2022/01/06

Croce’s Aesthetics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Croce’s Aesthetics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Croce’s Aesthetics
First published Sun May 4, 2008; substantive revision Fri Oct 8, 2021


The Neapolitan Benedetto Croce (1860–1952) was a dominant figure in the first half of the twentieth century in aesthetics and literary criticism, and to lesser but not inconsiderable extent in philosophy generally. But his fame did not last, either in Italy or in the English speaking world. He did not lack promulgators and willing translators into English: H. Carr was an early example of the former, R. G. Collingwood was perhaps both, and D. Ainslie did the latter service for most of Croce’s principal works. But his star rapidly declined after the Second World War.

 Indeed it is hard to find a figure whose reputation has fallen so far and so quickly; this is somewhat unfair not least because Collingwood’s aesthetics is still studied, when its many of its main ideas are often thought to have been borrowed from Croce. The causes are a matter for speculation, but two are likely. 

First, Croce’s general philosophy was very much of the preceding century. As the idealistic and historicist systems of Bradley, Green, and Joachim were in Britain superseded by Russell, Moore and Ayer, and analytical philosophy in general, Croce’s system was swept away by new ideas on the continent—from Heidegger and Sartre on the one hand to deconstructionism on the other. 
Second, Croce’s manner of presentation in his famous early works now seems, not to put too fine a point on it, dismissively dogmatic; it is full of the youthful conviction and fury that seldom wears well. On certain key points, opposing positions are characterized as foolish, or as confused expressions of simple truths that only waited upon Croce to articulate properly (yet his later exchange with John Dewey—see Croce 1952, Douglas 1970, Vittorio 2012—finds him more earnestly accountable). 

Of course, these dismissals carry some weight—Croce’s reading is prodigious and there is far more insight beneath the words than initially meets the eye—but unless the reader were already convinced that here at last is the truth, their sheer number and vehemence will arouse mistrust. And since the early works, along with his long running editorship of the journal La Critica, rocketed him to such fame and admiration, whereas later years were devoted among other things to battling with while being tolerated by fascists, it’s not surprising that he never quite lost this habit.

Nevertheless, Croce’s signal contribution to aesthetics—an interesting new angle on the idea that art is expression—can be more or less be detached from the surrounding philosophy and polemics. In what follows, we will first see the doctrine as connected to its original philosophical context, then we will attempt to snip the connections.

1. The Four Domains of Spirit (or Mind)
2. The Primacy of the Aesthetic
3. Art and Aesthetics
4. Intuition and Expression
4.1 The Double Ideality of the Work of Art
4.2 The Role of Feeling
4.3 Feeling, Expression and the Commonplace
5. Natural Expression, Beauty and Hedonic Theory
6. Externalization
7. Judgement, Criticism and Taste
8. The Identity of Art and Language
9. Later Developments
10. Problems
10.1 Acting versus Contemplation
10.2 Privacy
10.3 The View of Language
11. Conclusion
Bibliography
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1. The Four Domains of Spirit (or Mind)

We are confining ourselves to Croce’s aesthetics, but it will help to have at least the most rudimentary sketch in view of his rather complex general philosophy.

In Italy at the beginning of the twentieth century, the prevailing philosophy or ‘world-view’ was not, as in England, post-Hegelian Idealism as already mentioned, but the early forms of empiricist positivism associated with such figures as Comte and Mach. Partly out of distaste for the mechanism and enshrinement of matter of such views, and partly out of his reaction, both positive and negative, to the philosophy of Hegel, Croce espoused what he called ‘Absolute Idealism’ or ‘Absolute Historicism’. A constant theme in Croce’s philosophy is that he sought a path between the Scylla of ‘transcendentalism’ and the Charybdis of ‘sensationalism’, which for most purposes may be thought of as co-extensive with rationalism and empiricism. For Croce, they are bottom the same error, the error of abstracting from ordinary experience to something not literally experienceable. Transcendentalism regards the world of sense to be unreal, confused or second-rate, and it is the philosopher, reflecting on the world in a priori way from his armchair, who sees beyond it, to reality. What Croce called ‘Sensationalism’, on the other hand, regards only instantaneous impressions of colour and the like as existing, the rest being in some sense a mere logical construction out of it, of no independent reality. The right path is what Croce calls immanentism: All but only lived human experience, taking place concretely and without reduction, is real. Therefore all Philosophy, properly so-called, is Philosophy of Spirit (or Mind), and is inseparable from history. And thus Croce’s favoured designations, ‘Absolute Idealism’ or ‘Absolute Historicism’.

Philosophy admits of the following divisions, corresponding to the different modes of mental or spiritual activity. Mental activity is either theoretic (it understands or contemplates) or it is practical (it wills actions). These in turn divide: The theoretic divides into the aesthetic, which deals in particulars (individuals or intuitions), and logic or the intellectual domain, which deals in concepts and relations, or universals. The practical divides into the economic—by which Croce means all manner of utilitarian calculation—and the ethical or moral. Each of the four domains are subject to a characteristic norm or value: aesthetic is subject to beauty, logic is subject to truth, economic is subject to the useful (or vitality), and the moral is subject to the good. Croce devoted three lengthy books written between 1901 and 1909 to this overall scheme of the ‘Philosophy of Spirit’: Aesthetic (1901) and (1907) (revised), Logic (1909) and the Philosophy of the Practical (1908), the latter containing both the economic and ethics (in today’s use of term you might call the overall scheme Croce’s metaphysics, but Croce himself distanced himself from that appellation; there is also some sense in calling it philosophy of mind).

2. The Primacy of the Aesthetic

Philosophers since Kant customarily distinguish intuitions or representations from concepts or universals. In one sense Croce follows this tradition, but another sense his view departs radically. For intuitions are not blind without concepts; an intuitive presentation (an ‘intuition’) is a complete conscious manifestation just as it is, in advance of applying concepts (and all that is true a priori of them is that they have a particular character or individual physiognomy—they are not necessarily spatial or temporal, contra Kant). To account for this, Croce supposes that the modes of mental activity are in turn arranged at different levels. The intellect presupposes the intuitive mode—which just is the aesthetic—but the intuitive mode does not presuppose the intellect. The intellect—issuing in particular judgements—in turn is presupposed by the practical, which issues among other things in empirical laws. And morality tells the practical sciences what ends in particular they should pursue. Thus Croce regarded this as one of his key insights: All mental activity, which means the whole of reality, is founded on the aesthetic, which has no end or purpose of its own, and of course no concepts or judgements. This includes the concept of existence or reality: the intuition plus the judgement of existence is what Croce calls perception, but itself is innocent of it.

To say the world is essentially history is to say that at the lowest level it is aesthetic experiences woven into a single fabric, a world-narrative, with the added judgement that it is real, that it exists. Croce takes this to be inevitable: the subjective present is real and has duration; but any attempt to determine its exact size is surely arbitrary. Therefore the only rigorous view is that the past is no less real than the present. History then represents, by definition, the only all-encompassing account of reality. What we call the natural sciences then are impure, second-rate. Consider for example the concept of a space-time point. Plainly it is not something anyone has ever met with in experience; it is an abstraction, postulated as a limit of certain operations for the convenience of a ‘theory’. Croce would call it a pseudo-concept, and would not call the so-called ‘empirical laws’ in which it figures to be fit subjects for truth and knowledge. Its significance, like that of other pseudo-concepts, is pragmatic.

In fact the vast majority of concepts—house, reptile, tree—are mere adventitious collections of things that are formulated in response to practical needs, and thus cannot, however exact the results of the corresponding science, attain to truth or knowledge. Nor do the concepts of mathematics escape the ‘pseudo’ tag. What Croce calls pure concepts, in contrast, are characterised by their possession of expressiveness, universality and concreteness, and they perform their office by a priori synthesis (this accounts for character mentioned above). What this means it that everything we can perceive or imagine—every representation or intuition—will necessarily have all three: there is no possible experience that is not of something concrete, universal in the sense of being an instance of something absolutely general, and expressive, that is, admitting of verbal enunciation. Empirical concepts, then, like heat, are concrete but not universal; mathematical concepts, like number, are universal but not concrete. Examples of pure concepts are rare, but those recognized by Croce are finality, quality and beauty. Such is the domain of Logic, in Croce’s scheme.

A critical difference, for our purposes, between Croce’s ideas and those of his apparent follower Collingwood, emerges when we ask: what are the constituents of the intuition? For Collingwood—writing in the mid-1930s—intuitions are built up out of sense-data, the only significant elaboration of Russell’s doctrine being that sense-data are never simple, comprising what analysis reveals as sensory and affective constituents. For Croce the intuition is an organic whole, such that to analyze it into atoms is always a false abstraction: the intuition could never be re-built with such elements. (Although a deadly opponent of formal logic, Croce did share Frege’s insight that the truly meaningful bit of language is the sentence; ‘only in the context of sentence does a word have a meaning’, wrote Frege in 1884).

3. Art and Aesthetics

With such an account of ‘the aesthetic’ in view, one might think that Croce intends to cover roughly the same ground as Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic, and like Kant will think of art as a comparatively narrow if profound region of experience. But Croce takes the opposite line (and finds Kant’s theory of beauty and art to have failed at precisely this point): art is everywhere, and the difference between ordinary intuition and that of ‘works of art’ is only a quantitative difference (Aes.13). This principle has for Croce a profound significance:
We must hold firmly to our identification, because among the principal reasons which have prevented Aesthetic, the science of art, from revealing the true nature of art, its real roots in human nature, has been its separation from the general spiritual life, the having made of it a sort of special function or aristocratic club…. There is not … a special chemical theory of stones as distinct from mountains. In the same way, there is not a science of lesser intuition as distinct from a science of greater intuition, nor one of ordinary intuition as distinct from artistic intuition. (Aes. 14)

But the point is not that every object is to some degree a work of art. The point is that every intuition has to some degree the qualities of the intuition of a work of art; it’s just that the intuition of a work of art has them in much greater degree.

4. Intuition and Expression

We now reach the most famous and notorious Crocean doctrine concerning art. ‘To intuit’, he writes, ‘is to express’ (Aes. 11); ‘intuitive knowledge is expressive knowledge’. There are several points that have to be in place in order to understand what Croce means by this, because it obviously does not strike one as initially plausible.

4.1 The Double Ideality of the Work of Art

For our purposes, it is simplest to regard Croce as an idealist, for whom there is nothing besides the mind. So in that sense, the work of art is an ideal or mental object along with everything else; no surprise there, but no interest either. But he still maintains the ordinary commonplace distinction between mental things—thoughts, hopes and dreams—and physical things—tables and trees. And on this divide, the work of art, for Croce, is still a mental thing. In other words, the work of art in doubly ideal; to put it another way, even if Croce were a dualist—or a physicalist with some means of reconstructing the physical-mental distinction—the work of art would remain mental. In what follows, then, except where otherwise noted, we shall treat Croce is being agnostic as between idealism, physicalism, or dualism (see PPH 227).

This claim about the ontological status of works of art means that a spectator ‘of’ a work of art—a sonata, a poem, a painting—is actually creating the work of art in his mind. Croce’s main argument for this is the same as, therefore no better but no worse than, Russell’s argument from the relativity of perception to sense-data. The perceived aesthetic qualities of anything vary with the states of the perceiver; therefore in speaking of the former we are really speaking of the latter (Aes. 106; Croce does not, it seems, consider the possibility that certain states of the perceiver might be privileged, but it is evident that he would discount this possibility). Now the Crocean formulation—to intuit is to express—perhaps begins to make sense. For ‘intuition’ is in some sense a mental act, along with its near-cognates ‘representation’, ‘imagination’, ‘invention’,‘vision’, and ‘contemplation.’ Being a mental act, something we do, it is not a mere external object.

