often, and where Cicero used the phrase "litterarum lumen", "the light of literature", Petrarch in the margin wrote lumen litterarum alongside and drew a sketch of a lamp or candle. The Liège manuscript is lost and so is Petrarch's copy, but Petrarch's copy "can be shown to be behind all but one of the later manuscripts" and preserve Petrarch's marginal annotations.[4] Petrarch, in many respects a Medieval man, regretted that Cicero had not been a Christian and believed that he certainly would have been one had he not died before the birth of Jesus. Cicero's humanitas was not seen as in conflict with Christianity or a Christian education by the umanisti who immediately followed him.


During Roman times, the concept of the seven liberal arts evolved, involving grammar, rhetoric and logic (the trivium), along with arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music (the quadrivium). These subjects formed the bulk of medieval education, with the emphasis being on the humanities as skills or "ways of doing."
A major shift occurred with the Renaissance humanism of the fifteenth century, when the humanities began to be regarded as subjects to be studied rather than practiced, with a corresponding shift away from the traditional fields into areas such as literature and history.
In the 20th century, this view was in turn challenged by the postmodernist movement, which sought to redefine the humanities in more egalitarian terms suitable for a democratic society.



As a discipline, logic dates back to Aristotle, who established its fundamental place in philosophy. The study of logic is part of the classical trivium.

The migration of Byzantine scholars and other émigrés from southern Italy and Byzantium during the decline of the Byzantine Empire and mainly after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, is considered by many scholars as very important in the revival of Greek and Roman studies and subsequently in the development of the Renaissance humanism.

The "intellectuals" were the Scholastics (schoolmen, partisans of Aristotle), adepts of scholasticism who "knew" everything about Nature from Aristotle's books! Leonardo changed all that, investigating directly the very same Nature Aristotle was 1000 years prior! Science didn't exist as a discipline then  and often was considered as heresy and witchcraft.

The curriculum of Christian schools included dialectic among the seven liberal arts, which was at that time the only branch of philosophy studied systematically. The head of the school generally taught dialectic, and out of his teaching grew both the manner of philosophizing and the system of philosophy that prevailed during all the Middle Ages.

Scholasticism avoids Innatism, according to which all our ideas, or some of our ideas, are born with the soul and have no origin in the world outside us. At the same time, it avoids Sensism, according to which our so-called intellectual knowledge is only sense-knowledge of a higher or finer sort. The Scholastics, moreover, took a firm stand against the doctrine of Subjectivism. In their discussion of the value of knowledge they held that there is an external world which is real and independent of our thoughts.  from http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13548a.htm

Study REALITY (not as scholasts; from books): anatomy, perspective + beauty of nature (God)


DIALECTIC

HUMANISM

The Scholastic outlook on the world of nature is Aristotelean.
Historically, the Golden Age of Scholastic philosophy, was the thirteenth century. And, even after the close of the Middle Ages, a philosopher or theologian who adopts the method or the system of the medieval Scholastics is said to be a Scholastic.
The triumph of scientific discovery, with which, as a rule, the representatives of Scholasticism in the seats of academic authority had, unfortunately, too little sympathy, led to new ways of philosophizing, and when, finally, Descartes in practice, if not in theory, effected a complete separation of philosophy from theology, the modern era had begun and the age known as that of Scholasticism had come to an end.

Question: Christian thinkers, from the beginning, were confronted with the question: How are we to reconcile reason (Aristotle) with revelation (Plato), science with faith , philosophy with theology?  How the two orders of truth, the natural and the supernatural, must harmonize?

Humanism, in contrast to scholasticism, represents the cast of mind of the Renaissance. Beginning as a movement in Italy in the 14th century, it finds some of its greatest adherents in northern Europe as late as the 16th century - in influential figures such as Erasmus and Thomas More.


Swift says therein:  War is the child of Pride!


