Strangest Living Oddities
To my class:
Please feel free ask questions, especially tough ones, to motivate me to write this way. It's how I learn. And learning, along with teaching (though I hardly distinguishing between the two) is pretty much the only thing about which I give a damn.
David Bowie
"Diamond Dogs"
"Rebel Rebel"
"Rock 'n' Roll With Me"
"We Are The Dead"
Recall that Mannerist painting enjoyed presenting the viewer with scandal and violence, with the wildly exceptional. What Diderot and his crew believe, however, is that this kind of scandalization is generally used to mystify and control people, especially the non-philosophical multitidues. Note that Mannerist painting is basically a product (with is not to say tool) of Counter-Reformation culture.
In an age in which the new Religion (Lutheranism and his spiritual offspring), is attempting, gradually, remove the inexplicable and the mysterious from religious practice; Mannerismism seeks to confront its audience with the prodigious, the impossible. The New Science (Descartes and his followers) will further this same project. And we can look to a variety of Baroque thinkers and artist as struggling with these same issues.
Diderot and Enlightenment philosophers, however, work in a somewhat different manner - one which, to my mind anyway, attempts to synthesize the Mannerist interest in the exceptional with the demystification of the New Science. Here, the very exceptions which would have appeared scandalous in the past are again brought front and center in Diderot, though now they are shown not to be exceptions so much as actually the norm. This is because Enlightenment culture, especially as we saw in it Diderot today, believes very powerfully in the "continuum."
Nature, for these Enlightenment thinkers, is a "plenitude" in which anything that can exists must exist. Whereas for Descartes such metaphysical realities as Time and Space were understood to be regular and unbroken continuums, in Diderot (who gets so many of his ideas from proto-biologists) it's the Natural Order (including the order of insects, the order of fishes, the order of mammals, etc.) which is in fact an unbroken continuum of forms. There really is no clear distinction between species but each gradually shades into the next.
In the same way, in the inanimate physical world, there is no clear distinction between sweet and bitter, light and dark, hot and cold. None of the old 'eminent causes' or medieval 'qualities' are thought to hold up anymore. Everything shades into everythig else. It is the function of careful observation and appropriate naming to allow us to identify all these subtle differences, remember them, and make comparisons. Such data are then organized in taxonomical collections. It can be done, as seen below, with butterflies. But it can also be done with books.
Leibniz, who was one of the strongest advocates for the notion of the continuum, was a professional court librarian. The book I'm reading now treats this subject very inadequately, saying it was simply a job this social-climbing philosopher found beneath his dignity. But I'm inclined to complexify our view of the situation, seeing books as cultural equivalents of natural species. Leibniz was hired by the Duke of Hanover to be the literary equivalent of the court butterfly collector, encharged with finding one of everything and laying everything out in perfect order. You can see how Leibniz might bristle at the calling, and yet why in many ways it would have suited him perfectly. In fact, what Leibniz really wanted to be was a "cabinet minister". But once you realize that such collections were called "cabinets of curiosities," you can see how it was that Leibniz balked at being a collector and organizer, per se. It's just that he wanted to collect and organize an entire country and not just a bunch of books.
It's because he believes in such continuums, or the continuum of Nature in general, that Diderot is so interested in the two supposed scandals we mentioned in class today:
1) The Cyclops, because it marks a transitional point between different species, filling in the gaps between which we otherwise might image were empty. Now, the cyclops only lives for a few minutes. But, as Diderot points out, even if it only lived for a second, still it lived, and shows us that Nature creates in every possible direction to produce every possible formation, not just the one's we consider "natural."
2) The Clitoris (along with the hermaphrodite), because it marks the site at which the two sexes can be seen not to stand in total opposition to one another but rather how they in fact meet at a middle point. The sexes are not two discreet entities but rather extremes, the majority of humanity not existing at either end so rather somewhere in the middle. The examination of the clitoris reveals all the crucial "homologies" which show how any given individual, if only a few conditions had been different, might have been born tending toward the other sex. Here, while we're at it, is a complete list of "homologues of the human reproductive system" (click!). The hermaphrodite, then, is not an exception to the laws of nature but rather a confirmation of those laws. It does deny or hide them but reveals them all the more plainly. (p.s. So why doesn't Diderot like Farinelli?)
If you want to read more on such topics, here is an excellent and award-winning book from University of Chicago art historian Barbara Maria Stafford. If you follow here research, you see how she has dedicated her life to rediscovering and rehabilitating a variety of 18th-century modes of knowing and learning which were obliterated by the rise of the modern research university in 19th-century Germany.
(click below for a sample essay from another of her books, Artful Science:
Enlightenment Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual Education
(part one)
(part two)
It is only our refusal to examine these supposed exceptions, miracles or "messages from God" (the literal meaning of the word "monster" is "omen" or "warning"); along with our inability to understand them correctly; which causes us to seem them as scandalous. In a world in which people were purged of superstition, and given in language in which they could freely exchange unbiased information with one another; nobody would be outraged but such exhibitions anymore, or controlled by their spectacular display. And this is precisely Diderot's Enlightenment project: mass education and mass literacy (in this he differs from Rousseau) in the service of mass liberation from tyranny. It's for this very reason the Diderot and the real-life D'Alembert dedicated years and years of their lives to produces the world's first Encyclopedia.
Click below and check out this amazing resource, very much in the spirit of Enlightenment's believe in the free access to information. It should remind you in many significant ways of Dziga Vertov's "Man with A Movie Camera."
