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Through the Womb of Madness
![[Image: OVjHfLp.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/OVjHfLp.jpg)
Spoiler: Chapter I: The Hypothesis
The unease that many philosophers experience in regards to artists is well known given their dismissal or expulsion of the work from an artist, especially when they are considered to embody the very inversion of philosophical self-understanding. Philosophy- which is supposedly guided by reason, wisdom and self-control, is seen as the highest opposition to art, which dangerously provokes desire, pleasure and madness. Philosophy is understood as a practice of reason, establishing an ideal, active and self-determined uniformity as opposed to art, which is understood as an illusory, passive and alienated diversity.
However there are some philosophers that can present art in a more positive light. From this angle things seem to have been turned upside down, since philosophy is now presented as a sibling to art, as both originate from god-given madness. Art is here, in contrast to the negative understanding of it where it is analyzed as a skill or insight, understood as an ecstatic form of inspired madness. In it's common origin with art, philosophy is no longer appropriately understood as reason, knowledge and self-control. Unlike how the works of negative philosophers demonstrate how philosophy would be empty and methodologically incompetent without inspiration and this standing-outside, into which desire, madness and senselessness throw it. Like art, philosophy now seems to be an irrational, diverse, and passive activity.
The only thing separating the artists from the philosopher is actually, according to Lord Hagris, that the philosopher in contrast to the artist is able to explain and account for the knowledge produced. Negative philosophers are forced to acknowledge, not by worldly coincidence but rather out of metaphysical necessity, that the philosophical ideal of self-determined, uniformed and dispassionate reason is insufficient. Not only for the activity and cognitive drive of philosophy, but also for the cognitive and methodological leaps of philosophy. If philosophy pursues a new and unforeseen cognition, it must exceed the jurisdiction of reason. As such, thinking is not merely active, uniform and logical, but also artistic, diverse and erotic, that is to say, creative, passively receptive and transcendent. In other words, genuine thinking is able to know what it could not foresee or calculate in advance from a preceding analytical or logical pattern.
To put it differently, the unease and doubt towards art and madness reveal an uncanny unease and doubt within philosophy itself, within the very ground of self-understanding, self-determined philosophy. My theory for the following is thus that philosophy at one and the same time has to presuppose the irrational art as it's complete contrast, it's negative, and to recognize it as the actual condition for the possibility of the emergence of philosophy to start with.
However there are some philosophers that can present art in a more positive light. From this angle things seem to have been turned upside down, since philosophy is now presented as a sibling to art, as both originate from god-given madness. Art is here, in contrast to the negative understanding of it where it is analyzed as a skill or insight, understood as an ecstatic form of inspired madness. In it's common origin with art, philosophy is no longer appropriately understood as reason, knowledge and self-control. Unlike how the works of negative philosophers demonstrate how philosophy would be empty and methodologically incompetent without inspiration and this standing-outside, into which desire, madness and senselessness throw it. Like art, philosophy now seems to be an irrational, diverse, and passive activity.
The only thing separating the artists from the philosopher is actually, according to Lord Hagris, that the philosopher in contrast to the artist is able to explain and account for the knowledge produced. Negative philosophers are forced to acknowledge, not by worldly coincidence but rather out of metaphysical necessity, that the philosophical ideal of self-determined, uniformed and dispassionate reason is insufficient. Not only for the activity and cognitive drive of philosophy, but also for the cognitive and methodological leaps of philosophy. If philosophy pursues a new and unforeseen cognition, it must exceed the jurisdiction of reason. As such, thinking is not merely active, uniform and logical, but also artistic, diverse and erotic, that is to say, creative, passively receptive and transcendent. In other words, genuine thinking is able to know what it could not foresee or calculate in advance from a preceding analytical or logical pattern.
To put it differently, the unease and doubt towards art and madness reveal an uncanny unease and doubt within philosophy itself, within the very ground of self-understanding, self-determined philosophy. My theory for the following is thus that philosophy at one and the same time has to presuppose the irrational art as it's complete contrast, it's negative, and to recognize it as the actual condition for the possibility of the emergence of philosophy to start with.
Spoiler: Chapter II: The Clash
According to Lord Hagris there has been a clash between philosophy and art since ancient times. Apparently, there is a fundamental disagreement or clash of interest, which, in effect, means that art becomes the very inversion of philosophical self-understanding. On the other hand, the artists frequently ridicule the philosophers as boring individuals who are too wise for their own good. Furthermore, the philosopher is often compared to a ‘’yelping akk dog barking at her master’’ who is ‘’mighty in the idle chatter of fools’’. According to many an artist, the philosophers are thoughtless, mad dogs, excelling in empty speech among the empty-minded or senseless people. Likewise it is often the artist that voice this conflict with the philosophers, whom they accuse of being morally, politically and culturally subversive as well as excelling in figments of the imagination and sheer, empty abstractions. All in al qualifying them as madmen.
On the side of philosophy however, they make it clear that these claims are nothing but foolish or crazy assertions.
The antagonism seems absolute and mutual. There is an interesting symmetry in this strife with the artists accusing the philosophers of madness, for the philosophers resolutely return the insanity indictment.
The philosopher makes fun of the artist, which is often said to be out of themselves and mad during their performance. The artist’s enthusiastic and mad moment of creation, where divinity takes possession of their bodies, which equals the rapture and ecstasy of the artist’s performance releases in the audience- as it takes place without their knowledge. In a paradoxical manner, the artist is a passive spectator to their own performance or production. They are out of themselves in the divine rapture which means that they, whilst in artistic performance, can neither claim possession, genuine knowledge, insight or technical skill, nor intellect over their art.
As a consequence, the artist and philosopher stubbornly confront each other in this old clash, where each accuses the other of being mad. The ancient clash is therefore a quarrel between siblings, who are disgusted and drawn to each other as both partake in madness which threatens to dissolve them at any point in time, but which in reverse is also a constitutive for them as their actual condition of living.
On the side of philosophy however, they make it clear that these claims are nothing but foolish or crazy assertions.
The antagonism seems absolute and mutual. There is an interesting symmetry in this strife with the artists accusing the philosophers of madness, for the philosophers resolutely return the insanity indictment.
The philosopher makes fun of the artist, which is often said to be out of themselves and mad during their performance. The artist’s enthusiastic and mad moment of creation, where divinity takes possession of their bodies, which equals the rapture and ecstasy of the artist’s performance releases in the audience- as it takes place without their knowledge. In a paradoxical manner, the artist is a passive spectator to their own performance or production. They are out of themselves in the divine rapture which means that they, whilst in artistic performance, can neither claim possession, genuine knowledge, insight or technical skill, nor intellect over their art.
As a consequence, the artist and philosopher stubbornly confront each other in this old clash, where each accuses the other of being mad. The ancient clash is therefore a quarrel between siblings, who are disgusted and drawn to each other as both partake in madness which threatens to dissolve them at any point in time, but which in reverse is also a constitutive for them as their actual condition of living.
Spoiler: Chapter III: The Seduction
Lord Hagris explains that inspiration is a divine force that inspires the mind, who further inspires the artist which finally inspires the audience. Lord Hagris compares this divine force to a magnetic rock, magnetizing a chain of metal rings that are thus held together by the produced magnetism. The divine embodies the first magnetic stone, ,and their force is subsequently transferred via the mind, the artist, and the audience, who in this manner embody the subsequent metal rings. For this stone not only attracts the iron rings, but also bestows them with power through which they in turn are able to do the very same thing as the stone, and attract other rings. Sometimes, quite a long chain of bits of iron and rings can take shape, and each of them suspended from another, and they all depend on this power, on that one stone. In the same manner through which the mind inspires men itself, and then by means of these inspired individuals spreads the inspiration and binds them into the connected chain. The crucial lesson is naturally that the force is not localised in the individuals but in divinity, whose power all of them depend on. The Artist is moved and is the passive object of forces localised outside themselves, taking them in possession and moving them.
This is crucial to the understanding of philosophy, for, as wisdom, per definition is the object of the philosopher’s desire, philosophy must thus necessarily find itself in critical conflict with madness. Philosophy must, in other words, be determined as the opposite of madness, and this negative self-definition is entirely in line with philosophy’s negative self-definition in relation to art as well as love and desire. Oftentimes philosophers criticize artists for being utterly incapable of representing the galaxy from it's innermost state of being (or its ideas), and instead merely represent the phenomenal appearances. Common opinion amongst philosophers dictates that the artist, if they are to create, they are to do so knowingly. The problem that frequently arises however is that many artists are unknowledgeable and do not truly seize their own creations for what they are, but only what they appear to be. I, as an artist, object to this notion however by pointing out that the best creations of art are to take a mirror and carry it elsewhere, the immediate things as they are at current times would be mirrored exactly as they appear, that is to say that the mirror would reproduce the appearance of them but not the reality and truth. The mirror then seems to represent everything with perfect accuracy.
