Before

… they would have to have made, if such a thing is possible …

This is from The Genesis of Living Forms by Raymond Ruyer, translated by Jon Roffe and Nicholas B. de Weydenthal (1958, 2020):

… What psychologists call the dynamic unconscious is form, thematism, the primary consciousness of the organism manifesting itself in secondary consciousness. In terms of the theses of German romantic philosophy, which declared the unconscious older than consciousness and saw in it the primitive givenness on which consciousness was subsequently established, it is clear how easily they could be transposed into the much more appropriate language of primary and secondary form.

[line break added] Cyberneticians and mechanist neurologists, who stake their ambitions on the construction of ‘mechanical models of consciousness,’ have not taken account of the fact that before constructing a mechanical model of consciousness, they would have to have made, if such a thing is possible, a ‘mechanical model of the unconscious.’

My most recent previous post from Ruyer’s book is here.

-Julie

http://www.unrealnature.com/

 

This New Thing

… the chord is precisely not a mixture, a mixed tone, a different tone, but something basically different from individual tone.

This is from Sound and Symbol: Music and the External World by Victor Zuckerkandl (1956):

… The chord … is, then, not simply the sum of the individual tones as they sound together; it is something above and beyond that sum, something new as compared to the individual tones, something that radiates from their union, that hovers about them like an aura — inconceivable so long as only individual tones were known, indescribable in words.

[line break added] This new thing in the universe of tone has been referred to as a third dimension, added, as a sort of tonal depth, to the linearity of monophonic music and the plane juxtaposition of polyphony. We have already mentioned the comparison with chemistry; yet in chemistry it is always a case of substances becoming another substance, whereas the chord is simply not another tone.

[line break added] If we insist on a chemical simile, we should rather think of the heat set free by chemical transformations, of fire, the brightness of fire; of what, speaking unscientifically, one could refer to as the immaterial radiations that accompany transformation of material substances. If we were obliged to call tone immaterial, the chord is immaterial to the second power. A tone can still always be represented by a symbol; a note, a syllable, a numeral, can be brought into comprehensible relation to a particular physical process, a vibration of the air; it can be produced by depressing a key or plucking a string, it can be sung.

[line break added] But a chord can, strictly speaking, be neither played nor sung nor written. We can only play and sing and write all the individual tones that go to compose it; and the physical process that corresponds to it is again only a particular vibration of the air, the result of the mixing of the individual vibrations — whereas the chord is precisely not a mixture, a mixed tone, a different tone, but something basically different from individual tone.

[line break added] Its very essence, then, its uniqueness, that which transcends the sum, remains inaccessible to all these approaches. Here even the last frail relations still observable between the individual tone and the world of individual things are severed.

My most recent previous post from Zuckerkandl’s book is here.

-Julie

http://www.unrealnature.com/

 

Impossible

… He thinks he loves and then discovers he only promised to.

This is from ‘The Misery and the Splendor of Translation’ by José Ortega y Gasset, translated by Elizabeth Gamble Miller (1937); found in Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida edited by Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet (1992):

… someone spoke of the impossibility of translating certain German philosophers. Carrying the proposition further, he proposed a study that would determine the philosophers who could and those who could not be translated.

“This would be to suppose, with excessive conviction,” I suggested, “that there are philosophers and more generally speaking, writers who can, in fact, be translated. Isn’t that an illusion? Isn’t the act of translating necessarily a utopian task? The truth is, I’ve become more and more convinced that everything Man does is utopian. Although he is principally involved in trying to know, he never fully succeeds in knowing anything.

[line break added] When deciding what is fair, he inevitably falls into cunning. He thinks he loves and then discovers he only promised to. Don’t misunderstand my words to be a satire on morals, as if I would criticize my colleagues because they don’t do what they propose. My intention is, precisely, the opposite; rather than blame them for their failure, I would suggest that none of these things can be done, for they are impossible in their very essence, and they will always remain mere intention, vain aspiration, and invalid posture. … ”

… “The destiny of Man — his privilege and honor — is never to achieve what he proposes, and to remain merely an intention, a living utopia. He is always marching toward failure, and even before entering the fray he already carries a wound in his temple. … “

My most recent previous post from this book is here.

