Aesthetic Form and the End

 

"The development of mythic thinking towards logical and abstract thinking, which is best seen in the Greeks, is at the same time a constant dying away, not of faith, but of imagination, of the freely creating power of imagination. To the extent that it dies off, abstract thought is able to detach itself and set itself free. Now it lifts its wings to the high and free flight in which it gains autonomy. It flies over Pindar's nomos basileus and establishes laws for itself. Now the free thinker, free thought, enters the scene, and by manifesting in itself, by acting, all knowledge becomes anthropology, becomes anthropological in the sense that the Greeks understood it. Free thought detaches itself from the basis on which it originated. It separates itself from it, yet remains bound to it to the end and even soars above it – for this separateness and this free hovering constitute the history of free thought. In the struggle which philosophy wages against myth, waged by the Ionian thinkers, the Eleatics, the Sophists and all the rest, there is at the same time the recognition that it is impossible to do without it. The thinker makes use of it, if only to distance himself from it. That is why the argument does not end. It only ends when the myth-making spirit is extinguished, and with it Greek philosophy also ends. The two belong together. It is in Platonic philosophy that this dispute is clearest."

I don't entirely agree with this, but it is the best writing there is on the subject, and acts as a sort of "Cyclopean portal" towards mythic thought. The argument is also peculiar given the technical and rational basis of modern law, the Nomos Talos which defines us moderns. One would think that our sympathy would be with Plato against the theatrocracy, yet so many of us call for the return of its tyranny. This conflict highlights the paradox of thought, of insight, and the opposing directions that the rational and irrational take. There is no certainty of progress or decline, the infinite weight of the past is as prone to error as the future threatens eternal imprisonment; the lesson of Epimetheus and Prometheus.

"Law, the king of all,

of mortals and immortals,

guides them as it justifies the utmost violence

with a sovereign hand."

Pindar's Nomos is the answer to the Euthyphro Dilemma. And yet, in another sense, the Euthyphro Dilemma is a type of antiphon, an echo or harmony of the question causing it to appear at another level. How does one bring himself to the level of violence for which there is no weapon? An impossible question, and yet a decision must be made regardless of our fate. "Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt." (Fate leads the willing soul, but drags along the unwilling one.)

This is the vein which runs through all of Plato's work, and reveals how wrong Nietzsche and other critics of the Socratic method were. After Anaximander there can only be a return to the dominion of the gods, or a willless embrace of the vortex of the atoms. Plato's philosophy is that of the Forms at war with the atoms, a type of eidomachy. He imagines the formative world as a type of remembrance, or cult of death, of the genealogy of the gods. Our world is of the physiomachy, we draw technical lines back to the theatrocracy because it increases the power of the Nomos Talos, the great law of the technological myth. For us, all art is but a means, a Myth of Metals to be deployed as fuel for the sovereign machine. Theatrocracy is simply at the head of the Five Regimes.

This is also of the Promethean myth - the catastrophe of being in which reason and the false sacrifice are our only means of return to the numinous. Where we are not fated to be apprehended by the divine its elements must be taken.

As a 'hollow, painted figure' Plato's method, in its most formalistic understanding, is no different from Kant's humility of reason. Two diametrically opposed philosophies which rise from a single element, yet the worlds they seek form an unbridgeable chasm. Realism is the great danger of the war of the rational and irrational, the two-front war of the eidomachy and the physiomachy: Nietzsche's dynamite is one response, the rape of the Praxiteles Aphrodite another. The cosmomachy is the opposed pole of the world order and civil war, and the cause of both formations.

One may understand this in the works of Bruegel and Bosch, or primitive art. Mimetic skill is secondary to the sense of movement, the artist loses himself in his work, becoming one with the numinous. Otherwise he is terrified by his creation, and the impossible object must become central so as to eliminate its paralyzing qualities - Bruegel's Gallows as the opposite pole of the Gorgon pediment, yet serving the same function. This is where peasant art and high art were perfected in a single image. And Malevich's black forms the movement of dead images, the impossibility of art and Van Gogh's Prometheus in a single representation. Pure abstraction is the necessity of horror, the impossibility of the image after Bosch's machines. The Euhemerists of aesthetics - Fat Bacchus is the god of decline from Theatrocracy.