I present a hierarchical model of the galaxy which consists of one, perfect being, truth, ideas, and the ternally unchangeable universal. Second, contingent being, the changeable and the particular, and third, imitations, simulacra, empty or mendacious images. It is in this sense that Lord Hagris states that artists and philosophers alike ‘three removes from reality’’, as they merely produce images of the phenomenally manifold rather than the true and universal. Effectively explaining that the artist is ‘’the third removes from truth’’ or ‘’far from the truth’’. Thus merely forming mirror images of everything already existent. Since both merely produce a shadow of a shadow, an image of an image, and in doing so, claiming that they only produce phantasms, through which they give birth to fraudulent, illusory, non-existent madness. As a consequence, only children and mad or insane people, who allow themselves to be fooled by the work of an artist, and for example mistake the painter’s painting for what it really is depicting. Simply because every power is productive which causes things to come into being which did not exist before as well as anything that passes from a state being into a state of not being. Because of this the artists, must as a result, be the very opposite of being the creator, since they, unlike the latter, produce something non-existing into something existing.
Additionally, Lord Hagris shared psychological and moral critique which claims that artists provoke and flatters the irrational or mad part of the soul. Taking this into account, it would be right to deny the artist the well-ordered structure of the Empire, as the artist encourages the irrationality of emotions. The result being that they destroy the rational remainders of the soul.
According to negative philosophers the expulsion of artists is therefore necessary, if they want to avoid that thinking or intelligence is hit by the supposed inevitable destruction. When destruction signifies permanent mental or physical damage, art contains a great danger to philosophers which can only be avoided if one is in possession of an antidote which only comes in the form of the knowledge what art truly is. This psychological and moral critique, thus, in turn, contains the greatest accusation against art and artists, for they are so powerful that they are capable of seducing the reasonable and wise, and yes, even the best of you. The problem for them then not only arises in the form of a distorted reality, but in the allurement of the reasonable and wise, who would under normal circumstances be moderate and restrained, in their grief end up blubbering like a woman during theater. Where the reasonable man does not show grief outside of the theater, the spectator on the other hand is immoderate in the theater, where they, by identification, take part in the suffering of the wailings for those on stage. Through this identification with the sufferings of those on stage, we feel pleasure, since we, when it would otherwise be deemed inappropriate in all other public places, can give free reign to our sorrows and grief. We surrender to a self-abandonment, which is highly pleasurable, and which leaves us without a will of our own, if only temporarily. Where the reasonable man behaves with dignity outside of the theater, they are, in the theater, unashamed of behaving like a woman. They loosen their grip on the irrational part of their soul, and now says and does things that reason and common morals would normally deem indefensible. The behavior that we would normally find shameful outside of the theater now gives us pleasure. In a similar manner, the critique of comedy would suggest that the spectator would happily participate in enjoying foolishness, which they themselves would normally be too ashamed to display, fearing that it would ruin their reputation.
Comedy teaches us to loosen our hold on our sensuality, and before we know it, become play-actors in our own lives. The consequence being that comedy, tragedy, and art in general become ostracized, for if you grant admission to the honeyed musings in lyric or epic, pleasure and pain will be the lords of your city instead of law and that which shall from time to time have approved itself as the general reason as the best. And when concerning sexual desire, anger, lust, the painful and the pleasures, the problem with art is that it fuels and excites these impulses that should rather be kept down and mastered. Instead of being restrained and domesticated, they are being installed as the rulers of our souls. In short, the artist addresses the basest in us, the irrational and the demented- which in turn helps explain why they are incapable of imitating the philosopher’s character, and the philosopher must consequently be cautious and on his guard. The philosopher is anxious, and with good reason, for art threatens their psychological constitution. The philosopher therefore does not allow himself to take art seriously, as it is rather conceived of as a kind of play in a theater. The irresponsible and irrational artistic works are contrasted with the self-controlled reason of the philosopher. Unlike the philosopher, who solely directs themself to the purely rational part of their soul, which they strive to emancipate, the artist does the exact opposite, as they feed the irrational part of the soul, and in doing so gravely jeopardizes their rational control. The artist is therefore a kind of magician, who intensely flirts with the dangerous as well as with the irrational aspects of the soul. As a phantom or delusion, art entails a disturbance or derangement caused by a certain form of sorcery.
As mentioned, the discussion of the nature of art is described as a kind of medicine or antidote, the argumentation is consequently a kind of enchantment that the philosophers must chant to preserve them from slipping back into the childish love of the multitude. Art embodies a great spell and the philosophers are from time to time bewitched by it. Since art is directed towards pleasure, it seems obvious that the bewitchment is erotic in nature. The erotic aspect of the bewitchment of art is accentuated by the description of it as a beloved or concubine, courting the irrational parts of the soul. A concubine whom one can criticize as an injurious thing, since she aims at bewitching with her erotic allurement. The similarities between art and the concubine has been extended ever since the re-emergence of the Sith Empire under the rule of the former Emperor Vitiate, where art was then directly personified as a seductive and alluring woman. And just as a relationship with a concubine can be bad for us, the relationship with art is like an enormous bewitchment and attraction, which is unfortunate and should likewise be avoided. Even as those who have fallen in love, if they think love is not good for them, hard as it may be, refrain. At the heart of art we therefore, in addition to its production of empty phantasms and madness, flirting with the non-existent, find the excitation of pleasure and desire. And since desire and pleasure is so intricately tied to madness, art thus paves the way for madness. For man holds sensuous inclinations, that if not kept in check, threaten to drive him mad. Virtue and excellence are dissolved and unbridledness follows him who does not succeed in moderating his sensuous tendencies. The desire for the phenomenal world and the things it contains threaten to drive the man mad, which is why self-control is crucial in order to not lose oneself. Sexual desire entails an excess and thus a kind of excellence as it seizes control of the desiring individual, who loses level headedness, moderation and the mastery of oneself, since the sensuous and irrational part of the soul have been given free reign. Since art in its essence excites and allies itself with desire, it is intimately tied to madness, seeing that desire in itself is a kind of madness. Art is moreover necessarily mad as it excites and feeds pleasure, which itself is also closely tied to madness. Lord Hagris specified that madness is the result of excessive pleasure, for immoderate pleasures allow the soul to be seized by madness, the more senseless and unbridled one is, the more one abandons oneself to be mastered by pleasures.
In like manner, lawless pleasures and desires designate the domain for madness. Lord Hagris wryly claims that pleasures purify the one subdued for self-control and moderation, and fills him with madness. The madness pertaining to art is therefore most serious since it simultaneously nurtures pleasure and desire. Just as madness is said to be the undisputed evi amongst philosophers, the intense courtship of madness by art is then said to become highly problematic. Art is nonetheless not mad in itself, only it's effects. In a paradoxical manner, it is precisely the art which expresses soundness of mind and that instructs by insight or skill.
This is a circumstance into which we will look more closely in the next chapter. But at this point, we can tentatively conclude that art comes to represent the actual inversion to philosophy, since the latter, unlike art, is reason, wisdom and self-control, rather than desire, pleasure and madness. Philosophy therefore seems to be a rational activity, whereas art seems to be an irrational passivity.
This is crucial to the understanding of philosophy, for, as wisdom, per definition is the object of the philosopher’s desire, philosophy must thus necessarily find itself in critical conflict with madness. Philosophy must, in other words, be determined as the opposite of madness, and this negative self-definition is entirely in line with philosophy’s negative self-definition in relation to art as well as love and desire. Oftentimes philosophers criticize artists for being utterly incapable of representing the galaxy from it's innermost state of being (or its ideas), and instead merely represent the phenomenal appearances. Common opinion amongst philosophers dictates that the artist, if they are to create, they are to do so knowingly. The problem that frequently arises however is that many artists are unknowledgeable and do not truly seize their own creations for what they are, but only what they appear to be. I, as an artist, object to this notion however by pointing out that the best creations of art are to take a mirror and carry it elsewhere, the immediate things as they are at current times would be mirrored exactly as they appear, that is to say that the mirror would reproduce the appearance of them but not the reality and truth. The mirror then seems to represent everything with perfect accuracy.
