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Social and Behavioral Sciences
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 92 (2013) 770 - 111 —
Lumen International Conference Logos Universality Mentality Education Novelty (LUMEN
Idol or Icon? An Aesthetic Response to a Religious Question An Analysis of the Esthetic and Religious Experience
Anca Raluca Purcarua*
_aLecturer, Ph.D, Apollonia University of Iasi Associate Professor at Alexandru loan Cuza University of Iasi_
Abstract
This study represents an interrogation on the similarities between the aesthetic experience and the religious one. The ontological difference between an icon and an idol refers to the fact that the first is a re-presentation of a non-existing (false) god and the second of the authentic divinity. Based on this ontological difference, the experience of the idol appears to be similar to the experience of the fictional art work. In the opinion of phenomenologist Jean Luc Marion, the painting is closer to the idol and completely different to the icon. The experience of the idol is an aesthetic one, incompatible with the religious experience.
Reaching to the works of hermeneutical phenomenologist Gadamer, Ricoeur, Chrétien and others, we will underline the similarities between the aesthetic and religious experience, as hermeneutical (and conversational) experiences. The initiation of dialogue in the religious experience that enriches its experimenter is made by the divinity and the icon is a form of re-emerging into presence. Similarly, the aesthetic experience enriches its experimenter, is based on the emerging and re-emerging into presence of what the work represents and has a conversational dimension, in which the conversation is initiated by the art work. The belief in the godhood of the represented is a matter of religion, but the belief in the existence of what the work represents is inherent to both aesthetic and religious experiences. Moreover, this emergence into presence is a sine qua non for the experience of communion. In the absence of communion, neither the aesthetic, nor the religious experiences can be authentic.
As hermeneutical experiences, both types of experience enrich their experimenter with a certain kind of truth. © 2013TheAuthors.PublishedbyElsevierLtd.
Selectionand/orpeer-reviewunder responsibilityofLumenResearchCenterinSocialandHumanisticSciences, AsociatiaLumen. Keywords: hermeneutical experience, religious experience, conversation, re-presentation, truth
* Corresponding author
E-mail address: ralu_pur@yahoo.com
1877-0428 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Lumen Research Center in Social and Humanistic Sciences, Asociatia Lumen. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.08.753
1. Introduction
The question "Idol or Icon?" that the title consists of is not based on an exclusive disjunction, but on an inclusive one, as a query on the concept of experience as it is described by the hermeneutical phenomenology will show. We do not pretend to offer a religious response to this question, but a philosophical one that shows that the difference between the two is given by the experience we make of them and is not inherent within the nature of the objects. From a religious view point, the experience of the icon is the experience of truth, as the experience of the idol is the experience of lie. Icon is similar to an esthetic object, whose represented is from the realm of fantasy. The idol offers nothing more than an esthetic experience that remains in our existential plan. The icon, on the other hand, offers a religious experience because it delivers the emerging of the divine into our existential plan. Therefore, the main difference between the idol and the icon appears to be the authenticity of what they represent: the idol is a false god, as the icon is the presence of the true god. In order to find the answer to our question, we must first conduct a research on truth. For this purpose we will first conduct an analysis of truth from a hermeneutical phenomenological perspective, because from this perspective it is possible to offer a guideline for both esthetic and religious experience and truth.
2. Truth as difference between idol and icon. A phenomenological hermeneutical perspective on truth
From Hans Georg Gadamer's point of view, truth is given through the hermeneutical experience, because truth is conversational disclosure. We have argued in previous research that this truth concept, corroborated with the perspectives of other authors, is large enough to explain the alethic value of the art work in all its forms, including the religious art, namely the icon (Purcaru, 2011).
The hermeneutical experience is the experience of human understanding. Hermeneutical experience is not a method or an understanding procedure. The hermeneutical experience consists of the conditions in which understanding takes place. Understanding begins when something addresses us (Gadamer, 2004, p. 298). Gadamer recovers the Ancient Greek perspective on truth as disclosure, following Heidegger. For Heidegger, truth is aletheia, meaning unconcealedness. The Being's state of unconcealedness is the primordial condition of knowledge (Heidegger, 2000).
