[Update (1/27/10): I'm prefixing the actual result up at the top for those of you who do not want to read the tedious transcript: The question of whether and in what way a man can be the same as God is the same question as whether poetic inspiration can be the same as divine inspiration, provided that the hypothesis was correct that poetic inspiration is being inspired by one's own spirit.]
A couple friends came over today to talk. Rolf was wondering how poetic inspiration stands in relation to divine inspiration. I'm often wondering this myself, so I was glad to talk about it. At some point Rainscape hypothesized that in poetic inspiration one is inpsired by one's own spirit. Then, by way of a digression on the manner of communication involved in divine inspiration (dictation, planting an idea in the intellect, or what), we got to talking about how much the inspired author should be said to contribute, and after some time concluded that it would depend on the extent to which it would be true to say that he was like a god or the same as God--taking it for granted that there must be some upper limit to such a saying, but not knowing just where to put it.
Here's how we left it, tying it all together. The question of whether and in what way a man can be the same as God is the same question as whether poetic inspiration can be the same as divine inspiration, provided that the hypothesis was correct that poetic inspiration is being inspired by one's own spirit.
As an outsider to your conversation, my response is doomed to have the character of a certain inappropriateness. Indeed, I cannot respond to your conversation at all; I can only respond to the POSTING of what was said in your conversation. Therefore, not only on account of its dilatory nature but also because of the aforementioned reason, my comment will have to risk the possibility of expiration.
ReplyDeleteHaving made that dis-claimer, it seems to me that one element which stands in essential need of clarification is what the ownership of one's own spirit could possibly consist in. To refer to later posts on "having", how does a being endowed with spirit, possess itself in a manner that befits its endowment? Is it, as Hegel would have it, by way of phenomenological mirroring? In this case, what one's own spirit truly is could only be discovered to the extent that it, in its very nature, enabled one to negate the possibility that some individual human could own spirit, i.e. to the extent that it allowed spirit to take possession of itself. This I submit, is no doubt far from rainscape's immediate intentions. But if not as a Spiegel-spiel, than how are we to conceive of this ownership of spirit? The muse of Homer was not his own. Could it nevertheless be said that he owned this inspiration, while at the same time not blaspheming against that to which he owed his inspiration? If one's own spirit is responsible for poetic inspiration, why must is such inspiration not had from the outset? Why must it yet be GIVEN? Above all,why must one acknowledge an other in its place, even indeed, by INVOKING that other?
I think you ask a wonderful question, by which I mean that you have wonderfully contextualized for me a question which previously had only technical interest. I must confess however that at present and on this question the invocation of Hegel does not illuminate anything for me. I suppose you must be referring to the Phenomenology of Spirit (if not to something I have forgotten from the Encyclopedia, which I have yet to come around to reading. Could you elaborate on his "Spiegel-spiel?" Whether or not it is far from Rainscape's or anyone's immediate intentions will be no obstacle, since the ultimate intention of all involved was only to find the truth.
ReplyDeleteAs for Homer, I believe that his Muse was something of an "unknown god," and that the otherness of this god therefore does not preclude its turning out to be Homer's own spirit.
I believe there is a way of understanding your two remarks, regarding Hegelian phenomenology and the ignorance of Homeric invocation, as collapsing into a single concern, or if you prefer, of being yoked into a third which includes the previous two thought in terms of their co-necessity.
ReplyDeleteFirst, let me briefly and broadly touch upon Spiegel-spiel: What I was referring to as Hegelian spiegel-spiel is the unique manner in which Hegel, unlike anyone before or after him, aims to justify the internal movement of history, namely the stages of Thought which, at a certain one of those stages, become thinkable as (and in) the "History of Philosophy". Therefore, you are right to refer to the Phenomenology of Spirit as a pertinent text; it lays down the groundwork for the principle of the entwicklung of consciousness in which this history takes shape, a principle whose history of self-understanding achieves its innermost expression in the subject of Hegel's lectures on the History of Philosophy (and achieves its external expression in Hegel's lectures on the Philosophy of History). What I was trying to introduce into the previous discussion --which I think hinges on the question of the essence of spiritual ownership --was the very peculiar method in which Hegel does indeed justify the previous stages of the history of philosophy. According to this method, each stage of history must be read as inherently determined by history's Hegelian consummation, i.e. in history's eventual achievement of the transparent self-understanding toward which it had been moving all along in order to even be historical at all. Such a justification operates essentially on the principal that the whole is the truth, and to the extent that one has mere partiality, one has ignorance and deception. Now if the truth is really attained at the end of history, then the past and partial stages of the development of the whole, i.e. the stages past history as they are decisively marked by past philosophy, must each themselves be understood not partially but in their truth, i.e. in and as the whole. In this way, the prior stages cannot be dispensed with at the end. Rather, only at the end are they for the first time justified in their necessity: Each stage is seen at the end to be something more than a mere partial mistake; each stage must be recognized as reflecting or mirroring the whole as such by allowing it to appear within the limits peculiar to that stage of development which it is. In this way the whole appears in each of its own parts, and it does this in order to wholly comprehend itself and thereby bring itself to completion.
Ok, however abbreviated and deficient the above comment is, let me now bring it back into the main thrust of your posting. The whole which arrives at the end --and arrives precisely by comprehending itself in its past parts --this whole is Spirit. Initially, I only brought up Hegel for a point of sharp contrast, since with Hegel, what is most properly called Spirit is not the human spirit (e.g. your spirit, my spirit, Homer's spirit). Such a concept of spirit is individual and finite ---and therefore partial and ignorant (i.e. un-spiritual). In contrast what is most properly Spirit must be able to own itself without limiting itself. It must therefore come to comprehend itself IN the finite human spirit in order to ipso facto differentiate itself from it. In this sense man is the final way-station in the process of Spirit's coming-to-self-comprehension, and is therefore the most recent past of Absolute Spirit. Putting this in a more loose, vernacular way, what is ownmost to the spirit you possess is precisely not your own possession ---and once you possess a scientific comprehension of this very fact, you allow spirit to come into its own through you. Thus you come to recognize that you provide the condition for Spirit's self-recognition in this your very recognition.
ReplyDeleteNow regarding Homer's spirit, in saying that his muse was other than Homer himself strictly because Homer suffered the peculiar divide of self-ignorance, we have in a certain manner adopted Hegel's basic stance --namely that the beginning is the appearance of the ignorance of the end, i.e. it is the whole that has not comprehended itself as such and thus is divided into an other which limits it.
Is Homer's muse in this sense, a mere appearance that has yet to be understood as a necessary mirroring in which the proper spirit belonging to Homer is found? I think the central question has nothing to do with this problematic. Rather the question is WHY should Homer's spirit be encountered as a muse in the first place? Why should it be given as anything, or anyone? Hegel would respond to this that it is based on the necessity of history understood in terms of its end. But if we are not going to, as Hegel does, justify the problem of this ignorance and otherness by presupposing the end as its ultimate horizon for 'appearance' or mirroring, then whatare we to say? Why is the spirit of Homer (mis)perceived as a god, and why, furthermore is the god unknown? Are we being to hasty to call this a mis-perception? If not because of undevelopment, then in what does the hiddenness of the Homeric Muse consist? (With that, perhaps, I give a hint away at what I am trying to refer to). So to restate the question, Why is it that, with regard to ones very own spirit, one must yet own up to it? Why does spiritual ownership presuppose spiritual dispossession?