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A Philosophical Poetic Recourse Into Sameness

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A Philosophical Poetic Recourse Into Sameness 1 Poetics of the Same: A Philosophical Poetic Recourse into Sameness Astghik Simonyan Submitted for PhD Degree Queen Mary, University of London December 2010 2 Abstract This study endeavours to investigate the philosophical and poetological dimensions, the philological origins, and significant philosophical-literary representations of the Same. It also assesses sameness as a philosophical and poetological modus operandi; that is to say, it analyzes the ways in which the Same operates in different types of discourses both as an object of investigation and as an agent of (poetic) thought. The concept of the Same or the operation of sameness as the philosophical question par excellence will be considered in the development of Continental philosophy and philosophical poetics from classical antiquity to Postmodernism, and its transposition into poetry. The elaboration of the issue of sameness encompasses any philosophical inquiry which seeks to establish the essence of Being and make it susceptible to a general, unifying principle: as a search for an underlying element; for a metaphysical unity or universal, preceding division or difference and amounting to the harmony in the Universe; or for a transcendental absolute totality. Postulations of the pure conceptual difference are likewise examined as part of the elaboration of sameness, and will be viewed as indispensable for revealing the genuine plenitude of sameness. Part One traces the inception of sameness as a concept of pure identity, amounting to the harmony of the Universe by virtue of the operations of belonging (Presocratics), participation (Plato), and emanation (Plotinus), anchored in the relationships between the One and the many, between the Whole and its parts, between the Original and the copy. Part Two inquires into the limits of postulating sameness in terms of pure identity and points to two possible solutions to this problem: a philosophical-aesthetic digression from sameness (Kant and related aesthetic theories of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) and the return to sameness as an absolute totality in Part Three (Schelling and Hegel). Part Four investigates the re-postulation of sameness as pure Difference (Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida), hence the entire re-organization of thought in terms of the other. Part Five analyzes the transposition of sameness from 3 philosophy into the poetic language of repetition, using Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus as its prime poetic example. It will be argued that the philosophical displacement of the Same from a concept of identity into that of difference does not amount to an abandonment of its plenitude, but rather points to the need for a precarious balance between sameness and difference, the simultaneous quest for unity and the absolute singularity of the other. This balance, it will be argued, must be sought for in every genuine creation. 4 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ................................................................................. 8 1 Part One: Thinking of Identity ......................................................... 16 1 The inception of the Same in Ancient Greece ..................................................... 19 2 The Same: A Metaphysical Universal or an Operation of Participation in Plato? ........................................................................................ 24 2.1 Plato’s Questioning of Sameness: Philosophical Hypotheses or Poetic Metaphors? ..................................................................................... 24 2.2 The Reduction of the Operation of Sameness to the Metaphysical Universal of the Same: The Eidé and the Good ........................................ 27 2.2.1 The Eidé: Two Modes of Manifestation of the Metaphysical Universal of the Same ............................................ 27 2.2.2 The Ontological Discovery of the Good as Monoeidés of The Beyond .................................................................................... 30 2.3 Questioning the Monoeidetism of the Same ............................................... 34 2.4 The Non-Being of the Same ....................................................................... 36 2.5 Poetry as the Mimesis of the Same ............................................................. 40 2.6 The Limits of Mimesis ................................................................................ 44 3 Plotinus: Emanation as a Mode of Conceiving Sameness ................................. 47 3.1 The Postulation of the Self-Sufficiency of the One .................................... 47 3.2 Distinguishing Between the Same and the Lack of the Same .................... 50 3.3 Images of the Same ..................................................................................... 51 4 An Outline of the Perspectives of the Development of Sameness ..................... 54 4.1 Conceiving of Sameness through Christian Monotheism .......................... 54 4.2 Analogy as a Way of Conceiving of Identity .............................................. 57 4.3 Finalizing Thinking in Identical Terms ...................................................... 61 2. Part Two: Digression from Sameness ..................................................... 65 1 Aesthetic Theories as a Transposition into Subjectivity .................................... 68 1.1 Shifting from the Poetics of Sameness to a Subject- Centred Aesthetics of Reception ............................................................... 68 5 1.2 Outline of Aesthetic Theories with Particular Reference to the Dizgression from Sameness ....................................................................... 71 2 Kant: The Questioning of Sameness .................................................................... 82 2.1 Digressing From Identity toward the Transcendental A Priori and the Empirical Spheres of Cognition ...................................................... 82 2.2 Reducing Art to the Subject’s Faculties of Thought .................................. 85 2.3 Hegel versus Kant ....................................................................................... 94 3 Post-Kantian Aesthetic Theories ......................................................................... 98 3. Part Tree: The Return to Sameness ........................................................ 105 1 Schelling: Re-postulating Sameness as the Absolute ......................................... 108 1.1 Rethinking of Sameness beyond its Pure Identity ...................................... 108 1.2 The Romantic Idea of Art ........................................................................... 110 1.3 Differences between Digression and Sameness ......................................... 113 1.4 Art as an Ideal Potency of the Same ........................................................... 116 1.5 Schelling’s Reading of Dante’s Commedia ................................................ 122 2 Hegel: The Same as the Totality of Becoming ................................................... 126 2.1 Sketches of the Concept of Totality ........................................................... 126 2.2 The Totality as Geist ................................................................................... 131 2.3 Reconsidering Aesthetics ........................................................................... 137 4. Part Four: Difference .................................................................................... 145 1 Nietzsche: The Affirmation of the Same as Non-Same ...................................... 147 1.1 Surmounting the Same: God is Dead ......................................................... 147 1.2 Dispelling the Chimeras of Truth ............................................................... 149 1.3 The Space of Freedom ................................................................................ 151 1.4 Eternal Ring of Recurrence ........................................................................ 154 1.5 The Eternal Lust of Becoming in Art ........................................................ 156 1.6 The Pure Language of Becoming ............................................................... 159 2 Heidegger: The emerging-abiding sway of Being as Alētheia ........................... 163 2.1 Sameness manifested as Being in its relatedness to Dasein ...................... 163 2.2 Reestablishing Being as Nothing ................................................................ 167 6 2.3 Identity and Difference .............................................................................. 170 2.4 The Ursprung of Art as the Originating of the Concealed ......................... 175 2.5 On the Way to Language ........................................................................... 177 2.6 A Philosophical Recourse to the Poetic Texts ............................................ 180 3 Derrida: The Deconstruction of the Same .......................................................... 186 3.1 Experiencing the Sameness in the Other .................................................... 186 3.2 The Interplay of Infrastructures .................................................................. 191 3.3 Mimicry of Totality .................................................................................... 197 3.4 The Other of Philosophy ............................................................................. 200 5. Part Five: The Transposition of Sameness from Philosophy into the Poetic Language of Repetition ................................................
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