I present a hierarchical model of the galaxy which consists of one, perfect being, truth, ideas, and the ternally unchangeable universal. Second, contingent being, the changeable and the particular, and third, imitations, simulacra, empty or mendacious images. It is in this sense that Lord Hagris states that artists and philosophers alike ‘three removes from reality’’, as they merely produce images of the phenomenally manifold rather than the true and universal. Effectively explaining that the artist is ‘’the third removes from truth’’ or ‘’far from the truth’’. Thus merely forming mirror images of everything already existent. Since both merely produce a shadow of a shadow, an image of an image, and in doing so, claiming that they only produce phantasms, through which they give birth to fraudulent, illusory, non-existent madness. As a consequence, only children and mad or insane people, who allow themselves to be fooled by the work of an artist, and for example mistake the painter’s painting for what it really is depicting. Simply because every power is productive which causes things to come into being which did not exist before as well as anything that passes from a state being into a state of not being. Because of this the artists, must as a result, be the very opposite of being the creator, since they, unlike the latter, produce something non-existing into something existing.
Additionally, Lord Hagris shared psychological and moral critique which claims that artists provoke and flatters the irrational or mad part of the soul. Taking this into account, it would be right to deny the artist the well-ordered structure of the Empire, as the artist encourages the irrationality of emotions. The result being that they destroy the rational remainders of the soul.
According to negative philosophers the expulsion of artists is therefore necessary, if they want to avoid that thinking or intelligence is hit by the supposed inevitable destruction. When destruction signifies permanent mental or physical damage, art contains a great danger to philosophers which can only be avoided if one is in possession of an antidote which only comes in the form of the knowledge what art truly is. This psychological and moral critique, thus, in turn, contains the greatest accusation against art and artists, for they are so powerful that they are capable of seducing the reasonable and wise, and yes, even the best of you. The problem for them then not only arises in the form of a distorted reality, but in the allurement of the reasonable and wise, who would under normal circumstances be moderate and restrained, in their grief end up blubbering like a woman during theater. Where the reasonable man does not show grief outside of the theater, the spectator on the other hand is immoderate in the theater, where they, by identification, take part in the suffering of the wailings for those on stage. Through this identification with the sufferings of those on stage, we feel pleasure, since we, when it would otherwise be deemed inappropriate in all other public places, can give free reign to our sorrows and grief. We surrender to a self-abandonment, which is highly pleasurable, and which leaves us without a will of our own, if only temporarily. Where the reasonable man behaves with dignity outside of the theater, they are, in the theater, unashamed of behaving like a woman. They loosen their grip on the irrational part of their soul, and now says and does things that reason and common morals would normally deem indefensible. The behavior that we would normally find shameful outside of the theater now gives us pleasure. In a similar manner, the critique of comedy would suggest that the spectator would happily participate in enjoying foolishness, which they themselves would normally be too ashamed to display, fearing that it would ruin their reputation.
Comedy teaches us to loosen our hold on our sensuality, and before we know it, become play-actors in our own lives. The consequence being that comedy, tragedy, and art in general become ostracized, for if you grant admission to the honeyed musings in lyric or epic, pleasure and pain will be the lords of your city instead of law and that which shall from time to time have approved itself as the general reason as the best. And when concerning sexual desire, anger, lust, the painful and the pleasures, the problem with art is that it fuels and excites these impulses that should rather be kept down and mastered. Instead of being restrained and domesticated, they are being installed as the rulers of our souls. In short, the artist addresses the basest in us, the irrational and the demented- which in turn helps explain why they are incapable of imitating the philosopher’s character, and the philosopher must consequently be cautious and on his guard. The philosopher is anxious, and with good reason, for art threatens their psychological constitution. The philosopher therefore does not allow himself to take art seriously, as it is rather conceived of as a kind of play in a theater. The irresponsible and irrational artistic works are contrasted with the self-controlled reason of the philosopher. Unlike the philosopher, who solely directs themself to the purely rational part of their soul, which they strive to emancipate, the artist does the exact opposite, as they feed the irrational part of the soul, and in doing so gravely jeopardizes their rational control. The artist is therefore a kind of magician, who intensely flirts with the dangerous as well as with the irrational aspects of the soul. As a phantom or delusion, art entails a disturbance or derangement caused by a certain form of sorcery.
As mentioned, the discussion of the nature of art is described as a kind of medicine or antidote, the argumentation is consequently a kind of enchantment that the philosophers must chant to preserve them from slipping back into the childish love of the multitude. Art embodies a great spell and the philosophers are from time to time bewitched by it. Since art is directed towards pleasure, it seems obvious that the bewitchment is erotic in nature. The erotic aspect of the bewitchment of art is accentuated by the description of it as a beloved or concubine, courting the irrational parts of the soul. A concubine whom one can criticize as an injurious thing, since she aims at bewitching with her erotic allurement. The similarities between art and the concubine has been extended ever since the re-emergence of the Sith Empire under the rule of the former Emperor Vitiate, where art was then directly personified as a seductive and alluring woman. And just as a relationship with a concubine can be bad for us, the relationship with art is like an enormous bewitchment and attraction, which is unfortunate and should likewise be avoided. Even as those who have fallen in love, if they think love is not good for them, hard as it may be, refrain. At the heart of art we therefore, in addition to its production of empty phantasms and madness, flirting with the non-existent, find the excitation of pleasure and desire. And since desire and pleasure is so intricately tied to madness, art thus paves the way for madness. For man holds sensuous inclinations, that if not kept in check, threaten to drive him mad. Virtue and excellence are dissolved and unbridledness follows him who does not succeed in moderating his sensuous tendencies. The desire for the phenomenal world and the things it contains threaten to drive the man mad, which is why self-control is crucial in order to not lose oneself. Sexual desire entails an excess and thus a kind of excellence as it seizes control of the desiring individual, who loses level headedness, moderation and the mastery of oneself, since the sensuous and irrational part of the soul have been given free reign. Since art in its essence excites and allies itself with desire, it is intimately tied to madness, seeing that desire in itself is a kind of madness. Art is moreover necessarily mad as it excites and feeds pleasure, which itself is also closely tied to madness. Lord Hagris specified that madness is the result of excessive pleasure, for immoderate pleasures allow the soul to be seized by madness, the more senseless and unbridled one is, the more one abandons oneself to be mastered by pleasures.
In like manner, lawless pleasures and desires designate the domain for madness. Lord Hagris wryly claims that pleasures purify the one subdued for self-control and moderation, and fills him with madness. The madness pertaining to art is therefore most serious since it simultaneously nurtures pleasure and desire. Just as madness is said to be the undisputed evi amongst philosophers, the intense courtship of madness by art is then said to become highly problematic. Art is nonetheless not mad in itself, only it's effects. In a paradoxical manner, it is precisely the art which expresses soundness of mind and that instructs by insight or skill.
This is a circumstance into which we will look more closely in the next chapter. But at this point, we can tentatively conclude that art comes to represent the actual inversion to philosophy, since the latter, unlike art, is reason, wisdom and self-control, rather than desire, pleasure and madness. Philosophy therefore seems to be a rational activity, whereas art seems to be an irrational passivity.
Spoiler: Chapter IV: The Divine
The moderate and self-controlled life is depicted as an existence which is gentle in all respects, affording mild pleasures and mild pain, moderate appetites and desires void of frenzy. A love void of frenzy characterizes the just and moderate life lived far away from the increasing heights of emotions and passions. Or as Lord Hagris describes it: ‘’Then nothing of madness, nothing akin to license must be allowed to come nigh the right love’’. The emotions and the passions must be kept on a tight rein, if one pursues a philosophical life spent searching for true knowledge and contemplation of the ideal. The philosophical life’s realization of order, stability, and knowledge takes place against the background of a rejection of madness in which sensuality, desire, pleasure and the corporeal constantly threaten to be released.
These arguments and structures are initially reproduced loyally and accurately by Lord Hagris in two of his philosophical works. In the first it takes it's point of departure in the distinction between the one in love and the one not in love. His aim with this work is to persuade the reader that they should surrender to the one not in love, rather than the one in love. The one not in love will be beneficial to the beloved, whereas the one in love will actually be harmful to him. The one's in love are sick and mad, and they lack any self-control or composure, they reason poorly and have lost command of themselves. The one in love has lost their good judgement since they are entirely at the mercy of their emotions and desires, which is why they are dangerous and devastating company for the beloved. In contrast to this, we find the one not in love (Lord Hagris), who is not subjected to the hegemony of love, how come he does not act under compulsion but of their ‘free will’, since he is not overcome by passion but in full control of the self.