4.2 The Role of Feeling

Feeling, for Croce, is necessarily part of any (mental) activity, including bare perception—indeed, feeling is a form of mental activity (it is part of his philosophy that there is never literally present to consciousness anything passive). We are accustomed to thinking of ‘artistic expression’ as concerned with specific emotions that are relatively rare in the mental life, but again, Croce points out that strictly speaking, we are thinking of a quantitative distinction as qualitative. In fact feeling is nothing but the will in mental activity, with all its varieties of thought, desire and action, its varieties of frustration and satisfaction (Aes. 74–6). The only criterion of ‘art’ is coherence of expression, of the movement of the will (for a comparison with Collingwood’s similar doctrine, see Kemp 2003: 173–9).

Because of this, Croce discounts certain aesthetic applications of the distinction between form and content as confused. The distinction only applies at a theoretical level, to a posited a priori synthesis (EA 39–40). At that level, the irruption of an intuition just is the emergence of a form (we are right to speak of the formation of intuition, that intuitions are formed). At the aesthetic level—one might say at the phenomenological level—there is no identification of content independently of the forms in which we meet it, and none of form independently of content. It makes no sense to speak of a work of art’s being good on form but poor on content, or good on content but poor on form.

4.3 Feeling, Expression and the Commonplace

When Croce says that intuition and expression are the same phenomenon, we are likely to think: what does this mean for a person who cannot draw or paint, for example? Even if we allow Croce his widened notion of feeling, surely the distinction between a man who looks at a bowl of fruit but cannot draw or paint it, and the man who does draw or paint it, is precisely that of a man with a Crocean intuition but who cannot express it, and one who has both. How then can expression be intuition?

Croce comes at this concern from both sides. On one side, there is ‘the illusion or prejudice that we possess a more complete intuition of reality than we really do’ (Aes. 9). We have, most of the time, only fleeting, transitory intuitions amidst the bustle of our practical lives. ‘The world which as rule we intuit is a small thing’, he writes; ‘It consists of small expressions … it is a medley of light and colour’ (Aes. 9). On the other side, if our man is seriously focussed on the bowl of fruit, it is only a prejudice to deny that then he is to that extent expressing himself—although, according to Croce, ordinary direct perception of things, as glimpsed in photography, will generally be lacking the ‘lyrical’ quality that genuine artists give to their works (though this particular twist is a later addition; see section 9 below).
5. Natural Expression, Beauty and Hedonic Theory

There is another respect in which Croce’s notion of expression as intuition departs from what we ordinarily think of in connection with the word ‘expression’. For example we think unreflectively of wailing as a natural expression of pain or grief; generally, we think of expressive behaviour or gestures as being caused, at least paradigmatically, by the underlying emotion or feelings. But Croce joins a long line of aestheticians in attempting a sharp distinction between this phenomenon and expression in art. Whereas the latter is the subject of aesthetics, the former is a topic for the natural sciences—‘for instance in Darwin’s enquiries into the expression of feeling in man and in the animals’ (PPH 265; cf. Aes. 21, 94–7). In an article he wrote for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, speaking of such ‘psychophysical phenomena’, he writes:
…such ‘expression’, albeit conscious, can rank as expression only by metaphorical licence, when compared with the spiritual or aesthetic expression which alone expresses, that is to say gives to the feeling a theoretical form and converts into language, song, shape. It is in the difference between feeling as contemplated (poetry, in fact), and feeling as enacted or undergone, that lies the catharsis, the liberation from the affections, the calming property which has been attributed to art; and to this corresponds the aesthetic condemnation of works of art if, or in so far as, immediate feeling breaks into them or uses them as an outlet. (PPH 219).

Croce is no doubt right to want to distinguish these things, but whether his official position—that expression is identical to intuition—will let him do so is another matter; he does not actually analyze the phenomena in such a way as to deduce, with the help of his account of expression, the result. He simply asserts it. But we will wait for our final section to articulate criticisms.

Croce’s wish to divorce artistic expression from natural expression is partly driven by his horror at naturalistic theories of art. The same goes for his refusal to rank pleasure as the aim, or at least an aim, of art (Aes. 82–6). He does not of course deny that aesthetic pleasures (and pains) exist, but they are ‘the practical echo of aesthetic value and disvalue’ (Aes. 94). Strictly speaking, they are dealt with in the Philosophy of the Practical, that is, in the theory of the will, and do not enter into the theory of art. That is, if the defining value of the Aesthetic is beauty, the defining value of the Practical is usefulness. In the Essence of Aesthetic (EA 11–13) Croce points out that the pleasure is much wider than the domain of art, so a definition of art as ‘what causes pleasure’ will not do. Croce does speak of the ‘truly aesthetic pleasure’ had in beholding the ‘aesthetic fact’ (Aes. 80). But perhaps he is being consistent. The pragmatic pleasure had in beholding beauty is only contingently aroused, but in point of fact it always is aroused by such beholding, because the having of an intuition is an act of mind, and therefore the will is brought into play.

6. Externalization

The painting of pictures, the scrape of the bow upon strings, the chanting or inscription of a poem are, for Croce, only contingently related to the work of art, that is, to the expressed intuition. By this Croce does not mean to say that for example the painter could get by without paint in point of fact; the impossibility of say the existence of Leonardo’s Last Supper without his having put paint on the wall of Santa Maria delle Grazie not an impossibility in principle, but it is a factual impossibility, like that of a man jumping to the Moon. What he is doing is always driven by the intuition, and thereby making it possible for others to have the intuition (or rather, an intuition). First, the memory—though only contingently—often requires the physical work to sustain or develop the intuition. Second, the physical work is necessary for the practical business of the communication of the intuition.

For example the process of painting is a closely interwoven operation of positive feedback between the intuitive faculty and the practical or technical capacity to manipulate the brush, mix paint and so on:
Likewise with the painter, who paints upon canvas or upon wood, but could not paint at all, did not the intuited image, the line and colour as they have taken shape in the fancy, precede, at every stage of the work, from the first stroke of the brush or sketch of the outline to the finishing touches, the manual actions. And when it happens that some stroke of the brush runs ahead of the image, the artist, in his final revision, erases and corrects it.
It is, no doubt, very difficult to perceive the frontier between expression and communication in actual fact, for the two processes usually alternate rapidly and are almost intermingled. But the distinction is ideally clear and must be strongly maintained… The technical does not enter into art, but pertains to the concept of communication. (PPH 227–8, emphasis added; cf. Aes. 50–1, 96–7, 103, 111–17; EA 41–7)

He also defines technique as ‘knowledge at the service of the practical activity directed to producing stimuli to aesthetic reproduction’ (Aes. 111). Again, we defer criticism to the conclusion.

7. Judgement, Criticism and Taste

The first task of the spectator of the work of art—the critic—is for Croce simple: one is to reproduce the intuition, or perhaps better, one is to realize the intuition, which is the work of art. One may fail, and Croce is well aware that one may be mistaken; ‘haste, vanity, want of reflexion, theoretic prejudices’ may bring it about that one finds beautiful what is not, or fail to find beautiful what is (Aes. 120). But given the foregoing strict distinction between practical technique and artistic activity properly so-called, his task is the same as that of the artist:
How could that which is produced by a given activity be judged a different activity? The critic may be a small genius, the artist a great one … but the nature of both must remain the same. To judge Dante, we must raise ourselves to his level: let it be well understood that empirically we are not Dante, nor Dante we; but in that moment of contemplation and judgement, our spirit is one with that of the poet, and in that moment we and he are one thing. (Aes. 121)

Leave aside the remark that we become identical with the poet. If by taste we mean the capacity for aesthetic judgement—that is, the capacity to find beauty—and by genius we mean the capacity to produce beauty, then they are the same: the capacity to realize intuitions.

In Croce’s overall philosophy, the aesthetic stands alone: in having an intuition, one has succeeded entirely insofar as aesthetic value is concerned. Therefore there cannot be a real question of a ‘standard’ of beauty which an object might or might not satisfy. Thus Croce says:
…the criterion of taste is absolute, but absolute in a different way from that of the intellect, which expresses itself in ratiocination. The criterion of taste is absolute, with the intuitive absoluteness of the imagination. (Aes. 122)

Of course there is as a matter of fact a great deal of variability in critical verdicts. But Croce believes this is largely due to variances in the ‘psychological conditions’ and the physical circumstance of spectators (Aes. 124). Much of this can be offset by ‘historical interpretation’ (Aes. 126); the rest, one presumes, are due to disturbances already mentioned: ‘haste, vanity, want of reflexion, theoretic prejudices’ (Aes. 120). Also one must realize that for Croce, all that Sibley famously characterized as aesthetic concepts—not just gracefulness, delicacy and so on but only aesthetically negative concepts like ugliness—are really variations on the over-arching master-concept beauty.

8. The Identity of Art and Language

The title of the first great book of Croce’s career was ‘Aesthetic as a Science of expression and general linguistic’ (emphasis added). There are several interconnected aspects to this.

Croce claims that drawing, sculpting, writing of music and so on are just as much ‘language’ as poetry, and all language is poetic; therefore ‘Philosophy of language and philosophy of art are the same thing’ (Aes. 142; author’s emphasis). The reason for this is that language is to be understood as expressive; ‘an emission of sounds which expresses nothing is not language’ (Aes. 143). From our perspective, we might regard Croce as arguing thus: (1) Referential semantics—scarcely mentioned by Croce—necessarily involves parts of speech. (2) However:
It is false to say that a verb or noun is expressed in definite words, truly distinguishable from others. Expression is an indivisible whole. Noun and verb do not exist in it, but are abstractions made by us, destroying the sole linguistic reality, which is the sentence. (Aes. 146)

If we take this as asserting the primacy of sentence meaning—glossing over the anti-abstraction remark which is tantamount to a denial of syntactic compositionality—then together with (3) a denial of what in modern terms would be distinction between semantic and expressive meaning, or perhaps in Fregean terms sense and tone, then it is not obvious that the resulting picture of language would not apply equally to, for example, drawing. In that case, just as drawings cannot be translated, so linguistic translation is impossible (though for certain purposes, naturally, we can translate ‘relatively’; Aes. 68).

Interestingly, Croce does not think of all signs as natural signs, as lightning is a sign of thunder; on the contrary, he thinks of ‘pictures, poetry and all works of art’ as equally conventional—as ‘historically conditioned’ (Aes. 125; authors emphasis).

There is no doubt that on this point Croce was inspired by his great precursor, the Neapolitan Giambattista Vico (1668–1744). According to Croce (Aes. 220–34) Vico was the first to recognise the aesthetic as a self-sufficient and non-conceptual mode of knowledge, and famously he held that all language is substantially poetry. The only serious mistake in this that Croce found was Vico’s belief in an actual historical period when all language was poetry; it was the mistake of substituting a concrete history for ‘ideal history’ (Aes. 232).