Please feel free ask questions, especially tough ones, to motivate me to write this way. It's how I learn. And learning, along with teaching (though I hardly distinguishing between the two) is pretty much the only thing about which I give a damn.
David Bowie
"Diamond Dogs"
"Rebel Rebel"
"Rock 'n' Roll With Me"
"We Are The Dead"
Recall that Mannerist painting enjoyed presenting the viewer with scandal and violence, with the wildly exceptional. What Diderot and his crew believe, however, is that this kind of scandalization is generally used to mystify and control people, especially the non-philosophical multitidues. Note that Mannerist painting is basically a product (with is not to say tool) of Counter-Reformation culture.
In an age in which the new Religion (Lutheranism and his spiritual offspring), is attempting, gradually, remove the inexplicable and the mysterious from religious practice; Mannerismism seeks to confront its audience with the prodigious, the impossible. The New Science (Descartes and his followers) will further this same project. And we can look to a variety of Baroque thinkers and artist as struggling with these same issues.
Diderot and Enlightenment philosophers, however, work in a somewhat different manner - one which, to my mind anyway, attempts to synthesize the Mannerist interest in the exceptional with the demystification of the New Science. Here, the very exceptions which would have appeared scandalous in the past are again brought front and center in Diderot, though now they are shown not to be exceptions so much as actually the norm. This is because Enlightenment culture, especially as we saw in it Diderot today, believes very powerfully in the "continuum."
Nature, for these Enlightenment thinkers, is a "plenitude" in which anything that can exists must exist. Whereas for Descartes such metaphysical realities as Time and Space were understood to be regular and unbroken continuums, in Diderot (who gets so many of his ideas from proto-biologists) it's the Natural Order (including the order of insects, the order of fishes, the order of mammals, etc.) which is in fact an unbroken continuum of forms. There really is no clear distinction between species but each gradually shades into the next.
In the same way, in the inanimate physical world, there is no clear distinction between sweet and bitter, light and dark, hot and cold. None of the old 'eminent causes' or medieval 'qualities' are thought to hold up anymore. Everything shades into everythig else. It is the function of careful observation and appropriate naming to allow us to identify all these subtle differences, remember them, and make comparisons. Such data are then organized in taxonomical collections. It can be done, as seen below, with butterflies. But it can also be done with books.
Leibniz, who was one of the strongest advocates for the notion of the continuum, was a professional court librarian. The book I'm reading now treats this subject very inadequately, saying it was simply a job this social-climbing philosopher found beneath his dignity. But I'm inclined to complexify our view of the situation, seeing books as cultural equivalents of natural species. Leibniz was hired by the Duke of Hanover to be the literary equivalent of the court butterfly collector, encharged with finding one of everything and laying everything out in perfect order. You can see how Leibniz might bristle at the calling, and yet why in many ways it would have suited him perfectly. In fact, what Leibniz really wanted to be was a "cabinet minister". But once you realize that such collections were called "cabinets of curiosities," you can see how it was that Leibniz balked at being a collector and organizer, per se. It's just that he wanted to collect and organize an entire country and not just a bunch of books.
It's because he believes in such continuums, or the continuum of Nature in general, that Diderot is so interested in the two supposed scandals we mentioned in class today:
1) The Cyclops, because it marks a transitional point between different species, filling in the gaps between which we otherwise might image were empty. Now, the cyclops only lives for a few minutes. But, as Diderot points out, even if it only lived for a second, still it lived, and shows us that Nature creates in every possible direction to produce every possible formation, not just the one's we consider "natural."
2) The Clitoris (along with the hermaphrodite), because it marks the site at which the two sexes can be seen not to stand in total opposition to one another but rather how they in fact meet at a middle point. The sexes are not two discreet entities but rather extremes, the majority of humanity not existing at either end so rather somewhere in the middle. The examination of the clitoris reveals all the crucial "homologies" which show how any given individual, if only a few conditions had been different, might have been born tending toward the other sex. Here, while we're at it, is a complete list of "homologues of the human reproductive system" (click!). The hermaphrodite, then, is not an exception to the laws of nature but rather a confirmation of those laws. It does deny or hide them but reveals them all the more plainly. (p.s. So why doesn't Diderot like Farinelli?)
If you want to read more on such topics, here is an excellent and award-winning book from University of Chicago art historian Barbara Maria Stafford. If you follow here research, you see how she has dedicated her life to rediscovering and rehabilitating a variety of 18th-century modes of knowing and learning which were obliterated by the rise of the modern research university in 19th-century Germany.
(click below for a sample essay from another of her books, Artful Science:
Enlightenment Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual Education
(part one)
(part two)
It is only our refusal to examine these supposed exceptions, miracles or "messages from God" (the literal meaning of the word "monster" is "omen" or "warning"); along with our inability to understand them correctly; which causes us to seem them as scandalous. In a world in which people were purged of superstition, and given in language in which they could freely exchange unbiased information with one another; nobody would be outraged but such exhibitions anymore, or controlled by their spectacular display. And this is precisely Diderot's Enlightenment project: mass education and mass literacy (in this he differs from Rousseau) in the service of mass liberation from tyranny. It's for this very reason the Diderot and the real-life D'Alembert dedicated years and years of their lives to produces the world's first Encyclopedia.
Click below and check out this amazing resource, very much in the spirit of Enlightenment's believe in the free access to information. It should remind you in many significant ways of Dziga Vertov's "Man with A Movie Camera."