The identification of love and desire with madness is repeated in Lord Hagris’ second work, in which love is defined as an overwhelming irrational desire which overcomes rational opinion that strives towards the right, and which is led away toward the enjoyment of beauty. Effectively repeating his first work’s division of sense and reason being an opposite to love and madness. In short, the one in love is sick and ruled by a senseless and irrational principle, and all in all he is off his head.
Lord Hagris’ second work is nonetheless already undermined from the very beginning by his actual dramatic situation in the dialogue. Both at the beginning and the end of the speech he notices how he is possessed by divine spirits of the location. This means that his critique of the erotic madness is put forward in a state of madness. This work, which preaches wisdom, reason and sense, and emphasizes philosophy’s delimitation of love and madness would never mean anything if it wasn’t for his surrender to love and madness. Finally the opposition of philosophy and love proves to be extremely problematic and indefensible. And as some have observed, philosophy, by the very word, is a kind of love, at least a kind of philia. This important point is of course crucial to understanding the philosophy which enacts in it's ambivalent relationship with the madness of art. It is here that many have sinned against love and as a consequence there have been philosophers who have declared to attone by means of a palinode. The arguments and views we went over in the preceding chapter characterizes the relationship as neither healthy nor true. In contrast to the perception of love as a lunacy to be avoided. In response to this Lord Hagris was forced to accept his defeat and instead claimed that his previous statement of that explained that one should open a relationship with one not in love rather than someone in love, was in fact, incorrect.
The sharp distinction between the bad and the good, between the dangerous and the sick on one side and the healthy and the mind on the other, is dissolved. The opposition between rational and irrational, active and passive, conscious and unconscious, presence and absence, the same and the other is upset, since the assumption of self-control, self-presence and self-jurisdiction has the highest good is questioned. We, on our own, must prove that such madness is god-given for individual joy, and our proof will not simply be believed by the merely clever, but will be accepted by the truly wise. If it is rendered by celestials, madness brings both the highest happiness and highest pains, this is something that rationalistic philosophers in their limited self-determination are incapable of understanding. Unlike the truly wise, who perfectly understand that true wisdom cannot only actively be deduced or calculated from oneself, as it must at least partially be rendered from a greater divine reality, transgressing one’s own limited, empirical and historical horizon.
Likewise many ancient and modern priests and seers have conferred many splendid benefits upon the Sith Empire both in private and public affairs when possessed, but few if any among them could have been in their right minds. This mad inspired form of divination is this more perfect and honourable than the divination performed by those socially claimed to be sane by means of intellectual or rational thinking. In a similar fashion poetic or musical madness will awaken and through reveling in the ecstatic inspiration of the gentle and pure soul, to compose songs and other kinds of art as well as to educate the coming generations by adorning the countless deeds of the ancients.
And this applies to love as well, unlike the two preceding works, it is accentuated that the stirred lover or friend is to be preferred rather than the sensible self-controlled. The deconstruction of love and madness takes its point of departure from an altered understanding of madness. The fact remains that love is a kind of madness. But madness exists in two distinct forms: One side is due to ‘human’ sickness, the other occurs at a divine release from customary habits.
In Lord Hagris’ protrayal of madness, in which he advances a notion of ‘human’ madness, which, as a sickness, is primarily to be understood somatically, yet this implies a crucial difference, namely that it is the one not in love who, as a ‘fuck buddy’, merely surrenders to the beloved in body, not in mind, who flirts with the dangerous ‘human’ and sick madness. ‘Human’ madness is therefore a kind of mental imminent implosion in the body, whereas divine madness refers to the soul’s transcendent transportation away from the body. With divine madness being easily categorised and divided into four with each assigned to a god, and using the Sith Pantheon to compare: Prophetic madness is inspired by Hes’falda, mystical madness by Typhojem, poetic madness by Urgak-Val and the erottic madness of Marserha Jochor. All four forms of divine madness are transcendent, transgressing the positivity of the phenomenal, all of them break the idea of philosophy as an active, autonomous, self-authoritative and self-affirmative praxis. Furthermore, all of them are tied to the poetic and negative force of rapture or transportation, and finally, all of them are associated with philosophical praxis.
Now, let us in the following look a little closer at the exposition of the four forms of divine madness.
The Prophetic Madness. The first kind of madness pertains to divination. As a self-proclaimed seer, Lord Hagris is intimately tied to this form of madness, which is rendered by Hes’falda. It is therefore not without importance that Lord Hagris mentions the seer and the priestess of Hes’falda as an example of how the divine madness offers many good and beautiful things, for it was this priestess that prophesied that Lord Hagris was the wisest among his people, on account of his deep recognition of his own ignorance. In other words, it was Hes’falda and his priestess that set Lord Hagris in motion towards his voyage against the truth, and his entire philosophical praxis is therefore due to the calling of the god. It is the priestess’ reply which makes it feasible for Lord Hagris to distinguish between the apparent and the actual, the phenomenal and the true, as well as seeming and being.
Just as much as philosophy is defined as living in accordance with the calling rendered by the god Hes’falda, and because practicing philosophy is an exercise given birth to by muses, it is no different from art to start with.
When Lord Hagris designates himself as a kind of seer, he employs a terminology typical of the description of the artist. The singer and the poet are seers, who, like the priestess of Hes’falda, give voice to the divinity and the mythological, transcendent reality by momentarily losing their mind. There is an ancient saying that whenever an artist is seated on the Muses’ tripod, he is not in his senses but resembles a fountain which gives free course to the upward rush of water. The passage also shows how the similarities of the insane seer and the artist are quite traditional. The artist is out of themselves, and his passivity is likened to a fountain, which, as an inscrutable source, freely allows the water to stream up without anyone being able to say where from.
The Mystical Madness. The mystical madness is about purification and holy rites. The benediction of this kind of madness can be described in the following terms:
The greatest diseases and troubles seem to be related to the somatic and ‘human’, which is underlined by the fact that it is the same word which is used in the description of the amorous excesses in Lord Hagris’ works against the one in love, as well as the madness, which in contrast to divine madness, is due to ‘human’ sickness. The cure of such disease seems to be brought about by a holy madness of the mind. The description of the purification through the mystical madness finds an interesting parallel in Darth Horuset’s ‘The Sin of Modulation’ description of how one must undergo purification as you have erred or sinned against purity, and thus against divinity. From a purely bodily, sensuous and materialistic perspective, the reason that many require purification. Mystical madness can therefore be said to imply purification from the phenomenal, sensuous, and bodily in favour of the spiritual, in which the soul becomes itself for itself without interference of anything exterior or alien. Lord Hagris meanwhile defines purification as follows:
- The soul purifies itself in order to live by itself alone, freeing itself from that of itself which is not itself. In order to become itself, to free itself, the soul must negate and destroy what is alien itself. The description of the release from diseases has the same wording as the description of the soul’s emancipation from the body and the description of the deliverance from troubles and sufferings also has the same wording as the description of death, where it says that through death ‘’the soul is separated from the body and exists alone by itself.’’ To put it differently, the mystical madness can be understood as a platonic and philosophical purification through which the soul by means of an unrestrained negativity and madness pursues the purely divine and abstract, that is to say, the colourless, formless, intangible truly existing essence.
- Philosophy is such a madness, whose essence partakes in the mystical and negating, and which through the transportation and rapture of madness allows itself to be moved away from the factual and particular to the ideal and universal. Mystical ecstasy allows man to be able to negate part of themselves, which is not themselves, in order to truly become they truly are.
The Poetic Madness. Above we shortly reviewed Lord Hagris’ outline of how the artists poetic madness is responsible for the greatest works, whereas the artists who only use reason without assistance of divine madness, are said to create works that will disappear along with the death of the artists who created them. Honour or reputation that the artistic work should ensure the artist and which is furthermore intended to ensure the immortality of the artist and their name, will be denied if they only create by means of skill or reason. A more striking expression for the immense failure of such an artist is hardly found in a society so keenly obsessed with personal reputation and ancient foes.
