Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Research Department
PHILOBIBLON
Transylvanian Journal of Multidisciplinary
Research in Humanities
Volume XX
Number 1
January - June 2015
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
CONTACT INFORMATION:
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
The full text of the studies published in the Philobiblon are beginning with the
year 1996 included into two sub-bases of the international database edited by
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ISSN: 1224-7448
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ISSN L 1224 7448
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
CONTENTS
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
MISCELLANEA
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MAN BOOK
KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY
ORIGINAL STUDIES
AND ARTICLES
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Abstract. With a European high-life and known for being a famed writer and
socialite of the 1900s-1930s, Marthe Bibesco proves to have had played the role of a
cultural diplomat avant la lettre. Revealed by her writings and ideas, her
perspectives on Europes politics, civilization and way of life, as well as those on
her countrys role and cultural vocation, were astutely put together in order to create
the image of a Romania whose complexity was as enchanting as Europes own.
E-mail: radu.albu@euro.ubbcluj.ro
enchantress,2 Marthe, princess Bibesco was for many of those who met her a
remarkable personality. Roumanian aristocrat, writer, aesthete, Bibesco was highly
educated, beautiful, charismatic, and last but not least a creative author. During
her entire life covering almost 87 years from 1886 to 1973 she moved in
Europes royal, political and intellectual lite circles. She was friend, confidante, and
sometimes intimate of European monarchs, prime ministers and presidents.3 It was
1
Ghislain de Diesbach, Prinesa Bibescu. Ultima orhidee (Princess Bibesco. The Last
Orchid), Bucharest: Vivaldi, 1998. First edition, La Princesse Bibesco. La dernire orchide
(Paris: Perrin, 1986).
2
Christine Sutherland, Enchantress. Marthe Bibesco and Her World (New-York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 1996).
3
Mircea Eliade, Journal. 19701978 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), vol. 3,
252: Ive read La vie dune amiti, annotated correspondence between Marthe Bibesco
and the abb Mugnier. The most interesting letters are those from Marthe Bibesco, and yet I
heard so much about the extraordinary abb Mugnier! Marthe Bibesco was endowed with a
prodigious memory. In addition, all the kings, all the dignitaries, all the monsigniors, dukes,
princes, famous writers, men of state, and scholars who lived after 1900 were among her
friends and her acquaintances. How extraordinary would be the biography entitled Marthe
Bibesco and Her Contemporaries!
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
this aspect of her biography that justifies, in many ways, our present attempt to
portray Marthe Bibesco as a cultural diplomat of her birth country, Roumania.1
While Marthe Bibescos high-profile life and her literary triumph in the Belle-
Epoque Paris and through the roaring 20s are well-known thanks to Ghislain de
Diesbach and Christine Sutherland Marthe Bibescos political involvement and her
diplomatic activities, strongly related to how she understood Europe, how she
imagined the European unity and how she conceived her own identity, are less known.
These are joined by the manner she tactfully and often resourcefully promoted
Roumania in the French and British political circles of the time.
1
We shall use the classic British spelling of Roumania (related to the French Roumanie) for
Romnia, instead of the Americanised version Romania (officially in use since 1965), as in
2001 the Roumanian Academy decided to return to the use of the British spelling. (Thus, the
international code of Roumania was changed in the same year from ROM to ROU.) We
shall also use the Frenchefied or Anglicised versions of the Roumanian names, some of which
established by Marthe Bibesco herself in her texts (e.g. the Mogoshoaia spelling for the
residence, the palace of Mogooaia): Brancovan for Brncoveanu, Bibesco for Bibesco, etc.
2
More details on their genealogy, Costel Iordchi, Familia Lahovary. Ascenden i destin
politic (The Lahovary Family. Genealogy and political destiny) (Piteti: Carminis, 2004).
3
The equivalent of a Minister of Foreign Affairs.
4
He was the main negociator of the Porte with the Austrian Monarchy during the Austro-
Turkish War of the 1680s, and author of the treaty of Karlowitz (1699). The house of Austria
honoured him with the rank of Serene Highness in the same year. See Alexandre A.C.
Sturdza, L'Europe Orientale et le rle historique des Maurocordato, 16601830 (Oriental
Europe and the Historical Role of The Mavrocordatos) (Paris: Plon, 1913), 2547, 5060.
5
When Constantine Mavrocordato (III), Prince of Moldavia and of Wallachia, considered
selling his private library, he received offers from Pope Clement XII, the Holy Roman
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Emperor Charles VI of Austria, from King George II of Great Britain and from Louis XV of
France (Corneliu Dima-Drgan, La bibliophilie des Mavrocordato (Mavrocordatos
Bibliophilia), in Symposium. Lpoque phanariote (The Phanariot Aeon) (Thessaloniki:
Institute for Balkan Studies, 1974), 215216.
1
Six sovereign Princes of both Moldavia and Wallachia stemmed from this family
Nicholas, John, Constantine, John II, Alexander and Alexander II Mavrocordato covering
most of the 18th century, but also the last Princesses of Wallachia, Zoe Mavrocordato,
adopted heiress to the princely house of Bassaraba de Brancovan and spouse of George
Demetrius Bibesco (18041873), Prince-sovereign of Wallachia before the 1848 Revolution.
Their children would inherit the Bassaraba de Brancovan princely title (in Austria, 1828 and
1860) and the Roumanian Bibesco princely title (Sturdza, LEurope Orientale, passim; Dan
Berdindei, Urmaii lui Constantin Brncoveanu i locul lor n societatea romneasc.
Genealogie i istorie (Constantine Brancovans posterity and their role in the Roumanian
society. Genealogy and History), in Constantin Brncoveanu, edited by Paul Cernovodeanu
and Florin Constantiniu (Bucharest: Editura Academiei, 1989), 275285.
2
Manuscript, Le Cousinage, archive folder, box V, Bibesco papers, Manuscrits
Occidentaux, NAF D. 29738, Bibliothque Nationale de France, Paris.
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
genealogical rivers, when they were about to lose their ways into the Acheron, a
phoenix [= saviour] was born again, known only to her, provoking their rebirth.1
Surrounded by the historical resonance of all the aristocratic family
alliances, with a love for history carved in her spirit since her young years, for
Marthe Bibesco politics in a diplomatic sense was a responsibility, both
agreeable and gratifying. She knows she can contribute to History for the sake of
Europe; and, even if she cannot do it in the manner her sovereign ancestors did, nor
in the fashion her father and uncles could (as Ministers of Foreign Affairs), she
would gracefully choose to follow the steps of Chateaubriand, in many ways her role
model.2 Not just contributing to Europes history, but discerning the aftermath of the
events, the direction they would take, calculating the risks, deciphering their
profound meaning was an intellectual exercise she gave into.
Such an approach, next to her erudition, built Crownprince Ferdinand of
Roumanias confidence in her and in her opinions. Their amity continued after he
succeeded as King in 1916. King Alphonso XIII of Spain was also fond of her... But
Marthes penchant for politics and diplomacy became even more obvious in her
good relations with Wilhelm, Crownprince of Germany and Prussia (a fact which
would cause much gossip by Marthes foes, in days of war, when diplomatic
nuances fade away). Their friendship started in 1909 was built on admiration, as
documents prove above all.3 While feeling pleased and privileged to be his part-
confidante, Marthe esteemed the Kronprinzs almost philosophical concern to be a
good emperor. In return, Wilhelm admired her poise, intelligence, sophistication and
her grasp on statesmanship. Their long epistolary exchanges are, in this respect,
eloquent. It was her that he entrusted, for instance, with secret details about the
Eulenburg scandal of 19084 and, later, with the mission of examining the opinion of
French political circles in 19151916: I would be very interested in you writing me
about what people think there [about the war and about himself] () Most probably
you will meet leading politicians and you will hear their positions. The
Crownprince had drafted a peace treaty, 7 months after the start of the war, and was
suggesting Marthe Bibesco to disclose it to the French officials: I believe France
would accept our peace [proposal] with the following conditions: 1 we return the
occupied provinces [Alsace and Lorraine], 2 we give France a part of Belgium and
keep the rest, 3 France allows us to use Calais as long as the war against England
shall last () These are my personal opinions. I do not know what the government
considers, but I imagine they would be interested in knowing my plans. I write you
all this because it is a great pity that France and Germany wage war while the d***
1
Louise Weiss, Mmoires dune europenne (Memoirs of a European), transcribed fragment
in the Bibesco papers, V.
2
Diesbach, Prinesa Bibescu, 73.
3
Constantin Iordan, Martha Bibescu n timpul ocupaiei germane la Bucureti, 19161917
(Marthe Bibesco during the German Occupation of Bucharest, 19161917) (Bucharest:
Anima, 2005), 10100; idem, Martha Bibescu i Prinul motenitor al Germaniei. File de
istorie, 19091910 (Marthe Bibesco and the German Crownprince. Pages of History, 1909
1910) (Iai: Institutul European, 2010), 45183.
4
Diesbach, Prinesa Bibescu, 245.
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English just take advantage. () I wish that Roumania joins us, taking Bessarabia
and good parts of Russia and Bulgaria, as well as half of Serbia, leaving the other
half to Austria.1
Marthe Bibesco, whose sympathies were international, not exclusively
national, formulated a smooth answer: It is a great misfortune that the
circumstances and the high dignity God invested You with, next to so many other
things, prevent us to openly discuss the subject You commenced in the last letter. I
feel the same about the peace, but well-thought reasons make me believe France will
never accept to seize the smallest part of the Belgian territory. It is a psychological
fact the French public opinion has learned to consider the Belgians victims as
well, and heroes. Convincing them to accept a peace treaty lamiable would
require a completely different approach than offering a compensation in Belgian
lands; they would be ashamed to accept it. I have been to England a few days
ago. I noticed lots of sang froid, not hatred, but a great trust in the final victory. It
is the feeling every warrior has when confronted with their ennemy in this war that
reached a world-wide scale.2
The same spirit of diplomatic openness presided over Marthe Bibescos
residences, the palace of Mogoshoaia a few kilometers from Bucharest and the
mansion in Posada (by Comarnic), neighbouring the Pele royal castle in the
mountains. Once the restoration of Mogoshoaia was achieved in 1927, Marthe
hosted reunions and dinners with British, French, American, German, Spanish and
Swiss diplomats (chargs daffaires, ministers to Roumania, ambassadors to various
countries, delegates to the League of Nations); the closing reception of the 1931
Congress of the Fdration Aronautique Internationale3 took place in her residence,
and so did, partly, one of the Congresses for South-Eastern European Studies. The
royal and aristocratic set of Europe was also attending her reunions when in
Bucharest. Marthes spiritual conversation, the excellent cuisine, the historical
grounds (Mogoshoaia had been the spring residence of Wallachias last national
dynast, Constantine Bassaraba de Brancovan, 16881714, to which the Bibescos
were main heirs and successors) made her invitations sought after. The glittering
international society gathering there turned Mogoshoaia into the second Geneva or
1
Letter of Prince Wilhelm (Crownprince of the German Empire) to Marthe Bibesco, p.XCV,
d 2, ff 8889, the Alexandru Saint-Georges files, Archive of the National Library of
Roumania, Bucharest.
2
Letter of Marthe Bibesco to Prince Wilhelm, p. XCV, d2, ff 9091, the Alexandru Saint-
Georges files.
3
Grigore Gafencu, nsemnri politice (Political Notes) (Bucharest: Humanitas, 1991) 260.
Founded on 14 October 1905, the Fdration Aronautique Internationale (FAI / The World
Air Sports Federation, in English) was and still is the world organisation for air sports,
aeronautics and astronautics world records, with headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. First
presided by Prince Roland Bonaparte, it gradually became an institution reuniting the (back
then) newly created and strategic Ministries of Air/Aviation of different European countries
and of the United States. George Valentin, Prince Bibesco (18801941) presided the FAI
from 1931 to 1941 (F.A.I. History, accessed December 2014, http://www.fai.org/about-
fai/history and F.A.I. presidents, accessed December 2014, http://www.fai.org/about-
fai/presidents, last modified Monday, 26 November 2007).
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
the second League of Nations, as Louis Barthou, French minister of foreign affairs
himself a visitor put it.1
This sophistication, comprehensive understanding of circumstances and
proximity to the political milieus of Europe turned Marthe Bibesco into a privileged
diplomatic messenger when the case. It was through her that Ramsay MacDonald,
the British Prime-Minister and friend , or Lon Blum (French Prime-Minister)
informally contacted Roumanian governments of the late 1920s and the early 1930s.
In 1942, it was, again, through her that the US Minister to Switzerland, Leland
Harrison (previously US Minister to Roumania) notified Antonescu on the American
opposition to Roumanias pursuit of war against the Soviet Union east of Dniestr.2
Her political awareness was also innovative. Earlier, in the 1930s, she had
suggested the creation of an intervention force, an aerial military fleet controlled by
the Fdration Aronautique Internationale and placed under the authority of the
League of Nations, destined to prevent regional aggression.3 In this, her opinion
coincided perfectly with that of her husband, president of the FAI. Today, we can
only speculate on how Europe would have looked in the second half of the 20th
century, had the idea been put into practice
1
Diesbach, Prinesa Bibescu, 550554.
2
Marthe Bibesco, La vie dune amiti. Ma correspondance avec labb Mugnier, 19111944 (The
Life of a Friendship. My letters to aboot Mugnier, 19111944) (Paris: Plon, 1957), vol. 3, 527.
3
Idem, Echanges avec Paul Claudel: nos lettres indites (Exchanges with Paul Claudel. Our
unpublished letters), Paris:Mercure de France, 1972.
4
17911865, one of the founders of the modern Greek state, charg daffaires in different
European capitals, Minister of Finance and ultimately Prime-Minister of Greece.
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jappartiens dabord lAthnes cleste qui fut transport de mon temps Paris,
arche sainte. [I shall not relinquish, me, any of these particular fatherlands. But
first of all I belong to Celestial Athens, which had been transferred in my days to
Paris, a sacred Ark (of the Covenant)], the princess considered. Celestial Athens is
in Marthes literary symbolism the metaphor for the quintessence of the European
culture so perfectly illustrated by the city of Paris; Paris had to be the capital of a
Europe whose supreme duty was to find its unity.1
It is for this reason that she starts writing, in the 1920s, La Nymphe Europe.
The first volume out of 27 planned, each dedicated to a European country
reached 650 pages. Published in 1960, when Marthe Bibesco was already living in
exile, La Nymphe Europe was the literary outcome of entire decades of political and
social observation. It is a history and genealogy of Europe based on Marthes in-
depth knowledge of the European aristocracy, a symphony of history, philosophy
and mythology (as Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi saw it), delivered as an auto-
biography throughout the centuries. Marthes aim was to spiritually reconquer
Europe against all the forces keeping it divided. Nymph Europe would therefore turn
into a reflection of the European unity achieved by a transnational family, which
was Marthes own. The term family was extended from birth to alliance; this vast
extension of lineages, of intertwined ancestors and dynasties, of overlapping
political interests in the Past were enough to prove and build Europes unity, as
Louise Weiss perceptively noticed.2 Eulogies follow the publication, and among the
most representative of all are the opinions of Charles de Gaulle, Frances president
and Marthes friend, who writes her: Quel raccourci et quelle perspective! Quelle
histoire et quel conte! Vous avez saisi lEurope! [What a view and what a
perspective! What a history and what a recounting! Youve depicted Europe!].3
Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi is another admirer, writing her and confessing that
he and Marthe must have met in another life through his Kalergi and her
Mavrocordato ancestors who shared the same ideals.4
But it is not just the genealogical alliances of Europes monarchies and
aristocracies that build the unity of Europe. From East to West, Europe displays
political, social, societal, anthropological, linguistic and geopolitical similarities
which are, again, a proof of an underlying unity needing to be revealed and
explained. This is to Marthe, and not only the cultural and civilisational heritage
of Greece and Rome.
1
The quotes above are taken from Marthe Bibesco, La Nymphe Europe, Mes vies antrieures
(Nymph Europe. My previous lives) (Paris: Plon, 1960).
2
The title of the book is in itself highly suggestive. Europe is incarnated by a feminine
symbol a nymph, from the Greek nymph, also meaning wife. This nymph is spirit, it is
memory and also an abducted princess that her brother, Phoenix, searches for all over the
world. But the phoenix bird is exactly the heraldic symbol of Marthes maternal family, the
Mavrocordato; hence, analogically, daughter of the Phoenix herself, Marthe takes upon her
the duty to find Europe and her spirit.
3
Letter of Charles de Gaulle to Marthe Bibesco, 1960 (2nd half of the year), typewritten
copy, Bibesco papers, V.
4
Letter of Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi to Marthe Bibesco, August 12, 1960,
typewritten copy, Bibesco papers, V.
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It was in her Roumanian masterpiece, Isvor, Pays des saules (Isvor, Land of
the Willows), that Marthe Bibesco explores the antique Roman and Hellenic
backgrounds of her native country. The book was also conceived as a diplomatic
message, destined to highlight Roumanias Occidental credentials and imply that a
nation representing the only Latin community in Central-and-Eastern Europe should
not be abandoned by its Western European relatives mainly France, Italy and
Belgium.
Written in Switzerland in 1917, the book is the expression of a revived
cultural experience. Away from home because of the war, and missing it, Marthe
starts writing about her country in an attempt to feel closer to Roumania. She
searches for the nations deepest and most hidden cultural sources those that can
be seen clearer only when looked upon from afar. She plunges in folklore and
reinterprets Roumania by revealing the entire complexity of this nation who
absorbed influences coming, in time, from Paris and London, from Constantinople
and Moscow or Sankt-Petersburg, from Venice and Krakow. The geographic
location and the tumultuous history explains Roumanias exceptionalism rarely
understood and her multiple singularities: the only Latin yet Orthodox nation in
Europe; the only Latin nation located in Central and Eastern Europe; the only Latin
country having used, for centuries, the Cyrillic alphabet; the only country belonging
equally to Central Europe, South-Eastern Europe and to Eastern Europe; a country
whose cultural heritage imposes on it to perform despite the often hostile
geopolitical context; a country hesitating between openness and reclusion. In one of
her books, she wrote: The heart of Roumania, my native land, hangs forever in the
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balancehalf Orient, half Occident. Hers is a dual nature, two distinct faces, and
two opposing elements which yet powerfully attract each other. Land of contrast, of
flame and of frost, she is one of the infinitely sensitive points de rsonnance of the
universe. She compares the country to Byzantium, Granada, Ravenna, Venice or
Ragusa, which are other sensitive points of Europe, where Orient and Occident
meet creating a stagger of aesthetic emotions.1
Her immense erudition serves her in this quest to discover Roumanias roots
and commonalities with the rest of Europe. The poetic spirituality of the myths,
legends and folk traditions, so similar to those of the Celts, Germans, Slavs, adds to
the affinities to the Grco-Roman culture. Wasnt Europes unitas multiplex,
unidiversity, reflected in Roumanias cultural richness?... Marthe Bibesco adds: But
that is the secret of Roumaniaher profound resource, the key to her dual heart.
Whoever judges her by only one of her faces mistakes her. Whoever loves her only
for one of her beauties does not truly love her. Whoever criticizes her for her faults
does not know how to offset them by her redeeming qualities.2
But poetry was not just poetry. Marthes poetic vision was the seductive part
of a political and diplomatic expression. In her writings, when describing Roumania,
she always finds a comparison to places more familiar to Western politicians,
diplomats, aesthetes and literati so that one can already create a mental projection
not only of Roumanias atmosphere but also of the countrys natural and
civilisational perfect compatibility with Europe. For instance, she referred to
Roumania as Dacia felix. It was a livresque manner to revive the beautiful past of
a European territory that had shown much potential when a part of the Roman
civilisation, and also an indicator of a promising future if the country was properly
governed. She also facilitates the understanding of tradition or of ancient Roumanian
art by referring to the Byzantine and Italian artistic patrimony, or sometimes to
Germanys or Spains; the understanding of geography by jolly transliterations of
the Roumanian toponymy; the understanding of the language by revealing Latin
etymologies and establishing comparisons to Italian and French; the understanding
of rural society by comparison (mainly) to the French.3 In this, her talent was
unparalleled. It was easy to do so, as she felt European and she thought in a
European manner. This is most probably why, when visiting Roumania in May
1968, Charles de Gaulle Marthe Bibescos last grand political friend took Isvor
to read in order to culturally understand the country he was going to visit for the first
time, part of his Europe des patries.4
Last but not least, the recurring historical references constitute a discreet
message sent to those unable to understand enough the nuances hiding behind factual
truths: Roumania was not a newly built country, emerging only in the second half of
the 19th century on the map of Europe under the rule of foreign sovereign and Liberal
1
Bibesco, My Roumania, in Vogue Magazine, London, 15 June 1925. (Also available at
http://www.tkinter.smig.net/romania/Bibesco/index.htm, accessed July 2014.)
2
Ibid.
3
Maria Brescu, Interferene romneti n opera Marthei Bibescu (Roumanian influences in
Marthe Bibescos writings) (Bucharest: Minerva, 1983), 145165.
4
Diesbach, Prinesa Bibescu, 828.
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1
This set of ideas is a few times expressed in her book La Nymphe Europe II. O tombe la
foudre (Nymph Europe II. Where the lightning strikes) (Paris: Grasset et Fasquelle, 1976).
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
Anna JANI
Etvs Lornd University, Budapest
Faculty of Humanities, Institute of Philosophy
MTA-ELTE Hermeneutics Research Group
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
later investigations. Diltheys theory of the community becomes the guiding thread
for her to investigate the transition from the individual experience to the experience
of the community life. According to my thesis, this subjective act presupposes a
collective world experience that makes it possible to experience the subject as a
subject. This two-sided interpretation of the act of empathy as, first, the founding act
of community life, and, furthermore, something that is founded on co-subjectivity, is
what constitutes the essential phenomenological method of Edith Stein.
1 Edith Stein, The Collected Works of Edith Stein. Life in a Jewish Family, eds. Lucy Gelber
and Romaeus Leuven, trans. Josephine Koeppel (Washington, 1986), 269.
2 Edith Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, trans. W. Stein (Hague: Nijhoff 1964), 3.
3 Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, 60.
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1 It must be remarked here that the notion of social act, adopted by Stein from Adolf Reinach,
is not identical with her notion of the act of community. Reinach interprets the social act as the
communal experience of feelings, while Stein calls these acts as free acts, because of their
freedom from the objectivity. This means that Stein focuses on the content of the act, while
Reinach is interested in the intention of the act. The scholarly literature is divided by the
evaluation of the relationship between Stein and Reinach: some regard Stein's interpretation of
Reinach's social acts as a misunderstanding of Reinach's ideas. Others, however, claim that
Stein understands free acts as the act of love, hate etc. which are aimed at single phenomena in
the common life. My article focuses not on these single acts but on the perception of the
community as a basic phenomenon of our life. Cf. Beate Beckmann, Phnomenologie des
religisen Erlebnisses. Religionsphilosophische berlegungen im Anschuss an Adolf Reinach
und Edith Stein (Wrzburg: Knigshausen & Neumann 2003); Adolf Reinach, Nachgelassene
Texte. Nichtsoziale und soziale Akte, in Karl Schumann and Barry Smith, eds. Smtliche
Werke. Textkritische Ausgabe in zwei Bnden. vol. 1. (Mnchen: Philosophia, 1989), 355
361.; Adolf Reinach, Die apriorischen Grundlagen des brgerlichen Rechts. Die sozialen
Akte, in Smtliche Werke, 141335.; Alessandro Salice, Urteile und Sachverhalte: ein
Vergleich zwischen Alexius Meinong und Adolf Reinach (Mnchen: Philosophia, 2009); Karl
Schumann, Edith Stein und Adolf Reinach, in Reto Luzius Fetz, ed. Studien zur Philosophie
von Edith Stein. Internationales Edith Stein Symposium Eichsttt 1991, Phnomenologische
Forschungen 26/27. (Freiburg: Alber, 1993), 5389.
2 Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, 5.
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the temporality, there is an analogy between considering the memory, expectation and
fantasy and acts of empathy in which the experiences are given non-primordially.
Edith Stein regards primordiality as the main term characteristic of the different types
of acts: the memory of joy, for example, is primordial as a representational act, but
non-primordial in its content, since its content belongs to a situation in the past. This
act has the total character of joy which I could study, but the joy is not primordially
and bodily there. Rather, it has once been alive (and this once, the time of the present
experience, can be definite or indefinite).1
The experience of empathy is similar both to the memory and to the fantasy
in presenting the content of experience. Similar to them, the act of empathy has a
temporal dimension both as an acting process and in its experience. When I inquire
into its implied tendencies (try to bring anothers mood to clear givenness to
myself), the content, having pulled me into it, is no longer really an object. I am now
no longer turned to the content but to the object of it, am at the subject of the content
in the original subjects place.2 According to Stein, there is a transition between the
experience of the foreign person (which is my non-primordial experience) and my
experience of the others (which I conceive as my primordial experience). As Dan
Zahavi says concerning the intersubjective life-constitution, there is a smooth
transition from the experience of the others to the other forms of personal
experiences as imagination and recollection, but it must be realized that the empathy
is the irreducible form of intersubjectivity.3 Thus there is a twofold level of time
constitution that belongs to the primordial experience of the others on the one hand
and to the fulfilling explanation of a foreign personal experience on the other hand.
By this way, Stein distinguishes three grades of the representation of experiences:
the emergence of the experience, the fulfilling of explanation, and the
comprehensive objectification of the explained experience. This other subject is
primordial although I do not experience its primordiality; his joy is primordial
although I do not experience it as primordial. In my non-primordial experience I
feel, as it were, led by a primordial one not experienced by me but still there,
manifesting itself in my non-primordial experience.4
Stein distinguishes the theoretical and the so-called sentient acts (Gefhlsakt
as translated in the works of E. S.), which leads her thinking to value ethics. She
asserts that the value ethics is grounded on the act empathy, and this way it is
constituted by the individual. From this point, Stein concludes, the present
experiences overwrite the experiences of the past. Based on this statement of Stein,
1 Ibid., 8.
2 Ibid., 10.
3 Dan Zahavi, Subjectivity and Selfhood. Investigating the First-Person Perspective,
(London: MIT Press 2008), 155.: To be more specific, empathy has typically been taken to
constitute a unique and irreducible form of intentionality, and one of the classical tasks of
phenomenological analysis has been to clarify its precise structure and spell out the
difference between it and other forms of intentionality, such as perception, imagination, and
recollection. In the fact, the empathic approach has occasionally been assumed to constitute
the phenomenological approach to intersubjectivity.
4 Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, 11.
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1 Ibid., 54.
2 Ibid., 58.
3 Zahavi, Subjectivity and Selfhood. Investigating the First-Person Perspective, 163.
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bodily life and the living bodies of the foreign subjects. Corresponding to the
individual personality, which is constituted in the individual experiences and out of
which in turn the individual experiences are to be understood, there could very well
be a collective personality as that whose experiences the communal experiences are
to be regarded as.1 This analogy, the discovering of the community feelings
between two bodily expressions, is the guarantee of the act of empathy, and vice
versa. But is it possible at all, and if so, then exactly how could we talk about the
common sense of the community? These are the questions raised by MacIntyre,
relying on Steins notion of community feeling. Two sets of questions arise. The
first concerns what it means to speak of the purposes or hopes or fears or grief of a
community. What is the relationship between the purposes, hopes, fears, and griefs
of individuals which are theirs qua individuals and those which are theirs qua
members of a community. A second set of question concerns the differences
between the two imagined individuals. What is it for an individual to be open or not
to be open to those experiences that are communal? What is it for an individual to
identify or to fail to identify with the purposes of a community? What kind of
changes in an individual might membership in a community bring about?2
The dissertation of Edith Stein investigates the relation between empathy
and other psychical acts by elucidating the perception between the psycho-physical
bodies. Since the development of the individual takes place in the life of the
community, every bodily effect manifests itself as an interior psychical causality,
which is at the same time responsible for individual development. The aim of the
first part of The Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, the Sentient
Causality, is to show how psychical effects determinate the whole constitution of
experiences and delineate the core of the person. The causality of the physical
impact could be the same for different individuals, but it may involve different
psychical causalities for the different individuals. Along with these effects of outer
causes, we grasp effects within the individual himself. For example, we may see a
child actively romping about and then becoming tired and cross. We then interpret
tiredness and the bad mood as the effect of movement. We have already seen how
movements come to givenness to us as alive movements and how tiredness comes to
givenness. As we shall soon see, we also grasp the bad mood empathically.3 The
observation of an event in the outer world causes the same experience in its object,
but it can refer to different content for the participants at the same time. MacIntyre
asserts that, for Stein, empathy is always directed at a concrete situation, the
meaning of which is defined by earlier experiences.4 The foreign living body as a
1 Edith Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, ed. Marianne Sawicki, transl.
Marie Catharine Baseheart and Marianne Sawicki (Washington, 2000), 135.
2 MacIntyre, Edith Stein. A Philosophical Prologue, 109.
3 Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, 66.
4 MacIntyre, Edith Stein. A Philosophical Prologue, 112.: Here Stein first recognizes that
what is given in experience sometimes can only be characterized adequately in term that
takes us beyond that experience, in terms that presuppose some external point of view from
which what is given in experience has to be understood. And so it is with another aspect of
psychic causality.
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This means, on the one hand, that the psychic causality is not limited to the
experience, but the experience of now is motivated by the future and the past,
expectation, fantasy and memory. According to MacIntyre, this is the life-feeling
and life-power which influences our experiences: The changing life-feelings that
have effects on how we experience what we experience are to be understood as
manifestation of life-power, the power that we draw upon as living beings. Among
the effects of variations in life-power is varying receptivity of experience. The
powers that I bring to my discriminations of features of my experience are
themselves manifestations of another and more fundamental power, that of life itself.
And this stands as cause to effects that encounter in experience.1 An individual is
not only a closed conveyor of experiences but also an expression of his life. Stein
1 Ibid., 112.
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considers the reaction of the individual and the causal chain of his expressions as the
personal character of an individual. You can read the sorrowfulness of a person from
his or her face, I express my cheerfulness by my smile. These common emotional
expressions belong to the present situation, but their experience introduces other
non-primordially experiences. Meaning is always a general one. In order to grasp
the object intended right now, we always need a givenness of the intuitive basis of
the meaning experiences. There is no such intermediate level between the expressed
experience and the expressing bodily change.1 According to MacIntyre, Stein
makes a difference between the act of the person as an intersubjective act of
empathy among subjects and between the act of community which is turned to the
upper-subjective horizon of the community. So once again, when she discusses the
ebb and flow of life-power within communities and between individuals and
communities, she once again treats these phenomena as susceptible of causal
explanation. And, as she did with individuals, she understands life-power as
informing a range of communal acts and experiences, including those forms of
cooperation through which communal experience is constituted. Many individuals
may by their actions contribute to a common and communal goal.2
The language as the transition between the expression of personal effects
and the communication channel of the community symbolizes the mental life of the
psycho-physical individual. This linguistic expression is not primordial but can be
empathized. I can bring the circumstances of which the statement speaks to
givenness to myself. If I hear the words, It is raining, I understand them without
considering that someone is saying that to me. And I bring this comprehension to
intuitive fulfillment when I look out of the window myself.3 As Zahavi says: On
the one hand, there is something right about the claim that the feelings and thoughts
of Others are manifest in their expressions and actions. In many situations, we do
have a direct, pragmatic understanding of the minds of the Others. We see the anger
of the Other, we emphatize with his sorrow, we comprehend his linguistically
articulated beliefs; we do not have to infer their existence. On the other hand, there
also seems to be something right in the Cartesian idea that the mental life of another
is, in some respect, inaccessible.4 All our outer perception is carried out in mental
acts. We interpret the foreign living body as an object-constituting consciousness
and consider the outer world as its correlate. The transition from the individual
experiences to communal world constitution is realized in values which are
constituted by the mind in the acts of feeling. According to Edith Stein, Our whole
cultural world, all that the hand of man has formed, all utilitarian objects, all
works of handicraft, applied science, and art, and reality, they have become the
correlate of the mind.5 This whole value system of the human life is grounded on
the individual experiences, and the cultural sciences constitute the second level of
the human life. Stein claims that the elements of the cultural sciences, facts and
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historical events, are not in causal contact with the personal life of the individual,
but they are in genetic correlation with the life of the community. The
Geisteswissenschaften (cultural sciences) describe the products of the mind, though
this alone does not satisfy them. They also pursue, mostly unseparated from this,
what they call history, literary history, history of language, art history, etc. They
pursue the formation of mental products or their birth in the mind.1 These two
functions of the cultural sciences, the formative process of the mental products, on
the one hand, and the succession of the mental acts of the individuals, on the other
hand, raise the question, whether there could be a connection between the
methodology of the cultural sciences as a scientific formation of the community and
the act of empathy on a subjective level of the community.
As we saw, the last chapter of Edith Steins doctoral thesis aims to establish
the empathic act as an act of the mental person. This raises the question, whether the
act of empathy is only applicable at the experience of the outer world and the
interconnections of foreign individuals or whether it can be also understood as a
value constituting act that can re-actualize non-primordial experiences. It is precisely
this latter sense in which Stein discusses Diltheys theory of the cultural sciences.
Steins excerpts refer only to Diltheys Introduction to the Human Sciences, Ideas
about the Descriptive and Analytical Psychology, the Contributions to the Study of
Individuality, and The Imagination of the Poet,2 and she leaves the theoretical
improvement of Dilthey untouched. Starting from Diltheys Ideas, Stein formulates
her own question as to whether it is possible to arrive at the act of empathy from the
cultural sciences. Empathy was necessary for the constitution of these objects, and
so to a certain extent our own individual was assumed. But mental comprehension,
which we shall characterize in still more detail, must be distinguished from this
empathy. But from Diltheys mistaken exposition, we learn that there must be an
objective basis for the cultural sciences beside the clarification of method, an
ontology of the mind corresponding to the ontology of nature.3 When Dilthey,
claims Stein, finds in the Idea the connection between the individuals life and the
cultural sciences by a psychological method, then it is, according to Stein, a science
of nature: descriptive is not the proper word, for descriptive psychology is also
the science of the soul as nature.4 Stein advocates a more phenomenological
approach to the psychical causality as she claims that mental acts are in mental
relationship to each other, the I passes over from one act to another in the form
of motivation.5 According to the second part of the Philosophy of Psychology and
1 Ibid., 84.
2 Cp. Wilhelm Dilthey, Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften. Versuch einer Grundlegung
fr das Studium der Gesellschaft und der Geschichte. ed. Bernhard Groethysen,
(Gttingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1914); Wilhelm Dilthey, Die geistige Welt. Einleitung
in die Philosophie des Lebens. Erste Hlfte: Abhandlungen zur Grundlegung der
Geisteswissenschaften. ed. Georg Misch (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1924);
Wilhelm Dilthey, Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften. ed.
Bernhard Groethysen (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1927).
3 Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, 87.
4 Ibid., 86.
5 Ibid., 87.
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the Humanities, titled the Individual and Community, every psychical act is
constituted phenomenologically as a mental act and these mental acts of psychical
experiences ground the stream of experiences in the consciousness. With the
individual ego we didnt distinguish between a current of consciousness and a
current of experience, because here the originally productive flow of experiencing
and the series of persistent experiences that is constituted within it as a unity came
into congruence, and because the term consciousness in the usual manner of
speaking extended from the moment of the experience that we so designate to the
overall experience. But with communal experience, weve got to distinguish strictly:
here theres no current of consciousness as an originally constitutive flow.1 This
meaning context of consciousness builds the basic element of the mental world,
which is achieved by theoretical acts that incorporate the structure of all feelings. It
is possible to conceive of a subject, only living in theoretical acts, having an object
world facing it without ever becoming aware of itself and its consciousness, without
being there for itself. But this is no longer possible as soon as this subject not only
perceives, thinks, etc., but also feels.2 When I am turning towards an object, then it
is pre-given to me in theoretical acts, but the value realm belonging to this act is
acquired only in the realm of our personality. Following Stein, MacIntyre raises the
question as to what the difference is between the community sensation and the
feeling of the individual, if the community sensation is grounded on the personal
expressions. We can talk about both the joy and grief of the individual, but also
about the common understanding of feelings. The intentionality of the mental acts
and states of individuals can be directed towards common objects, objects of shared
feeling, objects of common understanding, objects of shared values. So individuals
may share grief or joy, may understand some task in which they are engaged with
others by exchanging views of that task from different standpoints, may use a
common idiom to describe and analyze what they are doing together, and may find it
worthwhile for the same reasons. But individuals can share in these ways without
considering a community. What then is specific to communal sharing?3
Stein finds a mutual transition between the perception of the cultural
objection, the communal appreciation of cultural phenomena and their individual
interpretation. The last chapter of her doctoral thesis will be elaborated in her
Individual and Community by her interpretation of the individual life in the
community. According to the communal life, mental life is already presupposed by
attitudes that hold for an objective fact. The apprehension of an objective phenomenon
is not possible without an act-realization, i. e. the mental connectivity of the
individuals. According to Zahavi, intersubjectivity is already present as
consubjectivity even prior to my concrete empathic encounter with another subject.4
This remark of Zahavi attests that the intersubjective life-perception occurs in a face-
to-face dimension between two individuals which is grounded on the historicity of
understanding, the basis of which is the act of empathy that is a fundamental act for
the community life. It is natural to conclude that a reflection on the intersubjective
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1 Ibid., 167168.
2 Cf. Wilhem Dilthey, Die geistige Welt. Einleitung in die Philosophie des Lebens. Erste
Hlfte: Abhandlungen zur Grundlegung der Geisteswissenschaften. Gesammelte Schriften
V. ed. Georg Misch, (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1924), 186, 194.
3 Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, 93.
4 Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, 165.
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the individual, adopts from Dilthey the vocabulary of life-feelings and life-power.
Life-power is at this point the name of an otherwise unknown cause, whose variation
produces variations in its effect. Life-power is not completely under the subjects
control. And so a consideration of life-power raises the question: how far is the life of
the psyche causally conditioned.1
The first part of the work, the Sentient Causality, shows us how the core of
the person is formed by the psychical affects and how the physical and the mental
experiences control this core. The mental world, which is the unity of living persons
value configurations, is an independent entity, which, however, consists of the actual
living personalities. Before anything else, if you want to understand in what sense you
can talk about the universe of sentient reality into which the lone psyche fits as a
member, youve got to clarify a determinate form of living together of individual
persons.2 The community life and the consciousness of the community are not identical
with the life of the subject and at least the subject has a private life without a reflection
on the community. To speak of communal consciousness is to speak of the
consciousness of those individuals who are members of some community and who
constitute it by what they share.3 According to Edith Stein, I can have individual
experiences and communal experiences as well, which constitute the universal mental
life and the value system of the community. The individuals constitutively connect to the
community in the common experience, but this experience is different for each:
Communal experiences, as we saw, are constituted by solitary experiences both as to
their content and as to their being experienced.4 Stein clearly distinguishes the
experiences of the individuals from the experiences of the communal life, and she claims
that we can distinguish between the act of the intersubjective world constitution and the
reflexion on the experience of the communal-cultural life. Zahavi interprets the act of the
community as a mental act, which makes impossible to realize the object of the act. In
sort, the basic idea is that we should avoid construing the mind as something visible to
only one person and invisible to everyone else. The mind is not something exclusively
inner, something cut off from the body and the surrounding world, as if psychological
phenomena would remain precisely the same even without bodily and linguistic
expression.5 The constitution of the intersubjective life is realized in the acts of the
empathy, in which every individual is developed during the empathic act. On the other
hand, there is the community as a super-individual which also has a personal life
different from my individuality and the individuality of others. My participation in the
life of the community is a very special kind of participation, which is coextensive with
the life of the community. Exchanges between individuals are effected for the most part
in social acts in which the one act is pointed at the Other, turned toward it. One is
speaking and the Other is understanding him. And it belongs to the sense of these acts
that the material content pronounced, and accordingly heard, is not only meant but also
imparted and received.6 Not only the primer social phenomena like the everyday
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interactions constitute an ontology of the community life, but all scientific activities
are performed in this form. That which I contribute to it on my own, achievements of
original thinking, arise on the basis of the already accumulated repertoire of thought that
take over; and for its part, it becomes the basis upon which others build further. And
with this mental doing of mine, I find myself inserted into a great network of motivation,
the knowledge-process of humanity.1 This remark of Edith Stein indicates a mutual
transition from the intended empathic act of the individual to its act of the community,
which is always intended at the mental phenomenon of the community. Its a
peculiarity of social acts (in the broadest sense) that they cultivate new objectivities:
relations between persons like friendship, enmity, companionship, authority, and the
like. And these exhibit both an individual and a typical side, just like the sources from
which they spring. These types, moreover, have an influence upon the behavior of the
individuals that enter into them, behavior thats motivated by the types in a typical way.
Indeed, the most general mode of social relationships of all the mere being together of
persons determines a modification of the total course of experience, as opposed to the
solitary life of the soul.2
Regardless of the involvement of the two types of acts in both the experience
of the Other and the experience of the community life, Stein made a sharp difference
between the individual experiences and that of the communities. While communal
experiences are not the sum of single experiences and single effects, but rather arise
from those as something new and unique beyond them,3 we can talk about the
different acts in the two kinds of experiences. Against Dilthey, who connects both the
individual life and the cultural life to the psychical acts and who explains the cultural
development by the spiritual effects on the individuals, that is, he does not make a real
difference between the experience of community and the experience of individual life,
Stein argues for social acts of communal life: These typical manners of behavior
arent masks that the individual takes up and under which the individual conceals his
true face (although that can be the case too). Rather, the individual renders himself in
the social perspective which is required by the social slant of the moment, and
which at each moment corresponds to one or another of his essential traits. For in
every single case, the typical behavior and the type itself receive their individual
imprint from the persons who enter into them.4 According to Stein, there is a smooth
transition from community life to individual life, but they are on the reflexive level.
The reflexion on the individual life is realized in empathic acts, and the community
life is apprehended in the social acts of friendship, hostility, companionship, etc. Edith
Stein considers the act of the empathy as a basic act of the community which grounds
the social elements of the community. The connection between empathy and social
act, according to Stein, is secured by the value constitution, which is realized by the
individual act of empathy whose meaning is achieved by the reflection on the
community life, and this way it turns beyond the individuals.
1 Ibid., 170.
2 Ibid., 292.
3 Ibid., 190.
4 Ibid., 293.
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tefan BOLEA
Faculty of Letters
Babe-Bolyai University, Cluj
E-mail: stefan.bolea@gmail.com
1. Ciorans Not-Man
In his first Romanian book, On the Heights of Despair (1934), Emil Cioran
constructs, in his ambiguous and lyrical style, a definition of a new concept, the not-
man: There are among men some who are not far above plants or animals, and
therefore aspire to humanity. But those who know what it means to be Man long to
be anything but If the difference between Man and animal lies in the fact that the
animal can only be an animal whereas man can also be not-man that is, something
other than himself then I am not-man.1
Cioran seems to be saying that there are undeveloped human beings, who
are not at the level of mankind. The pride of being human is a symptom of the lesser
men, who worship their deficit. Exaggerating, Cioran notes that these creatures are
*
This paper is a result of a doctoral research made possible by the financial support of the
Sectoral Operational Programme for Human Resources Development 20072013, co-
financed by the European Social Fund, under the project POSDRU/159/1.5/S/132400 -
Young successful researchers professional development in an international and
interdisciplinary environment.
1
E. M. Cioran, On the Heights of Despair, trans. Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1992), 6869.
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almost at the level of plants and animals. Those who know that Man is a dead end, a
being unable to evolve, despise the phenomenon of man. An important question
must be asked: if we renounced humanity, whereto would we head? Should we
become theocentric instead of anthropocentric? Or if the way towards divinity is
closed, should we go back to animality? We understand that the not-man is no
longer human. But how could one define it? From a psychological point of view, the
not-man is a stranger (alius), a spiritual mutation. For instance, the overman
transcended the human nature and occupied a new territory (as we shall see later,
Cioran claimed that the overman conquered the domain of deity). However, the not-
man went beyond humanity but found no such domain: that is why from the
perspective of mankind, the not-man is a subman, a being unable to find a proper
home and essence, a punishable psychological outsider.
In another Romanian book, The Twilight of Thoughts (1940), Cioran further
develops this definition of non-humanity: Cynics are no longer supermen or
submen, they are post-men. One begins to understand and even love them, when a
confession addressed to one or maybe to no one escapes from the pains of our
absence: I was man and I no longer am now1 One can ask: what do we become
when we cease to be human? From a theological perspective we become demons,
from a mythological perspective, we become Titans, from a psychological
perspective we become psychopaths, from a philosophical perspective nihilists.
These four metaphors can describe the psychological future of the human
race. The not-man is the other, the alterity of man. If God created the man in his own
image (Genesis 1.27), the not-man breaks from the pattern of the likeness: it is almost
as if he was created by an acosmic God who no longer exists. We must note the not-
man is not simply anti-human (a term we must use for the misanthropic anti-
humanism of Lautramont, who hoped for the destruction of the human race: were
the earth covered in lice like grains of sand on the seashore, the human race would be
annihilated, stricken with terrible grief2), he rather is in-human. It is more likely that
the not-man is the being of the future, who looks back at the history of mankind and
analyses it from a non-human perspective. If man will be erased like a face drawn in
sand at the edge of the sea3, the not-man will be its successor. If the over-man were
an alternate god, the not-man would be an alternate, estranged (alienus) man.
2. What Is Nihilism?
Perhaps a basic understanding of nihilism would be helpful for our task: Nihilism is
the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or
communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical
skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have
1
E.M. Cioran, Amurgul gndurilor (Twilight of Thoughts) (Bucharest: Humanitas Publisher
House, 1996), 126, italics mine (my translation).
2
Comte de Lautramont, Maldoror & The Complete Works, trans. Alexis Lykiard
(Cambridge: Exact Change, 1998), 83.
3
Michel Foucault, The Order of Things. An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London:
Routledge, 2005), 422.
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no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy.1 There are
at least two important traits of nihilism one can discern from Alan Pratts definition:
the baselessness of values and the negativist appetite for destruction. Here is what
Friedrich Nietzsche, the first important theoretician of nihilism, said about values:
What does nihilism mean? That the highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is
lacking; why? finds no answer ... 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.2
We can easily understand Nietzsches definition when we contextualize the
affirmation God is dead with the attack against values of nihilism: God, the
highest value of ontology, theology and even history has disappeared (has
devaluated itself) and cannot, as Jean-Franois Lyotard and other postmodern
thinkers have shown, serve as a source of legitimation. God, once the highest value,
is now valueless. Moreover, nihilism could very well be defined as a project of
destruction of society, as we learn from the novel which mentions for the first time
in the history of literature the term nihilist, Fathers and Sons (1862) by
Turghenev. Destruction, the clearing of the ground becomes almost religious,
making up the meeting point between nihilism and anarchism:
1
Alan Pratt, Nihilism, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ISSN 2161-
0002, http://www.iep.utm.edu/, 01.08.2014.
2
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, ed. Walter Kaufmann, trans. Walter Kaufmann and
R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), 913.
3
Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons, trans. and ed. Michael R. Katz (New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, 1996), 38.
4
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 17.
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3. Nietzsches Overman
One can reconstruct the definition of the overman by taking into consideration three
fragments from Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The first one: What is the ape to man? A
laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the
overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. You have made your way
from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even
now, too, man is more ape than any ape.1
There is an evolutionist mystique in this text: the ape and the overman mark
the limits of human evolution. The ape, metaphor for an ignoble past, when the
animal soul was engaged in biological immediacy, is the human being fallen asleep.
The ape is the term which best expresses stagnation, the radiography of the minus
human being (man is more ape than any ape). The man is the achievement of the
ape, an achievement so grand that makes the initial draft ridiculous. From an
opposite perspective, the ape is a warning and a reminder for man. The warning
says: You can go back to subhumanity. The reminder: Anything you do, the ape
mirrors you. One must observe that it is impossible to build a mythology without
constant reference to zoology.
Another relevant text for the configuration of the definition of the overman
follows: The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman
shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the
earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-
mixers are they, whether they know it or not. (TSZ, p. 125) We have here the
second dimension of the overman: the faithfulness to earth and the understanding of
the fact that otherworldly hopes are poisonous. These hopes are counterproductive,
therefore infecting the will to power: while they create an imaginary world, they
curse this very world. To sin against the earth is now the most dreadful sin (TSZ,
p. 125). The worshippers of God took refuge in a transcendent world, therefore they
neglect this world. Moreover they abandoned the existential idea of responsibility,
claiming that this life is only a prelude to future eternal life. Now that God died
and his worshippers died with him (TSZ, p. 125), the disciples of the overman can
make the point that we must be faithful to this immanent earth and to the here and
now of the earthly existence.
Now we can describe the third dimension of the overman: Behold, I teach
you the overman: he is this sea; in him your great contempt can go under. What is
the greatest experience you can have? It is the hour of the great contempt. The hour
in which your happiness, too, arouses your disgust and even your reason and your
virtue. (TSZ, p. 125) Two things have defined so far Nietzsches overman: his
ability to transcend the basic human being and his faithfulness to a sense of
immanency. Now, in the hour of the great contempt, the overman becomes an
active nihilist, renouncing happiness, reason and virtue. This active nihilism claims
that the avoidance of pain and the compulsive pursuit of happiness is a symptom
of weakness: What matters my happiness? It is poverty and filth and wretched
1
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter
Kaufmann (New York: Viking Press, 1982), 124; hereafter abbreviated TSZ.
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
1
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 1718.
2
Sam Dolgoff, ed., Bakunin on Anarchy (New York: Vintage Books, 1971), 57.
3
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, ed. Bernard Williams, trans. Josefine Nauckhoff and
Adrain del Caro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 70.
4
E.M. Cioran, The Trouble of Being Born, trans. Richard Howard (Chicago: Quadrangle
Books, 1976), 85.
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
with the blood and entrails of this earth than with the fantastic and dreamy character
of divinity. Cioran claims that Nietzsche observed men only from a distance. Had
he come closer, he could have neither conceived nor promulgated the superman, that
preposterous, laughable, even grotesque chimera, a crochet which could occur only
to the mind without time to age, to know the long serene disgust of detachment.1
1
E.M. Cioran, The Trouble of Being Born, 85.
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
1
Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce homo & The Antichrist, trans. Thomas Wayne (New York:
Algora, 2004), 90.
2
E.M. Cioran, Convorbiri cu Cioran (Conversations with Cioran) (Bucharest: Humanitas
Publisher House, 1993), 244.
3
E.M. Cioran, The Fall into Time, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Seaver Books, 1976), 183.
39
Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
stagnation, too much becoming brings chaos. What is the danger? To fall and to
break, to become a man who loses not only superhumanity but also humanity, to
become an essence not only without becoming but without actual being. In other
words, the man who tended toward the overman but was defeated in his quest, losing
both humanity and desired excellence, might fall outside the human species and
become a not-man.
Cioran therefore believes that the overman is a concept that fails in three
crucial points: he is an idol replacing another one (God); he would be much
crueler and more vicious than man; moreover, when one tries to become an
overman, one could lose his very humanity. But what would Nietzsche have said
about Ciorans not-man? Nietzsche could have argued that if one does not transcend
the human race, one falls outside it, disqualified as a human being1 and turning
into subman. From a Nietzschean perspective, the not-man is the last man (The
earth has become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small.
His race is as ineradicable as the flea-beetle; the last man lives longest [TSZ, p.