9. Later Developments

As he became older, there was one aspect of his aesthetics that he was uneasy with. In the Aesthetic of 1901 (Aes. 82–7, 114), and again in Essence of Aesthetic of 1913 (EA 13–16) , he had been happy to deduce from his theory that art cannot have an ethical purpose. The only value in art is beauty. But by 1917, in the essay The Totality of Artistic Expression (PPH 261–73), his attitude towards the moral content of art is more nuanced. This may have been only a shift of emphasis, or, charitably perhaps, drawing out a previously unnoticed implication: ‘If the ethical principle is a cosmic [universal] force (as it certainly is) and queen of the world, the world of liberty, she reigns in her own right, while art, in proportion to the purity with which she re-enacts and expresses the motions of reality, is herself perfect’ (PPH 267). In other words, he still holds that to speak of a moral work of art would not impinge upon it aesthetically; likewise to speak of an immoral work, for the values of the aesthetic and moral domains are absolutely incommensurable. It is not merely an assertion that within the domain of pure intuition, the concepts simply don’t apply; that would merely beg the question. He means that a pure work of art cannot be subject to moral praise or blame because the Aesthetic domain exists independently of and prior, in the Philosophy of Spirit, to the Ethical.

In the Encyclopaedia article of 1928, Croce asserts positively that the moral sensibility is a necessary condition of the artist:
The foundation of all poetry is therefore the human personality, and since the human personality fulfills itself morally, the foundation of all poetry is the moral conscience. (PPH 221)

Still it’s possible to read him as not having changed his view. For instance, Shakespeare could not have been Shakespeare without seeing into the moral heart of man, for morality is the highest domain of spirit. But we have to distinguish between the moral sensibility—the capacity to perceive and feel moral emotions—and the capacity to act morally. Croce’s position is that only the first is relevant to art.

The early emphasis on beauty is downplayed in subsequent writing in favour of the successful work art as expression, as constituting a ‘lyrical intuition’. In Essence of Aesthetic he writes:
…what gives coherence and unity to the intuition is feeling: the intuition is really such because it represents a feeling, and can only appear from and upon that. Not the idea, but the feeling, is what confers upon art the airy lightness of a symbol: an aspiration enclosed in the circle of a representation—that is art; and in it the aspiration alone stands for the representation, and the representation alone for the aspiration. (EA 30)

Croce still holds that art is intuitive, a-logical or nonconceptual, and therefore by ‘it represents a feeling’ he does not mean that our aesthetic mode of engagement involves that concept, and he does not mean that art is to be understood as symbolic, implying a relation which would require an intellectual act of mind to apprehend. Both would imply that our mode of aesthetic engagement would be something more, or something other than, the aesthetic, which is as always the intuitive capacity. The point is simply that our awareness of the form of the intuition in nothing but our awareness of the unifying currents of feeling running through it. It is a claim about what it is that unifies an intuition, distinguishes it from the surrounding, relatively discontinuous or confused intuition. This is, in effect, a claim about the nature of beauty:
An appropriate expression, if appropriate, is also beautiful, beauty being nothing but the precision of the image, and therefore of the expression. …(EA 48).
Expression and beauty are not two concepts, but a single concept, which it is permissible to designate with either synonymous word … (EA 49).

Genuinely new in the 1917 essay was Croce’s appealing but enigmatic claim that art is in a sense ‘universal’, is concerned with the ‘totality’:
To give artistic form to a content of feeling means, then, impressing upon it the character of totality, breathing into it the breath of the cosmos. Thus understood, universality and artistic form are not two things but one. (PPH 263).

And:
In intuition, the single pulsates with the life of the whole, and the whole is in the life of the single. Every genuine artistic representation is itself and is the universe, the universe in that individual form, and that individual form as the universe. In every utterance, every fanciful [imaginative] creation, of the poet, there lies the whole of human destiny, all human hope, illusions, griefs, joys, human grandeurs and miseries, the whole drama of reality perpetually evolving and growing out of itself in suffering and joy. (PPH 262)

Croce—and undoubtedly the political situation in Italy in 1917 played a role in this—was anxious to assert the importance of art for humanity, and his assertion of it is full of feeling. And the claim marks a decisive break from earlier doctrine: form is now linked with universality rather that with particular feelings. But it is difficult to see beyond such metaphors as ‘impressing upon it the character of totality’ (not even with the help of Croce’s Logic). One is reminded of the Kantian dictum that in aesthetics we ‘demand universality’ in our judgements, but there are no explicit indications of such. There is one piece of Crocean philosophy behind it: Since art takes place prior to the intellect, so the logical distinction between subject and predicate collapses; therefore perhaps at least one barrier is removed from speaking of the ‘universality of art’. But that does not indicate what, positively, it means. It obvious that there is something right about speaking of the ‘universal character’ of a Beethoven or a Michelangelo as opposed to the pitiful, narrow little spectacle of this month’s pop band, but Croce doesn’t tell us what justifies or explains such talk (various others have reached a similar conclusion; see Orsini p. 214). Still, that doesn’t mean that he had no right to proclaim it, and perhaps not to count his readers as agreeing to it.

10. Problems

There is a lot of Croce’s aesthetics that we have not discussed, including his criticisms of the discipline of Rhetoric (Aes. 67–73; PPH 233–35), his disparagement of ‘genre criticism’—that is, his doctrine that there are ultimately no aesthetic differences amongst different kinds of art (Aes. 111–17, EA 53–60, PPH 229–33)—and his condemnation of psychological and other naturalistic views of art (Aes.87–93; EA 41–7). There is also his magnificent if contentious précis of the history of aesthetics (Aes. 155–474). But these are points of relative detail; the theory is whole is sufficiently well before us now to conclude by mentioning some general lines of criticism.

10.1 Acting versus Contemplation

The equation of intuition with expression as at section 4.3 simply is not, in end, plausible. C. J. Ducasse (1929) put his finger on it. When we look at a vase full of flowers, it simply does not matter how closely or in what manner we attend to it; we do not create a ‘work of art’ unless we draw or paint it. Croce has lost sight of the ordinary sense of passively contemplating and doing something; between reading and writing, looking and drawing, listening and playing, dancing and watching. Of course all the first members of these pairs involve a mental action of a kind, and there are important connections between the first members and the corresponding seconds—perhaps in terms of what Berenson calls ideated sensations—but that is not to say that there are not philosophically crucial distinctions between them.

10.2 Privacy

The equation also defeats the purpose of art criticism or interpretation, and indeed of the very notion of an aesthetic community, of an audience. To say that the work of art is identical with the intuition is to say that it is necessarily private. It is to say, for example, that since one man’s intuition of Botticelli’s Venus is necessarily different from any one else’s, there is no such thing as Botticelli’s Venus, understood not as a material painting but as a work of art; there is only Botticelli’s-Venus-for-A, Botticelli’s-Venus-for-B, and so on. But these intuitions cannot be compared, and there is no higher standard; thus they cannot be said to agree or disagree, since any such comparison would be logically impossible (see Tilghman 1971, Ch. 1, for further discussion; for at attempt at saving Croce, see Schusterman 1983). The position is perhaps not contradictory, but it is exceedingly unattractive; it renders art a diversion away from reality, when as Freud emphasized—to invoke a figure who is Croce’s opposite in almost every respect—the artist’s struggle with the medium is the attempt to conquer reality. Although Croce disowned this consequence, it’s hard not to conclude that on this view art is a domain of fancy (in the bad sense), without any check upon vanity (see Aes. 122 for a point at which Croce almost sees the point). If we bring back the material painted object into the picture, of course, then there is no such difficulty: ones ‘intuition’ will be accurate, or one’s interpretation will be correct, just in case it corresponds to the picture (of course the notion of ‘corresponds to the picture’ is only a placeholder for a great deal to be supplied by theories of representation, perspective, expression and other parts of aesthetics; but the one thing that plausible theories will share is a commitment to the object, the material painting).

It’s worth emphasizing again that Croce’s claim that intuition is expression, and consequently that works art are mental objects, is not just an application of his general idealism. It is independent of it. In the Encyclopaedia Britannica article, for example, he allows himself to speak for convenience of the ‘spiritual’ and ‘physical’, in order to make the point that the physical object is only of practical, and not of aesthetic significance (PPH 227–8).

10.3 The View of Language

Undoubtedly Croce was influenced by his lifelong immersion in literature in his proclamation that all language is poetry. And perhaps it is true that all language has some poetic qualities, and perhaps it is true that language ‘in its actuality’ consists of sentential utterances. But as Bosanquet pointed out in 1919, this does not mean that language is only poetry, or that the referential dimension of language does not exist. It must have something that distinguishes a scientific treatise from a tune—in fact it must be the same thing, which we are calling the referential dimension, that serves to distinguish poetry from a tune (it has to have sound and sense, as we say). So to say that drawings and tunes are equally good examples of language seems, at best, strained. Perhaps Croce would have said that the referential dimension does not exist, or is a false abstraction; but his general philosophical views may be forcing him down an unprepossessing path. More promising would be a formalist endeavor to try to isolate the pure sonic aspect of poetry—comprising metre, alliteration and so on—and then to search for instantiations or at least analogies in the other arts.

11. Conclusion

Suppose Croce were to give up the idea that art is intuition, and agree that the work of art is identical with the material work—remember this would not prevent him being an idealist in his general philosophy—and suppose he allowed that he was wrong about language. What would remain of his theory would arguably be its essence: that art is expression, and we engage with it via the intuitive capacity. It remains individual, and perhaps pre-conceptual.

In closing, the reader may find it useful if we summarize the major differences—narrowly on matters of aesthetics—between Croce and Collingwood, who is often thought of as Croce’s follower. (Indeed the question of whether, how, and to what extent Croce ‘influenced’ Collingwood, not only in aesthetics but in wider matters of metaphysics and history, are vexed questions. According to a careful study Rik Peters, the influence was perhaps pervasive insofar as Croce influenced the questions that Collingwood posed for himself, but Peters concludes that the answers given were of Collingwood’s own making; see Peters 2011 for more; for the matter specifically about art and aesthetics, see also Hospers 1956, Donagan 1962, and Jones 1972.) First, Collingwood seems to agree with Croce that art, so to speak, is everywhere—there no self-conscious perception that lacks expressive and aesthetic qualities—whereas Croce’s theory does not tend to regard the expressive content of work of art as something ‘in the artist’, emphasizing instead its form and later its ‘universality’, Collingwood tries to explain expressive content in terms of a detailed theory of the emotions. Second, although Croce does devote some energy to discrediting the ‘technical’ theory of art, Collingwood offers a more organized and detailed analysis of why art is not ‘craft’, though arguably the main points are Croce’s. Finally, Collingwood devotes his final sections to a topic left unaddressed by Croce: the problem of whether or in what way the responses of the audience can constrain the object presented by the artist.