Both artistry and philosophy are indebted to muses in the sense that they carry a message of a reality transcending both. In this sense both are musical and inspired. The muses were perceived as the origin of knowledge and they are therefore crucial to the understanding of art, which is a remembrance of the old myths and narratives, and philosophy, the knowledge of which is a recollection of the divine and mythological. And if art was able to supplement praxis and work with dialectical method and defend itself against arguments of disproof, it could rightfully be labelled philosophy. However we must be careful not to overlook the potential wish, it could be so, but is not necessarily so. Nonetheless, philosophy and art are alike until this moment and philosophy would not see the day of light, if it was not for poetic madness of art. Even though philosophy is not identical with art and cannot be reduced to it, it is nevertheless indebted to it, as it is formed, determined and initiated by it.
The Erotic Madness. Of these four forms of madness, Lord Hagris proclaims the divine madness of love to be the best. When the lover is in love they behold a divine beauty in the beloved and they fashions and adorns them like a statue, as though they were their god, to honour and worship them. The beloved reminds the lover of a divine beauty which they recollect by beholding the sight of the beloved. In the erotic madness the lover yearns to recollect the divine reality not present at hand in the phenamenal world. The object for the lover’s yearning and desire is actually not the beloved themselves, but rather the divine reality, which the beloved represents like a symbol or sign. And if they draw the waters of inspiration, like the reveler, they pour it out upon the beloved and make them so far as possible, like their god. In this manner, the erotic madness appears to be affiliated with the poetic, since the lover equally ascribes imagined qualities to the beloved. The similarities of love and desire with the poetic is quite common, for love teaches an artist, even if they were previously lacking in skill. Love inspires the artist to make art, and the art further instills desire in those observing the creations. The potential of language is in an essential manner erotic, both as an erotic force, moving and initiating artistry, and as a bewitching power, emanating from a performance that excites a spell over the spectating audience. The artists makes poems by means of the force of the muses and Merserha Jochor. Although love has the power and control to drive us out of our minds, it nevertheless gives the artist one power of their own, that of expressing themselves in verse.
Just like the artists, the lovers resemble the similarities, who are filled up by a divine presence, enabling them to expand and transcend the profane and every day present. Love therefore refers to the moment in which the lover recognizes another reality than the profane. Lord Hagris thus portrays the desire of the lover as a yearning to behold a divine reality: ‘’Now a man who employs such memories rightly is always being initiated into perfect mysteries and he alone becomes truly perfect, but since he separates himself from ‘human’ interests and turns his attention toward the divine, he is rebuked by the vulgar, who consider him mad and do not know that he is inspired.’’
The initiated person, who as the only one becomes truly perfect, is he who desires what is forgotten, invisible and absent in the galaxy. In his passionate interest for that which, to the profane eye, does not exist, the lover appears mad. But the divine and complete alteration or emancipation from the common, convention and usual is precisely what characterizes he who is purified. For he who is seized by divine madness is purified, that is to say, in a state in which the god is inside of you, which means that one perception of reality must give way to another. Love is an enthusiastic madness, since the god is in the lover. As a consequence, love is mad. On one side, it is mad because it brings about an upheaval in which the one in love negates themselves, departs from themselves, as it becomes intolerable for them to remain themselves to the realization of their own lackings, wantings and incompleteness. On the other side, love is mad because it contains a rapture, in which the one in love is reformed and transformed with reference to the ideal that embodies a new, potential reality, absorbing the lover. The madness is therefore given by simultaneous upheaval and rapture, which in the annihilation of the soul’s self-determined autonomy demands a synchronous destruction and creation of the soul.
We have hereby completed the review of the four forms of god given madness. Please allow me to briefly summarize. All forms of god-given madness are in an essential manner characteristic of philosophy. All four forms of madness are in a crucial manner characteristic of art, whose relation to them is essentially no different than that of philosophy. Philosophy’s relation to madness is furthermore to a large degree accurately shaped in accordance with artistry’s traditionally and culturally well-established relation to madness in these four guises. Without these forms of madness there would be no art, and in turn, there would likewise be no philosophy without them either. Unlike the last chapter, we must here conclude that philosophy comes to mirror artistry in their common origin in god-given madness. Philosophy is furthermore, like artistry, not solely understood from reason, knowledge and self-controlled sensibleness, since it would be fruitless and void without the inspiration and this standing-outside, into which desire, madness and senselessness throw it. Philosophy thus seems, like artistry, to be an irrational, heterogeneous and passive praxis.
These arguments and structures are initially reproduced loyally and accurately by Lord Hagris in two of his philosophical works. In the first it takes it's point of departure in the distinction between the one in love and the one not in love. His aim with this work is to persuade the reader that they should surrender to the one not in love, rather than the one in love. The one not in love will be beneficial to the beloved, whereas the one in love will actually be harmful to him. The one's in love are sick and mad, and they lack any self-control or composure, they reason poorly and have lost command of themselves. The one in love has lost their good judgement since they are entirely at the mercy of their emotions and desires, which is why they are dangerous and devastating company for the beloved. In contrast to this, we find the one not in love (Lord Hagris), who is not subjected to the hegemony of love, how come he does not act under compulsion but of their ‘free will’, since he is not overcome by passion but in full control of the self.
The identification of love and desire with madness is repeated in Lord Hagris’ second work, in which love is defined as an overwhelming irrational desire which overcomes rational opinion that strives towards the right, and which is led away toward the enjoyment of beauty. Effectively repeating his first work’s division of sense and reason being an opposite to love and madness. In short, the one in love is sick and ruled by a senseless and irrational principle, and all in all he is off his head.
Lord Hagris’ second work is nonetheless already undermined from the very beginning by his actual dramatic situation in the dialogue. Both at the beginning and the end of the speech he notices how he is possessed by divine spirits of the location. This means that his critique of the erotic madness is put forward in a state of madness. This work, which preaches wisdom, reason and sense, and emphasizes philosophy’s delimitation of love and madness would never mean anything if it wasn’t for his surrender to love and madness. Finally the opposition of philosophy and love proves to be extremely problematic and indefensible. And as some have observed, philosophy, by the very word, is a kind of love, at least a kind of philia. This important point is of course crucial to understanding the philosophy which enacts in it's ambivalent relationship with the madness of art. It is here that many have sinned against love and as a consequence there have been philosophers who have declared to attone by means of a palinode. The arguments and views we went over in the preceding chapter characterizes the relationship as neither healthy nor true. In contrast to the perception of love as a lunacy to be avoided. In response to this Lord Hagris was forced to accept his defeat and instead claimed that his previous statement of that explained that one should open a relationship with one not in love rather than someone in love, was in fact, incorrect.
The sharp distinction between the bad and the good, between the dangerous and the sick on one side and the healthy and the mind on the other, is dissolved. The opposition between rational and irrational, active and passive, conscious and unconscious, presence and absence, the same and the other is upset, since the assumption of self-control, self-presence and self-jurisdiction has the highest good is questioned. We, on our own, must prove that such madness is god-given for individual joy, and our proof will not simply be believed by the merely clever, but will be accepted by the truly wise. If it is rendered by celestials, madness brings both the highest happiness and highest pains, this is something that rationalistic philosophers in their limited self-determination are incapable of understanding. Unlike the truly wise, who perfectly understand that true wisdom cannot only actively be deduced or calculated from oneself, as it must at least partially be rendered from a greater divine reality, transgressing one’s own limited, empirical and historical horizon.
Likewise many ancient and modern priests and seers have conferred many splendid benefits upon the Sith Empire both in private and public affairs when possessed, but few if any among them could have been in their right minds. This mad inspired form of divination is this more perfect and honourable than the divination performed by those socially claimed to be sane by means of intellectual or rational thinking. In a similar fashion poetic or musical madness will awaken and through reveling in the ecstatic inspiration of the gentle and pure soul, to compose songs and other kinds of art as well as to educate the coming generations by adorning the countless deeds of the ancients.
And this applies to love as well, unlike the two preceding works, it is accentuated that the stirred lover or friend is to be preferred rather than the sensible self-controlled. The deconstruction of love and madness takes its point of departure from an altered understanding of madness. The fact remains that love is a kind of madness. But madness exists in two distinct forms: One side is due to ‘human’ sickness, the other occurs at a divine release from customary habits.