129]). Moreover, seen through Nietzsches lenses, the not-man displays an attitude
characteristic to Cioran, i.e. passive nihilism: the weary nihilism that no longer
attacks; its most famous form, Buddhism; a passive nihilism, a sign of weakness.
The strength of the spirit may be worn out, exhausted, so that previous goals and
values have become incommensurate and no longer are believed.2
1
Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human, trans. Donald Keene (New York: New Direction Books,
1973), 166167; hereafter abbreviated NLH.
2
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 18.
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
inexplicably to give the impression of belonging to a living human being ... In fact,
if you look carefully you will begin to feel that there is something strangely
unpleasant about this handsome young man. (NLH, p. 15) The young man began to
adjust and tried to emulate the human being, hiding among enemies, in plain sight.
However, there still is a great discrepancy between persona and shadow (to use
Jungian terminology), or if you would like, between appearance and essence.
Although he developed a mechanism of survival through mimesis (thinking the
situation in Heideggerian terms, if one bowed to the they-self, this would take him
under its wings), there is something in his essence, in his very core (the alien soul)
that cannot ever emulate humans and begins to shatter once we take a closer look
(antimimesis). We can see the face of the stranger, of the outsider, of the not-man
passing like a dark cloud above our everyday blue sky.
We do not know when the third picture was taken but we can guess that it was
shot towards his death, when the mask of the character disappeared and when his
essence was truly revealed. For us humans, for the beings trapped in the comfortable
prison of the they-self, this picture is disturbing: The picture has a genuinely chilling,
foreboding quality, as if it caught him in the act of dying as he sat before the camera ...
the face is not merely devoid of expression, it fails even to leave a memory. It has no
individuality ... I think that even a death mask would hold more of an expression,
leave more of a memory. That effigy suggests nothing so much as a human body to
which a horses head has been attached. (NLH, pp. 1617)
Until now we could only hint the not-man: now we almost have a working
definition. Firstly, the not-man is a living dead, a being for whom non-existence takes
precedence over existence, in other words a nihilist or a being who feels that the
living is only a form of what is dead1 and that being alive expresses death better than
death itself would. For the not-man seen as a nihilist who favours non-existence, the
wisdom of Silenus seems the absolute guide: The very best thing is utterly beyond
your reach not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. However, the second best
thing for you is: to die soon.2 Why should one choose non-existence over existence?
Because the Buddhist-Schopenhauerian equation states: life = pain.
Secondly, the not-man has no individuality, it is impersonal. Is this
impersonality the one of death, the one of animality or the one that belongs to a
different species? Perhaps the not-man looks like a being that has zero and
otherness tattooed across his self, bearing the seal of nothingness. We come back
to animality or better said to inhumanity: from the perspective of man, the not-
man cannot be more than a subman. But how can we catch the suggestion of a being
caught between animality, estrangement, death and nothingness? How do we see the
unseen? In my perspective, Dazais not-man is beyond physical death (even a death
mask would hold more of an expression ) and can be recaptured at the realm of
spiritual death. We can catch a glimpse of the not-man looking at the pictures of
great spirits after they have lost their spirit, looking at the last photos of Nietzsche or
1
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 110.
2
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy And Other Writings, ed. Raymond Geuss and
Ronald Speirs, trans. by Ronald Speirs, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 23.
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
Cioran. Following a familiar line of argument, one could say that insanity is more
terrifying than death because it kills us while we still are alive.
The main affect of the not-man is anthropophobia (i.e. fear of man): All I
feel are the assaults of apprehension and terror at the thought that I am the only one
who is entirely unlike the rest ... I had a mortal dread of human beings It is true, I
suppose, that nobody finds it exactly pleasant to be criticized or shouted at, but I see
in the face of the human being raging at me a wild animal in its true colors, one
more horrible than any lion, crocodile or dragon ... I have always shook with fright
before human beings I was frightened even by God. I could not believe in His
love, only in His punishment The world, after all, was still a place of bottomless
horror. (NLH, pp. 26, 28, 117, 133) The not-man feels like he is the only one
entirely unlike the rest. There is no better description of the dissolution of the
pattern of likeness. The peculiar being born at the border of humanity would fear
both man and his God, whom are united through the discussed pattern. He is the
other, the one we must keep either at the door or in the cage.
This pathologic fear, this passive nihilism leads only to suicide or madness,
two versions of the same thing, death. I want to die. I want to die more than ever
before. Theres no chance now of recovery ... I want to die. I must die. Living itself is
the source of sin (NLH, pp. 163164), writes Dazais main character, accessing the
epistemology of the suicides, knowing what each of them knows in the enlightening
moment of transgression, that life is not only torment, horror and pain but also a
punishment and a disease. Dazais not-man continues to reflect in an access of self-
consciousness uncharacteristic to committed psychopaths: I was no longer a criminal
I was a lunatic. But no, I was definitely not mad. I have never been mad for even an
instant. They say, I know, that most lunatics claim the same thing. What it amounts to
is that people who get put into this asylum are crazy, and those who dont are normal
... And now I had become a madman. Even if released, I would be forever branded on
the forehead with the word madman, or perhaps, reject. Disqualified as a human
being. I had now ceased utterly to be a human being. (NLH, pp. 166167)
We can almost say that asylums are the zoos where the human beings
imprison the others, the inhumane ones, the not-men or the submen. Seen from
this point of view, the human is a dictatorship which always enslaves, imprisons
and destroys the exception. Who is to testify for the abuse against the other?
Probably suicides, madmen and strangers and outsiders, the so-called inferior
spiritual race, the ones who supported the genocide of dominant mankind. Cioran
and Dazai, their ideas and their characters, introduce a new concept (the one of
psychological inhumanity), which could make a career in anthropology, not only in
philosophy and psychology.
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
constitution, the only wrong what is against it.1 In Emersons vision authenticity
can be understood as a sort of autonomy (self-law in its etymological construction):
no one else has to govern us, to impose us a law foreign to our nature. The
autonomy of individuality is almost anomic (my law as opposed to the objective
law: my law transcends their law), and therefore, somehow a(nti)social (I am my
own Master and not the they-self). Charles Guignon is one of the most interesting
theoreticians that observed this feature of authenticity: To be authentic is to be in
touch with something that is concealed to the people who accept the outlook of
society. At some level, to be authentic is already to be asocial. What is more, being
authentic involves having a personal take on reality that is Other to the social, a
deeper reality that is masked by social customs.2 Moreover, the American
philosopher claimed that everyone is an artist, because each person creates his or
her own life, and each person has the ability to create it as a work of art.3
How can we consider the overman in the light of two of authenticitys
components, autonomy and self-creation? We keep in mind that we have defined the
overman as (1) a transcending individual, capable of overcoming the human being
fallen asleep, (2) a person with a sense of immanency, faithful to this very life and
world, (3) an active nihilist, who chooses (the will to) power instead of happiness,
reason and virtue. The overman is authentic because he has to create his own destiny
in pure immanence, in the absence of God, the former source of legitimation. He no
longer can take God as a model, in him existence precedes essence, as Jean-Paul
Sartre has put it. He is condemned to be free, he is forced to forge a new being,
which broke from the aforementioned pattern of likeness. Moreover, he is not only
being but also transgressive becoming: he must be of this world but also beyond
this existence, faithful to immanence and transcending humanity. How does an
overman look like? We are yet to find out.
If the overman were potentially authentic, would we rush to consider the
not-man inauthentic? The not-man was defined as an alternate man, a passive
nihilist, a subman. If the overman were the higher other of man, the not-man
would be the lower other or maybe the others other, the radical alterity one also
fails to imagine. But perhaps it is fundamentally wrong to view the not-man through
the hermeneutical lenses of the overman. What does Ciorans affirmation stand for:
I was man and I no longer am now? If we transcended humanity and became
overmen, absolute beings of destructions and active nihilists, we would still have a
region for our transformation: we would become alternate gods, probably the human
beings of the future, the post-humans that combine technology and computer science
with basic human traits. But if we transgressed humanity and became not-men, there
would be no region for our development: we would be crucified in pure nothingness,
in the utter unnamable. We would become something else for which there is no
name, because the not-man is only an approximation. So, keeping this in mind, the
not-man is not inauthentic but the bearer of a strange dark authenticity: the overman
1
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays (New York: Dover Publications,
1993), 2122.
2
Charles Guignon, On Being Authentic (London: Routledge, 2004), 40.
3
Ibid., 36.
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
is autonomous and gives his own sacred law and so is the not-man, who gives
little regard to they-self or persona, knowing that he is not superior but
completely different. If the overman were antisocial, the not-man would be asocial:
both are isolated and true to their anomic and abnormal nature.
When these two versions of (in)humanity are facing death, what do they
become? We ought to say that we are thinking of existential death, one which is
divorced from the vulgarities of the biological phenomenon. A certain human being
and even a certain God have to die in order for the overman to live. In other words,
the overman has to kill the humanity and even the potential divinity from himself, in
order to become himself. This death could be an existential condition for the beings
of the future post-history: they must go beyond themselves in order to become
alternate (high-tech or digital) gods. One must also view death as transformation, as
mythology and religion teach us: true life begins only after the first death. The
ones who fail to integrate the initiation of this first death are doomed to a life of
ignorance and sleep. If the overman stepped upon death and as an alternate god
enjoyed a sort of spiritual immortality, the not-man (in Dazais version) would be
(spiritually) dead while still alive, he would be a living dead. For him, as we have
shown, being alive expresses death better than death itself would. If the overman
died as man in order to live completely as a post-human being, for the not-man death
would hold no surprise: he would be sworn to death in life, an existence dedicated to
paralyzing consciousness, to sickness unto death and to the agony of passive
nihilism. The not-man cannot die anymore: he is condemned to (eternal) life because
his very existence symbolizes death. A similar life is virtual (immanent) damnation,
a condemnation to the inferno of here and now, the work of the last man or
Sisyphus: this is basically death in life. And while the not-man is doomed to this
dying existence, the overman is the inheritor of the life (la Vita nuova as Dante
has put it) which begins after the first death. One is created for a dead life, the
other is called for a deathless existence.
44
Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
Carmen GOREAN,
Babe-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca
Faculty of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences
Abstract: If until the outbreak of World War II the anti-Semitic manifestations were
generally limited to verbal abuse and in isolated acts of physical violence, the
alliance with Nazi Germany created the framework for the implementation of the
anti-Semitic policies. The pogroms in Romania described in various books were also
immortalized in photos. The photographs taken by the Jewish community reveal a
vivid picture of the atrocities committed. This study aims to present the human
losses, the moral and physical trauma, and also Jews property devastation during
the fascist rebellion in Bucharest reflected in the scientific works and in photos.
E-mail: carmen.tagsorean@ubbcluj.ro
Preliminary Ideas
A fragment in Emil Dorians personal diary describes the tense reality of the year
1938 when a major change was about to happen in the life of the Jewish
communities all across Europe: The stifling atmosphere of anticipation for events
and grave news was thickening like a dense smoke through which one cannot figure
out anything. Its got so far, that every piece of news seems possible. One cannot tell
fact from fiction anymore. Logic has disappeared in unfolding events. Hope
becomes insensitivity, and your Christian friend cannot comfort you anymore. In
truth, facts are coming together in a catastrophic way: in Germany the fire hatred
continues, in Poland the anti-Semitic hatred gets the governments blessing, in
Austria the Jews are being exterminated, and in Hungary the Jewish project becomes
law which means starving the Jews based on arithmetic.1
The Holocaust marks a turning point not only in the history of Jewish
communities, but in European history as well. The Jewish communities of all
European countries during WWII went through a great tragedy, one of the greatest, if
not the greatest of the 20th century2, which marked a radical rupture not only in the
1
Emil Dorian, Jurnal din vremuri de prigoan (A diary in times of persecution) (Bucharest:
Hasefer, 1996), 38.
2
Aurel Vainer and Dorel Dorian, eds., Holocaust 19401945. Suferine, compasiune,
solidaritate (Holocaust 19401945. Suffering, compassion, solidarity) (Bucharest: Scrib,
2009), 79.
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
Jews history, but also in the European history of civilization, in general. All spheres
of human creativity had to be redefined, taking into consideration, more or less
knowingly, the impact of this phenomenon on the mentality and life of the Western
world.1 For the Romanian Jews, it was also a century of extreme demographic
changes, this community facing a population increase towards the end of the 19th
century and the beginning of the 20th, but the Holocaust first and the territorial losses
later, led to a dramatic decrease in population in a very short period of time. This
demographic fluctuation, but also the historic events changed forever the relationship
of this minority with the Romanian state and the Romanian people as well as the
general image of the Jewish ethnicity in Romania. Not only the demographic trend
underwent new stages and developments, unknown till then, but even in its essence,
this category of population transformed itself profoundly, modifying its principal
coordinates of existence, valid for this territory along history.2
One of the great injustices the Jewish population was exposed to during
WWII was a total lack of help from the allied countries, which, in spite of the Jewish
support for the cause, simply left this community at the mercy of the German Nazi
aggression: The European Jewish world had no allies. At the trying time, Judaism
was alone, and when its leaders from around the world realized that, they went into
shock.3 An ally of Germany in the first stage of the war, Romania was no exception,
despite the fact that her material resources, geographic position and, very importantly,
Hitlers respect for Gen. Ion Antonescu, could have taken a different position. The
alliance with Nazi Germany was a move that justified Romanias desire to retrieve her
lost territories (North Bucovina, Bessarabia, Transylvania, South Dobrogea), but also
Gen. Ion Antonescus belief that communist Russia was a real threat to our state
security.4 An ample anti-Semitic propaganda and manipulation campaign took place in
the army to depict the Jews as responsible for the mistreatment, and even the death of
some Romanian soldiers during the retreat of 1940.5 Just like in other stages of
history, the Jews were used as scapegoats this time around again. For authorities it was
the easiest way because prejudice and stereotypes were widespread and very common
in the collective subconscious. The defeat in the battlefield of WWI found a perfect
explanation in the character slated for the Jews: fear, cowardice, lack of patriotism,
treason, espionage. All these stereotypes would be used in the anti-Semitic campaign
in preparation for the Pogrom of Iai. A serious matter was that this kind of attitude
was not only adopted by the army, but also condoned with internal memos that the
Jewish soldiers should be carefully watched as potential traitors all being inclined to
1
Sandu Frunz, Dumnezeu i Holocaustul la Elie Wiesel. O etic a responsabilitii (God
and the Holocaust at Elie Wiesel. An ethics of responsibility) (Bucharest: Contemporanul,
2010), 43.
2
Silviu Costache, Evreii din Romnia. Studiu de geografie uman (Jews in Romania. A
study in human geography) (Bucharest: Editura Universitii din Bucureti, 2004), 109111.
3
Raul Hilberg, Exterminarea evreilor din Europa (The extermination of Jews in Europe)
vol. 2 (Bucharest: Hasefer, 1997), 165.
4
Tom Gallagher, Furtul unei naiuni. Romnia de la comunism ncoace (The stealing of a
nation. Romania after communism) (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2004), 53.
5
Elena Chiri, Holocaust. Destine la rscruce (Holocaust. Fates at the crossroad)
(Bucharest: Editura Universitar, 2013), 190.
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
espionage and treason. There were secret orders to position the machineguns as to
open fire on the Jews in case they were about to flee to the enemy.1 Under these
conditions, the Jews had no chance of acceptance into the Romanian society, except
for freedom of religion.
Romania had become a satellite state of Germany, opportunistic, and the
destiny of her Jewish population depended entirely on the participation to the war.
As a result, Romania was obligated to respond to the Nazi murderous policy towards
the Jews in the same way as Germany. This opportunistic attitude can also be found
in the behavior of the general population on this issue: In their attitude towards
Jews, Romanians showed the same opportunistic ambiguity.2 With political
pragmatism set aside, the tragic events that took place between 1940 and 1944 were
a dark page in our national history. The Jews of Romania were subjected to the same
inhuman treatment as in the rest of Europe, only the methods of torture were
different: The Holocaust in Romania was different in terms of development and the
number of victims, compared to other countries where it was run by the Germans
themselves and took the ugliest forms possible (Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Hungary,
Germany). The massacre in Romania lacked scientific organization and
extermination technology, like gas chambers and crematoria to get rid of the
corpses. People were either beaten to death or suffocated in train cars whose vents
were deliberately closed. In some cases, they were selected at random from a
marching column on the way to a concentration camp and executed for their clothes
to be sold to the highest bidder.3
Without denying political responsibility, some voices consider that there is
no collective guilt or innocence, and, even if there were, nobody could be guilty or
innocent, as governments and countries take upon themselves the moral
responsibility for their good deeds or evil actions.4 One of the representative
personalities of the Jewish community in Romania, Elie Wiesel, says that the past
has to be a lesson of life that allows us not to repeat the mistakes, while memory
may be the foundation that a new conscience can be built on. It would not have the
wit to give us all the answers, but, combined with responsibility, it is an important
part for what we agree to be a common future.5 To keep this memory alive, it is
necessary to find some decisive answers for the understanding of the human being
and Western civilization, but, at the same time, it means raising an incomparably
bigger number of questions that may not find an answer.6
1
Andrei Oiteanu, Imaginea evreului n cultura romn. Studiu de imagologie n context est-
central-european (The image of the Jews in Romanian culture. A study in imagology in a
Central and Eastern European context), 3rd ed. (Iai: Polirom, 2012), 3067.
2
Hilberg, Exterminarea evreilor din Europa, vol. I, 65568.
3
Matatias Carp, Holocaust in Rumania. Facts and documents on the annihilation of
Rumanias Jews. 194044 (Budapest: Primor Publishing Co., 1994), 27.
4
Hannah Arendt, Eichmann n Ierusalim. Un raport asupra banalitii rului (Eichmann in
Jerusalem. Report on the banality of evil) (Bucharest: Editura All, 1997), 3234.
5
Frunz, Dumnezeu i Holocaustul la Elie Wiesel, 141.
6
Ibid., 59.
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
1
Radu Ioanid, Evreii sub regimul Antonescu (Jews under the Antonescu regime) (Bucharest:
Editura Hasefer, 1997), 399.
2
Ibid., 9.
3
Tuvia Friling, Radu Ioanid and Mihail E. Ionescu, eds., Raport final (Final report) (Iai:
Polirom, 2005), 226.
4
Lucy S. Dawidowicz, Rzboiul mpotriva evreilor. 19331945 (The war against the Jews)
(Bucharest: Editura Hasefer, 1999), 349.
5
Hilberg, Exterminarea evreilor, 674.
6
Friling and Ioanid and Ionescu, Raport final, 218.
7
Hilberg, Exterminarea evreilor, 68990.
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Filderman knew that Ion Antonescu had the pride and ambition to solve the Jewish
problem on his own and not led by others.1
Romania was at the time a sovereign state that today bears the entire
responsibility for the actions that targeted the Jews. Secondly, the assassination of
Jews under Romanian administration was not only the result of planned
extermination, but also the result of mass-deportation.2
As far as Ion Antonescus personal policy toward the Jews is concerned, it
can be judged as different from Europes, unfolding over two periods: 19411942
(the elimination of the Jewish population from Bessarabia and Bucovina, with
survivors deported to Transnistria), and 19431944 (a fairer treatment for the Jews
of the Old Kingdom and their unofficial help to emigrate to Palestine). One of Ion
Antonescus statements during his postwar trial, partially true, reads: If the Jews
are alive in the Old Kingdom today, its because of Antonescu. It is true that those
who managed to survive the assassinations, purges, and random violence at the
hands of murderous legionnaires did so because Ion Antonescu called it off. On the
other hand, Ion Antonescu is responsible for the death of the Jews from Bessarabia
and Bucovina, and their deportation to Transnistria: The Jews of Romania owe both
their life and death to Antonescu.3 The change of attitude between 1943 and 1944
can be justified by the same opportunism that had made Ion Antonescu sign an
alliance with Hitler. An excellent strategist, Ion Antonescu anticipated the fate of the
war and he was trying to secure his place at the negotiation table. His bargaining
chips were again the Jews. The second explanation may be that of rampant
corruption in the Romanian society. In Andrei ipercos opinion, there was also a
third explanation: the true humanitarian feelings typical to the Romanian nation
even in the murky time of war.4 In our opinion, this can be partly true if we
consider the events in and around Bucharest, where violence against Jews was not as
common as in other areas of the country.
The Romanian anti-Semitic governance had begun in 1867 and covered half
a century, a period in which 196 anti-Semitic laws were passed, denying the Jewish
populations basic civil liberties.5 Gen. Ion Antonescu, a lawful man, but also his
ruling body, were this way able to justify their actions and find moral comfort at the
same time. The legislation during WWII created the legal basis that made possible
deportation, eviction, expulsion, and internment of Jews in ghettos. It was according
1
Teu Solomovici, Romnia Judaica. O istorie neconvenional a evreilor din Romnia.
2.000 de ani de existen continu (Judaic Romania. An unconventional history of the Jews
in Romania. 2000 years of continuous existence) (Bucharest: Editura TEU, 2001), 4345.
2
Dennis Deletant, Transnistria: Cteva consideraii despre semnificaia acesteia pentru
Holocaustul din Romnia, in Viorel Achim, Constantin Iordachi, coords., Romnia i
Transnistria: Problema Holocaustului. Perspective istorice i comparative (Bucharest:
Curtea Veche, 2004), 162.
3
Ioanid, Evreii sub regimul Antonescu, 373.
4
Andrei iperco, Ecouri dintr-o epoc tulbure. Documente elveiene 19401944 (Bucharest:
Editura Hasefer, 1998), 15.
5
Carp, Holocaust in Rumania, 1223.
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to this legislation that the entire population of Bessarabia and the majority of
Bucovina were deported.1
Limiting political, civil and economic rights of the Jews was not new to this
part of the world. It had begun before WWI and culminated with the anti-Semitic
legislation passed by the Octavian Goga and Alexandru Cuza government (28
December 1937-February 10, 1938).2 All governments between world wars
supported and implemented anti-Jewish legislation and decrees, and whatever the
Goga government had left unfinished was picked up by the Gigurtu administration,
namely Decree 2650/1940, stipulating that Romania belongs to Romanians and
defending the blood is the moral basis for the recognition of the supreme political
rights.3 Legislation passed over a few years was in fact a real program to reorganize
the Romanian society so that the Jews would be not only pushed out of political,
social and economic activities, but also hurt in their civic and human dignity.4
Between the two world wars the national minorities (Jews and Hungarians) were
perceived as enemies, so branded even by influential political leaders.5
The next fateful moment for the Romanian Jews was the nomination of Ion
Antonescu as head of government, nicknamed The Leader on September 4, 1940.6
1940.6 There was only one more step to take over the entire country and on
September 14, 1940 King Mihai signed the decree by which Romania became a
national Legionnaire state, run by Gen. Ion Antonescu and the Legion Movement
was the only legally recognized political force in Romania. 7 Under these terms, the
Constitution and all legislation had to be adapted to the new political reality.8 This
absolute power in the hands of a single person meant the concentration of both the
legislative and executive powers into one. Starting with 1940, Ion Antonescu passed
anti-Semitic legislation that according to Hannah Arendt was the harshest in
Europe even compared to Germanys.9 In contrast to the religious anti-Semitism of
the legionnaires, Ion Antonescus anti-Semitism was based on political, economic,
and social reasons. In case the legionnaires were in power for the long run, this
legislation could have been stiffened, applying the German model.10 Ion
1
Ioanid, Evreii sub regimul Antonescu, 49.
2
Iaacov Geller, Rezistena spiritual a evreilor romni n timpul Holocaustului (1940
1944). Viaa economic, educaia i cultura, asistena social, religia, rabinatul, salvarea
refugiailor i emigrarea n Israel (The spiritual resistance of Romanian Jews during the
Holocaust (19401944). Economic life, education and culture, social services, religion, the
Rabbinate, saving the refugees, emigration to Israel) (Bucharest: Editura Hasefer, 2004), 11.
3
Solomovici, Romnia Judaica, 347.
4
Lya Benjamin, ed. and Sergiu Stanciu, coord., Evreii din Romnia ntre anii 19401944.
(The Jews in Romania between 1940 and 1944), Vol. 1, Legislaia antievreiasc (Anti-
Judaic legislation) (Bucharest: Editura Hasefer, 1993), XX.
5
Daniel Hrenciuc, Dilemele convieuirii: Evreii din Bucovina (17741939) (Dilemmas of
cohabitation: Jews in Bucovina) (Iai: Editura Tipo Moldova, 2010), 8.
6
Geller, Rezistena spiritual, 11.
7
Benjamin and Stanciu, Evreii din Romnia..., 61.
8
Ibid., 11.
9
Hannah Arendt, Eichmann n Ierusalim. Un raport asupra banalitii rului 208.
10
Ioanid, Evreii sub regimul Antonescu, 388.
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Antonescus policy regarding the Jews depended on the geographical area where the
Jews lived, in some distant provinces or in Romania proper (called The Old
Kingdom). His policy was strategic. He admitted that some categories of Jews had
contributed to the countrys development and emancipation. He really saw their
usefulness for the Romanian state, especially in the army. We dare say that Ion
Antonescus anti-Semitism was not extremist.1 It is true that Ion Antonescu installed
installed a military dictatorship because under his command the country had to be
prepared for the oncoming war with Russia and reunification with Bessarabia and
Bucovina, lost earlier through Russian ultimatum. He was a soldier. His anti-Semitic
stand meant to play along with Hitler the fanatical legionnaires whom he actually
despised. This was a big chance for the Jews!2 His anti-Semitic position had its
roots in the nationalist doctrine peddled in the media by journalists, writers and
intelligentsia. It took 10 years (19301940) to sell to the masses this new ideology,
based on hatred and discrimination, rather than peace and understanding. The idea of
an ethnically pure state penetrated all levels of communication, and to make matters
worse, even education, which, as we know, starts in the family and continues in
school. The ideas of purity, the nostalgia of essence, the quest for perfection,
aspiration for purity were some of the catchwords widely publicized by the
propaganda machinery set into motion for political gain.3
The anti-Semitic legislation and measures came in 3 categories: 1. Purges
(the expulsion of Jews from official positions or state jobs, school and college
students from the education system in an attempt to Romanize it) 2. Confiscation
(of property both commercial or housing, the annulment of business licenses and
driving permits) 3. New taxation laws on this ethnicity (plus forced labour for
community benefit, and mandatory contribution with goods, like clothing, etc.).4
The worst year for the persecution of Jews was 1941, when anti-Semitism
broke out into all aspects of daily life: economic, judicial, social, moral, religious.
Moreover, in some areas like Dorohoi or Iai, random killings, pogroms and
deportation peaked. In spite of all these, half the Jewish population managed to
survive.5 The legionnaires rampage engulfed the entire country and targeted not
only the Jews.6 These acts of vandalism and violence were tolerated by Ion
Antonescu from the fall of 1940 till January 1941, when his political cooperation
with the Legion was about to end. According to Marius Mircu, Ion Antonescus
desire to remove the Legion from the government was necessary because they
wanted to overthrow the government and run the country by themselves: When
1
Friling, Ioanid and Ionescu, Raport final, 1156.
2
Solomovici, Romnia Judaica, 3545.
3
Victor Neumann, Istoria evreilor din Romnia. Studii documentare i teoretice (The history
of Jews in Romania. Documentary and theoretic studies) (Timioara: Editura Amarcord,
1996), 2123.
4
Arendt, Eichmann n Ierusalim, 3512.
5
Lya Benjamin, Dumitru Hncu, Harry Kuller, Ioan erbnescu, eds., 1941. Dureroasa
fracturare a unei lungi convieuiri (1941. The painful fracture of a long cohabitation)
(Bucharest: CSLER, 2001), 7.
6
Marius Mircu, M-am nscut reporter! (I was born a reporter!) (Bucharest: Editura Cartea
Romneasc, 1981), 386.
51
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Antonescu realized that the legionnaires pushed beyond the limits of anti-Semitism
and now they were attacking the Romanian commerce and industry, hinting directly
at the exclusive power in the state, he decided that time had come to take action
against them.1 This point of view is shared also by the central press that says, their
thought and purpose were to get their hands on the entire power. Two newspapers,
Aciunea (The Action) and Universul (The Universe), ran 3 copies of documents that
back up this theory: the establishment of the legionnaire police, the transfer of arms
from the Ministry of Interior to the Legion, and the letter by Ion Zelea Codreanu that
read: Im so much against these phony legionnaires like Horia Sima.2 Ion
Antonescus first measure to anger the legionnaires was the elimination of the
position of Romanization Commissar from the administration. Their immediate
reaction was to ask for his resignation. Events are precipitating with the
assassination of German Major Dring, the dismissal of the minister of interior Gen.
C. Petrovicescu and the chief of police, Al. Ghica. As expected, the legionnaires
reacted violently. They holed up in a few official buildings: State Security,
Prefecture, their own, Iron Guard, Public Guards Patrol Barracks and on the evening
of Jan. 21, 1941, the rebellion began in full swing.3 Marius Mircu considers the
assassination of the German Major Dring a fortunate event that served Gen.
Ion Antonescu a good reason to dismiss two important leaders, the chief of state
security and the chief of police, who were main public figures supporting the
legionnaires, even providing them with guns.4 With the rebellion underway, the
rebels also took over the official radio station and printing houses so that the
generals appeals to public order never reached the public.5
It has been repeated over and over that the difficulty of getting the truth
about the Holocaust was because it was too complex an event. For John K. Roth the
difficulty lies in the inability of words to describe in comprehensive images the
psychological trauma, the despicable scenes of random violence, and the humiliation
of fellow man by man that the Jews had to go through. The idea is completed by Elie
Wiesel who says that the human mind cannot fathom and fit that kind of reality into
a rational, explanatory, and coherent system.6 The many books written on the topic
by historians offer detailed accounts of the horrific events, marked by torture,
pillage, looting, arson, beatings, and humiliation. To complete the picture, there are
personal memoires and diaries, very accurate and emotional, written by the lucky
ones, the victims who lived to talk about this human tragedy. These are personal
experiences that flash events and emotions of those who lived them a year in a
1
Ibid., 385.
2
Rebeliunea a fost premeditat i pregtit demult (The rebellion has long been
premeditated and prepared) Aciunea 124 (1941): 3; Rebeliunea a fost premeditat i
pregtit de mult, Timpul 1345 (1941): 1.
3
Ioanid, Evreii sub regimul Antonescu, 734.
4
Mircu, M-am nscut reporter!, 380.
5
Jean Ancel, Contribuii la istoria Romniei. Problema evreiasc, (Contributions to the
history of Romania. The Jewish problem) vol. I, 19331944 (Bucharest: Editura Hasefer,
2003), 407.
6
Frunz, Dumnezeu i Holocaustul la Elie Wiesel, 45.
52
Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
blink and a blink in a year. Back to back, these events seem surreal. Life lived in
daily routine pulverized by the outbreak of a pogrom followed by deportation to
concentration camps. Terrifying moments that look impossible for a contemporary
world. But it was real. It actually happened. Where the words become unreliable or
unable to resonate, the still photograph comes in to drive the message home. A
picture is worth a thousand words the saying goes. But how about a picture that is
worth an entire book? Because thats what comes to mind when you see
smouldering ruins that a day before was a suburban grocery store or a clearing in the
woods of Jilava full of corpses strewn about the place? We live in an era
oversaturated with information which allows us little time to read ample studies in a
society driven by images. If we talk about the Facebook generation, the
fascination with images that capture their attention is overwhelming. Regardless of
the language they speak or their education level, a pictures message is understood
by everybody. Moreover, technology of today allows its users to share instantly
information and images with peers wherever they may live on the planet. In the
same way, even those who are not keen on history, may find useful to know that
there was a Holocaust in Romania, and sooner or later will take an interest in the
details of this moment in the troubled times Romania went through in those years.
The black and white pictures, original and uncensored, possibly more expressive
than colour pictures, are vivid proof that, at times, life may come down to this kind
of event. Without any words, the faces or the bodies of those people relay their pain
and bewilderment at what happened to them, and even some sort of resignation to it.
The pictures that show burned synagogues, ransacked homes and looted stores with
broken windows and doors, deliver a powerful message that cannot be denied. The
visual impact delivers the message loud and clear that atrocities were committed
there, an impact more powerful than any words. If in the case of a written account
the reader may think that the facts are exaggerated, the pictures leave no room for
doubt because the picture speaks by itself. Set these pictures side by side in a slide
show and we get the terrifying film of an entire tragedy. The rebellion of Bucharest
was captured in many pictures, both official and private, and the way they were
taken also reveals the attitude of the photographer towards the events. In official
photographs one can see that the man behind the camera took the pictures in such a
way as not to harm the prestige of the totalitarian regime. The violence and
devastation against the Jews are not to be found in this category. The relevant
pictures for our study can be found in the unofficial gallery where reality prevailed
and nobody tried to fix them.
Picture is a modern means of manipulation of the public opinion. Success in
manipulation depends on the ability of the man behind the camera to impress his
target-public with pictures that relay powerful emotions like: fear, terror, and panic
because the impact triggers the attention of one of the principal senses the eye.
Focusing puts the viewer right into the situation making him identify with the subjects.
There are numerous pictures with the devastation of Dudeti and Vcreti
suburbs (burned synagogues, private stores and property) or the killings in Jilava
Woods. Matatias Carp was one of those who knew history had to be recorded and
did just that between 2123 of January, 1941. So did F. Brunea-Fox and Marius
Mircu who published the pictures of the Romanian Holocaust. Worldwide, the
53
Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
Holocaust is the subject of over 20 million pictures, making it one of the best
documented events ever.1 In spite of all this, in different books we see only the same
pictures. Modern technology allows us to process them digitally and soon we will
have unlimited and free access to all of these documents of historic importance.
The present study intends to show only specific aspects of the atrocities
committed during the fascist rebellion of Bucharest, namely those in the
photographs made by eyewitnesses. The study also presents briefly the historic
context, but does not insist on the forces that generated the event and what this
represented in terms of number of victims and who was responsible. Those are
complex issues and will be debated in other ample studies.
1
Marianne Hirsch, The Surving Images: Holocaust Photographs and the Work of Post
Modernity, http://www.fsf.ane.ru/attachments/article/157/mar%20f.pdf (accessed September
24, 2014).
2
Friling, Ioanid and Ionescu, Raport final, 225.
3
F. Brunea-Fox, Oraul mcelului. Jurnalul rebeliunei i al crimelor legionare (The city of
slaughter. The Diary of the legionnaires rebellion and crimes) (Bucharest: Editura Hasefer,
1997), 78.
4
Matatias Carp, Cartea neagr. Fapte i documente. Suferinele evreilor din Romnia 1940
1944. vol. 1. Legionarii i rebeliunea (Bucharest: Atelierele Grafice SOCEC&Co., S.A.R,
1946), 231.
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
their victims with the message Kosher meat.1 An act of humiliation that was not
strange to the Jews who seemed to have gotten used to or so thought their
tormentors. These thought that the weak resistance the Jews put up in the mayhem
was a sign of cowardice or guilt. This misinterpretation reveals a lack of judgment
and a criminal drive to hurt people. The pictures taken there do not show what
happened during the events, but show the shocking consequences that need no
explaining. Words just cant do it. Reading the expressions on those faces who in the
last moments of their lives cried out a booming Why? will be heard over centuries.
Nowadays people are exposed to a fabricated violence of make believe (in
movies, mass-media, or electronic games) that is simply unimpressive, but a still
picture in black and white showing a mass murder, irrational and aimless sends
shockwaves through the universal conscience.
The Rebellion of Bucharest took place between January 2123, 1941, in 3
areas: Jilava Woods, Bucharest Slaughterhouse, and residential areas2, and had two
components: one against the Romanian state authority and one against the Jews with
the help of local hooligans3, who, animated by a zest for destruction [...] set on
fire entire residential blocks in Bucharest (Dudeti, Vcreti), kill hundreds of
people at the slaughterhouse, in the adjacent woods, in the street and in homes.4
The legionnaires proved themselves very ingenious when it came to methods of
torture, not common to all of them, except for their pleasure to inflict pain and death
to their victims.5 Mihail Sebastian is bewildered by the peoples violent behaviour:
What really makes you freeze, especially in the mass carnage in Bucharest, is the
absolute beastly ferocity of how things were carried out. This comes out even in the
neutral official communiqu [...] But what is told by the word of mouth is a lot more
frightening than the official press release.6 The victims were forced to drink a mix
of salt, petrol, gasoline, and vinegar and then denied access to the bathrooms. During
the so-called investigations (with no official charges as these were innocent people
rounded up from their homes) they were stripped naked and beaten to a pulp. The
children were tortured in front of their parents. The lucky ones those who made
it out alive were released after two days only with their shirts on, barefoot, through
the snow to go to their homes that were devastated and burned.7 On January 21,
1941, 200 Jews were brought to the legionnaires centre on Clrai Avenue where
all their belongings were confiscated and they were forced to march up and down
the stairway between the cellar and the attic under a rain of strikes, as on every step
there was a legionnaire with a whip or an iron rod. Torture was also going on in a
room where the Jews were beaten with whips and iron rods over their naked bodies.
Then they were split into two groups. The first was taken to Struleti where they
1
Mihail Sebastian, Jurnal 19351944 (Bucharest: Humanitas, 1996), 299.
2
Geller, Rezistena spiritual a evreilor, 34.
3
Alexandru afran, Un tciune smuls flcrilor. Comunitatea evreiasc din Romnia 1939
1947. Memorii (Bucharest: Editura Hasefer, 1996), 62.
4
A. Simion, Regimul politic din Romnia n perioada septembrie 1940ianuarie 1941 (Cluj:
Editura Dacia, 1976), 253.
5
Jean Ancel, Contribuii la istoria Romniei, 422.
6
Sebastian, Jurnal, 299.
7
Carp, Cartea neagr, 21924.
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
were beaten for two days in a row, stripped naked and released. Those in the second
group were taken to Jilava Woods and shot dead.1 Their corpses were mutilated by
grave robbers who used knives to pry jewellery and golden teeth off their victims
fingers, ears and mouths.2 One of the few survivors of the massacre at Jilava
Woods was rabbi Zvi (Her) Guttman.3 His tragedy was reported by historians over
and over. It says that in the beginning, when the hell broke loose, he ignored the
noise of mayhem outside of his Vcreti home, thinking that it wouldnt touch him,
as some incidents of vandalism against Jewish property had happened before: No
Jewish resident of the capital city, locked inside his home as soon as the machine
gun fire erupted knew that this was all planned in advance and a major objective of
the rebellion the most vindictive and the bloodiest was the pogrom. The tension
became unbearable the moment they realized the final objective of their tormentors
was to kill them: I kept cool as much as I could for the sake of the boys, and they,
poor guys, were biting their lips to muffle their moaning.4 Rabbi Zvi (Her)
Guttman was picked up from his home together with his two sons Iaacov and Josef
who were killed in Jilava Woods.5 The father held his sons hands until their last
beat of life, their pulse was slower and slower until it stopped.6 When he woke up
from his faint in the snow of the Jilava Woods, rabbi Zvi Guttman saw the
legionnaires pulling off the rings on the dead bodies, the watches and golden teeth.7
teeth.7 He then met some farmers who were there to take the goods left behind by
legionnaires. Mercifully, these let him go and even told him which direction to
take to avoid falling again into the hands of those beasts from the city hall.8
Seriously shaken up, he had to face not only the despair for the loss of two sons, but
also the criminal conduct of those who were supposed to protect him under the law.
He was arrested again, taken to Jilava Woods again with 7 fellows, shot at but
missed. He escaped just to be picked up the third time, taken to the city hall where
he was beaten and his beard pulled, then, as if his tormentors got tired of this rabbi
who didnt want to die, they let him go. He went back to Jilava woods and tagged
his sons bodies so that they could be easily identified.9
1
Ioanid, Evreii sub regimul Antonescu, 767.
2
Carol Iancu, Shoah n Romnia. Evreii n timpul regimului Antonescu (19401944).
Documente diplomatice franceze inedite ( Shoah in Romania. Jews in the time of the
Antonescu regime [19401944]. Unpublished French diplomacy documents) (Iai: Polirom,
2001), 1137.
3
Brunea-Fox, Oraul mcelului, 96.
4
J. Alexadru, L. Benjamin, D. Brumfeld, A. Florean, P. Litman, S. Stanciu, coords.,
Martiriul evreilor din Romnia 19401944. Documente i mrturii (The martyrdom of Jews
in Romania 19401944. Documents and testimonies) (Bucharest: Editura Hasefer, 1991),
7683.
5
Geller, Rezistena spiritual a evreilor romni, 35.
6
Carp, Cartea neagr, 229.
7
Iancu and Iosif Guttman, Slove de martir... publicate de printele lor Rabin H. Guttman
(Martyrs words... published by their parent, Rabbi H. Guttman) (Bucharest: Editura Hasefer,
2008), 425.
8
Brunea-Fox, Oraul mcelului, 1004.
9
Carp, Cartea neagr, 22930.
56
Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
collections.yadvashem.org/photosar
chive/eng-us/29731.html (accessed
September 22, 2014).
57
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1
Ibid, 789.
2
Sebastian, Jurnal, 297.
3
Marius Mircu, M-am nscut reporter!, 393.
4
Hilberg, Exterminarea evreilor..., 672.
58
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Mutilated Corpse
http://collections.yadvashem.org/ph
otosarchive/en-us/59450.html
(accessed September 22, 2014).
59
Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
in a blink of an eye: Fright, the helpless fright before violence that one could watch
becoming harder and harder to control []. It seemed that fearful eyes were looking
at me from all the windows. Stores were hastily boarded up, waiting for a new wave
of terror. [] Volunteer informers were pointing out Jewish stores and homes to the
looters. [] a little farther down the street, stones started flying and baseball bats
swinging at a few pedestrians, all in a middle of a frightening mayhem. [] The
entire street smelled like fire burning []. The buildings looked like devastated by
bombs. Many of them were blackened by smoke. Smoke was coming out from the
windows of stores and homes alike. And cohorts of bandits were on a rampage,
while occasional pedestrians passed by with their heads down. This image makes a
striking contrast with that of the looters who seemed to be revellers at a popular and
cruel party.1 Right from the start of the rebellion, within 24 hours, the feeling that
took over the entire Jewish community was fright: it was a night of terror []
From the tiny window of the attic I saw Dudeti Avenue (it was close) towards
Vcreti Avenue the sky was red. That night shops and homes were set on fire on
both sides of the streets the front and the inside of the buildings were still
smouldering. All shops (Jewish) were destroyed and looted of their goods.2
1
Solomovici, Romnia Judaica, 3601.
2
Mircu, M-am nscut reporter!, 391.
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
The attacks against the Jewish suburbs started at the same time. Within a few
hundred yards one could see the devastation inflicted: ransacked homes, Jews
marching under armed escort, temples still burning.1 The suburbs of Dudeti and
1
Carp, Cartea neagr, 77.
61
Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
1
Dorian, Jurnal din vremuri, 146.
2
Sebastian, Jurnal, 295.
62
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Bedroom of a home on
Col. Prero St. no. 11
Matatias Carp, Cartea
Neagr. Fapte i
documente. Suferinele
evreilor din Romnia
19401944, vol. I:
Legionarii i rebeliunea
(Bucureti: Atelierele
Grafice SOCEC&Co.,
S.A.R.,1946), 221.
Vandalized home
http://collections.yadvashe
m.org/photosarchive/en-
us/14665.html (accessed
September 22, 2014).
1
Dorian, Jurnal din vremuri, 147.
2
Sebastian, Jurnal, 291.
63
Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
and everybody in there was picked up at gun point, taken to Jilava Woods and shot.
Another synagogue, one of the most beautiful in Europe, Cahal Grande, was burnt to
the ground during the Bucharest rebellion.1 The destruction of these important
symbols was well orchestrated because the perpetrators of this anti-Semitic wave of
violence wanted to strike at the heart of this community and destroy
1
Friling, Ioanid and Ionescu, Raport final, 1123.
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Devastated Synagogue
http://collections.yadvashem.org/ph
otosarchive/en-us/14496.html
(accessed September 22, 2014).
The attacks on the synagogues and homes were carried out by the
legionnaires, but for looting and destruction of the stores the locals jumped in.
Beside of being a criminal act, this also resulted in driving this social category into
poverty because the small shop was their only source of income. Not even the poor
Jews from the outskirts were spared. They were robbed too.1
Ion Antonescus intervention would have saved lives and property, but he
chose to stand idle for political reasons.
Conclusions
1
Ancel, Contribuii la istoria Romniei, 435.
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The Bucharest Rebellion was a tragic event in the life of the Jewish community in
this country, ignored by some or encouraged by others who took active part in the
violence and pillage. Besides the material loss inflicted by rioters, a lot more painful
and contemptible was the loss of life, the torture, and the humiliation inflicted
between 21 and 24 January 1941, a dark page in Romanian history. It is a clip of
history we are not proud of, but it should remind us of our moral duty not to repeat it
and pass this as a vow to the generations to come. A poll ordered by the Elie Wiesel
National Institute for the Study of the Romanian Holocaust, published in April 2007,
showed that less than a quarter of the Romanian population knows that during
WWII the Jews were victims of an anti-Semitic and criminal policy. The poll also
showed that those who had information about the Holocaust thought that it was
about loss of civil rights and loss of liberty. Extermination and the pogrom, as
manifestations of the Holocaust scored very low.1 Chances are that from 2007 to
present these data may have sunk even deeper. Taking into consideration the virtual
world that the young live in and the lack of time adults live with, we think that the
still photograph becomes essential in communication. A picture may have a more
powerful impact than a text, needs no explaining and can be understood by all,
regardless of the level of education. Moreover, in digital times the access to
information of more people than ever before makes it a success in the preservation
of history, especially that part that we do not want to repeat.
1
Lya Benjamin, Alexandru Florian and Anca Ciuciu, eds., Cum a fost posibil? Evreii din
Romnia n perioada Holocaustului (How was it possible? Jews in Romania in the time of
the Holocaust) (Bucharest: Editura Institutului Naional pentru Studierea Holocaustului din
Romnia Elie Wiesel, 2007), 8.
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Mircea-Andrei GOLBAN
Babe-Bolyai University Cluj
Faculty of Letters
Abstract: The essay joins together the concepts of transformation, negotiation and
adequacy with the concept of translatability. Firstly, I conducted my research on
Walter Benjamins text about translation. What stands out is the difference between
the poet and the translator, but mainly the concept of pure languageas described by
Benjamin. Secondly, I reviewed Benjamins text through a poststructuralist
perspective (Derrida, Pierre Bourdieu, Paul de Man and Paul Ricur), finally
reaching the acknowledgement of the impossibility of a perfect translation. Lastly,
the paper gives an example of the reason why a text can be difficult to translate
(Derridas letters).
E-mail: mircea.golban@gmail.com
The following essay intends to compare and contrast the poetic work with the act of
translation, touching both upon the convergent and the opposing elements which
configure these two types of discourse. A first undertaking would require a reading
of the German theorist Walter Benjamin.
1
Walter Benjamin, Iluminations (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), 7677.
2
Benjamin, Iluminations, 76.
3
Ibid., 76.
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source of an originating language, but not non-language, if this concept excludes the
possibility of communication.
In my point of view, pre-language is the writers intent of expressing a
referent through language; as such, joining these specific linguistic contextual
aspects targets a dialogic feature. Once these specific linguistic contextual aspects
are brought together, a decrease in what the work of art seemed to convey happens,
due to the materialization in language of the numerous combinations which existed
in pre-language. In other words, by uttering the work of art loses some of the
potential it initially had in the first stage of creation, namely in pre-language.
The task of the translator, unlike that of the poet (pre-
languagelanguage), is already limited by a language which has to be converted
into another language (language language). Besides the fact that the translation
follows the original text (derivative), it must also render the intended meaning.
Benjamin asserts that there is a similarity between language and meaning. In fact,
the text under discussion aims to recover the perfect language, as in the Bible, where
meaning has ceased to be the watershed for the flow of language and the flow of
revelation. Where a test is identical with truth or dogma, where it is supposed to be
the true language in all its literalness and without the mediation of meaning, this
text is unconditionally translatable.1 The German theorist thus creates the perfect
pattern which should serve as a guideline for every translation. This pattern is based
on the perfect match between language and revelation, the latter representing, in my
opinion, the writers purpose.
Walter Benjamins theory considers translation a failed attempt, with the
exception of the Scripture, a text which is defined by the strong bond between
signifier and signified. When it comes to translating literature, accessing the perfect
language can be done by detecting the differences which stem from the
incongruence between the original text and the translation. These differences
reconstruct the language spoken before the time of Babel. Even though the perfect
language can be attained only as a metaphysical construct, the purpose of translating
is not to emulate the original but to make the differences between the translated
work and the original one stand out. Moreover, even the language in which the work
of art is rendered for the first time, is in its turn a translation of the perfect
language. Before the Tower of Babel there was only a sole language. The beginning
of its construction ended those times and started another epoch. The latter is defined
by language pluralism.
Before I go any further with my analysis, I must distinguish between two
types of translation: the profane translation and the sacred one. On the one hand, I
define profane translation (profane text profane translation) as the translation of
any text into another language, except for the Scripture (sacred text sacred
translation). Profane should not be understood as a malicious translation of the
Bible; I have not been using this adjective with its standard meaning but to describe
the translation of any text that is not related to the Bible. I think this is the meaning
that Benjamin should attribute to any fallible translation because Benjamin does not
nominate the type of translation he makes reference to throughout his text. Instead,
1
Ibid., 82.
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he uses only one term (signifier), when in fact he renders two meanings (signified).
On the other hand, the sacred translation is perfect at all times, even when it is not.
In other words, it is never fallible because its perfection consists in the numerous
alternatives it grants.
The biblical message does not lose the potential it can access in the first stage
of creation in this respect, there is a great difference between the sacred language
and the profane language. In other words, the sacred language, even when it is uttered,
it maintains the same characteristics as in pre-language. The numerous content
combinations available in pre-language should not be mistaken with language
pluralism. In the Bible, there is a unique meaning which can have a multitude of
signifiers. To conclude, the signified has the greatest importance of all because it stays
the same irrespective of the various signifiers which are attributed to it.
1
Pierre Bourdieu, The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1995), 32.
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translatability seems to appear in the biblical text or in the literary one, on the
condition that the latter has the aforementioned effect on the entire structure.
The belief effect pertains, in my opinion, mainly to profane texts and it is a
consequence of the epiphanic intuition that is specific to the sacred text. Although
the readers intuition in respect to the profane text is lessened (profane textthe
belief effect), the belief effect is still a reminiscence of the belief that the sacred text
succeeds to render (sacred textbelief). As one can notice by comparing the
diagrams in the brackets, the belief effect deals with profane texts and it indicates
more likely an apparent cohesion between the signified and the signifier. Regarding
the sacred text, I would argue that it has a universal meaning, despite the numerous
alternatives of the signifier. All the same, in the case of profane texts, just one
signifier receives multiple meanings, hence the belief effect enables the occurrence
of a transcendental signified effect. The latter is an elusory feature because it does
not function properly, due to the multiple understandings it authorizes on its behalf.
The perfect translatability theory is overruled by Jacques Derrida. The
French deconstructivist refers to the difference (which in fact is never pure) between
the signified and the signifier. Translation always disrupts the entity constituted by
these two components. Thus, if translation cannot be perfect (due to its disruptive
feature), then for the notion of translation we would have to substitute a notion of
transformation: a regulated transformation of one language by another, of one text
by another.1 The perfect translatability is a concept which does not match reality.
Translating cannot reveal the equivalent pairs of signifiers relating to one another.
