Metamorphic nature of death in B. Stankovicʼs novel Sophka (Impure Blood) The paper shifts the focus of research on B. Stankovic’s novel Sophka (Impure Blood) from a naturalistic to a mythopoetic approach. Sophka’s double destructive nature is being related to Eros and Thanatos. Eroto-thanatic symbolization of body and space in which Sophka exists is being analyzed as well as Sophka’s double sacrifice: obedience to the so-called Law of the Father in patriarchal environment on one side, and self-giving to Black Eros, Male from the Darkness on the other. In Stankovic’s novel Thanatos and Eros are like Siamese twins, inseparable, and the world of the heroine, in which they rule, is being portrayed through their metamorphic emanations. Sophka herself is interpreted through both matriarchal and patriarchal principles. As for the matriarchal principle, she represents a personification of a dangerous and fatal woman (one of the characters regards her as a fatal nymph, while another seeks salvation in death). Through the patriarchal principle she is interpreted as a victim of a phallogocentric patriarchal world.
PL
Metamorficzość śmierci w powieści Nieczysta krew Borisava Stankovicia W analizie powieści Bory Stankovicia Nieczysta krew uwaga badawcza została przeniesiona z perspektywy naturalistycznej na mitopoetykę. Podwójny charakter Sofki prowadzi do związku z Erosem i Tanatosem. Analizie poddany został zatem proces erotycznej i tanatycznej symbolizacji ciała i przestrzeni, w której funkcjonuje Sofka, a także jej podwójne cierpienie związane z jednej strony z posłuszeństwem wobec Prawa Ojca w środowisku patriarchalnym, a z drugiej — z poddaniem się Czarnemu Erosowi, Mężczyźnie z Ciemności. W utworze Stankovicia Tanatos i Eros są z sobą nierozerwalnie połączeni, niczym bliźniacy syjamscy, a świat bohaterki, nad którą mają władzę, został ukazany poprzez ich metaforyczne emanacje. Postać Sofki można z kolei rozpatrywać poprzez pryzmat zasady matriarchatu, rozumianego jako niebezpieczne, śmiercionośne kobiece prawo (jeden z bohaterów postrzega Sofkę jako zabójczą nimfę, inny szuka ratunku przed nią w śmierci), jak i przez pryzmat patriarchatu — jako ofiarę fallocentrycznego patriarchalnego świata.
In “Amorous Initiation”, Oscar Milosz tells the story of the love of Mr. Pinamonte for Clarice-Annalena. A chance meeting with a woman who is, among other things, easy and fickle, perhaps even a prostitute, becomes a mystical meeting with the divine. Annalena is ambivalent : An ordinary woman, a bewitching Circe, a Great Whore of Babylon, a sign of the beauty of creation, a symbol of God. Above all she is the way to Transcendence. Annalena reappears years later in the poem of Czesław Miłosz, and, in turn, invites the poet on a great voyage. This is a voyage through the woman to the other side of the looking glass, towards God. When I say “through the woman” it is to be taken literally: “I loved your velvet yoni, Annalena, the long voyages in the delta of your legs”. The woman in the poetry of C. Miłosz is as ambivalent as her prototype in “Amorous Initiation”. She is the incarnation of nature — a crushing, sucking, chewing, digesting thing, she is the fragile creature who arouses deep compassion, a travel companion, an incarnation of Beauty, and finally a symbol of the divine. We are now going to retrace this voyage through women in the poems of C. Miłosz.
Herbert Marcuse, referring to Freud, demanded positing unrepressed childhood sexuality, characterised by polymorphous perversity and primary narcissism, as the basis for human self-realisation, which is to consist in spontaneous sublimation – that is, the process of unconstrained rationalization of the erotic drive. According to Marcuse, this would enable people – both on the individual and the social level – to live without repressing their nature and, simultaneously, to evolve in a rational and creative way. In developing these ideas, Piotr Rymarczyk – focuses on the notion of the oceanic experience, which according to Freud and Marcuse accompanies primary narcissism. He interprets it as a non-instrumental way of experiencing existence and regards it as the basis for a form of identity based the on self-affirmation of one’s own conscious and autonomous being – and not on identification with instrumentalising social roles. He also points to the possibilities of empathic identification with others provided by primary narcissism. Since Marcuse recognized art as a field where the non-repressive model of life is, to some degree, practiced even in contemporary repressive society, Rymarczyk – to illustrate the difference between the model of individual identity and life based on spontaneous sublimation and the one recommended by consumerist mass culture – tries to analyse the paintings of Frieda Kahlo and Balthus. According to him, both models are somehow founded on the body and bodily pleasures. However, in contemporary mass culture we have to do with identity based on the body treated as an external image determining the individual’s social status, and the model of life based mainly on striving for impressing others with the abovementioned glamorous bodily image and apparently hedonistic lifestyle. On the other hand, Kahlo’s and Balthis’s artworks suggest a model of identity based on identification with an animated body, which symbolizes our internal life and a model of self-realisation based on experiencing pleasures which have sensual roots, but which are enhanced by their symbolic dimension being uncovered by activity of the non-instrumental reason.