In Lord Hagris’ protrayal of madness, in which he advances a notion of ‘human’ madness, which, as a sickness, is primarily to be understood somatically, yet this implies a crucial difference, namely that it is the one not in love who, as a ‘fuck buddy’, merely surrenders to the beloved in body, not in mind, who flirts with the dangerous ‘human’ and sick madness. ‘Human’ madness is therefore a kind of mental imminent implosion in the body, whereas divine madness refers to the soul’s transcendent transportation away from the body. With divine madness being easily categorised and divided into four with each assigned to a god, and using the Sith Pantheon to compare: Prophetic madness is inspired by Hes’falda, mystical madness by Typhojem, poetic madness by Urgak-Val and the erottic madness of Marserha Jochor. All four forms of divine madness are transcendent, transgressing the positivity of the phenomenal, all of them break the idea of philosophy as an active, autonomous, self-authoritative and self-affirmative praxis. Furthermore, all of them are tied to the poetic and negative force of rapture or transportation, and finally, all of them are associated with philosophical praxis.
Now, let us in the following look a little closer at the exposition of the four forms of divine madness.
The Prophetic Madness. The first kind of madness pertains to divination. As a self-proclaimed seer, Lord Hagris is intimately tied to this form of madness, which is rendered by Hes’falda. It is therefore not without importance that Lord Hagris mentions the seer and the priestess of Hes’falda as an example of how the divine madness offers many good and beautiful things, for it was this priestess that prophesied that Lord Hagris was the wisest among his people, on account of his deep recognition of his own ignorance. In other words, it was Hes’falda and his priestess that set Lord Hagris in motion towards his voyage against the truth, and his entire philosophical praxis is therefore due to the calling of the god. It is the priestess’ reply which makes it feasible for Lord Hagris to distinguish between the apparent and the actual, the phenomenal and the true, as well as seeming and being.
Just as much as philosophy is defined as living in accordance with the calling rendered by the god Hes’falda, and because practicing philosophy is an exercise given birth to by muses, it is no different from art to start with.
When Lord Hagris designates himself as a kind of seer, he employs a terminology typical of the description of the artist. The singer and the poet are seers, who, like the priestess of Hes’falda, give voice to the divinity and the mythological, transcendent reality by momentarily losing their mind. There is an ancient saying that whenever an artist is seated on the Muses’ tripod, he is not in his senses but resembles a fountain which gives free course to the upward rush of water. The passage also shows how the similarities of the insane seer and the artist are quite traditional. The artist is out of themselves, and his passivity is likened to a fountain, which, as an inscrutable source, freely allows the water to stream up without anyone being able to say where from.
The Mystical Madness. The mystical madness is about purification and holy rites. The benediction of this kind of madness can be described in the following terms:
The greatest diseases and troubles seem to be related to the somatic and ‘human’, which is underlined by the fact that it is the same word which is used in the description of the amorous excesses in Lord Hagris’ works against the one in love, as well as the madness, which in contrast to divine madness, is due to ‘human’ sickness. The cure of such disease seems to be brought about by a holy madness of the mind. The description of the purification through the mystical madness finds an interesting parallel in Darth Horuset’s ‘The Sin of Modulation’ description of how one must undergo purification as you have erred or sinned against purity, and thus against divinity. From a purely bodily, sensuous and materialistic perspective, the reason that many require purification. Mystical madness can therefore be said to imply purification from the phenomenal, sensuous, and bodily in favour of the spiritual, in which the soul becomes itself for itself without interference of anything exterior or alien. Lord Hagris meanwhile defines purification as follows:
- The soul purifies itself in order to live by itself alone, freeing itself from that of itself which is not itself. In order to become itself, to free itself, the soul must negate and destroy what is alien itself. The description of the release from diseases has the same wording as the description of the soul’s emancipation from the body and the description of the deliverance from troubles and sufferings also has the same wording as the description of death, where it says that through death ‘’the soul is separated from the body and exists alone by itself.’’ To put it differently, the mystical madness can be understood as a platonic and philosophical purification through which the soul by means of an unrestrained negativity and madness pursues the purely divine and abstract, that is to say, the colourless, formless, intangible truly existing essence.
- Philosophy is such a madness, whose essence partakes in the mystical and negating, and which through the transportation and rapture of madness allows itself to be moved away from the factual and particular to the ideal and universal. Mystical ecstasy allows man to be able to negate part of themselves, which is not themselves, in order to truly become they truly are.
The Poetic Madness. Above we shortly reviewed Lord Hagris’ outline of how the artists poetic madness is responsible for the greatest works, whereas the artists who only use reason without assistance of divine madness, are said to create works that will disappear along with the death of the artists who created them. Honour or reputation that the artistic work should ensure the artist and which is furthermore intended to ensure the immortality of the artist and their name, will be denied if they only create by means of skill or reason. A more striking expression for the immense failure of such an artist is hardly found in a society so keenly obsessed with personal reputation and ancient foes.
Both artistry and philosophy are indebted to muses in the sense that they carry a message of a reality transcending both. In this sense both are musical and inspired. The muses were perceived as the origin of knowledge and they are therefore crucial to the understanding of art, which is a remembrance of the old myths and narratives, and philosophy, the knowledge of which is a recollection of the divine and mythological. And if art was able to supplement praxis and work with dialectical method and defend itself against arguments of disproof, it could rightfully be labelled philosophy. However we must be careful not to overlook the potential wish, it could be so, but is not necessarily so. Nonetheless, philosophy and art are alike until this moment and philosophy would not see the day of light, if it was not for poetic madness of art. Even though philosophy is not identical with art and cannot be reduced to it, it is nevertheless indebted to it, as it is formed, determined and initiated by it.
The Erotic Madness. Of these four forms of madness, Lord Hagris proclaims the divine madness of love to be the best. When the lover is in love they behold a divine beauty in the beloved and they fashions and adorns them like a statue, as though they were their god, to honour and worship them. The beloved reminds the lover of a divine beauty which they recollect by beholding the sight of the beloved. In the erotic madness the lover yearns to recollect the divine reality not present at hand in the phenamenal world. The object for the lover’s yearning and desire is actually not the beloved themselves, but rather the divine reality, which the beloved represents like a symbol or sign. And if they draw the waters of inspiration, like the reveler, they pour it out upon the beloved and make them so far as possible, like their god. In this manner, the erotic madness appears to be affiliated with the poetic, since the lover equally ascribes imagined qualities to the beloved. The similarities of love and desire with the poetic is quite common, for love teaches an artist, even if they were previously lacking in skill. Love inspires the artist to make art, and the art further instills desire in those observing the creations. The potential of language is in an essential manner erotic, both as an erotic force, moving and initiating artistry, and as a bewitching power, emanating from a performance that excites a spell over the spectating audience. The artists makes poems by means of the force of the muses and Merserha Jochor. Although love has the power and control to drive us out of our minds, it nevertheless gives the artist one power of their own, that of expressing themselves in verse.
Just like the artists, the lovers resemble the similarities, who are filled up by a divine presence, enabling them to expand and transcend the profane and every day present. Love therefore refers to the moment in which the lover recognizes another reality than the profane. Lord Hagris thus portrays the desire of the lover as a yearning to behold a divine reality: ‘’Now a man who employs such memories rightly is always being initiated into perfect mysteries and he alone becomes truly perfect, but since he separates himself from ‘human’ interests and turns his attention toward the divine, he is rebuked by the vulgar, who consider him mad and do not know that he is inspired.’’
The initiated person, who as the only one becomes truly perfect, is he who desires what is forgotten, invisible and absent in the galaxy. In his passionate interest for that which, to the profane eye, does not exist, the lover appears mad. But the divine and complete alteration or emancipation from the common, convention and usual is precisely what characterizes he who is purified. For he who is seized by divine madness is purified, that is to say, in a state in which the god is inside of you, which means that one perception of reality must give way to another. Love is an enthusiastic madness, since the god is in the lover. As a consequence, love is mad. On one side, it is mad because it brings about an upheaval in which the one in love negates themselves, departs from themselves, as it becomes intolerable for them to remain themselves to the realization of their own lackings, wantings and incompleteness. On the other side, love is mad because it contains a rapture, in which the one in love is reformed and transformed with reference to the ideal that embodies a new, potential reality, absorbing the lover. The madness is therefore given by simultaneous upheaval and rapture, which in the annihilation of the soul’s self-determined autonomy demands a synchronous destruction and creation of the soul.
