Draft for the oral presentation
Edmundo Balsemão Pires, Organic, Psychic and Communicative Elements in the Individuation of «Genius» in XVII-XVIII Centuries, Coimbra International Conference on the Semantics of Culture, Coimbra, 24-25 November 20111
The modern analytical use of „culture“ entails the references to modern science, to the objective observation of human groups and to descriptions ruled by „objective“ distinctions. But the norm of the modern scientific objectivity followed aspects of another historical model of description: the ancient model of „human nature“. Such historical conversion needs clarification. Firstly, this means that the descriptions of the collective behavior based on the notion of „culture“ were born in a scientific context peculiar to Europe (as a geographical location) eventually accompanied by a philosophical understanding and explanation. Societies from different historical and geographical roots with no ideas about the scientific objectivation and observation of the collective behavior don„t refer to „culture“ (or equivalents) as a set of analytical tools related to descriptions of social rules, habits and distinctions between populations. Secondly, the approach to how people behave is only embedded in „culture“ if someone mobilizes a specific, localized and precise semantic framework in order to observe how people behave which includes „culture“ as a category. I call this cultural semantics and I will sustain that „cultural semantics“ evolved from modern science and its ideal of objectivity. Thirdly, the large historical conditions of the emergence of the „cultural semantics“ from the European science are related to the literary and philosophical descriptions of „human nature“ in such a way that the XVIII century semantics of „culture“ was deeply connected to the descriptions of „human nature“. A. This association produced semantic contaminations: the ideal of the scientific objectivity is mixed with the evaluative structure of the philosophical descriptions of „human nature“. One is able to describe “objects” as “values” and “values” as “objects”. B. Additionally, this contamination characterized also the ambiguity of the period of the crisis of the unified model of „human nature“. „Culture“ evolved from the symptoms of such crisis.
The understanding of the context of the emergence of the European semantics of „culture“ demands the clarification of the precarious equilibrium of three main aspects of the classical model of the „human nature“: the bio-physiological aspect, the psychic and the social or communicative aspect.
In the present essay I„ll try to explain some dimensions of the „human nature“ model, its development and crisis in XVII-XVIII centuries and its role in the constitution of the modern semantics of „culture“.
1 This paper is a partial development of the research project on “The Individuation of Modern Society” of the research team with the same designation of the research R&D unit LIF – “Language, Interpretation and Philosophy”, FCT and UC. Coimbra International Conference on the Semantics of Culture | 2011 2 Edmundo Balsemão Pires, Organic, Psychic and Communicative Elements in the Individuation of «Genius» in XVII-XVIII Centuries Draft for the oral presentation
The essay is divided in the following parts (I-III).
I. Physiological-psychic continuum: the classical concept of genius and the melancholic individuality. II. Psychic closure: the turn from melancholy to enthusiasm and the diffusion of the semantics of „enthusiasm“ in the definition of “genius”. III. Social dimension: „Genius of the People“, individuality of the Volksgeist and the reference to „culture“.
I Physiological-psychic continuum
The anthropological depiction of the ancient concept of melancholy develops the cosmological explanation of humors from the four elements of the natural composition of the terrestrial beings. The classical explanation of humors as cosmologic and physiological components of nature and human nature started with the Pythagorean School, Empedocles and the Empedocles„s medical School in Sicily, passing through the medical treatises of Hippocrates until Aristotle„s text of the Problem XXX.
The ancient sources combined medical ideas about the bodily composition of some fluids in men, called humors, and notions about proportions in the composition of material and organic beings, biological and cosmic rhythm in nature. The isonomic proportion of the internal fluids and their periodical or cyclical occurrence and the state of the external environment was a condition for health. The distinction between health and disease entails the analysis of the composition of the humors in the organic circulation of the fluids.
The psycho-physiological bridge is an essential aspect to be referred in the double psychic and physiological effects of the humoral proportion in the circulation. The ancient naturalistic concept of the soul, confirmed by Aristotle in his concept of entelequeia of the De Anima books, supports the notion of a continuous influence of the organic in the psychic. Impressions, Ideas, association of ideas, drive and emotions are partially explained by the proportion of the fluids in the animal and human bodies. The behavior is a result of the individual response to this psychic-physiological corridor.