It is clear that Levinas’s critique of the dominance within Western philosophy of the concept of totality in Totality and Infinity was intended as a response to totalitarian-ism, but the extent to which this determines the organization of the book and the way in which this takes place has been largely misconceived. This is because of the failure to take seriously the opening question of whether or not we are duped by morality. The ethical resistance of the face of the Other does not adequately address that question until morality is secured against the challenge issued by a philosophy that equates being with war and that takes place only through the account of the infinite time of fecundity. Fecundity concretized in the family is the site of resistance to the totalitarian tendencies of any state that seeks for the sake of its preservation to legislate procreation. Hence fecundity and Eros are “beyond the face.” This reading draws on the important role given to fecundity in Time and the Other as well as the texts newly available in the first three volumes of Levinas’s Oeuvres.
To think philosophically about love has been, at least in modern times, a dark matter that has been characterized as an unphilosophical matter. The truths about love are inev- itably tied to experience, they overflow concepts, and keep us on the edge of self- knowledge in between of complex links with what Plato called mania. In fact, the rela- tions between Eros and philosophy are found in Socrates and Plato, and the omnipo- tence of the god of love is as old as our poetic beginnings. These times, certainly, in which love has returned to reflection with more proximity towards experience, the body and its beauty, thinking about love does not exempt itself from the amazing dimension of universality and relationships that the invisible networks of communication pose, since they constitute, in reality, a new version of the universal power of Eros that we inherited from the ancients. Love has always liked, as we can observe since the same lyrical beginnings, to show itself, proclaim itself, as if something vital was played in that revelation that, in a certain sense, does not stop being strange because we are talking about deep experiences of each one’s soul. Now, that showing, which has found a place of privilege, must be thought under the digital cloak that dresses Eros, and think about it, then, as digital Eros. From Plato, Eros is a desire for the beautiful, Eros loves the beautiful. Therefore, the showing itself beautiful of love, requires a reflection in relation with how we show ourselves beautiful, that is, how the possibilities of networks allow us to make, sculpt, elaborate for that purpose. Finally, this implies a revision of the fictitious and the au- thentic of us, what the networks allow of us.
Readers of Levinas are often puzzled by the move from the ethical to the political. The ethical relation is that of the face-to-face. It is marked by inequality and exclusivity. The political, however, is characterized by equality and universality. Since the Enlightenment, its ideal has been a justice that is no respecter of persons; the touchstone of the political has been equal justice for all. How, then, are we to move from the ethical to the political? Does Levinas provide us with a way to mediate between the two? The very notion of mediation presupposes that there are levels that intervene between the individual and the political. For Levinas, such levels are provided by the family. This, I argue, is the import of Levinas’s account in Totality and Infinity of the erotic origin of society. In the final sections of this article, I draw out the implications of Levinas’s account of fecundity for the concept of the political.
Several key lines concerning the relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades, extracted from the Symposium and the Alcibiades 1, are discussed for the purpose of detecting the epistemic value that Plato attributed to eros in his new model of education. As result of this analysis, I argue for the philosophical significance of the relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades as a clear example – even when failed – of the epistemic role of eros in the dialogically extended knowledge.
Over the centuries, Cleopatra VII, the famous queen of the Nile, has uttered thousands of amorous sentences in countless dramas, poems, novels, librettos and films. Historians, writers and artists of all periods, selecting the Egyptian monarch as the “hero” of their works, referred, and still continue to do so, primarily to the Life of Antony by a great Greek philosopher and moralist - Plutarch of Chaeronea. It might seem that it was Plutarch who presented Cleopatra a woman overcome with genuine passionate love. But does the queen in the Plutarch’s work really, even for a moment, experience the true agony of love? The problem with this is that if we reject the Shakespearean prism through which we used to view Cleopatra created by Plutarch and we analyse the Life of Antony exclusively in the context of other works of the moralist from Chaeronea, we will not perceive an Egyptian Dido cursing her lover and dying of love. It is a delusion that in the final parts of the Life of Antony, the monarch’s previously feigned or perhaps concealed love for the Roman commander is manifested as true – as is stated by many researchers identifying in Plutarch’s work the specific elements of romance in which the lovers’ feelings are reciprocated.
