From: Elizaphanian (elizaphanian@tiscali.co.uk)
Date: Tue Apr 15 2003 - 18:16:06 BST
Hi Wim,
I liked your Kuitert extract very much; I also agree with your point about
his postmodernism (the Word turned in on itself). I have the impression that
this is what Derrida is presently engaged with, through his work on
Augustine, but as I haven't studied it properly I couldn't say for certain.
I'm not sure what was behind your naming of the thread though (when I saw
it, I was expecting something else).
You asked, "Could Kuitert's 'only real experience that does matter and that
is universal' and his 'transcendence' refer to Pirsig's DQ?" I would suspect
not. I would think it refers to Quality as such; if the 'only [thing] that
does matter' is DQ then SQ, defined by contrast, becomes the realm of things
that do not matter, and I don't think that's what the MoQ implies (to say
'does not matter' implies 'has no value' - so how can it be Quality?). Plus
which, there is, I would argue, a danger here in getting hung up on personal
experience; a subject which we have discussed before, and I think you know
what my views are - principally that the emphasis on personal experience is
derived from subjectivist Modernism, and is religiously incoherent or
otherwise irrelevant.
I particularly like Kuitert's point about the Fathers, which is
uncontentious within theological circles, yet causes ripples when brought to
a wider audience, viz: "we are dealing with mythological imagery, that
doesn't do justice to God.... Because the myth lacks transcendence, they
said, and god should be transcendent or otherwise he isn't god." However, I
disagree with him when he writes, "According to them the biblical depiction
of god is that of religious myth and not to be taken seriously; the biblical
images of god are appearances." I think he is here using a particular
conception of myth which I would disagree with.
What I object to is the (almost) imperceptible glide from calling something
mythological to saying that it is 'not to be taken seriously'. I don't think
that we can do without mythology (whether we eventually place it in level 3
or level 4 of the MoQ). This has two aspects. The first is the 'shrub/tree'
point - that the mythos shapes our logos, so, in a historical/genealogical
sense we need to understand myth in order to be able to think at all.
Science has its own mythos (and mystique, and priests and rituals) just as
much as, in this intellectual sense, a religion. Secondly, I think that our
cognitive faculties are irreducibly narrative in structure - this might even
be embedded in our genetic heritage (if you have the capacity to communicate
information through narrative, eg 'go left by the apple tree, walk two
hundred years past the waterhole and there you will find the animal I
slaughtered' then an evolutionary advantage is gained). This has the
interesting corollary (which many theologians advocate for various reasons)
that mythologies resist exhaustive abstraction - that you can't do without
the symbol or the story, however much you quarry it for abstract
intellectual insights.
On this topic Kuitert further writes: "creating images never leads one to
real transcendence", and "Transcendence cannot be caught in an image or
formula, transcendence happens, occurs, befalls you, is an experience that
is unconditional and universally binding."
I think that images can be created, although they can't be created by an
intellectual process (so much the worse for intellect). There seems to be a
little Protestant iconoclasm at work in his thinking here - Eastern
Orthodoxy has an entire spirituality built around the use of icons (think
Andrei Rublev) so in what sense is it true that this prevents transcendence?
Or is he saying that an entire religious tradition is invalid? (I doubt it).
His perspective would seem to rule out the Quality of Art.
I would like to bring in here something from the 'Philosophy and Theology'
thread. I wrote (to Rick/DMB): "I (i) don't think it's possible to think
without an underlying mythology (meta-narrative, final vocabulary, whatever)
(ii) think that science operates within a mythology which is largely
unacknowledged (iii) think that the Christian mythology, for all its faults,
is superior to the scientific one (more precisely, it is superior to
Modernism)...I'd also be interested to know what are the myths which he (and
you) live by." I would be interested in your response to that, bringing in
Kuitert as necessary.
Cheers
Sam
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