-Julie

http://www.unrealnature.com/

 

It Is Necessary

… It is necessary out of duty, out of research or quest.

This is from Rome: The First Book of Foundations by Michel Serres, translated by Randolph Burks (2015, 1983):

… It’s easy to think about places where thought already is. It’s easy to turn a rich and loose compost. Nothing is simpler than practicing philosophy on subjects or in the languages in which philosophy has long been cultivated. I can speak Greek, rethink geometry; it wouldn’t be much trouble; I descend the best slope, for geometry is dense with thoughts, present or latent; the language of the Hellenes is that of philosophy itself, in its nascent state.

… The good soil for cultivating has been turned a thousand times already, cultivation of the plains. Athens and Jerusalem have been writing, speaking, thinking since anyone has thought, spoken or written around the Mediterranean Sea.

In the places where thought has not yet been, it is difficult to think. A bad slope of sterile rock. On subjects or in languages where philosophy has not occurred, it is necessary to practice philosophy. It is necessary out of duty, out of research or quest. Out of duty: those bad rocks, abandoned by culture, can return some say. And I’ll change images: the same rocks serve for stonings and slings, violence, and for pediments, construction. The barbarian demolishes the edifice in order to bring the stone back to its function as a projectile; wisdom [sagesse] builds in order to immobilize the stone, to appease the hatred, for protection.

My most recent previous post from Serres’s book is here.

-Julie

http://www.unrealnature.com/

 

This Uncrossable Distance

… and nothing else happens or is even possible except for the frantic imitation of this ebbing away …

This is from Phrase by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, translated by Leslie Hill (2018, 2000):

… All in all what I call “phrase” is what brings me face to face, as it has always done, with what is not and cannot be. I am forever without relation to it, and this is the reason it leaves me deeply affected or afflicted, to the point of slipping or stumbling, losing or abandoning myself, being almost nothing at the moment when it happens to me — that is, when it is already no longer happening to me.

… something, though never a thing, withdraws or retracts, and nothing else happens or is even possible except for the frantic imitation of this ebbing away: the body bordering on the untouchable, the phrase on the inaudible. Whence the painstaking and cautious attentiveness, the ceremonial, the rituals.

[line break added] Whence the fear too: not to falter, to be able at the very least — as when you’re listening, yes, to a devastating piece of music you would like to have written and which you know deep down you could have written because you’ve always heard it resonate as far as possible from yourself in yourself — to be able at the very least to accompany it to breaking point, to the point where “it collapses,” the motionless crossing of this uncrossable distance.

My most recent previous post from Lacoue-Labarthe’s book is here.

-Julie

http://www.unrealnature.com/

 

It Is Hatred that Has Brought Us Together

… Hatred is the cause of the honey-sweet harmony.

This is from Sounding the Event: Escapades in Dialogue and Matters of Art, Nature and Time by Yve Lomax (2005):

… ‘Hatred insists that my power to exist is a possession to fight for. Hatred would not agree that my power to exist involves constitutive acts that can never be separated from the whirls and twirls of a world that is continually constituting and reconstituting itself as it ceaselessly comes about and comes undone.

[line break added] Oh no, the power of hatred would insist that my power to exist must win itself an identity in order to be. Hatred loves for me to fear a loss of identity. It loves the whole world to be fighting for identity, to be fighting for the same. For then, when we say The World it would be the power of hatred that unifies the whole.

‘It is hatred’s power that makes the world want to sing in harmony. You and I are called to sing along, but it is hatred’s power that enjoins us here. Yes, we can hold hands and make the perfect circle but the grouping here is not caused by those who are singing. And it is the causality that matters.

[line break added] Hatred is the cause of the honey-sweet harmony. Yes, the melliferous sound is hatred’s effect. There is harmonious song yet this is not composed and caused by the constitutive power of those who are singing; we are singing together but we are dancing to another’s tune: it is hatred that has brought us together.