Over the centuries, Cleopatra VII, the famous queen of the Nile, has uttered thousands of amorous sentences in countless dramas, poems, novels, librettos and films. Historians, writers and artists of all periods, selecting the Egyptian monarch as the “hero” of their works, referred, and still continue to do so, primarily to the Life of Antony by a great Greek philosopher and moralist - Plutarch of Chaeronea. It might seem that it was Plutarch who presented Cleopatra a woman overcome with genuine passionate love. But does the queen in the Plutarch’s work really, even for a moment, experience the true agony of love? The problem with this is that if we reject the Shakespearean prism through which we used to view Cleopatra created by Plutarch and we analyse the Life of Antony exclusively in the context of other works of the moralist from Chaeronea, we will not perceive an Egyptian Dido cursing her lover and dying of love. It is a delusion that in the final parts of the Life of Antony, the monarch’s previously feigned or perhaps concealed love for the Roman commander is manifested as true – as is stated by many researchers identifying in Plutarch’s work the specific elements of romance in which the lovers’ feelings are reciprocated.
The analysis of medieval hagiographic stories bring an interesting reflection on the role and significance of female breasts in faith transmission. Their presence in cultural transmission, despite common conviction about absence of erotic motives in the culture of the Middle Ages is quite widespread. It is strongly connected with biblical tradition in which the breasts become a symbol of mother-hood and at the same time of youth and joy expressed by wine. Simultaneously in early Christian tradition female breasts become the mark of martyrdom. Mythical narration emerging in this way combines milk and blood as life-giving juices which may be sucked by a “child of God”.
Along with the previous article “Three Levels of Love in the Greek? Words of Love in Non-Christian writers and the Church Fathers,” published in ST 16,1 (2014), this paper provides a comparison between the semantic situation of classical Greek, the language of the Church Fathers and Biblical Greek. It specifically demonstrates that no (threefold) hierarchy of the terms of love has existed in any period. A comprehensive view of the wide spectrum of Biblical words for love is presented (it is not limited to agapan, philein, eran, stergein and related terms), and the usage of words of love in the Septuagint translations from the Hebrew and the New Testament is contrasted with the Septuagint books written in Greek.
If the motif of sociality has its roots in sexuality, then sexuality itself is situated in the ambiguous throbbing of immanence and transcendence. Desirous Eros thus brings us to fundamental immanence, and also elevates us to the Other, to a love without desire. The deformalization of time undergoes several registers in Totality and Infinity. It goes from the “the night of the erotic”, to “the equivocal […, that] allows profanation”, bringing us to Eros, which delivers us from “encumberment” and “it goes toward a future which is not yet and which I will not merely grasp, but I will be […]”. Here, Levinas alludes to the eroticism of time, to fecundity, which manifests the social structure of enamored subjectivity. The affected identity is truly fecund, and that with the fecundity of voluptuosity, which never withdraws into itself. The time variations described in such a manner culminate the movement of the deformalization of time, from the first generative cell (sexuality) to the highest ethical demand (Justice).
The study compares Theognis’ and Socrates’ concepts of love and friendship. Challenging the traditional interpretation that presupposes an agreement between the ideas of the two thinkers, we find out that only Plato’s Socrates works with the concept of love as a unique phenomenon that constitutes the identity of an individual. For Theognis, love appears to be a non-essential part of a contradictory political scheme: helping friends / harming enemies. In case of Socrates, love opens a new crucial horizon in the life of an individual by lifting him to see the divine beauty and characters. Within such an openness an individual changes his attitudes to himself, the others, the issues of communal life and the life in general. Openness, which seemingly evokes anxiety, in reality leads Socrates to a bitter-sweet satisfaction with the constantly examined life, whereas closeness in the circle of conforming friends, which seemingly secures Theognis’ life, leads in the end to a dissatisfaction and desire to die. Socrates’ erotical friendship stemming from love, still ambiguous and ironic, reveals itself to be stronger than unambiguous, pragmatic friendship of Theognis. Only through the erotical establishment, reason and friendship surpass their mortal style and acquire purposeful value for the movement of soul.