Instead, it reminds us that it is rather a process, like thinking, like deconstruction
(because this is the philosophical field from which it emerges). It is an endless
process which questions not only translations finality but also its starting point. The
deconstruction movement subverts perfect translatability and, at the same time, it
affects the literary work and its creation stage.
The notion of transformation suggested by Derrida expresses simultaneously
that any translation is an ongoing procedure since the interpretation of a text is never
completed. Translation is a hermeneutical act which can always undergo
transformations. Last but not least, Derrida discredits, on the one hand, the perfect
translatability theory and, on the other hand, the creation stage as a compatible
conveying between the referent and the signified. The writers intention and the
translators intention are, for Derrida, fallible notions.
1
Jacques Derrida, Positions (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981), 20.
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1
Paul de Man, The Resistance to Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1986), 81.
2
De Man, The Resistance to Theory, 81.
3
Ibid., 82.
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of relationship with the work of art because it only uses the existing words from the
original text. In a deconstructivist manner, De Man demonstrates that both
translation and its similar types of literary and philosophical investigation ultimately
reveal their failure to read the text because paradoxically they focus too much on the
written text. Paul de Man identifies this failure with an intrinsic disarticulation
already at work in the original. One can consider that the readings failure is an
effect of excessively focusing on the written text. Hence, it can be said that one is
dealing with a textual reading. More importantly, what should be clear to us is the
fact that primary disarticulation never leads to a perfect coherence of the text. The
original poetic act alludes to another meaning which is extralinguistic and it cannot
be grasped only by a textual reading. This is the point in which De Mans theory and
Derridas coincide; if Derrida replaced the notion of translation with transformation,
Paul de Man would also overrule the idea of a primary and resolute language.
Moreover, the disarticulation of the original is more obvious when
translating into another language rather than in the stage of just reading the original
text. When translating, the junctures where the text breaks itself become obvious.
The translations ambiguity is a result of the junctures in the text, the points in which
meaning becomes loose. This is precisely the moment when one can recognize that
the original text was already a corrupted text. Also, one can infer how difficult it is
to translate a text whose meaning is equivocal.
Thus, the (profane) translation of any work of art will eventually prove that
translating is fallible not only because of the language in which the original text is
translated but also due to the primary language in which it was written at first. The
specific linguistic contextual aspects, in my opinion, are lost once the first
translation (thinkinglanguage) is performed. The specific linguistic contextual
aspects cannot be restored by another translation because they are already
diminished through uttering. If there is indeed a case in which they could be
flawlessly restored, one should bear in mind the belief effect that a profane text can
inspire to its readers. Nonetheless, for De Man, the sacred translation (a term he does
not mention explicitly) shares the same connotations as profane translation, namely
that both are disarticulated.
Understanding a text can be quite demanding in the absence of the external
factors that triggered the texts creation. But the translations failure and also the
texts failure to assembling a structure as a meaningful entity has a more profound
reason: Translation, to the extent that it disarticulates the original, to the extent that
it is pure language and is only concerned with language, gets drawn into [...]
something essentially destructive, which is in language itself.1 Language seems to
be the disruptive element of the text. Language is indeed the component which binds
the text but it is not altogether its source (maybe with the exception of metatextual
works of art). In other words, language is productive up to the point in which it
cannot render what it initially wanted to.
To conclude, one can notice the following structure: firstly, according to the
romantic paradigm (Walter Benjamins theory), the sacred texts entity between the
signified and the signifier will be rendered irrespective of the signifier. This leads to
1
Ibid., 84.
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the belief effect which occurs in profane texts. Secondly, due to deconstructivist
thought, once humanity was aware of the original texts disarticulation, the profane
texts belief effect is undoubtedly lessened. We are part of a postromantic stream of
thought in which the language crisis begins with the mistrust in any primary forms
of speech (as when casting a spell) and ends with the modernist language crisis
visible in any cultural work but especially in the poetic one because it deals, first and
foremost, with language.
1
Paul Ricur, On translation (London & New York: Routledge, 2006), 7.
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Retranslations are one and the same with Derridas notion of transformation.
I would argue that there is also a distinction regarding this particular aspect: unlike
the sacred text which does not require any retranslation due to its complete
understanding, the profane texts are instead committed to all sorts of revisions and
reintrepretations.
Both translation and the poetic act can have two distinct influences. In his
essay Paul Ricur makes reference to George Steiners After Babel, one of the first
substantial works on translating. Steiner classifies translation in two categories: there
are translations which are directed towards the target (the language into which the
work is translated) and translations which are directed towards the source (the
language from which the work is translated). The French philosopher prefers to
embrace the source translations because (and this is a major philosophical theme of
the paper) the image of oneself can only be created in relation with alterity. Ricur
has in mind a united Europe, but since this is an underlying aspect of his paper, I
will not approach it now.
The prototype of target translations is the equivalent of a bourgeois art, as it
is called by Ricur in his The Rules of Art. The bourgeois art, in contrast with art
for arts sake, is a mercenary type of art, focused on consumerism. In my
judgement, the prototype of source translations corresponds to the idea of art for
arts sake and it should be adopted by the poetic act as well. From an ethical
standpoint, these two types of discourse resemble each other because they have the
ability to stay true to the source. In the case of translation, on the one hand, such a
tendency is inferred by a respect for the original language of the text. It is, in a
manner of speaking, a hosting of the source text by the target language. This
aspect is amply discussed by J. Hillis Miller in his Ethics of Reading. In our case,
translation can be regarded as a form of reading, due to its hermeneutical viewpoint.
In the case of the poetic act, on the other hand, the creation of the poem would be
more authentic if it would bear in mind the source rather than the target. Whether
one speaks about translation or about poetry, both of them should undoubtedly
negotiate as well as they can their emanation.
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1
Jacques Derrida, The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1987), 515.
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simpler discourse for the reader, i.e. alterity. This can be achieved by an epiphanic
intuition rather than by a rational one.
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Mihaela URSA
Faculty of Letters, Babe-Bolyai University, Cluj
Head of the Department of Comparative Literature,
E-mail: mihaelaursa@gmail.com
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complicity seem to numb rational recognition of real-life gender roles1 and expose
Romanian society to an ideology of conflict, opposition to change and judgmental
conduct. The three discourses that I have targeted above have different aims: the
goal of the first one is to boost consumerism and give the best chance to a given
product. This is why it is more susceptible to protect traditional and clich
representations, as long as they trigger identification2 and desire. The second one
aims to convince the electorate that a certain party ideology is trustworthy,
regardless if this means to promote new representations or to endorse existent
stereotypes. The third discourse is the most problematic one, because it belongs to
the intellectuals, whose goal is identified by Foucault as the opposition to power
discourses and the disclosure of ideologized tenets.3 Lets examine the three
discourses one at a time.
1
Donna Gill, REAL Women and the press: An ideological alliance of convenience,
Canadian Journal of Communication 143 (1989).
2
Herbert Marcuse, One-dimensional man: Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial
society (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968).
3
Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, Intellectuals and power, in Language, counter-
memory, practice, ed. Michel Foucault and Donald Fernand Bouchard (Ithaca and New
York: Cornell University Press, 1977): 20517.
4
Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Literature and Aesthetics (Athens: Plethron, 1980), passim,
especially Chapter VI of part three.
5
Doru Pop, Birdie mnum-mnum. Visual Exploitation of Women in Romanian Media
Representations, Caietele Echinox 10 (2006): 300307.
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train from Bucharest to Constanta? and is satisfied with the answer: Just one
second. In cases like these, the stereotype of the stupid blonde (that makes the
delight of many other popular cultures) turns, from a manifestation of the popular
culture of laughter, to a public statement. Even more, making these public
statements on national TV is an option based on public expectancies and implicitly
on the idea that they sound humorous, and not derogatory to the targeted audience.
This kind of ideological connivance is bound to perpetuate gender-offensive speech
in the public sphere.
Unfortunately, a public debate on sexual identity is largely missing in
Romania, or takes place in unfortunate contexts, where informed opinion leaders are
missing. For instance, since 2000, a number of TV talk-shows or reality-shows
claimed to open the above-mentioned debate. Talk shows like De trei ori femeie
(Three times a woman), aired on Acas TV in the first part of the decade, or Femeia
e la putere (Women in power) on Euphoria TV, of the same period of time were
designed for majoritarian feminine audiences (as are the respective channels).
However, they offered stereotypical images of women as well: the falsely
independent woman, often a divorce, who takes pride in her man-hating attitude,
while at the same time has little education and parades, like spoils of war, her new
gained fortune from the divorce; the hypersexed woman (possibly hyperemotional as
well), modelled after her favourite heroine from the most recent soap opera, having
no subject of conversation other than sex and fashion, maybe cosmetic surgery; the
family mother, whose identity is entirely derived from her domestic value and who
is lost once her children grow up. A reality show running at the end of the first
decade of the new millennium, still broadcast today on channel Prima TV, Schimb
de mame (Mother swap), presents two mothers, who do not previously know each
other, exchanging families and lives for a few weeks. Designed to promote the
image of the modern Romanian woman, who juggles a career and a family, this
reality-show constantly promotes an intolerant traditional type of woman. Between
their most precious values, that they would hopefully instil to the other family, the
women shown value house order and tidiness before anything else. Very few of
them are really preoccupied by something other than their domestic identity, than
their kitchen rules or their regulations regarding cleanliness.
It is probable that the clich that says a good woman is a woman who keeps
her house really tidy, so frequent in this particular reality show, has inspired
advertisers to launch a promotion campaign in 2013 for two Romanian cleaning
products (Nufr and Triumf a toilet detergent and a stove cleaner) on a line that too
many mothers from Schimb de mame get to utter: nobody tells me how to clean my
house! Imagined as an altercation between a housewife and a door-to-door seller of
new, foreign cleaning products, the campaign promotes an idea of traditional
Romania (both products were also used before 1989 in national households) in the
same package as the idea of a woman whose identity is primarily given by her
cleaning-related knowledge.
On channels like Antena 1 or Antena 3, frequently criticized for the poor
quality of their programs and for the highly ideologized political commentaries,
there are a few family shows which can be easily accused of harmful, stereotypical
representation of women. In Nor pentru mama [A daughter-in-law for my mother],
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the web of traditional complicities and Oedipal transfers between mother, son and
daughter-in-law is so thick, the life standards so low, the language so defective, it
becomes almost too hard to watch. While it could present contemporary, modern
realities of the mother daughter-in-law relationship, the show seems to be a
collection of the worst stereotypes of the issue, starting with the fact that a young
man does not just like a woman, but chooses his mothers daughter in law.
It is probable that Romanian culture has given one of the most violent
narratives of the relationship between the new bride and her mother-in-law in the
tale entitled Soacra cu trei nurori (The mother-in-law who had three daughters-in-
law), an ideological source of inspiration for this reality show. Originally a folk tale,
the story was re-written by the storyteller Ion Creang in the 19th century and is still
very popular at a symbolic level. In the story, the mother-in-law has the attributes of
the evil stepmother of folktales, psychoanalytically embodying characters of the
bad mother (projection of the ordering, intrusive component of motherhood). First,
the mother-in-law functions as a stepmother in the economy of the tale (the three
brides come to live fraternally in her home; her sons help her reinforce the rules of
the house, etc.). Then she deliberately makes up a monstrous image for herself (she
exploits her daughters-in-law to exhaustion under the threat of her continuous
wakefulness, she censors every move they make using her alleged eye on the back
of her head, a sign of a superhuman pervasive consciousness). Of the three
daughters-in-law, two are hard-working and submissive and the third, chosen by
the youngest son in an act of disobedience towards his mother, is cunning and
proves destabilizing to the other two. In due time, they organize what can be
described as a true Sabbath of witches, where they torture their evil mother. The
detailed description of all the tortures is made to be entertaining and funny, possibly
inspiring good cheer and empathy towards the vindictive girls. By this kind of
images of women, the Romanian patriarchal world gives a problematic design to the
relationship between husband and wife, fractured within the evil triangle in which
not only the man is disputed by the two women of utmost importance in his life, but
there is also a sacrifice needed: one of the two power poles has to disappear,
although the war is never definitively won.
A large number of advertising campaigns still use this peculiar design of the
relationship between the new bride and her mother-in-law. Although the tortures
may be missing from the picture, there is still a cold war going on between the two:
for instance, in a 2011 campaign for a wall paint (Savana), the dictatorial mother-in-
law comes to the renovated apartment of her sons new family just to reject and
criticize everything her daughter-in-law has designed. The one who makes things
better between the two is not the missing son (who is absent from this picture, as he
is absent from Creangs tale), but the painter, who compliments and flirts with the
old lady, who as a result ends her criticism.
Apparently, shows like the ones mentioned above rank high in public TV
preferences. Therefore, they are efficient vehicles of ideological transfer: on the one
hand, they confirm to the viewer that these representations are valid (since they are
used as identifying marks); on the other, they reinforce the same representations as
popular good choices to the new generations of viewers. While it is true that
commercial TV was never preoccupied with education and that the goal of these
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The series of examples that one can use in support of the idea that Romanian
political discourse (even the liberal one) perpetuate dangerous clichs about evil
actions of evil women is too large to be accommodated in this article. At times, the
examples imply outrageous conduct, such as the one of the mayor of Constana,
Radu Mazre, a prominent member of the Social Liberal Union. While a socialist,
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according to his partys doctrine, Mazre is well known for entertaining an opulent
life-style, with many scandalous ideological options: from parading as a Nazi officer
at a public event, to posing for Playboy magazine as a sultan surrounded by women
who are ready to please him or as Napoleon having won the sexual submission of a
large number of women, this politician has violated lots of rules of political
correctness and insulted different social communities.1 His public conduct was
sanctioned by the press on occasions, but was never amended by his party, who did
not express any public blame and even more did not expel him for the party.
One last example should be invoked here, since it features a very important
character of Romanian politics, Antonie Iorgovan, who died in 2007. A member of
the Social Democratic Party, he is best remembered as the father of our
Constitution and, as such, functions as a symbolic father substitute in Romanian
politics, which is known to have had such fathers during and after the fall of
communism. In a radio interview,2 Antonie Iorgovan was invited to state his
position on women in politics and women in public life in Romania. The MP
seemed initially to sympathize with women whom he depicted as victimized by
Romanian public parochialism (we believe that we have a problem: we cannot
overcome this mindset, that women should know their places). Up to this point, he
stuck to the usual doctrinal declarations of his party (and most others). Later,
however, his personal misogynist views became clear. Iorgovan believes there are
two types of women (both of which will prove to be unmistakable antifeminist
stereotypes). The first one is the good woman (i.e. passive, submissive, solely
preoccupied with home and her family), and the second one is the bad woman (i.e.
seductive, bringing misfortune on a man she exhausts through sexual magnetism).
The father of our Constitution has no doubt that real women, the nice ones are
the majority in Romania, dealing with the roles assigned to them by tradition. In
contrast, seductive women are described as parachutes, mistresses of trade, and
are considered to be using their erotic potential to go into politics at the expense of
naive career diplomats who accept the role of sugar-daddies. Towards the end of his
speech on the radio, Iorgovan quotes a poem by Marin Sorescu that we should quote
and analyze for a while.
Entitled Rnduieli (Right Ways), the poem nostalgically and comically
reveres, in the colourful words of a peasant, about the good old days when women
were women and men were men: Where I come from, women kiss their mens
hands / Or so they used to - said Marin son of Peter/ And do not ever call them by
their first names./ Women made their men three or four kids, but never dared to call
them by their first names./ There were of course the prouder ones, who had
ambition, and these did not call their men anything./ A woman here knows the right
ways, she can hold her plates,/ And her pots by the fire, squatting by the fire place,/
And she can leave politics - thats our concern, this is for us men - / Woman, what
1
For a briefing on the matter, see: http://www.gandul.info/magazin/galerie-foto-radu-
mazare-spartan-maharajah-ofiter-nazist-si-aviator-avatarurile-primarului-constantei-9920955
2
Entitled Questionnaire on women, the show was broadcast on Radio InfoPro on the 10 th
of May 2006.
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does the woman know?.1 If we take a closer look at this poem, we can easily spot
the antagonistic views on women and their roles: on the one hand, the traditional
woman, who kisses her mans hand, is understood as an incomplete man. She
lacks all knowledge of politics, that is to be left in mens care. She freely admits to
her enslavement, as an eternal male pupil in the care of male rationality. In this
ideological view, female subordination to men is structural, professed as natural and
justified by the comparison between a full term (man) and a derealized one
(woman), in a system with comparable terms.
On the other hand, the first concept is dislocated by the intervention of
prouder women, who appear later in the poem, in the unquoted section of it, as
women of today who cannot even properly bear your kids as they should.2 This
second configuration of women (unreasonable, stubborn, conniving) is possible to
associate with the metaphor of the complete Other, of a woman who, given her alien
nature, lives in conflict with man. In the world of the poem, the servant-woman
clearly belongs to a golden age of man, identified with a primitive patriarchy,
whereas the alien-woman, who refuses her traditional place, is the sign of a
breakdown of the right ways, a sign of mans entry into an iron age of his glory, an
obscure matriarchy. Gender hierarchy is untroubled even in the second case,
although the ideology changes. No longer comparable terms (since woman appears
to man utterly incomprehensible), the two are hierarchized by means of the
axiological privileging of those terms pertaining to the semantic field of the
masculine and by ridiculing corresponding terms in the field of the feminine.
In the same poem, there is an overlapping mechanism whose relevance goes
far beyond the framework of text analysis. It is the mechanism by which male values
become generic terms. The most obvious example is to be found in: this is for
men. The overlap of man (homo, generic term for all humanity, regardless of
gender) and man (vir, selective denomination of a single sex) is neither new, nor
incidental. It echoes in many cultures at a linguistic level (see Engl. Man or Fr.
Homme, or regional Romanian om). A less visible overlap is that of the semantic
sphere of politics and a much broader content than that justified by the explanation
in the dictionary. Here, politics means rational discourse, male esoteric
knowledge. It is not by accident that such a term contributes to further ostracism of
those women fleeing from the private sphere to the public one. That women should
leave politics to man, in this poem, actually means women should be excused from
exercising their reason, being incapable of rational actions and of public impact.
In his interview, Antonie Iorgovan actually uses poetic speech and the above
quoted poem just as he would use ideological speech, assigning it a doubtless truth
1
Marin Sorescu, excerpt from Rnduieli (Right Ways), a poem of the cycle La Lilieci
(1973, 111). My translation. Original version: La noi muierea pupa mna brbatului/ Pn
mai adineaori zicea Marin al lui Ptru,/ i din dumneata nu-l scotea niciodat,/ i fcea trei,
patru copii, dar nu-ndrznea s-i zic tu./ Cele mai mndre, care se ambiionau, nu-i ziceau
nicicum./ Femeia are socotelile ei, ea s in de coada crptorului,/ S in oala de mnu,
la foc, s stea ciucit la vatr/ i s lase politica de-asta ne ocupm noi, asta e pentru
oameni -/ Femeia, ce tie femeia?.
2
Original version: nici copii nu-i mai face ca lumea. My translation.
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value, although poetry should be freed from truth criteria.1 This is why I have
conducted the textual analysis of this poem on improper ways, namely those of
ideological interpretation. My justification is given by the fact that more than once,
literature dealing with women and men is read (especially by the large public)
ideologically, much in the way one would read and adhere to ideas from sapiential
texts. For this particular case, I agree with Kenneth Burke2 and his proposition to
replace ideology with philosophy of myth, since Iorgovans aim is not a change
in social consciousness, but the condemnation of a certain philosophy of public
action. Let mistresses stay just that, mistresses, Iorgovan decrees when quoting
Sorescus poem, and let them leave politics to us men. This way, the politician
uses the term politics just like Marin son of Peter, the rural character speaking in
Sorescu s poem would do. Going further than Ludovic Orban, Iorgovan has the
nonchalance or the cynicism to explicitly say what the other MP did not follow
through, that all women should know and observe their traditional places.
Few noted the paradox that, while in most areas of life urban Romanians
want to see some changes, mostly understood in terms of Europeanization, as far as
gender relations are concerned, change has the resonances of a shaking threat.
While, as we have seen in the examination of the first level of discourse, the
perpetuation of traditional gender representations is somehow inevitable in
consumerist publicity, for reasons that belong to audience expectancies, one can
only deplore the fact that public discourses and ideographs3 of Romanian politicians
(investigated at the second level of discourse) are no different. The kind of publicity
they make through sexist endorsement of dubious gender representation, while being
less explicit and hidden in certain rhetorical mechanisms, has dangerous impact
upon mainstream representation of gender and of the relationship between them.
What about the third level? Can Romanian culture put its hopes for a fair
public representation of gender in the intelligentsia and in the messages coming
from cultural elites? One could think so, but it is worth taking a closer look.
1
Gilles Deleuze in Foucault and Deleuze, Intellectuals and power, 207.
2
Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969),
197203.
3
In the sense given to this term by Michael Calvin McGee, in The ideograph: A link
between rhetoric and ideology, Quarterly Journal of Speech 66, no. 1 (1980): 116. The
authors definition suggests that a description of political consciousness is possible from the
structures of meaning exhibited by a societys vocabulary of ideographs, where ideology
and mythical symbolism meet.
4
Constantin Noica, Spiritul romnesc n cumptul vremii. ase maladii ale spiritului
contemporan (The Romanian spirit in the thinking of the age. Six illnesses of the
contemporary spirit) (Bucharest: Editura Univers, 1978), 50.
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six philosophical maladies he makes up in this beautiful essay, but todetitis is sure to
affect the spirit of each and every woman. Consequently, even if the above
mentioned text does not hold an explicit antifeminist tenet, the reader is faced with a
double simplification. On the one hand, Noicas text operates the typical reduction
of essentialist discourse when it levels the diversity of what he names the female
half of mankind to a single generic term (women). Besides, there is an implicit
condemnation involved. Although the book is not explicitly incriminating or openly
ideological, since it merely states that there can be described a certain pathology of
the contemporary human spirit, in the chapter on todetitis, women are set to
illustrate an unfortunate case-study: this is a typical disease for half of humanity,
that is, for women, who constantly seek to fix the generality of the species in
something individual: a love, a child, a home.1 In other words, the contemporary
spirit under study in Noicas book is, excepting its part affected by todetitis, the
masculine one, since the female spirit is, as we can deduce, afflicted, with no
exception. In some other text, the same philosopher wishes one of his disciples a
male one, of course the good fortune of having a single vocation, that is of going
through a minor (preferably zero) series of failures in different areas. Altogether, the
two references - seemingly insignificant - lead to the perception of the female gender
as a fatal sentence to imposture.
That conviction is based on at least two biases: on the one hand, the
woman imagined by Noica is meant to be a housewife, is natural by conformation,
as well as emotional and erotic by structure (love is her main existential purpose).
She is born necessarily equipped with maternal instinct and a wish to serve
(spending all of her self-identifying efforts inside the gyneceum). The existence of
this woman is impossible to imagine per se, since it makes no sense outside a
relational context: love, family, motherhood, home-making. The presence of man is
the sine qua non that enables both her love and the appearance of children or the
transformation of her house into a home. The stereotype of a natural woman is
probably the most common of all the gender clichs in the history of the intellectual
Western world, being the source of a hierarchical ideology based on a Romantic
philosophy of systemic oppositions. The immediate implication of conditioning
women biologically leads straight to the second bias. Descriptions of a natural
vocation of the domestic woman imply that any other vocation or career would mean
missing what is right, or taking an inappropriate if not counterfeit identity.
The above example is not as benign or as minor as one may think, since it
has a value of generalization. Noicas book matters a great deal in almost all
canonical libraries in the formative path of young Romanian intellectuals of both
sexes (or so it did until the new millennium), so its real impact can only be measured
in time. To be fair, Noicas understanding of the role of an intellectual, conforming
to his generations understanding, does not recommend a politics of social action,
but rather an elitist, individualist stand. However, the intellectual is already
politically involved,2 by means of his position within a given society and a given
ideology and by means of his discourse.
1
Noica, 54.
2
Foucault and Deleuze, Intellectuals and power, 20507.
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1
Plutarh, Viei paralele (Parallel lives), vol. I, Introd., trans., and notes prof. N. I. Barbu.
(Bucharest: Editura tiinific, 1960), 221. My translation of excerpt.
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church ritual.1 It is ironic that some passages of sacred texts, where both husband
and wife have equal status to martyrs and are seated in a relationship of mutual
dependence, as well as in one of vertical dependence to God, have come to be
invoked as doctrinaire excuses of domestic violence. The justifying of a husbands
brutality towards his wife is absurdly inferred from the privileging, within the public
reception of the Orthodox celebration of the wedding union, of the excerpts which
state the subjection of woman to man. By comparison, the excerpt referring to the
husbands duty, although bearing equal importance within the sacred text, is much
less visible or known in public reception of the same ceremony. This way, the
fragment that states that all of mans actions come from the love he must have for
his wife, equal in amount and quality to self-love, bears no public value.
Finally, another stereotypical gender image, frequently found in the
Romanian public sphere is the woman as the Other. Both the metaphor of a bad or
even evil woman and the metaphor of the witch come from this ideological
source, but also apparently positive terms like the feminine je ne sais quoi have
their roots here. To explain, this is just another name for a mysterious occult
essence, an unknown energy or fluid, which turns women into entities completely
unknown and foreign to men. This second clich is still very active in present-day
urban Romania, where the public activity of women cannot be ignored. The greatest
danger of this stereotype is that it clearly supports the ideology of a permanent war,
a conflict between sexes that both men and women may fuel.
In an inquiry conducted among women-writers on how they perceive the
masculine and feminine in Romania,2 some well-known woman writers have
provided extremely relevant answers. Here are some excerpts: Only when I got to
Western Europe I realized that being born a woman is not necessarily a handicap.
Oh, of course, not all men I know are misogynistic and rude. There are, thank God,
normal men, too. Around them I feel good and feminine. And happy. (Marta Petreu
); I have for a long time been lacking female solidarity, so to speak, perhaps as I
have let myself be convinced by the cultural environment in which I was beginning
my own development as a young intellectual. [...] Today, I believe in the need for
female solidarity not against something, not against men, just solidarity. (Simona
Popescu); I am not a feminist, [...] but I wouldnt dislike to be considered an
Amazon (Aura Christi); I am not a feminist. [ ... ] The typical lover of the
Romanian novel loves by despising the very woman he loves. (Doina Jela); As
long as boys know from their mothers that school failure is explained by the fact that
girls are just hardworking (nerdy), while boys are the ones who are really smart, that
[ ... ] no girl is good enough for them and that when they get married they practically
give themselves to some women who clearly do not deserve them, the intention to
educate mature men, full of resentment and frustration well planted in them by their
1
See the excellent commentary of Mihaela Miroiu, in Convenio. Despre natur, femei i
moral (Convenio. On nature, women and morals), 2 nd ed. (Iai: Editura Polirom, 2002).
2
Ruxandra Cesereanu, ed., Masculin versus feminin n literatura romn (Masculine vs.
feminine in Romanian literature) Steaua 56 (2001), thematic inquiry answered by Marta
Petreu, Simona Popescu, Aura Christi, Doina Jela, Sanda Cordo, Irina Petra, Saviana
Stnescu, Irina Nechit, Magda Crneci, Ana Blandiana.
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own mother, is largely bound to fail (Sanda Cordo); I wish I were a feminist, that
is I wish I could bluntly claim, knowing that I speak for an entire community, equal
treatment for equal competence (Irina Petra); I am not an advocate of a
conservative, dogmatic feminism; [...] the Romanian intellectual is, by definition as
we know it, a man, and the woman is generally his inspiring muse. [...] Either that,
or the prostitute who relaxes the same deep thinker of existential crises (Saviana
Stanescu); traditionally, writing is a male occupation a manifestation of spiritual
and physical virility, and when a woman masters the art of words, the glow of her
writing makes subtle changes in the phenomenology of creation (Irina Nechit);
maybe its just a late balancing of the sexes in an aging humanity and excessively
calibrated on the hard, tough, possessive, rational values of the Power dimension of
generic human nature. (Magda Crneci); I am not a feminist, [...] I have never
thought of my books as being written by a woman (Ana Blandiana).
Most quoted writers have carefully included in their statement some form of
dissociation from feminism. The first reason may be that feminism has connotations
of a reversed sexism in Romanian public perception, as an aggressively egalitarian
ideology, that irritates men and makes women virile.1 An important vote against
feminism, given by women from Eastern Europe, may be due to the fact that the
professed emancipation has been negatively associated with the professed
emancipation imposed by communism. Forcing women to leave their traditional
domestic role in order to work alongside men to build the new communist world
meant operating two different roles at the same time, resulting in a serious identity
fracture. Yet another reason for the resistance to feminism is the resistance to any
visible ideology, gained by the East-European woman through the communist
ideology-vaccine. Regardless of its particular manifestation, the ideological agenda
of feminism includes change and aims to alter social, political and cultural roles, etc.
Beyond that, one can also notice within the statements of the above-quoted
women-writers a tendency to adopt the role of a bold woman, who breaks access to
cultural creation. The woman-writers either eliminate the perception of gender and
claim they are just authors, or perceive the field of cultural creation as a battlefront,
where victory belongs to the one who really makes the effort (the case of those who
refute the common perception that the Romanian intellectual is male by definition).
We can also take into account that a few of them enjoy radical images like the
Amazon, or antimasculine idiosyncrasies that echo in linguistic harshness. Finally,
one notable aspect is especially the quasi-unanimous need for feminine solidarity, a
solidarity whose aim is not belligerent (in preparation of a world war against men),
but relational. This conclusion appears both in their wish to speak on behalf of a
class, and in the attempts to restore a flawed communication between different
generations of women.
1
Further development on the reasons for oppositions and resistance to feminism, as well as
a good typological understanding of feminism vs. antifeminism vs. nonfeminism, in Lori J.
Nelson, Sandra B. Shanahan, and Jennifer Olivetti, Power, empowerment, and equality:
Evidence for the motives of feminists, nonfeminists, and antifeminists, Sex roles 37/34
(1997): 227249 and Susan E. Marshall, Ladies against women: Mobilization dilemmas of
antifeminist movements, Social Problems (1985): 348362.
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This latter point touches a sore spot, that is, the myth (probably of Oriental
origin) of the conflicting archetypal relationship between mother and daughter-in-
law (i.e. between the woman who gives birth and then educates the future man and
the woman who psychoanalytically takes her place). In many products of the
Romanian popular cultures, as I have stated before, the two women not only hate
each other and place themselves in perpetual conflict, but also are presented to find
supreme joy in their mutual annihilation. The fact that the popular culture of the
Western societies does not support this conflicting archetype and that the incidence
of conflicting relations between mothers and daughters-in-law is much lower should
give food for thought to women in Romania: they could see that, instead of an
immutable archetype, we operate with a variable and therefore modifiable
representation.
4. Stereotyping men
In the Western world, the crisis of male identity exacerbated in the 70s has led to
the development of hundreds of departments of Mens Studies.1 In Romania and
Eastern Europe, being feminist is tacitly frowned upon by members of both genders.
As seen above, creative women who act on the public scene feel the need to detach
themselves from feminism, although not being a feminist is already a sign of
retrograde conservatism in the Western world. To my knowledge, there are no
departments of Mens Studies in any of the Romanian universities, even if Gender
Studies professors sometimes approach this topic, too. This is a clear indicator that
male identity is assumed without much dilemma in this cultural space.
One of the most authoritarian stereotypes of men, at work in contemporary
Romanian culture, is the tough man, which brings together qualities of the macho
man, of the provider and of the family protector, possibly of the rational head of the
mystical union that the couple is perceived to be. The Romanian man is asked, first
of all, to fulfil a heroic fantasy. Should one read into this that female imagery is
somehow haunted by a premonition of violence, always seeking a rescuer and a
white knight? It is my contention that there is a clear correspondence between
domestic violence (whose frequency makes Romania one of the most conflictual
countries of East-Europe in this respect) and the need to imagine a providential man,
a saviour who will offer protection. In most cases, in crisis situations, Romanian
women expect a mans intervention. I do not just refer to social conflicts here, when
regardless of who is responsible, regardless of the size of the problem, a very dear
form of protest is to call for the President of the country or the Prime minister to be
present in person wherever something goes wrong. I indicate strictly minor
incidents, like having to fix a doorknob, to change a flat tire, to make an important
family call, to calm a daily turbulence of pubertal children (wait till your father
comes home), to fight a small social battle. The solving of these small disasters is
still expected to come from a man, in an overwhelming number of cases.2
1
Cf. Elisabeth Badinter, XY. De lidentit masculine (Paris: Editions Odile Jacob, 1992), 1518.
2
See a detailed analysis in Mihaela Mudure, Feminine (Cluj: Napoca Star, 2000).
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1
Cum s-i facem pe brbai (How to have men), see analysis in Mihaela Ursa, 2Portrete de
femei, portrete de brbai (Women portraits, men portraits), in Tzara mea. Stereotipii i
prejudeci 9My country. Stereotypes and prejudices), edited by Ruxandra Cesereanu (Iai:
Institutul Cultural European, 2006).
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account the challenges in store for representations of male gender identity. Here is
an excerpt from a women magazine publicly speaking about a possible identity
change: More and more men claim that couple life is in an impasse and that women
are responsible for it. Women offer less and less while asking for increasingly more.
Men feel deceived in their expectations, their desire is slowly dying, and they cannot
communicate. So, man is in pain, couples are agonizing. [ ... ] Their companions ask
them to take on too many responsibilities: to succeed professionally, to be perfect
lovers, tender and virile at the same time ... So they live in constant fear of not being
good enough. The result? Three quarters of our men are simply afraid of their
women. At least so the statistics say.1
A first difficulty in assuming masculine identity today comes from the
collision of two opposite imperatives: be a man!, which asks for the macho man
action hero, and simultaneously be nice and sweet!, which requires a change of
content that men have not agreed upon, even if occasionally they consent to it in
spite of their own agenda, for various reasons. A second difficulty comes from the
assertion of some form of female aggression (a vagina dentata - type of image),
resulting from the replacement of traditional feminine values (passiveness, patience,
silence, obedient nature) with modern values (activism, determination, overt
rapacity, refusal of love sufferings).
Holding on to a conflict between the sexes is not entirely manmade. In 2005,
a Romanian literary review called a response2 to a popular volume of short stories
by Mircea Crtrescu, entitled De ce iubim femeile (Why we love women). The
review issue consists of the interventions of women of culture, meant to illustrate
Why we love men. In her speech entitled Why we dont love men Alexandra
Olivotto writes one of the most virulent anti-masculine texts of our culture ,
composed, basically, of the sequencing of all the negative stereotypes about men:
Because they smell of sweat, cheap tobacco or their upper lip sweating make them
feel not unsanitary, but increasingly virile. Because they can only smile to all small
children passing once they have planned to perpetuate the species. [ ...] Because
hypochondria was invented by and for them, but they endure it with unexpected
courage. Because they go to bed with you like a summer rain, to show you that they
love you. Because if they take care of all the nagging and petty chores of the house,
they have either beaten you, or cheated on you the night before. [ ... ] Because they
always have the simplest orgasms and because post-coital sadness is just a myth that
assures us of the depth of their feelings,3 and so on. A small percentage of
Romanian men (slightly higher among educated men4) do not feel at all comfortable
in the position of being daily forced to be something. While a woman is never
asked to be a woman (but possibly be a good /nice woman etc.), her identity as a
woman being unquestioned, as hard evidence, the fact of being a man seems to
1
Mihaela Spineanu, Imposibila iubire (The Impossible Love), Elle (February 2003): 47.
2
Alexandra Olivotto, De ce nu iubim brbaii (Why we do not love men), Vatra1112
(2005), themed issue De ce iubim brbaii (Why we love men), edited by Nicoleta
Slcudeanu.
3
Olivotto, De ce nu iubim brbaii, 113.
4
See issue Fii brbat! (Be a man!) of magazine Dilema (2004).
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Several conclusions
In general, the stereotypical description of man and woman in Romania happens at
the intersection of two gender representations. Firstly, the Western frame represents
the woman with multiple skills and the man outside the illusion of virility, no longer
under the obsession of macho hardness. Secondly, these images suffer the by-pass of
another, far more authoritative frame, the one coming from traditional Eastern
Europe and even the East, where gender images are strongly segregated and well
polarized. In this second case, the woman is still either domestic, passive (good),
or seductive and erotic (bad, evil). The man is in turn represented as the manly,
rational dictator head of the family and the couple.
As I have stated before, the representations by themselves cannot be accused
of being true or false. However, they never appear alone in an empty space.2 These
ideological representations populate the public sphere and bear public truth value.
Whether they come within product advertising, political discourse or elite culture,
they can affect social and cultural change, delaying the solutions that could be given
to serious problems like domestic abuse, implicit gender segregation, social
discrimination, manipulative rhetoric or simply stereotyped understanding of gender
roles.
1
Margaret Mead, Coming of age in Samoa: A psychological study of primitive youth for
Western civilisation (London: HarperCollins, 2001).
2
Melvin J. Hinich and Michael C. Munger, Ideology and the theory of political choice
(Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1996).
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Daniel JUGRIN
Al. I. Cuza University, Iai
E-mail: jugrindaniel@gmail.com
Negation ()
The Plotinian negative theology is extremely radical, especially if it is judged in the
context of Plotinus view on the One. Thus negative theology is guaranteed
foremost, but not exclusively by his views on the reality of the One. This
foundation must be taken into consideration mostly when we try to understand the
contents and the functions of the Plotinian negations whenever the One is brought
into discussion. On this basis, it is necessary to perceive the Plotinian negative
theology within the broader context of the souls ascension towards the mystical
union with the One, which is in itself a way of return of all things back to the One:1
therefore, even in the case of mystical union, the Plotinian understanding concerning
the One shapes, in the last instance, and the other dimensions regarding the souls
relation with the One in the state of union, but also the state of union itself.2
Among researchers,3 there is a well defined intention of making a distinction
between the two forms of negation in Plotinus: apophasis and aphairesis, though
both function generically as negation of some aspect or other in respect to the One.
1
See Andrei Cornea, Lmuriri preliminare (Preliminary clarifications), in Plotinus, Opere
(Works), vol. I (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2002), 108 and 124.
2
Cf. Todd Ken Ohara, The Internal Logic of Plotinian and Dionysian Apophasis, Ph.D. Diss.
(New Haven: Yale University, 2007), 144.
3
E.g., John Bussanich, The One and its relation to Intellect in Plotinus (Leiden: Brill, 1988);
Pieter A. Meijer, Plotinus on the Good or the One (Enneads VI, 9): An Analytical
Commentary (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1992); Michael Sells, Mystical Languages of
Unsaying (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994).
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If apophasis is applied in order to explain the fact that the One is not thus and such,
aphairesis operates instead somehow differently, on the basis of three conceptual
models. The first model1 is the one of the sculptor which removes the addition of
clay to arrive at the completely finalized figure.2 The second one refers to the
mathematical model of subtraction, through which Y is subtracted from X, having as
residuum Z.3 The first model and the last one concerns abstraction, according to
which aphairesis functions as a way of conceptualization of a hypothetical state of
things: i.e. we abstract from what is factual to expound something about the reality,
transcendence and independence of the One. In each model, something is
definitively negated, though having as a result the fact that something else remains.4
In Enneads V.5.6., Plotinus argues explicitly for the fact that even negations
() concerning the One must be, in the end, negated: for perhaps this
name [One] was given it in order that the seeker, beginning from this which is
completely indicative of simplicity, may finally negate () this as well,
because, though it was given as well as possible by its giver, not even this is worthy
to manifest that nature;5
Previous to this declaration, Plotinus had explained that the name of the One
is best expressed in the form of a suppression or negation of multiplicity (
).6 He goes further and teaches us that even the name of One itself
understood as negation of multiplicity must be, in the end, denied or negated.
Admitting this negation () of negating multiplicity (
),7 Plotinus acknowledges implicitly the fact that negations or denials
1
Most researchers tend to agree that Plotinus adopted the discursive practice of aphairesis
from Pythagorean or Neopythagorean philosophies. Moreover, they pretend that Dionysius
itself would have taken the method following the Plotinian use of aphairesis in relation to the
first conceptual model brought into discussion. Cf. John N. Jones, Sculpting God: The
Logic of Dionysian Negative Theology, Harvard Theological Review 89, no. 4 (1996): 357,
n. 8.
2
Plotinus, Enneads 1.6.9.8 sq.: Go back into yourself and look; and if you do not yet see
yourself beautiful, then, just as someone making a statue which has to be beautiful cuts away
() here and polishes there and makes one part smooth and clears another till he has
given his statue a beautiful face, so you too must cut away () excess and straighten
the crooked and clear the dark and make it bright, and never stop working on your statue till
the divine glory of virtue shines out on you [trans. A.H. Armstrong, in Plotinus, vol. I
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 259].
3
Jones (Sculpting God: The Logic of Dionysian Negative Theology, 357, n. 8) defines the
process of subtracting attributes from a subject in terms of the rejection of the logician.
Ohara (The Internal Logic of Plotinian and Dionysian Apophasis, 95, n. 152) is rather
tempted to associate the method of the rejection of the logician proposed by Jones with what
results from an act of apophasis. Even though the second Plotinian model was often coupled
with the one present in Pythagoreanism/ Neopythagoreanism, nonetheless, Ohara thinks that
Plotinus also uses aphairesis in other ways.
4
Cf. Ohara, The Internal Logic of Plotinian and Dionysian Apophasis, 95.
5
Plotinus, Enneads 5.5.6.30-34
6
Ibid., 5.5.6.28.
7
Cf. also Deirdre Carabine, The Unknown God. Negative Theology in the Platonic Tradition.
Plato to Eriugena (Louvain: Peeters Press, 1995), 124.
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themselves are, in the last instance, inadequate in the attempt to express the reality
of the One alongside other things; and this is because they function by means of and
in relation to the things posterior to the One. In other words, the One is treated by
means of a reference which relates to the things that are not the One itself, things
that are, from a metaphysical point of view, under the One or are inferior to the
reality of the One.1
Negations are improper when applied to the reality of the One for other
reasons also. Firstly, negations are improper because, even when someone would
have a mystical contact with the One, such negations do not contain, do not express
and neither do they deliver a knowledge of the One.2 This idea is crucial for the
understanding of the limitations of any discourse, including the one belonging to
negation. According to Plotinus, the act of negation or denial no matter how it is
practiced: on cognitive or verbal level does not mean and neither does it constitute
an apprehension or at least a thinking of the One. It is simply impossible to know the
One by bringing it within the frame of the human mind, because the One is,
metaphysically, too simple, and thus indeterminate.3 Strictly speaking, our concepts
about the One fail to circumscribe the One.4 Even though to a certain extent it can
direct its gaze towards the One, still even the Nous cannot know, think or
understand the One.5
All discourse concerning the One positive or negative functions, lastly, in
view of the souls ascension to the state of mystical contact with the One: Raised
up, then, towards that by what has been said one should take hold of that itself, and
he will see also himself and will not be able to say all that he wishes.6 In this
broader sense, the apophatic discourse achieves its goal to finally indicate the
direction of the ascension towards the mystical union of the soul with the One. The
movement by which Plotinus imposes the negation of negation (7
) and the removal of all ( 8) behaves in the
sense of transposing the soul from the level of discourse and cognition to the level of
1
Cf. Plotinus, Enneads 5.5.10.1 sq.: But do not, I beg you, look at it through other things;
otherwise you might see a trace of it, not itself; but consider what this might be which it is
possible to grasp as existing by itself, pure, mixed with nothing, in which all things have a
share, though nothing has it; for there is nothing else like this, but there must be something
like this (trans. Armstrong, V, 185).
2
Cf. Plotinus, Ennead 5.3.14.2-3: we certainly do not speak it, and we have neither
knowledge or thought of it (trans. Armstrong, V,
121).
3
Cf. Ibid., 6.8.13.1 sq.: But if one must bring in these names of what we are looking for, let
it be said again that it was not correct to use them, because one must not make it two even for
the sake of forming and idea of it [trans. A.H. Armstrong, in Plotinus, vol. VII (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 267].
4
Cf. Ibid., 5.4.1.9 sq.: there is no concept or knowledge of it
(trans. Armstrong, V, 141).
5
Cf. Ohara, The Internal Logic of Plotinian and Dionysian Apophasis, 133134.
6
Plotinus, Enneads 6.8.19.1 sq. (trans. Armstrong, VII, 291).
7
Ibid., 5.5.6.32.
8
Ibid., 5.3.17.38
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Nous, of noetic contemplation and, finally, on the level of mystical union with the
One: Now if you want to grasp the isolated and alone1, you will not think; (
).2 It thus results that a necessary
necessary condition for the transposition of the soul to the ascension towards the
union with the One is given by the ceasing of the noetic activity of the soul, and in
this manner are emphasized the function, the status and the value of apophasis as a
final instrument of preparation for the transposition of the soul in a state of mystical
union with the One.3
1
Plato, Philebos 63b.
2
Plotinus, Enneads 5.3.13.32-33 (trans. Armstrong, V, 121).
3
Cf. Ohara, The Internal Logic of Plotinian and Dionysian Apophasis, 137138.
4
Cf. Rich T. Wallis, The Spiritual Importance of Not Knowing, in Arthur Hilary
Armstrong, ed., Classical Mediterranean Spirituality: Egyptian, Greek, Roman (New York:
Crossroad, 1986), 473.
5
The Soul becomes conscious of itself and realises that it depends on a divine superior
Intellect which illuminates it and which allows it to think; it also realizes that it emanates
from a transcendent Good which is superior to the Intellect and which constitutes the subject
of its attraction. Cf. Pierre Hadot, Neoplatonist Spirituality. Plotinus and Porphyry, in
Armstrong, ed., Classical Mediterranean Spirituality: Egyptian, Greek, Roman, 234.
6
Cf. Bussanich, The One and its relation to Intellect in Plotinus. A commentary on selected
texts, 113: This epistemological and ontological procedure of abstraction or subtraction
deepens the moral and psychological .
7
Plotinus itself was a remarkable model of moral purification; Porphyry relates that Plotinus
was mild and kind, most gentle and attractive, and we knew ourselves that he was like this.
It says too that he sleeplessly kept his soul pure and ever strove towards the divine which he
loved with all his soul, and did everything to be delivered and escape from the bitter wave of
blood-drinking life here (See Porphyry, The Life of Plotinus, 23.1 sq., trans. Armstrong, I,
69). On the moral aspect of Plotinus thought see, e.g., John M. Rist, Plotinus and Moral
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obligation, in Idem, The Significance of Neoplatonism (New York: State University of New
York Press, 1976), 217233.
1
Having as a starting point Arnous interpretation [Ren Arnou, Le dsir de Dieu dans la
philosophie de Plotin (Paris: Libraire Flix Alcan, 1921), 202, 217], which does not seem to
decipher a negation of an intellectual order in Plotinus case, Trouillard emphasizes the
importance of an asceticism of the spirit which is distinguished from the moral effort. Its
about the ascesis which consists in the annihilation of illusions, in the criticism of the mental
limitative forms and in preferring night in the detriment of some obvious facts. On the
distinction between intellectual negation and moral negation see Jean Trouillard, La
Ngation, in Idem, La purification plotinienne (Paris : Presses Universitaires de France,
1955), 137139.
2
Plotinus the same as Plato, Dionysius and Meister Eckhart makes appeal to the image of
the sculptor which splinters a piece of rock in order to reveal the statue free of all obstacles
and additions (Enneads 1.6.9). In this way, the soul becomes liberated of all that was added
to its real nature and it is led towards the state of contemplating the Good. Cf. Carabine, The
Unknown God, 132133.
3
Plotinus, Enneads 5.3.17.38; 5.5.13.13.
4
Cf. Ibid. 3.8.10.31-32. The view that Plotinus voices here viz. that we must look for the
Good outside the created things is one of the typical forms of negative theology in the
manner illustrated by Philo of Alexandria, Dionysius, Eurigena, and Meister Eckhart. Before
all things came into being, the One was and It is now as it was before bringing all things into
existence. Therefore, we must not add to its existence anything that belongs to the realm of
created being. Cf. Plotinus, Enneads 5.5.12.42-43 and 6.7.23.9-10.
5
Ibid. 6.8.11.1-3 and 3.8.10.32.35.
6
Ibid. 5.5.6.
7
Carabine, The Unknown God, 134135.
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asceticism i.e. the detachment of the soul from the body:1 What then do we mean
when we call these other virtues purifications, and how are we made really like by
being purified? Since the soul is evil when it is thoroughly mixed with the body and
shares its experiences and has all the same opinions, it will be good and possess
virtue when it no longer has the same opinions but acts alone.2
In this sense, it must be pointed out that Plotinus highlights moral purification
and intellectual purification to an equal degree: But what could the purification of
the soul be, if it had not been stained at all, or what its separation from the body?
The purification would be leaving it alone, and not with others, or not looking at
something else or, again, having opinions which do not belong to it whatever is the
character of the opinions, or the affections, as has been said and not seeing the
images nor constructing affections out of them.3
In Enneads 4.7.10.40, Plotinus will speak of as a maneuver which
leads in a state of knowledge of the best4 ( ). In some other
place, the Neoplatonic philosopher introduces a hierarchy of spiritual stages:5 at
first, moral purification which gives birth to virtues () and adorning
() , and then a superior level of knowledge, achieved when the soul is
gaining footholds in the intelligible.6
On the first level, the journey of the soul may follow two different routes. The
first road consists in contemplating the splendor of the sensible world in order to
rise to the World Soul which generates it and to discover thus the superiority of the
soul in comparison with the body.7 Therefore, the first path will lead the human soul
soul to self consciousness as a force of transcending the body and to receiving
light from the divine Intellect. The second trajectory which converges with the
first makes direct reference to inner experience: initially, ascetic experience and,
subsequently, the experience of thinking.8
The union ()
1
In its first stage, the journey of the soul may follow two routes: one that consists in
reflecting upon the existence of the sensible world; the other turns firmly back inside the
soul. Both are destined to reach the same goal: the spiritual separation of the soul from the
body and life in conformity with the Intellect. Cf. Hadot, Neoplatonist Spirituality: Plotinus
and Porphyry, 234 sq.
2
Plotinus, Enneads 1.2.3.10-14
3
Ibid., 3.6.5.13-19
4
Trans. A.H. Armstrong, in Plotinus, vol. IV, 385.
5
Cf. Plotinus, Enneads 6.7.36.8-10: but we are put on the way to it by purifications and
virtues and adorning and by gaining footholds in the intelligible and settling ourselves firmly
there and feasting on its contents
6
A certain support for the first level could be the fact that the only instance of
seems to makes reference to moral preparation: the preparation () and the
adornment () are clearly understood, I think, by those who are preparing
themselves (Plotinus, Enneads 6.7.34.11-12); Cf. Bussanich, The One and its relation to
intellect in Plotinus, 195196.
7
See Plotinus, Enneads 5.1.2.1-5.
8
Cf. Hadot, Neoplatonist Spirituality Plotinus and Porphyry, 234.