Supported by the general principle that every thing comes from „the same“ and returns to „the same“, or that „every thing that grows upon the earth partakes of its quality“, the Hippocratic concept of human nature referred four humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. The four fluids have similarities with the four natural elements and are combined in proportional mixtures due to the influence of the environment in the balance of the climatic differences of humid or dry, hot or cold.
Hippocrates also conceived the influence of the different climates and the natural Coimbra International Conference on the Semantics of Culture | 2011 3 Edmundo Balsemão Pires, Organic, Psychic and Communicative Elements in the Individuation of «Genius» in XVII-XVIII Centuries Draft for the oral presentation rhythm of the seasons in the variety of the races on earth, including differences in customs and habits. He believed that the disposition to indolence among the Asian people contrasted with the disposition to war among the Europeans. In the Asian people the indolence was partially explained by the influence of the climate in the physical composition of the bodies. On the other hand, the despotic regime reinforced the physical cause. Customs and laws may counteract against the climatic conditioning but only limitedly, because also the customs are under the influence of the universal rhythm of nature and under the variations of the humid and dry, the hot and cold of the year stations. The geographical location is decisive for the understanding of the differences of the human races.
In his commentaries to the Hippocrates„s treatises Galen developed the humoral doctrines and applied the concept of the individual proportion of the circulation of the humors to the explanation of the diseases and to the temperaments. With Galen„s commentaries the Humorism evolved into a serious research on the elements, the distinction between elements and qualities, the relation of the elements and the humors and the psychic-physiological linkage.
In the account of the „human nature“ the Humorism reveals two major descriptive orientations towards „nature“: nature as expression and nature as force. With the idea of expression the Humorism explained the psychic-physiological corridor between the soul and the body and the possibility of the recognition of the reciprocal psychic-organic influence in the unity of the living. With force nature and „human nature“ are depicted through levels of causality from the physical through the organic into the psychic.
In the doctrines concerning the temperament genius is a case study for the examination of both descriptive models of expression and force.
The doctrines of the four humors were partially directed to the explanation of the four temperaments and to the nosological signs resulting from the absence of humoral balance. Black bile was responsible for the mental states of the melancholic personality identified with genius in the Aristotelian Problem XXX, but also abundantly detected in cases of misanthropy, disorientation, deep concern or disgust, phobic behavior and certain types of delirium. As a type of temperament melancholy stands for an abnormal rate of black bile in the humoral proportion. If this rate exceeds some limits melancholy becomes a mental disease.
In the text of the Problem XXX Aristotle described the character of some „exceptional men“ and attributed to a given proportion of the black bile the cause for the extraordinary development of certain faculties in philosophers, politicians, poets and heroes, but also present in cases of the „sacred evil“, epilepsy. His depiction goes from the behavior as external expression of the character to its inner source in a psychic- physiological cause, identified with inner organic drives.
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A comparison with drunken people shows that the behavior and the mental states of the melancholic have their origin in the inner proportion and mixture of the humors, as a singular dynamis, and are not directly caused by external, environmental causes. The nature of the melancholic, responsible for „genius“, is explainable by the rhythm of the contraction and expansion of the black bile in the organic compound according to the presence of cold or hot, dry or humid variations. Caused by the dynamis of the black bile such rhythm explains the maniac-depressive oscillation of „genius“. Aristotle calls „enthusiasm“ the euphoric expression of the humoral mixture under pressure of the hot black bile, leading to dance and singing, ecstasy and audacious actions. Thus, enthusiasm is an expression of exceptionality or „genius“ and also of the melancholic drives.
At the beginning of the modern epoch, the identification of the „exceptional men“ and the contemplative character of the men of science and study with genius and genius with the melancholic temperament was evident in the influent M. Ficino„s De Vita Triplice. M. Ficino„s depictions of the melancholic temperament introduce new cosmological and astrological ideas, speculations about a balance between the bottom and the top of the universe and the idea of a correspondence between micro- and macro cosmos through symbolic analogy. The idea that every thing comes from „the same“ and returns to „the same“ regains force, is applied to the cosmos, to astrology and magic. The melancholic genius is an expression in the human nature of the large principle of this symbolic identity.
A remarkable semantic continuity leads from M. Ficino„s conceptions of the symbolic, cosmic-anthropological, identity of the same to the medical literature of the XVII and XVIII centuries on melancholy, dealing with the pathological expressions of this „spiritual disease“. Another line of the same conception conduces to the appreciation of the melancholic abnormality of the „exceptional men“ in Art, Philosophy and Politics.