Our world is of the Vitruvian man fallen to cancer. Yet this catastrophic fault, this metastasis, can in no way be attributed to da Vinci's methods. His brilliance is revealed through the simplicity of perfected technique. Particularly in his drawings and sketches, where we see the realistic in a formation of movement, "The end of the world in great order and beauty." The Deluge is the violent conquest of the divine, the dominion of the shifting Nomos. In our world of law, decided by Poseidon's reconquest, there is no other choice than an alliance with Ouranos. This is the constellation of Leonardo's entire work; we worship Pelops, not Dionysus.

This is the logic of the descending scale, of perfect harmony returned to dissonance and then droning noise. Apocastatis is of the same movement as metastasis, but formed of the underworld, the myth and mist of fate which leaves neither pollution nor will. The war of the elements.

"Rauda rasvana venikse,

Rauda rasvana venikse,  

ila kombel valgunekse,

ila kombel valgunekse,  

veerdes alla ääsi’ilta,

veerdes alla ääsi’ilta,

voolates valutulesta.

voolates valutulesta.

Veel sa rauda pehmekene,

Veel sa rauda pehmekene,

miska sind karastatakse,

miska sind karastatakse,

terakseksi tehtanekse?

terakseksi tehtanekse?"

(Iron stretches out like tallow,

Iron stretches out like tallow,  

Dripping down like oozing spittle,

Dripping down like oozing spittle,  

Flowing from the blazing furnace,

Flowing from the blazing furnace,

Seeping from the scalding fire.

Seeping from the scalding fire.

Yet the iron, soft and gentle,

Yet the iron, soft and gentle,  

Must be toughened, must be tempered,

Must be toughened, must be tempered,  

Turned into steel defiant.

Turned into steel defiant.)

 

The crystalline structure of the elements defeats all law, of the binding of their natural formation. The law of non-contradiction may only conclude through the complete destruction of its reasoning. Mimesis is its own opposing law, a law of self-annihilation, the extrication of being through fate. Even the law of reason may lose all sense.

And yet, the opposite is also true, only the instincts reign, and their sovereignty is the chaos of its defeat.

The Law of the Sabine Women: rape is justified where the death of two nations is heralded. There is no logical or mathematical formula that can solve such a catastrophe. Neither tragedy nor peace is possible, the men and women suffer equally despite all appearances. Both beauty and power are eliminated - only the finalisation of law resides as a possibility of reconciliation, or enduring. Civilisation explodes as nothing more than an atom... "like a cosmogonic blossom, seen from a strange star."  Apocatastasis is the law that unites all gods, and they are proscribed by that which is not determined by it. Death is augured with each stone carved of the founding city, and yet its formation must anticipate the conquest of the entire world.

One must speak here of the infinite, the war of the eternal and the ephemeral. Reality forms of the earth as a column of heaven, the golden arguments and divine revelations woven around it tightly, as a chasm - disintegrating after a brief iridescence. This is the left-hand and right-hand path around the maypole, the sunwise and widdershins of the 2/3 beat in Norse folk song. On the territory of the infinite Dionysus kills Chernobog and realises that he has defeated something greater. Nietzsche is a victim of the law of non-contradiction just as every other human.

Through the triumph of Fate we are all reduced to the tyranny of free association. This is our labyrinth, our Heraklean labour. Nietzsche's great power is in the revealing of triumph over fate. But this is a phantasiespiel

One may assume this is of the Nietzschean instinct, the elemental force, 

Carl Orff's Catullus resolves all contradiction, his Narcissism of return to peace with the infinite. All with a single word and its infinite repetition: "Eis aiona!" The most mundane and profane words are imbued with the power of the infinte, and we are returned, through the stomping, monotonous rhythms of the giants to the dominion of Aphrodite.

What divides the Christian from the atheist is an eschatology formed of inescapable reason.

Between chaos and void there is only the bridge of the titans or the wheel of fate.