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To make the One the object of knowledge implies its transformation into a multiple,
and, as the One is absolutely simple, it is clear that it cannot be any thought about
it.1 Nevertheless, the ascension towards the supreme entities is operated first by the
movement towards the Nous and then beyond Nous. We first contemplate the
intelligible and then leaving behind the intelligible we move beyond it. Only
through the contemplation of the intelligible world the soul can rise to what its
beyond it.2
To describe the arrival of the soul in the intelligible realm, Plotinus uses the
words of Platonic fashion (ascension) and (banquet). The
first belongs to a quote from Platos Republic, where it is said that hypotheses (
3) are stepping stones to take off from, enabling it to reach the
unhypothetical first principle of everything.4 For the second one, a plausible source
source could be Phaidros: And when the soul has seen all the things that are as they
are and feasted on them, it sinks back inside heaven and goes home5 which may
very well be a parallel closely related to Plotinus intelligible banquet.6
In order to become simple the same as the One we must abandon the
process of thinking the One, which is, by its nature, multiple. When the soul
becomes the same as the Intellect, it reaches the union with the Nous, by means of
which we understand that the Good is.7 When the soul leaves behind all other things
and becomes pure thinking, then it will attain the same as the Nous the
contemplation of the One.8
The way of reaching the unity with the Good or the vision of the Good
simply implies the renunciation of all things, including knowledge: 9 Plotinus way
goes beyond knowledge:10
1
Plotinus, Enneads 5.3.14.2-3.
2
Ibid., 3.8.11, 5.5.6 and 6.8.7. Cf. Carabine, The Unknown God, 140.
3
Plato, Respublica 511b5. [trans. G.M.A. Grube and rev. C.D.C. Reeve, in J.M. Cooper
(ed.), Plato, Complete Works (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997),
1132].
4
Ibid., 511b6-7:
5
Plato, Phaidros 247e2-4:
[trans. Alexander Nehamas and Paul
Woodruff, in Cooper (ed.), Plato, Complete Works, 525].
6
Cf. Bussanich, The One and its relation to intellect in Plotinus, 196.
7
Plotinus, Enneads 5.3.8.45-48.
8
Ibid., 6.9.5 and 1.1.8. Cf. Carabine, The Unknown God, 140.
9
The whole doctrine of the unity of the intellects and souls is destined to explain the
concrete experience of soul which, on concentrating on itself and by returning to its original
source, abandons the body, surpasses its discursive activity, and experiences the union with
the divine Intellect. It discovers itself as an intellect which, by self-knowledge, is a part, an
element of the total Intellect. In discussing this stage from the journey of the soul, inside
which, by surpassing rational and discursive activity, we experience the unity with the divine
Intellect, we can speak of a mystical experience. Cf. Hadot, Neoplatonist Spirituality
Plotinus and Porphyry, 236.
10
Schomakers considers the treatise 6.9 from Plotini Opera as the first systematic
philosophical description of mystical philosophy i.e. of knowledge beyond knowledge,
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One must therefore run up above knowledge and in no way depart from
being one, but one must depart from knowledge and things known, and from every
other, even beautiful, object of vision. For every beautiful thing is posterior to that
One, and comes from it, as all the light of day comes from the sun.1
Even though it could be found at least one fragment where Plotinus does not
totally eliminate intellection when it comes to the Good, the most frequent way that
is supported is the non-conceptual way.2
Silencing all intellectual activity and harmonizing with the simple nature of
the Good i.e. without being duality anymore the soul cannot do anything else
but to wait quietly till it appears ( ).3 The
experience of expectation lacking thinking and concept is not such an easy state to
come to, but if someone persists, the soul can wake another way of seeing, 4 which
everyone has but few use.5 This awakening towards another way of knowledge is a
rouse to the presence of the Good, which it can neither come, nor go; it is
permanently present, as without its presence, the universe cannot be.6
This perception of the Good cannot be named anymore knowledge, as the
Good cannot even possess self knowledge:7 it is presence superior to knowledge
( ).8 The Good offers something much more
important and grand than the simple fact of knowing it: he gives them rather to be
in the same place with him and to lay hold on him
.9 The One is unknowable, and all the other
things, even though they cannot know it, can still enter into contact with it a
contact that is beyond knowledge.10 Neither the Intellect, nor the thinking is the
supreme Good, but they are suspended in each of us by a superior presence which is
antecedent to the noetic order.11
which is made possible because of a rigorous rejection of other types of knowledge, thus
being constituted the first treatise of negative theology. See Ben Schomakers, Knowing
through Unknowing. Some Elements for a History of a Mystical Formula, in Nancy van
Deusen, ed., Issues in Medieval Philosophy: Essays in Honor of Richard C. Dales (Ottawa:
The Institute of Mediaeval Music, 2001), 34.
1
Plotinus, Enneads 6.9.4.7-11
2
See Ibid., 6.7.40.32-36 and 6.7.35.44-45.
3
Ibid., 5.5.8.3-4
4
See also Ibid., 6.9.11.22-23. Cf. Schomakers, Knowing through Unknowing, 35.
5
Ibid., 1.6.8.25-27 (trans. Armstrong, I, 259).
6
Cf. Carabine, The Unknown God, 140.
7
Plotinus, Enneads 6.9.4.3. Cf. Ibid. 5.6.6.31. On the fact that the One does not think as a
recurring theme in Plotinus, see Arthur Hilary Armstrong, The Escape of the One. An
investigation of some possibilities of apophatic theology imperfectly realized in the West,
Studia Patristica 13, Part. II (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1975), 81.
8
Plotinus, Enneads 6.9.4.3 (trans. Armstrong, VII, 315).
9
Ibid., 5.6.6.34-35.
10
We are all in the One (Good) and then we can enter into contact with It in a super-
intellectual way. See Cornea, in Plotinus, Opere (Works), vol. II (Bucharest: Humanitas,
2006), 124125, n. 28.
11
Cf. Jean Trouillard, Valeur critique de la mystique plotinienne, Revue philosophique de
Louvain 59 (1961), 431.
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1
Plotinus, Enneads 3.8.10.31-32: But if you grasp it by taking away being from it, you will
be filled with wonder (trans. Armstrong,
III, 397). In this way, Plotinus mystics can be considered a mystics of the nous. Cf. Philip
Merlan, Monopsychism, mysticism, metaconsciousness. Problems of the soul in the
neoaristotelian and neoplatonic tradition (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1963), 2.
2
Cf. Carabine, The Unnknwon God, 141142.
3
See Plotinus, Enneads 6.7.35.36-40.
4
Ibid., 6.7.36.15-21 (trans. Armstrong, VII, 201).
5
The references for this term also include Ibid. 5.3.17.28; 5.5.3.13; 5.5.7.23 and 6.7.34.13.
Cf. also Plato, Symposium 210e.
6
See Plotinus V, trans. Arthur Hilary Armstrong (Cambridge Mass./London: Harvard
University Press/William Heinemann, 1984), 135, n. 1.
7
Cf. Carabine, The Unknown God, 142.
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The experience of the unity in terms of vision and light is one which
presupposes the lack of a real object present in front of our eyes: the real terminus
point of the wandering soul is the direct vision of that light in itself and not by
means of any other thing: the self glorified, full of intelligible light but rather
itself pure light weightless, floating free.1
This type of vision excludes the very possibility of the soul of knowing the
fact that it is united with the One, as it cannot be anymore a distinction between
itself and the object of its intuition: But one must transport what one sees into
1
Plotinus, Enneads 6.9.9.57-59 (Armstrong, VII, 339).
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oneself, and look at it as one and look at it as oneself.1 This alone is the eye that
sees the great beauty.2
The ecstasy ()
Plotinus also imagines the experience of being outside-of-itself or of ecstasy
() in terms of another way of seeing. Jean Trouillard deems regrettable the
fact that the mystical stage was rendered by the term (ecstasy), which
Plotinus used just once, and which would rather express a fleeting migration (un
exode passager) towards pure transcendence; he favours instead the word 3
(simplification). Porphyry tells us that, for Plotinus, his aim and his goal were
hiding the desire to be intimately united with the god who was beyond all.4 This
union was attained by the master four times and by his biographer just one time. 5 It
is thus described as an event.6
The ecstatic moment does not do anything else but to actualize its eternal root
and to recover its expressions.7 For Plotinus, ecstasy is but the momentary
revelation of an eternal datum.8 It is the experience of thinking which exceeds itself
and at the same time realizes its highest possibility (seine hchste Mglichkeit).9 In
this self-surpassing, the thinking conscience will not go back just to its
foundation; it will find in itself its own origin and it will not attain it by the means
of thinking or of not-thinking, but, in fact, it is united with it, it is identifying with it
beyond any concept of thinking (den denkenden Begriff hinaus).10
There is an intimate connection between the movement of thinking which
surpasses itself in the tension towards the One and the discovery of its origin, the
unification, or the fact of becoming one: in this event of becoming simple and one
with itself, it is produced the overcoming of the spirit or of the Intellect towards the
One. The unification or the simplification of the self is the condition of the union
with That which is one and simple. The overcoming of the self, the simplification11
or the unification of the self and the union with the origin coincide.12
1
Plotinus, Enneads 5.8.10.40-42 (Armstrong, V, 273).
2
Ibid., 1.6.9.24-25.
3
Ibid., 6.9.11.23.
4
Porfir, Vita Plotini 23.15-16: .
5
See Porphyry, Vita Plotini 23.
6
Cf. Hadot, Neoplatonist Spirituality Plotinus and Porphyry, 245: This is why the
mystical experience is presented as an eceptional phenomenon and as transitory.
7
Cf. Trouillard, Valeur crititique de la mystique plotinienne, 433.
8
Eric R. Dodds, Tradition and Personal Achievement in the Philosophy of Plotinus, The
Journal of Roman Studies 50 (1960), 6.
9
Cf. Werner Beierwaltes, Denken des Einen. Studien zur Neuplatonischen philosophie und
ihrer wirkungsgeschichte (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klosterman, 1985), 123.
10
Ibid., 123.
11
Cf. Pierre Hadot, Plotin ou la simplicit du regard (Paris: Pion, 1963).
12
Cf. Ysabel de Andia, Henosis. Lunion Dieu chez Denys lAropagite (Leiden/Kln/New
York: Brill, 1996), 6.
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1
See de Andia, Henosis, 67.
2
Cf. de Andia, Henosis, 6.
3
Beierwaltes, Denken des Einen, 129.
4
Ibid., 131.
5
Cf. de Andia, Henosis, 6.
6
Plotinus, Enneads 6.8.5.35.
7
Cf. de Andia, Henosis, 6.
8
Plotinus, Enneads 4.4.2.4-7 (trans. Armstrong, IV, 141).
9
Cf. de Andia, Henosis, 7.
10
Plotinus, Enneads 4.4.2.15-18 (trans. Armstrong, IV, 142).
11
Cf. de Andia, Henosis, 7.
12
Plotinus, Enneads 4.4.2.24-29 (trans. Armstrong, IV, 143).
13
Cf. de Andia, Henosis, 7.
14
Plotinus, Enneads 6.7.35.29-30.
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unifying experiences of the soul are exceptional. They appear unexpectedly and they
cannot be self induced. The exercise of inner unification which prepares them is not
sufficient to induce them; they also disappear unexpectedly.1
Plotinus prefers the term in order to illustrate the union of the Soul
with the Intellect,2 but, for the union with the Good, he appeals either to the word
: to be united, to become united as Porphyry does in The Life of Plotinus
, either to the expression : nor are there still two but both are one (
).3
The experience of the Good, or of the One, is represented in Plotinus through
the model of the loving union.4 The relation with the Good cannot be but one of
love:5 the Good excites the desire and in this manner the Good is the one which will
become the object of love. This love incites the soul to assimilate itself to the loved
object and to withdraw from all that could separate it from the object.6 As the Good
lacks form and thinking, anyone who loves it wishes to abandon all form and
thinking. We cannot be attached to the Good and remain in the same time attached
to something outside it. The detachment from all corresponds to a form of
asceticism: the Soul must detach from the body, the passions, from all memory of
external objects, and then from all ideas and from all intelligible forms. 7 As is the
case with lovers, so is the desire of the Soul to be alone with the loved one, all the
more so as the loved one is the only One.8 The Soul refuses to stay in any form no
matter how elevated, and it experiences thus the infinite love of the One.9
1
Ibid., 6.7.34.13; 36.18; 5.3.17.29; 5.5.7.35; 6.9.9.60-10.2. Cf. Hadot, Neoplatonist
Spirituality Plotinus and Porphyry, 245.
2
Ibid., 4.4.2.26.
3
Ibid., 6.7.34.13-14 Cf. de Andia, Henosis, 7.
4
Ibid., 6.9.9.39; cf. Ibid. 6.7.34.3 and 14.
5
Ibid., 6.7.22.1-36.
6
Ibid., 6.7.31.11.
7
Ibid., 6.7.34.1-8.
8
Ibid., 6.9.11.50.
9
Ibid., 6.7.32.24-28. Cf. Hadot, Neoplatonist Spirituality Plotinus and Porphyry, 245246.
10
Ibid., 5.5.7.31-34
11
Cf. Carabine, The Unknown God, 145.
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1
Cf. Schomakers, Knowing through Unknowing, 41.
2
See Ibid., 3441.
3
See Ibid., 3738.
4
Ibid., 5.5.8.1-7.
5
Cf. Ibid., 6.9.11.22-25 and 6.9.10.12-13.
6
Ibid., 6.9.4.17-21 and 6.7.36. Cf. Schomakers, Knowing through Unknowing, 39.
7
Ibid., 6.9.10.1-2
8
Ibid., 6.9.9.57-60
9
See Carabine, The Unknown God, 146147.
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it comprises everything without being itself comprised; it is simple and it is still not
simple; it is the Shape without shape; and the unity without parts; the multiple but
still beyond all multiplicity. On short: all the things are and arent the One:1 it may
be affirmed that all things are One, as It is present in them as their source; on the
other hand, they arent the One, because the One cannot be any of the things into
which its power is poured.2
On the second level of dialectic, operative in the Enneades, the One is both
present and absent, not only through the metaphysical manifestation of itself, but
also in terms of its presence, as It exists in the universe, as it exists in itself: It is
neither far, nor close, neither here, nor there.3
The tension produced by the dialectical understanding of the One, in the Enneades,
was to become an important part of subsequent negative theology. By this, Plotinus
positions itself at the beginning of a tradition that took over Platos dialectic, as it
was applied in Parmenides, bestowing to it a new meaning, one with strong
theological connotations concerning the nature of the first principle the One.4
1
Cf. Plotinus, Enneads 5.5.2 and 5.3.12.
2
Cf. Ibid., 6.4.3.
3
Cf. Ibid., 5.5.9; 6.4.2; 6.4.3 and 6.9.4.
4
E.g., in Dionysius the Areopagite, God is all things and still neither of things; It is both
manifest and hidden. See De divinis nominibus II.11; V.10 and V.11.
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
Francisc RMNY
Babe-Bolyai University Cluj
Faculty of Philosophy
Abstract: The present study attempts to show in which cases the barbarism
discussed and sometimes openly advocated by the French philosophers of the 18th
century (Montesquieu, Diderot, Voltaire and Rousseau) relates back to some pagan
habits and realities for mystically-romantic and for nostalgically-instinctual reasons
and in which cases it has to do with rudimentary and bloodthirsty uses of reason. As
these thinkers ignited the first precious and powerful sparks in the direction of a
historical recuperation of the phenomenological and aesthetic roots of man, our
material represents an attempt to explain the political and historical phenomenon
which brought back to the table the discussion concerning the cultural origins of
Europe and which resurrected the pagan fascinations and fears within the cultural
imaginary of the coming epochs.
E-mail: ormenyfrancisc@yahoo.com
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
historical situation and to create the conceptual premises for some logically
inevitable changes in society).
Their most important contribution remains perhaps the elaborate way in which
they approached two complex concepts: that of liberation from imperial structures
and a corresponding or subsequent issue of pagan savagery and exuberance. They
addressed these issues from political, sociological, philosophical, historical and
theological angles, while trying to operate directly at the level of the status quo of
the holders of authority and tradition in order to deconstruct the idea of
forbidenness and to reveal the imposture of the power relations on which political
authority was built and through which it was sustained.
What truly unites their writings is perhaps one of the strangest possible
combination: an almost religious feeling of devotion towards reason (and a self-
imposed belief in the power of this reason to create heavenly places here on Earth),
combined atypically with an exuberant (romantic, intoxicating) pagan lust for the
purity of freedom. Their ideas about how freedom should be gained and about the
real meaning that should accompany such a state of mind went hand-in-hand with a
confidence in the transformative power of instincts. Their revolutionary fervour was
savoured by the medium of a deviant socio-melancholy we say deviant in an
epistemological sense, because it was, after all, a politically induced and sustained
pensiveness, one roughly divorced from the classic romantic (politically-
disinterested) definition of melancholy.
Orders were sent to the Roman governors on the banks of the Danube to
make preparations for bringing the Visigoths across the river, and when a
sufficient number of boats had been collected, the great immigration began.
Day after day, from early morning till far into the night, the broad river was
covered with passing vessels, into which the Goths had crowded so eagerly
that many of them sank on the passage, and all on board were lost. At first
the Romans tried to count the people as they landed, but the numbers were
so vast that the attempt had to be given up. (...) If the Goths at first felt any
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thankfulness to the Romans for giving them a safe refuge from their savage
enemies, their gratitude was soon turned into fierce anger when they got to
know that their children were to be taken from them, and sent away into
distant parts of the empire. The reason for this cruel action was that the
Romans thought the Goths would keep quiet when they knew that their
children might be killed if a rebellion took place; but it only filled the minds
of the barbarians with a wild longing for revenge.1
And the Goths took their rebellion so far that they ended up crowning their
kings in Rome itself, and imposing their laws on the whole of Southern Europe.
Having in view this historical aspect, we could say that the concept of Gothic culture
(as part of the 18th century revolutionary spirit that animated the whole Europe) is
built around the idea of rebellion (though, as we shall see, quite often rationalization
itself is also condemned by the conservative factions as being a venal form of
rebellion), or that it contains strong rebellious ideatic stems as inherited from the
Forefathers (the Goths) of this trend in the European history of the empires.
In the historical evolution of Europe, after the fall of the Roman Empire, the
second most important episode of rebellion (from the point of view of its cultural
effects), destructuring from within an otherwise overwhelming imperial structure,
was the French Revolution. And it is no coincidence that Charles de Secondat Baron
de Montesquieu, one of the most modern voices of the 18th century and a major
source of inspiration for all future ways of thinking the sense of history, when
advocating the cause of a massive and reviving re-organization of France, went
back, for reasons of exemplarity, to the episode with the Goths.
In a fascinating chapter from his The Spirit of the Laws, entitled That,
when the peoples of Northern Asia and those of northern Europe conquered, the
effects of their conquests were not the same, Montesquieu proved an unprecedented
power of understanding the dynamics that ensure the functioning of the progressive
engines of history, showing that a savage conquest (be it in the form of a rebellion
from within an empire or of an outer invasion of an imperial domain) as such does
not and cannot exists, that it can only be culturally acknowledged if placed on an
incisive vector by means of a political determination.
Different political determinations establish different types of vectors of
infiltration. In this respect Montesquieu compares the Asian conquests with those of
the Vikings, claiming that when the invaders seize a structure as slaves, they only
install there a new type of slavery (basically perpetuating and even aggrandizing or
turning truly malignant their social oppressive cell), while, on the contrary, when
they seize it as free men, they create the very conditions for equality of chances and
for progressive meritocratic development. And, according to Montesquieu, the
Goths knew about the Vikings and their ways and, inside the Roman imperial
space2, they turned the Nordic model into a law of being and, mostly, into a law of
becoming of the conscious and entrepreneurial human subject:
1
Henry Bradley, The Goths From The Earliest Times To The End Of The Gothic Dominion
In Spain (Whitefish - Montana: Kessinger Publishing , 2005), 6667.
2
It is well known that by the time the Vikings (in their strong identitary countenance and
skillful enterprises) entered into the Mediterranean, what was left of the Roman Empire hired
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And it is not at all accidentally that in other sections of his book Montesquieu insists
as well on the Gothic model of dismantling the Roman political organization and of
slowly creating social equilibrium and equal opportunities within the Great Empire:
The Goths who conquered Spain scattered throughout the country and soon
were very weak. They made three noteworthy regulations: they abolished
them as mercenaries and there was no need for any kind of savage dissension between the
two civilizations. Here, the most significant case remains perhaps that of the Hagia Sophia
building in Istanbul, Turkey. A former Orthodox patriarchal basilica, later a mosque, and
now a museum, Hagia Sophia contains on its marble parapets a series of runic inscriptions,
most probably engraved there by such Viking mercenaries serving the Eastern Roman
Empire. The most famous such inscription is the one that refers to a Norse character called
Halfdan. Yet, apart from the name itself it remains pretty illegible and open to speculations.
According to Elisabeth Svrdstrm (Runorna i Hagia Sofia, Fornvnnen 65 [1970], 247
49) it seems to say something that could equal our modern formula Halfdan was here. We
could conclude that such peripheral historical contingencies remain mere episodes of
mercenary attachment between the Romans and the Vikings, a relation that would pretty
much fit the contemporary American label of soldier of fortune if we are to consider both
the personal gain and love of adventure that motivated the alliance.
1
Charles Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, Editors and Translators: Anne M. Cohler,
Basia Carolyn Miller, Harold Samuel Stone (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1989), 282283.
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the former custom that prohibited them from allying themselves with the
Romans through marriage, they established that all those freed from the fisc
would go to war on pain of being reduced to servitude; they ordered that
each Goth would lead to war and arm a tenth of his slaves. This number was
not very large by comparison with the number who remained. In addition,
these slaves led to war by their master did not make up a separate body; they
were in the army and remained, so to speak, in the family.1
We can see that Montesquieu praises the pagan initiative and independent
entrepreneurial spirit,2 while attributing the human savagery to former slaves who
cant see beyond their social conditioning and who, when they get to be kings and
other types of rulers, by virtue of the most brute inertias of life, keep on perpetuating
and reinventing the severe harm that was previously inflicted on them. A pagan in a
state of nature, according to him, is always an inventor, an adventurer, a conqueror
and even a civilizer.
3. Diderot s resurrected use of the human entrails as tool for hanging and as
chain of historical consequences
Denis Diderot remains perhaps the most fascinating and viscerally-authentic case of
paganism though one never noticed as such, because of the heavy accent placed by
his exegetes on his encyclopaedic spirit and on his liberal use of rationalism.
His discourse from his extremely complex lifework entitled Encyclopdie
(Encyclopedia) mostly challenged the ecclesiastical institution and its influence upon
other social and political forms of organization, identifying as the heart of the problem
of the various forms of social slavery the doctrine that stated the so called divine
right of a prince to hold power over others (as a true reflection of Gods will).
He advocated a religion and a political choice based on reason (a) and on
personal freedoms and initiatives (b):
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As it can be observed from the lines above, with Diderot it begins the hectic practice
of reason, in an attempt to launch a web of general influence in this direction. Yet
Diderot did not overstep the functions or the roles of processes of rationalization,
maintaining himself in a constant liberal stream of consciousness, one which
honours him even today among the free-thinkers.
His preference for a personal and domestic philosophy places him among
the pioneering voices (advocates) of a return to a primordial (archaic) form of reason
and of self-determination, controversially labelled later as state of nature. As it can
be seen in the quotation above, like the most modern pagan thinkers and artists, he
encourages a return to a more intense and endurant form of wisdom and of
emotionality, one better connected to the a-temporal essentials and constants of
human existence, and also one that has always truly sustained all continuities and
reliable precious persistencies amidst the fluxes and refluxes of human historical
intentionalities (see in the above quotation the passages where he states that man
should go back to the most clear and general principles, and that he should know
rather than (...) teach the truth).
A fascinating chapter within his writings remains his defence of the pagan
virtues of the Roman god Aius Locutius, where he denounces the vulgar and
aggressively-irreverent agitators and critics of other peoples faith and sacred inner
areas. Diderot proposes a model within which reason, far from undermining
anything, strengthens and sustains the religious feeling (those who really think
know what to believe) and makes true believers (complex believers, not mere
followers) immune to cheap attacks. We could say that Diderot shyly offers the
ancient pagan society as model of tolerance:
1
Diderot, The Encyclopedia: Selections, 86.
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If we analyze deeper the meaning of this passage, we see that what Diderot really
emphasizes is the ancient peoples capacity to erect inside themselves temples of
humane virtues and of gratitude towards the benevolent superior forms of energy,
inner buildings which make them self-confident, strong and reliable people. As such,
they did not react in aggression to Cideros and to other philosophers misplaced
criticism, as they were secure enough in their faith and in their reason a two-pan
balance which functioned in a decent way in the epoch and which caused no need
for religious wars.
But is this rather pastoral and pleasantly (elegantly)-entrepreneurial
resurrected old wisdom the real manifestation of Diderots pagan appetite? Or it is
but the sociably-acceptable face of Janus that of the appeased, settled and ripened
melancholies?
In order to answer this double-question one should remember that, at
Diderot, a humane religiousness is possible only in the context of a total extraction
of the religious feeling from the grasp of both the state apparatus and the church an
idea illustrated by the French thinker in a radical and powerful language which,
consciously or subconsciously, goes back to the savage (and also somehow
superstitious) imaginary of the old tribes:
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the
last priest.
We think that it is here where Diderots real and pungent paganism reveals
itself. The sentence was read in a variety of classic cultural codes (always within the
acknowledged systemic webs of references) by sociologists, philosophers and
political theorists but never taken for an instinctively incisive pagan statement, one
with strong historical references in what concerns the physical ritualistic aspects
invoked by the author.
1
Ibid., 5758.
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3.1. The classic interpretations of Diderots dream of kings strangled with the
entrails of priests
The tradition of liberalism assumed Diderots weird statement as a radical but
strongly metaphoric (endowed with an intense symbolism) expression of our desire
to gain a Free Will, one that should operate beyond the grasp of the morally-biased
authorities (the state institutions and the Church). We are talking here about a will
resulting from a genuinely independent thinking style, one based on a creative
semantics and, in our vision, one bordering on Karl Mannheims free-floating social
intelligentsia or socially unattached intelligentsia.1
The anarchists still use it as a manifesto for the musealization of the places of
worship and governance and for the elimination of the power seekers from the
public scene (because absolute power corrupts absolutely); while the atheists see
in such a line an opportunity for their deconstructionist and, in most of the cases,
left-wing propaganda (though the statement was written during the Enlightenment as
a general warning against the oppressive politicized forms of social cohesion).
Yet the most credible interpretation circulating today through the agency of the
discourses of the universities is the one belonging to the sphere of political
philosophy one which claims that what Diderot actually wanted to stress when
uttering this controversial statement, was an extremely acute need to separate the
government from the Church. Regarded as radicalization of the necessity to keep the
religious and the civic-minded individuals away from each-others influence and to
1
The idea as such is perfectly explained by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann in their The
Social Construction of Reality, as a way of transcending ones social position, class-interests
and cultural conditioning through an accumulation of perspectives on the same subject an
increase in information, in concepts, in representations and in ideas which helps the object of
study become clearer, or reveal itself as an active transformer and adapter within the field of
research known as the sociology of knowledge. Such clarity leads to concrete
understandings based on relationism and not on relativism or isolationism: With the general
concept of ideology the level of the sociology of knowledge is reached the understanding
that no human though () is immune to the ideologizing influences of its social context. By
this expansion of the theory of ideology Mannheim sought to abstract its central problem
from the context of political usage, and to treat it as a general problem of epistemology and
historical sociology. () He coined the term relationism (in contradistinction to
relativism) to denote the epistemological perspective of his sociology of knowledge not a
capitulation of thought before the socio-historical relativities, but a sober recognition that
knowledge must always be knowledge from a certain position. () Be this as it may,
Mannheim believed that ideologizing influences, while they could not be eradicated
completely, could be mitigated by the systematic analysis of as many as possible of the
varying socially grounded positions. In other words, the object of thought becomes
progressively clearer with this accumulation of different perspectives on it. This is to be the
task of the sociology of knowledge, which thus is to become an important aid in the quest for
any correct understanding of human events. Mannheim believed that different social groups
vary greatly in their capacity thus to transcend their own narrow position. He placed his
major hope in the socially unattached intelligentsia (freischwebende Intelligenz, a term
derived from Alfred Weber), a sort of interstitial stratum that he believed to be relatively free
of class interests. Peter L. Berger, Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality:
A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Doubleday, 1966), 10.
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prevent an apocalyptic fusion between their spirits poisoned with sick devotions,
such a declaration signals the main obsession of the late 18th century European
societies and their understanding of the freeing of the ways to progress in other
words, a premonition1 that managed to materialize itself in an overwhelming
zeitgeist of both the 18th century and of the centuries to come.
3.2. The literal pagan interpretations of Diderots dream of kings strangled with the
entrails of priests
Yet, in the logic of our present study, we will regard all these interpretations and
appropriations of Diderots controversial words about priests, kings and entrails as
obsolete and as purely philosophical and aesthetical decipherments. In our view, all
the exegetic directions mentioned previously interpreted Diderots statement
metaphorically, allegorically and in any possible way that allows one to avoid
crossing the ts and dotting the is, that is, to regard the words for what they really
(actually) say: the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. This
line advocates and resurrects an old pagan ritualistic use of the entrails: making the
most of their elasticity and endurance when used as ropes.
And historians especially historians of religion such as Mircea Eliade
have documented the use of animal and human intestines as ropes as early as the
times of the Roman Empire, from the first to the fourth centuries AD, within what
remained known until today as the Roman Mithraism a mystery religion
(Mithraic Mysteries) tributary to Persian or Zoroastrian sources (inspired from the
cult of an Old Persian god Mithra who was always represented as a predatory force
renowned for his act of bull-slaying [tauroctony] as a forced and bloodily-
invigorating forging of human life against the overwhelming background made of
grandiose primordial presences [symbolized through the fierce image of the bull]).
We are discussing here the case of the Roman Mithraism as opposed to
Christianity because, as an ultimately elitist and military cult, this religion is
regarded by the researchers of the diachronic evolutions of cultures as the strongest
historical pagan alternative to Christianity: When the Mysteries of the Mithra are
discussed, it appears inevitable to quote Ernest Renans famous sentence: If
Christianity had been halted in its growth by some mortal illness, the world would
have been Mithraist(Marc Aurele, p. 579).2
The community of the mystai would use entrails as an important ritualistic
piece at the very (triumphant) end of their sophisticated trail of symbolic acts: they
used chicken-intestines whose role was to both reflect the captivity and the
disorientation of the neophyte and to provide the opportunity for the apparition of a
redeemer in the form of a liberator. What resulted at the end of a tumultuous
symbolic display of ravenous energies awaiting and struggling to embody
1
We call it premonition when relating it to the inseparability that still exists in the Muslim
between state and church world with dreadful consequences.
2
Mircea Eliade, History of Religious Ideas, Volume 2: From Gautama Buddha to the
Triumph of Christianity, translated by Willard R. Trask (Chicago and London: The
University of Chicago Press, 1985), 326.
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themselves and to reach a historical form of selfness was order, an order symbolized
through the image of the soldier and of the lion that conquers the previous chaos:
The entrails symbolize and condense within these rituals the whole history of mans
previous incapacity to disrupt his flesh (and his will and his spirit) from the
apocalyptically-bulging protoplasmic and proto-historical sarcoid mass of the all-
absorbing chaos (a sinisterly placentary threatening presence). Their endurance and
elasticity as well as their dramatically-reversed biological presence constitute
aspects that turned them into a total symbol of the acts of seizing, of immobilizing
and of devouring. A rope made of intestines becomes a devastating image of the
defeat (in the case of the victim) and an over-visceral allegory of engulfing and of
conquering through constriction (in the case of the victor): it is as if the intestines
acquired a life of their own, because they didnt want to wait for the mouth and for
the other organs to provide them with food. To this end they got out of the body and
assumed the role of an attacking snake (or of the human hand, for that matter).
1
Eliade, History of Religious Ideas, Volume 2: From Gautama Buddha to the Triumph of
Christianity, 324325.
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In the following centuries it was on the Germanic and Baltic mystical lands
that the ritual got re-actualized but also drastically radicalized. According to the
historians Jacob Grimm and Johannes Voigt, the pagans in these parts of Europe no
longer used intestines of chickens but human entrails: they punished their
adversaries by using the victims own intestines, after disembowelment, as rope with
which he/she was woodened into a tree.
It is this real use of human intestines that echoes in Diderots words and
resurrected pagan imaginary:
From the 15th century, a number of ordinances are retained that threaten
with a terrible punishment for those who stripped off the bark of a standing
tree in the common woods. A typical wording is found in the 1401
ordinance from Oberursel1:
und wo der begriffen wird, der einen stehenden baum schlet, dem wre
gnad ntzer dan recht u. wann man deme sol recht thun, soll man ihm seinen
nabel bei seinem bauch aufschneiden u. ein darm daraus thun, denselbigen
nageln an den stamm u. mit der person herumgehen, so ,lang er ein darm in
seinem leib hat [and whoever is caught stripping off a standing tree, mercy
would have been more benificial to him than the law is; for when law is to
be fulfilled, then one is to cut up his stomach at the navel, and pull out a
length of the gut. The gut is to be nailed to the tree, and one is to keep going
around that tree with the person, so long as he still has any part of the gut
left in his body]
Jacob Grimm observes, that no actual case where this punishment
was carried out has been found in records from that time period (15 th
century). However, some 300500 years earlier, the Western Slavic tribes
like the Wends are said to have revenged themselves upon Christians in this
way, by binding the guts to an erect pole, and driving them around until the
person was fully eviscerated.2 In the 13th century, members of the now
extinct Baltic ethnic group of Old Prussians in one of the battles against the
Teutonic Knights, are said to have captured one such knight in 1248, and
made to undergo this punishment.31
1
Wikipedias reference: For a number of such ordinances, see Grimm, Jacob (1854).
Deutsche Rechtsalterthmer. Gttingen: Dieterich. pp. 51920. Retrieved 2013-03-13.
2
Wikipedias reference: i) General comment, with connotations of this being a type of
human sacrifice Hbner, Johann (1703). Kurtze Fragen aus der politischen Historia, volume
6. Gleditsch. p. 500. Retrieved 2013-03-13., ii) 8th century description from 77273, Caesar,
Aquilin Julius (1786). Beschreibung des Herzogthum Steyermarks, Volume 1. Grz:
Zaunrith. pp. 8889. Retrieved 2013-03-13., iii) Danish 1096 retaliation on Wends, by like
execution method, Sell, Johann Jakob (1819). Geschichte des Herzogthums Pommern,
volume 1. Berlin: Flittner. pp. 8889. Retrieved 2013-03-13., iv) 1131 pagan attacks on
Christians by Wends, Rper, Friedrich L. (1808). Geschichte und Anekdoten von Dobberan
in Mecklenburg. Dobberan: Self-published. pp. 11113. Retrieved 2013-03-13.
3
Wikipedias reference: Voigt, Johannes (1827). Geschichte Preussens: Von den altesten
Zeiten bis zum Untergange der Herrschaft des Deutschen Ordens. Die Zeit von der Ankunft
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des Ordens bis zum Frieden 1249, Volume 2. Knigsberg: Borntrger. pp. 613614.
Retrieved 2013-03-13.
1
Wikipedias page for Disembowelment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disembowelment
(accessed September 7th 2013).
2
Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, The Nature of Religion, Translated by Willard
R. Trask (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1959), 169.
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In the logic of our study here, we could say that, when projected into the
English intellectual environment, Voltaire represented not the threat of a resurrected
paganism, but the very opposite phenomenon the extreme intensification of reason
and of calculations that threatens to erase the sacred territories of imagination and to
replace them with patterns and matrixes of automatons. Because of this aspect he
even typifies the triggering element of a desperately-recuperatory pagan (archaic,
mystic) instinct in the British Gothic art. English Gothicism resurrected pagan
frantic, undomesticated and spellful contexts, images, intuitions and creatures
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especially when it saw the private and collective ancestral sacred memories of
modern individuals (their immemorial hopes and fantasies and their fragile and
unconfessed expectancies) invaded and attacked by hungry, heedless and, we could
say, spoiled rationalists.1 Voltaire was one of them and he began showing a
discourteous disdain (if we are to attempt a poetic emphasis here) and abhorrence
explicitly (with a special dedication in modern ironic terms) for the pagan
historical roots of mysticism and fancy, that is, for the pagans ways of worshiping
ardently their gods and of gaining unsuspected strengths from such fusions.
This kind of an abstract intellectual rejection was stemming, in his case, as it
was normal, from an overwhelming accent placed on the glamorization of reason
and of heavy criticism (ignoring the limit beyond which they become a form of
denigration).
Voltaire speaks of faith (in the article using the word as its very title
[Faith] from his Philosophical Dictionary) in terms of a depletion of the capacity
to reason and to see the broader ontological perspective; in terms of intellectual
laziness or of aristocratic spiritual convenience (conservatism at best); and maybe
even in terms of some inherent limits that unimaginative and unambitious people
carry within and whose existence they instinctively deny. According to Voltaire,
such denials are possible only by labelling such limits not for what they really are
but for what their believers hope them to be: mystery as the very proof of the living
possibility of the impossible; magic as the confirmation that it is not we that bear the
responsibility and the necessary vision for our lives but another entity; omnipresence
and ubiquity as calming (soothing) marks of the conceivability of an overprotective
quality of energy unfolding itself all over us:
1
English Gothic during the eighteenth century meant a revival of imagination in an era that
privileged rationality James Watt, Contesting the Gothic. Fiction, Genre and Cultural
Conflict, 17641832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 1.
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mind, that these words mean no more than, I respect these mysteries; I
submit myself to those who announce them.1
It is not hard to anticipate that the natural development of such a way of thinking
is to label the true believer as the truest ignorant and to regard such ignorance as the
fertile soil on which the tyranny of kings blossoms into crude and carnivorous
flowers. In Voltaires vision, enslavement is achieved and effected through the
cultivation of ignorance; an ignorance which he sees as having its roots in the old
pagan world where people would practice rituals of worshipping (idolatrizing)
wooden, stone or metal idols (sculptured or painted representations):
As for polytheism, good sense will inform you that once there were men,
which is to say weak animals, capable of reason, subject to all sorts of
accidents, to illness and to death, these men felt their weakness and their
dependence; they readily recognized that there is something more powerful
than them. They felt a force in the earth that produces their food; one in the
air that often destroys it; one in the fire that consumes and in the water that
submerges. What more natural in ignorant men than to imagine beings who
preside over these elements! What more natural than to revere the invisible
force that made the sun and the stars to shine in their eyes? And as soon as
one wished to form an idea of these powers superior to man, what more
natural again than to configure them in some sensible manner?2
This passage is part of a famous article entitled Idol, Idolator, Idolatry, conceived
for and published in Diderots Encyclopedia. As if anticipating Edmund Husserls
notion of natural attitude, Voltaire is among the first and rare thinkers of past
centuries to interpret ignorance as falling into a natural state (the unproblematic
condition of beasts [of burden]). The entire article constitutes an unprecedented
diatribe against, we could say in modern terms, the (desperate) absolutization of
otherness through objects of cult. If the pagans regarded their gods as absolute
others, as ultimate carriers of promises, Voltaire attempts to defuse such tense (and
dense) adhesions by introducing a principle of intellectual relativity as opposed to
the brute (natural) abandonment at the mercy of chance and of fascination:
But what precise notion did the ancient nations have about all these
simulacra? What virtue, what power was attributed to them? Was it believed
that the gods descended from heaven in order to come hide themselves in
these statues? Or that they (the gods) communicated to them (the statues)
some portion of the divine spirit? Or that they did not transfer to them
1
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/v/voltaire/dictionary/chapter
196.html, (accessed April 23rd, 2013)
2
Voltaire, Franois-Marie Arouet de. Idol, Idolator, Idolatry. The Encyclopedia of Diderot
& d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Erik Liddell. Ann Arbor:
MPublishing, University of Michigan Library, 2006. Taken from http://hdl.handle.net/
2027/spo.did2222.0000.523 (accessedApril 23rd , 2013)
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anything at all? On this, people have so far written very little of use; it is
clear that each man judges of them according to his degree of reason, or
credulity, or fanaticism. It is evident that the priests attach the greatest
divinity to their statues, in order to attract more offerings; it is known that
the Philosophers detested these superstitions; that the warriors mocked them;
that the magistrates tolerated them, and that the people, absurd as ever, did
not know what it was doing: such, in a few words, is the history of all the
nations to whom God did not make himself known.1
With Voltaire, the French philosophy enters a first major process of relativization,
one which makes its pioneering attempts to replace eternal truths with temporary
truths, and the fascination with the unexpected paths with the contentment with the
logical units of measurement of possibilities.
Voltaire accused the pagans of being mindless worshipers of objects
(personifying various idols or gods) and, in order to sustain his idea, he provides his
readers with two famous contrastive examples from history - a positive one from
the Roman world (where, according to him, the gods were regarded as being present
first of all in the actions of men), and a negative one from the very building of Hagia
Sophia (a case discussed previously in this study and a site which remains truly
fascinating because it witnessed and withstood an almost entire spectrum of
transformations of the religious thought and behaviour):
When the Roman and Carthaginian captains sealed a treaty, they called all
the gods to witness. It is in their presence, they said, that we shall swear
peace. Now the statues of these gods, of which the number was very long,
were not in the generals tent. They regarded the gods as present in the
actions of men, as witnesses, as judges, and it was assuredly not the
simulacrum which constituted divinity. (...) it is an abuse of terms to call
idolaters the peoples who rendered worship to the sun and stars. These
nations did not long have simulacra or temples; if they were deceived, it was
in rendering to the stars what they owed to the creator of the stars.2
Since men very rarely have precise ideas, and still less do they express
them in precise words and without equivocation, we have called the
Gentiles, and above all the Polytheists, by the name idolaters. (...) Genghis
Khan among the Tartars was not an idolater, and had no simulacra; the
Muslims who fill Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Persia, India and Africa call
the Christians idolaters, giaour, because they believe that the Christians
render worship to images. They broke all the statues that found in
Constantinople in Hagia Sophia, in the church of the holy Apostles and in
the others which they converted into mosques.3
1
Voltaire, Franois-Marie Arouet de. Idol, Idolator, Idolatry http://hdl.handle.net/ 2027/
spo.did2222.0000.523 (accessed April 24th , 2013)
2
Ibid.
3
Ibid.
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It is pretty hard to understand the essence of Voltaires war against carved, melted or
sculptured idols, in the context where his religious position remains unclear and so
does his message in this regard. Not being able to assign his ideas to a recognizable
spiritual form of whatever kind, nor to a sacred or at least artistic vision, we can only
regard them as part of an attempt to replace religion with logic or to turn logic and
scepticism into a religion for the otherwise irreligious ones (or, better said, into the
only possible form of fidelity and devotion for the infidels and for the undevout
[profane] ones by nature). By calling idolatry deeply offensive, Voltaire wrongly
generalizes and, with a rational (this time) fanaticism he unsustainably considers
that idolatry can bring no helpful insight, that it can arouse no true passion and no
true connection, that it creates only utopian and improbable visions disrupted from
the real life, together with an exacerbated symbolism:
It appears that there has never been any people on the earth who took for
themselves the name of idolater. This word is an insult that the Gentiles, the
Polytheists seemed to deserve; but it is certain that if one had asked at the
senate of Rome, at the areopagus of Athens, at the court of the kings of
Persia, Are you idolaters? they would hardly have understood the question.
No one would have replied, We worship images, idols. One finds the
words, idolater, idolatry, neither in Homer, nor in Hesiod, nor in Herodotus,
nor in any religious author of the Gentiles. There has never been any edict,
any law which commanded that people should worship idols, that they
should serve them as gods, that they should believe them gods.1
For sure, reason and passion are not mutually exclusive, nor are science and religion
(as the American pragmatists had clearly showed it in the 19th century). Both reason
and religious passion should be used and understood so as not to block initiatives,
not to obstruct the revelation of a sense of the Self, or to generate distrust for
anything outside the sphere of the object of worship, or, in the other cases, outside
the sphere of the (explicit) possibility of making sense of a phenomenon. In other
words, the impossibility of something should be regarded as a viable
phenomenological condition in the construction of meaning. Because if it is used
inadequately, it creates bad self-presentations. Nevertheless, objects, when
approached with the right spirit and with a warm and cosy-enough obsession, can
reveal themselves as important magnetic junctures and as synthetic crystals of the
Self, in both its physical and metaphysical coordinates (trails of progressive and
regressive [with the sense of recuperatory] unfoldings).
We consider Voltaire an incomplete and still confuse exercise into both the spirit of
reason and the reason of the spirit and we use Husserls theories about intentional
1
Ibid.
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and true objects in order to try to correct Voltaires prejudiced perception of special
(sacred) objects through an ill-natured use of reason.
Husserls discussion in this respect revolves around the dichotomy of the
objectless ideas (mere fictions here the intention lacks an external object) and
the ideal objects (concrete [not fictitious] numbers, qualities and principles).
A merely intentional object is for Husserl an objectless idea and the
analogue of an intention that lacks its intended object. According to Husserl, the
reality of an object is not something exhaustible by the brute (physical) existence
(presence) of that object. On the contrary we could claim by using a modern
terminology the genetic code, the design or the matrix of an object, the
sacredness of its possibility (the mother-emotion and state-of-mind that stands
behind all human endeavours across histories) is to be found first and foremost in
our intentions. The presence of an object in our intentions gives the real quality to
the human project, and not the physical or brute presence of an object into our
environment because when still in our intentions, that object embodies an
infinite potential and a total presence of energy:
Moreover, we could try to radicalize Husserls idea and claim that the purity of our
intentions (and the fascinating transformative force of the energies therein) is given by
the lack of the object in our effective reality in which case the physical absence of an
object becomes a constitutive absence, because that absence triggers a fabulous
spectrum of possibilities or, to put it otherwise, it releases the object back into its pure
godly (divine) possibility (Husserls merely intentional object reassumed by the
Polish phenomenologist Roman Ingarden as a purely intentional object). Following
this logic, we could say that the physical presence of the object impurifies the
intention and that it chases away the divine and the mesmerizing spirit of an object.
Since we do not live in a perfect reality, no intention can be said to relate
perfectly to its object, even when that object has a definite physical reality. In other
words the effective and the affective qualities of the objects surrounding us remain
peculiar to the intention as such as a transformative divine essence of man rather
than derived from the relation existing between an object and its intention
1
Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, Volume II. Translated by J.N. Findlay (London
and New York: Routledge, 2001), 127.
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warmth and cosiness that constituted the heart of the previous pagan sweet
superstitions, shiverings and auroral devotions all of them derived from the unique
details of the landscape, and from the nature of the human and natural resources.
Here we will assume Rousseaus lines of reasoning inside Timothy OHagans grid
of interpretation:
1
Timothy O'Hagan, Rousseau, (The Arguments of the Philosophers, edited by Ted Honderich)
(London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 153154.
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1
We are talking here about one of the two main types of religion which he advances, namely
the religion of man, a subject on which we will insist later on.
2
O'Hagan, Rousseau, 153.
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acutely impregnated with the old pagan integrated vision. Having to solve this
problem of legitimation and, after all, of profit and of influence sharing disturbing
modern societies, the authorities eventually found a solution and invented the so
called religion of the citizen, a religion which combines aspects of faith with
political interests and which sits at the basis of the historically fatal artificial fusion
between the Christian Church and the political institutions of the state a fusion
which later (in the 19th and 20th centuries) became both the symbol of social
cohesion, identification and acknowledgement and the obsession of the
philosophical critical attacks, the most prominent voices being those of Friedrich
Nietzsche and of Michail Bakunin.
This assimilative use of religion for social and political purposes found its
prototype, as Frank Pagano observes when analyzing the previous case of
Montesquieu, in the Roman Empires need to extend its influence over vast
geographical areas containing an otherwise irreconcilable diversity of races and
spiritual visions and needs:
Mutually exclusive, the two types of religion symbolize in Rousseaus logic the very
split between the pagan and pre-pagan savage worlds of the Self and the socially
pre-fabricated influence and constellations of interests of modern Christianity.
From now on, the core of the problem is no longer the savage purity and
beauty of the religious feeling and of its authenticity as a possible mirror of a personal
or of a collective identity, but the inadmissible and the horrid (extremely disagreeable
and offensive) intrusion of politics into the sacred places and palaces of the Self
places and palaces which, Rousseau seems to suggest (though he officially speaks in
an almost politically correct manner of a balanced argumentation ), deserve being
defended with an equally savage and justified instinct of self-preservation:
1
Frank N. Pagano (St. Johns College Santa Fe, NM), Greek Pettiness in Montesquieus
Considerations of the Grandeur of the Romans. P.6. Material prepared for delivery at the
2005 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, September 1September
4, 2005 Copyright by the American Political Science Association. Available on-line at
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/3/9/7/6/pages39762/p397
62-1.php, (accessed September 4th 2013)
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of the citizen. The former, without Temples, altars or rites, limited to the
purely internal worship of the Supreme God and to the eternal duties of
morality, is the pure and simple Religion of the Gospel, or true Theism. The
latter, inscribed within a single country, gives it its Gods, its tutelary
Patrons. It has its dogmas, its rites and its external form of worship
prescribed by the laws; outside the single Nation that follows it, everything
is considered infidel, foreign, barbarous; it extends the duties and rights of
man as far as its altars (SC IV.8. 464/219)
The religion of the citizens is here indistinguishable from the polytheistic
cults described in the historical sketch. The religion of man, in contrast, is an
ideal type, supposedly extracted from the Gospel, a combination of
monotheism and moral duty. () Rousseau then outlines the positive and
negative features of the two main types. From this it emerges that each is the
precise inverse of the other. The religion of the citizen:
is good in that it unites divine worship with love of the laws, and in making
the homeland the object of citizens adoration, it teaches them that to serve
the State is to serve its tutelary God But it is bad in that, being founded on
error and lies, it deceives men, makes them credulous and superstitious, and
drowns true worship of the divinity in vain ceremonial. It is bad too when it
becomes exclusive and tyrannical and makes a people bloody and
intolerant (SC IV.8.464-5/219-20)
() the religion of man () Its disadvantage is that it: having no particular
relation to the body politic, leaves the laws with only their intrinsic force
without making any addition to it; and so one of the great bonds which can
unite a particular society remains without effect. Even worse, far from
attaching the hearts of the Citizens to the State, it detaches them from all
earthly things: I know of nothing more contrary to the social spirit. (SC
IV.8.465/220)1
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from behind all his analytic lines, and so does a deep sense of revolt against the
politicized, abusive and fake modern world.
The latter is a feeling that is a full part of Janus double face the Roman
god of new beginnings and impossible transitions and, as such, it ultimately
redefines itself in the form of a need to return to basics of naturalism.
Later exegetical echoes, such as the one represented by Frank N. Paganos
analysis on Montesquieu, redefined Rousseaus dichotomy of the religion of the
citizen and the religion of man as a dichotomy of the political religion and poetical
religion. Pagano speaks about religions conceived so as to serve the state, and about
states conceived so as to serve religious purposes. The Roman paganism was such a
religion constructed around the objectives of the state (a political religion) and it
rightly appeared to the modern progressive thinkers of the 18th century as a ridiculous
(because painfully obvious) artefact (Rousseaus religion of the citizen).
The mistake, however, of Voltaire and of other similar voices was to
generalize this pattern and to apply it to all forms of religious feeling or, to put it
otherwise, to filter all religious experience through the Roman (politically-biased)
model within which religious devotion was either a case of fancy extravagance or one
of military mystic devotion (we could say, the historical cornerstone of the future cult
of heroes so venomously implemented by the Nazi regime in 20th century Europe).
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heard and felt. The Romans easily believed in the gods and heroes because the
Roman way of life and its emphasis on exercise made Romes citizen-soldiers
feel strong. The heroes were merely stronger extensions of Roman soldiers.
