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Adelheid KeglerBackground In the seventh of Plato's Epistles, in the context of hints at what he calls the "non-written" teaching, he comments on the adequate manner of conveying such teaching: "for it cannot be put into words like other disciplines, but by long familiarity, and from living in conjunction with the thing itself it suddenly arises like a light, which is kindled by a leaping spark within the soul and keeps on feeding itself" (341c-d). This manner of conveying knowledge does not work by a techne, which Sophist teachers in Plato's time employed to train their students. Plato rather refers to the dynamis and energia of the mind, which, as a divine element, is present in both the student and the teacher. It causes "comprehension and insight to light up" only if the thing sought after is pursued by "well meaning investigation" and a motivation "without any envy" (344 b). Platonic tradition unfolds this thought in the concept of the nous. Humankind, along with the angelic hierarchies and other rational beings, participate essentially in the nous. It is the nous that makes knowledge possible, both as a procedure and as an act. Within this frame of thinking the conventional roles of teacher and student are abolished. Everyone who dedicates himself to the quest for knowledge is, as it were, ennobled by the dignity of the nous and commands deep respect. Any egotistic and envious competitiveness has become superfluous. This is made clear in a fragment by the Neoplatonist Numenius:
Alluding to this fragment, ("Vom Geist des Christentums"), Hegel says: "For in every man himself is the light and the life. He is the property of the light; he is not illumined by the light like a dark body, which then carries a foreign splendour, but his own inflammable substance catches fire and is its own flame (Werke 1. 382). Coleridge's eighth essay of the General Introduction or Preliminary Treatises on Method may be read as a development of this image of thought. It does not stop there, but is at work in the beginnings of phenomenology where Vladimir Solovyov defines the fundamental philosophical acts. According to Solovyov, no objective knowledge is possible without an intuition, based on enthusiasm (1. 2.231; 9. 2.157). He further stresses that mutual respect between people concerned with the search for knowledge additionally depends upon the resolve to overcome all interests contrary to the search for truth (9. 2.99). A work of art, a complex of thought, the example of some outstanding
personality, can only be of educational relevance if the thing in
itself, and its mediation and reception, are related to a dimension
situated beyond mere rational calculation. They should rather correspond
to the "light and fire from those eternal regions where the
owl-winged faculty of calculation dare not even soar," as Shelley
remarks in The Defence of Poetry, using the light-fire imagery
of the Platonic tradition.
Introduction Before explaining how the students and I worked practically in
relation to MacDonald's thoughts and ideas, I will give a survey
of the frame within which his work was explored. On two occasions I perceived that MacDonald's world of ideas and
his poetry were felt as fascinating by the students. During an introductory
Philosophy course I had them work on a comparison of Plato's famous
question: "Is not the love of wisdom a practice for death?"
(Phaedo 64) with the passage from chapter 24 of Phantastes
where Anodos looks at the world from the realm of the grave (from
"'He has died well,' said the lady" up to "Yet all
love will, one day, meet with its return"). Contrary to my
expectations, the students did not complain of the difficulties,
instead they assured me they had been inspired by the imagery and
beauty of the passage. The second occasion of such an experience
was the integration of "The Ballad of Sir Aglovaile" from
chapter 18 of Phantastes into our black comedy "Sein und
Schein." The audience actually shuddered when the girl
acting the part of "the murdered bride" recited the ballad
while her colleague "the drowned nanny" spoke the chorus.
The whole group was astonished at such a forceful echo. The central aim of my philosophy lessons over the past thirty years has been a double one. First, to give an insight into the dimensions of both the history of ideas and of consciousness, because the encounter with history is a help towards forming one's identity; second, to encourage a consciousness of problems and to cultivate strength to deal with those problems and to find solutions. In the ideal case, the students would be able to combine analytical methods with the ability to perceive imaginative worlds, worlds beyond the mere rational powers. In carrying out the curriculum, these basic concepts were related to the actual topics of the individual courses. The texts and thoughts of George MacDonald were of considerable importance for the imaginative clarification and the analytical shaping of terminology.