We have hereby completed the review of the four forms of god given madness. Please allow me to briefly summarize. All forms of god-given madness are in an essential manner characteristic of philosophy. All four forms of madness are in a crucial manner characteristic of art, whose relation to them is essentially no different than that of philosophy. Philosophy’s relation to madness is furthermore to a large degree accurately shaped in accordance with artistry’s traditionally and culturally well-established relation to madness in these four guises. Without these forms of madness there would be no art, and in turn, there would likewise be no philosophy without them either. Unlike the last chapter, we must here conclude that philosophy comes to mirror artistry in their common origin in god-given madness. Philosophy is furthermore, like artistry, not solely understood from reason, knowledge and self-controlled sensibleness, since it would be fruitless and void without the inspiration and this standing-outside, into which desire, madness and senselessness throw it. Philosophy thus seems, like artistry, to be an irrational, heterogeneous and passive praxis.
Spoiler: Chapter V: The Denouement
Philosophy must by necessity be art, just as it by necessity cannot. Philosophy is and is not art. My reflections on desire and madness clearly demonstrates that it cannot be otherwise.
Philosophy finds itself in a constant strife between reason and desire as well as between control and madness. This constitutes it's irresolvable and troubled dispute with artistry. Philosophy is in need of what dissolves it, namely the poetically and transcendently insane, and what stands opposed to it's own self-understanding as rational and self-determined. Philosophy’s origin in instinctual structure is directed towards securing rationality that- if it was to exist by itself or stand alone, would never see the light of day. The point in short, is that the formation of universal concepts is not purely a logical procedure but requires is to be inspired and possessed by a vision that transcends both our perceptions and our logic. Philosophy must first be art before it can be philosophy. As the inspired madness escapes the conscious control of the enthusiast, not only art, but also philosophy, contains an important element that is uncontrollable just as much as any production or creation is unique, passive and unrepeatable. The poetic madness and the divine madness are, as an ecstatic upheaval and transported rapture- necessary for philosophy as an opening and erection of the space of thinking, in which the distance, difference and leeway allows thinking to formulate something as something. If it wasn’t for the poetic madness, one would, popularly speaking, see the wood for the trees. This is name the situation for the uninitiated mob, the many, who nearsightedly remain in awe and the whirl of the manifold and the particular.
The literary dimension of the universe is thus associated with the open, exploratory, and questioning aspects of given dialogue. The questioning activity allows the gaze to be directed towards the possible, the questioning essentially raises the possibility of whether being and the galaxy could perhaps be thought of differently. The questioning activity is therefore transcending and mad, like art, as it transgresses the established ways of understanding ourselves and the galaxy. The projective and poetic element is then clear. The one questioning and the one making art tend to be one: Both activities involve and uncanny upheaval of the conventional and everyday, like an upheaval which can seem fateful in it's questioning of the hidden and unformulated.
In other words, the divine madness, which philosophy has in common with art, enables that something can appear as something. The path is therefore and experience, which, like divine madness, discloses our transcendence: What we seem to be, but are not, and what does not appear for us, but which actually is. Knowledge therefore presupposes a contradiction. The dialogic hospitality of this philosophical thesis entails, first of all, a stance of adaptation to the disturbance brought by diversity, by alterity. A politics of self-identity is thus constituted, with the self being different from itself. In similar logic as remarked by Lord Hagris within the question regarding madness: ‘’Therefore, madness is already a philosophical term, both as definition of philosophy where the maddest is also the most rational, and as that which is excluded from philosophical activity, namely things associated with the sensuous world.’’ As concerns reason and madness, the principle of contradiction seems to have been suspended since reason is both rational and irrational, and madness is both absurd and analytical- and philosophy is both art and the direct opposite.
If the ideas are beyond the sky, they are not immediately present at hand for the ‘human’ horizon experience, meaning that they can only be given artistically, just as much as art or creation signifies some things appears where nothing existed before. If that truly transported thinking, the philosophical thinking that exceeds the factual, positive and commonsensical, does not originate in reason, then neither does true knowledge. On the other hand, reason is rendered by a poetic transferal from a non-localizable place beyond our positive and empirical horizon of experience. On the other hand, reason interprets and categorizes the god-given message. The first form of reason must be said to be divine just as much as it has a ‘higher origin’, which qualifies it as artistic, whereas the other form of reason is ‘human’, as it categorizes, differentiates, systemizes, deduces, etc. In that sense one would have to say that reason is a latecomer, which is granted a place within thinking after the fact as a kind of rationalization. Reason is in this manner a rather late demonstration of knowledge rendered in advance. Dialecticians, whose art, does not enable them to know something true, if they did not know it beforehand. They can only deduce the truth which they were familiar with in advance. For this reason it is therefore obvious that they themselves can learn nothing new from such forms of reasoning. Meaning that the ordinary dialectic is of no use to those who wish to investigate the truth of things. Thinking, that is to say, true thinking, philosophical thinking, which is erotic- is thus artistic before it is rational. This in no way means that the door is left open to irrationalism or anti-rationality, but rather that reason should not be embodied.
Or to use a more scientific example to illustrate it: Research or genuine insight, must, to start with, be creative or intuitive in order to prepare the ground for the discovery of something new. Scientific research presupposes daring, which afterwards must be subjected to strict verification. And while strict rules of verification can be erected and put forward, the same does not apply to the bold conjecture leading to discoveries. To some extent, the reason consisting strict verification is utterly impotent as regards the knowledge of what is not yet discovered. Bold ideas, unjustified anticipations, and speculative thought, are our only means for interpreting nature. Our only system, our only instrument, for grasping her. The creation of genuine new knowledge cannot solely be deduced from well established knowledge patterns, it cannot be entirely calculated from already given algorithms, as it contains a certain degree of unpredictability. It is therefore unjustified by reason.
One might object that my interpretation rests on the assumption of an opposition between philosophy and art and madness and reason that may be less contradictory than first assumed. Yes, there are several passages that seem to question this supposedly opposition. In the Sith Code for example, inspiration appears to be ambiguously spread out between naturalistic or intuitive perception guided by logic and a religious or metaphysical view. I nevertheless believe that in the preceding chapters, I have clearly shown an unmistakably dominant tendency towards contrasting philosophy on one side and art on the other. Art is shown to not be directly tied to divine inspiration but rather with madness, pure and simple as an intrinsic trait of philosophy itself.
An actor is precisely an actor to the degree that they play a role, that is to say, someone else than they really are, as an actor they essentially pretend to be another. This way inscribes them within the sphere of madness by trying to be what we are not, we come to believe ourselves different from what we are, and that is the way to go mad. By associating with madness, one risks to lose, seize, and dispose of oneself. It is therefore telling when I mention a slave as a person, whom is not allowed to imitate. For the slave is per definition, someone who is not master of himself, who does not own himself, he cannot make any claims as concerns the ownership of himself. A confiscation of the subject involves a danger of feminization and madness- which are claimed to equal nonage. A state in which one cannot be guided by oneself. As a consequence, the danger of reason is the same as that belonging to art. For art is both mad and feminized.
The mimetic capacity to present something different as well as representing oneself as another contains a danger of going mad, as one risks losing one’s ecological integrity for there is no twofold or manifold man among us. What is threatening in mimesis, understood in these terms, is exactly that kind of pluralization and fragmentation of the subject provoked from the outset by linguistic or symbolic (de-)constitution.
However the critical problem still remains, namely that the subject would never be consistent with itself and achieve itself, if it was not already constituted by the mimetic representation, being made possible by a movement latently mad. By taking the first philosophical step toward really and truly becoming oneself one exposes oneself for the risk of losing oneself, thus going mad. The imagination renders the representation intended to gaze away from the factual to the transcendent is not limited to what truly is, but rather unlimited as concerns the unreal.
Another critical problem consists in the fact that the subject would never be linked to and made aware of the divine- just as it would never be able to imitate or alter itself, as it identifies with the divine- if it obstinately remains loyal to itself. If it remained true to its nature, if it in masculine stubbornness insisted on it's own self-determinacy and on being unaffected by poetic madness, recoiling from feminine receptivity, it's ignorance would remain unaltered and undisturbed. The subject would never become a philosopher, but would remain ignorant.