Consonant with their belief in the feeling of their own strength was the
punishment of soldiers with blood-letting. They were made to feel weak in their
bodies and in consequence they felt diminished in spirit. Romans of all classes,
whether commoners or nobles, believed in the truth of spectacles.1
*
Such visions and theories later agglutinated into a solid and nucleic concept within
the political philosophy, the concept of the state of nature one which finds in
Montesquieu, in Diderot and mostly in Rousseau its founding fathers; and one which
was a profound influence for all subsequent nostalgic, repressed or feared pagan
apparitions in arts (Gothic literature especially).
The dichotomy between the patriarchal autarkic households (founded on
personal liberties and initiatives) and the overwhelming influence of the state
authority over the lives of citizens (constant control and external demand legitimized
with arguments that refer to the wellbeing of the community and to the continuity
through stability of the state or of the city-structures) is (as it has always been)
surpassable at the level of the religious feeling.
As an emotional supra-solicitation of mans potential and as an
overwhelming trans-contextual stream of motivation religion has always had
access to man sacred crystals or, otherwise said, it has always been able to reveal
mans full spectrum of identitary planar faces and, most of all, to release the
unknown and unapproachable essences that unite such faces into consistent, clear,
transparent and impenetrable structures of the Self (crystals), structures
encapsulating both the urges and the transforming visions into harmonious formulas.
1
Pagano, Greek Pettiness in Montesquieus Considerations of the Grandeur of the Romans, 7.
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At the same time it is very important the remark according to which, the
present essay, although it broadcasts and conveys classical themes of the 18th century
philosophy, it does so more in virtue of some aesthetic and neo-phenomenologically-
poetic purposes than in virtues of some conceptually-analytic or cognitively-
anaclitic ones. It uses conceptual organizations and conceptual juxtapositions and
connections only as frames of reference, as foundations and as mechanical flanges for
the integrated pressure-transmission of some more esoteric designs; of some quasi-
transcendental corpuses made of streamy manifestations of the primal focuses of
consciousnesses that, by the pure grace of their inevitably primitive axial nature,
outlive and outshine the cultural frames and that, as such, do not really survive in their
natural form except in the darkest and most peripheral and unsuspected (as well as
uncontrollable) corners of the discourses and, especially in-between their main lines
(inside our essay, this is the case of our ultra-daring interpretation of Diderots vision
of a last king strangled with the entrails of a last priest).
These strayed ardours of the dangerously-unexplored inner powers haunt, hunt
and corner the reason from everywhere, as shadows from Hell, but, interestingly, they
constitute simultaneously the terrifying beauty of the rhythm of poetry (but, beware!,
not of the poetries of the rhythm) actually living in and from the involuntary visceral
violences, exacerbations and enthusiasms of formulations (of expressions).
In this way, the fact that in some cases we insist more on one philosopher
while in other cases we use a significantly diminished accentuation, is not due to a
superficiality of the approach and of the research behind it, but to the fact that
from Diderot, for example we were interested to take into account only some very
isolated aspects from the thinkers work and to introduce them on the orbit of a new
course of thought (a way of thinking that almost seeds a thirst for a philosophical
revisionism), and, ultimately, of feeling: one strongly personalized and vibrant at the
very level of (or consonant with) the dangerous and downright toxic veins of the
text. Far from insignificant is in here the special ideational delta which is created in
the whirlings and in the maelstroms of the deconstructions made not in/with the
letter but in/with the spirit of postmodernism: it is the case of an otherwise very
interesting and important place from the perspective of the cultural influence, and
our essay tries to use its themes in order to highlight once more the existence of a
special place of assimilation within the contemporary cultural ethos: the trans-
textuality where the esoteric melts into the exoteric: lets think for example how
would a listener of the Death-metal musical current (more precisely of the band
Cannibal Corpse) read Diderots phrase about entrails used for strangling, and what
would it say about the French thinker a possible/eventual Proustian jouissance of
this latter one (at the hearing of the words of the maestro of the Encyclopedia about
commanding figures being strangled with entrails), a jouissance of that precise type
described by Proust: Every reader finds himself. The writers work is merely a
kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what,
without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.(Marcel Proust)1
1
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/246311-every-reader-finds-himself-the-writer-s-work-
is-merely-a, (accessed March 25th , 2014)
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Our essay attempts, thus, to open a line of thought which does not
particularly want to do justice to the historical character which is Diderot, but
rather to read between the lines and even in the subconscious of the author and of his
historical epoch (one in which the enthusiasm of the change skidded voraciously and
uninhibited in any way, un-castrated, un-fragmented and culturally un-syncopated).
We preferred this diachronically unusual approach, deconstructivist in an a-
historical and poetically-visceral sense, in order to be able to realize or at least to
localize that which has not been read until now in the work of the previously
mentioned thinkers although, this something clearly existed there as some
impassible and implacably-defiant exclamation marks at the address of cultures
heavy and deafening blankets: the slime of culture that Heidegger spoke about,
seeing it as clouding, as darkening (blackening with a cold-acre disheartening and
very bad-omened darkness) and as drowning with mud and silt the capture-pipes and
the glades of the Being.
We preferred the present approach being motivated precisely by the weight
with which the mantras (the heavy instruments of thought) of the canonical
cultures press on the revealing feelings, but also on the resentments (re-sentiments)
of the possibilizing inconsistencies1 (where the re- is the re- of the Husserlian
phenomenological reduction, of the reinvention and of re-actualization of the self in
and from its very deadly/fatal crevices [inconsistencies]).
Therefore, our essay is a direct expression, precisely because it is honestly
and sincerely bricolated (from where the impression of an article being turned into a
hazy [freestyled] enumeration of different ideas), of the mystico-cynical and
enterprisingly/craftily-Machiavellian faith according to which the author gets to be
better read in his small slips than in his big themes the much ovated big themes
being, after all, but those (tired and expired avant- and devant-la-lettre) closely-
studied exercises in concatenations (restoring adhesion, we may say, to the old and
strongly worn down/deteriorated icons, with the purpose of the rehabilitation of the
monumentality through which these prefabrications dominate and possess the social
landscapes) on those political lines of a ferociously-disreprovable sterility of
elegance (correct only within an emotionally-, poetically- and
phenomenologically-impracticable pathology of the abstract2).
In todays accepted academic body of specialized words relating to a
particular subjects, the present article as such could be regarded as a faithful echo of
1
In other words, (press) on any interpretation of any salutarily-augurous, dissident and
apostatic remainder from the work of the author.
2
Which abstract becomes, in this case, a third degree Platonic copy, a prefabricated
weakness of the Idea of force which is otherwise incarnated by the same abstract by
breathing it as an act inspiring [inhaling] itself [we use inspiring both in the sense of
absorbing/capturing air, and in the sense of allowing itself to be inspired], in the realms of
the transcendental, that is, in the supra celestial world in which the Name written with capital
N designates, practically, the prototypes, the matrixes, the archetypes and other premieres
still vague and deformed / or decanted for the very first time from the subterfuges of the
deliverances that lie and await in the phenomenal refuges which are naturally created, like
ravines, when the vortex that make turbulent the abysses of chaos retreat.
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Umberto Ecos ambition to re-open the works of art and of criticism alike (his idea
of an open work or opera aperta in Italian).
Far from being an attempt to outline a reasonable paganism, on the
contrary, the article is a (re)fine(d) irony (slightly deconstructivist because it is
elegant and discreet or at least postmodernly-demured) directed against reason and
against the ways in which it still is compatible, or can still be said to be able to
recover safely (that is, inside a recognizable and academically-accreditable
discourse) some deep structures of the instinct and of the archetypal abysses that
pond threateningly within us, along seriously distressing mind-sloughs, until they
inevitably erupt.
Considering the exacerbated rationalism of the 18th century, the discussion
on reason, approached here slightly postmodernly, will be reduced to affirming
that reason is an indispensable methodology, but still a much too poor and an
obviously insufficient one for a convincing rendering of the grave level-differences
or of the crevices which appear in mans psyche and soul when he begins wandering
about how to re-conquer some holy lairs of the self.
Here the discussion about reason begins to be reduced already to one about a
mandatory, but still a backgroundish structure (so to say, to a simple principle of
balance of the aesthetical and phenomenological whorls which, however, never
exceeds its function by jumping into the foreground and by dictatorially oppressing
the evolving structures from there, through its rigidities [as it usually happens in
modal logic]) that only sustains the dark and the diabolically-reptilian revealing
stylistics.
Reason can thus be used elegantly and liberally as it is the case with
Montesquieu (as I was saying, as a background-principle for a balanced stylistic of
the self and of its projections within the discourse), purely methodologically as it
happens with Rousseau, or downright in a barbarically-resentful style (that is, as an
ostentatious and tyrannically-intolerant foreground, as a displacement that consumes
its anomaly and its inadvertence with a total and truly brutal indifference to the frail
concealments from the unique details), as it appears at Voltaire.
What links the four thinkers is an uncertain (paganly-confusing) dance
(heretical [Voltaire], apostatical [Diderot, Montesquieu] or juridical and formal
[Rousseau]) around reason and around the shy ways in which it can still make a
decent peace with the already betrayed, forgotten and hijacked/diverted (from
their substantializing and essentializing savour) instincts.
The article is therefore a plea for the necessity of an atavic elegance in the
use of reason, as a prerequisite to the subsequent aesthetics of the instinct one not
founded rationally but just started ( dishevelled or decanted) rationally, in a
first phase, and prepared in this way for future evolutions in thinking that will
invent a reason of their own or, maybe will only know how to relocate the
resources of reason within other rhizomes of the instinct, in such a way that the force
of life, the Eros that Marcuse later spoke about, would be the one that governs the
stallion of reason and that frames it a human elegance: like a horse that dances.
The dance of this horse is the dance of the demon of theory inside us, the
instinct brought to the predatory purity of the elegance of the style (which only here
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becomes the equivalent of the man that handles it1), the graciously-perfect beast in
its possessive and a-historical veilings. Looking back at the 18th century through the
eyes of the modern man, we can realize that Reason can only still be today the
harmony and the symmetry from the dance of this horse, from the dance of the
perfect beast (redemptively found once more and maturely introjected) Reason as
the rhythm of the elegance but not as the elegance of the rhythm.
1
Georges-Louis Leclercs (Comte de Buffons) Le style cest lhomme mme.
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Bla MESTER
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Research Centre for the Humanities
Institute of Philosophy
Abstract: After the emergence of natural sciences in the age of Romanticism, a new
approach of nature has appeared due to the historical view of the objects of natural
philosophy. Mineralogy was paradigmatic; it made culturally valuable, historical
objects, exhibited in Museums, from the objects of dead, culturally neutral nature,
which was evaluated before as an unhistorical world. In works of Kant, Herder,
Schelling and others was established the topic of the early history of Earth as a
preface of the history of the humanity. My paper outlines the consequences of the
idea of humanised and historicised dead nature.
E-mail: mester.bela@btk.mta.hu
This text is based on my lectures at the conferences entitled 13th Loinj Days of Bioethics,
18th21st May 2014, Mali Loinj, Croatia; Man-Made World, 21st24th September 2014,
Cres, Croatia, both of them organised by the Croatian Philosophical Society. My researches
on the topics of these lectures were supported by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund.
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1
It may come one day to be recognised that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin,
or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a
sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the
faculty of reason, or, perhaps, the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog, is
beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversible animal, than an infant of a
day or a week or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it
avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?
Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 2nd edition
(London: Pickering, 1823), Vol. 2, 236, footnote.
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1
It follows that we are by nature fitted to form unions, societies and states. Again, they hold
that the universe is governed by divine will; it is a city or state of which both men and gods are
members and each one of us is a part of this universe; from which it is a natural consequence
that we should prefer the common advantage to our own Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Finibus
Bonorum et Malorum (Cambridge/MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), 6364.
2
For a more detailed analysis of this question see my recent article: Bla Mester, Human
Nature and the Nature Itself: Natural and Social Aspects of the Human Nature, Limes:
Borderland Studies 2 (2012): 7181.
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destroying their surface. In the latter cases the inhuman fundaments of the idea are
clear with a hidden, developed aesthetics and ethics; someone is beautiful and good,
if it has no human spectators, or interactions. On the bottom, there is a hidden
anthropomorphic metaphor of personified nature as virgin.1
1
For a more detailed analysis of this question see my article: Bla Mester, A Wanted
Environment Alive or Dead, Philobiblon 14 (2009): 174183.
2
This question was discussed in details in my recent paper in Hungarian, see: Bla Mester,
As svny mint trtneti emlk. Az lettelen termszet trtneti szemlletnek kialakulsa
(Mineral as Memory of History. Rise of the Historical Aspect of Inanimate Nature), in:
Dezs Gurka, ed., Formcik s metamorfzisok. A geolgia, a filozfia s az irodalom
klcsnhatsai a 1819. szzadban (Formations and Metamorphoses. Interactions of
Geology, Philosophy, and Literature in the 18 th and 19th centuries) (Budapest: Gondolat,
2013): 97105, with English summary.
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which is intact from humanity; its concept was pre-formed by the history of the
philosophy and the sciences in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was the topic of a
separate presentation to outline the process of the changing images of nature from
the unhistorical models of the seventeenth-century cosmologies till the recognised
historicity of inhuman and non-living nature in the middle of the 19th century.
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history, where the objects as the signs of typical natural processes have become the
witnesses of a narrative of nature, a needed prehistory of the humanity, on the same
level with the archaeological objects as the witnesses of the human nature. In this
interpretation, historicised nature has been fulfilled with the human values of the
historical way of thinking, and it has been suddenly humanised. The above
mentioned model of the axiological autonomy of nature takes this humanised
concept of nature, and considers it an inhuman, autonomous axiological value, but
the signs of the original humanisation will be unmasked in several cases during the
chain of the argumentation within this model.
1
Immanuel Kant, Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels oder Versuch von
der Verfassung und dem mechanischen Ursprunge des ganzen Weltgebndes nach
Newtonischen Grundstzen abgehandelt (KnigsbergLeipzig: Petersen, 1755).
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hidden system of knowledge. The first challenge is to explain the origin of the living
being, with its intrinsic teleology, based on the rules of the Newtonian physics; by
Kants words, the real challenge is a clear and entire deduction of the emergence of
a single leaf of grass, or that of a worm from the laws of mechanics.1 The next
teleological jump is to describe the genealogy of the Universe, and the history of the
Earth, based on the same Newtonian basis, as an entity being for living nature, and
for the humanity. Kants hidden programme in this period is to establish a historical,
at least, narrative system of knowledge. In his framework, non-living nature is not a
neutral, ahistorical scenery of the human activity; it has its own history, and the
scientists task is to offer a link between the two narratives, the history of the
Universe, and the history of humanity, and to unify them.
A widespread textbook of physics of the second part of the same century,
written by a good Central-European Jesuit professor, who later, in the nineties
became an anti-Kantian protagonist, Horvths Physica particularis mirrors the
dilemmas of the transition from historia naturalis to the modern physics, from the
point of view of the school philosophy.2 Horvth was a typical figure of the so-called
Jesuit Enlightenment; his physics was based on Newton, his philosophy remained an
old-fashioned late Scholasticism. His work was characterised by this difficult
background; its main part contains the disciplines of modern physics; other parts
discuss geographical and geological questions, with a short botanical appendix. His
textbook has in its structure two crucial points by the point of view of the scientific
methodology. The first one is the gap between the eternal, testable laws of physics
and the reconstructed narrative of the history of the Earth; the second one is the gap
between non-living and living nature. However, these gaps are out of the
disciplinary boundaries of modern physics, they are the central questions of the
science and philosophy of his lifetime.
Telling a relatively unified narrative of the Universe, Earth, living nature,
and humanity is the achievement of the German historicism of the next generation.
In Herders masterpiece, Outline of a Philosophical History of Humanity,3 the
history of the Earth, within the whole of geology, is a prehistory of the human
history. The unified narrative from the cosmogony to the human culture is
surprisingly continuous; jumps from non-living to living nature and from nature to
humanity have not clearly formulated methodological problems in his basically
teleological interpretation.
Hegel, in his Encyclopaedia (1817) has found a structured description for
the jumps within nature, and between nature and history. In the second part of his
work he describes the history of minerals as the steps for living nature. Another
1
Ibid., XXXV.
2
I have discussed its Venetian edition, based on several previous versions, published since
the sixties of the 18th century by the Hungarian University: Joannes Baptista Horvth,
Physica Particularis. Auditorium usibus accomodata, excuebat Antonius Zatta, Editio Prima
Veneta (Venetiis 1782). With a short Italian preface written by the editing committee of the
Serenissima Repubblica.
3
Johann Gottfried Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit Vol. I.
(RigaLeipzig: Hartknoch, 1784).
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problem for him is the method of the description of the world of the minerals
historically. His metaphors in the relevant loci are interesting from this point of
view. On the one hand, the Earth is a whole, a system of the life; but as a crystal,
it is dead, similar to a skeleton, on the other. New theories of geognosy, both the
concurrent Neptunist and Vulcanist theories and the moderated Plutonism of the later
period are based on a method of reconstruction, borrowed from the relatively new
science of archaeology. Both the human history and the history of the Earth have
historical facts, which can be reconstructed on the basis of the physical signs of the
activity in the past. The task of the archaeologist and that of the geologist are the
same, reconstructing a history, a narrative, and describing the subject of their
research by its history. The historical value of a stalactite or a stalagmite in a cave is
similar to an ancient arrow and bow in the same cave; however, they are used for the
reconstruction of different, human and non-human histories.
The link between the new, historical humanities of this epoch, and the another
new science, called mineralogy, was formulated clearly, within a program of the
system of sciences, by Schelling, in his On University Studies: Every mineral is a true
philological problem.1 (Schelling, in here, probably follows a commonplace,
established by the letters written by Johann Georg Hamann to Immanuel Kant about
natural philosophy in 1759.) From our point of view it is important that Schelling here
thinks of the new, historical linguistics of his age, which was a kind of archaeology of
the language. Excavations for the fossils of the language on the one hand, and
reconstruction of the grammar of the stones, on the other were parts of the same
metaphoric language of the new historicity emerged in the sciences in this epoch.
A typical 19th-century real-lexicon (18291831) summarised the problems
of the historicity of the natural sciences in its system of knowledge.2 According to
the Schellingian author, all the sciences are organised by historicity; they are divided
for the historical disciplines proper, and for the auxiliary disciplines of the history,
amongst them narrative disciplines, natural history (Naturgeschichte) of the Heaven
and the Earth, as real historical studies. In this system, which consciously refers to
Kants work, mineralogy is the part of natural history of the latter one, and the
geological findings are equal with the archaeological ones by their cultural values, as
witnesses of an inhuman and human epoch of the history of the Universe. Historicity
of the mineralogy, and the value of geological and paleontological findings, by the
cultural and moral meaning, has become evident for the public opinion, in this time.
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their own discipline was interpreted by the mineralogists within the framework of the
informatics from the seventies. Their mineral findings as witnesses of the past were
evaluated as a container of information, and the mineralogists task was to reconstruct
the crashed information from the remained elements, and decipher them.1 It is a
reformulation of the old historical method within the new requirements of the
scientific methodology, saving cultural and moral value of the potential geological
finding, as valuable information-containers. Another solution of the methodological
tension is the aim for making mineralogy and geology a synchronic, modern science,
instead of the diachronic view of its old historicity.2 Why not? If, by Schelling, every
mineral is a true philological problem, mineralogists can choose the descriptive
method of synchronic linguistics, instead of the diachronic view of historical
linguistics, which was a dominant approach in the time when mineralogy as a modern
discipline was established. Surprisingly, this experiment of changing the
methodological view of the geosciences, has not become a recognised theory, it
remained an interesting, but isolated idea of the Novosibirsk school of geology.
It is characteristic that the last serious contribution to the philosophy of
geological research recognises the historical method as evidence. In the
argumentation of professor engr, the parallelism of the humanities and
geosciences, based on their historicity, is more evident than it ever was.3 The
authors main question Is the present the key to the past or is the past the key to the
present? is a fundamental problem of the philosophy of history. His direct
comparison of the historical interpretations of the father of the Vulcanist school of
geology, James Hutton, and Adam Smith on the one hand, and the father of the
Neptunists, Abraham Gottlob Werner and Karl Marx on the other makes clear that
there is one, homogeneous historicity in the sciences, only, for him. By the evidence
of the title, all the mentioned ancient authors, both the mineralogists and
philosophers have just interpreted history in the same sense.
We can say based on the evidences of this short overview that historicity in
mineralogy, with all its consequences for the world of values, and for non-
living/living, and nature/human relationships, seems to be a fact in science today. It
concerns our initial problem.
Conclusion
In the first half of my paper I have outlined my hypothesis about the intrinsic
axiological tension within the environmental thought, in the approach of nature as a
morally valuable entity, whose value is based on its inhumanity. I have supposed
1
For an overview of the question in Hungarian see: Istvn Viczin, Trtneti szempontok a
kzettanban (Historical Aspects in Mineralogy) MTA X. Osztlynak Kzlemnyei
[Transactions of the 10th Department of HAS] 12 (1976): 8389.
2
The Novosibirsk school of mineralogy, under leadership of Yuriy Voronin was a
characteristic representative of this approach. For the details see: Yuriy Voronin E. Eranov,
Facii i formacii: Paragenesis (Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1972).
3
Ali Mehmet Clan engr, Is the present the key to the past or is the past the key to the
present? James Hutton and Adam Smith versus Abraham Gottlob Werner and Karl Marx in
interpreting history (Special Paper 355: Geological Society of America, 2001).
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148
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Istvn FEHR M.
Etvs Lornd University/
Andrassy German Speaking University
Budapest
Abstract: Irony and solidarity are two key concepts characteristic of the vocabulary
of Richard Rorty. Their thematization can be done on a narrower or wider basis of
texts. In the present paper I attempt to contextualize and reconstruct them against the
background of other important concepts of Rortys vocabulary, such as, first of all,
the concept of contingency. The concept of irony is shown to derive, for Rorty, from
Sartre conception of the humans who are claimed to be what they are not, and not to
be what they are. The non coincidence of humans with themselves, or, with their
essence, is argued to lead the way to the basic attitude of irony. The concept of
contingency may be shown to lead up to the concept of solidarity as well, in that the
realization that what we are we are in a contingent way implies the possibility of
being radically other than what we happen to be. (I.) In a second step, the basic
concepts of Rorty, thus far reconstructed, are shown to be dependent on Rortys
basic philosophical stance of anti-foundationalism; the latter is claimed to have a
hermeneutical background. (II.) In a final part the outlines of a tradition are sketched
from Kant to the present, characterized by an anti-metapyhsical flow, whereby the
importance of solidarity and morality is stressed without the attempt to anchor it in a
metaphysical theory of humans or any kind of epistemology destined to provide
knowledge rather than hope. Indeed, Rorty shows that hope stands over and above
knowledge, and it contributes to making us humans more than a project to attain any
kind of (secure) knowledge is ever capable of.
E-mail: feher@ella.hu
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very likely to be listed as two of Rortys key concepts. Irony and solidarity: these are
two central subjects in Rortys thinking, which seem adequate, along with other
topics, to be used as guidelines for a cross-section of Rortys thinking. The basic
concepts are however not isolated or independent from each other. They are linked
directly to other specific concepts, their meaning is embedded into groups of other
concepts, while they are also interconnected in various ways. (This insight is also an
important part of Rortys vocabulary as the expression of a basic meaning-
theoretical contextualism). Irony for Rorty is, for instance, connected to liberal hope
and thus liberalism itself, while solidarity is embedded into some of the particular
problems of the contemporary world, among others the phenomenon of
globalization. These key concepts can be reconstructed on various textual bases, and
to various depths in the present paper I will confine discussion to delineating and
highlighting some of the aspects of irony and solidarity in Rortys work (I., II.).
Lastly, based on the reconstruction, I will attempt to present Rorty as the so far
last significant representative of a tradition which may be called anti-metaphysical in
relating knowledge and action to one anothera tradition, to which he can be
unproblematically assigned, and to whose thinkers Rorty himself often refers. (III.)
I.
It is of importance for our theme to note that the development of the concept of
irony is embedded by Rorty into the exposition of the concept of vocabulary as a
sort of meta-concept. This is hardly accidental, since irony itself (like anything else)
can only be characterized with the help of some sort of a discourse or description
that is, a sort of vocabulary. Human beings, claims Rorty as his starting point,
carry with themselves a set of words with which they tend to justify their actions,
beliefs, lives. Rorty calls this a final vocabulary, where the adjective final is not
the forms published as books (language, professional, etc.), while vocabulary has an extra
dimension of meaning which is beneficial to Rortys use. Various dictionaries offer various
descriptions for this dimension of meaning of vocabulary; as the Cambridge Dictionary of
American English puts it: all the words used by a particular person, The Advanced
Learners Dictionary of Current English: (range of) words known to, or used by, a person,
in a trade, profession, etc., Websters: all the words used by a particular person, class,
profession, etc., sometimes all the words recognized and understood by a particular person,
although not necessarily used by him (in full, passive vocabulary); for the term dictionary
in the same dictionaries, in the same order, the following descriptions are given: a book that
lists words alphabetically with their meanings given in the same or in another language, and
often includes other information; book, dealing with the words of a language, or with
words or topics of a special subject (e.g. the Bible, architecture), and arranged in ABC
order, or: a book of alphabetically listed words in a language, with definitions [...] [or]
with their equivalents in another language [...] [or] related to a special subject: as a medical
dictionary (see Cambridge Dictionary of American English [Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000], 973, 236; The Advanced Learners Dictionary of Current English,
2nd ed. [London: Oxford University Press, 1969], 1120, 272; Websters New World
Dictionary of the American Language [Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing
Company, 1966], 1633, 407).
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1
CIS 73. Bibliographical note: I refer to Rortys works with the following abbreviations:
PMN = Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1979); CP = Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1982); CIS = Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1989); PP 1 = Philosophical Papers, Volume 1. Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); PP 2 = Philosophical Papers, Volume 2.
Essays on Heidegger and Others (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); PP 3 =
Philosophical Papers, Volume 3. Truth and Progress (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998); AOC = Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth Century America
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); PSH = Philosophy and Social Hope
(London: Penguin, 2000). Other abbreviations: : EN = Jean-Paul Sartre: L'tre et le nant.
Essai dontologie phnomnologique, dition corrige avec index par Arlette Elkam-Sartre
(Paris: Gallimard (collection Tel), 1998); GW = Hans-Georg Gadamer: Gesammelte Werke,
vol. 110, (Tbingen: Mohr, 19851995), [vol. no., page no.]; SZ = M. Heidegger: Sein und
Zeit, 15th ed. (Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1979).
2
CIS xv. Rorty confirmed this summarizing definition almost word by word in a later
retrospection, see PP 3, 307. fn. 2.
3
CIS 73.
4
CIS 74.
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concepts (irony and solidarity) appearing in the title of my paper and the three
concepts in the title of Rortys book (contingency, irony, solidarity). Second, I wish
to dedicate some attention to the fact that Rorty draws on Sartre at this point,
introducing as he does the concept of irony in relation to Sartres ideas, thereby
offering an opportunity for an interesting parallel.
I propose to discuss the first problem partly detached from Rortys text. The
concept of contingency is adequate to function as a mediating concept between irony
and solidarity connecting and bridging between them. Let us start from the
relationship of contingency and irony. At a closer look the former leads up to the
latter. This is so because the realization that we and our vocabulary are originally
contingent, that is, not a necessity, suggests a distanced attitude which may rightly
be called ironic insofar as irony means detachment from the thing, the cessation of
identification with it, or a kind of hovering above it.1 Relating with a kind of
distance, doubt or modesty to our contingently being who we are looking at
ourselves this way: contingent and modest is perhaps not completely inconsistent;
and this, coupled with the view that the language and vocabulary we use to describe
our world and ourselves is just as contingent, means relating to ourselves with (self-)
irony, that is, a sort of distance.
However, in addition to irony, from contingency there is a way leading up to
solidarity as well. If I am not necessarily what (and who) I am, then I could just as
well be someone else; and this consideration may lead to solidarity with that
someone or those others.2 It may entail solidarity with those others of whom I could
happen to be one, although I happen although not necessarily not to be one of
them. I could be one of those others, insofar as it is in a contingent way that I am
who I am. To distance from myself is to approach to, to make a step towards, the
others. I might just as well be him (in exactly the way he could be me) on my view
this is one of the fundamental (perhaps even hermeneutical3) theses of solidarity,
1
If someone says something ironically, it means that she/he does not identify with it, does
not mean it literally, and relates to her/his own discourse or chosen vocabulary in a specific
precisely ironical way.
2
This formulation is not suggested by some kind of compulsory stylistic modesty, but just as
much by the choice to be consistent: a philosophy which starts from and centres around
contingency cannot speak about necessary connections or relations without risking to be self-
contradictory.
3
As long as Gadamers hermeneutics considers the other (whether text or fellow human) as
formulating statements with truth and knowledge claims no less than I do, and who may in
principle always be right against me. See Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd revised edition,
revisions by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, New York: Crossroad, 1989,
reprinted London/New York: Continuum, 1999, 355: In human relations the important thing
is [...] to experience the Thou truly as a Thoui.e., not to overlook his claim but to let him
really say something to us ( = Gadamer, GW 1, 367: Im mitmenschlichen Verhalten kommt
es darauf an [...], das Du als Du wirklich zu erfahren, d. h. seinen Anspruch nicht zu berhren
und sich etwas von ihm sagen zu lassen). See also J. Grondin, Die Weisheit des rechten
Wortes. Ein Portrt Hans Georg Gadamers, in Information Philosophie 5 (1994): 28; Idem,
Einfhrung in die philosophische Hermeneutik (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,
1991), 160. Cf. Gadamer, GW 2, 116, 505; GW 10, 274; Gadamer: Die Vielfalt Europas. Erbe
und Zukunft (Stuttgart: Robert Bosch Stiftung, 1985), 29.
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1
This relation is best described by Rortys interpretation of the Gadamerian term of Bildung.
Through Bildung, which has no other purpose than itself, we become different people, and an
essential moment of this process is that we admit the historical contingency and relativity of
descriptive vocabularies. See PMN 359, 362.
2
See CIS 89.
3
CIS 73.
4
EN 104.
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existence precisely towards the stability, permanebce, and coincidence with itself
characteristic of the being-in-itself. Meta-stability in the wide sense is not only valid
for bad faith. Human reality inasmuch as it is not what it is, and it is what it is not,
it exists at a certain distance from itself (and this is the starting point of irony for
Rorty) is itself unstable, it does not coincide with itself, and therefore there is no
statement about it (in Rortys later perspective: vocabulary) which could
adequately grasp it one way or another, (linguistically) identify it, put it in
words, and thus record it. I cannot make any statement about myself, Sartre
writes in a characteristic passage, that would not become false the moment I make
it (je ne puis rien noncer sur moi qui ne soit devenu faux quand je l'nonce);
elsewhere he writes: the being-for-itself is always different from what may be said
about it (il est toujours autre chose que ce qu'on peut dire de lui).1 The idea of the
contingency and plurality of the final vocabulary may be seen from this perspective
as a consistent continuation of this idea.
If we look at Rortys concept of irony in his considerations on Sartre, then in
addition to a general reference to meta-stability,2 the second part of the same
sentence offers a more specific and in a certain sense more substantial clue,
although Sartres name is no longer mentioned there. The ironists who find
themselves in the position that Sartre calls meta-stable, in Rortys further exposition
are never quite able to take themselves seriously because [they are] always aware
that terms in which they describe themselves are subject to change, they are
always aware of the contingency and fragility of their final vocabularies and thus of
their selves. [...] never quite able to take themselves seriously: this formulation
recalls Sartres critical remarks towards the end of Being and Nothingness on what
he called the spirit of seriousness, and which takes up and elaborates on what has
been said in the first part of his work about bad faith. For the spirit of
seriousness [esprit de srieux] the values constituting in human projects appear
transcendent givenness independently of human subjectivity (donnes
transcendantes indpendantes de la subjectivit humaine), and the desirable
(dsirable) nature of things is also part of the material constitution of things. 3 The
spirit of seriousness is characterized by the fact that it escapes the basically
volatile, contingent, free nature of human reality, unjustifiable and unfounded for
itself, towards the stability of the being-in-itself. Man tries to freeze himself into a
rock as seen about Flerieur, the protagonist of Sartres short story, The Childhood
of a Leader and strives to acquire some kind of personality and, through this,
stability, justification of his existence, or self-identification by a thoughtless
connection to commonplaces, mass ideologies or meaningless views.4 The spirit of
1
EN 151, 483. (Emphasis in the original)
2
See the expression also in CIS 113. Rorty also uses the term meta-stability, for the
mentioned reasons, for Heideggers Dasein; the basic Heideggerian terms describing the
Dasein are inherently ironic, he claims; it could even be said that the Dasein is Heideggers
term for the ironist. (ibid.)
3
EN 674.
4
The representation of various forms of bad faith and the spirit of seriousness frequently
appears in Sartres literary works and essays; see my somewhat more detailed references in
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seriousness, in other words, takes itself very seriously, it tries to be this and this
(and anchor itself in this and this), identify with itself one way or another with the
greatest seriousness (thereby concealing that any such endeavour is the result of free
choice), it flees from freedom and the anxiety that accompanies it, which would
result in the consideration that to choose something rather than something else in a
necessary way as Kierkegaard was already very much aware of it1 is an
impossible task. This kind of seriousness is not a serious confrontation with life
and things, but intellectual and moral arrogance and rigidity, conceived in bad-faith;
it is a flight from freedom and the responsibility that goes with it, from choosing,
from plurality.
Istvn Fehr M., Jean-Paul Sartre (Budapest: Kossuth, 1980), 33. Elsewhere Sartre
describes this ambition as an attraction to the permanence of rock or the impenetrability
of stone (Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, translated by George J. Becker, New York: Schocken
Books, 1995, 19, 38).
1
See S. Kierkegaard: Entweder Oder. Teil I und II, Unter Mitwirkung von Niels Thulstrup
und der Kopenhager Kierkegaard-Gesellschaft hrsg. von Hermann Diem und Walter Rest,
Mnchen: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2005, 725: [...] eigentlich fordert sie [sc.
philosophy], da man notwendig handle, was ein Widerspruch ist.
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indeed very much suggest this interpretation, but Sartre does not proceed to embrace
this possibility lying in his own ideas. Irony in Sartre if at all appears at most as
an occasionally sarcastic and defiant unveiling of various forms of bad faith,1
manifest more in our attitude towards the criticized opponent, rather than in the
(right) relation to ourselves. As regards the latter, the lack of the coincidence of
human reality with itself appears in Sartre mainly accompanied by pathetic-tragic
accents; Rorty however simply puts these aside, considers them to be a metaphysical
sediment. In fact, Rorty still considers Sartre as being metaphysical when, for
example, Sartre calls man a useless passion.2 And indeed: Sartres oeuvre (in both
its phases) is penetrated by a kind of pathetic-tragic tone and attitude, which is
difficult to harmonize with the criticism of the spirit of seriousness, or is itself prone
to overlap with the spirit of seriousness. The relevant passage at the end of the
existentialist work is worth quoting: Every human reality is a passion in that it
projects losing itself so as to found being and by the same stroke to constitute the In-
itself which escapes contingency by being its own foundation, the Ens causa sui,
which religions call God. Thus the passion of man is the reverse of that of Christ, for
man loses himself as man in order that God may be born. But the idea of God is
contradictory and we lose ourselves in vain. Man is a useless passion.3
Rorty (and his modest irony) is quite far from this dramatic tone: for him, it
bears the traces of the sort of metaphysics that he gave up and systematically
distanced himself from it, influenced by the critique of metaphysics taken over from
the second period of Heideggers work (and just as much from the tradition of
American pragmatism). If mans ambition to become God as part of traditional
metaphysics becomes meaningless in the light of a radical critique of metaphysics,
then it also becomes meaningless to characterize man in terms of a useless
passion, following from the failure of this ambition (and Sartre leaves little place
for doubting the failure of this ambition). The topic of futility, says Rorty, would
arise only if one were trying to surmount time, chance, and self-redescription by
discovering something more powerful than any of these. For Proust and Nietzsche,
however, there is nothing more powerful or important than self-redescription.4
Dependence on time and incidence as relativity provided we think with radical
1
See, e.g., Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, translated by Carol Macomber, New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 2007, 39: Essentially, that is what people would like to
think. If you are born a coward, you need not let it concern you, for you will be a coward
your whole life, regardless of what you do, through no fault of your own. If you are born a
hero, you need not let it concern you either, for you will be a hero your whole life, and eat
and drink like one.
2
CIS 99; cf. also PP 2, 131; PSH 61.
3
Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, English
translation by Hazel E. Barnes, London: Methuen & Co, 1958, 615. See EN 662: Toute
ralit-humaine est une passion, en ce qu'elle projette de se perdre pour fonder l'tre et pour
constituer du mme coup l'en-soi qui chappe la contingence en tant son propre fondement,
l'Ens causa sui que les religions nomment Dieu. Ainsi la passion de l'homme est-elle inverse de
celle du Christ, car l'homme se perd en tant qu'homme pour que Dieu naisse. Mais l'ide de Dieu
est contradictoire et nous nous perdons en vain ; l'homme est une passion inutile.
4
CIS 99. Rorty repeatedly returned to Sartres topos of man as a useless passion. See note 19
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consistency about relativity is not identical with, and does not account for, futility
(this could be the reconstruction of Rortys possible answer to Sartre at this point).
Futility presupposes absolute standards. The ironist might find it meaningful to
apply the concept of better description, but has no criterion for this term,
therefore the concept of the right description is useless for him. So he finds no
futility in mans not being able to become a being-in-itself, tre-en-soi. The ironist is
distinguished from the metaphysician precisely in that he never wanted to become
one (or he wanted never to want to become one).1
The human project as an ambition to become God (just as Heideggers view
in his letter on humanism about man as the pastor of being2) is hardly compatible
with Rortys pragmatist attitude, his pragmatic view on man as a cooperative social
being. In this respect, Sartre was not radical enough for him, or, so to say, not
existentialist (anti-metaphysical) enough. By contrast, Sartres dissolution of the
strong relationship of metaphysics and politics is very consonant with Rortys views
on Dewey, emblematically expressed also in the title of his influential study: The
Priority of Democracy to Philosophy.3 In his study entitled Materialism and
Revolution, Sartre criticizes the view that the materialistic metaphysics and the
revolutionary attitude are strongly interrelated, and the philosophy of revolution or
the liberation of man could only be brought by dialectical materialism (that is, one
could only be a true revolutionary if one were to accept the materialistic
metaphysics that Sartre considers absurd).4 There is no necessary connection
between metaphysics and political position, and the political position or the
commitment to democracy needs no kind of philosophical (metaphysical)
foundation. It is hardly the case that one cannot be a good democrat or liberal unless
one embraces some theory on some atemporal, unchanged human essence. A
liberal society goes the rightfully ironic note is badly served by an attempt to
supply it with philosophical foundations.5 Its necessity is a concept which goes
1
CIS 99; cf. also PP 2, 131.
2
Heidegger, Brief ber den Humanismus, in Idem, Wegmarken (Frankfurt/Main:
Klostermann, 1967), 175196, 145194, here: 162, 172.
3
See J.-P. Sartre, Materialism and Revolution, in Sartre, Literary and Philosophical Essays,
translated by Annette Michelson, New York: Collier Books, 1962, 198--256, here in particular
200 (it is to be asked whether materialism and the myth of objectivity are really required by
the cause of the Revolution and if there is not a discrepancy between the revolutionary's action
and his ideology), 215f, 221, 234 (But, once again, is the materialistic myth, which may have
been useful and encouraging, really necessary?), 241, 243f .
4
PP 1, 175196. Here mainly 180.
5
CIS 52. At the end of his classic study entitled Two Concepts of Liberty (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1958), Isaiah Berlin approvingly cites the words of Joseph A. Schumpeter: To realise
the relative validity of ones convictions, and yet stand for them unflinchingly is what
distinguishes a civilised man from a barbarian (Joseph A. Schumpeter: Capitalism,
Socialism, and Democracy [London, 1943], 243.). Rorty quotes both Schumpeter, and
Berlins commentary on it approvingly: To demand more than this is perhaps a deep and
incurable metaphysical need; but to allow it to determine ones practice is a symptom of an
equally deep, and more dangerous, moral and political immaturity; CIS 46.). Berlin also
writes: It may be that the ideal of freedom to choose ends without claiming eternal validity
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for them [...] is only the late fruit of our declining capitalist civilisation: an ideal which
remote ages and primitive societies have not recognised, and one which posterity will regard
with curiosity, even sympathy, but little comprehension. This may be so; but no skeptical
conclusions seem to me to follow. Principles are not less sacred because their duration
cannot be guaranteed. Indeed, the very desire for guarantees that our values are eternal and
secure in some objective heaven is perhaps only a craving for the certainties of childhood or
the absolute values of our primitive past. Rorty says largely the same when claiming: The
fundamental premise of [my] book is that a belief can still regulate action, can still be
thought worth dying for, among people who are quite aware that this belief is caused by
nothing deeper than contingent historical circumstance (CIS 189.)
1
It is one of the most characteristic concepts of Being and Nothingness, see e.g. EN 118.
L'vnement absolu ou pour-soi est contingent en son tre mme.; Ibid. 119.: le pour-soi est
soutenu par une perptuelle contingence, qu'il reprend son compte et s'assimile sans jamais
pouvoir la supprimer. Contingency means for Sartre the lack of foundations just as later for
Rorty it implies the rejection of foundationalism. The Sartrean concept of injustifiable is also
characteristic in this respect. (EN 73f, 118f.) Sartres protagonist, Roquentin, says in Nausea:
one cannot define existence as necessity; those who exist let themselves be encountered, but
you can never deduce anything from them [...] contingency is [...] the absolute, (Sartre:
Nausea, New Directions Publishing 2007, 107.). Sartre uses the concept of facticity as a
synonym for contingency (EN 119.), while in Heidegger only facticity appears, albeit very
emphatically (see, e.g., SZ 12. , 56.: Die Tatschlichkeit des Faktums Dasein, als welches
jeweilig jedes Dasein ist, nennen wir seine Faktizitt), contingency does not (probably
because Heidegger considers inappropriate the very pair of contingency-necessity; if Dasein
cannot be necessary, then it cannot be its opposite, contingent, either.)
2
PP 3, 325.
3
PP 3, 326.
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thing we can do claims Rortys definition taken over from Judith Shklar).1 Novels,
reports and newspaper articles are much more capable of reporting on such things.
Expressions like late capitalism, modern industrial society, conditions of the
production of knowledge must be replaced by workers representatives,
association of journalists, laws against financial manipulation.
II.
1
CIS, xv.
2
See e.g. PSH xvi, xxxii, 36, 151. (The latter place is a summary of the rejected idea of
foundationalism: Foundationalism is an epistemological view which can be adopted by
those who suspend judgement on the realists claim that reality has an intrinsic nature. A
foundationalist need only claim that every belief occupies a place in a natural, transcultural,
transhistorical order of reasons an order which eventually leads the inquirer back to one or
another ultimate source of evidence. Different foundationalists offer different candidates
for such sources: for example, Scripture, tradition, clear and distinct ideas, sense-experience,
common sense. Pragmatists object to foundationalism for the same reasons as they object to
realism.). Cf. also Ibid. 155. The rejection of foundationalism is not only based on relating
to the views of philosophers influencing Rorty; it also has a kind of independent
theoretical background, summarized in his biographic writing as follows: There seemed
to be nothing like a neutral standpoint from which these alternative first principles could be
evaluated. But if there were no such standpoint, then the whole idea of rational certainty,
and the whole Socratic-Platonic idea of replacing passion by reason, seemed not to make
much sense (PSH 10.)
3
See PMN 348f; CP 161, 226; CIS 44, 50, 52; PSH 116.
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foundations for them. (Just as it was thought once that one can only believe
legitimately, coherently in the social objectives of Marxism if one accepted
materialism, or dialectical materialism as a theory.)
In the light of the fact that Rorty shows not much understanding for
phenomenology, as he considers it a late descendent of Platonic-Kantian Western
metaphysics1 the idea of philosophy as science, the view that man is a cognitive
being, whose essence is to know or discover essences2 , it is especially important
that, seen from the perspective of a hermeneutically transformed (lets say,
Heideggerian) phenomenology, for which things should be taken as they appear (not
in consciousness, but) in life, Rorty proves, in fact, to be a good phenomenologist.
Most of his arguments are descriptions, uninfected with inherited theories,
metaphysics and epistemology, of how things are in real life, for an unbiased regard.
For instance, to show solidarity to my fellow human beings, I do not need any theory
on the I or on the human essence; a much more restricted, concrete, contingent or
with Rortys word, parochial3 consideration, or rather emotion, would also do it. I
help because She is, like me, a mother of small children4 (and not because she is
also part of, or embodies, the same unchanged human essence). Nor should we be
much worried if someone objects saying: our practical activity is only consistent,
coherent, if it is based upon an appropriate theory. As things are in real life,
practice precedes theory this is what pragmatism, Heidegger, Sartre, Gadamer and
the late work of Wittgenstein teach for Rorty.
The Heideggerian as well as Sartrean thesis that there is no human essence,
and that human existence precedes its essence is shared by Rorty, too with the
single difference that for him this is less dramatic than for the other two
philosophers, and even entails some ironic consequences. This ironic attitude would
stand in opposition with the thought of solidarity only if the latter were in need of a
metaphysical foundation, perhaps connected to the super-historical essence of
human nature, or the permanent, inalienable human rights. But since this is not the
1
See Philosophy in America Today, In CP 211230: here 213, 226. On page 226 one can
read: Husserls quest for a phenomenological method was, like Reichenbachs logical
positivism, an expression of the urge for the secure path of science. But Husserl was a
brief and futile interruption of the Hegel-Marx-Nietzsche-Heidegger-Foucault sequence
which I am taking as paradigmatically Continental [...]. What distinguishes Nietzsche,
Heidegger, and Foucault from Hegel and Marx is precisely the increasing wholeheartedness
with which they give up the notions of system, method, science [...]. Rortys lack of
understanding for phenomenology is related to the fact that Rorty only wants to hear
Husserls urge for strict knowledge and apodictic truths not unjustly, considering
Husserls verbal manifestations, but still onesidedly, considering the general practice of
phenomenology established by Husserl, see PMN 8.); therefore Husserl often appears for
him next to Russells similar endeavours (especially those that wish to clean logic of
psychologism, resulting in a complementarity of Husserls term essence and Russells
logical form) [see on this PMN 166f.]); see PMN 4, 8, 166ff, 269, 369, 390; CP xvi, 37f,
160, 165, 169; PP 2, 10, 12, 19, 21, 23, 32, 109ff; PSH 176.
2
PMN 367.
3
See e.g. CIS 73; PP 1, 21.
4
CIS 191.
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case, the lack of such a foundation is not a barrier to solidarity. If we look at things
as they are, we see: helpfulness is not a matter of adequate theories.
The dilemma lies in the fact that, while solidarity seems to be a serious thing,
it raises the question: could anyone feel solidarity for others while being ironic at the
same time? In other words: can anyone show solidarity ironically? Is it not a
contradiction? Rorty senses this possible reproach himself. As he writes in the
introduction to his book on contingency: ironism has often seemed intrinsically
hostile not only to democracy but to human solidarity.1 However, this presupposition,
as he convincingly argues, is basically false. [...] But it is not. Hostility to a particular
historically conditioned and possibly transient form of solidarity is not hostility to
solidarity as such.,2 he writes. What he calls here Hostility to a particular historically
conditioned and possibly transient form of solidarity, refers in fact to the concepts of
solidarity with metaphysical foundation. Solidarity however, and this is Rortys main
thesis, is not a matter of philosophical investigation and theoretical foundation. Nor is
it the result of research or reflection: it is simply a product of imagination or
imaginative ability, it simply rests on our ability to see strange people as fellow
sufferers.3 To see the other, the strange people (not necessarily as a fellow human
being in the first place, but) as fellow sufferers: this summarizes the concept of
solidarity. One may speak about imagination because pain, as Rorty convincingly
explains, is not a linguistic phenomenon. People who are the victims of cruelty, who
suffer hardly have words or a message to express in language. What could they
possibly say? Some kind of objective accounts or reports on their suffering?
Therefore there is hardly anything like the voice of the oppressed or the language
of the victims. The language once used by victims no longer functions, or the victims
have suffered too much to be able to coin new words. Therefore the linguistic
expression of their situation is a work that someone else must do for them. The liberal
novelist, poet or journalist know how to do that the liberal theoretician does not.4
Rorty later describes the concept of imaginative ability as imaginative
acquaintance, skill at imaginative identification.5 Solidarity is much more about
this, rather than an agreement upon common metaphysical truths. Meditations on
human nature or human dignity presuppose a great deal of reflection, while the
sufferers hardly have access to such reflections or the vocabulary created in result.
Such reflection will not produce anything except a heightened awareness of the
possibility of suffering, but it will not produce a reason to care about suffering.6
We may of course ease our (theoretical) consciousness by creating a new theory on
1
CIS xv; cf. Ibid. 87.
2
CIS xv.
3
CIS xvi.
4
CIS 94.: Pain is nonlinguistic [...] So victims of cruelty, people who are suffering, do not
have much in the way of a language. That is why there is no such things as the voice of the
oppressed or the language of the victims. The language the victims once used is not
working anymore, and they are suffering too much to put new words together. So the job of
putting their situation into language is going to have to be done for them by somebody else.
The liberal novelist, poet, or journalist is good at that. The liberal theorist is not.
5
CIS 92f, 190f.
6
CIS 93.
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human nature or the inalienable human rights, but have we thereby helped those who
suffer? Is it this a new theory that they need? Is it not bad faith to ease the
consciousness this way? Rortys fundamental reproach that he addressed to the
American left primarily the university left, that Allan Bloom called Nietzscheized
was that, besides the sweeping criticism and over-sophisticated, or, better said,
over-philosophized theoretical commentaries of Western civilization, rotten to the
core, it has lost all receptivity or susceptibility to the suffering and dispossessed;
apart from the global criticism of the system, it has nothing to say, it has no
recommendations about practical actions, or the political reforms to reduce inequality
it looks into the distant future, and disregards the present.1
The connection of solidarity as a matter of imagination to irony, as
mentioned before, can be presented with the mediation of the concept of
contingency. Taking up my previous formulation: the insight that I am who (and
what) I am not by necessity, but by contingency, is equal to the insight that I could
be someone else as well; and this may lead to the solidarity and empathy with
other(s). What can be added to all these, is the role of imagination and imaginative
identification in this process. Irony, or the lack of stable self-identification, the
abandonment of ones identification once and for all makes one receptive to the
understanding and experience of life situations which could be ones own, and it
ultimately points in the direction of community existence. Solidarity the
recognition of the other as your equal and as entitled to your sympathy is the
natural companion of irony, and becomes, for Rorty, the true basis of political life
writes Roger Scruton.2
Rorty takes up and develops several themes of Gadamers hermeneutics, and
the idea of solidarity appears at Gadamer as well. Not unimportantly, the concept
appears in Gadamers major work as one of the leading humanist concepts. This
means that as I shall soon dwell on it a little there is a connection between
humanism and solidarity: humanism is related to solidarity, and solidarity refers to
humanism. The concept of solidarity appears in Gadamer amongst the leading
humanist concepts, in the analyses of sensus communis, but since the leading
humanist concepts (formation, sensus communis, power of judgment, taste)
are interconnected on several levels their common characteristic is that they do not
give some general knowledge that still needs to be applied, but a knowledge which
is just as much existence, and having-become existence, which carries the
application within itself, and thus in each case it is a knowledge for life which has its
place in the life of people, or rather the community life, for which reason it is
connected to all of them, especially the most important leading concept of the
leading concepts themselves, Bildung.