Many medical treatises follow T. Bright„s book A Treatise of Melancholie (1586), which followed M. Ficino„s views, with similar anthropological ideas in XVII century. T. Bright„s book was responsible for the adaptation of the concept of spirit to the needs of the explanation of the connection between body and soul in the human nature, in order to establish a continuous corridor between physiological and psychic processes. Meanwhile, the distinctions between a „natural melancholy“ representative of a balanced rate of black bile among the other humors and the „morbid melancholy“ as an excess, cause of disease; the „morbid“ and the melancholy of the „exceptional men“ became generally accepted. At the end of the XVI century André du Laurens published the Discours de la Conservation de la Veue, des Maladies Mélancholiques, des Catarrhes, et de la Vieillesse, Paris, 1597, assuming the thesis of the cerebral character of the effects of the atrabile, especially in morbid cases. But, the analysis of the melancholy of the „hommes ingénieux“ disclosed the importance of the imagination in the elaboration of the drives. The exhalations of the humors of the melancholic genius of the „hommes ingénieux“ in the brain makes the body stronger, increases the capacity Coimbra International Conference on the Semantics of Culture | 2011 5 Edmundo Balsemão Pires, Organic, Psychic and Communicative Elements in the Individuation of «Genius» in XVII-XVIII Centuries Draft for the oral presentation of the memory and makes the imagination more vivid. The final product of such exhalations in the brain is „enthusiasm“, or furor.
The role of enthusiasm becomes more decisive in the literature at the turn of the XVII to the XVIII century complementing the large social and religious critique of enthusiasm, fanaticism or Shwärmerei. In the XVIII century, keeping the reference to the model of Ficino„s symbolic identity the semantics of „enthusiasm“ evolved to a relative independent notion from the humoral concept.
Human nature is only a meaningful construction if one takes for granted the continuity between psychic representations and the emotional basement of communication. In the structure of the melancholic temperament, “enthusiasm” involves the behavioral conversion of the organic humoral state and the internal drives through imagination. Due to this role of conversion of the physiological elements and processes in psychic and the psychic in emotional behavior „enthusiasm“ represents the synthesis of expression and force in the atrabile„s internal and external mixtures, movements and states.
The privileged reference to the imagination in the definition of genius continues in the XVII century and it is evident also in R. Burton„s treatise The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621). The double articulation of the „organic“ and the „psychic“ through expression and force according to the model of human nature is confirmed again in the symbolic analogy of macro- and micro cosmos and in the formula the body is domicilium animae. In R. Burton„s Anatomy... ecstatic imagination and enthusiasm are both proofs of the physiognomic plasticity of atrabile, of humors and of human nature, generally speaking.
R. Burton„s examination of the types of melancholy shows a variety of symptoms sometimes difficult to align, such as the despair, fears, frequent blames and censures, taedium vitae, occasional loss of consciousness, instability, enthusiasm and furor. But, if one looks closer all the symptoms are really there to demonstrate the physiological- psychic corridor: they are symptoms of the theory. The semiotics of the atrabile includes symptoms so vast and distinct that some of them are representative of contradictory tendencies. The maniac-depressive structure of melancholy refers at the same time to symptoms of enthusiasm and to sadness or „accedia“. The differences of hot and cold, dry and humid in the black bile may explain the cyclical rhythm of joy and sadness in behavior. But if the concept of genius is relatively independent from other atrabile„s manifestations it is also possible that with genius one refers only to some symptoms and not the whole. This tendency is a real possibility if the semantic evolution of genius reveals the preference to enthusiasm in the definition of the „exceptional men“, as the XVIII century evolution shows.
II Psychic closure
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By the middle of the XVII century and along the XVIII century a tendency emerges and evolves that led to the description of genius mainly through psychological definitions. The evolution of the semantics of enthusiasm helps to understand this new orientation.
From the philosophical classical tradition the modern semantics of „enthusiasm“ continues the reappraisal of Plato„s concept of the divine inspiration of mania in the Phaedrus and the divisions of the divine mania (244 b - 245 c). In this dialogue, furor and enthusiasm are evidences of the separation of the body from the soul and of the returning journey of the soul to the Heaven, but also signs of the inspiration of prophets, diviners and poets. In the meaning of Plato„s mania there is no reference to melancholy. This means that the translation of the Platonic mania to „enthusiasm“ didn„t include a direct reference to the atrabile. Phaedrus‘s textual passage about the divine mania follows the idea of a direct divine inspiration of the „exceptional men“ instead of describing an internal drive produced by a particular mixture of the humors in the composition of the individual.
