Hi Arlo,
Great project!
The quote "[Orozco] presents man not as a blank tablet but as a vibrant living
flame." reminds me of Nietzsche's:
Ecco Homo
Yes, I know from where I came,
Ever hungry like a flame;
I consume myself and glow.
Light is all that I conceive,
Ashes everywhere I leave.
Flame I am assuredly.
(Nietzsche, The Gay Science)
Marsha
On May 25, 2011, at 11:38 AM, Arlo Bensinger wrote:
> My summer "project" (one of them) this year is to digitize Northrop's The
> Meeting of East and West (or at least get this well underway). Here is an
> interesting segment from Chapter Two "The Rich Culture of Mexico"...
>
> "The criticism is that a philosophy of life which shuts its eyes to the
> creative fire in man's nature, to the eros or frenzy in all its human
> manifestations so cuts man's soul off from the fresh, warm, bodily, earthly
> feeling of life and from the emotional, aesthetic and spiritual component of
> man's nature, that one becomes artificial, stereotyped, without individuality
> of the feelings, sentiments and imagination, afraid of one's emotions, tense
> and often colorless or neurotic. One's Kantian or pollyannic ideals, being so
> purely formal and artificial, become so separated from one's real, emotional,
> bodily, and spiritual being that the sparkle goes out of both. The pupils and
> practitioners become as dull as their teachers and preachers. Moreover, a
> faulty political idealism is created in which the ideal is so divorced from
> the actual in human nature or international relations that art becomes empty
> or vapid and one's political aims become equally unrealistic and ethereal, wh
ile one's actual conduct and behavior tend to be left to crass, independent,
self-centered opportunism, the reverse of one's idealistic professions. ...
>
> The initial modern conception of the personality, especially for the
> English-speaking portion of the modern world, was introduced and defined by
> John Locke. For Locke, as Chapter III will show, the soul in its essence is a
> blank tablet. It is precisely this contrast between such an Anglo-American
> soul and the Spanish and Mexican soul whose essence is passion that Jose
> Orozco is portraying.... [Orozco] presents man not as a blank tablet but as a
> vibrant living flame, a frenzied spirit, an eros, living dangerously, making
> his free choice, and staking his life without compromise upon its
> consequences. One is reminded of Plato's Phaedrus with its account of human
> frenzy."
>
> Just as an aside, speaking of "living dangerously", if you haven't checked
> out Ant's video of Pirsig describing his Atlantic crossing, I highly
> recommend it.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/user/pirsigfilms#p/a/u/0/CijYZyOb4kI
>
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