Chapter IV
Synopsis
I. Logic, organic and inorganic-page 117
Destiny & Causation are opposites; Soul holds Destiny, primitives experience Destiny as anxiety, High Cultures express Destiny thru religion & art. It is the organic logic of direction; the World of Nature is the inorganic logic extension. Causality is reflected in physical, epistemological systems, in number, classification; Destiny is expressed in music, portraiture, tragedy. In Destiny the Soul shows its desire, works to actualize it; late Civilized man looses such feelings. Causality equates to Law, which leads to the necessity of consciousness (Kant); it also destroys the necessity of Life.
Destiny & Causation reflect time & space; each create its world form: World as Nature, World as History. Time is Destiny itself, direction & irreversibility, it takes primacy over Casualty. The Faustian Soul gave birth to Newton's laws and not vice versa. And see Mind Map 4 ii
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Causality does not touch Time. Space (extension) contradicts Time, which is more fundamental than Space. Only with fearfulness produced by the realization of impeding death (Destiny) does man seek Causation which provides an alternative & protective world. The morphological character of Destiny is idea, for Causation it is Principle.
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II. The problem of Time- page 121
The become thinkers conflate living with direction (unrelated to the motion of physicists), Time is inconceivable. Time and Space cannot be treated together. Space a concept; Time a sound symbol. Primitive man does not know time: he lives. Only later is Time discovered. Higher cultures project Time as a magnitude, labeling & naming the incomprehensible we control it. Numbering & drawing are becoming; number and a drawing are become. The “ing” belongs to time & life, whereas number & a drawing are causality & extension. Questions how? & what? answers Mathamatics, the world of Nature: when? answers Destiny & chronology, the world of History.
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III. Time a counter-conception to Space- page 126
Time arises out of space, antithetical, opposition to Space; awareness requires separation, an anti-pole. The notion of art occurs with awareness that “works” have connotation. The eye can perceive in all art the destiny and causal; both fear & longing in every whole work. Fear generates Causal, the extended, strict schools, numerical & logical, the form, the taboo. It’s polar opposite, longing and direction (as against extended) is reflected in personal genius, creative passion, imagination, the totem. Architecture, the immediate Extended with stone, controls the alien, fear-instilling. It is the early art in all Cultures; in all large architectural problems we find (not mathematic but) causal logic (Classic column beam & load, Faustian Gothic disposed-thrust of force and mass). However the symbolism of direction and destiny is neither contained in aesthetics or techniques but in great art's kinship with religions, this is the key to the problem of Time.
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Each Culture possess its own Destiny idea, the actualizing of a single Soul. This inexpressible Soul constitution goes by many names: Fate, Kismet, Tyche. For Classical Culture we find the Euclidean body, as evidence in Oedipus speaking of his misused body. The Faustian King Lear is about dark relationships between himself the father and his daughters. It is about unbounded infinitesimal, not touching the body but the soul. Contrast this with the Laocoon group, manifest bodily, as is Ajax, Philoctetes, as against Prince of Homburg or Tasso (both psychological).
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The symbols of Time - tragedy, time reckoning, disposal of the dead- page 130
Greek drama is situation drama, looking at the moment only; Western drama is character drama, the object is personality. All Tragic drama rests on Time (irreversibility). For the Classic Soul time is always the moment, the Present; for the Faustian Soul Time is the development of a whole life. Western portrait is biographical, arose concurrently with its great Drama: Rembrandt (1606-69) was the premier portrait artist, Shakespeare (1564-1616) the premier dramatist. For the Greeks, portrait was taboo, actors wore masks, their statues’ faces impersonal, idealized without personality.
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Every Culture has a unique sense of Time. The autobiography of Western man in Gothic ages was auricular confession. Clocks reflects the sense of Time. Classical man had no clocks or archaeology or astrology; he was a man of the Euclidean point, the Present only. Their temples originally of wood of no duration or future. Likewise the Indians have no historical sense, no clocks. The birth of Faustian Culture (1000 AD) saw the birth of the wheel clock. Funeral customs reflect attitiudes to Time. Classical man chose cremation, an act of annihilation, with no history or duration. Western man has a family vault & genealogy tree; the Egyptians, masters of preservation & memorials.