===

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Works by Croce:
1902. Estetica come scienza dell’espressione e linguistica generale, Florence: Sandron.
1909 [1922]. Aesthetic: As science of expression and general linguistic, translated by Douglas Ainslie, New York: Noonday. Cited as Aes.
1909. Logica come scienza del concetto puro, Florence: Sandron.
1909. Filosofia della practica, economica ed etica, Florence: Sandron.
1913. Breviario di estetica, Naples: Laterza.
1917. Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept, translated by Douglas Ainslie, London: Macmillan.
1917. Philosophy of the Practical, Economic and Ethic, translated by Douglas Ainslie, London: Macmillan.
1921. The Essence of Aesthetic, translated by Douglas Ainslie, London: Heinemann. Noted as EA. (Likely to be superseded by the 1992 translation below.)
1952. ‘Dewey’s Aesthetics and Theory of Knowledge, translated by F. Simoni, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 11(1): 1–6.
1995 [1965]. Guide to Aesthetics, translated by Patrick Romanell, Indianopolis: Hackett.
1966. Philosophy, Poetry, History: An Anthology of Essays, translated and introduced by Cecil Sprigge, London: Oxford University Press. Noted as PPH
1992. The Aesthetic as the Science of Expression and of the Linguistic in General Part I: Theory, translated by Colin Lyas, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2007. Breviary of Aesthetics: Four Lectures, translated by Hiroko Fudemoto, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
2017. A Croce Reader: Aesthetics, Philosophy, History, and Literary Criticism, edited and translated by Massimo Verdicchio, Ontario: University of Toronto Press.
Secondary Sources
Bosanquet, B., 1919. ‘Croce’s Aesthetic’, Proceedings of the British Academy, IX: 261–288.
–––, 1920. ‘Reply to Carr’, Mind, XXIX(2): 212–15.
Carr, H. W., 1917. The Philosophy of Benedetto Croce, London: Macmillan.
Donagan, A., 1962. The Later Philosophy of R.G. Collingwood, Oxford: Clarendon.
Douglas, G. H., 1970. A Reconsideration of the Dewey-Croce Exchange, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 28(4): 497–504.
Ducasse, C., 1929. The Philosophy of Art, New York: Dial.
de Gennaro, A. 1968. ‘Benedetto Croce and Herbert Read’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 26(3): 307–310.
Hospers, J. 1956. ‘The Croce-Collingwood Theory of Art’, Philosophy, 31(119): 291–308.
Jones, P. 1972. ‘A Critical Outline of Collingwood’s Philosophy of Art’, in Critical Essays on the Philosophy of R.G. Collingwood, edited by Michael Krausz, Oxford: Clarendon: 42–65.
Kemp, G. 2003. ‘The Croce-Collingwood Theory as Theory’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 61(2): 171–193.
Moss, M. E., 1987. Benedetto Croce reconsidered: truth and error in theories of art, literature, and history, London: University of New England Press.
Orsini, G., 1961. Benedetto Croce: Philosophy of Art and Literary Critic, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Patankar R. B., 1962. ‘What Does Croce Mean by ‘Expression’?’, The British Journal of Aesthetics, 2(2): 112–125.
Paton, M., 1985. ‘Getting Croce Straight’, The Brit Journal of Aesthetics, 25(3): 252–265.
Peters, R., 2011. History as Thought and Action: The Philosophies of Croce, Gentile, de Ruggiero and Collingwood, Exeter: Imprint Academic.
Scaglione, A., 1959. ‘Croce’s Definition of Literary Criticism’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 17(4): 447–456.
Shusterman, R., 1988. ‘Croce on Interpretation: Deconstruction and Pragmatism’, New Literary History, 20(1): 199–216.
Tilghman B., 1970. The Expression of Emotion in the Visual Arts: A Philosophical Inquiry, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Vittorio M., 2012. ‘Reflections on the Croce–Dewey exchange’, Modern Italy, 17(1): 31–49. [available online].

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art, definition of | Collingwood, Robin George: aesthetics | Dewey, John: aesthetics | Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich: aesthetics | idealism | intuition | privacy | Vico, Giambattista

2022/01/05

I came out as pansexual in a straight-passing relationship | SBS Voices

Post: Edit

I came out as pansexual in a straight-passing relationship | SBS Voices
4 JUN 2021 - 9:45AM
I came out as pansexual in a straight-passing relationship



"But even when I thought I was bi, and in a straight-passing relationship, I still couldn’t say that out loud to my parents." (EyeEm)



At 37, I felt I have finally found a term I identify with, that most fits my sexual identity.
By
Madalene Chu

3 JUN 2021 - 11:11 AM UPDATED 4 JUN 2021 - 9:45 AM




In 1990, I was seven years old. Disney had just released The Little Mermaid, which was the first in a line of films that would define my childhood. There is a scene in which Ariel flings her hair back after coming out of the water, which seven-year-old me was obsessed with and couldn't say why. I remember thinking, Prince Eric was OK. But Ariel? What a hot piece of tail! My unexplained love for Ariel would then spark a lifelong obsession with red-headed women.

In fact, my childhood crushes have always been confusing. Still on the Disney front, Belle from Beauty and the Beast was my ideal. Brains and beauty: the whole package. At the same time, I was also into the fox from Robin Hood. Handsome, resourceful, playful and generous. What a fox!

Little did I know back then, that the term for my attraction to someone’s personality regardless of biological sex, gender, or gender identity meant that I was pansexual. Back then I thought that my attraction to women meant that I was gay. And I knew that growing up in a very strict Vietnamese Catholic family meant I was most certainly not allowed to be gay. So as a teenager, I suppressed my attraction to women.


Little did I know back then, that the term for my attraction to someone’s personality regardless of biological sex, gender, or gender identity meant that I was pansexual.

Ironically, when Ellen came to dominate the daytime television screens, my mum loved her. She would watch Ellen interview celebrities and dance-walk downstairs and laugh and laugh. When she finished laughing, she would always ask, presumably God or the universe, “But why lesbian, Ellen?” Even though she loved Ellen, she couldn’t understand why she would “choose to be gay”. So I knew that if I came out as pan, (if I understood that about myself back then) that she would not get why I’d “choose to be attracted” to both sexes. What my parents couldn’t grasp, of course, is that attraction isn’t a choice. In the same way that heterosexuals can’t choose opposite-sex attraction; gay, lesbian, bi, queer or pansexuals can’t choose who they are attracted to, they just are.

I did go through a stage in my 20s where I thought I might be bi. I had met a new group of queer friends. At the time, I identified as queer. It was a term that I was comfortable with (even though I was still not comfortable enough to tell my parents). I knew for sure I did not identify as straight — so queer seemed to be entry-level appropriate. I was 21 and marching with my new friends in the Mardi Gras. My friend Tina*, who, at the time identified as a lesbian, asked me if I wanted to make out with her. I told her I did, and we kissed in front of a cheering crowd as part of the Mardi Gras parade. That, right there, was my first kiss.

Around the same time I was hanging out with Tina, I was also close to Sam*. A sweet, thoughtful, softly spoken boy, who just came out as gay. I knew he wasn’t going to be into me and didn’t expect my crush to be reciprocated. But here’s the thing with sexuality. These days, most of us realise it’s not binary. It’s not black and white. It’s not that you either are or you’re not straight or gay. In my experience, sexuality is fluid. For me, sometimes I meet a girl and might think, I am 100 per cent gay for you. Sometimes I meet a guy and think, I am 100 per cent straight for you. With Tina and Sam, ironically, they ended up together. They are now married years later with two beautiful children. But even though they are in a straight-presenting couple, they are far from heteronormative.


For me, sometimes I meet a girl and might think, I am 100 per cent gay for you. Sometimes I meet a guy and think, I am 100 per cent straight for you.

I ended up in a similar type of relationship. At 25, I met and fell in love with Andrew. He was and still is my best friend. We tell each other everything. He is my partner, my confidante, my lover, my friend. I would often tell him, if he woke up the next day a woman, I would still want to be with her. He unfortunately, would not reciprocate. Andrew is straight. He tells me, “You’re lucky you were born a woman because if you were a man I would not be with you. I can offer you friendship but that’s it.” If I were a man I would be secretly in love with my best friend in the hopes that one day he would reciprocate. I guess it worked out for both of us that I happen to have been born a woman.

But even when I thought I was bi, and in a straight-passing relationship, I still couldn’t say that out loud to my parents. It took both my parents to die before I felt comfortable enough to say I was bi.

And yet, deep down, I knew the term still didn’t feel quite right. It wasn’t until my 21-year-old cousin, upon hearing me tell her all the different people I currently have crushes on, suggested, “Hey I think you might be pan” — that rang a bell for me. So at 37, I felt I have found a term I identify with, that most fits my sexual identity. I’m even comfortable enough to say it out loud, “Dear world, I am pansexual”. If only Mum and Dad could hear.

*Names have been changed







RECOMMENDED





The moments my race, gender and sexuality collide
Throughout my late teens and early 20s, the first response I usually got when I came out to people was, ‘What does your family think?’





The difference between being bisexual and pansexual
There is a lot of overlap between the terms bisexual, pansexual, bi+, and queer. It’s understandably confusing for some folks, even if we identify with these terms ourselves.





Growing up in the sleepy suburbs, bisexuality was a foreign concept
Either you liked girls or you liked boys – and if you were a girl, you shouldn’t like girls.

Straight passing | LGBTA Wiki | Fandom

Straight passing | LGBTA Wiki | Fandom



Straight passing
2VIEW SOURCE


The straight passing flag

Straight passing is a term used to refer to a queer or trans person in a duaric or "straight" relationship or what appears to be a duaric relationship. This is most commonly used to refer to multisexual people who are in a duaric relationship. It can also refers to a-spec people who are in a duaric relationship. Another usage is for transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming individuals who are in relationships that appear straight due to them being misgendered.


Controversy

The term "straight passing" is viewed as controversial, particularly in the context of "straight passing privilege", as it is most commonly used to undermine multisexual and a-spec people's LGBT+ identities. Bisexual, pansexual, and other multisexual people often have their attraction to the same gender questioned or erased when they date someone of the opposite gender, leaving them feeling isolated from both heterosexual society and the LGBT+ community. The term "straight passing privilege" is commonly used to imply that multisexual people are more privileged, ignoring any struggles that multisexual people specifically face, even when in "straight" relationships.[1] Similarly some people have tried to argue "straight passing privilege" as a reason why a-spec people are not members of the LGBT+ community.

The appearance of "straight passing" can also commonly be a direct result of misgendering people. In a "straight passing" couple one of the people may be gender non-conforming, transgender in the early staging of transitioning, or non-binary.

Surrendering into Silence: Quaker Prayer Cycles byDavid Johnson

Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Surrendering into Silence: Quaker Prayer Cycles




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Surrendering into Silence: Quaker Prayer Cycles


By David Johnson
84 pages
2 hours

Included in your membership!
at no additional cost

Description
Quaker spirituality is at its core a contemplative practice which is based on the path taught and lived by Jesus. The traditional Quaker experience is that the Spirit of God communicates directly to each and every person, especially when we spend time in silence, and is experienced mainly as an Inward Light in the conscience. Further, as this Inward Light is followed, we are granted more light and greater purity of heart or holiness, and we become reborn inwardly as the Spirit of God (Christ) takes hold of our lives.

Many of the quotations in this work are deliberately sourced from the first Quakers, whose remarkable spiritual strength opened up a vision of true Christianity and changed the world around them. The language of the 1600s sounds foreign to our ears until it becomes familiar. Many words have had different meanings over the centuries, as is clear in the different wordings of the King James Version and Revised Standard Version translations of the Bible. Readers are urged to sit and feel for the underlying spiritual message of these written experiences of our Quaker ministers and elders as well as of the selected excerpts from the Scriptures.

The Quaker experience and understanding are that God is always ready to guide and lead us and goes before us, though we may be called upon to wait till we have been inwardly prepared. 'Way will open' in God's time rather than in our own time frame.