From the ancient melancholic composition and consequent cyclical oscillation of depression and mania in its return to the platonic meaning the modern evolution saved the „enthusiastic“, the maniac aspect.
In modern times, the first systematic treatise on Enthusiasm is Méric Casaubon„s A Treatise concerning Enthusiasme (1655). The author is attentive to the religious conflicts and to the fanatical expression of the faith. In the epoch of the crisis of the institutionalized expression of faith the religious movements went into inorganic demonstrations, into private revelations of God or into the miraculous interventions of God through signs of His presence. In the History of England of this period there were many examples of Religious Enthusiasm or so-called „Religious Melancholy“. M. Casaubon didn„t ignore the proximity of enthusiasm and the morbid melancholic states of mind or epilepsy, but he treated the case of enthusiasm separately and conceived its signs as expressions of the exaggeration in the use of imagination. Thus, the psychic formation of enthusiasm is now the main concern of the description.
According to M. Casaubon the correct explanation of „enthusiasm“ must show how the imagination acts as a cause of mental disturbances that can contaminate the understanding and the final judgment. Many observations of the author discuss the influence of imagination in the change of the real perception and the appropriate actions and discourses of men. The political-theological appeal to the enthusiastic adhesion of the people is documented in the most remote religious forms and entails always the use of the exalted fantasy.
In the influent Letter on Enthusiasm Shaftesbury has explained the meaning of the concept combining the psychological dimension of the being inspired with the aspect of the social contamination of enthusiasm through sympathy. At the center of inspiration and sympathy and converting both reciprocally fanaticism is an extreme case of Coimbra International Conference on the Semantics of Culture | 2011 7 Edmundo Balsemão Pires, Organic, Psychic and Communicative Elements in the Individuation of «Genius» in XVII-XVIII Centuries Draft for the oral presentation enthusiasm with religious and political consequences.
The belief in the presence of the muses excites the passions of the soul sufficiently to ignite the genius. On the other hand, the Letter refers to the internal excitation of certain passions in the individual by the presence of a social connection with others that can motivate the excitement of the personal genius.
The psychosocial compound of Shaftesbury„s enthusiasm is a projection of the psychic aspects of the poetic inspiration. This justifies also the psychic character of his notion of sympathy, as an emotional flow from soul to soul.
Hemsterhuis„s idea of the „moral organ“ in the Lettre sur l‘ Homme et ses Rapports expanded Shaftesbury„s premises and F. Hutcheson„s concept of the „moral sense“ and gave an additional force to the former idea of the emotional communication as the ground of sympathy and society which was important in the formation of Herder„s concept of humankind.
III Social dimension
In the second half of the XVIII century as a result of the nationalist and romantic mentality we witness to a creative return to the roots of national literatures and to the discovery of the primitive use of the national languages in so-called national poetry. The case of the Scottish bard Ossian is illustrative. The empirical author of the poems attributed to the fictive "national" Scottish poet Ossian, who supposedly had written in III century some verses in ballads, was James MacPherson. The "translation" of the verses was published initially in 1760 and after in 1765. In a new edition of these poems, published in London in 1796, the author-translator developed some ideas on the relationship between genius and language, genius and melancholy, and genius and nation in A Dissertation concerning the Poems of Ossian. The vindication of the national authenticity and the national linguistic and literary expression, the idea of a special preservation of the spirit of the people in the primitive oral ballads, as spiritus loci, and the privilege of the rough expression in the conservation of the people„s spirit are aspects of MacPherson„s defense of Ossian„s literary creations.
Hugh Blair, a contemporary apologist of Ossian„s authenticity, wrote the following: Ossian himself appears to have been endowed by nature with an exquisite sensibility of heart; prone to that tender melancholy which is so often an attendant on great genius: and susceptible equally of strong and of soft emotion. He was not only a professed bard, educated with care, as we may easily believe, to all the poetical art then known, and connected, as he shows us himself, in intimate friendship with the other contemporary bards, but a warrior also; and the son of the most renowned hero and prince of his age.