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VI. Care (sex, the State, works)- page 136
The feeling of concern & care lives in the Faustian Culture (and in Chinese & Egyptian) but absent in Classical & Indian Cultures. Western eroticism centres on the sense of flowing life, family. Eroticism in Classical Culture centres on the moment, immediate orgasm & birth (note Phallus & Demeter cults). In the West we see mother-love reflected in the Mary cult,, the breast feeding mother, the child represents the future. From maternal we move to paternal, the State, in the West the active state; in China, Egypt & the West the idea of Future care/concern is strong; governments aim to achieve these ends. In , Stoicism & Hindu Buddhism action, organizing & planning are absent. Chinese, Egyptian & Western economis all reflect planning, socialism, industry & development (the future). In India & the Classic World, the economy is one of spoils, hand to mouth, present satisfaction enough.
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Average man is aware only of his immediate surroundings, his own becoming, sees a series of facts. Only the rare man feels the deep logic of becoming, is aware of Destiny; he will regard the less critical facts as mere incidents. What is the difference between Destiny and incidentt? The question cannot be answered by science, acquired knowledge or definition; only the individual or Cultural Soul can answer this riddle.
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Destiny & Incident are in opposition; Soul creates feeling, living intuition, becoming, expressed only in religion & art, never rationaly or cause/effect. History/Destiny is haphazard; great men, artists, rise & fall seemingly at random. The Incident /Destiny opposition is reflected in the supreme ethical idea of the West- Grace. The polarity of Original Sin & Grace (inner recognition of personal imperfection opposed by the free Infinite love of God) is a polarity of emotion & living, not reasoned. Yet always present, in confession, in Rembrandt’s self-portraits, in Bach, even scientific Evolution. The polarity defines Free Will. And yet our will, our acts & their results serve another: Destiny (“Providence”). The attempt to rationalize Destiny (as found in Calvin), to bring it into cause/effect, Kant’s system, led to Predestination, led to natural forces bound by iron laws, from a mystical intuitive image we come to a dark machine, science. Yet Destiny also led the Puritan Calvinists to ruin, as they knew their will the will of God & therefore could not be compromised, they fragmented again & again into sects churches, groups, from political masters in the 1550s, to outcasts in the 1660s.
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VIII. Incident and Cause- page 141
Incident and Nature-causation inhabit different worlds; sight, free of sensation becomes Vision, a super-natural outlook giving Knowledge. It seems Incidental, accidental that World History or man or Physics, arises on Earth in a given place or time. The counter-pole of “Knowledge” are the systems, science, Aristotle, Kant. The world of Incident, once actual facts, may lead to despair for the Future, or sorrow for the Past. Those who have no Vision (the rationalist, unable to see Destiny) see incidents without purpose. Only those with Vision can see Incident as Destiny.
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Incident and Style of existence, page 142
Incidents are facts of the past, present, future which we see with joy or grief, not the world of timeless truths of cause/effect; only one with insight into the data symbols can differentiate between them. Shakespeare is a dramatist of the Incidental, writing his plays as he found them full of Incident without contrivance, personalities make his work sublime (not moral causality). Hebbel the opposite, his dramas are contrived to present a Problem using cause/effect instead of anecdote. Greek tragedies have no Incident only Destiny, the person can be anyone, personality is inconsequential. Common history is caught up in its author’s rationality seeking to prove via cause/effect. History has ever been Incident, the trivial leading to major consequences. Men of Destiny know Destiny & even if Incident removes them (e.g. Napoleon killed at Marengo) that which he signified would come about thru a different agent (a melody may have many variations). Faustian Culture demands great men & events (like wars) given its natural physiognomic abundance. Though history is Incident, a Culture is bound by its “charter”; the possibilities for actualizing details is infinite yet it is necessary that the epoch & its life unity emerge. Its inner form defines its specific determination; incidents can effect shape, emotions, style BUT cannot alter basic form. This irrevocable fact is not a special case but a special type (we have types of solar systems, types of life on earth); we have several types of Culture allowing a comparative study. Cultures like plants relate to the soil from where they spring. Typical for each is how they understand/experience Destiny. The Euclidean Soul knew only foreground & incidents. The Faustian sees Incident as minor relative to Destiny, seeks connections, a logic of history. Greek history knew no historical evolution. Greek myths (House of Atreus) are anecdotal with no logic; what happens to Oedipus is extrinsic to himself, could happen to anyone (situation tragedy) but for Werther we see character tragedy. History is the actualizing of a Soul, the same style which governs the history of a Culture also governs how it sees & writes history.