My previous post from Lomax’s book is here.

-Julie

http://www.unrealnature.com/

 

Life Will Go On Without Me

… “in art” we cannot leave this earth without having produced — in both senses of the word, manufactured and shown — a duplicate of life which attests the “without me.”

This is from Look: 100 Years of Contemporary Art by Thierry de Duve (2001):

… Now art — and visual art especially — has an irrepressible desire to show that can and should go as far as the desire to show what is not showable. This is why art is condemned to resurrection.

Resurrection doesn’t mean denial of death. It doesn’t mean immortality. You have to be mortal and you have to die in order to rise from the dead. Looking for religions of immortality these days, you’d rather find them in cloning and in the cyborg myth, or in the prophecies about the “post-human.” Resurrection doesn’t mean Renaissance, either. The spirit of Erasmus will not come and save us from the post-human.

[line break added] The problem with the idea of Renaissance is not that it is humanist but that it presupposes ushering in a new golden age: whether Jerusalem Delivered or Utopia, or still, Revolution, or the End of History. Evil rooted out. The idea of resurrection presupposes nothing of the kind. It only presupposes faith in life, which itself presupposes nothing more than that elementary act of faith: life will go on without me. There’s nothing grandiloquent about this; it’s even rather banal.

[line break added] Anyone who has children makes this act of faith every day by loving them. The same goes for anyone who gives birth to art — which, incidentally, doesn’t erase the difference between life and art: life can be experienced without having to show itself, art cannot. We do not vaccinate ourselves more surely against death by leaving behind a work of art rather than offspring, but “in life” we may die in peace, if we’ve had a good life, and leave our offspring to live their lives in their turn; “in art” we cannot leave this earth without having produced — in both senses of the word, manufactured and shown — a duplicate of life which attests the “without me.”

…The artist’s task is to turn a thing into a living being so that it can be mortal. Only then can it “really” be called living, and deserve receiving the esteem due to living things. Aesthetic creation only gives birth to a work of art if it first of all resurrects its raw materials.

My most recent previous post from de Duve’s book is here.

-Julie

http://www.unrealnature.com/

 

It Does Not Yet Have Eyes

… This ‘knowledge’ is primary, like the knowledge inherent in a perfectly mastered activity which unfolds with perfect precision, without any need for auxiliary images.

This is from The Genesis of Living Forms by Raymond Ruyer, translated by Jon Roffe and Nicholas B. de Weydenthal (1958, 2020):

… The embryologist — in other words, the grown-up embryo — certainly observes the young embryo under study in a way that the embryo does not observe the biologist on account of the fact that it does not yet have eyes and its brain is no more than a gutter. But this superiority of the biologist is, first of all, short-lived. Nothing prevents the observed embryo from becoming, in its turn, an eminent biologist or great neurosurgeon who will observe, with a profound sense of superiority, the now-deficient brain of its earlier observer.

[line break added] And above all, this very observation clearly takes place on the basis of the subjacent condition that a development has occurred in the organism of the observer, who has passed from the state of a fertilized egg or ‘neurula,’ occupied some thirty years earlier, to that of an adult organism, endowed with eyes and a functional nervous system.

… Let’s therefore accept the following facts without further stipulation: that the embryo knows embryology better and more directly than the embryologist, that the liver knows its role and is more competent in hepatology than Claude Bernard or Cannon, and that Harvey’s heart knows how to ensure the circulation of blood before Harvey’s brain is advised that blood is circulating. Equally, let’s accept the fact that an atom knows atomic physics better than Bohr or de Broglie.

The word ‘knowledge’ [savoir] would only be a metaphor if it were claimed that it applied to either collective phenomena without internal unity or to machines which have been assembled according to the ‘knowledge’ of an engineer but which, in themselves, can only function. It would be pure metaphor to say of a set of scales that they know [sait] horizontality better than a painter who represents them.