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In this fragment, the author imagines the national genius as an emotional aggregate of organic-psychic-social dimensions. The final expression of such aggregate is the transformation of the melancholic bard in a hero, reproducing, again, the maniac- depressive structure of the ancient humoral theories. His heroic self-expression faces the possibility of war as an extreme condition of his own preservation. In the preparation to war, the hero-warrior-bard acts like a collective being-to-death. At the same time his nation represents his „melancholic point“, the ground for his emotional concentration upon himself in the decision towards his own fate and the fate of all.
In the introduction of his collection of poems and popular songs of the northern peoples Herder depicted the Ossian„s poems as genuine expressions of the genius, spirit or soul of the people, not as creations of an abstract author (see: Stimmen der Völker in Lieder, Wien, 1813).
Among the poetical creations of the people those that paint the savage state are the most vivid, sensuous and lyric and can be seen as original expressions of a primitive language (Ursprache). The oral poetry of the ancient Scots, of the Scandinavians and the natives of North America are good examples of the savage state of the Humankind, free from the modern metric and the literary, artificial, civilized fancy. In the same manner of Macpherson and Hugh Blair, Herder conceived also Ossian„s primitive poetry as an emotional response to the collective voice of the nation. This explains the oral form and the musical, lyrical rhythm of the primitive poetry. The poet is the emotional medium expressing the vibrating totality.
Primitive poetry and folk songs are seen as an "archive of the peoples" preserving the rhythmic sense, religious and scientific conceptions, mythology, the deeds of the ancestors and the historical events as they were firstly experienced. The hearing and the memory related to the hearing in the case of music, singing, poetry or dance preserve the vitality of the lyrical expression of the people. In all these examples we are facing the arts of rhythm. Through rhythm, song and poem exert a lasting influence on the sensitivity of the modern readers, leading them to the perception of the savage force of ancient peoples, participating in their psycho-rhythmic flow. The attentive hearing acts like the „moral organ“ allowing the union of the popular lyric sentiment, the narration of the ancient deeds and the actual hearing through a single emotional stimulation. This psycho-rhythmic flow is the „culture“ and includes the „cultural“ transmission along the tradition. In this sense, „culture“ refers to a strong sentiment of belonging and to the belief in the temporal continuity of the same everlasting flow. Thus, we have here united two basic predicates of the cultural semantics: the sentiment of belonging and identity.
In this sense, „culture“ represents the unison, the psychosocial agreement or the identity of the expressive levels of Herder„s „humanity“ by a melancholic-enthusiastic participation in the People„s spirit. Here, the use of the melancholic-enthusiastic oscillator is appropriate. Coimbra International Conference on the Semantics of Culture | 2011 9 Edmundo Balsemão Pires, Organic, Psychic and Communicative Elements in the Individuation of «Genius» in XVII-XVIII Centuries Draft for the oral presentation
In the brochure Instruction sur la Manière de Gouverner les Insensées de J. Colombier and F. Doublet (1785) we find the following distinction between „mania“ and „melancholia“: La Mélancolie est un délire continuel qui diffère de la manie en deux choses ; la première, en ce que le délire mélancolique est borné à un seul objet qu’on appelle point mélancolique la seconde, en ce que ce délire est gai ou sérieux, mais toujours pacifique ... (Second Part of the Instruction...).
The important for this distinction is here „le point mélancolique“. The projection to the nation of some emotional states of mind accomplishes the construction of the nation as „le point mélancolique“ of the national poets but also defines the content of „culture“. This content is a melancholic identification with an „object“ which is saved and transmitted by a delirium. The persistence of such imaginary identification depends on the actualization of the same psychic emotional elements and depends also on the verification of its psychic reproduction in the other minds through the equivalents of the presential communication: hearing and the intimacy of the flow from the voice to the ear is the norm for this psychic-acoustic proximity to the nation.
Inspired in a similar model of the humoral doctrines regarding „human nature“, in his Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte Herder conceived the object of the History of Mankind as a dynamic process grounded on expression and force.
As an aspect in the Natural History the human uniqueness represents a force within the system of all forces. The human senses have affinities with the human body and this one is proportionate to the movement of nature. The relation of diversity and the unity in nature and human nature is possible by the subordination of the parts that make up the earth and man to the general purposes that we can recognize in the human drives: Unser Verstand ist nur ein Verstand der Erde, aus Sinnlichkeiten, die uns hier umgeben, allmälich gebildet : so ist es auch mit die Trieben und Neigungen unseres Herzens (p. 16).
