Derrida quoting Kant cont on p.7,
“The imagination (as a productive faculty of cognition) is a powerful agent for creating, as it were, a second nature out of the material supplied to it by actual nature.” This is why intelligence is not is not necessarily the essential faculty of the critic when he sets out to encounter imagination and beauty; “in what we call beautiful, intelligence is at the service of the imagination, and the latter is not at the service of intelligence.” For “the freedom of the imagination consists precisely in the fact that it schematizes without a concept.” This enigmatic origin of the work as structure and indissociable unity-and as an object for structuralist criticism-is according to Kant, “the first thing to which we must pay attention” According always insufficiently examined, to the “role in art of imagination, that fundamental activity” about which “uncertainties and oppositions abound.” This notion of an imagination that produces metaphor-that is, everything in language except to verb to be – remains for critics what certain philosophers today call naively utilized operative concept. To surmount this technical ingenuousness is to reflect the operative concept as a thematic concept. This seems to be one of Rousset’s projects.
Yesterday I compared his use of imagination to individual/universal perception and expression. This part of the paragraph puts imagination more in the light of not just the heart’s perceiving of things, because that involves intelligence, but the heart’s response that subordinates intelligence. Perception comes after encounter. It is the post-analysis, and involves first and subsequent impressions. But there is an original spark of encounter where we don’t know what hit us, as it were. It goes directly to the heart, and the mind tries to make sense of it and decides how to react to it. But the first impulse is the more honest reaction and betrays the state of our heart. If it is passionate, it will be incited and then we have to curb ourselves or try to seek the end of our passionate fulfillment. If it is transcendently dispassionate, it will respond with pure eros, where love will not be of the fallen, passible pleasure/pain, addictive/possessive sort. It will love as God loves. A giving, warm, joyful, peaceful, or someday ecstatic sort. In a heart that is ruled by cold intelligence, neither response will occur, for it will be stifled. For some reason, Professor Snape comes to mind, but that deserves further analysis that I wont destract myself with here.
I want to get to the area of silence. I don’t think we should be legalistic about silence. I worry more that some Orthodox’s silence is more about stifling and fear than about dispassion. If our hearts are passionate, I think blocking expression is a recipe for a future exponential explosion. The Church prescribes regular confession to a priest, and of course we can’t just say everything we think or feel, but I have a sense that free-er speech should be encouraged. Especially in America where it’s one of our bills of rights. This free speech is pretty tolerated in Catechumens. We don’t expect them to understand everything and do expect them to still have hang-ups from their past that needs to be sorted out. We usually do this through self-expression. Catechumens are allowed to question all their disagreements with associated fearful feelings, and to lash out at their past which they now view as not presenting the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But as soon as we’re chrismated, we’re expected to all the sudden be dispassionate and deal with our anti-Orthodox environment with perfect peace and impassive self-control. I feel a lot of pressure about this. I still pray for mercy for myself during the Catechumen prayers during Divine Liturgy, because I think becoming Orthodox takes a lifetime and we need to let ourselves be children and act childishly because stifling this reality is unhealthy and counterproductive, imo.
Along these lines, some Orthodox speak down about self-expression. To me this is a backlash against Protestant individualism and relativism where we see what chaos can ensue where everyone is making it up as they go along in a vacuumized, sola miola sort of way. But I think the Orthodox Church is capable of handling rogue and immature, but sincere expressions from individuals. Her Truth is the only one who knows how to contextualize it. We are not totally depraved, so neither are our words. We are all in a state of maturing so our words just reflect where we are. I just think we underestimate what can be tolerated, forgiven, and mercifully corrected. I think that because we have committed ourselves to the Truth in becoming Orthodox, God will separate the wheat from the tares as He always has, especially if we commit ourselves to praying for this to happen.
I’m contradicting what I just said about Emma Thompson in my other blog, but even she had her moments of catharsis in the movies I mentioned, and does anyone think she shouldn’t have? We’re not robots.
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January 18, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Jerrida
Weelll, I guess I will write briefly about construction/destruction and imagination.
First, construction/destruction: Death (and to a more specific degree, destruction) entered the world through sin: Man came from nothing and was brought into being by the Eternal, but turned to the path leading straight back to nothingness by denying the Life that had brought him into being. Thus, the only way to bring Life back into our being is to turn back to the Lord of Life Himself, and to contemplate Him (as stated in “On the Incarnation” by Athanasius). Basically what I’m saying is, while we certainly should encourage the building up and life of the creation around us, this will come most effectively through our own contemplation, prayer to, and communion with Christ, the Resurrection of all.
About the imagination, I will only quote some things from C.S. Lewis:
“For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition.”
“I do not think the resemblance between the Christian and the merely imaginative experience is accidental. I think that all things, in their own way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least. “Reflect” is the important word. This lower life of the imagination is not a beginning of, nor a step toward, the higher life of the spirit, merely an image.”
January 19, 2008 at 10:26 am
Andrea Elizabeth
Jerrida, aka Jared our second born, (clever, btw)
Re death, since the fall the way to constructive life is through death, both are necessary, which is most concentratedly done in our baptism. Digestion is the break down of food, a tree must die to become a house, etc. So to contemplate Christ, our Life, we must give up or die to our fallen passions. This is probably why the persecuted, poor in spirit, mourners are more receptive to the Kingdom, they have come to the end of their rope and this is a blessing in disguise. Would we look to God if we were comfortable in this world? I read of St. Macarius today who said to a young man who wished to become a monk,
“Flee from people and you shall be saved.” That one asked: “What does it mean to flee from people?” The monk answered: “Sit in your cell and repent of your sins.”St Macarius sent him to a cemetery to rebuke and then to praise the dead. Then he asked him what they said to him. The young man replied, “They were silent to both praise and reproach.” “If you wish to be saved, be as one dead. Do not become angry when insulted, nor puffed up when praised.” And further: “If slander is like praise for you, poverty like riches, insufficiency like abundance, then you shall not perish.”
Thanks for providing C.S. Lewis’ help on the imagination. I think I’ve been on the right track about that. Our stories reflect the state of our heart.