 A THEOLOGICAL QUESTION:

WHEN SEEING IS BELIEVING
 The row started with the first monotheist religion: Judaism with its condemnation of “idolatry”, to combat against the appeal of “images” from other Gods had on the first Hebrews. Yes, seeing was believing. Judaism became ever since a religion of the “Book”. This negative stance on “images” was transmitted to the two other monotheisms born out from Judaic tradition: Christianity and Islam. Indeed even today both Judaism and Islam condemn representing God with an image. Islam evolved towards geometry (architecture) and (writing) when …? Judaism: literature and music But Christianity was a religion fundamentally different: God (Jesus-Christ) had a human face. “Immediately after Constantine’s conversion, the Christian image, which had originated in the age of graffiti, proliferated and entered into constant dialogue with the imperial image” [1] + graffitis http://realhistoryww.com/world_history/ancient/Misc/Jesus/Jesus.htm John 14:8-9 "If you had known me, you would have known my Father also; henceforth you know him and have seen him." Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied." Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?" -> images of Christ… of human figure (imitation of Christ) = theological issues (not artistic, ie secular) because seeing is believing… Iconoclasm ideas from Constantine Copronymus, a Byzantine emperor from 741 to 775: "....He cannot be depicted. For what is depicted in one person, and he who circumscribes that person has plainly circumscribed the divine nature which is incapable of being circumscribed." (see error  and // fingers at Moon) >< Iconodules iconoclasm controversy in the Byzantine Empire Rejection of the past  (eg acephale)… “To me there is no past or future in art. If a work of art does not live in the present, it must not be considered at all.” (Pablo Picasso) No past, no futurehttp://gwynlmichael.com/?p=159 What is art? Conceptual artists: everything is art… What art is not? Eidetic art takes its roots in the past masters (ideas) Old tradition of copying was studying from old masters. Art should speak for itself (no “painted word”)

>< art for the sake of art?

formalism in art = ”plastic form” Conceptual art = literary (words, books!) Surrealist (dada?) method = chance, accident of juxtaposition of two “things” whose combination creates a “spark” (Breton). à B Eno!!! Surrealism comes from Symbolism + dada = to explore “onirism”, dreams, NON VERBAL world… Art is communication of ideas, via EMOTIONS. Conceptual (intellectual) art is without emotion If you are touched, moved by a painting, you have been hit by some “idea” Beauty ß> Life Ugliness ß> death (eg Damien Hirst) ??? Nazis: their views on art/beauty was biased by racial eugenics. They hailed beauty as seen/expressed in (Aryan) Greek beauty. Nazi art (as Hitler’s) was based on death. Beauty ß-> Harmony (Nazis were opposed to harmony = // “impurity”) As a SOLUTION to a problem (simplicity containing complexity. eg E = mc2) = meaning of “harmony”. Philosophical problem of one/many. Scientists are “pattern searchers” and find beauty (simplicity) in these patterns, be they visual or mathematical. Life is such a simple/complex solution. Hence beauty = life. Canon of beauty is not beauty.

// Picture of Dorian Gray? = >< hypocrisy
Enlightenment s criticisms:
  • Jacobin terror (and absolutism)
  • Science as "positivism"
// music? In music there was attempts for radical antimusic but failed- Harmonics (melodies) were preserved (Beatles!)+ sources were pop/folk/country + African POP(ular) music!!! Unlike the radical nietzscheans (antiart or counter counterculture) etc- visual arts were an ideological battlefield These radicals (“free trhinkers”, revolutionbaries) considered themselves as an elite (Nietzscheamn ubermencsh/ zarathrustra) Therefore Acephale as a “secret society”. African culture: Picasso picked the masks when he could have pickedIfe’s sculpture! Figurative art = preserve the humanity inside (“humanism”- abstract art is anti (or “Uber”) humanists….) + it is a shared common language without which there is hardly any possible communication- especially of  asocial nature. No picture was able to fill a Wembley stadium! HOWEVER, amongst the most famous pictures: Leonardo’s Mona Lisa! NO “abstract” picture ever achieved this. Andy Warhol tried to compete using Marilyn’s popularity. “Before” poets were art critics… then replaced by “intellectuals” (radical / free thinkers) More on Evola and Nietzsche’s superman and nihilism He wrote: THE ACTIVE NIHILISM OF FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

The painted word Magritte’s pipe (trahison des images). NEW ICONOCLASM: LOGOS V. EIDOS (or society?) Our philosophy or Art will celebrate LIFE. It is based on construction, instead of destruction, on imagination rather than ### // Magritte ceci n’est pas une pipe (mensonge des images) // Name of the rose “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”

From Richard Wolin - The Seduction of Unreason (PDF - complete - text) + http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7705.html + Introdution (unreason)  Or 
---------

Romanticism as a reaction against... the Restoration (neoclassicism)

What is "Romanticism"?