To the physical and organic proportionality of nature and man Herder added the moral proportionality of man, nature and history. This one follows the other and both are subordinate to the solar system. This general system obeys to a Geogenesis in the sense of Buffon„s project of a “History of the Earth”. The philosophical perspective of the Natural History combines the data of the external experience with the vision of an inner continuity of the earth, the emergence of life and Man„s History. This inner continuity is analogous to the symbolic co-reference of macro- and micro cosmos. The term "culture" refers here to the relation between the History of Mankind and the mineral, vegetal and animal evolution. For the understanding of this inner continuity Herder introduces the notion of Bildung, again as a synthesis of impressions, expression and force. The formation accomplishes the inner design of nature in the mature, human expression. The coming to expression of nature in cultivated conditions depends on the custom and tradition. Both, custom and tradition, are the symbolic underpinnings of the human micro Coimbra International Conference on the Semantics of Culture | 2011 10 Edmundo Balsemão Pires, Organic, Psychic and Communicative Elements in the Individuation of «Genius» in XVII-XVIII Centuries Draft for the oral presentation cosmos socially conceived. Thus, they reveal the design of nature in human language, because language, and the literary linguistic expression, par excellence, is the privileged organ of the human formation of nature. Everything on earth used by humans can be converted in language or symbols reducible to human language.
In the second part of his Ideas Herder conceived the Genius der Völker as a force that captures the custom, tradition and the habits of the nations and gives to them the appropriate expression. Genius is the capacity of appropriation of the inner symbolic relations of the whole. The organ of Genius is, again, language. But with „language“ Herder means firstly the exteriorization of the mind. Peoples are endowed with „minds“ and culture stands for the exteriorization of the People„s minds. The „Genius of the People“ means: People„s identity brought to the daylight. In order to keep the identity of the people in their own singular expression the „exceptional men“ need a strong imagination, because imagination is overall an organic and climatic faculty, modified through custom and tradition. Thus, imagination, as the organic and climatic faculty, and language, as the exteriorization of the mind, are, both, the moral organs of genius.
Genius is the active understanding of the system of forces that act from the inner part of the earth through the mutual adaptation of the geological, organic, psychic forms and the custom. As an individual, genius is a part and a psycho-linguistic representation of these series; it is a cultural form, but characterizes itself by the dimension that ensures the representation of the human nature as a whole. This one is psychic representation and expressive language. This is the reason why Herder„s „Kultur“ stands for the sum of the humankind„s creations, for the real drive of the literary effort of the national genius and for the literary result itself, as work of genius. Again, the mediation of force and expression returns from the ancient humoral concept of the human nature.
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As we know, modern society reproduces itself in communicative autonomous cycles that can„t be stopped by single voluntary acts or apprehended by psychic representations. The opacity of communication regarding psychic acts has huge effects in the epoch of „globalization“.
But, the encapsulation of communication and the encapsulation of the psychic systems are results of an evolution that has produced effects also in the need for new descriptions of society. These descriptions will be very different from the cultural understanding of „Man“, „Human Nature“, the „Nation“, „Culture“ or „national Genius“.
Cultural semantics is embedded in a description of society centered in psychic determinations and in the anthropological continuum. From this perspective society is an object for a representation, like the customs, the external habits, material advancements of civilization, or a psychic atmosphere, like the “sentiments of the peoples” or the “souls of the nations” that can be apprehended through the collective Coimbra International Conference on the Semantics of Culture | 2011 11 Edmundo Balsemão Pires, Organic, Psychic and Communicative Elements in the Individuation of «Genius» in XVII-XVIII Centuries Draft for the oral presentation enthusiasm by a co-genial intuition.
However, cultural semantics is a reductive semantics, a psychic reductive semantics, because it treats the development of communication like a psychic content, continuing the premises of the ancient uniform model of „human nature“. Cultural semantics and the reference to „culture“ and to “cultural identities” didn„t realize that such objects as „manners“, customs, the Nation or the „People„s spirit“ are psychic quotations of communicative more complex cycles of autonomous communicative elements.