The sensus communis is an element of social and moral being, writes
Gadamer, and this concept, in the course of its long history expressed, from time to
1
See PSH 129; AOC 78ff, 98. Only the rightists speak about the consequences of
globalization. (AOC 91.). Cf. also PP 2, 133.
2
Roger Scruton, Richard Rortys legacy, 12 June 2007 emphasis by I. F. M.; see:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy_power/people/richard_rorty_legacy).
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1
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 29 (= GW 1, 38: Der sensus communis ist ein Moment des
brgerlich-sittlichen Seins. Auch wo dieser Begriff, wie im Pietismus oder in der Philosophie
der Schotten, eine polemische Wendung gegen die Metaphysik bedeutet, bleibt er damit noch
in der Linie seiner ursprnglichen kritischen Funktion.)
2
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 20 (= GW 1, 28: ein gegen die theoretische Spekulation der
Philosophen gerichteter Ton).
3
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 19: here sensus communis obviously does not mean only
that general faculty in all men but the sense that founds community. ( = GW 1, 26: Sensus
communis meint hier offenkundig nicht nur jene allgemeine Fhigkeit, die in allen Menschen
ist, sondern er ist zugleich der Sinn, der Gemeinsamkeit stiftet.)
4
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 18 (= GW 1, 26).
5
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 22 (= GW 1, 30: Shaftesbury folgt [] auch darin
altrmischen Begriffen, die in der humanitas die feine Lebensart mit einschlossen, die
Haltung des Mannes, der Spa versteht und macht, weil er einer tieferen Solidaritt mit
seinem Gegenber gewi ist.)
6
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 29 (= GW 1, 38: echte sittlich-brgerliche Solidaritt).
7
H.-G. Gadamer, Vom Wort zum Begriff (1995). In Gadamer Lesebuch. ed. J. Grondin
(Tbingen: Mohr, 1997), 100110, here 109, 108. I think it is evident that understanding-
agreement is inherently related to solidarity. These implications of Gadamers hermeneutics,
related to the philosophy of science, were expanded by Rorty. He formulated in his major
work that the only usable meaning of the concept of scientific objectivity was agreement
(PMN 33: our only usable notion of objectivity is agreement, rather than mirroring); and
that scientific praxis as such, with its need for objectivity and rationality, is rooted in a
determined form of human cohabitation: solidarity. This idea was later expressed in several of
his writings: the only sense in which science is exemplary is that it is a model of human
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solidarity.(PP 1, 39f.) Rorty then extended to notion of solidarity to other, wider fields of
community existence. See e.g. Solidarity, CIS 189198.
1
PMN 359. Metaphysicians thinkwrites Rorty elsewhere that human beings by nature
desire to know (CIS 75). They are opposed to the ironists, who think that the purpose of
discursive thinking is not knowledge in the sense of reality, true essence, objective
viewpoint, the correspondence of language of [recte: to] reality. Their purpose is not the
representation of reality.
2
See e.g. Rortys requirements for the humanist intellectual. [The humanistic intellectuals]
idea of teachingor at least of the sort of teaching they hope to dois not exactly the
communication of knowledge, but more like stirring the kids up. When they apply for a leave
or a grant, they may have to fill out forms about the aims and methods of their so-called
research projects, but all they really want to do is read a lot more books in the hope of
becoming a different sort of person. (PSH 127). Elsewhere he writes: Unmethodical criticism
of the sort which one occasionally wants to call inspired is the result of an encounter with an
author, character, plot, stanza, line or archaic torso which has made a difference to the critics
conception of who she is, what she is good for, what she wants to do with herself: an encounter
which has rearranged her priorities and purposes. (PSH 145).
3
Gadamer, Hermeneutik als praktische Philosophie. Rehabilitierung der praktischen
Philosophie, ed. M. Riedel (Freiburg i.Br.: Rombach, 1972), vol. I, 342f. Verstehen [...]
vermag in besonderer Weise dazu beizutragen, unsere menschlichen Erfahrungen, unserer
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Dilthey also wrote about the effect of the extension of the horizon on our being in
the introduction of his classic study on hermeneutics: Our action always
presupposes the understanding of other persons; the major part of human happiness
derives from the reminiscence of strange states of mind [...] The historical
consciousness built on these makes it possible for the modern man to possess the
entire past of the humanity as being there in itself: it gains insight into foreign
cultures beyond all limits of his own age; it absorbs their power and enjoys their
magic; and from this derives a major increase of happiness for himself.1 Dilthey
talked about the never satisfied need to complete our individuality by
contemplating the individuality of others, and that understanding and
interpretation [...] are always alive in life itself.2
The widening of horizon happening through Bildung, as long as it is able to
shape ones personality, changes not only the knowledge, but also the existence of
man, thus it has a community creating function and has an effect of increasing
solidarity. Bildung can increase that which solidarity depends on in Rortys view:
the imaginative ability, the imaginative acquaintance, and the skill at imaginative
identification. Education makes one able to imaginative identification. As a result of
the extension of horizon caused by Bildung man learns to take into account the
perspective of others, to see the world as they see it. The reverse side of it is that
meanwhile he also learns: the way he sees the world is only one possible way to see
it. And this, in Rortys perspective, means irony (and not to the least the awareness
of our contingency). Only the uneducated may think that things cannot be otherwise
than the way they see them.
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The educated man, writes Hegel, also learns that there are other and better
ways of behaviour and action, and that his is not the only possible way. 1
Interpreting the discussion of the concept of Bildung in Hegels Propedeutic,
Gadamer writes: contemplating ourselves and our purposes with distance means to
look at these in the way that others see them.2 We should realize that, seen from
Rortys perspective, to contemplate with distance implies irony, for the latter
means precisely giving up the naive identification with ourselves; it means
distancing ourselves from ourselves. If one learns other ways to judge things, he
remains less of a captive of the provincial narrow-mindedness3 which closes him up
in the world of his own restricted environment and experiences. One remains less of
a captive of the naive belief that the world cannot be seen otherwise than one sees it.
Rorty is also familiar with this closing up within oneself, and makes a critical
remark about it. Interestingly enough, and unusually for Anglo-Saxon philosophy, as
well as for his own thinking, he identifies the criticized viewpoint, not unjustly, as a
kind of common sense perspective. The opposite of irony is common sense he
writes. It is characteristic for those who describe everything with the help of the final
vocabulary that they and their environment are used to. This kind of common sense
takes it for granted that the statements formulated in its final vocabulary are also
appropriate to describe the actions and life of those who use other final vocabularies.4
It would be a kind of philosophical extension or levelling of the common sense, as
urged by the metaphysicians to justify the standpoint of the common sense. The
metaphysicians do not question the plain truths of common sense they do not offer
redescriptions but they analyze old descriptions with the help of old descriptions,
insisting on the principle of the one true reality and vocabulary.5 The ironist opposes
both of them both the common sense and the metaphysics of the common sense.
Rortys opposition at this point can be seen as the opposition between narrow-
mindedness and Bildung. The former, narrow-mindedness, is characteristic thus both
for common sense and metaphysics. Open-mindedness, on the contrary, means irony
and awareness of contingency; it sensitizes for solidarity and identification with other
people. It makes me aware that I might just as well be the person who suffers. Bildung
and the awareness of contingency opposes narrow-mindedness, the conceitedness of
common sense, as well as the philosophy that justifies it, and last but least the self-
satisfied, posing attitude of self-righteousness.6
1
Hegel, Philosophische Propdeutik, . 42. Theorie Werkausgabe. vol. 4, 259. (Indem der
Mensch ber das, was er unmittelbar wei und erfhrt, hinausgeht, so lernt er, da es auch
andere und bessere Weisen des Verhaltens und Tuns gibt und die seinige nicht die einzig
notwendige ist. [...]).
2
See Gadamer, GW 1, 22f.: Sich selbst und seine privaten Zwecke mit Abstand ansehen,
heit ja: sie ansehen, wie die anderen sie sehen.
3
Cf. Andrew Abbott, The Aims of Education Address: [...] education is a habit that
expands experience so as to overcome that provinciality by increasing ties between your
locality and other human meanings. See note 54 above.
4
CIS 74.
5
Ibid.
6
See my remarks on this attitude in Istvn Fehr M., Hermeneutika s humanizmus
(Hermeneutics and Humanism),in Hans-Georg Gadamer - egy 20. szzadi humanista (Hans-
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III.
Georg Gadamer a 20th century humanist), ed. Mikls Nyr (Budapest: L'Harmattan, 2009),
43117: here 104ff. This attitude, rejected by Emilio Betti, then by Rorty and Gadamer, was
not unknown to the classical liberal tradition. John Stuart Mill wrote about it as moral
police. Mill, On Liberty (London: Watts & Co., 1936), 105. Mill also adds: this is one of the
most universal of human attitudes. The term righteous indignation also appears at Rorty,
see PP 1, 37.
1
This stance is best summarized in the fragment quoted in note 26: The fundamental
premise of [my] book is that a belief can still regulate action, can still be thought worth dying
for, among people who are quite aware that this belief is caused by nothing deeper than
contingent historical circumstance (CIS 189). The claim of contingency means here to
renounce any kind of (ultimate philosophical) foundation, or any kind of (historical,
philosophical, or other) necessity, or any ultimate certainty about life conduct or anything
else. Briefly and sharply: life usually needs no kind of theory; but if it still does, definitely
not the kind that makes a contingent practice seem necessary and leads to self-deception.
2
The reconstruction below is the partly shortened, partly extended exposition of thought
that I formulated in some of my earlier writings in different contexts: Istvn Fehr M., Az
let rtelmrl. Racionalizmus s irracionalizmus kztt (On the meaning of life. Between
rationalism and irrationalism) (Budapest: Kossuth, 1991), 3543; Sartre, hermeneutika,
pragmatizmus (Sartre, hermeneutics, pragmatism), Holmi VI/12 (1994), 18101831: here
1820f, 1828f; Polgri kultra, polgri mveltsg, polgri filozfia: Kant s a
neokantianizmus vilgszemllete. I. rsz" (Bourgeois culture, bourgeois culture, bourgeois
philosophy: Kant and the worldview of neo-Kantianism), Protestns Szemle 1 (2002): 29
55: here 3336; Hermeneutika, etika, nyelvfilozfia" (Hermeneutics, ethics, philosophy of
langauge), Vilgossg 5-6 (2003): 7381: here 75f.
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practical] reason [...] with complete elimination.1 That our knowledge is restricted
to phenomena revealed by experience, and we cannot know the world-in-itself, is
definitely a disadvantage from the point of view of knowledge. But this disadvantage
is fully balanced by admitting: if the necessary order of the world revealed by
knowledge gave us not only the world of phenomena, but the world-in-itself too,
then the causal relation would become universal, and would extend to the being-in-
itself. If we made no difference between phenomena and beings-in-themselves, that
is, if we knew the being-in-itself through cognisance, this would mean that the more
perfect our cognisance is while cognisance is the more perfect the more necessity
or causality is within it the more human freedom turns to nothing. Simplifying a
little, but probably not incorrectly, we may say: the world of cognisance
(knowledge) is a world of necessity, while the world of action is a world of freedom.
Let us assume, Kant argues, that morality presupposes freedom, but the difference
between things as objects of experience and as beings-in-themselves had not been
made; in this case the thesis of causality acquires a universal meaning. I could not
say about the same being, e.g. the human soul, [...] that its will is free, but it is still
subject to natural necessity; in this case freedom and morality with it [...] must
give way to the mechanisms of nature.2 To put it briefly: If phenomena are things-
in-themselves, then freedom is beyond recovery.3 There would only remain one
world, the natural world guided by necessary laws (revealed by scientific
knowledge, as a world-in-itself), and in its closed causality chain the human soul
would itself be only one link, deterministically defined. The Critique of Pure Reason
paves the way at this point for the Critique of Practical Reason, ethics. The
deficiencies and the limited, imperfect nature of our human cognisance ground
precisely the possibility of our action as free, moral beings.
This recognition is the key to understand Kants thesis, not easily
comprehensible, and often explained and misinterpreted, that I had to deny
knowledge in order to make room for faith [Ich mute das Wissen aufheben, um
zum Glauben Platz zu bekommen].4 Kant reduced knowledge in order to make
place for freedom, morals and faith. The knowledge that he wanted to remove or
deny in the first place, is expressed in the haughty statement of dogmatic
metaphysics that it is able to know the ultimate things God, freedom,
immortality with the help of theoretical reason; and in this regard Kant does not
only claim that there is no such kind of cognition, and to state this is mere deception,
but, beyond this, also that precisely this dogmatism is the true source of faithlessness
and immorality.5 Probably the easiest way to shed light on this state of facts is to
1
See Kritik der reinen Vernunft, BXXV: Daher ist eine Kritik, welche die erstere [the
theoretical reason] einschrnkt, so fern zwar negativ, aber, indem sie dadurch zugleich ein
Hinderni, welches den letzteren [practical] Gebrauch einschrnkt, oder gar zu vernichten
droht, aufhebt, in der That von positivem und sehr wichtigem Nutzen, so bald man berzeugt
wird, da es einen schlechterdings nothwendigen praktischen Gebrauch der reinen Vernunft
(den moralischen) gebe [].
2
Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B XXVIIff.
3
Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A 537=B565;
4
Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B XXX
5
Cf. Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B XXX.
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1
Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952), 2nd
ed, vol. 2, 206.
2
AOC 19.
3
Kant: Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloen Vernunft, Kant, Werkausgabe, Werke in
zwlf Bnden, edited by Wilhelm Weischedel, vol. VIII, 724: Gewiheit in Ansehung
derselben ist dem Menschen weder mglich, noch, so viel wir einsehen, moralisch zutrglich.
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of our knowledge, then it could never be the object of our will. In a world that
became perfectly rational nobody would be able to act.1 A metaphysical idealism,
he writes later, which is supposed to know the general evolutionary law of the
world, makes the one-time course of history just as meaningless and futile as
metaphysical naturalism, which considers the absolute reality a permanent cycle. [...]
History is only possible as long as we do not grasp the world metaphysically.2
History is unknowable but free: this is how one could summarize the
message of Rickert and neo-Kantianism, but this thesis could also be put this way:
history is unknowable because it is free and the pledge of its freedom is its
unpredictability and unknowability. The world of knowledge is a world of necessity,
while the world of action is a world of freedom, I summarized Kants tenets above,
and now it could be added: if something like history must belong to the world of
action, if actions take place in a domain called history, then they must also be
unknowable.
The Kantian duality of metaphysics and ethics, knowledge and freedom
(free action) can also be found in Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard criticized Hegelians for
being able to fly in the cosmic heights of absolute knowledge, that is, they can
mediate Christianity and paganism, [...] they can play with the titanic forces of
history, but they are unable to tell the simple man what to do with his life, for
they do not know what to do themselves.3 Hegelian philosophy is only valid
supposing that the present is an absolute age, that there is no future a supposition
which is very difficult to be embraced by the existing man, to build his life upon it.
But if there is future, then the age in which the philosopher lives is not an absolute
age, if the world history is not over, then the system is in permanent becoming,
that is, there is no system, which means here: knowledge has no system.4 Hegelians,
says Kierkegaard, interchange two spheres, the sphere of thinking and that of
freedom; and in the sphere of thinking, where Hegels philosophy dwells, necessity
1
Heinrich Rickert, Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung, 2nd ed. (Tbingen:
Mohr, 1913), 464: Knnten wir die Zukunft wirklich in ihrer Individualitt vorausberechnen,
und wssten wir also genau, was kommen muss, so verlre sofort alles Wollen und Handeln
seinen Sinn. Wir haben daher nur Grund, uns zu freuen, dass es keine historischen Gesetze giebt.
Die Irrationalitt der Wirklichkeit, die allem naturwissenschaftlichen Begreifen eine Grenze setzt,
gehrt zugleich zu den hchsten Gtern fr den, der immer strebend sich bemht. Es ist eine
gndige Hand, die fr uns Menschen die Zukunft in einen undurchdringlichen Schleier gehllt
hat. Wre auch das Knftige in seiner Individualitt Objekt unseres Wissens, so wrde es niemals
Objekt unseres Wollens sein. In einer vollkommen rationalen Welt kann Niemand wirken. To
act means of course here to act morally. In einer rational gewordenen Welt, he writes towards
the end of his book, gbe es nicht nur keine Geschichte und kein sittliches Wirken sondern auch
keine Religion (ibid., 641).
2
Ibid., 578f.: "ein metaphysischer Idealismus, der das Entwicklungsgesetz der Welt zu kennen
glaubt, macht den Verlauf der Geschichte genau ebenso sinnlos und berflssig wie ein
metaphysischer Naturalismus, der die absolute Wirklichkeit fr einen ewigen Kreislauf hlt.
[] Nur so lange wir die Welt nicht metaphysisch begreifen knnen und die empirische
Wirklichkeit in einem irrationalen Verhltniss zu Werthen steht, ist also Geschichte mglich.
3
Kierkegaard: Entweder Oder, 721.
4
Ibid., 723, the following two quotations: ibid., 723, 724.
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rules. Thereby we return back again to the Kantian difference between the world of
knowlede and the world of freedom. In this respect Hegels absolute philosophy is a
philosophy of necessity a critique that the old Schelling already formulated against
Hegel.1 And if Kierkegaard says that philosophy is unable to send man to action,
this evidently refers to Hegels philosophy, which refuses to be aware of the other
sphere, that of freedom, or is only aware of it in such a way that it has eliminated its
freedom in the necessity of thinking.
The basic ambition of foundationalism, namely to acquire well-founded
(metaphysical) knowledge and to ground practical actions on this knowledge,
becomes thus fundamentally questionable: the very concept of knowledge becomes
thus unstable. The result could be summed up approximately like this: human mind
is unable to attain a coherent, objective knowledge of the world, but this may be
not a great problem. We may not be able to reach our desired goal, but possibly it is
not even desirable in all repects to reach this goal. The analysis can shed light on the
unreflected, naive, even dogmatic desire for an absolute knowledge of the world. For
if we ask why we need such an absolute knowledge, why we long for it, then the
answer would be this: in oder that we may know our purpose in life, the way to act
correctly, and get guidance for our actions. But if our reconstruction has been
meaningful then we might realize: although we cannot reach our goal, it is not at all
certain that attaining it would fulfil the hopes we connect to it. If we could somehow
peep into the absolute order of the world, would it offer us any clear guidance as to
what our purpose is? And if so, if we could so indecently look into the ways of
destiny or providence, would we not become a little like a cheater, for whom the
game is already over?2
The summary of the Kantian tradition is largely similar to how Rorty
understands Kants work. At an important section of the concluding part of his
major work, there is a fundamental reference to Kant. Rorty places emphasis on
Kants dismissal of the traditional concept of mind in order to make place for moral
faith, and considers this idea precisely as Kants greatness. What this is about he
sums up briefly and to the point is the philosophers special form of bad faith
substituting pseudo-cognition for moral choice.3 Kants greatness he writes
was to have seen through the metaphysical form of this attempt, and to have
destroyed the traditional conception of reason to make room for moral faith. Kant
gave us a way of seeing scientific truth as something that could never supply an
1
Cf. Schellings smmtliche Werke, ed. K. F. A. Schelling (Stuttgart und Augsburg: J. G. Cotta,
185661), vol. 10, 159.
2
This is similar to how Wittgenstein questions the supposition of the immortality of the soul:
Not only is there no guarantee of the temporal immortality of the human soul, that is to say
of its eternal survival after death; but, in any case, this assumption completely fails to
accomplish the purpose for which it has always been intended. Or is some riddle solved by
my surviving for ever? Is not this eternal life itself as much of a riddle as our present life?
(Tractatus logicophilosophicus, 6.4312). Wittgensteins words can be understood as being
meaningful for the immortality of the soul as long as it is expressed as a desire against the
finiteness of human life. But if we wish to think it autonomously then it becomes just as
mysterious as what it should have had to offer a result for as against a mystery.
3
PMN 383.
171
Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
answer to our demand for a point, a justification, a way of claiming that our moral
decision about what to do is based on knowledge of the nature of the world.1
Clearly, this is what Rorty considers to be Kants basic idea. At the same time, he
also criticizes Kant for not being able to keep up with this idea, and for having
formulated his diagnosis on science unfortunately under the heading
inevitable subjective conditions, claiming that there was a procedure of decision
for solving moral dilemmas.2 Seen from here, Kant is part of the main trend of
European philosophy starting with Plato, and criticized by Rorty, that is concerned
first and foremost with putting philosophy on the stable path of science.3
Returning to the tradition starting from Kant, the thesis of the independence
and unconnectedness of (scientific) knowledge and (practical) action (a moral and
political decision and position) also plays an important role in the work of Max
Weber, connected on several points to neo-Kantianism. As he exposed it probably
most clearly in his influential lecture Science as a Vocation, scientific knowledge
and practical decisions form two separate, unrelated realms. No science is capable to
ground the individuals decisions (religious, political, or regarding ones
worldview). Such things as scientific worldview or scientific politics are
therefore impossible, they serve only to conceal decisions or shift the responsibility
for autonomous action onto some kind of knowledge.4 The very question about the
meaning of science is not a question to be answered with the means of science. The
distinction of facts and values, science and politics/ethics, the recognition that
practical positions cannot be scientifically grounded may give reason to a certain
degree of disappointment or disillusionment (in virtue of questioning the
omnipotence of science) against the background of the hope of some kind of
ultimate metaphysical knowledge of the world. Its acceptance is therefore a matter
of intellectual rectitude,5 which can hardly be proved at all with scientific means.
The best way to characterize Webers stance is by a thesis of Karl Popper. Although
ethics is not a science, Popper writes, and there is no rational scientific basis of
ethics, there is an ethical basis of science6 It is worth mentioning: this difference
shows significant parallels with Gadamers claim, in the preface of the second
edition of his major work, that, although the hermeneutics he elaborated is not a
science not a system of professional rules or methodology but it invites to
scientific correctness.7
1
Ibid., emphasis in the original. See also CIS 34.
2
PMN 383.
3
This is the interpretation of Kant that Rorty has in mind when he mentions Kant together
with Plato, or talks about a Plato-Kant canon. (See e.g. CIS 33, 45, 61, 76, 78f, 96f, 106,
118, 154; PP 2, 65, 157; PSH xvii, 34.) It is this Kant who seeks certainty, and not the Kant
to demolishes knowledge for the sake of faith that he will oppose Sartre to (as we shall see
later). See PSH 13: Jean-Paul Sartre seemed to me right when he denounced Kants self-
deceptive quest for certainty.
4
See Max Weber, The Vocation Lectures, eds. David Owen and Tracy B. Strong,
Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 2004, 17ff, 26ff.
5
Max Weber, The Vocation Lectures, 20 (intellektuelle Rechtschaffenheit).
6
Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol 2, 238.
7
Gadamer, GW 2, 438: wissenschaftliche Redlichkeit.
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
1
Paul Feyerabend, Wieder den Methodenzwang. Skizzen einer anarchistischen Erkenntnistheo-
rie, (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1976), 49. Gewiheit wenn sie erreichbar wre
bedeutet Fehlen der Verantwortlichkeit. Vielmehr ist es so: da sich Gewiheit nicht erreichen
lt, nimmt man die Verantwortung auf sich und wird ein reifer Mensch. Es ist interessant zu
sehen, da Erkenntnistheoretiker und Wissenschaftstheoretiker Verhltnisse anstreben, in denen
unsere Reife geringer ist als wir vielleicht wnschen.
2
SZ, 4. ., 11.: Wissenschaftliche Forschung ist nicht die einzige und nicht die nchste
mgliche Seinsart dieses Seienden. In his pragmatist stance Rorty fully agrees with this
approach; he emphatically and approvingly mentions that in Being and Time Heidegger
considers objective scientific knowledge as a secondary, derivative form of Being-in-the
World (PP 2, 11)
3
PMN 361.: [Sartre] sees the attempt to gain an objective knowledge of the world, and thus
of oneself, as an attempt to avoid the responsibility for choosing ones project.
173
Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
moment of utterance,1 and this also confirms Rortys interpretation. The need for
objective knowledge is connected for Sartre to bad faith (mauvaise fois). The
attempt to grasp ourselves in some kind of ultimage objective description (suggested
by the spirit of seriousness2) is therefore not only futile and hopeless, but even
more importantly the aspiration itself is conceived in bad faith. Lying behind it is the
tacit intention to turn the being-for-itself into being-in-itself, into a thing.
This attempt to slough off responsibility," writes Rorty, "is what Sartre
describes as the attempt to turn oneself into a thing-into an etre-en-soi. In the visions
of the epistemologist, this incoherent notion takes the form of seeing the attainment
of truth as a matter of necessity, either the 'logical' necessity of the transcendentalist
or the 'physical' necessity of the evolutionary 'naturalizing' epistemologist. From
Sartre's point of view, the urge to find such necessities is the urge to be rid of one's
freedom to erect yet another alternative theory or vocabulary. Thus the edifying
philosopher [the sort whose primary concern is not knowledge of metaphysical
truths, but the edification of humans I.M.F.] who points out the incoherence of the
urge is treated as a 'relativist,' one who lacks moral seriousness, because he does not
join in the common human hope that the burden of choice will pass away."3 Sartre
was definitely lacking moral seriousness since he did not want at all to take off the
burden of choice from peoples shoulders, and in his major work he thoroughly
criticized the spirit of seriousness (esprit de srieux), and referred ironically to
serious people even in his popular lecture.4
Rortys remark that Sartre (and what Rorty calls edifying philosophy) lacks
moral seriousness should evidently not be understood literally, containing as it does
irony. Sartre (similarly to all representatives of the mentioned tradition, beginning with
Kant) embodied and expressed a kind of (often rigorous) moral attitude and strictness
one that rejects any kind of self-deception and self-delusion, any kind of wishful
thinking, one that is ready and able to ruthlessly confront the fallibility of the contingent
man which urges him to substitute pseudo-cognition for moral choice.5 However,
1
EN 151; cf. also ibid, 483: the being-for-itself is always different from what may be said
about it (toujours autre chose que ce qu'on peut dire de lui; emphasis in the original).
2
See Sartre: Materialism and Revolution, Sartre, Literary and Philosophical Essays, 215,
where Sartre writes about materialism that it is one of the forms of the spirit of seriousness and
of flight from one's own self (translation modified; see Sartre, Situtions, vol. III, Paris:
Gallimard, 1949, 162: une des formes de l'esprit de srieux et de la fuite devant soi-mme).
3
PMN 376. Rorty writes further on: Sartre adds to our understanding of the visual imagery
which has set the problems of Western philosophy by showing the traditional image of the
unveiled mirror of Nature as the image of God. From this point of view Rorty concludes: to
look for commensuration rather than simply continued conversationto look for a way of
making further redescription unnecessary by finding a way of reducing all possible descriptions
to oneis to attempt escape from humanity (PMN 376f.). In a later writing, explaining Sartre,
Rorty writes: We shall not need a picture of the human self in order to have morality (PP 2,
160), cf. also CIS 42, PP 2, 132.: Sartres point that we have a tendency to repudiate and evade
this freedom of choice is perfectly just.
4
See EN 674, also: Sartre, L'Existentialisme est un humanisme (Paris: Nagel, 1946), see:
http://www.mediasetdemocratie.net/Textes/Existentialisme.htm>
5
PMN 383.
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
the measures are reverse for the man who escapes responsibility and himself; for
him, it is the rejection of the urgent desire for certainty-security-stability that counts
as lack of moral seriousness. Be it as it may: Rorty is receptive of Sartres critique
of the spirit of seriousness; his answer as I have outlined earlier is irony (and
hope, as will be mentioned in the concluding part).
Jean-Paul Sartre seemed to me right when he denounced Kants self-
deceptive quest for certainty says Rorty.1 In his major work, in reference to Quine
and Sellars, Rorty talked about a concept of philosophy, trying at the same time to
raise sympathy for it: holism produces, as Quine has argued in detail and Sellars
has said in passing, a conception of philosophy which has nothing to do with the
quest for certainty.2 This certainty is illusory and unachievable: the quest for it is
nothing else than self-deception, evasion of life, and all this in the best of the cases.
For a false certainty and the illusion of certainty may stabilize and grow into an
ideology, they may lead to self-justification, in the possession of which man may
pose as morally superior. The moral suspicion might extend to other philosophical
disciplines in addition to ethics, and ultimately also to philosophy as such.
***
This paper could be concluded with the following remarks. One of the basic
metaphysical questions of Kant the third one sounds like this: Was darf ich
hoffen? (What may I hope for?)3, and for Rorty also it is primarily about hope.
From Rortys perspective, hope plays a fundamental role both in the lives of people
and in the philosophers life. The expression itself appears often in his texts and in
the title of one of his books as well: Philosophy and Social Hope. One chapter of
this book indicates the narrow context of this phrase: Hope in Place of Knowledge.
Hope stands, therefore, for Rorty just like for Kant in the place of knowledge. If
Kant demolished knowledge to make place for faith (Ich mute also das Wissen
aufheben, um zum Glauben Platz zu bekommen),4 than we could state by analogy:
Rorty demolished knowledge to make room for hope. Solidarity for Rorty does not
depend on the existence of common truths, common language, or some final
1
PSH 13. See also the the bibliographical indications in note 81.
2
Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1979, 171. See also J. Grondin, Die Hermeneutik als Konsequenz des kritischen Rationalismus,
Philosophia naturalis 32 (1995), book 2, reprint: Hermeneutik und Naturalismus, ed. B. Kanit-
scheider, F. J. Wetz (Tbingen: Mohr, 1998), 42f. [...] die kartesianische oder, im allgemeinen,
die wissenschaftliche Sicherheitsobsession einer Flucht des Daseins vor seiner eigenen Zeit-
lichkeit oder Geschichtlichkeit entstamme. Heidegger und die Hermeneutik sehen nun in dieser
Sorge um Gewihet eines der Grundmotive der abendlndischen Philosophie und Wissen-
schaft, sofern sie nach letzten Fundamenten streben
3
Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B833: Alles Interesse meiner Vernunft (das spekulative
sowohl, als das praktische) vereinigt sich in folgenden drei Fragen: 1. Was kann ich wissen?
2. Was soll ich tun? 3. Was darf ich hoffen?. See also: Logik. Ein Handbuch zu Vorlesungen.
ed. G. B. Jsche, in Kant: Schriften zur Metaphysik und Logik. 2, Werkausgabe. ed. W.
Weischedel, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1974, vol. 6. 448.
4
Kritik der reinen Vernunft, BXXXI
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
vocabulary, but on the receptivity for pain, suffering and humiliation, and the
common hope that everybodys own world with the little childish things and
individual vocabulary would not be destroyed.1
As Rorty exposed in his influential writing discussing the common features of
the Bible and the Communist Manifesto, both teach the sensitivity to inequality, and
feed the hope in the future. Both want to encourage, and not formulate knowledge
claims (about the second coming of Christ, or about the realization of the communist
society). Christianity and socialism they both mean the same, so something like
Christian socialism is almost a pleonasm: nowadays you cannot hope for the
fraternity which the Gospels preach without hoping that democratic governments will
redistribute money and opportunity in a way that the market never will..2
The question Was darf ich hoffen? is for Kant sharply separated from the
question Was kann ich wissen?. And not by chance. If I knew everything that was
possible to know everything I want to know I would not have much to hope for.
Hope is only possible where knowledge does not have access to. Hope is at home in
the world of action it motivates, urges and guides our actions. As such, it is
connected to practical life, and not to knowledge. I do not I cannot have hopes
about things that I know.3 The life of omniscience, the life lived in omniscience
would therefore be a life without hope, that is, a hope-less life in the emphatic sense
of the word and in each of its multiple senses: perhaps not unthinkable for Gods, but
hardly conceivable for humans.
1
CIS 92. Cf. ibid., 89, where Rorty writes about the little things of the child that he fantasizes
about, and that some adults would tend to describe as trash and throw them away.
2
Cf. PSH 201ff. quote on 205.
3
And what I hope for cannot be the object of my knowledge. The statement I know that
twice two is four can hardly be meaningfully replaced by the statement (which is doubtful
as it is) I hope that twice two is four. The latter cannot be deduced from the former, nor is
it some kind of weakened form of the former. Knowledge may have its gradations (I know,
I dont know, I am certain, I am uncertain), but I cannot be connected to the object of
my knowledge by a practical hopeful interest. In other words: what has got into the scope
of knowledge, cannot get into the scope of hope, and vice versa. In his writing discussing the
parallels between the Bible and the Communist Manifesto, Rorty claims: there is a
difference between knowledge and hope. Hope often takes the form of false prediction, as it
did in both documents [...] When reading the texts themselves we should skip slightly past
the predictions, and concentrate on the expression of hope. (see PSH 204f.)
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
Abstract: The subject of this paper is the presentation and contrasting analysis of the
so-called ultimate metaphysical questions in the works of Istn Kirly V., who had
spent several decades of consistent fathoming of the senses of life, death, freedom,
history and illness. Although Kirlys Heideggerian thinking, his commitment to
fundamental ontology and hermeneutics is beyond dispute, he can be regarded as an
independent thinker who forms his own thinking autonomously and independently
from the authors he prefers to refer to (Kierkegaard, Heidegger, etc.) His originality
lies in the fact that he rethinks and takes forward the Heideggerian questions and
answers, trying to join the abstract views of fundamental ontology with the life-
commitment of applied philosophy. This way he sees the questions of death, freedom
and illness connected to euthanasia or abortion, that is, the concrete questions of
human existence which often test the limits or paralyse freedom. The paper does not
claim that Kirlys radical interpretation of being is an isolated attempt. Therefore the
author of the paper compares Kirlys applied philosophy experiment with other
similar approaches of the 20th century, such as Ernst Bloch, Nicolai Berdyaev,
Emmanuel Lvinas, and Jean-Paul Sartre, in the mirror of whose works the originality
and challenging innovation of Kirlys thoughts is even more apparent.
E-mail: kisslaj@zeus.nyf.hu
Some two years ago I found myself in an interesting and revealing debate on
the current position of Hungarian philosophy with a friend of mine who is of course
also an expert of the field, whats more, a well known researcher of the history of
Hungarian philosophy. I happened to say, partly by conviction, partly as a
provocation (a debate is a debate) that the quality of Hungarian philosophy is not
*
Istvn Kirly V., Krd jelezs. (Question marking) (Pozsony [Bratislava]: Kalligram,
2004), 219p. Idem, Halandan lakozik szabadsgban az ember (Mortally dwells man in his
freedom) (Pozsony [Bratislava]: Kalligram, 2007), 309p. Idem, Krds-pontok a
trtnelemhez, a hallhoz s a szabadsghoz (Question-points to history, death and freedom)
(Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitar Clujean, 2008), 253p. Idem, A betegsg az l
ltlehetsge (Illness A Possibility of the Living Being (With a detailed English summary)
(Pozsony [Bratislava]: Kalligram, 2011). 198p.
177
Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
1
Cf. Kirly, Krd83131. If not marked otherwise, all foreign-language quotations are
translated into English by Emese Czintos.
178
Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
appropriate to structure my impressions and critical remarks about his studies around
his most recently published book. While doing this, I will make references to the
chapters of the other two books which dwell in more detail on, or are more
argumentative in underlining, the theses formulated in this latter, visibly synthetic
volume.
1
Hall s trtnelem Prolegomenk egy trtnelemfilozfiai, illetve trtnelemontolgiai
lehetsghez. (Death and history Prolegomenae to the possibility of a philosophy of
history and ontology of history), in Krds-pontok. 7110.
2
Ibid., 27.
3
Dying, human death is never merely biological, never a process or event defined merely by
the natural laws of the living world. Kirly, Halandan107.
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
ignore the burden of radical finiteness, to turn away from the problem of death is not
merely a matter of the genetic weakness of will of historical subjects. Actually, the
flight strategies which turn man away from taking on the true burden of the radical
end (death understood as dying) are in fact built in the very foundations of European
(and extra-European) cultural traditions. These flight directions always aim, one way
or another, at minimizing our personal implication deriving from the existential
nature of death (meaning that it cannot be transferred) either by promising the
immortality of the soul, or by transforming the issue of ones own death into the
issue of the other peoples death. The first direction is taken by religions and so-
called philosophies of religion, while the second direction is shared by medicine,
ethnology, historiography, cultural anthropology, etc.
In what follows, I will present some strategies to avoid the problem of
death which differ from the traditional problem of the immortality of the soul and
some of which are also at times taken into account by Kirly V.; his judgment is of
course almost always ruthlessly rejecting, as a direct consequence of the authors
admittedly fundamental ontological commitment.
1
See Krd 8692. Berdyaev, who has a way of seeing the existential relation to death in
many respects similar to that of Lvinas or rather, Lvinass is similar to Berdyaev ,
writes: The question of the immortality of the soul is one of the now obsolete metaphysical
questions. Nikolai Berdyaev, O naznacsenyii cseloveka opit paradoxalnoj etyiki [English:
The Destiny of Man] (Paris YMCA-PRESS, 1981), 268.
2
Cf. Bernard Bolzano, A llek halhatatlansga, avagy Athanasia Mi a filozfia? (The
immortality of the soul, or Athanasia * What is philosophy?), trans. Csiks Ella (Budapest: Szent
Istvn Trsulat, 2001); Ludwig Feuerbach, Gedanken ber Tod und Unsterblichkeit. In Idem,
Frhe Schriften, Kritiken und Reflexionen (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1981), 175517.
3
Ernst Bloch, Das Prinzip Verantwortung, vol. 3. (Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 1956)
(Hoffnungsbilder gegen den Tod), 196279.
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
whilst the body can also enforce its rights. The physis can only be allegorized by the
dead body. And the actors of the tragedy die because they can only reach their
allegorical homeland as corpses1 Bodies become emblems, says Bloch, rethinking
Walter Benjamins analysis, because history in general is a huge pile of ruins and as
such, in a Baroque emblem, the deadness of the figures and the abstractness of the
concepts is therefore a precondition for the allegorical transformation of the
pantheon in a world of magical conceptual creatures.2 Although the hero dies in the
Baroque tragedy, his figure lives on in the allegory.3 Although the complaint against
death appears in the tragedy, it is eventually set aside, since the hero at the expense
of losing his factual life acquires an immortal character. Bloch regards death as it
appears in German tragedy as a sort of chisel: with the function of shaping the
character of the hero, and make it immortal in its final form. This form of death can
by no means be regarded as an unsurpassable possibility of human existence. This is
the form achieved at least in Blochs view in the victory of socialist
consciousness over death. The communist hero does not simply immunize the fear
of death in his consciousness (like for instance the martyrs of Christianity), but goes
well beyond it. At the same time, Bloch strangely argues that the communist hero
can neither be regarded a pantheist thinker who hopes that the atoms of his body
would simply merge into the universe after his death. Although it is true that the
communist hero dies without the hope of personal resurrection, Bloch still says
about the death of Sacco and Vanzetti that their martyrdom is in fact not even
martyrdom. The martyrdom of a communist martyr is not individual, but also not a
general collective martyrdom, but a previously inexistent unity of the individual and
the collective; and this is what Bloch terms solidarity.4 True solidarity does not
merely mean the cohesion of those who live close together in space, but it is also an
essentially temporal cohesion as well: the sacrifices of the past meet, or rather
become present in the actions of future winners. Still, however skilfully might Bloch
use the dialectical possibilities offered by the German language, every kind of
teleological and utopian philosophy of history must face the inevitable fact of
individual death, and therefore he himself cannot possibly avoid the question of the
individuals existential end-orientation. On the last pages of his analysis of the
problem of death, Bloch intends to reveal the ontological structure of the actual
being related to death, and these are precisely the thoughts that Lvinas reflects on
in his book on death.5 Bloch states that man approaching death does not cease to be
inquisitive. And this inquisitiveness also contains the affect of cheerfulness, as the
world does not cease to offer original experiences to the very last breath of the dying
man. And this instinct urging for research presupposes of course an I which tries
1
Ibid., 264. Und die Personen der des Trauerspiels sterben, weil sie nur so, als Leichen, in
die allegorische Heimat gehen.
2
Ibid., Abgestorbenheit der Gestalten und Abgezogenheit der Begriffe sind also fr die
allegorische Verwandlung des Pantheons in eine Welt magischer Begriffskreaturen die
Voraussetzung.
3
Cf. Ibid., 264.
4
Cf. Ibid., 270.
5
Emmanuel Lvinas, La mort et le temps (Paris: ditions de lHerne, 1991), 106122.
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hard to preserve itself while dying, in order to be able to observe death.1 The desire
for knowledge triumphs over anxiety, and in this sense it also becomes apparent that
the power of epistemological commitment may turn at times into an ontological
fact.2 All this, according to Bloch, is inseparably connected to the ultimate
experience of existential time. Bloch claims that the experienced existential now as
absolute directness occupies precisely that spot which cannot be experienced.3 The
new or the moment as not-being-there (Nicht-Da-Sein) appears to the mortal as the
entangled fabric of his arranged and unarranged fate. Man is born, and by this his
origin is lost in the past, since we can never remember the moment of our birth,
although it most intimately belongs to us. Death through its other side, which
remains problematic in all respects (as the definite in the world, where it appears
rather as fragments to define), never opposes, not even despite being the strongest
anti-utopia, the trivial realities that are there in the mass of hopes and suspicions
connected to death. However, it does oppose the categorical system of scientific-
concrete utopias (because of the lacking continuities connected to ones previous
life). The meaning of death appears in the darkness of the given moment, or in
other words: in the blind spot of the given moment. That is to say, the not yet
defined how, or how-being (Da-Sein) must break through the factual givenness of
being-there (Da-Sein) without finding a stable grab in his previous life. The question
stays of course: do the moment being lived and death not have the same root? (...)
namely the not yet involved how-being without the being-there (...)4 Undoubtedly
Block sees the death of man as appearing in the essential kernel (Kern) of every
thinking and acting being existent in time. In contrast to religious utopias, in Blochs
utopia of hope, in the projection of the not-yet-being-there (meaning the problem of
1
Cf. Bloch, Das Prinzip Verantwortung, 273. Dieser Forschungstrieb setzt freilich ein Ich voraus,
das whrend des Sterbens, ja nach ihm erhalten bleibt, um den Tod beobachten zu knnen.
2
This is not to say, of course, that the dying person is able to accurately communicate the
phenomenology of the process he undergoes. Istvn Kirly V. is right to claim: What could
such a thought- or actual experience which is probably not useless, but, as we have
emphasized, asking for its actual happening, possibly inform about? Is it not precisely that
the gradually dying phenomenologist gradually but definitely loses his ability to gradually
communicate his interpretations and experiences recte: phenomenological description of
dying, becoming more and more obscure?! Kirly, Halandan 66. Of course, even in the
case of a person with extraordinary self-control who could perhaps offer an objective
exposition of the process of his dying to the last moment of his life one would have to face
almost unsolvable dilemmas. That is, it would still be problematic whether one could get any
closer to disclosing the enigma of dying even in such a strange and special case. One would
have to face the question often asked by Luhmann whether self-observation can be any more
objective than external observation. Undoubtedly, I have a privileged access to my own
mental state. This means: nobody can see into my head. But I have no access to the
observation of my own observation. This could be thought of as an all-seeing eye which
would not just want to see everything, but also how it sees everything. According to
Luhmann, the blind spot of ones own observation can only be corrected by taking into
account external observations. These are of course only occasional observations which
should be clarified by further investigations, but this is not the place for such an endeavour.
3
Ernst Bloch, Das Prinzip Hoffnung. I. (Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 1954), 313.
4
Bloch, Das PrinzipIII. 275. (nmlich noch nicht involviertes Da-Sein ohne Da-Sein
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the liberation of mankind) the death present in an anticipated way does not belong
to the dying person. The kernel (Kern) of existing beings, as that which has not yet
come into being, always falls outside Creation and Passing, of which neither is able
to grasp the core of our being.1 And this is how it happens, argues Bloch, because
an exterritorial dimension is absolutely necessary to successfully achieve the human
essence transposed into the future. The negativity of death surrounds the subject-
kernel as a hard shell, but is it not impossible to break this kernel. And if the hard
shell can be successfully broken, says Bloch, then an incorruptible novum, opposing
transience, appears in this earthly salvation history.
Beyond doubt, Blochs utopia of hope with its extraordinary complexity
and terminological sleight shows some similarity with Heideggers interpretation
of death. Nevertheless, one must not be silent about the weaknesses of Blochs
interpretation of death. For he also, as well as any teleological vision of the
philosophy of history, must face that uncomfortable side effect that the last
generations of history can only be happy at the expense of the suffering of their
predecessors. (I shall return to this question in the next chapter).
1
Ibid., 278. Der Kern des Existierens ist, als noch ungeworden, allemal exterritorial zum
Werden und Vergehen, von welch beiden unser Kern noch gar nicht erfat ist
2
Boris Groys, Politik der Unsterblichkeit, in Idem, Die Kunst des Denkens (Hamburg:
Phili Fin Arts, 2008), 35. Frher war dies freilich anders. Es galt nicht als peinlich, ber die
Unsterblichkeit zu reden, denn glaubte, dass die Seele den Krper berleben wrde. Und es
schien durchaus edel und vernntftig, sich noch whrend des irdischen Lebens Gedanken
darber zu machen, welchen Weg die Seele nach dem Tod nimmt vor allem die Frage zu
behandeln, welcher Teil der Seele potenziell unsterblich und welcher Teil vergnlich ist.
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talking, acting being, they have completely stuck amidst spatial coordinates. This is
how the class, the race or these days the gender could become new reference frames
of human action, where natural determinants were replaced and are still being
replaced by social (self)determinations. This has a fundamental influence on the
transformation possibilities of the metanoia as well. For, if there is no soul any
more, then the body (or perhaps the corpse) could just as much be a vehicle of
immortality. The corpse is of course something that decays and finally perishes.
However, the process of rotting is potentially endless one can never say that this
process will definitively end sometime, since the remains of the body can be
identified for a long time. But even in the case if the trace of the corpse can no
longer be identified, it does not mean that the body has completely disappeared, it
only means that the elements of the body, the molecules, atoms, etc. have been
dispersed in the universe and that the body is practically united with the universe, or,
if we wish, it has turned into a body without organs.1 This new, evidently cosmic
perspective creates a new possibility for metanoia. It is not the soul, but the body
which intends to become immortal. Part of the citizens of the Western world
anticipates the possibilities of the perpetuation of the body just as they used to do it
before with the soul. Groys uses the term heteronoia to denote the recent visions in
fashion of the after-life transformations of the body although, thinking of the
Egyptian mummies, the ideas of the immortality of the body seems even older than
the anticipations of the immortality of the soul. It is definitely worth mentioning that
Groys builds on the concept of heterotopia introduced by Foucault. The body, as it
frees itself from the soul, moves to a new place: the graveyard. Foucault, says
Groys, points out the museum and the library, in addition to the graveyard, and
eminent manifestations of heterotopias. The body, by entering a new kind of life-
time, transcends the graveyard or the museum. Man experiences thus a kind of
heteronomia, as he experiences his body as a corpse even in his lifetime. At this
point we do not ask where he comes from, but where he will be taken after his death
and this very heterotopic endpoint is the starting point of his worldview.2
European philosophy has been concerned for a long time with the
metaphysics of the corpse. The decadent movements of the 19th century were centred
precisely on the questions of the metaphysics of the dead body. Among others,
Groys refers to Walter Benjamins allegory interpretation mentioned in the previous
chapter. Jacques Derridas deconstructivism may also belong here. In his case, one
can speak about a kind of metanoia as well: Derrida thematizes a kind of post-
1
Ibid., 37. Dieser Vorgang des Verwesung is potenziell unendlich mann kann nicht sagen,
wann dieser Prozess definitiv endet, denn die berreste des Krpers lassen sich lange genug
identifizieren. Aber auch in dem Fall, dass sich die Leichspuren nicht mehr identizifieren
lassen, bedeutet es nicht, dass der Krper verschwunden ist, sondern es heit nur, dass sich
seine Elemente, d. h. Molekle, Atome usw. so sehr ber das Ganze der Welt verteilt haben,
dass der Krper mit dem Ganzen der Welt praktisch eins oder, wenn man so will, definiv zu
einem Krper ohne Organe geworden ist.
2
Ibid., 3839. So kann der Mensch eine Heteronoia erleben, indem er schon whrend seines
Lebens seinen Krper als Leiche erlebt. Dann fragt man sich nicht, woher man kommt,
sondern wohin man nach dem Tod gebracht wird und man diesen heterotopischen
Endpunkt zum Ausgangspunkt seiner Weltbetrachtung.
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mortem falling apart, which already began in ones real life. It is a permanent
bodily fall, which has no beginning and no end. Or Giorgio Agambenr Muslim
could also be mentioned, interestingly described in the Italian philosophers book
entitled Homo sacer.1 The Muslim is the living corpse of German concentration
camps. Or rather, the Muslim is a man not completely alive but also not
completely dead; he is almost impossible to be defined on the basis of a dual logic.
(I must note that the homo sacer condition is not identical with the liminal situations
of Jaspers, or the frequently mentioned death experience of people who survived
coma. It is in connection to them that Kirly repeatedly mentions that there is no
such thing as someone is a little dead, and a little not dead.2 The Muslim is in fact
already dead, or more precisely a dead person whose death is constructed by
biopolitics in a way elaborated with technical precision. That is to say, the death of
the homo sacer can only be perceived in its real meaning if embedded into a social
perspective). In Groyss opinion we find very similar phenomena in the mass
cultural imagination of our age as well. We are dealing here also with immortal
bodies without souls. It is primarily zombies, clones and living machines, that is,
various immortal beings, which stand in the centre of contemporary mass culture.3
Still, the real stages of bodily immortality are cultural archives, and especially art
collections, claims Groys. Art museums are outstanding showcases for the storage of
dead things: the things preserved and put on display have already lost their
connection with life practice, their function, and they are offered as mere spectacle.
Works of art live a vampire-like life: just like vampires, they must be protected from
light. Modern avant-garde has always considered its primary role, and continues
doing so, to demonstrate pure corporeality, that what is corpse-like. Avant-garde art
fights the average art consumer who tries to project a soul into the works of art in
the form of interpretations or historicizing. By this, however, the viewer prevents the
possibility of heteronomia: the viewer tries to look at the work of art from a worldly
perspective instead of changing the perspective and looking at the world from a
museum perspective, that is, learning to experience the world as a corpse. Art is
becoming more and more radical in fighting this false reaction: it does its best to
reduce even more the experiential world to a corpse. The world of artistic
representation becomes more and more deserted, disintegrated, having no reference.
Groys considers Malevichs painting Black square against white background one of
the purest projections of the dead body.4
1
Giorgio Agamben, Homo sacer (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2002). I analyzed
this book in detail in my book Haladsparadoxonok bevezets az extrm korok
filozfijba (Paradoxes of progress introduction to the philosophy of extreme ages)
(Budapest: Liget, 2009), 2533.
2
(...) the reports of people brought back from the experience of clinical death or as a
result of medical science saved or revived in increasing numbers inform about experiences
of people who eventually did not die.
3
Boris Groys, Politik der Unsterblichkeit, 40. Es handelt sich dabei meistens um
unsterbliche Krper ohne Seele. So stehen vor allem Zombies, Klone und lebende
Maschinen, d. h. unterschiedliche Untote, im Zentrum der heutigen Massenkultur.