Despite his opposition to Enlightenment principles, "Romantic William Blake" arrived at a linear aesthetic that was in many ways more similar to the Neoclassical engravings of a John Flaxman than to the works of the so-called Romantics, with whom he is often classified. <<<<!!!!! 



-------------
Even though the French Bourbon monarchy was restored it didn't mean the end of the "revolutionary troubles".
France returned to Revolution times in 1830 and in 1848, two major events that not only impacted France, but the rest of Europe as well. The French Revolution of 1830, better known as the July Revolution, was triggered after Bourbon king Louis XVIII died, and his brother, Charles X, rose to power. He established the French Constitution that many citizens of France opposed. Fighting broke out in the streets of Paris between military officials and angered citizens. The rebels gained control and forced Charles X to abdicate to Great Britain. The French Revolution of 1848 was started for reasons very similar to the July Revolution.


Liberty Leading the People (French: La Liberté guidant le peuple) is a painting by Eugène Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled King Charles X of France.




Art historians say that "romantic artists" valued nature which was closely associated with emotion and imagination in opposition to the rationalism of Enlightenment philosophy. Delacroix hardly painted any landscapes! He rather painted people and human emotions!
Théodore Géricault exerted a seminal influence on the development of Romantic art in France.  Eugène Delacroix, was profoundly influenced by Géricault.


Romanticism emphasised more on human emotion, (but not as a Counter-Enlightenment force.)
The Romantics complained that the Enlightenment had neglected the force of imagination and mystery.
Restoration and NEOCLASSICISM (eg stoicism, academism, puritanism) >< ROMANTICISM?

Note: Romanticism (emotions, Beethoven, Gericault, Eugène Delacroix, etc) >< David's Neo classicism (Bourbons restoration, = COUNTER revolution Congress of Vienna)

David and Géricault – Neoclassical Rationalism and Romanticism in the wake of Revolution.

Enlightenment's neo-classicism // Re-naissance, ie of classical roman/Greek arts!

COUNTER-ENLIGHTENMENT 

COUNTER-REVOLUTION
COUNTER-CULTURE
against PROGRESS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanities#Origin_of_the_term 
Trivium 
  1. Grammar 
  2. Dialectic (also known as Logic)
  3. Rhetoric 

 Quadrivium 
  1. Arithmetic 
  2. Music 
  3. Geometry 
  4. Astronomy
They are seven in number and may be arranged in 

 wiki: The humanities include ancient and modern languages, literature, history, philosophy, religion, and visual and performing arts such as music and theatre. The humanities that are also regarded as social sciences include technology, history, anthropology, area studies, communication studies, cultural studies, law and linguistics.  !!!

 Although, literary intellectuals will argue that this is preposterous because most are secular, I think it is fair to compare the arguments.

A major shift occurred with the Renaissance humanism of the fifteenth century, when the humanities began to be regarded as subjects to study rather than practice, with a corresponding shift away from traditional fields into areas such as literature and history. 

Humanities v. Humanism

"Literary Intellectuals" or the Revenge of 

In the West, the study of the "humanities" can be traced back to ancient Greece, as the basis of a broad education for citizens. 

During medieval times, when learning came under the purview of the Church, these subjects (called the Trivium) were extended to include arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy (which included the study of astrology). 

But in Medieval times, education was split into two categories: 

the concept of the seven liberal arts evolved, involving grammar, rhetoric and logic (the trivium), along with arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music (the quadrivium).[19] These subjects formed the bulk of medieval education, with the emphasis being on the humanities as skills or "ways of doing."

from  ANTI-HUMANISM (AND ANTI-ART/SCIENCE)

------------------

But what is "modernism" then?

Before looking at POST-modernism, let us try to define what is "modernism". Art historians generally define Modernism as a cultural movement in our society from the late 19th to early 20th centuries, which attempted to challenge the objective rigid "classicism". The theories of Sigmund Freud influenced early Modernism with some apparent scientific basis defending the preeminence of subjective experience over "objective reality", which the Enlightenment thinkers highly valued since Galileo or Newton. Freud's description of subjective states, involving an unconscious mind full of primal impulses was very appealing to artists as they would have to William Bake. Counter-Enlightenment philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is also considered as another major precursor of "modernism," with a philosophy in which psychological drives, specifically the 'Will to power', were more important than facts, peoiple or things. Literary Modernists experimented with literary form and expression, adhering to Ezra Pound's maxim to "Make it new" (Pound, Ezra, Make it New, Essays , London, 1935). (*)

On the other hand American visual art critic Clement Greenberg called Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant "the first real Modernist" ! (Frascina and Harrison 1982, p. 5.)