I propose to call psychic virtualization such mechanism of the psychic quotation of communication in psychic elements. This virtual construction of communication was recognized implicitly in the interest with imagination I just referred in the ancient model of genius and the „human nature“. Indeed, the psychic virtualization mobilizes imaginary conditions in order to conceive the effects of communication. Good examples are the references to the identity of the „People„s spirit“ or to sympathy and enthusiasm as the psychic condition to apprehend collective identities. Both ideas are possible because in the analogical fictional space of imagination one can retain communicative elements and conceive them according to psychic projections. This occurs through the equivalent of an imaginary freezing, entailing the transformation of the continuous flow of consciousness in discrete images. Due to the projective character of the imaginary processes the discrete images are easily conceived as being prefigured in organic elements. On the other hand, images are easily projected to communicative events to identify also their “being” and their effects. Both processes were here illustrated in the construction of a homogeneous „human nature“ and in the concept of humor made by physical, organic, psychic and communicative elements in a continuous harmonious corridor. As a powerful tool in the formation of identity, virtualization and psychic virtualization, particularly, is a combination of psychic retention and latency, the constitution of a fictional space for analogies, the imaginary freezing, the modification of continuous in discrete elements, and the scheme of successive time in the simultaneity of the images.
In the modern globalized society the world‟s invisible communication increasingly destroys the evidence of the old cultural divisions of humankind in the planet. In his Race and Culture Claude Levi-Strauss mentioned this ongoing destruction.
The ancient imaginary construction of the unity of the human nature and of the local identities of its acclimatization is clearly endangered. This is not a provisional effect of a cultural western conquest of the planet, it is not the result of the hegemonic domination of a „culture“ over other „cultures“, bur rather the product of the cultural abstraction of communication.
Such conclusion shall guide us in the reconstruction of „culture“ as an historical concept in the post-cultural society.
Coimbra International Conference on the Semantics of Culture | 2011 12 Edmundo Balsemão Pires, Organic, Psychic and Communicative Elements in the Individuation of «Genius» in XVII-XVIII Centuries Draft for the oral presentation
Basic References
William Belsham, “Observations on Genius” in Idem, Essays, Philosophical, Historical, Literary, “Essay XX”, London, 1789
Hugh Blair, A Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian, the Son of Fingal, London, 1763
R. Brandt, Kritischer Kommentar zu Kants Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (1798), Hamburg, 1999
N. L. Brann, The Debate over the Origin of Genius during the Italian Renaissance, Leiden, Boston, Köln, 2001
T. Bright, A Treatise of Melancholie. Containing the causes thereof with the phisicke cure, and spirituall consolation, London, 1586
R. Burton, Democritus Junior, The Anatomy of Melancoly, Oxford, 1638, the fifth edition corrected and augmented by the author
A. A. Carus, Psychologie in Idem, Nachgelassene Werke, Erste Teil,Leipzig, 1808
Méric Casaubon, A Treatise concerning Enthusiasme as it is an effect of Nature, London, 1655
J. Colombier / F. Doublet, Instruction sur la Manière de Gouverner les Insensées, Paris, 1785
R. Daval, Mélancolie, Ivresse et Enthousiasme, Paris, 2009
M. Ficino, Liber de Vita in tres libros divisus / Buch vom Leben in drei Teilbüchern (german translation, R. Hirth), 2007: pascua.de/ficinus.
D. C. Fouke, The Enthusiastical Concerns of Dr. Henry More: Religious Meaning and the Psychology of Delusion, Leiden, New York, Köln, 1996.
C. Galenus, Oeuvres Anatomiques, Physiologiques er Médicales de Galien vols. 1-2, (ed. Ch. Daremberg) Paris, 1854-1856
Idem, Corpus Medicorum Graecorum V 1,2 Galeni / On the Elements according to Hippocrates, (ed. Ph. De Lacy) Berlin, 1996.
A. Gerard, An Essay on Genius, London, 1774
G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik I, in Idem, Werke 13 (E. Moldenhauer / K. M. Michel, Hrsg.), Frankfurt / M., 1986
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Coimbra International Conference on the Semantics of Culture | 2011 13 Edmundo Balsemão Pires, Organic, Psychic and Communicative Elements in the Individuation of «Genius» in XVII-XVIII Centuries Draft for the oral presentation
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Coimbra International Conference on the Semantics of Culture | 2011 14 Edmundo Balsemão Pires, Organic, Psychic and Communicative Elements in the Individuation of «Genius» in XVII-XVIII Centuries Draft for the oral presentation