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IX. Anonymous and personal epochs, page 148
If France had supported Columbus this “incident” might have changed European history: the Spanish dominated 16th-17th centuries might have been French instead; the French Revolution might have occurred elsewhere. However its idea, the transition from Culture to Civilization, was necessary, an epochal event which had to happen at this specific point in time. Episodic or epochal is determined by the Culture’s idea of Destiny & Incident and its idea of Tragedy. Some epochs are personal, some impersonal, depending on their physiognomic type. Personal epochs see the great person effecting thousands (Alexander), against inconsequential leaders (Danton) effecting an anonymous destiny. Such anonymous movements have 2 sub-types: either powerful inward constitutions (Peloponnesian War) or feeble, indistinct evolutions (the Diadochi); this form depends on the historical & tragic style of the Culture. Napoleon is a tragic figure aiming to progress ideas originating from his chief enemy, England (liberalism, laissez faire, empire). His aim: replace the British Empire with a French Empire NOT assimilation of Europe into a giant French state. Petty incidents end his destiny & only when Imperial dreams died did he incorporate Germany & Spain. But now his own idea of Revolution (an English Revolution) rose against him! Spain first embraced the global empire, then UK/France remould it. Napoleon’s defeats & victories are surface phenomenon yet behind them walks the logic of great history- in this logic the West having fulfilled the French formed Culture of the ancien regime (itself a product of the earlier Spanish culture) moved onto English Civilization.
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Man knowing & Nature knowing are incompatible yet the 19th century attempts to capture history as a cause/effect machine. Fundamentally they are irreconcilable – history knows the event, singular & never to repeat; science knows the case, which will always repeat. The materialist cause/effect history scheme creates Eenlightenment, world peace, progress but these have no destiny.
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Direction into the future and Image of the Past- page 152
Youth has Future with Time & Direction; men living forward in the full flow life find in themselves meaning for the future (Napoleon). In childhood we know the present moment, the nearby environs of things & people. Gradually a distinction emerges between the moment & an image of time past. The latter is contemplated by the poet & historian, the realm of Chronology. Gradually again, technical experience reveals Nature which can be calculated. Over the lifecycle of the Culture Nature becomes stronger & stronger turning History into a material, mechanistic system of Laws for a Past/Future. In every personal world picture we find both History & Nature intermingled: every experiment is also historical event and in history we find chronology, statistics, names & forms on which Nature works. For the historian the data is always symbols, facts which never repeat; the Scientist seeks only truths & Laws which will repeat. The quality of a given history depends on how far the historian distances himself from science.
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XI. Is there a Science of History? - page 155
Can we talk of historical fact causing another such fact? The Rationalists will cry “yes”. The 19th century progressed from Rationalism to Materialism where hunger & sex are the engines of causation. Utilitarianism & Evolution replace the historical. Historical “movements” (Enlightenment, Renaissance) emerge with nothing to do with space; Destiny falls to Progress; history becomes a series of states, each to be experimented on (as in Chemistry). Social issues & sex are the themes of Utilitarian history leading to Utilitarian tragedies (Ibsen-Lady of the Sea; Hebbel-Judith). Yet the historians do not possess the commons sense of the physicist who is prudent & who knows he is not seeking knowledge but only symbolic interpretations. Nature forms continuous repeating Laws outside time with no Direction, necessarily finding expression in Mathematics; history is a singularity, never repeating, present becoming, tending to Future, looking back at the Past, finding expression in the tragic. Yet both are interwoven, Laws are discovered thru Destiny and History is made up of people, acts, scenes on all of which Nature can act. The Primitive is submissive in the face of this contradiction but as a Culture matures there is conflict: History & Nature struggle in us, opposed as life & death, time & space. In Plato & Aristotle, in Goethe & Kant we see the eternal child contemplating history, and the system comprehended by the eternal greybeard.
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XII. The new enunciation of the problem-page 159
Owing to its analytical maths, perspective oil painting & contrapuntal music the Faustian can be a cultural archaeologist, resurrecting long lost Cultures, compiling a comprehensive physiognomic of all existence, a morphology of becoming for all humanity.