Surrendering into Silence: Quaker Prayer Cycles
byDavid Johnson

5 global ratings | 2 global reviews
From the United States
Brian
4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Primer for Anyone
Reviewed in the United States on September 17, 2020
Verified Purchase
Much of this was a review to me, having been trained under the teachings of the late Thomas Keating, a Catholic. Surrendering into Silence is a Quaker version of Keating, who was one among three who began the movement of Centering Prayer and which became Contemplative Outreach LTD.

Here, Johnson, a Quaker from Australia, applies universal principles of the cycle recurring in the life of spiritual contemplation to the Quaker, or Society of Friends, or Religious Society of Friends, tradition. His use of citations from varied traditions, ancient and modern, amplifies his own comments.

While Johnson acknowledges the contemplative dimension is in varied spiritual paths, his book reads like a primer for Quakers. Still, the book would prove a valuable introduction to contemplative silence for anyone interested in exploring the process of such a way of prayerful silence and the psychology behind it as a means of purification and growing intimacy with the Divine - Johnson, in the way of Quakerism, does not seek to decide or define what the Divine would be for the reader.

Johnson points out, rightly, spiritual depth in a faith community is not possible apart from this contemplative silence. In the silence, as Johnson clarifies, we are welcomed below the usual chatter of mind and emotion so to be receptive to the Light.

And, again in the vein of Friends, receptivity to the Light in silence is done as part of a community, one not grounded on doctrinal or moral agreement, but on a shared vision in response to divine Grace. Hence, for Johnson, prayerfulness among others is as, if not more, important than alone. Indeed, he disallows any form of privatized worship, wherein one is not linked in agreement of spirit with others who share a like vision and life together.
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From other countries
MikeF
5.0 out of 5 stars Much needed guide
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 9, 2020
Verified Purchase
There is far too little published about the life of prayer from a specifically Quaker point of view; this brilliant and lucid little book will be of great value not only to Friends, but to all who are called to the contemplative way, from whichever tradition.
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===

There is language which describes an experience.

Have you ever been to Florence? There are fountains and sculptures everywhere you look, stone castles and vineyards occupying the surrounding countryside, ornate churches, murals painted on unsuspecting walls….

Then there is language which foretells an experience and invites you to it.

You’ve never been to Florence? Would my previous description entice you to visit? (pandemics aside). I loved the artistry of Italian doors, even just into a pharmacy. The coffee is awesome. You should definitely go.

And again, there is language which makes sense of experiences; affirming and consolidating them.

Welcome back from your trip. Did you see the fountains? Oh, yes, and they were wonderful!

Johnson’s book uses the language of early Quakers and the Christian mystics to:

  • describe his authentic experience of the life and patterns of prayer over time (Florence)
  • describe the predictable motions of the prayer of silence over time, and invites us to experience it (You should go – it’s awesome)
  • affirm and make sense of the experiences we have had, and point to next steps (…yeah, I saw that too)

If you feel offended by Christian language this book will be a challenge to you. Johnson makes no claim to the rightness of Christianity, and points to the universality of faith which lies beyond any system attempting to describe the process and guide people through. But Christianity is his language – also the language of early Friends – and he uses it unreservedly.

Surrendering into Silence is in alignment with other descriptions of the life of prayer. For example, Johnson’s description of the prayer cycle fits well with Rex Ambler’s process of Light Meditation which advises us to 1) Mind the Light, 2) Open to what it has to show you, 3) Wait for guidance, and 4) Submit to that guidance. Even more succinctly, the gospel of Thomas (logion 2) quotes Jesus as saying. “Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find; when they find they will be disturbed; when they are disturbed, they will marvel and will reign over all”

This book is a deceptively brief 55 pages. The structure is not readily apparent but eventually it becomes clear that he lays out the prayer cycle bit by bit; each bit being separated from the next by some “reflections” – carefully selected short quotes to let the concept just given connect with our own experience.

These reflections are to be read and re-read and savoured over time. This is not a book to be read from cover to cover.

Johnson describes the prayer cycle as a process of moving from an external busyness to an inward stillness, and identifies practices to become “…awakened to the possibilities of the spiritual life.” Initially, we experience rest and refreshment through a sense of effort… which gives way to a sense of being found rather than doing the searching ourselves. We begin to yield to the Light.

Next we are met with “eruptions from the subconscious”. We have sought, and found, and now it’s time to be disturbed. The disturbance and darkness we find can continue unabated for some time; Johnson says, “suffering is a real and essential part of the spiritual journey” and he observes that prolonged periods of darkness are normal. Monastics call this process “stripping”; being stripped of the unhelpful to prepare us for a more fruitful life. Extended darkness can be regarded, therefore, as making good progress; discomfort begets change. This is a place where psychology and spiritual practice overlap. The author’s advice is to step back and observe and wait to see what the Light is showing you. (Sounds a lot like Rex Ambler)

The cycle of prayer (daily practice, consolation and rest, disturbance, darkness, and transformation) is repeated over and over again, each iteration moving us further in the journey. Johnson encourages us to persevere. As we persist in the process of being transformed, we are prepared to be an instrument for a secret responsiveness, not necessarily of action, which Fox described as walking in the Light. In the author’s words. “As we become more aware, more attentive and more accepting, God can do more with us. We become co-workers with God.”

It is one thing to be passionate about what is good and to respond to the flawed world through practicing our values. It is another thing to be prepared by Spirit to be a Light-powered instrument of God moving in, and responding to, the world around us.

Johnson invites us to be there, and shows us a path for how to get there. If you want the quickie cheat sheet, the full cycle is well summarised and illustrated on pages 44 and 45.

You do need to work a bit to understand Johnson’s language of experience, invitation, affirmation and guidance, but it’s worth the effort.

Surrendering into Silence: Quaker Prayer Cycles, by David Johnson, Inner Light Books 2020.

Sheila Keane, New South Wales Regional Meeting

밭에 감추인 보화 같은 유교의 道 < 한국 페미니스트 신학자의 유교 읽기 < 학술 < 기사본문 - 주간기독교

밭에 감추인 보화 같은 유교의 道 < 한국 페미니스트 신학자의 유교 읽기 < 학술 < 기사본문 - 주간기독교

밭에 감추인 보화 같은 유교의 道

기자명 이은선 한국신信연구소 대표·세종대학교 명예교수
승인 2022.01.04
 





도산서원선비문화수련원은 ‘한국 정신문화의 수도’라는 구호를 걸고 있는 안동시에 소재한 유교 선비정신 수련장이다. 동방의 스승 퇴계 선생(1502-1571년)을 기리고 그 정신을 널리 퍼뜨리고자 2001년 개원하였다. 지난 11월 그곳에서 일종의 가톨릭 피정 시간으로 유교 선비 수련을 체험한 대구 성당의 한 교인은 그 체험을 마치 ‘황금을 주운 것 같다’는 심정으로 토로했다고 한다. 왜 그 천주교인은 자신의 유교 선비정신과 만남을 그와 같이 황금을 주운 것 같은 경험이라고 했을까? 그런데 사실 이 글을 쓰는 본인도 오래전 유럽에서 유학 생활을 하면서 유사한 경험을 했다. 당시 유럽 기독교 문명의 중심에서 기독교 신학을 공부하고 있을 때, 박사학위 논문 주제로 유교와 기독교의 대화라는 큰 물음 아래서 16세기 중국의 신유교(新儒敎) 학자 왕양명(王陽明, 1472~1529)을 만나면서 한 경험이었다. 그때 지도교수였던 바젤 대학의 후리츠 부리(Prof. Fritz Buri) 교수는 본인에게 가톨릭 수녀 출신 중국 여성종교학자 쥴리아 칭의 저서 『지혜를 찾아서-왕양명의 길, To Acquire Wisdom, The Way of Wang Yang-ming』을 건네주었는데, 그 책을 읽으면서 본인은 정말 신약성서 마태복음 13장 이야기의 주인공처럼, 밭에 보화가 감추인 것을 발견하고서 돌아가서 모든 소유를 팔아 그 밭을 산 사람처럼 동아시아 신유교의 가르침을 큰 기쁨과 행운으로 맞이했다.

당시 서유럽에서 한국인으로서 기독교 신학을 전공으로 공부하면서 민족적 자존감이 많이 흔들리는 것을 경험했다. 또한, 학문하는 사람으로서 학문적 사유의 토대와 정체가 약한 것을 느끼면서 고심하고 있을 때였다. 그때 왕양명이라는 한 강력한 유학적 인격을 만났고, 그럼으로써 그 고민과 고심을 풀기 위해 나아가는 길에서 환한 등불을 만난 것 같았다. 양명은 서구 기독교사에서 마틴 루터(Martin Luther, 1483-1546)와 견주어질 정도의 전복적인 사상가로 평가받는다. 그때까지 본인이 기독교 초월신 신앙에서만 가능하다고 여겼던 큰 인격적 깨달음과 삶의 전회를 바로 기독교 유일신 하나님과는 다른 모습과 방식으로 그려지는 유교 내재적 초월(天/理)의 체험(心卽理) 안에서 유사하게 본 것이다. 또한, 이후 그 삶의 실천적 행보가 어떤 기독교 신앙인의 그것보다 덜하지 않은 것도 보았다. 물론 본인의 그 등불에 대한 이해가 유학 생활을 마치고 한국에 돌아와서 한국 유교에 대해서 더 공부하고, 특히 그때부터 본격적으로 여성 생활인과 직업인으로서 살아가며 또 다른 차원을 알아가면서는 다시 변하기 시작했다. 그래도 그 첫 만남의 충격은 여전하다. 지금 21세기 초 인류가 코로나 팬데믹이라는 복병을 만나기 전까지 전 지구가 서구 기독교 문명으로부터 세례를 받았지만, 그러나 오늘 심각한 한계가 드러나면서 다른 길을 탐색하며 그 ‘이후(以後, postmodern)’를 찾고 있다. 본인은 그 길 위에서 동방의 유교와 그 핵심 정신으로 나타나는 선비정신이 하나의 결정적 역할을 할 것을 의심치 않는다.

이번 회부터 “한국 페미니스트 신학자의 유교 읽기-신학(神學)에서 신학(信學)으로”라는 제목으로 격주로 연재하고자 하는 글은 이런 본인의 생각을 좀 더 구체적으로 풀어내고 변증해 가는 과정일 것이다. 그것은 본인이 여전히 유교 공부에서 일천함을 벗어났다고 할 수 없지만, 그 안에 보화가 담겨있다는 것을 엿보았기 때문에 용기를 낸 시도라고 할 수 있다. 오늘 매우 유아독존적이고, 자기 우월에 빠져있는 한국 교회나 서구 가치 중심적 인류 문명에게 자기와 다른 타자를 듣는 일은 긴요하다. 그 타자 중에서, 아니 어쩌면 그 타자와 자기 바깥이라고 생각했지만, 유교 道는 특히 한국 신앙인에게는 더 오래된 스스로의 토대로서, 그래서 이미 만남이 있었지만, 지금까지 의미를 잘 알아채지 못해서 저버렸고 억눌렀고 무시했던 자신이었는지도 모른다.