The text covers the coexistence of libido and the death drive in Cindy Sherman’s art. Her photographs show morphing, repulsive bodies. Photography as such is characterised by the two above-mentioned opposite drives: it is a fetish and a trace of the past. The connection between Eros and Thanatos becomes closer in Cindy Sherman’s art.
Plato's Lysis, a comprehensive study of philia, can be treated as a prelude to the issue of eros, discussed directly in the Symposium and the Phaedrus. The ideas first introduced by Plato in the Lysis, are developed and elaborated on in the two dialogues on love. Being the first part of the Platonic story of love, the dialogue is an excellent starting point for considerations of eros, especially its synthetic, intermediary and masculine nature.
Das Konzept der erotischen Liebe von Wladimir Solowjow bildet eine originelle theosophische Liebesvorstellung. Die Theorie der Liebe von Solowjow ist nämlich eng mit der eschatologischen Problematik verbunden und ist darüber hinaus eine Resultante der materialistischen (stricte biologischen) und der spiritualistischen Auffassung der Thematik. Solowjows philosophische Analysen der Geschlechtsliebe beweisen, dass es weniger ein Akt ist, der über die rein biologische Ebene hinausgeht, als viel mehr einer, der unsere biologische Natur verwandeln lässt. Er beruht auf der Überhöhung oder Vergöttlichung unserer Natur. Der Sinn einer so interpretierten erotischen Liebe liegt in dem Herausbilden einer breitgefassten Einheit, deren Grundlage darin besteht, das geistig-körperliche Ganze zu erreichen und die Teilung aufgrund des Geschlechts zu überwinden, d.h. das weibliche und männliche Prinzip des menschlichen Daseins zu integrieren.
EN
Vladimir Solovyov’s concept of erotic love represents a rather original theosophical vision of this issue for his theory of love is closely connected with eschatological matters and, in addition to that, constitutes the product of materialistic (strictly biological) and spiritualist presentation of the subject in question. Solovyov’s philosophical analyses of sexual love demonstrate that intercourse is not so much an act that exceeds purely biological level as the one that causes transformation of our biological nature and consists in over-spiritualisation and divinisation (deification) of our nature. The meaning of erotic love, as construed by Solovyov, lays in creating a widely understood unity based on attaining a spiritual and bodily integrity as well as overcoming disintegration connected with the existence of gender, that is integrating the female and male principle of human existence.
PL
Włodzimierza Sołowjowa koncepcja miłości erotycznej to dość oryginalna koncepcja teozoficzna. Sołowjowowska teoria miłości wiąże się bowiem ściśle z problematyką eschatologiczną, ponadto stanowi wypadkową materialistycznego (stricte biologicznego) oraz spirytualistycznego ujęcia tej tematyki. Sołowjowa filozoficzne analizy miłości płciowej wykazują, że jest to akt nie tyle wykraczający poza poziom czysto biologiczny, co powodujący transformację naszej biologiczności, polegającą na przeduchowieniu czy przebóstwieniu naszej natury. Sens tak zinterpretowanej miłości erotycznej tkwi w wytworzeniu szeroko pojętej jedności, której podstawę stanowi uzyskanie duchowocielesnej całości oraz pokonanie rozpadu związanego z faktem płci, czyli integracja żeńskiej i męskiej zasady ludzkiego bytu.
This article concerns the legitimacy of the diagnosis of McKenzie that Marcuse’s philosophy speaks of what today is called organizational performance. But the main purpose of these considerations is to answer the question of whether the proposal to create a new civilization presented by Marcuse and the theoretical attempt to reconcile the pleasure principle with the reality principle is possible. Marcuse wanted to create the vision of a new society as an alternative to the existing industrial society. To this end, he combined Marx and Freud’s perspective because he considered that only the combination of theory of the productive forces and psychoanalytical considerations would help determine the necessary conditions for the emergence of a new, non-repressive reality. Marcuse called for the project of a new principle of reality which would also include the pleasure principle. It seems, however, he did not notice that mutation forces pass into normative forces. What Marcuse expected, on one hand, has been fulfilled, on the other, however, created a lot of disadvantages which he did not foresee.
