[lit-ideas] Re: Hylomorphism -- A Dogma?
- From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 01:49:39 -0500
Thank you, JL. When philosophers start talking about 'form' or 'substance'
or 'accidents', etc. I get squirrelly. I'm never sure just what they're
talking about. And it has seemed to me that every philosopher means
something just a little bit different by the terms. Hence the history of
philosophy. My first instinct is to say, well, they're the philosophers,
they should know, and then hit myself on the head with a hammer hoping for
enlightenment. Philosophy is as complicated as physics, I know, and a hell
of a lot older with more subject matter to be mastered so why should I
expect to know what philosophers are talking about any more than what
physicists are talking about without having devoted years to studying them?
Why? I don't know why. But, in fact, I do expect that philosophy should be
self-evidently accessible to. And I think I do know why. It's because I
think Philosophy is about why we live, something that arises more out of the
experiences of my life than through the experiences of others. I think I'm
as much a philosopher as anyone, and I suspect every taxi driver, ditch
digger, CEO and movie star thinks the same. To most of us, I contend,
philosophy is the sense we make of our own lives. But that's certainly not
what the academic study of the canon of thinkers identified as philosophers
is all about. Now if Mike Chase wants to argue that philosophy should not
be confined to the stagnant bays of Marsh's Library, I would tend to agree
with him -- generally. But it seems to me that there is a difference
between, say poetry and philosophy. Take Wallace Steven's stanza from _Le
Monocle De Mon Oncle_.
VII
The mules that angels ride come slowly down
The blazing passes, from beyond the sun.
Descensions of their tinkling bells arrive.
These muleteers are dainty of their way.
Meantime, centurions guffaw and beat
Their shrilling tankards on the table-boards.
This parable, in sense, amounts to this:
The honey of heaven may or may not come,
But that of earth both comes and goes at once.
Suppose these couriers brought amid their train
A damsel heightened by eternal bloom.
Is this poetry or philosophy? Or both? It's obviously not history.
Psychology maybe? It may be of interest to psychologists, but it's
certainly not psychology. Literay Studies has fun with it, and, from my
persepective, Literary Studies is closer to philosophy than poetry. The
passage asks questions about the nature of reality, but only as literature
can, I think -- does Mike Chase say this passage (not to mention the entire
poem) qualifies as philosophy as much as poetry? Richard Rorty seems to
make the claim that fiction is the only real philosophy being done today. I
wonder if he doesn't mean that philosophizing from fiction is the only
philosophy being done today.
----- Original Message -----
From: <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2004 8:03 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Hylomorphism -- A Dogma?
>
> In "Form in literature"
>
> Eric Yost writes -- in the course of the dialogue with M. Chase on the
> balancing form/content in literature and art:
>
> To render form and content as x and y is to posit discrete entities that
can
> be separated, or exist separately and can be combined, as is the case
with
> oil
> and vinegar in salad dressing.
>
> ----
>
> Problem with 'form' is that it is one of the most elusive concepts in
> aesthetics (and theory of literature). Consider Hosper's passage below
where he
> considers how a piece of reasoning can be vitiated by the arguer
_equivocating_
> on the 'sense' of "form".
>
> Of course, being a monoguist (at heart), I don't think (as Hospers) does,
> that 'form' has different _senses_; 'uses' at most -- and it's up to each
> discourser to make it more or less explicit which one she means...
>
> I think the philosophical distinction here is Aristotelian, hylomorphistic
> (hylemorphistic), and the _dogma_ (shall we say) that there is a thing as
> matter and a different thing as _form_. The Platonic amongst us would
oppose
> that...
>
> Cheers,
>
> JL
>
> Hospers writes:
>
> "Consider, for example, the term 'form'. people say, "I don't care about
the
> form, I only care about what it says," "if the subject-matter of a poem is
> not what makes it a good poem, it must be the form," and so on. But the
term
> 'form' is an elusive one. Sometimes by 'form' we mean shape: we say tht
two
> pennies have the same form although they have different 'matter'.
Sometimes we
> mean a species or class: thus, we speak of two compositions as both being
of
> the sonata _form_. Sometimes we have reference to a mode of arrangement
of
> things as opposed to the things that are so arranged: thus, three rhyming
lines
> of poetry could be put in the orders AB, ACB, BAC, BCA, CAB, or CBA,
though
> the lines thus ordered are the same in each case. Sometimes we refer to
the
> 'how' as opposed to the 'what': we take the underlying idea or theme of a
work
> of art to be the content (the what), and the way in which it is expressed
by
> the artist (the how) is called the form. Here is an example of how
confusions
> can arise: a person is convinced that it is not the theme which an artist
> selects for treatment, but rather how he treats this theme, that
determines the
> merit of a work of art: the how and not the what, the form and not the
> matter. He then feels himself committed to the view that only the form
(in
> _another_ *sense* of the word, though he is unaware of this) of a work of
art is
> important (primarily the arragement of its lines and colors) and that the
other
> elements such as we have called the 'associative' are of no relevance at
all.
> This conclusion, of course, is unwarranted: the mood the artist has
created
> in his painting are just as much to do with his treatment of the theme as
> does the formal arrangement of its elements. But, through confusion in
the
> *viciously ambiguous term 'form'*, he may not know this.", John Hospers,
'Problems
> of art', in _Philosophical Analysis_, p. 121
>
> OED quotes for hylomorphism:
>
> 1881 Dublin Rev. Ser. III. V. 236
>
> He..establishes the hylomorphical system held by St. Thomas.
>
> 1888 J MARTINEAU Study Relig. I. II. i. 324
>
> No hylomorphic doctrine can raise its head against the decree of Kant.
Ibid.
> 337
>
> To mark the differentia of these three theories we may call them
> respectively Anthropomorphism, Biomorphism, and Hylomorphism.
>
> 1897 Month Sept. 332 The scholastic doctrine of hylomorphism.
>
> 1888 J. MARTINEAU Study Relig. II. III. i. 142
>
> â?~Matterâ?T, construed by the hylomorphists, declares itself competent
to all.
>
> 1895 F. HALL Two Trifles 27
>
> Solidiform spirits, whether hylomorphous or otherwise, are an object of
> rational curiosity.
>
>
>
>
>
>
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