I consider "modern" as a subjective term that applies to anything which is considered as "new". The Enlightenment was therefore "modern", so was "Counter-Enlightenment." 

(*) On Ezra Pound, read the excellent research by Dr. Matthew Feldman "Ezra Pound's Fascist Propaganda, 1935-45"  (2013)

 This "modern" term is not defined and opens the door to any subjective interpretatioon. The same applies to "postmodernism" and its "intellectuals".

Note: 
While A. Sokal and J. Bricmont with their book `Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science' (1997) prepared postmodernism's coffin, G. G. Preparata hammered the nails in it and buried it deeply. Never has a `philosophical' movement sunk so deeply in the language morass. This book based on a massive bibliography is a must read for all those interested in modern philosophy and in the world we live in.


 towrote monographs drawing new attention to Nietzsche's work, and a 1972 conference at Cérisy-la-Salle ranks as the most important event in France for a generation's reception of Nietzsche.
In France, this rehabilitation texts is manifested by (Nietzsche et la Philosophie by Gilles Deleuze, 1962) and seminars (1964  1972) where discuss.  

the most important postmodernist intellectuals were influenced by Nietzsche, via Georges Bataille's review the "Acephale" in the 1930s.

While questioning artistic values in early 20th C, artists never paid attention to Einstein's solutions superseding classical Newtonian science, nor Godel's or quantum mechanics (Heisenberg's uncertainty principle).  




// intellectuals as secular "scholastics"! -> New Art Renaissance
Postmodernism itself is a move away from Modernism especially from its twin pillars, Humanism and Rationalism. AGAINST LUMIERES
Instead adopting these basic principles:
  1. Nothing is absolute.
  2. There is no great 'Truth'.
  3. Everything is a 'text' to be deconstructed.
  4. There are no 'Grand Narratives' of how to explain society.
  5. All research findings must be open to change and must be falsifiable.
---------

  • 1902-14 // like on "Giant s shoulders" (Hawking) or eg Renaissance: it built on the past (added) He gained Swiss citizenship in 1901 and in 1909 became Professor Extraordinary at Zurich, in 1911 Professor of Theoretical Physics at Prague, returning to Zurich in the following year in 1912 to fill a similar post.
  • 1916-22 Dada: Nietzschean method of REJECTING (tabula rasa) everything > anti Art ps: Apollinaire died in 1918


RELATIVISM: "EVERYTHING IS ART" since Duchamp's urinal
ZURICH
Einstein: 

 In 1905, Albert Einstein earned his doctorate at the University of Zurich.
Einstein sought to extend the special theory of relativity to phenomena involving acceleration. The key appeared in 1907 with the principle of equivalence, in which gravitational acceleration was held to be indistinguishable from acceleration caused by mechanical forces. Gravitational mass was therefore identical with inertial mass.
In 1908 Einstein became a lecturer at the University of Bern after submitting his Habilitation thesis. The following year , 

Dada
Unlike Einstein, "Cubists" FAILED to go beyond clasical perspective, failed to understand "hyper so they tried "multiple pserspectives" (Cezanne) which is like going back to medieval art! Einstein di go "beyond" Newton... WITHOUT rejecting it... unlike dada/sur-realists/cubists etc
ps: Apollinaire did NOT understand 4th dimension
The term Dada was first used by Tristan Tzara in 1916.[54] The movement, which lasted from approximately 1916 to 1922, arose during World War I, an event that influenced the artists.[55] 
 Given that Dada created its own means for interpreting its products, it is difficult to classify alongside most other contemporary art expressions. Hence, due to its ambiguity, it is sometimes classified as a nihilistic modus vivendi.[55]
= Anti-art art mvt (see Dada and anti-art)
French writer Dominique Noguez imagined Lenin as a member of the Dada group in his tongue-in-cheek Lénine Dada (1989).WIKI + http://www.suite101.com/content/how-the-city-of-zurich-became-a-small-haven-for-revolutionaries-a352414
Albert Einstein
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious – the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.
  • science: build on the past (relativity didnt overthrow Newton, it included it) = on giant's shoulders
  • art: rejection of the past (after Duchamp et al) = tabula rasa, >< imitattion/ copying masters or nature!
! 1905: Einstein + dada... :
!!! divorce between sciences and art: while questioning artistic values in early 20th C, artists never paid attention to Einstein's solutions superseding classical Newtonian science, nor Godel's or quantum mechanics (Heisenberg's uncertainty principle) etc etc Art is meant to disturb, science reassures. (Georges Braque)  2 different and diverging histories (science and art):
  • science: build on the past (relativity didnt overthrow Newton, it included it) = on giant's shoulders
  • art: rejection of the past (after Duchamp et al) = tabula rasa, >< imitattion/ copying masters or nature!