The Philosophy Curriculum and George MacDonald The Anthropology course has as a central subject the development of consciousness: from the manner of archaic participation, leading to the "pontifical" man of Plato's philosophy, and going on to show how man began to imagine himself as a Prometheus and Sisyphus figure during the era of modernism. A look at the newly found traditional view of man created by the Romantics is the final item. I have used the first chapter of The Princess and Curdie to show the many dimensions of the human being, having translated this book (along with many other MacDonald texts) into German. Motifs from the same story were introduced to exemplify some experiences of shamanism (Curdie's magic hands, the animal companion Lina, and so on); of Platonism (the different levels of the king's palace); and of the experiences of isolation and stagnation (the sick, poisoned king and his court) in a post-modern-or late-modern-world. For a final definition of traditional man I often read with the students the last passage of chapter 18 of Lilith from "Now first I knew what solitude meant . . ." sometimes confronting this with a contrary text, for example from Albert Camus. When working on ethical problems and discussing ethical phenomena, I sometimes worked with non-fictional texts by MacDonald. A passage from the Unspoken Sermons, Third Series, "The Truth": "We are here in a region far above that commonly claimed for science [ . . .]" (463 et seq.) especially helped the students gain access to the difference between noumena and phenomena. And by this it led to a grasp of Coleridge's foundation of a theory of value, ("Wertbegründung") where he transcends Kant by his distinction between the primary and the secondary imagination (Biographia Literaria ch. 13). From these roots an ethical approach to the world of nature becomes possible. In the context of considering the political and historical dimensions of philosophy, we concentrated upon the problems of modern and late-modern societies-the mutual increase of fears and aggressions (the fear->aggression->fear spiral). The typically modern intention to conquer nature, especially human nature, and to lock out what cannot be conquered, is an aggressive procedure to maintain a safeguard against fear. In the nineteenth century it expressed itself as a eurocentric colonialism, and has culminated in the genocide of the last remains of so-called primitive people. There are so many texts to be read in this half-year that we read only a single passage from MacDonald's "circle." This was pages 196-97 from his son Greville's Reminiscences of a Specialist: "We had brought introductions [. . .]." There the author characterises the phenomenon of work in Modernism as a brutal attack on nature and especially on children. The core of the Philosophy curriculum is the course on the genesis and the dogmatising/idolising of phenomena arising out of the Cartesian and Kantian theories of knowledge. Both these theories include options on "safeguarding"-the securing of certain concepts with the aims of subjecting nature to exploitation and guaranteeing the feeling of safety. These contradict the very nature of knowledge, because knowledge involves risk. Here we read chapter 3, "The Raven" and chapter 4 "Somewhere or Nowhere" from Lilith, and sometimes also passages from Paul Faber, Surgeon and Weighed and Wanting. These Lilith chapters may also be read as an excellent account of the experience of attaining knowledge. The true aim of philosophy emerges here. We follow it by discussing Plato's "non-written" teachings (see above) and Plotinus' metaphysics of the One, and finally those of Coleridge's works, particularly his "Dejection" ode, where he transcends his discussion of Kant's Critiques-the premises of modern subjectivism-and arrives at a philosophy of being. These traditions are intensively present in MacDonald's whole œuvre. A particularly striking example occurs at the beginning of chapter 45 of Lilith, "The Journey Home": "It had ceased to be dark [. . .]" which corresponds in every respect with Plotinus' description of the world of the nous in his Enneads (5.8.31). Many topics are available for discussion in the final course. In the context of the present paper I should like to note the example of a comparison of "section First" of Kierkegaard's Sickness Unto Death with chapter 39 "That Night" from Lilith. In Kierkegaard's terminology, Lilith's sickness consists in "Despair concerning Eternity or about Oneself" followed by "Defiance," which is situated "one single dialectical step beyond "Sickness" (Section First B. 2). According to Kierkegaard, defiance is the desperate misuse of the eternal element in the innermost self, at the same time very near to truth and infinitely far from it. With the help of G. F. Watts' painting The Dweller in the Innermost used in conjunction with chapter 39 of Lilith, the students could grasp what it means to be desperate in being oneself.
MacDonald as Philosopher and Poet The few examples mentioned above already confirm that MacDonald's
œuvre is conceived in a dynamic and dialectic analysis of the
central problems of modern philosophy. By its thought-worlds and
its many-layered imagery, it covers the great distance from the
primordial world of the "dreamer," through his experience
as a prisoner in the realm of mere facts, up to the wasteland of
the "will to power" (Bulika). It shows the situation of
painfully exploited and silenced nature and of the brutally silenced
soul, both of which have lost the ability to realize their own forces
and powers. Along with the work of philosophers of the calibre of
Schelling, Kierkegaard and Solovyov, it gives an outlook to the
regions "where the wasteland ends" (to employ Theodore
Roszak's expression). This outlook, however, is very far from bland
optimism.
A Theatre Production When in 1995 the MacDonald Symposium of the Inklings Gesellschaft
took place in Cologne, my daughter and I wrote a poetical drama
Durch den Spiegel - The Wanderer to honour him. The
German-English title was chosen because MacDonald was connected
with both languages. The play was staged in collaboration with The
Dreamsinters, the school theatre group we have directed for more
than 25 years. Its members are between twelve and nineteen years
old. The players are mostly members of the philosophy courses who
like to give artistic forms to what they have learned or who are
drawn to philosophy through the insights they had gained through
their acting. At first we concentrated on a sort of "living
image," a multifaceted scene of intense power-for example,
Mr Vane in front of the mirror seeing a foreign landscape. Then,
by trying to perform it on stage, we followed the inspirations we
gained. From this we were led to enhance the initial image by other
parallel ones; then these too were transformed into scenes. With
the help of my daughter these have been worked into plays and performed,
the whole process lasting about a year with each play. The MacDonald
play was primarily inspired by the Philosophy course, where the
imagery of crossing a border had been thoroughly discussed (see
above). Additional impulses came from a course in European literature
where the students and I had experimented with double action on
a two-storey stage. The passages from Plato, Numenios, Hegel and Ivanov were translated by me from the German. A fuller account of Durch den Spiegel - The Wanderer by Hella Kegler was published in volume 14 of North Wind, along with a transcription of scene 3. Works Cited Halfwassen, Jens. Geist und Selbsbewusstsein: Studien zu Plotin
und Numenios. Knigge, Armin. Die Lyrik Vladimir Solov'evs und ihre Nachwirkungen
bei A MacDonald, Greville. Reminiscences of a Specialist. London:
Unwin, 1932. Solov'ev, Vladimir. Gesammelte Werke van Vladimir Solov'ev.
Ed. S. M. Wilton, Andrew and Robert Upton. Der Symbolismus in England
1860-1910. |
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