20세기부터의 한국 개신교 역사에서 끊임없이 다른 것과의 대화를 통해서 자신을 새롭게 하는 일에서 뛰어났던 함석헌 선생은 지금 인류가 가장 원하고 필요로 하는 것은 ‘새 종교’라고 갈파했다. 그의 『뜻으로 본 한국역사』는 한국 유교 전통에 대해서 그렇게 호의적이지 않았다. 그는 기독교가 불교, 유교를 일깨워서 다시 생기를 주어야 한다고 발설했다. 하지만 한편으로 예로부터 우리나라의 산 힘은 늘 ‘선비(士)’에게 있었다고 하면서 자신이 매우 중시한 ‘뜻(志)’이란 바로 ‘선비(士)’의 ‘마음(心)을 말하는 것이라고 했다. 그리고 그 ‘선비(士)’란 ‘열(十)’에서 ‘하나(一)’를 보고, ‘하나(一)’에서 다시 ‘열(十)’을 보는 뛰어난 통찰과 통섭, 통일의 마음을 지닌 사람이라고 지적했다. 그는 “유교야말로 현실에 잘 이용된 종교다”라고 하면서, 앞으로 지구 인류의 삶이 크게 ‘민족’, ‘소유권’, ‘가정’이라는 “인류 사회의 캠프를 버텨 오던 세 기둥”에 대한 이해에 따라 좌우될 것이라고 했다. 즉 오늘 20세기 이후 인류의 삶이 이 세 기둥에 따라 크게 흔들리면서 어떻게 거기에 대한 관점을 새롭게 정립하는가에 따라서 큰 차이가 날 것임을 말한 것이다.

앞으로 연재될 유교와 기독교와의 대화도 주로 이와 유사한 물음들에 대한 답을 찾아가는 일이 될 것이다. 그러기 위해서는 예를 들어 우리의 유교 이해에서도 먼저 그 유교 문명의 발단이나 전개 역사 등을 살필 때 한국 유교를 단순히 중국 유교로부터의 피동적인 수용자와 수혜자로 보지는 않을 것이다. 그래서 지금까지는 잘 언술 되지 않았지만, 더욱더 주체적이고 능동적인 역할과 기원에 대한 탐색, 그 전개에 대한 고유한 역할 등을 언급할 것이고, 이러한 일을 통해서 우리의 대화는 지금 인류 문명의 미래를 위해서 중요한 관건이 되는 ‘민족’이나 ‘국가’의 경계 물음에 대해서 어떤 대안을 찾을 수 있는지 물을 것이다. 두 번째 ‘소유권’과 관련한 탐구는 오늘 인류 문명이 온통 빠져있는 지독한 유물주의와 경제 제일주의, 그를 통한 자아의 무한 팽창과 번영에 대한 욕망을 어떻게 제어할 수 있을 것인가 하는 물음과 관계된다. 이것은 우리 궁극의 가치와 그에 다다르고자 하는 길을 무엇으로, 어떻게 보느냐와 긴밀히 연결될 것인데, 오늘 한국 교회의 탐욕과 물질주의에 대해서 우리의 오래된 미래로서의 유교는 무슨 말을 할 수 있는지 살피고자 한다. 마지막 ‘가정’이나 ‘가족’에 대한 물음과 관련해서는 지금 시급한 실존적 물음이 된 성(性)과 몸, 가족적 삶과 돌봄, 보살핌이나 탄생과 떠나감, 집 등에 관한 물음이 탐색 될 것이다. 이 물음과 관련해서는 오히려 유교 측에 대한 현대 서구 페미니즘으로부터의 비판과 달라짐이 요청될 터인데, 이에 대해서 유교 道는 무엇을 말할 수 있는지, 어떻게 그 높은 파도 앞에서 응전하면서 그러나 단지 일방적인 들음만이 아닌 오늘 ‘고립’과 ‘외로움’을 세기의 특징으로 규정하는 서구 페미니스트들에게 무엇인가 말해줄 것이 있는지 등을 돌아보고자 한다. 여기서도 둘의 대화가 결코 일방적이지 않다는 것이 드러날 것이다.

21세기 인류의 삶은 이제 더는 어떤 초자연적인 神의 이름이나 초월 이야기로 좌우되지 않는 급진적인 탈종교화의 시간으로 들어섰다. 그러나 그 가운데서도 여기 지금에서의 모든 초월적 차원의 탈각은 또 다른 심각한 문제를 일으킨다는 것도 함께 경험하고 있다. 그래서 우리는 ‘가장 적게 종교적이면서도 참으로 풍성하게 영적인 초월’을 찾아 나서고자 한다. 거기서 유교의 道가 줄기차게 여기 지금의 지극한 일상과 평범, 정치나 교육과 같은 구체적인 세간(世間)의 삶에서 초월과 궁극을 찾는 ‘하학이상달(下學而上達)’이나 ‘극고명이도중용(極高明而道中庸)’을 말하는 것이 시선을 끈다. 그래서 이러한 모든 정황을 더는 어떤 초월 神에 관한 이야기(神學)가 아니라 여기 지금 우리의 진정한 눈뜸과 새로운 인식(信學)이 가장 긴요한 관건이라는 의식에서 이번 연재의 부제로 ‘신학(神學)에서 신학(信學)으로’를 가져왔다.



이은선(李恩選) 교수는 세종대학교를 명예퇴직하고 지금은 현장(顯藏) 아카데미 <한국信연구소> 대표를 맡고 있다. 21세기 인류 문명의 전환을 위해 유교와 기독교의 대화를 지속하면서 종교(聖)와 정치(性), 교육(誠)의 통합학문적 시각에서 한국적 신학(信學)과 인학(仁學)의 구성을 탐색한다. 지은 책 중에는 『잃어버린 초월을 찾아서-한국 유교의 종교적 성찰과 여성주의』(2009), 『한국 생물生物여성영성의 신학』(2011), 『생물권 정치학 시대에서의 정치와 교육-한나 아렌트와 유교와의 대화 속에서』(2013), 『다른 유교, 다른 기독교』(2016), 『환상과 저항의 신학』(공저, 2017), 『세월호와 한국여성신학』(2018), 『3·1운동 백주년과 한국종교개혁』(공저, 2019), 『동북아 평화와 聖·性·誠의 여성신학』(2020), 『사유하는 집사람의 논어 읽기』(2020), 『한국전쟁 70년과 ‘以後’교회』(공저, 2021), 『李信의 묵시의식과 토착화의 새 차원』(공저, 2021) 등이 있다.

이은선 한국신信연구소 대표·세종대학교 명예교수 cnews1970@naver.com
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Yale / Coursera Online Religion and Ecology

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Religions and Ecology: Restoring the Earth Community

Enroll in these free courses from Yale University and Coursera to understand the ecological teachings and practices of religious traditions across the planet.

These Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) explore the ecological dimensions of the world’s religions. Developed over the course of several years, they draw on a rich variety of lectures, videos, readings, and interviews with scholars, religious leaders, and environmental practitioners from around the world. They highlight religious ideas and practices inspiring ecojustice movements in response to the challenges of the climate emergency, biodiversity loss, and pollution.
Introduction to Religions and Ecology
Indigenous Religions and Ecology
South Asian Religions and Ecology
East Asian Religions and Ecology
Western Religions and Ecology

We recommend taking “Introduction to Religions and Ecology” first to provide context for navigating the other courses.

Completion of these five courses leads to a Coursera Specialization certificate. A Specialization designates a series of related courses designed to help a learner gain a basic understanding of a given topic.

In order to audit these courses at no cost, please first log in or sign up for a free Coursera account. After logging into Coursera, click on the course’s “Enroll for Free” button, then select “Audit this course” at the bottom of the dialogue box. The course specialization has a free limited trial period, but the individual courses can be audited for free indefinitely. The audit button will appear when registering using the individual course links (but not the specialization link).

For further information, see our FAQ Fact Sheet.


Christianity and Ecology

We are also launching a separate course exploring the ecological dimensions of Christianity, the world’s most populous religion. This course highlights diverse theological and moral voices from the Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and Evangelical traditions. It also affirms the emerging movements of ecojustice in Christianity.
Go here to register for this course.



All of these courses were created by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim and draw on interviews and writings of many other historians of religions, theologians, religious leaders, and environmentalists.

We hope you will join us in exploring the ecological depths of these diverse religious traditions.



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Header Image: Courtesy of Greenfaith

알라딘: 다시개벽 2021.봄○ 다시개벽의 역사철학, 내재적 신성을 아는 방향: 백낙청과 김종철의 비판적 포월을 위하여 / 홍박승진

알라딘: 다시개벽 2021.봄


다시개벽 2021.봄 - 형상 없는 흔적, 흔적 없는 형상 
다시개벽 편집부 (지은이)모시는사람들2021-03-01


책소개

계간지『다시개벽』제2호로, 2021년 봄호이다.『다시개벽』은 백 년 전에 창간되었던 우리나라 대표적인 종합잡지『개벽』을 복간한 계간지이다.『개벽』 잡지의 기본적인 태도는 이 시대가 문명사적인 대-전환기, 지구적 전환기라는 시대 인식을 기반으로 새로운 인문학적인 인식 지평을 제시하는 것이다.


목차
● 권두언 PROLOGUE
○ 서학은 형상이 있으나 흔적이 없고 동학은 형상이 없는 듯하나 흔적이 있다 / 홍박승진

● 다시쓰다 RE: WRITE
○ 미래로서의 동양, 동양의 미래: 미국 사이언스픽션과 테크노-오리엔탈리즘 / 유상근
○ 개벽문학의 현황과 전망 / 유신지
○ 사회주의를 넘어선 평등의 상상력: 김남천 소설의 여성 인물 / 정우경
○ 한국의 신관을 찾아서: 신들의 전쟁-하늘님 신명神名 논쟁 / 이호재
○ 최제우의 ‘시천주’와 김소월의 ‘산유화’ / 임동확
○ 대중문화 이론도 개벽할 때-연재 (1) / 김동민

● 다시읽다 RE: READ


○ 한국 역사에 대한 신채호의 상상: 『독사신론』을 중심으로 / 이우진
○ 안상수의 조형과 담론: 오리엔탈리즘인가, 대안적 근대성인가 / 최범

● 다시말하다 RE: DIALOGUE
○ 창작은 죽어가는 것에 대한 살림의 감각으로부터 나온다 / 안상수

● 다시그리다 RE: IMAGINE
○ 차도하, 시 말더듬이 외 1편
○ 성다영, 시 블라인드 외 1편
○ 김승일, 시 이것은 여행이 아니다 외 1편

● 다시잇다 RE: CONNECT
○ 『지구전요』 / 최한기 (김봉곤 번역)
○ 외래 사상의 흡수와 소화력의 여하 / 이돈화 (김현숙 현대어 역)

접기
책속에서
P. 9 권두언

서구 제국주의 문명의 문제는 신 또는 하늘님이라는 가장 고귀하고 신성한 가치를 마음과 생명의 내부에서가 아니라 그것들의 외부에서 찾고자 한다는 데에서 비롯한다는 것이 서학에 대한 수운의 진단이다. (중략) 최제우의 진단은 서구 제국주의 문명에서의 생활 방식이 의도적으로 하늘님을 위하지 않는다거나 공공연하게 자신만을 위한다고 보는 것이 아니다. 하지만 우리 밖의 하늘님에게 조아리고 절을 한다는 것은, 비록 그것이 하늘님을 위하는 일일지라도, 궁극적으로는 하늘님을 위하는 일이 아니라 하늘님에 투사된 자신의 인격만을 위하는 일일 수 있다[頓無爲天主之端 只祝自爲身之謀].4  접기
P. 34 미래로서의 동양, 동양의 미래

