Abstract
There are two kinds of dream: one is illusion, and one is vision. We do both from a state of relative ignorance: one dreaming seems to bind us, while the other is the harbinger of liberation. But perhaps both belong to a larger dream that is dreaming in and through us. This is the ancient philosophy of the East, and has its roots in the oldest cosmologies of humankind. Implicit to this philosophy is the idea of ‘play’: the whole of creation is perceived as a vast and eternal cosmic play. This idea is foreign to most Western thought, which values individual freedom and purposiveness. However, this play is not described as arbitrary, childish, or recreational. It is profound, and possessed of a stunning beauty.
The idea of play is also present within the discourse of art. It is arguably at the core of what we in the West have come to know as the ‘aesthetic’. Play here plays with the outer and inner worlds, which art brings together, transmutes, and transposes. Within that play, art also plays with its own presence and absence, its own identity as art.
In this paper I will attempt to show how this play of art channels and reflects the nature of life as profound play: how its dream and semblance can teach us the uncertainty of what we take for reality, and point to something higher and deeper; and how the play of ambiguity at the heart of art leads not to confusion, but to certain delight.
(…) Therefore those who believe, that they speak or keep silence or act in any way from the free decision of their mind, do but dream with their eyes open (…) there is a dream dreaming us
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Notes
- 1.
Spinoza, The Ethics (Teddington: The Echo Library), p. 61.
- 2.
Van der Post, L., A Mantis Carol (Washington DC: Island Press, 1983).
- 3.
Ibid., p. 63.
- 4.
Descartes, Meditations and Other Philosophical Writings (London: Penguin, 1998).
- 5.
Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (London: Hutchinson’s University Library, 1949), p. 15–16.
- 6.
That which in earlier times might have been called the ‘soul’, a term and concept that since the Enlightenment has progressively been omitted from philosophical discourse.
- 7.
Descartes, op. cit., p. 16. Descartes uses this phrase throughout the Meditations and also, on this page, in conjunction with the phrase “[known by] the natural light of reason”, which suggests in the context a link to mathematical truths.
- 8.
See my article A Question of Balance, at: http://www.briangrassom.com/Blog/Blog.html
- 9.
A similar outlook could be attributed to the ‘Eleatics’, Parmenides and Zeno.
- 10.
Spinoza’s English contemporary, the poet Thomas Traherne, perhaps expressed the same thing: “You never enjoy the world aright, till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you (…) the world is a mirror of infinite beauty, yet no man sees it.” Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditations (New York: Cosimo, 2010), 1: 29, p. 19.
- 11.
Sri Chinmoy Kumar Ghose, “Immortality” in: My Flute (New York: Sri Chinmoy Lighthouse, 1972), p. 10.
- 12.
In all of these, there is advocated a surrendering of ‘will’ – which in the West we identify with freedom – quite explicitly in Spinoza and Schopenhauer, and more subtly, as a specious “freedom” of “possession” of the “other”, in Levinas.
- 13.
Dante, The Divine Comedy 3: Paradise, trans. Dorothy L. Sayers (London: Penguin, 1962), Canto 1, p. 53.
- 14.
Tymieniecka, A. T., “Possibility, Life’s Ontopoiesis, and the Vindication of the Cosmos”, in: Phenomenological Enquiry, A. T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Vol. XXXVI (Hanover, NH: The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning, 2012), p. 6.
- 15.
We have at our disposal the work of Darwin, in demonstrating the biological pattern of life, as a striving for life (which Spinoza referred to as the “conatus”), and through modern science knowledge of its essential elements (e.g. carbon) distributed throughout the universe. We also have the theory – now perceived fact – of evolution. It only remains to formulate accurately the metaphysical, philosophical, and possibly spiritual corollary to these.
- 16.
This view has much credence, as proposed by both Rancière and Adorno, for example.
- 17.
Schiller, F., Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, Letter XV. Online at: http://www.bartleby.com/32/515.html. The sculpture Schiller refers to is the Juno Ludovici.
- 18.
The above is a very brief synopsis, but I think indicates the spirit of the book. Cf. Rancière, J., Aesthetics and Its Discontents (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009).
- 19.
Baldacchino, J., Art’s Way Out (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2012).
- 20.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg, “The Relevance of the Beautiful” in: The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 53.
- 21.
Ibid., “The Play of Art”, pp. 127–130.
- 22.
Ibid., p. 130.
- 23.
Tagore, R., Gitanjali (London: MacMillan and Co., 1915), Verse 96, p. 88.
- 24.
John Searle (1984), in: “An Exchange on Deconstruction”, The New York Review of Books, online at: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1984/feb/02/an-exchange-on-deconstruction/?pagination=false
- 25.
“Always already” is both an adverbial phrase, perhaps first used by Paul Ricoeur with regard to the reading and understanding of texts, and a concept in Heidegger’s Being and Time. Derrida refers to it extensively throughout his work, its function there similar to the words “différance” and “trace”. He most characteristically uses it to describe “deconstruction”, which is “always already” at work within a text, and indeed - as he says - within everything else.
References
Baldacchino, John. 2012. Art’s Way Out. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Dante. 1962. The Divine Comedy 3: Paradise. Trans. Dorothy L. Sayers. London: Penguin.
Descartes, René. 1998. Meditations and Other Philosophical Writings. London: Penguin.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1986. The Relevance of the Beautiful. In: The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ghose, Sri Chinmoy Kumar. 1972. Immortality. In: My Flute. New York: Sri Chinmoy Lighthouse.
Grassom, Brian. A Question of Balance. In: Traces: A Journal of Art and Philsophy. March 2013.Web.http://www.briangrassom.com/Blog/Blog.html
Rancière, Jacques. 2009. Aesthetics and Its Discontents. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Ryle, Gilbert. 1949. The Concept of Mind. London: Hutchinson’s University Library.
Schiller, Friedrich. Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man. Web. http://www.bartleby.com/32/515.html.
Searle, John. An Exchange on Deconstruction. In: The New York Review of Books. 02 February 1984 issue.Web. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1984/feb/02/an-exchange-on-deconstruction/?pagination=false
Spinoza, Benedict. 2006. The Ethics. Teddington: The Echo Library.
Tagore, Rabindranath. 1915. Gitanjali. London: MacMillan and Co.
Traherne, Thomas. 2010. Centuries of Meditations. New York: Cosimo.
Tymieniecka, A.T. 2012. Possibility, Life's Ontopoiesis, and the Vindication of the Cosmos. In: Phenomenological Inquiry, vol. XXXVI, ed. A.T. Tymieniecka. Hanover: The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning.
Van der Post, Laurens. 1983. A Mantis Carol. Washington, DC: Island Press.
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Grassom, B. (2016). Dream and Semblance: The Play of Art and Life. In: Tymieniecka, AT., Trutty-Coohill, P. (eds) The Cosmos and the Creative Imagination. Analecta Husserliana, vol 119. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21792-5_5
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