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Artykuł dotyczy słuszności diagnozy dokonanej przez McKenziego, że w filozofii Herberta Marcusego jest mowa o tym, co dzisiaj nazywa się performansem organizacyjnym. Ale głównym celem niniejszych rozważań jest znalezienie odpowiedzi na pytanie, czy propozycja stworzenia nowej cywilizacji przedstawiona przez Marcusego oraz próba teoretycznego pogodzenia zasady przyjemności z zasadą rzeczywistości jest możliwa. Marcuse przedstawia wizję nowego społeczeństwa jako alternatywę dla dotychczasowego społeczeństwa przemysłowego. Łączy on perspektywę Marksowską z Freudowską, a to dlatego, że uznał on, iż dopiero połączenie teorii sił wytwórczych i rozważań psychoanalitycznych pomoże ustalić niezbędne warunki do powstania nowej, nierepresywnej rzeczywistości. Nawoływał do stworzenia projektu nowej zasady rzeczywistości, która nie wykluczałaby zasady przyjemności. Wydaje się jednak, że nie zauważył on faktu, iż siły mutacyjne niemalże niepostrzeżenie przechodzą w siły normatywne. To, czego spodziewał się Marcuse, z jednej strony spełniło się, z drugiej zaś stworzyło szereg wątpliwości, jak i niedogodności praktycznych, których nie przewidział.
Longos, pisarz starogrecki końca II w., autor pastoralnego romansu „Dafnis i Chloe” żył w epoce „drugiej sofistyki”. Jego stosunek do religii i wiary dość poważny: wiara w istnienie bogów i pietyzm wobec kultu bóstwa autentyczne, a obrazy bogów i opowiadania o cudach przez nich tworzone, nie stanowiły dodatku do opowieści fabularnych, a ważną ich część. Tak samo należy rozpatrywać poświęcenie romansu Erosowi, Nimfom i Panowi. Zdaniem autorki, kwestia stosowania elementów mitycznych w romansie Longosa pozostaje aktualna.
EN
Longus, the ancient Greek writer of the end of the second century, who wrote the pastoral novel „Daphnis and Chloe”, lived in the epoch of the „second sophistry”, when artistic and moral values were actively overvalued, in the epoch, when vision and treatment of religion was changed and rural gods, Pan and Nymphs, were honoured only as a tradition and mainly among villagers. Longus’ attitude toward religion and beliefs was serious enough: faith in gods’ existence and worship to the cult of deity were real for him, and images of gods and narrations about wonders, which they create, were not just an addi-tion to artistic narrative, but an important part of it. Moreover, there is a necessity to ex-amine the dedication of the novel as a gift to Eros, Nymphs and Pan. We consider the elements of myth as not an artistic reception, but as an important component of the writer’s idiostyle, his world outlook. A question about using mythical elements in the Lon-gus’ novel, the subject of our scientific research, is considered to be actual.
The narrator of The Diary of Carnojevic is related to Don Juan, although he identifies himself as Casanova. His intercourses are just ameans of avoiding apathy and demonstrating his masculinity: he does not comprehend the woman’s soul, because he is not empathically involved, and he is uninspired (he is deprived of Eros) and repeatedly confirms his a priori negative attitude towards women. Living archetype of Eros-playboy, the hero only mirrors himself in all those women. By analysing his love choices, dream and ironic of women’s character, we reveal ambiguity of narrator’sarchetype of Anima (Eva/Virgin Mary), but also his fear of women, which is generated from his relationship with his mother (uncompleted separation from the mother is the main reason why the hero cannot have heavenly Aphrodite/Sophia). However, the dream motivates the hero to transcend himself by becoming an Eros-creator by means of panaesthetics.
Usually we are ashamed to touch the issue of eroticism, although it is a quite natural one and, in fact, very close to us. It seems that roots of this shyness date back to the biblical paradise and to the original sin committed by the first people. Since the exile from paradise the erotic sphere is a kind of taboo that we are afraid to invade. Bataille measures wits with this problem very courageously, showing that eroticism played a key role in the pagan religions. With a help of eroticism it was possible to make a transgression (exceed ban), reach sacrum and thereby fully experience the existence. Then Christianity distanced to eroticism and, paradoxically, by associating it with unclean sacrum, permanently closed it within the limits of profanum. Eroticism is however a powerful force with multiple effects, which should not be reduced to a purely sexual experience. Also in Christianity love for God reveals his ecstatic capacity, which can be seen even on the example of the mystical visions of Saint Teresa of Ávila. Looking from this perspective, the positive qualities of a pagan religious eroticism can be better understood and valued. Especially eleusinian mysteries that are associated with a cult of the goddess Demeter seem to be spiritually close to the Christian cults. Whereas in the first case we have a profund love of Mother and Daughter, in the other one a love of Father and Son. The two religions have similar characteristics of a care for moral purity and for a faith in the eternal life. Therefore, in some aspects, they complement each other. Also the similarity of religious symbols that are present in both religions is surprising.
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