결국 동양의 역사를 어떻게 기록할 것인가 하는 문제뿐만 아니라, 동양의 미래를 어떻게 상상할 것인가 하는 재현-전쟁과 상상-전쟁의 문제에 있어 단순히 동양인이 등장하는 미래가 아닌, 동양인에 의한, 동양인을 위한 서사가 그 어느 때보다 필요하다. 동양의 미래를 오리엔탈리즘의 이데올로기에 맡기기보다, 이제 한국인을 비롯한 동양인이 직접 상상한 미래와 그 미래를 재현하는 수백수천의 서사들이 등장해야 한다.  접기
P. 44~45 개벽문학의 현황과 전망

동학적 사유의 핵심이 되는 ‘시천주’ 사상, 즉 작품에서 다양하게 형상화되고 있는 ‘합일의 상상력’을 바탕으로 문학 작품을 살피는 과정은 당대에 이루지 못했던 우리 전통시학의 독자성을 확보함과 동시에 이것이 세계적 보편성을 획득하는 연속성 안에서 다루어져야 할 것이다. 이와 같은 시각으로 동학적 사유를 근간으로 한 근대문학을 적극적으로 발견하고 그것에 의미를 부여하는 일은 향후 문학사의 과제로 남을 것이다.  접기
P. 80~81 최제우의 ‘시천주’와 김소월의 ‘산유화’

김소월은 1925년 첫 시집 『진달래꽃』을 펴낸 이래, 지금껏 민족적 서정의 ‘민요시인’ 또는 ‘정한(情恨)의 시인’ 등으로 불려오고 있는 형편이다. 특히 그 과정에서 김소월의 주요 발표무대였던 『개벽』지와 관계는 물론 그의 시 세계와 수운의 ‘시천주’에서 비롯된 동학사상의 연관성 및 영향관계가 철저히 망각되래 기화(氣化)작용으로 본질 현현한[外化] 하늘님과 각기 자신의 내면에 모신 본질 은현한[內有] ‘신령’의 상호작용 내지 그 사이의 신묘한 만남과 일치의 경지를 직감적으로 선취하고 있다. 마음의 근원에서 발원하는 ‘심령’과 스스로 피고 지는 한 송이 꽃의 우주적 마주침을 통해 대상과 주체가 격절되지 않는 ‘하늘님’ 세계를 노래하고 있는 것이 김소월의 ‘산유화’다.  접기
P. 105 다시개벽의 역사철학, 내재적 신성을 아는 방향: 백낙청과 김종철의 비판적 포월을 위하여

백낙청-김종철 논쟁은 직선적 역사철학과 순환적 역사철학 각각의 한계를 드러낸다. 양자를 우리의 실생활에 적용해 보자. 자본주의적 생산 양식에 발맞추어야 한다는 전자의 논리를 고수한다면, 이미 현실로 닥쳐오고 있는 기후위기를 피할 수 있을지 의문이다. 반면에 농경 문명으로 되돌아가자는 후자의 논리를 따른다면, 농경 문명이 해소하지 못하거나 강화하였던 여성 억압과 아동 착취 등의 구시대적 억압을 얼마나 해소할 수 있을지 의문이다. 이때, 다시개벽의 사유는 우리 삶에 더 절실한 역사철학이기 위하여 직선과 순환을포월(包越)하는 역사철학으로 해석될 필요가 있으며 그렇게 해석될 근거가 충분하다.  접기
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저자 및 역자소개
다시개벽 편집부 (지은이) 
저자파일
 
신간알리미 신청
최근작 : <다시개벽 2021.겨울>,<다시개벽 2021.가을>,<다시개벽 2021.여름> … 총 5종 (모두보기)
출판사 제공 책소개
■ 이 책은

계간지『다시개벽』제2호로, 2021년 봄호이다.『다시개벽』은 백 년 전에 창간되었던 우리나라 대표적인 종합잡지『개벽』을 복간한 계간지이다.『개벽』 잡지의 기본적인 태도는 이 시대가 문명사적인 대-전환기, 지구적 전환기라는 시대 인식을 기반으로 새로운 인문학적인 인식 지평을 제시하는 것이다. 구체적으로 서구-인간-물질 중심의 근대문명의 폐해가 점증하는 데 대하여 동방-만물-영성 중심의 탈-근대문명, 개벽(동학)문명을 대안적인 문명으로 제시하는 것이다. 또한 ‘서구 지향, 영향’에 편향된 현대 한국사회의 담론장에 한국적, 자생적 사유의 방법론과 그것을 통한 인식지평(철학과 문학과 사학)을 제시하는 것이다. 『다시개벽』 제2호는 ‘한국예술론 특집’으로 이것을 수운의 표현인 “형상 없는 흔적, 흔적 없는 형상”으로 표어화하여 여러 필진의 담론들을 일관성 있게 배치하였다.

■ 책 소개

『다시개벽』은 “겨울 - 봄 - 여름 - 가을”의 계절별로 각각의 고유한 주제를 지향한다. 봄호는 “한국 자생적 사유의 발굴”을 핵심적인 과제로 삼는다. 겨울호는 ‘영혼의 탈식민지화’로서 서구 지향적 사유의 한계를 지적하는 것이고, 여름호는 ‘지구학’이라는 화두로, 인간과 비인간의 위계 서열을 무너뜨리며 지구적 위기의 대안적인 삶의 지평을 모색한다. 가을호는 ‘신인간학’을 핵심어로 하여 여성·성소수자·유색인·아동·장애인·노동자 소수자, 피억압자의 해방을 위한 변혁과 창조의 사유를 제시한다.

‘한국 자생적 사유의 발굴’은 ‘한국 전통적, 고유의 사유 체계와 문화 양식을 낡은 것으로 치부’했던 근대 이후의 한국사 전체에 대한 반성에서 출발한다. 즉 지난 100여 년 한국사회의 역사가 자의반 타의반으로 “우리는 어떻게 서구적 근대를 따라잡고, 완성하고, 오히려 서구를 추월하여 앞서갈 것인가?”라는 “잘못된 질문”에서 출발하여 진전되어 온 것을 바로잡는 것으로부터 시작해야 한다고 본다.

이러한 작업을 2021년 봄호에서는 ‘한국적, 자생적 문화예술에 대한 이해’로써, “새로운 질문”을 이끌어내고 그에 따라 “새로운 답변”을 찾아가고자 한다. 이러한 ‘한국적 문화예술 이해’의 근거로『다시개벽』제2호에서 주목한 것은 동학을 창도한 수운(水雲 崔濟愚 : 1824~1864)이 “서학은 형상이 있지만 흔적이 없다. 우리 도[東學]는 흔적이 없는 듯하지만 형상이 있다”고 한 말이다. 이러한 수운의 입장은 서학의 관점을 전복(개벽)할 뿐만 아니라, 동양 고유의 전통적 맥락도 전복하는 파격성이 있다. 이것을 통해『다시개벽』 제2호에서는 그동안 온전한 ‘형상’(담론화)을 갖추지 못하였던 한국적인 예술론의 흔적을 드러내고 있다.

<다시쓰다> 꼭지는 다음 여섯 가지 글로 구성된다. (1) 유상근은 여전히 서구적 시각에서 대상화, 주변부화되고 있는 동양-한국에 대한 사고방식들을 ‘테크노-오리엔탈리즘’을 중심으로 살피고, “동양인 자신의 미래로 상상하기”를 요청한다. (2) 유신지는 “한국 현대문학을 ‘동학’과 같은 한국 고유의 자생사상으로 해석하는 연구들”이 활발해지는 현황 소개함으로써 ‘개벽문학’이 한국문학사의 새로운 연구 흐름을 형성할 것임을 예고한다. (3) 정우경은 한국 근대 ‘사회주의 작가’ 김남천 소설에서 ‘자생적 평등주의’의 지향을 발견함으로써 그의 문학을 그동안 (외래적) 사회주의적 맥락에서 이해하려 한 경향으로부터 탈피하고 새로운 지평을 연다. (4) 이호재는 ‘한국 고유 사상’의 ‘신관’이 서구 전통의 종교와 혼재되고 나아가 그들에 의해 전용되며 압살되는 사태를 실피며, ‘한국 자생 종교 특유의 신관’을 오롯이 재건해 나가야 함을 역설한다. (5) 임동확은 김소월의 시 <산유화>에서 발현된 ‘고유성’을 독특한 시각 - 동학적 기반에서 바라본다. (6) 김동민은 ‘대중문화 이론’에서의 ‘개벽 선언’을 지향하며, 인문사회과학과 자연과학의 학제 간 통섭의 새로운 방법론을 제시한다.

<다시읽다>에서 (1) 홍박승진은 ‘다시개벽의 역사 철학이 내재적 신성에의 앎’을 척도로 한다는 점에서 백낙청의 직선적 역사 철학이나 김종철의 순환적 역사철학을 포월한다고 주장한다. (2) 이우진은 단재 신채호의 한국사 연구가 한국의 토착적 정신문화를 주체적으로 재발견하는 개벽의 상상이었다는 관점에서 재조명한다. (3) 최범은 한국의 디자이너 안상수의 작업이 한국 현대디자인에서 거의 유일하게 담론을 갖춘 조형이자 원본성(독창성)을 갖춘 조형이라는 비평적 접근을 시도한다.

<다시말하다>에서는 스스로 ‘개벽파’라고 자처하는 안상수를 만나 그의 디자인 철학을 들어보았다. 한국의 디자이너로서의 안상수의 진면목에 십분 접근하고 있다.

<다시그리다>는 이번호부터 시작하는 문학란으로 차도하, 성다영, 김승일 등 세 사람의 시인의 작품 각 2편을 수록하였다. 이로써, 종합잡지『개벽』의 복원에 한 걸음 더 다가가면서 독자와 한층 다양한 경로로 소통하는 길을 만들어 나간다.

<다시잇다>는 창간호에 이어『개벽』 수록 원고의 현재적 재음미를 계속해 나가면서, 이번호부터는 혜강 최한기의 『지구전요』를 함께 수록한다. 이로써, 현대 ‘한국철학’과 ‘사상’의 연원과 연속성을 풍부하게 해 나간다. 접기

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<다시개벽>을 읽어야 하는 이유 새창으로 보기
"다시개벽"이라는 말은 '다시'와 '개벽'이라는 말로 구성됩니다. 여기서 '개벽'은 일반적으로 현재 가장 널리 알려진 증산 계열의 신종교의 용어가 아니라, 본래[그보다 앞서서] 동학을 창도(1860)한 수운 최제우 선생이 가장 먼저 '철학적/사상적/역사적/문명적' 차원에서 쓴 말입니다.[물론 '개벽'이라는 말 자체는 그 이전부터 널리 쓰여 왔습니다만.]

수운 역시 '개벽'을 본래의[전통적인/오래된] 의미로 쓰기도 했습니다. 그 의미는 '천지개벽'의 뜻으로 오늘날의 현대과학의 입장에서 말하자면 '빅뱅'의 순간이나 '지구와 대기가 처음 형성되는 것'쯤으로 정의할 수 있습니다. 이것이 '개벽'이라는 말의 '전통적인 의미'이지요. 그러나 이런 의미의 '개벽'을 수운이 '말하고자' 하였던 것은 아닙니다. 그러나 수운의 동학에서 '개벽'이 본격적으로/창의적으로/동학적으로 쓰일 때의 의미는

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첫째는, '다시개벽'의 뜻입니다. 이때 다시의 의미는 이 시대가 마치 하늘과 땅이 처음으로 생길 때처럼, 다시 말해 무에서 유로, 혼돈에서 질서로, 불모에서 (생명)가능성의 세계로 전환하던 때처럼 근본적이고, 막대하고, 막강한 대전환의 시기라는 의미로 쓰입니다. 이것이 다시개벽의 첫 번째 의미입니다. 