If one ignores or even banishes art, one remains what actually is not, whereas, if one allows oneself to be seized by it, one gains the possibility to become what one really is. The philosophical rationality, differentiating and nominating the identity of the named, guarding what is proper, can therefore not only be understood as rational reason. Reason would namely not be reason, if it could not be exceeded or contradicted, that is to say, if thinking was not artistic or transcending. As a consequence, philosophy would cease to be philosophy the moment it did not wholeheartedly directs all of its efforts towards it's ancient struggle with art. Yet, in a paradoxical manner it would cease the moment in succeed in conquering it. Even though such a definitive victory over art may appear quite attractive to philosophy, it would mean it's own definitive and total defeat. Hence, the madness of art is both the closest ally of philosophy and it's fiercest enemy. The starting point of reason is not reason but something far superior.
Philosophy finds itself in a constant strife between reason and desire as well as between control and madness. This constitutes it's irresolvable and troubled dispute with artistry. Philosophy is in need of what dissolves it, namely the poetically and transcendently insane, and what stands opposed to it's own self-understanding as rational and self-determined. Philosophy’s origin in instinctual structure is directed towards securing rationality that- if it was to exist by itself or stand alone, would never see the light of day. The point in short, is that the formation of universal concepts is not purely a logical procedure but requires is to be inspired and possessed by a vision that transcends both our perceptions and our logic. Philosophy must first be art before it can be philosophy. As the inspired madness escapes the conscious control of the enthusiast, not only art, but also philosophy, contains an important element that is uncontrollable just as much as any production or creation is unique, passive and unrepeatable. The poetic madness and the divine madness are, as an ecstatic upheaval and transported rapture- necessary for philosophy as an opening and erection of the space of thinking, in which the distance, difference and leeway allows thinking to formulate something as something. If it wasn’t for the poetic madness, one would, popularly speaking, see the wood for the trees. This is name the situation for the uninitiated mob, the many, who nearsightedly remain in awe and the whirl of the manifold and the particular.
The literary dimension of the universe is thus associated with the open, exploratory, and questioning aspects of given dialogue. The questioning activity allows the gaze to be directed towards the possible, the questioning essentially raises the possibility of whether being and the galaxy could perhaps be thought of differently. The questioning activity is therefore transcending and mad, like art, as it transgresses the established ways of understanding ourselves and the galaxy. The projective and poetic element is then clear. The one questioning and the one making art tend to be one: Both activities involve and uncanny upheaval of the conventional and everyday, like an upheaval which can seem fateful in it's questioning of the hidden and unformulated.
In other words, the divine madness, which philosophy has in common with art, enables that something can appear as something. The path is therefore and experience, which, like divine madness, discloses our transcendence: What we seem to be, but are not, and what does not appear for us, but which actually is. Knowledge therefore presupposes a contradiction. The dialogic hospitality of this philosophical thesis entails, first of all, a stance of adaptation to the disturbance brought by diversity, by alterity. A politics of self-identity is thus constituted, with the self being different from itself. In similar logic as remarked by Lord Hagris within the question regarding madness: ‘’Therefore, madness is already a philosophical term, both as definition of philosophy where the maddest is also the most rational, and as that which is excluded from philosophical activity, namely things associated with the sensuous world.’’ As concerns reason and madness, the principle of contradiction seems to have been suspended since reason is both rational and irrational, and madness is both absurd and analytical- and philosophy is both art and the direct opposite.
If the ideas are beyond the sky, they are not immediately present at hand for the ‘human’ horizon experience, meaning that they can only be given artistically, just as much as art or creation signifies some things appears where nothing existed before. If that truly transported thinking, the philosophical thinking that exceeds the factual, positive and commonsensical, does not originate in reason, then neither does true knowledge. On the other hand, reason is rendered by a poetic transferal from a non-localizable place beyond our positive and empirical horizon of experience. On the other hand, reason interprets and categorizes the god-given message. The first form of reason must be said to be divine just as much as it has a ‘higher origin’, which qualifies it as artistic, whereas the other form of reason is ‘human’, as it categorizes, differentiates, systemizes, deduces, etc. In that sense one would have to say that reason is a latecomer, which is granted a place within thinking after the fact as a kind of rationalization. Reason is in this manner a rather late demonstration of knowledge rendered in advance. Dialecticians, whose art, does not enable them to know something true, if they did not know it beforehand. They can only deduce the truth which they were familiar with in advance. For this reason it is therefore obvious that they themselves can learn nothing new from such forms of reasoning. Meaning that the ordinary dialectic is of no use to those who wish to investigate the truth of things. Thinking, that is to say, true thinking, philosophical thinking, which is erotic- is thus artistic before it is rational. This in no way means that the door is left open to irrationalism or anti-rationality, but rather that reason should not be embodied.
Or to use a more scientific example to illustrate it: Research or genuine insight, must, to start with, be creative or intuitive in order to prepare the ground for the discovery of something new. Scientific research presupposes daring, which afterwards must be subjected to strict verification. And while strict rules of verification can be erected and put forward, the same does not apply to the bold conjecture leading to discoveries. To some extent, the reason consisting strict verification is utterly impotent as regards the knowledge of what is not yet discovered. Bold ideas, unjustified anticipations, and speculative thought, are our only means for interpreting nature. Our only system, our only instrument, for grasping her. The creation of genuine new knowledge cannot solely be deduced from well established knowledge patterns, it cannot be entirely calculated from already given algorithms, as it contains a certain degree of unpredictability. It is therefore unjustified by reason.
One might object that my interpretation rests on the assumption of an opposition between philosophy and art and madness and reason that may be less contradictory than first assumed. Yes, there are several passages that seem to question this supposedly opposition. In the Sith Code for example, inspiration appears to be ambiguously spread out between naturalistic or intuitive perception guided by logic and a religious or metaphysical view. I nevertheless believe that in the preceding chapters, I have clearly shown an unmistakably dominant tendency towards contrasting philosophy on one side and art on the other. Art is shown to not be directly tied to divine inspiration but rather with madness, pure and simple as an intrinsic trait of philosophy itself.
An actor is precisely an actor to the degree that they play a role, that is to say, someone else than they really are, as an actor they essentially pretend to be another. This way inscribes them within the sphere of madness by trying to be what we are not, we come to believe ourselves different from what we are, and that is the way to go mad. By associating with madness, one risks to lose, seize, and dispose of oneself. It is therefore telling when I mention a slave as a person, whom is not allowed to imitate. For the slave is per definition, someone who is not master of himself, who does not own himself, he cannot make any claims as concerns the ownership of himself. A confiscation of the subject involves a danger of feminization and madness- which are claimed to equal nonage. A state in which one cannot be guided by oneself. As a consequence, the danger of reason is the same as that belonging to art. For art is both mad and feminized.
The mimetic capacity to present something different as well as representing oneself as another contains a danger of going mad, as one risks losing one’s ecological integrity for there is no twofold or manifold man among us. What is threatening in mimesis, understood in these terms, is exactly that kind of pluralization and fragmentation of the subject provoked from the outset by linguistic or symbolic (de-)constitution.
However the critical problem still remains, namely that the subject would never be consistent with itself and achieve itself, if it was not already constituted by the mimetic representation, being made possible by a movement latently mad. By taking the first philosophical step toward really and truly becoming oneself one exposes oneself for the risk of losing oneself, thus going mad. The imagination renders the representation intended to gaze away from the factual to the transcendent is not limited to what truly is, but rather unlimited as concerns the unreal.
Another critical problem consists in the fact that the subject would never be linked to and made aware of the divine- just as it would never be able to imitate or alter itself, as it identifies with the divine- if it obstinately remains loyal to itself. If it remained true to its nature, if it in masculine stubbornness insisted on it's own self-determinacy and on being unaffected by poetic madness, recoiling from feminine receptivity, it's ignorance would remain unaltered and undisturbed. The subject would never become a philosopher, but would remain ignorant.
If one ignores or even banishes art, one remains what actually is not, whereas, if one allows oneself to be seized by it, one gains the possibility to become what one really is. The philosophical rationality, differentiating and nominating the identity of the named, guarding what is proper, can therefore not only be understood as rational reason. Reason would namely not be reason, if it could not be exceeded or contradicted, that is to say, if thinking was not artistic or transcending. As a consequence, philosophy would cease to be philosophy the moment it did not wholeheartedly directs all of its efforts towards it's ancient struggle with art. Yet, in a paradoxical manner it would cease the moment in succeed in conquering it. Even though such a definitive victory over art may appear quite attractive to philosophy, it would mean it's own definitive and total defeat. Hence, the madness of art is both the closest ally of philosophy and it's fiercest enemy. The starting point of reason is not reason but something far superior.
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(*Post by Luca/Khatatas.*)