4
See also Codrina Laura Ionitas recent interesting study on Malevich: Lau-del du visible ou
labstraction dans lart, Studia Universitatis Babe-Bolyai. Philosophia 1 (2010): 107123.
185
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1
Michael Hagemeister, Az orosz kozmizmus az 1900-as vekben (Russian cosmism in the
1990s), in G. B. Rosenthal, ed., Az okkult az orosz s a szovjet kultrban (Occultism in
Russian and Soviet culture), trans. Katalin Teller (Budapest: Eurpa, 2004), 261.
2
Ibid., 216.
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that the idea of international inter-library loan also comes from him. If nothing else
were connected to Fyodorovs name, his name would still be worth remembering for
these. The ascetism of Fyodorovs private life is strangely completed by his
alchemistic/occult activism, since, as Eliade writes: The alchemist on its part strives
to realize the dream of prolonging his body and the youth, force and flexibility of his
body.1 For this reason, from an occultists perspective the nature which lacks
human activity is wild and cruel in itself. Maxim Gorky, who and few know this of
him trained himself, albeit as an autodidact, to be an extremely well-informed
philosopher viewed nature in a similar way. In addition to Dostoevsky, he used
many elements of the teachings of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Eduard von
Hartmann for elaborating his anarchist-Gnostic worldview. He wrote in his article
On culture in 1928: Nature is the chaos of unorganized, instinctive forces. These
forces afflict man with earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, drought, intolerable heat or
unbearable cold (...) Nature unreasonably wastes its force on useless microorganisms
causing all sorts of diseases bacilli carried by dangerous insects mosquitoes,
flies, lice -; these carry the poison of typhus, malaria and others of the kind over to
the blood of people. Nature has created countless dangerous and completely useless
plants and animals. A legion of parasites sucks on the healthy juices, and thus
weakens the organism (...).2 In another of his writings, Gorky uses in a witty
formulation the expression stepmother-nature instead of mother-nature known
from myths. Gorkys contempt of nature however was not unmatched in the age.
Representatives of just forming Soviet Marxism had a similar way of thinking. Ivan
Skvortsov-Stepanov states in his handbook Historical materialism and modern
natural sciences published in 1926: It is impossible not to recognize the rough,
barbaric, destructive, devastating processes of nature (...) Where is the providence,
harmony, expediency so often referred to? These are the wild actions of the blind
processes of blind nature! Man acts incomparably more reasonably and expediently
when he creatively... penetrates the processes of nature and begins to control,
regulate and rule them.3 A new world must be created! claims Gorky, and this
way he actually returns to his younger anthroposophist-Gnostic self. Gorky
anticipated the concept of the socialist bermensch already in his poem Man, an
outstanding work of his young age. The most important idea of this work rhymes
with the famed Nietzschean thought that God is dead. Man must overcome his
natural determination and, reclining on the unlimited creative power of reason, he
must step into the place of the dethroned God. It clearly emerges from these that
Gorky was not the least a materialist. Rethinking Oswald and Bogdanovs
energetism, he saw as the basis of material phenomena the inexhaustible energetic
transformations, which in his view the superior man is able to guide by his own
will. The new man is even able to defeat death with the help of energy freed from
the prison of the matter.
1
George M. Young Jr., Az okkultizmus Fjodorov-fle vltozatai (The Fyodorov-type
variations of occultism), trans. Katalin Teller, in Rosenthal, Az okkult az orosz s a szovjet
kultrban, 227.
2
Cited in Mikhail Agursky, Velikii eretik (Gor'kii kak religioznyi myslitel') Voprosy
filosofii 8 (1991): 56.
3
Cited in Ibid., 56.
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1
Groys, Politik der Unsterblichkeit, 44. (Der Sozialismus funktioniert als Ausbeutung der
Toten zugunsten der Lebenden und als Ausbeutung der heute Lebenden zugunsten der
spter Lebenden.)
2
Fyodorov understands correctly Kants intentions in this case. It may suffice to mention
Kants work entitled The Conflict of the Faculties (German: Der Streit der Fakultten, in
Schriften zur Anthropologie, Geschichtsphilosophie, Politik und Pdagogik. Erstel Teil,
Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1964). This kind of approach is also
accepted by Istvn Kirly V. For example: This does not mean however that death in itself,
any kind of death would be, directly and explicitly, annihilation. On the contrary: the
historicity of human existence lies in the fact that the generations living in their mortality
base their lives on the works of generations past, continuing, caring for, and changing them,
giving them up or taking them on... In fact, maximum four generations of people (can) live
on the Earth at one time, all the rest is either already dead or have not yet been born...
3
Quoted by Agursky, Velikii eretik, 61.
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But another character goes even further, saying: Not even your most daring dream
may surpass the perspectives offered by our party (...) We erect an eternal bridge
between live and dead nature.1
These seemingly nave phantasms turned very important in the last decades
because of the degree of the interference with natural processes, which could
previously only be imagined by the greatest fantasts. Bionics (the connection of
human flesh and technical instruments, like pacemakers), biotechnology (the
connection of biology and information technology, e.g., researches conducted on
computer-controlled human organs), and especially the most recent achievements of
genetics are now definitively confusing us about the undisturbed application of
natural and unnatural codes.2 All this is completed with the ever stronger tendency
of modern art since Baudelaire that art should not imitate nature but be a creator of
alternative worlds. The penetration of biotechnology and nanotechnology into art
can increasingly be perceived ever since the 1980s. Three famous representatives of
body-art, Matthew Barney, Stelarc and the French Orlan (who was originally a
woman!) claim that the natural human body is no longer natural in our age, therefore
in the age of technology the body must be trained to that technological, political and
social milieu we inhabit. The solitary creation of the solitary artist is doomed, artists
must cooperate with physicists, technicians, engineers, information technologists,
plastic surgeons, etc. There is a need for new body techniques, the successful (!?)
application of which may result in the complete transformation of the Homo sapiens.
While being a fairly well-known body-artist in France, Orlan also tries to
theoretically explain his strange activity, interpreting his work as a special kind of
existential critique. To Orlan, the primary boundaries are not the social
determinations; she is not content with the human bodys nature of being given
once and for all. It is precisely corporeality (charnel) from where the world can be
questioned. In the view of Orlan and other body artists the body is not a givenness
but a commitment, a possibility shaped almost unlimitedly. Orlan has been
transforming her body in operations from the beginning of the 1990s. She also uses
the computer to compose her new looks. She puts together her continuously
changing body identity from the representations of man and chimaeras of Greek and
Oriental mythologies, her own imagination and all kinds of computer software. Her
most important concern is never to resemble the female ideal that began to shape
beginning with European Renaissance culture and at least to her mind has hardly
changed ever since. In this, she follows the views of radical feminist Judith Butler,
who claims that the female gender identity is nothing else than a product of the
colonization of male culture. Orlan has been planning lately to grow her nose several
times its length with plastic surgery. Earlier she also had small horns operated on her
forehead. The Orlan regarding herself as her own Pygmalion intends to continue
the radical transformation of her body ever after her death. More precisely, she is
interested in the possibility of attaining immortality or at least quasi-immortality
(just like Fyodorov, as we have seen earlier). Death will not come for Orlan for
1
Andrej Platonov, Munkagdr (The Foundation Pit) (Budapest: Eurpa, 1989), 220.
2
Jol de Rosnay, LHomme symbiotique (Paris: ditions du Seuil, 2000).
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well find her mummified body some day in a museum, inserted into an installation
with interactive video.1 Just like the representatives of Russian cosmism once (and
the Bolsheviks too, who also relied quite heavily on the views of the cosmists but
kept discreetly silent about their names) who wanted to turn natural laws into
obedient instruments of their will, Orlan also fights against all external
determinations. My work she notes is a fight against the innate, the inexorable,
against nature and DNA (which is our direct rival as performance artists) and God.2
Of course, in Orlans case we tend to say that this is merely the fantasy of an
eccentric and solitary artist. But this is not quite the case. As one of her French
critics says: the identity that Orlan changes through her body from time to time is
itself subordinated to the collective phantasms produced by a mediatised society.
Plastic surgery may indeed give us a face that we would like to see in the mirror
later. But for this view to rise to aesthetic standards, there is need for much more. It
is precisely the mediatised world of images conveyed by television which provides
the ammunition even for individual revolt. It is still a question of course whether
there is a constant natural basis for a body constructed by society, which resists its
unlimited transformability. These dilemmas which, whether we want it or not,
always become ethical problems appear not so much in connection with bionics
and biotechnology (as these technologies clearly have no effect on future
generations), but with the vertiginous possibilities of human genetics.
It seems that Istvn Kirly V. is completely uninterested in these variations
of radical anthropological endeavours and the linking of these strange fantasies with
the problem of death. It is obviously so because clearly for Kirly any historical,
sociological, cultural anthropological, medical ethical interpretation of death
necessarily misses the metaphysical/fundamental ontological meaning of dying, that
is, such reductionist interpretations of death are unable to inquire about the (...)
ontological-existential resultants (...) of death.3 However, Kirly claims, even the
purely philosophical problematizations most often miss the essence of the problem
of death, even though it is only pure philosophical thinking that takes itself seriously
that is the only (...) mode (of being) or area in which we humans can face or
confront death, our death and the problem of death, with all its dead ends,
difficulties and weight, in our most authentic and responsible although not
quite comforting way possible.4 As I have mentioned, the author is quite critical
about the history concept of the entire Greek-Jewish-Christian culture, which, at
least in his opinion, hardly thematizes death as dying as a sui generis philosophical
problem, or, if it does on occasions, it tries to get rid, as soon as possible, of its true
weight, often even at the expense of trivializing the problem. For the telos of our
culture inspires us primarily to perceive our basic relationship to death as its
1
David Le Breton, LAdieu au corps (Paris: ditions Mtaili, 1999), 44. La mort narrttera
pas Orlan, car son cadavre momifi doit se trouver un jour dans un muse, insr dans une
installation avec vido interactive.
2
Ibid., 44. Mon travail, crit-elle, est en lutte contre linn, linexorable, la nature, lADN
(qui est notre rival direct en tant quartiste de la reprsentation) et Dieu.
3
Kirly, Halandan13.
4
Ibid., 26.
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1
Kiry, Halandan.69.
2
Kirly, Krds 19.
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First, says Kirly, one should start from the fact that death or the discourse
of death unfolds at the narrow confines of complete rationality and complete
irrationality. From a certain point of view the difficulty or problem connected to
death is precisely that, on the one hand, it is rationally almost fully comprehensible
by nature (physis) (...) On the other hand, still, death is fully irrational that is,
incomprehensible.1 Kirly terms the unitary thinking of this strange paradox as
thinking-nothing.2 Although he does not refer here to Nietzsche, in all probability
he thinks in his spirit, as long as Nietzsche also makes a difference between not
1
Kirly, Halandan82.
2
Ibid., 83.
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1
Cf. Slavoj iek, Die Tcke des Subjekts (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2001), 151.
2
Kirly, Halandan119.
3
Ibid., 124. I mention Bichats genial description of the process of dying as a mere curiosity,
which simultaneously proves the heights of the great physiologists knowledge of nature and
spirit of observation, and insensitivity to the existential problem of death: Natural death is
remarkable because it almost completely ends the animal life before the organic life would
come to an end. Let us look at a man who died at the end of a long life: this man dies in
pieces, almost step by step; his external functions cease one after the other; the causes which
usually trigger normal perception, now just run across him. The gaze grows dim and
becomes confused, and no longer transmits the image of objects: this is the so-called old age
blindness. Sounds begin to transform into obscure noise in the ear, but soon this will also
cease. The skin surface becomes hard because it turns into keratin, and its place is partly
filled with clogging blood-vessels, and now it is nothing more than the centre of a confused
and hardly distinguishing sense of touch. It also becomes his habit to perceive his feelings
bluntly. First it is the organs depending on skin that weaken and die. The body hair and beard
grow grey. In absence of biological nutrients the body hair and most of the hair falls out.
Smells only cause a very faint impression in the nose. Isolated in his natural environment,
and deprived of most of the functions of his senses, the old man soon finds himself facing his
diminishing brain activity. He hardly has any perception (...), his imagination dims, and
slowly it even disappears. His memory of present things also fades away: the old man forgets
almost in the same instance what he was told (...).Xavier Bichat, Recherches physologiques
sur la vie et la mort (Paris: Marabout, 1973), 109110. Quoted in Giorgio Agamben, Ce qui
reste dAuschwitz (Paris: Rivage poche/Petite Bibliothque, 2003), 166167.
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1
Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tbingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2001), 250251.
2
Cf. Kirly, Halandan68.
3
Ibid., 70.
4
Cf. Ibid., 42.
5
Cited in Jacques Rolland, Parcours de lautrement. Lecture dEmmanuel Lvinas (Paris:
PUF, 2000), 357.
6
This problem is also treated in detail by Vladimir Janklvitch, to whom Kirly frequently
refers. Cf. Vladimir Janklvitch, La Mort (Paris: Flammarion, 1977). Especially chapter La
mort dans linstant mortel, 219256.
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looking at (...)1 This dilemma, which seems to resemble in some of its aspects that
ancient debate of nominalism vs. realism, is usually of no consequence in the
average topics of the life world, but it cannot be fully disregarded with respect to the
phenomenon of death. Kirly solves this existential problem clad in epistemology by
distinguishing between the validity level of the concept of death and the fact of
dying. However, he still thinks that these two levels can be connected at a further
step, for it must be clear, the author claims, that the concept of death can and must
be meaningfully conceived together with the fact of dying. But how can one
communicate about this, the approximately adequate concept of death, in a way that
is meaningful for the other? However witty Kirlys proposed solution might be, it is
still incapable of reassuringly freeing us of the persisting discomfort coming from
the inextricability of the tension between the radical singularity of existential
experiences and the universalism of communication by language which necessarily
neutralizes every personal experience. (I might be wrong in this judgment, and it
may indeed belong to the essence of the facticity of death that the theoretical
reasoning that wishes to face it is doomed to eternal uncertainty and anxiety.) For
Istvn Kirly intends to (and indeed does) explore wise ideas about death in such a
way that he considers the experience of death absolutely singular and irreproducible.
As he writes one place: So the experience of death as ones own dying is
impossible to communicate also because it absolutely always and with everyone
only happens once.2 This is so in all probability. However, this radicalism has its
costs. On the one hand, it is somewhat disturbing that the existential facticity of
death is often mixed up in Kirlys argumentation with the conceptual universalism
of the philosophical discourse on death. Nevertheless, we must still face here the
duality of language/meta-language, although the facticity of death should be
regarded not so much as language, but rather as an anti-language. In short: clearly,
no man who died will ever talk out of his grave saying: Sir, you were right, it was
indeed Heidegger who saw things right, and not Jaspers and Lvinas. Therefore we
must accept that the incommunicable facts of dying are on the opposite side of the
more or less acceptably formulated philosophical sophistries on death. To this,
another difficult question is added: how can one differentiate an authentic life
history narrative including the phenomenon of death from a narrative which escapes
the fact of dying?3 Then there is a further dilemma, deriving from the fact that as
mentioned before in the case of man death is by no means identical with passing,
with transition to non-being. This is a problem that Heidegger himself had to face
after WWII. We have seen: for Heidegger, death appears to man as the absolute
possibility of all possibilities, unsurpassable and non-relational. Therefore death as
1
Kirly, Halandan127.
2
Kirly, Halandan52.
3
By simply stating: the life history narrative, no matter how many histories of fate, events
of faith it might attest, it does not project or think them over, and does not UNDERSTAND
them to the end of the life history called as death and happening factually as dying... Cf.
Halandan131132. (The authors personal completion, sent to me as a result of the
present review).
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1
This division would definitely not be grounded in the moment of dying, but
retrospectively: it would be the entirety of ones lived life that would count as authentic or
inauthentic, which of course changes nothing.
2
Kirly, Halandan192.
3
Kirly, HalandanExkurzus The chapter Az eutanzia, avagy a mltsg()hoz segtett
hall (Euthanasia, or death assisted to its dignity), 136183. In this chapter the author,
probably guided by respect for Heidegger, says that The unreferentiality of death and
dying, and the connected circumstance that death and dying makes claim to the Dasein as
unique does not mean even for Heidegger that it has no interpersonal weight, meaning
or importance. Ibid, 156. Later on, I will try to briefly express my opinion that Heidegger
misses the very basis of the problem of interpersonality.
4
Ibid., 156157.
5
Ibid., 159.
6
Ibid.
7
Ibid., 160.
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legitimate if the dialogue of the doctor and the dying person (whether actually dying
or potentially dying in the sense of living testament) reveals that the dying person
(...) is indeed a victim, but not the victim of the other person who does the
euthanasia or helps (him) with it, but only of his own illness, condition and
situation.1 The practice of a well understood euthanasia even if it seems like an
attack against the value of human life considered absolute and intangible still
proves that the existential solitude of dying is not completely impossible to share
and communicate: if we are all mortals, then we have the right to make our fellow
humans understand what this mortality means to us. Therefore the existential fact of
death can be grasped precisely in the paradox that the death of the Dasein is, on the
one hand, indeed impossible to be assigned or replaced, while on the other hand we
can still make, or sometimes must make statements understandable and perceivable
for our fellow humans on this impossibility of assignment or replacement.
While Kirly is very close to Heideggers existential-ontological conception,
he is quite critical about Emmanuel Lvinass thanatological meditations. He is
right to say: Broadly speaking, Lvinas has two basic objections against
Heideggers philosophy. One is that he [Heidegger A.L.K] centres or restricts all
philosophy to ontology, and the other is that the Dasein analysis he never
completely transcended actually only examines the latter singularly, in its isolation
from the Other.2 I would like to quote a remarkable observation of Lvinas, a
good rendering of the difference between the two viewpoints. In one of his
interviews, Lvinas says: the fundamental difference between Heideggers views
and his own is that Heidegger underestimates too much the intersubjective world of
everyday life. It is widely known that Heideggers terms Mitsein or Miteinandersein
express the fundamental dimension of human being-together. According to Lvinas,
this is, however, only one instance of our being-in-the-world. It is by no means
central. The preposition Mit always expresses a lateral togetherness ( ct de)
and not a face-to-face one. This kind of togetherness (Zusammensein) may perhaps
be understood as marching together (zusammenmarschieren).3 While on the one
side we see that Heidegger underestimates the interpersonal relations of everyday
life (let us think of his term of chatting which is impossible to be understood without
a pejorative sense), Lvinass elevated and ceremonious concept of dialogue on the
other side threatens, at least seen from everyday communication, to dive into a
mysticism incomprehensible for the discursive mind. For Heidegger, my death
(Heideggers concept of Dasein is simply an alternative name for the first person
singular personal pronoun), while for Lvinas, the death of the Other means a
starting point and at the same time the ultimate point of reference as well. Lvinas is
of course consistent in his own way, for to his mind the ultimate basis of the I-
identity must be sought outside the limits of the I: in the Other or in You. Lvinass
concept must be understood as a kind of reverse intentionality: that is to say, it is not
I who looks at the Other, but the Other looks at me, as if I myself am seen in the
1
Ibid., 172.
2
Ibid., 94.
3
Emmanuel Lvinas, Entre-Nous Essais sur le penser-lautre (Paris: Grasset, 2000), 126.
198
Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
face of the Other.1 This is why Kirlys conclusion that all this applied to the
problem of death means in Lvinass case that the death of the Other actually belong
more to me than my own death.2 Istvn Kirly V. sees this view again as the well-
known over-moralized return of the problem of death. It is true, Lvinas himself
often claimed that for him ethics preceded ontology. But it must also be observed
that Lvinas has a very specific way of interpreting the ethical dimension. It is well
known that almost all modern conceptions of moral philosophy starts from the
symmetric relation of moral subjects. But Lvinas builds on the radical asymmetry
of the I-You-relation. Several serious difficulties emerge however from this
asymmetry, first of all that the I becomes a hostage (otage) and victim (sacrifi) or
defendant of the You. The vulnerability of the I is fulfilled on looking at the masque-
like face of the dead You, since from that time on it can no longer expect any
external help to define its own identity. But is it possible at all to build a
discursive ethics on such an unusual semantic foundation? For in this peculiar
linguistic world the spontaneity and activity of the I exhausts in that it allows itself
to be absorbed by the demand of the You (the Other). This is how Georg Rmpp
argues against Lvinas: A relationship can only be called ethical if the demand in it
is formulated as a must coming from the Other in which the submissive party
actually submits to its own freedom, and not the suffocating compulsion deriving
from becoming the Others hostage.3 But perhaps this dilemma can be somewhat
dissolved, claims Kirly, if we do not exclude an interpretation of Lvinass texts
which suggest that he might also speak about the fact that (...) in the first place,
death should be thought of precisely with reference to ourselves.4 Nevertheless, the
Transylvanian philosopher is merciless, for he is very quick to reject this option. He
claims: amidst the worrisome and responsible care for the death of the Other (and
every Other) (...) the problematization and acceptance of Ones own, Our own
death is actually, always and permanently unrecognized!5 I suspect: some of those
who will face these ruthlessly consistent thoughts of Kirly may accuse him of
ontological autism. I ask them: please dont! For the author does not want to be
the prophet of the nowadays trendy ideology of self-caring society, and does not
want to urge everybody to care for themselves so everything is settled. Kirlys
radical programme of the self-centring of death is preserved for an outstanding
event (happening) which must not be generalized since the facticity of death owes its
ontological privilege to precisely the fact that it stubbornly resists any attempt of
generalization.
With all the resoluteness that Kirly holds on to the exclusive authenticity
of Heideggers death interpretation, it must be seen nonetheless that there are many
1
Cf. Emmanuel Lvinas, Teljessg s vgtelen (Fullness and infinity), trans. Lszl Tarnay
(Pcs: Jelenkor, 1999), 161162, and tienne Feron, De lide de transcendance la
question du langage (Grenoble: Jrme Millon, 1992), 39.
2
Cf. Kirly, Halandan 95.
3
Georg Rmpp, Verantwortung als Obsession? Kritische Anmerkungen zu Lvinas
Philosophie des Subjekts, Theologie und Philosophie 4 (1999): 544.
4
Kirly, Halandan, 99.
5
Ibid., 100.
199
Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
other conceptions as well, opposing Heideggers. Lvinas has just been mentioned.
But Nikolai Berdyaev or Jean-Paul Sartre are also harsh critics of Heideggers
views. Berdyaev says that Death is an insanity which derives from ordinariness.
The everyday consciousness approaches death with the sense of the paradoxical and
irrational. This rationalization as social everyday in its ultimate consequences is
eager to forget about death, shut people away from it, buries the dead almost
unnoticed... The victorious spirit in everyday life is that which opposes the Christian
prayer that we must preserve the memory of our dead. In this respect the civilized
man is deep below the ancient Egyptians. The paradox of death is not only ethical,
but it also takes on the form of aesthetic expression. Death is the extreme form of
ugliness, of deformity. Falling apart, losing the face, the complexion, and the regard
is in fact the victory of the inferior material world. But death is at the same time also
beautiful, it may become the ultimate dignity of mortals (...) The moment will come
when it becomes more beautiful and harmonious in its ultimate tranquillity than it
was as a living being.1 Of course, Berdyaevs religious personalism rejects death,
and calls man to defeat it. The categorical imperative of the personalist activism
revolting against the new, objective world order goes as follows: act so that you
assist at all times the defeat of death and the attainment of eternal life in your
relation with your fellow beings. Berdyaev thinks that love is the force which can
defeat even death. He writes in his philosophical biography: Thinking of myself, I
arrive to the conclusion that I am mobilized by the revolt against objectivation, the
revolt against the objectivation of reason, life and death, religion and values. (...)
Christ defeated death. This victory was accomplished in the subject, that is, in the
true primary life and primary reality. The objectivation of this victory is nothing else
than making it comprehensible for an average consciousness. (...) However, I am not
satisfied with the purely spiritualistic conception of the immortality of the soul, just
as I am not with the idealist teaching about the immortality of the universal spiritual
force.2 For Berdyaev the acceptance of the finiteness of being would equal the
capitulation before the rule of things. Undoubtedly, says the Russian philosopher,
they we can only break out of the world of average ordinariness if the authentic life
undertakes also the defeat of the laws of the material world, or at least never gives
up the hope of victory.
This point of view is utterly unacceptable, at least at a first sight, both for
Istvn Kirly V. and Martin Heidegger. For both of them stand at the position of
radical confrontation with radical finiteness. For them, the true domain of the fight
1
Berdyaev, O naznacsenyije 272.
2
Nikolai Berdyaev, nmegismers (Self-knowledge), trans. Gyula Gasparics s Erzsbet
Kovcs (Budapest: Eurpa Kiad, 2002), 402403. Berdyaev stronly believed in the
demiurgic and emancipatory power of love. This aspect is the direct continuation of Vladimir
Solovyovs erotomane views: Death is unacceptable even for the last, most deplorable
creature, and if we didnt strive to defeat it in our relation to it, then the world could not be
justified, and actually could not be accepted. Everything and everyone must be resurrected
for eternal life. This means that the ontological principle of eternal life must be enforced not
only in our relations to human being, but also in animals, plants, or what is more: even in
objects. Man must act as a life-giver always and in his relation to everyone, and must be able
to light the creative energy of eternal life. Berdyaev, O naznacsenije273.
200
Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
against death is where death happens as ones absolutely own death, and this fact
(which is at the same time an artefact1) makes also possible or enables through
itself the almost incommunicable, authentic interpretation of death.2 Facticity and
hermeneutics are almost inextricably linked in Kirlys metaphysics of death. It
remains a question still: is it not so that the authentic fact of dying (which is also an
interpretation of death), even if uncommunicable, is distinguished from inauthentic
death (and interpretation of death) by the fact that the former version did defeat
death after all? And if the light has been born once, why could it not be born again?
Finally, Jean-Paul Sartres understanding of death, which again disputes
Heideggers domestication of death, is also worth looking at. According to Sartre,
it is impossible to relate to death in a non-subjective way, since every manifestation
of man necessarily bears the signs of anthropomorphism. Furthermore, and this
argument is addressed distinctly to Heidegger: in fact every human activity is
individual and unassignable, not only the facticity of death: Nobody can love
instead of me, meaning that he cannot make the vows which are my vows,
experience the emotions (however trivial) which are my emotions (Nul ne peut
aimer pour moi, si lon entend par l faire ses serments qui sont mes serments,
prouver les motions (si banales soient-elles), qui sont mes motions)3 It can be
objected of course that the missed love can perhaps be replaced even in the case of
the same person or another one, while the missed or false (that is: inauthentic)
death is actually unrepeatable. However, one may reply that my betrayal (let us think
of historically tense situations) is also unreplaceable in the sense that nobody can
take over my responsibility. In Sartres opinion it is the unrepeatable and
unreplaceable situatedness that belongs to the Daseins always mine nature, and
not the external and absurd facticity of death. What is more, modern mass wars
mostly prove that man can die practically instead of anyone else, for he is nothing
but a statistical data in the calculations of military strategies. (Naturally, as we have
seen earlier, for Heidegger and Kirly this kind of death is not even a true death,
much rather merely a destruction. Such an approach would definitely be
acceptable, although I must repeat the formerly asked question: how can one make
any difference between an authentic and inauthentic death from the external
perspective of an observer?) Furthermore, the time management connected to death
also seems almost like a impossible endeavour, says Sartre, since I cannot wait for
death as for my friend Peter coming with the night train. Death is not the single most
1
For Heidegger, the ability of being of the existence running forth to death means at the
same time being and reflection on being, thus it comprises both the ontological and the
epistemic level. However, to project oneself on ones ownmost ability-of-being means: to
be able to understand oneself in the being of a so revealed being: to exist. Running forth
proves to be the possibility of the understanding of ones ownmost and ultimate ability-of-
being, that is, the possibility of actual existence. (Auf eigenstes Seinknnen sich entwefen
aber besagt: sich selbst verstehen knnen im Sein des so enthllten Seieneden: existieren.
Das Vorlaufen erweist sich als Mglichkeit des Vertsehens des eigensten uersten
Seinknnens, das heit als Mglichkeit eigentlicher Existenz). Heidegger, Sein und Zeit,
262263.
2
Cf. Kirly, Halandan43.
3
Jean-Paul Sartre, Ltre et le nant (Paris: Gallimard, 1943), 579.
201
Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
1
Ibid., 585. What is more, by my death, after my death I will be completely at the mercy of
the interpretive power of future generations, since from now on they say who I was (am), and
I am not able to defend myself. Cf. Marc Crepon, Vivre avec La pense de la guerres et la
mmoire des guerres (Paris: Hermann diteurs, 2008), 5657.
2
Cf. Kirly, Krd 100.
3
Ibid., 122.
4
Ibid., 109.
202
Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
without death! This is basically the main thread of the author. This statement would
of course be difficult to refute. So they say, the ancient Greeks had no philosophy of
history for their cyclic conception of the world based on reincarnation had no
concept of the dramatic nature of history (Berdyaev).1 Temporality, death-related
existence and historicity belong together not only in a conceptual, but also in an
ontological sense, claims Kirly. Or, in other words, history and death belong
together in a co-original way, for it is only the finite being, and the reflection on the
finite being which is able to create history, and inhabit it in an understanding way.
The historians work is paradoxical, inasmuch as they do their work against death,
and at the same time as a parasite of death. Historiography, the historians work is
therefore something which in its essence that is, athematically, independently from
the analyzed theme is forced and tries to turn death, by death and against death,
towards a summarizing or analytical knowledge of the past, primarily addressed to
the present (but probably also referring to the future).2 What is most often
unrecognized in historical works, claims Kirly, is precisely that the historian/
questioner does not take it into account that he is himself part of history, so that the
stories of the past did not simply become past, but become concluded facts by the
cooperative surplus of historical memory. The past is not a simple givenness for
the present, but a task which becomes real past, that is, history as a simultaneous
realization of the radical finiteness (mortality) and obligatory freedom of those who
remember in the present.
The other main question of Krds-pontok is about human freedom.
According to Kirly formulated with some simplification the essence of human
freedom lies in the fact that the man never ceases the ask questions about the finiteness
of human existence. The primary concerns of the author are not the free will or the
possibilities/impossibility to confront natural-causal determinations, but the ways and
directions of the problematization of being. The actual meaning of freedom, human
freedom (...). Ultimately, the question and questioning of being itself, opening to
beings and the being always in search for meaning.3 It is obvious that the author is
not so much concerned with the successfulness of questioning; his primary interest is
always the steadiness and persistence of questioning. Kirly considers that to question
the dying, the freedom, the finiteness and weight of being is in itself a value that must
be an acceptable accomplishment almost regardless of the answer. What is truly
important for him, can be summarized in the following thesis or imperative: It is only
important that the co-original belonging together of death, freedom and history must
not be lost, since this is only which gives real weight to the questions of the
1
Aron Gurevich says: The ancient Greeks contemplated and experienced the world not
through the categories of change and development, but either as a state of immobility or a
rotation on a huge circular track. The events happening in the world are not singular: the
alternating ages repeat, the people and phenomena of times past return after the end of the
great year, the Pythagorean era. Aron Gurevich, Idkpzetek a kzpkori Eurpban
(Concepts of time in medieval Europe), In Trtnelem s filozfia (History and philosophy),
ed. Tibor Huszr, trans. Csaba Knczl (Budapest: Gondolat, 1974), 36.
2
Kirly, Krds-pontok 65.
3
Ibid., 200.
203
Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
questioner. This stance lies at the basis of the authors very serious treatment of the
current problems of the teaching of philosophy. In the context of modern university
mass education, there is even greater risk that philosophy is instrumentalized, that is to
say, by the logic of capitalist market economy it is reduced to a mere marketable
commodity. Chair philosophy degrades thinking to a simple subject (and a course),
therefore it, as a philosophical thing, unproblematically integrates into the
comfortably manageable world of technical order. Philosophy becomes thus a
corrupted surrogate of keeping up, alignment and adaptation, giving up its
original destination. In contrast, Kirly insists on the original intention of philosophy:
to be the primary stage and forum of freedom. Therefore: (...) philosophy can only
be taught by philosophizing even at university level, regardless of the fact that the
direct audience the students would want to invest their scholarships or tuition
fees for philosophy itself or exchange it for other horizons
(instrumentalization).1 The addressee of real philosophy is the autonomous
individual, just as he is the perpetuator of philosophical tradition. For this reason any
person seriously dealing with philosophy must also take into account that sooner or
later he/she will be regarded as an uncomfortable, or even directly suspicious person.
As a summary to the problem of death, I only wish to mention: Istvn V.
Kirlys works are also afflicted by their chosen subject: the questions asked by the
author imply further questions, and challenge the reader to further questioning. I
suspect this is not at all contrary to the authors intentions.
***
1
Ibid., 216.
2
Istvn Kirly V., A betegsg az l ltlehetsge. Prolegomna az emberi betegsg
filozfijhoz. Rszletes angol nyelv sszefoglalval / Illness A Possibility of the Living
Being. Prolegomenae to the Philosophy of Human Illness. A Detailed English Summary,
trans. Emese G. Czintos (Pozsony [Bratislava]: Kalligram, 2011).
3
Christine Detrez, La construction sociale du corps (Paris: ditions du Seuil, 2002), 100.
204
Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
cannot be reduced merely to the biological sphere even from the point of view of
sociology, because the problem of illness versus health has several social and
community aspects which are outside the fundamental-ontological or existential
interpretive framework used by Kirly; however, the sociological approach can be
regarded as the entrance hall to the problem of illness conceived as a fundamental
existential problem.
Approaching the problem of illness starting from history, it can be stated
with considerable certainty that people had been thinking for a long time and to a
certain degree still think about health as the lack of body: if I am healthy, I
hardly notice I have a body. (Psychological illnesses in the current sense hardly
existed before the birth of modern psychology). The silence of the body
guaranteed health. In the twentieth century the X-ray revealed the traces of illness
even on a seemingly healthy body, for instance the signs of tuberculosis on the
lungs, like in the case of the protagonist of Thomas Manns novel The Magic
Mountain, who arrived to the sanatorium as a healthy man for a simple medical
check-up, and remained there as an ill man.1 Moreover, one cannot disregard the
change of concept that nowadays it means more or something else to be healthy than
simply not to be ill. In other words in the cultural milieu of late capitalism it is not
enough to define illness merely with the help of privation, but health also contains
such positive determinations like saying that someone is fit, agile, impulsive,
full of vitality, etc. In this sense being healthy is not a state but a task that one
must prove day after day in a way visible for the environment.
Kirlys starting point builds on that evidence of the life world that illness is
(...) an actually universal and necessary experience2 of all human existence. For
hardly is there any person who has never met any kind of illness in their lifetime.3 We
cannot be exonerated from accepting illness, or rather the existential consequences of
illness. In spite of this, the history of philosophy most often offers examples for how
the majority of thinkers analyzed the strategies to avoid illness, while the problem of
facing illness was neglected. However, an existentially committed philosophy cannot
leave unthematized this question, for, in the authors words: The fundamental task
and mission of philosophy stands precisely in the currently possible philosophical
exhibition of precisely these directions or detours.4
But the endeavour to interpret the problem of illness solely through the
purely positive definition of health is also debatable. For in this understanding
being healthy is identical in fact with living in total mental harmony with
ourselves. Or, as the author puts it: with the state of social satisfaction and well-
being. This kind of approach does not only lead the problem of illness astray, but
1
Ibid., 112.
2
Kirly, A betegsg, 13.
3
It cannot be excluded of course that there were and are people who lived their life in
complete health and then ended it with a sudden death. But as Bernard Andrieu warns, aging
is an undesired fatality which we might perhaps delay for a while, but cannot avoid. And
aging is itself a specific sort of illness. See Bernard Andrieu, La nouvelle philosophie du
corps (Ramonville Saint-Agne: ditions rs, 2002), 145.
4
Kirly, A betegsg, 16
205
Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
also identifies, without any further ado, health with happiness. This interpretation
preserves of course something of the interpretation of illness as the opposite (or
relational term) of health, but says Kirly in such a way that meanwhile it
obscures the essential relation between health and illness.1
However, one must also face that fact that philosophy cannot undertake the
task to come up with a compact, all-inclusive and comprehensive definition of
illness. What philosophy can do is that it consciously deals with the fact that illness
is a possibility organically (literally and metaphorically) pertaining to human
existence. A possibility which in case of its successful realization points beyond
itself because, perspectively, it promises to grasp and understand the entirety of
human existence. It is also true, the author acknowledges, that a philosophical
approach cannot fully eliminate the biological, medical and sociological terminology
from the analysis of the problem of illness. To formulate more clearly: Kirly knows
and respects the endeavours that analyze the discourse of illness/health from the
perspective of medical power or biopolitics. Still, he does not wish to pursue the
path of Foucault or Canguilhem, but asks the existential questions of human
existence, and precisely in connection with illness. He is interested in finding out
what lies behind the fact that (...) the human being experiences, reveals and records
illness continuously, actually, existentially always as a possibility, a particular
possibility pertaining to the essence of life, and also relates to it this way.2 In
addition to this, a philosophy that thematizes illness does not only want to reveal,
through the phenomenon of illness, the possibility of human life, but the living
beings possibility of being and the possibility of living-being.
It is a further question to ask what one means by the term of possibility. The
concept of possibility and contingency usually means that something is not
necessary, but neither it is impossible. The author mentions another interpretation
that he calls popular: that possibility stands close to the concept of probability.
Probability is usually understood as a mathematical probability which can be
calculated and expressed in numbers. The author accepts neither of the two above
interpretations, but chooses an ontological approach: the possibility of illness
pertains to life itself and evidently in a particular way also to human life, to
human existence.3
However, Kirlys reflections do not exclude completely the aspects of
cultural and science history. The excursus entitled Schematic considerations about the
problematic issues of Christian medicine and Christian healing is a good
example for such analyses. The author starts from the historical fact that the Christian
Middle Ages faced a almost unsolvable dilemma or series of dilemmas when it tried to
introduce the phenomenon of illness into its worldview. First, it considered all
illnesses as a consequence of the original sin, from a twofold perspective: first, the
divine punishment afflicted the human race in general with all kinds of illnesses and
epidemics, and second, it punished every person in particular, based on their sins,
with individual and specific forms of illnesses. Kirly very wittily argues that the
1
Ibid., 20.
2
Ibid., 23.
3
Ibid., 25.
206
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1
Ibid., 27.
2
Ibid., 29.
3
Ibid., 31.
4
See Neil Postman, Das Technopol. Die Macht der Technologien und die Entmndigung der
Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main: S. Ficher Verlag 1992), 107108. Trans. Reinhart Kaiser;
Original: Technopoly (New York: Alfred A. Knopf), 1991.
207
Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
1
Kirly, A betegsg, 36.
2
Ibid., 43.
3
Ibid., 44.
4
Ibid., 6162.
208
Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
human being is primarily to ask, investigate and shape its own historically given but
unfinished (open horizon) modes of being.
One of these modes of being and precisely one of the most special modes
of being because of its painful or suffering forms of appearance is the one
burdened with illnesses. Illness itself is primarily, in its primary relation to the
privation, damaging or deficiency of health, but as such, it is still an essential
possession, its own positive property (ousia) and not just some external attribute
of the ill person.1 The lack (steresis), the privation from something does not simply
appear here as emptiness, for it has a constructive role. It appears as a very
energetic activity which damages, impairs health. This is why Kirly is right to
claim that in the relation health versus illness: the ousia of illness and health is the
same, for both are essential possibilities of the same being.2 Therefore the state of
recovered health after illness is not merely the restoration of a previous state but the
act of the birth of a different kind of health.
Illness is of course not only present in the mode of the being of the living in
its actualized form, but as a danger or threat permanently lurking in the background.
This fear is an experience with the structure of challenge and trial. Illness as
deficiency is woven into the multitude of human modes of being. That is to say, it is
both a challenge and a possibility for medicine, health care, humanities culture,
religious, literature, and various everyday activities. If for no other reason,
deficiencies therefore cannot be described as mere lack, or empty negativeness.
It is a fact that the illness radically rearranges and restricts the ill persons
being-in-the-world, but paradoxically opens ways to new possibilities of action
and interpretation. The incurable diseases and devastating epidemics yield to
possibility both for the ill person and their environment precisely for the reason of
deficiency to reveal the previously concealed aspects of being. As the author
puts it: and it may suffice to refer here to the lengthy and repeated, lets say,
medieval epidemics of plague and smallpox. Which at that time could not be either
stopped or healed, and which therefore restructured mankind both immunologically
and biologically.3
The understanding of health as deficiency also offers a possibility to reveal
the real existential relations of health, for health must be reclaimed from illness.
However, we must also see, claims the author, that illness is a sign of special
importance: it warns us that we are mortal! Just like in his works treating death and
mortality, Kirly emphasizes again: For the so-called immortals however neither
illnesses and suffering, nor their easing, healing or caretaking etc. may have any
kind of stake or significance.4
These recognitions drive us almost as a necessity to the philosophical
thematization of the relation of illness and freedom. In a first approach we can say
that illness robs the healthy person for it deprives him of precisely one of his most
important assets. A more thorough reflection however point way beyond this
1
Ibid., 68.
2
Ibid., 71.
3
Ibid., 84.
4
Ibid., 92.
209
Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
ordinary obviousness says the author. It is worth starting from the fact that the
essence of freedom is questioning, or rather the ability or gift of questioning well.
But no subject is more prone to questioning or curiosity than illness. An ill
person does nothing else at least at the beginning than asks questions. (Why did
it happen to me, what have I done wrong to bear this terrible suffering, etc.) But, as
seen above, it is not all the same what questions we ask and what kind of meaningful
answers we expect. For instance, we can by no means regard freedom as a medicine
giving solace to the ill person. Such an interpretation would be unworthy of the
case, its existential weight and of philosophy itself.1 It seems like a much more
productive approach to stars partly based on Gadamer from the question-
structure of the experience of illness (as a fundamental experience of being).
Because the understanding of the world with the help of questions is also self-
understanding. And it is not in need of painful instances. This is why Gadamer
claims with Aeschylus so nicely that experience is actually nothing else than
learning at the expense of suffering.2 For where man is successful in questioning
well, meaningfully, there freedom also appears. However surprising it may sound,
says the author, the illnesses which can indeed be regarded as human (...) actually
are only possible in the all-time horizons, ontologically constitutive and existentially
world-like, of human freedom.3 That is to say, the questions directed to the ill
person and his illness are never merely questions directed at a specific illness-
object. The case is much rather the curiosity regarding the essential possibilities of
human existence, and dwelling on the nature of existential threats. Caring about
illness does not only aim at the avoidance or prevention of illness, and it is not
merely about listing the losses caused by the illness, (...) but about what resources
does [the ill person] have meanwhile (...) and the struggle of his world and
environment with the illness, rearticulated and re-outlined in this situatedness...4
This way the suffering is not merely a pathos understood in the sense of passivity,
but an active and acting experience. For the same reason one must not see illness
merely as the ill persons deprivation from freedom (although that too), but as the
creation of new horizons of experience enabled by the restructured life conditions.
Therefore we can learn from illness, our illnesses. But not only how we can protect
ourselves from falling ill again (our possibilities are still very limited even today, in
an age of modern technology applied in the health care system), but to learn to find
and then esteem the true values of life. Another way to formulate this is that illness
and ill people of the one hand, and the world on the other are complementary
notions. For (...) the world does not really exists without illnesses and ill people.5
To SERIOUSLY examine illness and illnesses primarily means: to enrol into the
basic course of the understanding of being. For illness, and suffering and learning
from it, is the primary way for anyone to test what he is actually capable of...
1
Ibid., 103.
2
Ibid., 104105.
3
Ibid., 109.
4
Ibid., 111.
5
Ibid., 116.
210
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1
Ibid., 126.
211
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Istvn KIRLY V.
Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj
Department of Philosophy
Abstract: Every discourse about the nothing seems fully and ultimately empty.
However, this cannot be true precisely because it is language that is, discourse
which always brings forth the nothing, the word of the Nothing. The language
therefore speaks about the nothing and perhaps also speaks nothing. In its primary
and abstract appearance, the nothing is precisely that which it is not.
However, its word is still there in the words of most languages (for we cannot know
all). What is more, since it is not, at a first sight all the nothing has is its word, its
name... and this is precisely what protrudes. But the word of the nothing utters in
language only that which has no being. That is therefore not just any kind of
negation, but the negation of being, the name of the negation of being. The
nothing is therefore the mere word of the negation of being. Which lives standing
in languages. As deeply that its translation presents no problems. The German das
Nichts can be translated unproblematically to the English nothing, the French rien or
nant, the Slavic ni, the Romanian nimic or the Hungarian semmi, etc. However, if
we go on deeper into the problem, it shows that, despite the unproblematic
translation, being and (its) negation articulates in different ways in the names of the
nothing. The writing analyses this in detail, with special emphasis of the Hungarian
word of Nothing [Semmi]. It concludes by initiating a philosophical dialogue with a
poem of Attila Jzsef.
E-mail: kiraly_philobib@yahoo.com
Every discourse about the nothing seems fully and ultimately empty. However,
this cannot be true precisely because it is language that is, discourse which always
brings forth the nothing, the word of the Nothing. The language therefore speaks
about the nothing and perhaps also speaks [the language of] nothing.
It is a question, however, whether the language does indeed think about the
nothing?
In its primary and abstract appearance, the nothing is precisely that
which it is not. However, its word is still there in the words of most languages
(for we cannot know all). What is more, since it is not, at a first sight all the nothing
has is its word, its name... and this is precisely what protrudes.
It is in fact that word or name of the nothing which most directly stands
before us and as we also utter it within us. So the word of the nothing explicitly
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is the not a contingent, but precisely a necessary subject and field of the outspoken
and questioning thinking about it. Which awaits consideration.
However, to consider the words of the nothing may mean nothing else than
thinking into these words. For, I repeat, the only nothing that is problematic at
least for now stands in front of us only and exclusively as a mere word. We can
only say perhaps what its significance and importance in our languages is after
thorough consideration. So we can only understand the various directions of the
meaning of the dictionary word. Not the other way round.
But: the name of the nothing only utters in language that which has no
being. It is therefore not just any kind of negation, but the word or name of the
negation of being. This is how Hegel could find that as concepts the Nothing and
the Being are identical. With this, however, the nothing as a concept is exhausted
and it disappears, and what remains as its precedent is only and exclusively the word
of the nothing. For the work, the name precedes the concepts (and Hegel of course).
So the fact that the nothing disappears in its concept, is merely one more
reason or basis to take seriously its word or words! For what is here most directly
is the language which utters it, the speaker, and the nothing as a word that the
speaker speaks. These are not concepts but rather experiences, which witness
the togetherness of language, speaker and the nothing and as we shall see also
articulate it. Because the unutterable can have nothing to do with it. For it is
uttered, it is expressed.
The nothing as utterance is a mere word. As a concept, it is empty with
existential tension (Hegel), for it is connected to being as a concept precisely by
negation, precisely by the negation of being. And vice versa... This is why it cannot
be avoided in the course of thinking about being, the human being, and existence,
for it is not a contingency, but a law-enforced possibility which thus has a huge
impact. For it may be or perhaps it is certain that the being constituted in
questions of meaning may lose its existence in time... so this belongs to being itself
and the being of the speaker as well.
The discourse of the speaker is the language or languages. It is in
language that the speakers utter the words of the nothing. Therefore the words of the
nothing are just as special and historical as the utterers themselves. This is how these
(the words of the nothing) belong to, or rather constitute, articulate the history of
being, in the language.
The nothing is therefore the mere word of the negation of being. Which
lives standing in languages. As deeply that its translation presents no problems. The
German das Nichts can be translated unproblematically to the English nothing, the
French rien or nant, the Slavic ni, the Romanian nimic or the Hungarian semmi,
etc. However, if we go on deeper into the problem, it shows that, despite the
unproblematic translation, being and (its) negation articulates in different ways in
the names of the nothing.
The German word of nothing is one block, one syllable: das Nichts. It was
Martin Heidegger who considered this word most deeply. The word sends, of
course, Heidegger to negation, for thinking in the horizon of the German utterance
of this word, starting from the nothing, one may consider first of all the negation
itself (das Nichts) as saying NO. Guided from this, Heidegger analyzes the series of
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1
In his habilitation paper written on the problem of negation analyzed from the viewpoint of
functional grammatics, Peter Kahrel deduces the English term Nothing from the concept of
negation understood as a 0 (zero) quantifier fused with an undetermined. Therefore it must be
especially emphasized as a fact indispensable to understand the word Nothing that this
undetermined is in fact always a thing. However, in the background of this superficial
understanding there is always a much deeper misunderstanding about the sui generis searching
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Just as interesting is the French name of the Nothing: rien. Originally this
word meant precisely thing, but in the manifestation which is not the things
own, in which the thing cannot be found, that is, in which it appears as negated.1
Therefore the word rien gains its current meaning by the assimilation and
association of thing-ness and negation, but in such a way that neither the negation
nor the thing-like being are articulated in it, only merged together.2
The situation is completely different however when we analyze the
articulations of the Romanian term Nimic! This is also a compound, created from
nici, meaning neither and the adjective mic, meaning little, small. The
negative nici is completely different, however, than the German das Nichts, and
different from the completely inarticulate English Nothing. For the Romanian
nici articulates the negation as a searching negation! On the other hand, the mic
denotes a kind of being diminished in a quantitative respect, thus the Romanian
nimic means precisely that no Being can be found either for the searcher (so
we cannot find it) that could be grasped at least in its smallness. That is: the
negation grasped in its searching nature and being and manifested as such loses its
quality of an abstract logical operation, and linguistically records its originally
existential nature. Meanwhile the Romanian Nimic, if only in its quality of
uttering a diminished quantity, articulates the being again only in its thing-like
nature. (For ultimately only the things can be really small.)
nature of the negation of the Nothing, and its connection to the negated Being. The negation
left in the void of the inarticulate undetermined and the 0 quantifier and the articulation of the
negated Being is in fact impossible to be considered. What we see here is probably just as
much the limitation and trap of the English language than the deficiency of the method. Still,
Kahrel analyzes forty words of forty languages in statistics and tables, among which also the
Romanian and Hungarian words of the Nothing. In spite of this, the negation for him is simply
a 0 quantifier! Supposedly this is why it can be applied in an undetermined way. The
Nothing and the Nobody (the body articulated as human) can only be regarded just as
(differently) undetermined only in the indeterminacy of the negation. That is: just as co-
originary. But actually the Nothing is closer to the origin than the Nobody! But this can
only be achieved by the real understanding of the searching-questioning No. The Nobody
also in Romanian, Nimeni means not somebody. The Nobody contains a sending to
the searcher: where there is Nobody, there is only the one who searches (for them). But
meanwhile the horizons of searching can be full with things. However, in the NOTHING we
go beyond an undetermined thing-ness, first reaching to the WE the searchers who do not
find , then becoming that WE OURSELVES who do not find precisely OUR SELVES.
Where there is Nobody, there is only the lonely searcher. Thus the Nobody does not mean
neither, but, on the contrary, it means alone. That is, the searcher of the neither will
actually never find the Nothing in the Nobody, only its own Self. The Nobody is thus in
fact the only I which derives from the Nothing. See Peter Kahrel, Aspects of Negation
(Amsterdam: Akademisch Proefschrift, 1996), 3043.
1
Albert Dauzat, Jean Dubois, and Henri Mitterand, Nouveau Dictionnaire timologique et
Historique (Paris, 1964).