[line break added] It would also be pure metaphor to imagine that this knowledge of the mode of consciousness or a second form implies perception and schematization, reflecting and representing objects exterior to itself. This ‘knowledge’ is primary, like the knowledge inherent in a perfectly mastered activity which unfolds with perfect precision, without any need for auxiliary images.

My most recent previous post from Ruyer’s book is here.

-Julie

http://www.unrealnature.com/

 

Wherever We Go, We Return

… the last tone is not simply a last tone …

This is from Sound and Symbol: Music and the External World by Victor Zuckerkandl (1956):

… What do I, one person, hear, hearing eight tones [up a scale]? We are not inquiring into eight experiences but one experience, the total experience.

What can be said of the motion that I believe I hear in this case? Am I simply following a random section of a course of motion, as, for example, I follow the motion of an automobile that comes around a corner into my field of vision and shortly thereafter disappears around another corner?

Certainly not. In the random section the motion simply disappears, as if cut off; the motion that I hear in the scale does not simply disappear; it reaches a goal. Our ear leaves us in no doubt that the last tone is not simply a last tone but is a goal tone.

We could not hear it as such if we had not heard the immediately preceding phase of the motion as an advance toward a goal. In its latter part, then, the motion follows the general schema: advance toward . . . attainment of a goal.

Does this schema contain the whole of the motion? Again our ear gives us the answer: No. The beginning of the motion, in any case, is not heard as an advance toward . . . but, on the contrary as a departure from . . . . Hence we say that the motion along the scale begins as an “away from” and ends as a “toward” and the attainment of a goal.

… From the earth, even though at present only in thought, we can set out into the cosmos, and go on and on, to the point of no return. In tonal space we can do nothing of the sort, either actually or in thought. We cannot, precisely because no tone appears only once, but each tone is repeated with every octave; because the center of the dynamic field is not present merely in one place but is reproduced with every new octave, to the limits of tonal space. Going away from the center of force, we immediately find ourselves going toward it, toward its repetition at the next octave.

… Formulations that in the world of space are paradox, indeed nonsense — wherever we go, we return; start and goal are one and the same; all paths travel back to their own beginnings — are in the world of tone, simple statements of fact.

My most recent previous post from Zuckerkandl’s book is here.

-Julie

http://www.unrealnature.com/

 

Pure Language

… to turn the symbolizing into the symbolized, to regain pure language fully formed in the linguistic flux …

This is from ‘The Task of the Translator’ by Walter Benjamin; translated by Harry Zohn (1923); found in Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida edited by Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet (1992):

… Although translation, unlike art, cannot claim permanence for its products, its goal is undeniably a final, conclusive, decisive stage of all linguistic creation. In translation the original rises into a higher and purer linguistic air, as it were. It cannot live there permanently, to be sure, and it certainly does not reach it in its entirety.

[line break added] Yet, in a singularly impressive manner, at least it points the way to this region: the predestined, hitherto inaccessible realm of reconciliation and fulfillment of languages. The transfer can never be total, but what reaches this region is that element in a translation which goes beyond transmittal of subject matter. This nucleus is best defined as the element that does not lend itself to translation.

… In all languages and linguistic creations there remains in addition to what can be conveyed something that cannot be communicated; depending on the context in which it appears, it is something that symbolizes or something symbolized. It is the former only in the finite products of language, the latter in the evolving of the languages themselves. And that which seeks to represent, to produce itself in the evolving of languages, is that very nucleus of pure language.

[line break added] Though concealed and fragmentary, it is an active force in life as the symbolized thing itself, whereas it inhabits linguistic creations only in symbolized form. While that ultimate essence, pure language, in the various tongues is tied only to linguistic elements and their changes, in linguistic creations it is weighted with a heavy, alien meaning. To relieve it of this, to turn the symbolizing into the symbolized, to regain pure language fully formed in the linguistic flux, is the tremendous and only capacity of translation.

My most recent previous post from this book is here.

-Julie

http://www.unrealnature.com/