! 1905: Einstein + dada... : two roads in different directions yet "revolutionize" both science and art...

STORY:
 (eg Leonardo/ Vitruvius man as perfect "symbol" of unity between arts and sciences < Acephale) = Nietzsche/ Heraclitus/ sophism  -> con art SITUATION: example: landing on the Moon // the wise-man and the Moon ;-)  (see below) humanities/ "literary intellectuals" v scientists AND visual arts To demonstrate that anti-science = anti-art as well... ---> Nietzsche via postmodernism v modernism/ enlightenment  DRIFT: SWITZERLAND... Einstein / Lenin /Dada science+ art: Apollo/ Dionysus= aesthetic principle


Switzerland
Chronology:
  • 1902-14 Einstein: revolutionized science NOT by rejecting it (newton)  but by building upon it // like on "Giant s shoulders" (Hawking) or eg Renaissance: it built on the past (added) + atomist theory (Democritus) He gaine Swiss citizenship in 1901 and in 1909 became Professor Extraordinary at Zurich, in 1911 Professor of Theoretical Physics at Prague, returning to Zurich in the following year in 1912 to fill a similar post.
  • 1916-22 Dada: Nietzschean method of REJECTING (tabula rasa) everything > anti Art ps: Apollinaire died in 1918
  • 1916 Lenin
Dionysus/  Apollo revisited at Copenhagen interpretation ZURICH

N's "PERSPECTIVISM" AND POSTMODERNISM

(= "literary intellectuals" CP Snow was complaining about) or when LOGOS strikes back

= Humanities v Sciences
POSTMODERNISM AGAINST ENLIGHTENMENT (AND HUMANIST RENAISSANCE)

NIETZSCHE/HERACLITUS > POSTMODERNSIST (INTELLECTUALS) / HUMANITIES

The Enlightenment's "perversion of reason", 

sometimes associated to "enlightened monarchs" (despots)


TOTALITARIANISM  ><  POSTMODERNISM

ACEPHALE AND FOUCAULT: MADNESS (NIETZSCHE)

POSTMODERN THINKERS >< REASON

Divergence : 

switzerland

BUT Copenhagen interpretation:  in 1927, Werner Heisenberg stated that the more precisely the position of some particle is determined, the less precisely its momentum can be known, and vice versa. Werner Heisenberg formulated the Uncertainty Principle at Niels Bohr's institute in Copenhagen, while working on the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics. 
It laid the foundation for what became known as the "Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics." Heisenberg showed that the commutation relation implies an uncertainty, or in Bohr's language a complementarity. Any two variables that do not commute cannot be measured simultaneously - the more precisely one is known, the less precisely the other can be known. Heisenberg wrote:
It can be expressed in its simplest form as follows: One can never know with perfect accuracy both of those two important factors which determine the movement of one of the smallest particles—its position and its velocity. It is impossible to determine accurately both the position and the direction and speed of a particle at the same instant. (Heisenberg, W., Die Physik der Atomkerne, Taylor & Francis, 1952, p. 30) 

A Brief History of Enlightenment-Inspired French Art

Blake vs. Newton


: Emotions vs. Reason
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Enlightenment

= vindicating Democritus 2,500 years later ;)
Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism, which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value. Moral nihilists assert that morality does not inherently exist, and that any established moral values are abstractly contrived.
HERACLITUS' pessimism > arts
DEMOCRITUS' optimism > sciences
Posted by

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)