2
Perhaps this is why French thinkers prefer to use the technical term Nant instead of the
rien, which, as all technical terms, connects mere notions merely conceptually: the Being
grasped in its conceptual inarticulation and the negation also grasped in its logical-
conceptual inarticulation.
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searched everywhere, but I/we have found nothing, nowhere, never. However much we
thought about it: the NOT to which the sem sends is not the negating Not, nor the
depriving Not that Heidegger revealed in the analysis of das Nichts.
The Not in the sem is as we have seen a searching Not! It says in
fact that searching, we have not found. By this, it says that the way we met, faced
and confronted the Not is actually a search. Thus the sem places the negation in
the mode of search, and the search into the mode of Not (that is, negation).
What does all this mean in its essence? Firstly, it means that, although the
SEM is indeed a kind of search which flows into the Not, still, as a search, it
always distinguishes itself from the not-s it faces and runs into. For searching is
never simply a repeated question, nor the repetition of a question, but a question
carried around. Therefore the SEM is always about more than the tension between
the question and the negative answer given to it. For the negation itself the Not is
placed into the mode of search! And reversely.
Therefore the sem never negates the searching itself, only places and fixes
it in its deficient modes. Those in which it does not find in any direction. This way
the SEM charges, emphasizes and outlines the Not, but, it also stimulates the search
until the exhaustion of its final emptiness. Therefore the contextually experienced
Not that is, the SEM is actually nothing else than an endless deficiency of an
emptied, exhausted, but not suspended search.
These ensure on the one hand the stability of the SEM, which is inclined to
hermetically close up within itself, while on the other hand they also ensure an inner
impulse for the search which, emanating from it, continues to push it to its
emptiness. And it is in the horizon of this emanating impulse that the SEM merges
with the pronoun MI, in the Hungarian name for NOTHING.
The MI in Hungarian is at the same time an interrogative pronoun and the 1st
person plural personal pronoun. Whether or not this phonetic identity is a
coincidence, it conceals important speculative possibilities that should not be
overlooked. For the Mi pronoun with the Sem negative always says that it is
WE (Mi) who questioningly search, but find NOTHING (SEMMI). Merged in their
common space, the SEM and MI expresses that the questioners grasped in the
plurality of their searching questions, facing the meaning of the SEMMI, only
arrived at, and ran into the NOT, the negation.
In the space of its articulation the Hungarian word of the nothing offers a
deeper and more articulated consideration of what it expresses, fixing not only the
search and its deficient modes, but also the fact that it is always WE who search
and question, even if we cannot find ourselves in that, in the Nothing. That is to
say, the Nothing in one of its meanings is precisely our strangeness, foreignness
and unusualness, which belongs to our own self, and therefore all our attempts to
eliminate it from our existence will always be superfluous.
The Hungarian word of the Nothing also reveals that all this is not merely an
external negation of Being, but such which always takes part in our being and
existence. However, in order to understand it we must consider the articulation of
the various words of the Nothing.
However, it also reveals that the interrogative pronoun MI? (what?) carries
other impulses as well and sends to different directions. It mobilizes through the
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1
By joining I mean that something is attached to something else but still remains always
external to it.
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Closing Excursus:
Nothings branch
In the last stanza of his poem entitled Without hope, Attila Jzsef invents, articulates
in the depths of poetry the name/word of the Nothing. The poem:
WITHOUT HOPE
Man comes at last to a vast stretch
of sandy, dull, waterlogged plain,
looks round in wonder, the poor wretch,
nods sagely and knows hope is vain.
How should one understand this last stanza and the Nothing in it? Is this a
simple, admirable poetic image, or something that invites to a philosophical
dialogue?
The poets heart is perched on nothings branch, shivering. But does the
nothing have a branch? And if so, how does this branch grow? What is the relation
between the branching nothing and the pensive, shivering (poetic) heart?
Well, the deficiency of the searching (SEM), taken around and belonging to
Us (MI), which by its fate brings to newer and newer questions and searches,
CRACKS again and again (with and within us) Every new question and every
impulse of searching originating from the Nothing and falling back into it is a new
branch of the nothing.
Therefore: without a shivering, and always questioning-searching, pensive
heart, on the one hand, there is no nothing, and one the other hand it cannot be
anything else than a questioning and searching, repeatedly cracking (widely
branching) universal exposedness that cannot be exhausted (only died2). WE (MI),
all of us. Which can only open shiveringly always questioningly to the gentle
pure coldness of the universal stars without self-deceit and miracle. (Sem-mi/neither
us nor some empty miracle to hope for).
1
Translation by George Szirtes. In Gyngyi Vgh, ed., Inspired by Hungarian Poetry
British Poets in Conversation with Attila Jzsef (London: Balassi Institute Hungarian
Cultural Centre, 2013), 2829.
2
An axehead, a silvery sighing,/ Shudders across the poplar tree
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The shivering heart sits at the essence of being and life, at the roads ends
of the branches of searches constituted by negations and denials, sent to itself
(shivering, beating), and swung back to the human and non-human universe
where it shivers sitting in or on the Nothing. Shivering is therefore here the
question, the searching which does not find anything with any of its frowns.
The nothing is not an endless universe of stars, and this is not even void
but it is precisely the existence searching-questioning itself mortally which belongs
to the human and non-human universe (precisely on account of its mortality!), and
draws it in its irrhythmic shivering to being; in its newer and newer branches,
mindfully and undeceptively, it cracks the Nothing.
Just such a being can situate itself in meaning, in the questions of meaning
cleverly and judiciously, and just such a being may accept shaking off the
deceptive and easy hopes the Nothing essentially related to its being, being
born and unraveled through it.
The search for the meaning of the being, of life is a kind of loneliness, a
kind of alienated, creative suffering of turning-to-the-world. In which the suicide
does not mean senselessness, but the unbearable torment of a clear vision
Therefore we do not simply fall into the Nothing, but reach it on a poetic-
philosophical path. One that the poet treads in a deserted, vast stretch, a clear and
clever mind, and a shivering heart, slowly and pensively. And to which he arrives
also this way.
For the entire poem is an arrival after a kind of existential journey
pensive, slow, devoid of any magic of initiation. Which is, however, not about
reaching a destination. It is the destiny of man, of life that willingly or not
takes a creative mind pensively to that spot (Man comes at last) The path is about
freeing oneself from deceptive hopes and renouncing them. The result is first of all
the clear, undeceptive mind. Which nods wisely and cleverly, being freed of, or
rejecting hope.
The vast stretch found once the deceptive and self-deceptive hopes have
been slowly abandoned is of course deserted and sad But it is real and authentic.
Like the stars. So this is precisely the spot of the Nothing, on whose branch the
shivering heart and life sits, mortally and questioning-searchingly, in the
company of stars ever since the origins.
Is this all perhaps only and exclusively the experience of a strange-special
individual called Attila Jzsef? Or simply a wonderfully concocted poetic
image?
The answer lies again in the consideration of the name or word of the
Nothing. For we have seen that the word Semmi, also used by Attila Jzsef,
expresses the NEM in the first person plural. Which then inhales every individual
in the Nothing and with the Nothing... (We/Mi = all of us and any of us.)
*
Finally... : Man comes at last...
Translated by Emese Czintos
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Referine critice
a Bibliography of Romanian Literary Exegesis
Angela MARCU
Central University Library Cluj
Daniela TODOR
Central University Library Cluj
Abstract. This paper tries to identify the position of the Referine critice (Critical
references) bibliography among all the other bibliographical works of literary
periodicals. It also attempts to present this work with its ups and downs which have
been recorded during its uninterrupted appearance for almost fifty years, and to
propose a project for further continuation and development of the work.
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Ion Bianu and approved by the Romanian Academy, the creation of the retrospective
bibliography of periodical titles and the analytical one of journal articles was
envisaged. The project has been postponed for seventy years. Until World War I, the
universal bibliographies aimed at the retrospective restitution of cultural written
contributions, and afterwards - due to the acceleration of scientific progress - the
focus has been mainly on current bibliographies.
Among the factors behind the creation of the work, an important role must
have been played by the tradition of literary references in Cluj through the Revista
periodicelor (Periodicals review) of the prestigious magazine Dacoromania led by
Sextil Pucariu and published within the Muzeul limbii romne (the Romanian
Language Museum) of Cluj between 19211948. As an analytical and critical
bibliography of high intellectual standard, Revista periodicelor (Periodicals review)
aimed to be as exhaustive as possible, noting and evaluating through annotations all
works of letters and literary history. Revista periodicelor (Periodicals review) was
not actually a bibliography of literary criticism and history because it covered letters
altogether, especially language; nevertheless it described in an exquisite manner
literary articles and studies both analytically and critically. Retrospectively, we can
assert that a great deal of the tools needed for literary research have been achieved in
Cluj, the place where most of the dictionaries of Romanian literature have been
created, and since 1996 the Bibliografia literaturii romne (The Bibliography of
Romanian literature) has been continued due to the endeavour of the librarians at the
library of the Cluj branch of the Romanian Academy, a well known work edited
under the auspices of the Romanian Academy and projected by Tudor Vianu as a
work of national scientific interest.
We should also mention here another work considered by Barbu
Theodorescu in Istoria bibliografiei romne1 (History of Romanian bibliography) as
the soul son of the Dacoromania, that is Bibliografia publicaiilor privitoare la
cultura romneasc veche (The bibliography of the publications on old Romanian
culture), published in 5 volumes between 19341943 and referring to 19311940.
This work was initiated by Nicolae Cartojan and performed by students at the
University of Bucharest under the coordination of N. Georgescu Tistu. The
bibliographic data covered both books and periodicals.
The sustained activity in the national bibliographical field has been greatly
determined by a moment of crucial consequences for Romanian bibliographic
activity, that is Decizia nr. 1542/1951 (Decision no. 1542/1951) which led to the
creation of Camera crii (Book chamber) with the precise objective to record all
publications printed in Romania, the execution of legal deposit provisions and the
publication of national current bibliography.2 As a result, in 1952 Bibliografia RSR.
Cri, albume, hri, note muzicale3 (Bibliography of the SRR. Books, albums,
1
Istoria bibliografiei romne (History of Romanian bibliography) (Bucharest: Fundaia
Regele Mihai I, 1945), 132.
2
D. Drgulnescu and V. Moldoveanu, Istoria documentrii n Romnia (History of
documentation in Romania) (Bucharest: Editura Academiei Romne; Agir, 2002), 139.
3
The common title of the six series underwent several changes, the better known are:
Buletinul bibliografic al Camerei crii din RPR (The Bibliographic Bulletin of the Book
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maps, notes) and Bibliografia RSR. Articole din publicaii periodice i seriale
(Bibliography of the SRR. Articles from periodical and serial publications) was
issued. On the other hand, the time for Referine critice (Critical references) (1967)
has been prepared by an ample activity of recording the articles from the Romanian
periodicals and their sorting by the UDC in systematic catalogues. It was the time
when Lucian Blaga at that moment employed by the Cluj branch library of the
Romanian Academy as a researcher - was delivering an interesting lecture for his
fellow librarians on the UDC.1
Beside the above mentioned works, another current bibliography in the field
of literary criticism and history was published in the Revista de istorie i teorie
literar2 (Review of literary history and theory) during 1966. Initially, this work has
been conceived as a permanent column to quarterly signal all the volumes of literary
history, theory and criticism published in our country, all editions of literary works
accompanied by forewords and critical annotations, the most relevant specialized
works in the collections of the main libraries, together with selective specialized
studies in periodicals (Note to the volume for 1966, part 1, p. 201). The bibliography
also signals works of foreign authors in the field of interest published abroad in books
or periodicals and acquired by Romanian libraries. It appears that this work and
Referine critice (Critical references) have been initially conceived as complementary
works: the first comprising data from books, while Referine critice (Critical
references) recorded data from periodicals. However, as it results from Lmuriri
(Explanatory note) to the first volume of Referine critice (Critical references)
published in 1967, Teodora Oprescu, the editor of this first volume which reflected at
that time only data from articles in periodicals, was fully aware of the bibliography in
the Revista de istorie i teorie literar (Review of literary history and theory), making
reference to this work for the studies recorded in the volume and for the editions
accompanied by forwards. Only since 1983 this type of description has been included
in Referine critice (Critical references). Unfortunately, there was no further
collaboration between the editors of these two works for sharing the types of
documents to be recorded. Actually the bibliography from Revista de istorie i teorie
literar (Review of literary history and theory) was sporadically resumed in issues 3
and 4 in 1968, signed by Ion Stoica and Mihail Vatan.
As far as the retrospective bibliographies of articles from literary and
cultural periodicals are concerned, literary research is being supported by a valuable
work, Bibliografia relaiilor literaturii romne cu literaturile strine n periodice3
Chamber in the SRR), then Bibliografia RSR (The Bibliography of the SRR) and today
Bibliografia Naional (The National Bibliography).
1
Cornelia Vaida, Aspecte bibliologice ale activitii lui Lucian Blaga (Bibliological
aspects of Lucian Blagas activity), Biblioteca i nvmntul VI (1982): 86103.
2
15, 1 (1966): 201210; 15, 2 (1966): 403407; 15, 3 (1966): 589597; 15, 4 (1966): 689699.
3
13 volumes of this work have been published until now, structured in two distinct
categories: Bibliografia relaiilor literaturii romne cu literaturile strine n periodice :
18591916 (Bibliography of the relations of Romanian literature with foreign literatures in
periodicals: 18501916) coordinated by Ioan Lupu, Cornelia tefnescu et. al. (Bucharest:
Editura Academiei RSR, 19801985, 3 vol.) and Ana Maria Brezuleanu et. al., Bibliografia
relaiilor literaturii romne cu literaturile strine n periodice : 19191944 (Bibliography of
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Library of Romania are still being printed, and since 1998 they can also be used
online1 in .pdf format. In this brief attempt to outline the bibliographic context which
Referine critice (Critical references) is part of, we need to mention the database
achieved by the CUL in Jassy since 1990, Catalogul articolelor din periodice2 (the
Catalog of articles in periodicals), subsequently included in Baza de date Romnia
(Romania database) project. This database already comprises a large amount of
valuable bibliographic information on the main Romanian periodicals. Another
online database is Catalogul Romnia (Romania Catalogue) achieved by the CUL
in Bucharest, offering information on serial academic publications published after
2000 in the fields of philosophy, linguistics, literature, orientalism, psychology,
religion, economic sciences and political sciences.3 Lately, many Romanian
periodicals have also a digital format and even digital archives, but searching these
archives is not possible due to the lack of search engines making information hard to
retrieve. Moreover, we must mention the presence of some Romanian periodicals in
foreign databases such as the CEEOL4 where the full text of the articles is available.
This is quite encouraging but does not stand for the lack of digital resources to
reflect the national cultural heritage in books and periodicals. This is the national
bibliographic framework to relate Referine critice to in very broad lines.
1
http://www.bibnat.ro/Arhiva-s237-ro.htm#6
2
www.bcu-iasi.ro/
3
www.bcub.ro/
4
Central and Eastern European Online Library, comprising 1160 journals on humanities and
social sciences among which 289 publications from Romania at the address:
http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/publicationlist.aspx
5
Biblioteca i nvmntul (Library and education) IV (1979): 9397.
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writers from studies and articles in the main literary and cultural periodicals
published in Romania and after 1990 also in the Republic of Moldova in
monographic volumes, collection of critical studies, forewords and afterwords of
some prose and poetry volumes. Volume I issued in 1967 referred to the most
significant references from the main Romanian periodicals, as stipulated by the
author in Lmuriri (Explanatory note). Therefore, the work is a selective
bibliography. Along its publication, the criterion of selectivity has been abandoned.
In the case of studies and articles only the most important literary periodicals were
chosen to be described bibliographically, and in this case the principle of selectivity
was kept. During the forty years of publishing, there was a significant disparity in
terms of year of publication and year of reference, thus the information became
retrospective. This is a serious disadvantage of the work which has been cleared in
time. In 1992 the volume for 1985 was published causing an 11 year disparity, while
at the present moment this disparity downsized to 4 years, given that only three
bibliographers are engaged in this work with other tasks to perform in addition.
Another important inconvenient is the precarious accessibility of the Referine
critice (Critical references) database at the http://192.168.1.10/ris/risweb.isa address
due to a rather unfriendly searching interface. In order to overcome this
predicament, the latest volumes have been transferred in a .pdf format onto DVDs,
while the database has been made accessible for the public in the reference room in
its original Procite version with all its searching functions.
The second series, Estetic i teorie literar (Literary aesthetics and theory)
was issued during 19711985. The references here have been sorted alphabetically
by subject index. This subject work has been completed with subject terms and
article authors indices. In the above mentioned paper Instrumente bibliografice n
sprijinul cercetrii literare (Bibliographic tools supporting literary research at the
Central University Library in Cluj), Cornelia Gltescu made the following remark
with regard to the subject term index: Setting up a vocabulary of terms, on issues of
aesthetics and literary theory remains a difficult problem, the terms of the
vocabulary are created by the nature of the topics covered in researched articles
when there is no established terminology in dictionaries in fixed patterns. This
work amounting to a total of seven volumes covers the period 19661981. It is for
this period the only work that indexes thematically the studies and articles from
the Romanian literary periodicals.
Although Referine critice (Critical references) have successfully filled in
the gap in the bibliographic field with pertinent information, the work has only
sporadically been notified. The causes are multiple. One is probably the general lack
of support and recognition of the endeavour to create bibliographic tools. Mircea
Anghelescu one of the few literary historians concerned with emphasizing literary
research tools considered the work a valuable index for reporting annually on the
history and literary criticism, but little known due to its diffusion in a small number
of copies.1 Another quite enthusiastic echo reported the volume for 1984 as follows:
A catalogue made after severe principles, an Index of articles and studies on writers
1
Mircea Anghelescu, Instrumentele de lucru (Working tools), in Istoriografia literar
romneasc. 19441984 (Romanian literary historiography) (Bucharest: Minerva, 1984) 266.
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from Romania, published in the country. [...] We are in great need for these tools.
Will we ever wonder who are the people who spend much of their lives pursuing
literary work step by step? A difficult road through prints with patience and
enthusiasm, with great respect for the letter, for the ministers of art; a tribute to our
culture. About some of them I have found out recently after going through a volume
of Referine critice (Critical reference)1
Development perspectives
At a first glance there might be the question whether the work Referine critice
(Critical references) need to be continued, or its place may be taken by Romania
Database, which partially includes information from Referine critice (Critical
references). A few issues related to the very structure of the two works and their
addressability should be noted from the beginning. It should be mentioned that the
national project Romania database aims to provide the interested public at home and
abroad, via the Internet, a national bibliographic database Romania, comprising the
articles in specialized periodicals published in Romania and processed first at the
central university libraries in Cluj, Iai and Bucharest. The functions of this database
were: web access to the catalogue, possibility to search by different entries (e.g.
author, title word / original title / title in another language; keywords in Romanian /
other languages, journal title, year). Romania database project, conceived as separate
activities of the three libraries, would become the sole objective of an independent
institution and cover all areas of scientific contribution of Romanian research. Until
the achievement of this national desideratum, the three major university libraries
have provided professional expertise and periodical collections to create a common
bibliographic catalogue. The titles of journals and areas of interest were established,
and initially they were socio-humanities: history, art, religion, literature, general
culture, politics, minority publications, later on followed by technical disciplines,
natural sciences, etc.
We need to say that the work Referine critice (Critical references) finds its
individuality primarily in that it is a special bibliography of literature, and then
because of the different structuring of information and addressability with a clear
target beneficiary, teachers, researchers and students interested in literary research.
However it must be mentioned that the effort of continuing and resizing the work
Referine critice (Critical references) in the future means a new approach involving
additional resources. Continuing should only be the result of correct evaluation of
the information needs of literary research in the academic environment.
In our opinion, there are two alternatives to consider:
1
George Bdru, Referine critice (Critical references) in Cronica 32 (1991): 8.
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Undoubtedly, a reconfiguration of the work must take into account the new
national bibliographic context in addition to the information needs. Hermina G. B.
Anghelescu an eminent specialist in documentary information and with good
knowledge of both the US and the Romanian realities in the field very reasonably
assesses the state of information services in Romanian libraries in the paper Bazele
de date pe domenii un concept tridimensional: colaborare, coordonare i
comunicare C31 (Specialized databases a three-dimensional concept:
collaboration, coordination and communication C3) and proposes solutions. As
regarding the indexing of periodical and serial publications, Hermina G. B.
Anghelescu stands for creating databases on specialized fields. Such a specialized
database in Romanian literary exegesis could be built on the platform of the work
Referine critice (Critical references)
1
Bazele de date pe domenii un concept tridimensional: colaborare, coordonare i
comunicare C3 (Specialized databases a three-dimensional concept: collaboration,
coordination and communication C3) Biblioteca 15/ 1112 (2004), 334338.
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MISCELLANEA
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
E-mail: ancatatai@yahoo.com
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As a result, after years of steady research work, in 2013, the second edition,
an imperative one, of Repertory of typographers, engravers, editors, patrons of
Romanian books (15081830) was published at Sibiu, coordinated by Eva Mrza
(whose rigorous researches in the field of the history of books and printing are
already well known in the specialized world not only in Romania but also abroad)
and the young researcher Florin Bogdan (guide at the Union National Museum in
Alba Iulia). On the forth page of the book it is mentioned that The Repertory is the
result of collaboration of the following authors: Teodora Ancateu, Florin Bogdan,
Silviu Bor, Diana Ciugudean, Zevedei Drghi, Doina Dreghiciu, Alin Mihai
Gherman, Eva Mrza, Gabriela Mircea, Iuliana Wainberg. Ana Maria Roman-
Negoi, Dorin Wainberg.
Except for those of Eva Mrzas generation (Doina Dreghiciu, Alin Mihai
Gherman and Gabriela Mircea), the other authors belong to the school competently
formed within Alma Mater Apulensis by the eminent professor Eva Mrza during
the 25 years put in the service of the reputed University, formerly mentioned.
Printed under good graphic conditions, the book starts with an introduction
named in the title of the work: Repertory of typographers, engravers, editors,
patrons of Romanian books (15081830) (p. 58) signed by Eva Mrza, followed by
the English translation made by Adina Bogdan (p. 912). From the very beginning,
the coordinator states: we felt it necessary to draw attention to the phenomenon of
early Romanian writings from a different angle of investigation than the usual one
(p. 5). Therefore, while BRV deals with writings, the present repertory starts from
the human element that contributed to printing of books (p. 5). Sources of the
work are clearly mentioned, as well: This work is meant to be a synthesis of
information possible to be gathered from periodical or monographic publications
(those that accumulate earlier relations or new discoveries), published documentary
sources, and last but not least, from writings printed on Romanian territory up to
1830, completed with mandatory bibliographical references, finally having the role
and the shape of a dictionary (p. 6).
The Repertory proper (p. 13298) comprises the persons presented who
were evidently arranged alphabetically. A persons file consists of the following
headings: Name office (Pandovici, Dimitrie typographer, engraver); the list of
books he worked on; Observations (presents the features of books); Bibliography
(rendered through siglas and abbreviations); Biographical references (brief
biographical medallions).
Bibliography (p. 299305) which contains new titles as compared with the
first edition is divided into five sections: Critical editions, facsimile editions (p.
199301); Bibliographies (p. 301); General Bibliography (p. 302303); Studies (p.
303305); Webography (p. 305) which finishes this ample and successful work.
In conclusion, we consider that through their laborious work the team
coordinated by Eva Mrza and Florin Bogdan have attained the proposed desiderata
making this Repertory constitute a very useful instrument for historians and all those
interested in the respective subject-matter.
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Alina BRANDA
Babe-Bolyai University, Cluj
E-mail: alinabranda@yahoo.com
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1
Zoltn Rosts, ed.,Universitatea interbelic a sociologilor gustieni. Studii, 1011.
2
Idem, 11
3
Quote on page 17.
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dysfunctionality of promoting new capacities, which are kept outside the University
or at its limits.1
In this extremely thorough and documented framework, the role of Gustis
projects to improve student life, to solve acute social problems, that characterized
the interwar period is emphasized: the creation of Student Offices and Cooperatives,
the launch of social surveys on the conditions of university life, the setup of a
science of university, which would gather accurate data regarding the student
population movement; the promotion of the publication Cluza studentului (The
Student Guide). Student life, as a whole, is reproduced as it was in that time of
tensions, conflicts, atomisation (with its organizations: The National Union of
Christian Students, ASCR, IMCA), with the ideologies and religions they promoted.
The study authored by Drago Sdrobi, titled Prsirea Boemei i
ncarnarea Utopiei. Studenimea interbelic, Dimitrie Gusti i Serviciul Social
Obligatoriu (La Boheme Abandoned, Utopia Incarnated: Interwar Students, Dimitrie
Gusti and the Mandatory Social Service), aims at explaining, at first, the causes
leading to the political radicalization of intellectuals, referring to the interwar period
in Romania. I appreciated the way in which the two terms, La Boheme and Utopia,
were presented, at a theoretical, conceptual level, both diachronically and
synchronically (regarding the interwar period), as both terms are essential to the
research approach proposed by the author. Furthermore, the way in which the rural
utopia arises due to Dimitrie Gustis great vision, but also due to his easy access to
resources is also in the authors attention and systematic observation. The social
service function is the authors main concern, as he tries and succeeds to decipher
the mechanisms that made its creation possible in that period: subtle manipulations
of decision-making bodies and entities, Carol II on the one hand, and Corneliu Zelea
Codreanu on the other hand, the way in which the Social Service was instrumented
also in order to combat the trend of the legionary movement, the impact it had on
young people.
The ideological and political tensions, the ways in which youth, as essential
stake, was to be won by one side or by the other, are contextualised brilliantly. In
this context, the way in which the royal teams had to contribute to the
organization of a model village as every Romanian village should be2 is analysed,
firstly by studying the 15,201 villages with 14 million inhabitants. Therefore, the
royal student teams had to be formed in order to meet the village in all its
complexity.3 They were designed on several levels, in order to correspond to the
intervention in what was called culture of health (here the students in medicine
and sports were responsible), culture of labour (students in agronomy, veterinary
medicine and household masters), culture of soul and mind (students in theology and
sociology etc.). An entire science lay behind these teams. The Social Service
unquestionably had scientific and social intervention plans, very well configured at
1
Octav Onicescu, quote on page 19.
2
Universitatea interbelic a sociologilor gustieni. Studii, 99; quote from ndrumtor al
muncii culturale la sate (Bucharest: Fundaia Cultural Regal Principele Carol), 13.
3
Ibid., 100
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its establishment. All these represent particular subjects that are discussed by Dragos
Sdrobi, the author of this study, focused on social and political context.
The approach proposed by Theodora-Eliza Vcrescu, Educaia femeilor n
provinciile locuite de romni i n Romnia, ntre anii 1880 i 1930. Studiu de caz.
Universitatea din Bucureti (Women Education in the Provinces Inhabited by
Romanians and in Romania, between 1880 and 1930. Case Study, University of
Bucharest) provides an analysis from the gender relations perspective of the way in
which education functioned in Romania, especially in the University of Bucharest.
The interpretation of the low presence of women in universities (due to their limited
access to education), was also built contextually. The mechanisms regarding the
marginalization or even exclusion of women from this educational area are
identified. Also, the analysis focuses on the way in which these mechanisms led to a
low self-esteem in women, to their mistrust in their own ability of bringing their
contribution to the production of knowledge. All these aspects are discussed in the
above mentioned study, starting from the interpretation of empirical data, gathered
from sociological surveys of the period and from different statistical assessments.
Also, the gender stereotypes of that period are analysed, based on a systematic
documentation. I found interesting the explanations about womens option for
certain domains, when they had access to education; the choice of these fields is the
result of social pressures, instrumented in order to extend the role women had within
the family, in private, in public and is also the result of internalizing a certain gender
role; the distrust in their contribution to scientific knowledge, according to the
statistics referred to on page 157, is interpreted in the same register. In turn, the
care for preserving womens morality is explained in the same frames:
according to statistics, 75% of women students lived with their parents, relatives, in
boarding schools during the studies, where they were closely monitored; only 6.3%
of them rent a room independently (the data were provided by a survey, conceived
and applied by students, in the Sociology Seminar, at the time).1
The volume, as a whole, reconstructs in a realistic and vivid manner a social
context, that of the interwar period, especially in its first decades, and an
atmosphere, which is usually more difficult to obtain just using documents, source
analysis and even interpretation. The authors demonstrate consistently and almost
equally a remarkable empathic ability, an insight into the spirit of the period, by
decrypting the functioning and social representation mechanisms specific to the
period under analysis, a deep understanding of that times political context.
Also, the studies as a whole highlight the role played by the social sciences
in the university and in the public sphere, in society, during the period under
analysis. Another merit of this book is that it clarifies the relationship between social
sciences, at an epistemological level and the social action and intervention in the
heyday of the Gusti School. A contextualized analysis of the relationship between
social sciences, ideology and religion is also present in the volume but is rather
implicit, giving an indirect warning on the possible danger of the specialists
manipulation by different power agents, by dominant narratives, in different times.
1
Ibid.,153.
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Ovidiu PECICAN
Babe-Bolyai University, Cluj
E-mail: pecolino59@yahoo.com
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tefan Boleas work shows that the great existentialist concepts the
aforementioned three but also others did not have, ante existentialism, a clear and
generally accepted categorical statue. The role of the existentialist authors as
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
concept inventors turns them not only in creators of philosophical language, but
also in propellers of philosophical problematic and descriptors of life situations.
Following tefan Boleas reading one observes that the conceptual apparatus
of existentialism creates a different mapping of life and world. This mapping seems
quintessentially modern and contemporary, locating the main authors in the 19th and
20th century. However, the suggestive span of terms like anxiety or authenticity
allows us to take a step back to the historical premises of pre-existentialist
experiences. In this light one can grasp the huge existential value of many medieval
and pre-modern paintings like Sebastian Brants The Ship of Fools, the alienating
universes of Hieronymus Bosch, the works of the two Pieter Bruegels, the
masterpieces of the mannerist painters and a certain baroque sensibility, including
here the modern alchemic and esoteric meditation.
tefan Bolea is less interested in his book in the perennity of the
existentialist perspective and its appreciation as permanence of mans relationship to
life and world than in the post-historical development of a movement considered
dated. In the annexes of the study positioned here not because they would stand for
derivative, facultative or negligible leads but because they would hinder the main
discourse of the book he tests his exegetical track on artistic materials beyond
philosophys designated perimeter (because philosophy expressed itself for a long
time in arts disguise, a thesis proven by Platos or Lucian of Samosatas dialogues,
Erasmuss essay on folly or Campanellas or Francis Bacons utopias). The young
philosopher alludes to the fiction of Chuck Palahniuk and Philip K. Dick and the
recent cinematography. Therefore, instinctively or programmatically but not quite
explicitly assumed he brings in front of the mirror (one might note here that the
highly philosophical term of speculation derives from speculum Latin for mirror)
the philosophical and artistic projections, hoping to understand how these two types
of vision reflect the existential condition of the contemporary human being. Far from
deciding that establishing the human being under the sign of anxiety and death (in
search of authenticity) amounts to a hopelessly tragic destiny and a certain condition
of perpetual unhappiness as thinkers like N. Berdiaeff and V. Solovyov believed ,
tefan Bolea considers that the dialogic attitude, the tense partnership with these
values and life perspectives can lead to less predictable and more spiritually
profitable answers. The idea is somehow surprising, because it seems to give off an
epistemic and existential optimism which has nothing in common with the
traditionally gloomy school of existentialism. The absurd of yesteryear seems to
fade away in front of the new devices proposed by the meditation of existentialist
masters. This absurdity might result from the composed and confusing character of
the postmodern experience, which seemed to swallow up all alternatives, chewing
up and burning together various stylistic heritages. In a medium configured by the
late modernity, the tragic sense of life fades out while the feeling of absurdity
lost its aggressiveness and virulence, creating space for the predictable pattern of
existentialist conceptualization.
tefan Boleas audacity and originality stem from experiments like those,
which ensure him, beyond a certain historical priority ( Our study is the first in the
Romanian cultural space which achieves a reconstruction of existentialism through its
concepts, p. 252) a distinct place in the young Romanian philosophical exegesis.
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Based on a PhD thesis defended in February 2012, the book brings in the spotlight a
representative of the new generation of the restless partners of ideation, redeeming,
partly, the impression that the author of this review has had too many times, namely
that some young authors mistake the apprenticeship with spiritual obedience and
beating over the old ground. One might hope that after the mastery exercises
necessarily presupposed by all PhD theses, tefan Bolea will listen even more
unconventionally the voice of his calling, endowing our culture with original and
personal reflective free dives, essential not only for him but also for his generation.
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Iulia GRAD
Babe Bolyai University
E-mail: iuliagrad@gmail.com
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The author considers that the thought based on a symbolic logic that differs from the
rational thought, is not alien to the postmodern man. On the contrary, he claims that
mans need for sacred is evident and that the symbolic thought is a human constant.
These remarks are essential for Sandu Frunz s undertaking to demonstrate that
mass media play a major role in the creation of mythical content and that their
functions have the same nature as the functions that were fulfilled in archaic
societies by the instances of mythical communication.
In the investigation of the symbolic dynamic of modernity, the author
introduces the concept of the median space of religious experience, as
representing the intersection between the human and the manifestation of the sacred,
a space materialized by symbolic structures, imaginative constructs and symbolic
actions. This space offers the symbolic material used by the postmodern man in the
process of the construction of his own identity. Evidently, mass media represent one
of the most important sources of the symbolic content that occupies the median
sphere of the religious experience.
In the last two parts of the volume, Sandu Frunz focuses on the field of
political communication as representing one of the areas where the myth and the
ritual are essential dimensions in the communication process. The author describes
the ritualic and mythical construction of political reality especially during the
election campaigns.
In the context of the announced death of the areas significant for the human
condition, Sandu Frunz underlines the importance of a reconceptualization of
communication rather through the lens of a logic of significations, than through the
lens of an instrumentalized logic. Thus, Sandu Frunz asserts that the main function
of communication becomes that of a depositary and a vehicle of the significant, from
the perspective of the human condition, contents.
The author takes Aurel Codobans affirmation even further by affirming that
communication constructs reality, stating that advertising constructs reality,
through its fragmentary but full of existential engagement stories, through the
mythical, symbolic, ritualic, dimensions contained by advertising. The author
proposes a balanced position referring to the authenticity of the experience provided
by the media culture on the whole, and advertising in particular, stating that when
we affirm that advertising creates reality we refer precisely at its capacity to offer,
through damaged or hidden structures of depth, an authentic existence and an
experience perceived by the person who lives it as being as high as possible.
With the volume Symbolic communication and seduction, Sandu Frunz
outlines an accurate and balanced image of the postmodern context where, as Aurel
Codoban says, physical reality becomes more and more a footnote of the
communicational reality. At the same time, the perspective proposed by Sandu
Frunz provides us precious insights into the way in which the camouflaged
seduction of the sacred penetrates the field of communication which constructs
reality.
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Ana-Maria DELIU
Babe-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca
E-mail: anyshk.d@gmail.com
Simon May, Istoria iubirii, trans. Dana Ionescu (Bucharest: Nemira Publishing House,
2014) [Love. A History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011)]
1
Ibid., 6.
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to love, the object of love, and the lover.1 The procession of forms through history
indicates a slow but certain deification of love: from love directed to God as a
supreme virtue, to a transcending force meant to elevate the human condition to a
divine level, to love as an emotion worthy of any human with the same intensity that
was formerly reserved to God, and finally, to a potency of being authentic through
love, to actualise his own nature.2 From exploring beyond individual, to exploring
the individual, and from manifestation of love for and to God, to love for the sake of
love, this are the cultural transformations.
To show the construction and deconstruction of an emotion, Simon May
invokes examples from The Hebrew Scripture, ancient and modern philosophy
(Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, Ovid, Spinoza, Rousseau, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche),
from Christianity, psychoanalysis (Freud), literature (Schlegel, Novalis, Proust), and
troubadours songs. In my opinion, the author should have insisted more on the
Orphic mystery cults and Assyro-Babylonian mythology when depicting the roots of
the idea of love. However, for the purpose of the book, how Plato and the Judaic
tradition view love is revealing enough, since these sources are not only more
influential in Western culture, but also a synthesis of the above.
One of the books shortcomings is the fact that in the chapter dedicated to
this problem the author argues that God loves them [Israels people] as the
guardians of his law; and his choosing of them to receive the law, given to Moses
on Mount Sinai, is itself an act of his love.3 Scholars in history of religions have
concluded that the early religion of Israel (before the prophets) was based not on
love, but on fear. Israels God as a moral and loving divinity would have been
impossible to imagine before Jeremiah and Isaiah.4 Simon May acknowledges that
Yahweh can be cruel but it resolves into [t]his is how all love works.5
Nevertheless, his argument is reinforced by the idea that not the moral comportment
evokes love, but what he calls ontological rootedness.
What I appreciated is the writing style, which is not only eloquent, but also
lyrical. The argumentation is clear and logical and the poetic language does not
affect the concision. Overall, one may find the book enjoyable and challenging.
While this book represents more of a historical approach, it is worth
mentioning that Simon May is currently writing a second volume on the philosophy
of love, entitled Love: A New Theory. Although theoretical directions can be found
in Love. A History, the second book might be a critique of the idea of love. We can
assume that the author will develop the definition and directions already suggested,
and that the new theory is relating love to the feeling of existential grounding or, as
Simon May puts it, ontological rootedness.
1
Ibid., 1112.
2
Ibid.
3
Ibid., 35.
4
See Robert. Henry Charles, Doctrina vieii de apoi n Israel, n iudaism i n cretinism (A
Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life in Israel, in Judaism and in Christianity)
(Bucharest: Herald, 2009), 920.
5
May, Love, 36.
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Cultural Memory
- Review -
Amalia COTOI
Faculty of Letters, Romanian Literary Studies
Babe-Bolyai University, Cluj
E-mail: amaliacotoi@yahoo.com
*
Jan Assmann, Memoria cultural (Cultural memory) (Iai: Editura Universitii Alexandru
Ioan Cuza, 2013), 349 p. ISBN 978-973-703-903-3
1
Assmann, Memoria cultural, 19.
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1
Ibid., 16.
2
Ibid., 33.
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Taking into account these examples, the author is talking about cultural
memory related to tradition. If we were questioning ourselves about whether
tradition was not sufficient in talking about collective memory, the author attempts a
clarification in this respect. According to him, various phenomena described in this
book could be subsumed under tradition, but in this way we lose sight of the act of
interception, of the breakage with the past (if necessary) and of the negative aspects
such as repression and forgetfulness.
Maurice Halbwachs, as Jan Assmann emphasizes, says that even if
individual memory develops through communication, a social frame is needed too.
The author of Cultural memory believes that this theory is functional because it
explains both remembrance and forgetfulness. Besides a frame of remembrance and
forgetfulness, cultural memory also demands figures of remembrance.1 In order to
function in a group, the truth needs a concrete shape which materializes into an
event, a person or a place. The remembrance needs a space (as the topography of the
Holy Land) and a time (as a calendar with holidays). But more than that, the
memory is in close connection with its bearers, which brings identity to the
community they belong to.
The reconstruction is also tied to the belonging to a community, according
to the theory of Halbwachs, continued by Assmann. When we said reconstruction
we meant that no remembrance of the past is maintained in the initial shape, the past
being a construction of each epoch. Christian topography is a valuable example in
this sense. It does not commemorate facts certified by witnesses of those times but
proofs of beliefs in God, which were declared post factum.
Last but not least, because a debate about remembrance is also a debate about
history, Jan Assmann (through Halbwachs theory) draws some explicative lines
between memory (seen as collective) and history. If collective memory is interested in
time continuity and similarities between epochs, history is concerned with time
discontinuities and differences between epochs. For history, the periods lacking events
are meaningless, whereas collective memory tries to keep a right image of the entire
past. There is more than one cultural memory but only one history.
1
Ibid., 38.
2
Ibid., 49.
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Remembrance as mytho-motricity
Historical conscience is part of human nature, it is a basic instinct. Forgetfulness is,
on the other hand, stronger and more enrooted in human structure. Remembrance
and forgetfulness are better developed in some peoples than in others. A fact that,
according to Assmann, does not rely on the existence of written culture, but rather
on the existence of some factors that block or stimulate remembrance.
In search of stimulators and inhibitors of remembrance, Assmann cites the
theory of cold and warm societies developed by the French anthropologist Claude
Lvi-Strauss. By Assmanns consignment, societies that oppose the modification of
their mechanism are called cold societies, while change-thirsty societies are named
warm. If for Claude Lvi-Strauss this categorization was not seen beyond the
polarity of societies with/without history, for the author of Cultural memory it is
nothing more than the motor of a used Ford that helps him carry on his journey until
he finds the new Ford a well defined theory of cultural memory. As a counter-
example to the theory of warm and cold societies, Jan Assmann gives ancient Egypt
a civilized, literary society that, however, refuses a log of its history. Thus, avoiding
the division of the world in two, the author thinks that societies can be both warm
and cold at the same time, without the need of a categorical framing.
Having reached the subchapter The alliance between mastery and memory,
Assman involves a primary factor in the stimulation of remembrance, which is the
domination upon a people. Social transformations are desired by the ones lacking
privilege, the lower classes, and their oppression is nothing but a stimulant of
remembrance and implicitly of historical thinking. In this case, anchorage to the past
becomes a form of resistance.
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1
Ibid., 7576.
2
Ibid., 78.
3
Ibid., 79.
4
Ibid., 8384.
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
The ritual signifies a meaning. Thats why the ritual keeps living through
repetition (as in the case of Seder celebration). But once a culture passes from a
ritual coherence to a textual one the main type of movement, while texts arent or
may be only if they are in circulation. When it is out of movement, from a container
of the meaning, the text develops into a grave of the meaning. From now on, only
the interpret can read the text and bring the meaning back to life.1 What Assmann
says is that even if it becomes harder to be transmitted, the meaning is not frozen
once it passes to a textual coherence, but it is replaced with other meaning. The
School of scribes plays a major role in this development because it is the one
which approves the circulation of texts and preserves unaltered the main meanings.
The House of Life and House of Boards from Mesopotamia are two examples of
establishments in charge of carrying the cultural memory of the texts.
The reason for passing from a ritualistic manifestation to a textual one was a
so called cessation of the flow of tradition by canonization2 not by the emergence
of writing, as we are tempted to think. As proofs the author brings the Jewish Bible
and the Buddhist Tripitaka. The Christian Bible and the Koran are two canons that
are connected with those earlier mentioned. Around these forms of canon and
canonization are brought to life institutions, whose main purpose is the hermeneutics
of the texts, and intellectual elite (as the Jewish Rabbi, the Buddhist etc.) who deals
with this kind of texts.
The canon is defined by Jan Assmann as being that tradition whose content is
absolutely mandatory and the form inviolable.3 In this way the carrier of the canon,
the scribe, was part of the canonization of a text by keeping and giving it further with
legal strictness. A good example is given by the Babylonians who protected their texts
by blessings and imprecations addressed to the transmitter of the text. In the Jewish case
things are different. The birth of the canonizations for the Jews starts with the collapse of
the second Temple and the exodus, so with the loss of ritualistic continuity. By
Deuteronomy, Israel survives as a so-called connective structure.
From the dawn of Antiquity until today, the meaning of the word canon
has changed especially because of the Church. The Church was the one who claimed
the status of unquestioned authority. Thats why besides answering the question
what are our guiding criteria?, the canon literary, philosophic or scientific
draws a demarcation line between A and non-A, between straight and skewed, good
and bad, between beautiful and ugly, etc.
1
Ibid., 91.
2
Ibid., 94.
3
Ibid., 103.
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that we collective identity does not exists outside a multiplied I. Then, from
I-we we pass on to the triad I-him-we where I is the individual identity
that makes the individual unique with respect to the others (also on a corporal level)
and him is the personal identity, which comprises the entirety of the individuals
role and social functions. In spite of the formers corporal quality and thus of the
danger of the pathological manifestation, both identities are developed through
reflection. The same things happen within cultural identity, where the involvement is
reflexive, whereas collective identity appears like a social belonging that has
become reflexive.
Thus, Jan Assmann concludes that because man is incapable of living
without culture, the latter becomes second nature. An animal adapts to its
environment by instinct. Man, while lacking these instincts, must adapt to culture as
a world of symbolic meanings.1 The symbolic meaning represents here a common
basis of knowledge and memories packed in a common language. At the level of
face-to-face communities, for instance, dialog is the major form of transmission of
social consensus, which is the knowledge that regulates the identity of a community.
The myths are the ones founding this identity because they tell us who we are,
where we come from and what is our place in the Cosmos.2 The ways of keeping
this identity are the rituals in illiterate societies, and the texts in literate societies.
The exception to this rule is again Egypt because here the symbol of the peoples
birth and the nation founding is represented by the building of the pyramids during
the 4th dynasty. Thus, whereas it is transmitted through a temple, a ritual, a text or
through religion (the most effective, according to Assmann), memory, as a
foundational or counter- presential myth, offers to a community its identity through
what the author calls cultural memory.
1
Ibid., 138.
2
Ibid., 144.
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Teodora COSMAN
Universit Libre de Bruxelles
Facult de Philosophie et Lettres/
Acadmie Royale des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles
Unusually for Philobiblon, the current issue is illustrated with the works
of not one but two artists, two young photographers from Cluj-Napoca, Patricia
Todoran and Irina Dumitracu Mgurean. The choice was made on the basis of the
nothingness of their pictures, but not in a pejorative sense. The images are a kind of
visual response to the negative vibe that seems to traverse the current issue,
featuring such texts as Daniel Jugrins Negation and Mystical union in Plotinus,
tefan Boleas The Nihilist as a Not-Man or Istvn Kirly V.s Names of the Nothing.
What they have in common (the images and the texts) is the refusal of
representation. But how can a picture refuse representation, how can visual
nothing(ness) look like? Modern art has long ago begun to address this issue,
pushing the limits of representation further and further away, notoriously in the case
of the monochrome. Nonetheless, the matters with photography are complicated by
the fact that a photograph is supposed to have a referent (common sense demands
it) in order to be understood as a photograph. If were culturally programmed to
recognize intentionality in a canvas covered in white, for example, that is not the
case with pictures. A blank photograph is no more than a blank piece of paper, or in
the best case, a mistaken photograph, something that is not worth the effort to be
shown, to be seen. (If we were to reproduce a blank photograph this would be
most likely interpreted as a typographic mistake.) Not much unlike the name of the
nothing, a photograph has to show something in order to signify nothing.
The question is how much of this something can be put in a photograph in
order to maintain its significance as nothing? Natalie Heinich, in her work on media
culture, distinguishes between visuality that is the domain of the visible, and
visibility (a quality of) what is worth or demands to be seen.1 The last term
implies the idea of an election, a promotion, a special value that is attached to the
object in order to accede (in)to visibility. There is, however, an inferior and a
superior limit to the visible, that excludes from visibility realities that are too little
(in terms of importance) or too much to be seen.
The representative practices (such as painting and photography) cast a value
judgment on their objects, enforcing them with a special dignity by bringing them
into visibility. For a picture to show nothing it has to keep as close as possible to
the limits of the visible, without completely falling outside. The object of the picture
1
Natalie Heinich, De la Visibilit. Excellence et singularit en rgime mdiatique (Paris :
Gallimard, 2012).
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has to be infimous (if not infamous) in such a way that it is almost not there. A
mistaken photograph, like in the example given above, is an object that cannot make
it into the visible, unless a value judgment cast upon it decides otherwise.
In her work, Irina Dumitracu employs the strategies of cheap
photography that is the use of photographic error, such as blur or overexposure,
and of obsolete or amateurish techniques, such as Polaroid raising into the dignity
of the visible objects that otherwise would have been discarded. Even in this context,
the images have a ubiquitous status depending on their degree of (figurative)
readability, going from a foggy but still recognizable visible reality to (almost)
nothing to see. This blurring effect is used in order to signify that photographys
denotatum is situated beyond the visible, into the in-visible self of the other (the
photographers? the models?) and thats how the viewer should consider them: they
are pictures made not to be seen, but to be absorbed and contemplated inside oneself
with the eyes closed, as mental images.
From the point of view of the dignity of their objects, Patricia Todorans
photographs also adopt the minimal strategy: a pile of sand, a barrack, the top of
some hills. Although full of visual signs, the pictures seem devoid of any
significance. They look like a crime scene missing the clue. From this point of view
they are similar to the evidence photographs used by the police, whose meaning
relays on the explanatory apparatus which accompany them.
Walter Benjamin famously compares photographs with crime scenes: But
isnt every square inch of our cities a crime scene? Every passer-by a culprit? Isnt it
the task of the photographerdescendant of the augurs and haruspicesto reveal
guilt and to point out the guilty in his pictures? anticipating the practices of some
conceptual artists (such as Edward Ruscha or John Hilliard) who used the
criminalist model in order to challenge photographys evidential character. He
also stresses out the importance of the caption in the construction of meaning, saying
that inscription [will] become the most important part of the photograph.1
In Patricias work neither do the captions explain the images, nor do the
images illustrate what is said in the caption, but rather their incongruence creates a
new meaning which falls beyond representation, in the gap created between them,
the gap of re-presentation. That kind of use of image and text reminds us of the
surrealist tradition, especially that of Andr Bretons photo-novel Nadja.2
Solo exhibitions :
1
Walter Benjamin, Little History of Photography in Selected Writings vol.2 (Cambridge
Mass., London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), 507530.
2
Andr Breton, Nadja (New York: Grove Press Inc., 1960).
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Selected exhibitions:
2015 Local Municipalities, Artists book exhibition, Visual Kontakt, Oradea,
Romania
Bus stops. Thresholds of our daily lives, Photo Romania Festival 2015, Cluj-
Napoca, Romania
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Volume II. Number 1 / 1997 136 p. (Culture, Books, Society: Axiological Openings
and Closures; A Changing Profession in a Transitional Society: Data
Conditions Possibilities; Varia: The Special Collections of the Library;
Miscellanea)
Volume II. Number 2 / 1997 237 p. (Culture, Books, Society: Existential Dispositions;
A Changing Profession in a Transitional Society: Data Conditions
Possibilities; Varia: The Special Collections of the Library; Miscellanea)
Volume VIIIIX. 20032004 573 p. (Culture, Books, Society: Censorship and the
Barriers of Freedom; A Changing Profession in a Transitional Society: Data
Conditions Possibilities; Varia: The Special Collections of the Library;
Miscellanea).
Volume XXI. 20052006 603 p. (Culture, Books, Society: Music and Existence;
Librarianship: Hermeneutica Bibliothecaria: Data Conditions
Possibilities; The Special Collections of the Library; Miscellanea).
Volume XII. 2007 457 p. (Culture, Books, Society: Adrian Marino and His Horizons;
Librarianship: Hermeneutica Bibliothecaria: Data Conditions
Possibilities; The Special Collections of the Library; Miscellanea).
Volume XIII. 2008 672 p. (Culture, Books, Society: Living and Dying Life;
Librarianship: Hermeneutica Bibliothecaria: Data Conditions
Possibilities; The Special Collections of the Library; Miscellanea).
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Philobiblon Vol. XX (2015) No.1
Volume XV. 2010 601 p. (Science, Culture, Books, Society: Time, Past, Future,
History; Librarianship: Hermeneutica Bibliothecaria: Data Conditions
Possibilities; The Special Collections of the Library; Miscellanea).
Volume XIX Number 2. (July - December) 2014, 283 -615 p.; MAN BOOK
KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY, Miscellanea
259