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둘째는, '인문개벽'의 뜻입니다. 즉 수운의 동학의 개벽의 본격적인 의미의 두 번째는 선천개벽이 주로 물질적인 측면에서 하늘과 땅이 생성되거나 그 기능을 발휘하는 때라는 의미와 대비해서, 다시개벽은 '인문개벽' 다시 말해서 인류의 사회적/역사적/문화적 삶의 방식, 세계관, 인간관, 가치관이 근본적으로 전환되는 시기라는 의미를 나타냅니다.

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셋째는, '정신개벽/인심개벽'의 뜻입니다. 이것은 비유적으로 설명하겠습니다. 수운이 동학을 창도하던 근대 시기[19세기 중엽] 전후의 시기까지 인류 역사는 일찍이 마르크스가 통찰하여 설파한바 있듯이 '하부구조가 상부구조를 결정해 온 역사'라고 할 수 있습니다. 다시 말해 물질적인 토대/존재의 조건이 정신적/문화적/심리적/사상적인 양상을 결정하였다는 것이지요. 마르크스는 인간의 역사의 제 양상을 섭렵하고 망라한 결과로 이러한 통찰을 얻어냈습니다. 그러나 수운은 이러한 선천의 역사, 즉 물질적/생산관계적 토대가 인간의 삶과 운명을 결정적으로 결정하는 시대로부터 '개벽'적인 '변곡'이 일어나고 있음을 통찰하였습니다. 다시 말해 인간의 사상과 정신과 심리와 문화 같은 상부구조가 도리어 하부구조[물질적/존재론족] 조건에 영향을 끼치며, 그 역전관계가 점점 더 심화/확장되어 간다는 것입니다. - 중요한 것은 이 시기에 들어 현실 세계에서는 '물질적 측면의 영향력과 발전 정도가 점점 왕성해진다는 것입니다. 우리가 익히 보아온 대로 지난 1.5세기 혹은 3세기 정도의 시기에 인간이 달성한 물질적 발전(?)의 성취는 가히 가공스러울 정도로 전면적이고, 급진적이고, 압도적으로 진전되어 왔습니다. 그러나 실상 그것은 정신적/문화적/심리적/사상적인 측면의 개벽 즉 정신/인심 개벽에 대한 반작용으로서 성대해진 것이라고 할 수 있습니다. - 다른 한편으로, 이 시기를 '인심개벽/정신개벽'의 시대로 규정하는 것은 물질의 기운이 극단적으로 왕성해지는 데에 대응하여 인심/정신의 기운이 '극단적'/'도약적'으로 성숙되어야 한다, 다시 말해 "개벽되어야 한다"는 당위론적인 명제로서 제시되는 것이기도 합니다.

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우리가 지금 보고 있는 코로나19 팬데믹은 곧 닥쳐올 '기후위기'(로 우리가 알고 있는)의 전주에 불과하다는 인식은 어느 정도 보편화되어 있습니다. 그리고 오늘의 이 '코로나19팬데믹"이나 "기후위기" 또 그에 따른/병행하는/그 일부로서의 생물대멸종이나 대재난의 빈발은 바로 이 시대가 "다시개벽"의 시대임을 말해주는 것입니다. 혹은 바로 그러한 현상을 일컬어 '다시개벽의 양상'이라고 말합니다. 이런 의미에서 우리가 겪고 있는 시대는 단지 최근 몇 십년 사이에 진전된 시대가 아니라, 이미 수 세기 전에 이미 접어든 '변곡구간'의 일부임을 알 수 있습니다. 이 '변곡 구간을 지나가는 시기와 그 지나감'을 일컬어 다시개벽이라고 할 수 있습니다. 

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계간 <다시개벽>은 이러한 우리 시대의 우리의 의지를 확인하고, 그것을 갈고 다듬는 일을 해 나가는 것입니다. 이것으로 오늘 각자의 삶의 행태를 돌이켜보고, 우리가 더불어 사는 이 사회의 삶의 양식을 점검해 보고, 우리가 맞이해야 할/맞이하고 싶은 미래 세계 - 우리의 노후, 우리의 후손들이 살아갈 세계를 고난과 재난과 재앙이 없는 / 최소화된 세상으로 만들어가는 데, 지금 우리가 할 수 있는 일이 무엇인지를 고민하고, 제안하고, 토론하고, 공유하고, 공감하는 작업을 하려고 합니다. 

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봄'은 새로운 생명의 의미와 더불어 새로운 삶, 새로운 세상, 새로운 시대의 의미합니다. 무엇보다 그 주인공은 새로운 존재[새싹 = 새 사람]입니다. '나'를 '다시개벽'하는 새 봄이 되기를 바라며, 이 책을 꼭 읽어 보시기를 기원합니다.    





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Namgok Lee | Facebook 리링(李零)을 읽고 있다.

Namgok Lee | Facebook

Namgok Lee
1t9000a5l13chn1su70972i  · 
리링(李零)의 ‘논어, 세 번 찢다’는 서문부터 나 같은 사람에게는 주눅을 준다.
진짜 연구자이기 때문이다.

‘논어를 읽을 때 우리는 그 대상이 어떤 사람들인가를 결코 잊어서는 안된다. 어리석은 사람들처럼 절에 들어가 향을 피우고 혼잣말을 하며 ’오버‘하다가 스스로가 스스로에게 답을 찾아주어서는 안 된다. 공자가 무엇을 말했는지 듣지 않고, 말하지 않은 것도 그의 입을 빌려 우리를 대신해 말하게 해서는 안된다는 말이다’

나는 향을 피우고 혼잣말로 ‘오버’하는 것과는 거리가 멀다고 생각하지만, ‘그의 입을 빌려 우리를 대신해서 말하게’ 하지 않았나 돌아보게 된다. 찔끔.
나는 공자를 제대로 알려고 하지도 않는채 오랫동안 비난 배격해 온 반동(反動)으로 약간 반대 방향으로 기울어지지 않았나 하는 느낌도 있다. 

‘역사적으로 공자를 떠받드는 방법으로는 세 가지가 있었다.
첫째는 정치적 정통성을 강조하는 것으로, 이는 한나라 유자들이 취한 방법이었다.
둘째는 도통을 강조하는 것으로, 이는 송나라 유자들이 취한 방법이었다.
셋째는 유학을 종교로 삼는 것으로, 이는 근대 이후 기독교의 자극을 받아 형성된 구세(救世)설이다. 그런데 이 세가지는 모두 이데올로기로 공자를 사랑한다고 말하지만 사실은 공자를 해치는 짓이다. 나는 이와는 반대되는 방향으로 간다. 공자를 정치화하고 도덕화하고 종교화하는 것에서 벗어나려 한다. 이 셋에서 벗어나지 못한다면 그 사람은 도저히 따라잡을 수 없을 정도로 우매하다 하겠다. 백성을 우매하게 만드는 자는 그 자신이 백성을 위해 우매해진다.‘
나는 유학을 체계적으로 공부해 본 적이 없는 사람이다. 

역사의 격변을 실제로 경험한 현대 중국의 학자가 공산당 정권 아래에서 어떻게 논어를 읽고 있는가하는 것을 아는 것은 나에게는 대단히 귀중한 경험이다.
아마도 학자가 아닌 내가 이 책을 읽다가 부딪치는 어려움도 있을 것이지만, 특히 내가 논어에서 발견한 공자의 무지(無知)에 바탕을 둔 탐구와 인식 그리고 실사구시의 실천 태도에 대해서 어떻게 보고 있는지 궁금해진다.
나는 나름의 판단으로 공자의 사상은 그 생존 당시의 정치체제에서 살려지기 힘든 것은 물론, 지금도 전체주의나 독재 체제에서는 살려질 수 없다고 보고 있는데, 현대 중국의 역사 속에서 어떤 모습으로 배격 또는 찬양 등을 거치며 공자가 평가되고 있는지 다소라도 그 편린을 이해하는데 도움이 되기를 바란다.



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Namgok Lee
4 m  · 
리링(李零)을 읽고 있다.
몇 곳을 옮긴다.

<공자는 ‘여자와 소인은 다루기가 어렵다. 가까이하면 불손해지고 멀리하면 원망한다’(17-25)고 했다. 원문에는 이해하기 어려운 것이 없다. 하지만 최근 사람들은 대단히 시끄럽게 떠들어대곤 한다. 공자가 성인인데 어찌 부녀자를 무시하여 위대한 여성과 덕이 부족한 소인을 하나로 묶을 수 있었겠느냐, 설마 그에게 어머니가 없었겠느냐며 공자를 대신하여 서둘러 ‘여자(女子)’를 ‘여자(汝子)’로 읽고 ‘소인’을 어린 아이로 이해하지 않으면 안된다고 한 것이 바로 전형적인 예이다.>

나는 ‘공자의 변명’이라는 제호로 칼럼을 쓰고 있지만, 이런 식의 왜곡된 변호는 단호히 거부한다.
시대의 한계인 동시에 공자 자신의 명백한 한계라고 본다.

<공자의 일생은 매우 불행했다. 어릴 때도 그는 불행한 아이였으며, 위나라에서 노나라로 돌아왔을 때도 눈물로 마음을 적시고 있었다. 
(중략)
공자를 연구한다면 이들 ‘성적도’를 봐두는 것이, 송(宋) 이후로 공자를 논하면서 그가 어떻게 신비화되었는지를 봐두는 것이 좋을 것이다.
(중략)
사마천의 붓 끝에 묘사된 공자가 아무래도 비교적 믿을 만한 것이다. 
때를 잘 못 만나고 뜻을 이루지 못한 공자. 이것이야말로 공자의 참된 모습이다.>

공자에 비하면 우리는 얼마나 때를 잘 만났는가! ㅎㅎ

<공자가 사진을 남기지도 않았으니 진짜 얼굴을 볼 수도 없고, “만약 새로 조각을 한다고 하면 조각가의 상상에 맡기는 것 외에는 다른 방법이 전혀 없었으므로 더욱 마음이 놓이지 않았다. 이에 유자들은 마침내 ‘전부 아니면 전무’라는 브랜트 식의 태도를 취할 수 밖에 없었다”
여기서 ‘전부’란 다 있다는 뜻, 즉 마음대로 그린다는 뜻이고, ‘전무’란 아예 그리지 않는다는 뜻이다. 어느것이든 모두 당신의 ‘상상’에 맡긴다는 것이다. 
상상을 하면서 마음대로 해서는 안된다고, 명령을 따르고 지휘를 따라야 한다고 말한다면 멍청이 아닌가?>

나는 공자가 태어난 취푸(曲阜)를 가본적도 없고, 별로 가보고 싶은 생각도 없다.
이 책에서 리링의 안내로 돌아보았다.
역사를 통해서 치권력이나 숭배자들에 의해 우상화나 신비화가 덕지덕지 붙어 있는 흔적을 보느니, 논어를 통해 2500여년의 세월을 뛰어넘는 내 상상도 허(許)하라. ㅎㅎㅎ
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Namgok Lee
1t5000a5l13chn1su70972i  · 
쾌청.
'사람에게는 얼마나 많은 시간이 필요한가?'
내가 소설을 쓸 수 있는 재능이 있다면, 한 번  써보고 싶은 제목.
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