So I haven’t been keeping up with this methinksing very well, even though I’ve been allegedly devoting more time to writing and studying lately. There are a lot of reasons for that (some of them even valid!), but I’ll try to be a more regular methinkser.

One thing that will help, I think, is borrowing content from e-mail/instant messages. So, here's an e-mail thread from several weeks ago; hope you, my faithful readers, enjoy it.

hey sylvia. I was thinking about our conversation on art and music. I want to plant a seed that will be a future discussion point as it grows. hegel in his dialectic asserts that human history is the story of reason working its way through mankind and elevating their state as it proliferates and develops. (that is a gross simplification, but good enough for now.) hegel maps a progression of civilization from superstition to deterministic thinking, and projects a reasoning that overflows deterministic thought and imbues the universe with spirit. he credits ristotle and plato especially for laying the rational groundwork that has developed in modern science, and credits modern science for elevating the mind of man from sensory bounds into thought. he then places the onus on modern philosophy to exceed deterministic boundaries of present science and make room within reason for spirit and actualization.

another way of mapping this progression of human thought is as follows:

superstition + progress in reason -à deterministic thought

deterministic thought + continued progress in reason --à actualization and spirit

what hegel presents is a tri-step climb, with the layers of thought as first believing, then limited believing/not believing, and lastly liberated believing. I think this is a parallel situation to the concepts of art and rules. in the realm of art of music, the classical rules and structures can be viewed as deterministic principles. when an art form is outside of the deterministic structure, it can either be that it is crap ( i.e. superstition) or that it is liberated, self-aware, enlightened expression (actualization of thought). so it becomes a risky business to play with the third realm, because one’s art will either be perceived as banal (lowest level) or as brilliant (third level). there is no room outside of the deterministic approach for a middle-ground expression.

My response (or non-response, since all I really do is ask questions, as is my wont):

Consider the seed planted. I have to admit that I’m not at all familiar with philosophy, so a well-written reply will require some research on my part. I have lots of fairly nebulous pre-thoughts (what, exactly, do “civilization,” “progression,” “elevating,” and “actualization” mean in this context? Does Hegel think that reason is the only way to attain actualization [which I assume is the ultimate goal in his philosophy], and does he therefore value reason above any other method ( e.g., faith, intuition, etc.)? What makes a belief a superstition, and does “superstition” in Hegel’s philosophy have the same negative, ignorant connotation it has today? Why do modern Westerners automatically think that we’re so much more enlightened than other civilizations, when I think our thought bases are different but not necessarily better than past bases—are we so enamored with the innovative that we discard the truth that other philosophies have discovered and revealed just because those philosophies are “outdated” [which again harks back to Screwtape Letter I, where C.S. Lewis tells Wormwood that he should “make [the patient] think [materialism] is strong or stark or courageous” but not “waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true”] [http://www.bible-reading.com/screwtape.html]? Is there room inside the deterministic approach for middle-ground expression?), but I want to do some more thinkin’ before I send a real response.

Of course, I never got around to thinking about or writing that real response (even though I LOVE these kinds of discussions and want to engage in them more frequently)—my apologies to the writer of the original e-mail…