The Being discloses itself through logos, because "the articulation of the logos brings the structure of being into language", meaning that logos is aletheia. Language is "the presencing of the being itself' (Gadamer, 2004, p. 453). An analysis of the statement's logical structure reveals that every statement can be understood only as an answer to another question. Therefore, the structure of the understanding is that of the conversation, understanding is only possible through language. The hermeneutical experience is the experience of conversation and it is based on the question-answer dialectic. But conversation is not a method of understanding, it is the understanding's structure. Genuine conversation is not about mastering conversation, because the conversation partners do not conduct it. Gadamer considers that "genuine conversation is never the one that we wanted to conduct. Rather, it is generally more correct to say that we fall into conversation, or even that we become involved in it (...) A conversation has a spirit of its own (...)" (Gadamer, 2004, p. 385). Similarly to the case of the play, in which we become absorbed by it, in a genuine conversation, we become absorbed by a greater truth. Hermeneutical experience is then a type of experience in which truth, understood as "disclosure", is revealed (Neculau, 2011, p. 211). The importance of this perspective is the accent placed on the conversational attitude: genuine conversation means accepting the alethic pertinence of what is said. During the conversation, there is no questioning of the truth of what is told, it is letting oneself "be told something" and understanding it. Moreover, through conversation self-understanding is gained, too. Understanding oneself is only possible by understanding something else (Gadamer, 2004).
The universality of the hermeneutical experience is based on the universality of language and on the fact that understanding is only possible through language and conversation. The Gadamerian thesis - "the being that can be understood is language" means that we do not master understanding, but, on the contrary, that during the
experience of understanding we let ourselves "be told" something (Gadamer, 2004, XXXII). Understanding is only possible through language, because "it is impossible to distinguish Being from its presence into language"; Gadamer's ontology "draws out the universality of human understanding's linguistic locus" (Grondin, 2012, p. 238). This Gadamerian thesis on Being is based on a medieval theological premises of "the original fusion and unity of thought and Being" that is no longer found in the subject-object opposition of recent epistemologies that objectify the Being (Grondin, 2012, p. 239).
The (hermeneutical) phenomenological language is an appropriate manner to approach (Christian) religion, because it is capable of understanding it (Chifoiu, 2008). If understanding is language and the intelligible is given to us through conversation, the dialogical structure of truth is applicable to the religion as well: conversation is not only a way of understanding each other, it is also the way of understanding the divinity. From a religious perspective, conversation is "the manner in which the revelation of divinity takes place" (Purcaru, 2011, p. 75). Conversation is the structure of religious (revealed) truth. The initiator of the conversation and its possibility is the divinity.
The premises for a conversational structure of the relation with the divine are implicit in Gadamer's philosophy and explicit in Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutical phenomenology. Whatever the nature of religious experience, "it comes to language, it is articulated in a language"; in this case, the truth value of language is connected to "the power of showing a reality common to the interlocutors", process in which faith is fundamental. Faith is related to self-understanding, as it means "the attitude of one who accepts being interpreted at the same time that he interprets the world of the text" (Ricoeur, 1974). In the case of religious discourse, understanding is more than a question/answer structure, it is a "call/answer structure" (Ricoeur, 1995, p. 160). If the first structure denotes, in the author's conception, an epistemological relation, the second is specific to religion. In Gadamer's philosophy, the question/answer structure of understanding is similar with that of the call/answer, because it is based on the same non-superior attitude, that of listening to what is confessed, as well as on recognizing the authority of the other. Jean Louis Chrétien finds that the convocation (the call to come forth) is based on the previous coming-forth of what is convoked. The answer precedes (and waits) the call (Chrétien, 2004). Truth is not something to be found in the utterance of a subject, but in the understanding of the answers given through the conversation initiated by a coming-forth of divinity. The revelation of divinity precedes us and calls us, it invites us to conversation. The revelation addresses us.
In phenomenologist Jean Luc Marion's conception, truth is given to us by revelation. Revelation is the essence of religion and it takes many forms, but always enters the phenomenality "under the figure of paradox as saturated phenomena that saturate the entire horizon of phenomenality" (Marion, 2008, p. 16). In the case of the paradox, the given meaning surpasses the intentions of the receiver. The subject is not the one constituting the phenomenon, but "it experiences itself as constituted by it" (Marion, 2008, p. 44). Revelation is "an appearance that is purely of itself and starting form itself, that does not subject its possibility to any prior determination" and there are principally three domains in which this phenomenon occurs: the painting (the idol), the icon and the theophany (Marion, 2008, p. 47). We find in Marion's classification another difference between idol and icon: the first belongs to the esthetic and the visible, the other to the invisible. Jean Grondin pertinently observes that it is necessary to add the dimension of language (of intelligibility) to that of donation, because there can be no donation of meaning in the absence of language (Grondin, 1999). Thus, the conversational perspective on truth we presented remains pertinent and in this conversational perspective on truth lye the premises for a possible reconciliation between idol and icon.
Dan Chitoiu refers to the phenomenological type of discourse, but we believe, together with Jean Grondin, that phenomenology must be correlated with hermeneutics in order to achieve meaning.
3. Conciliating idol and icon. A hermeneutical phenomenological perspective on art and religion
From a religious perspective, the idol is an object whose divinity is a fictional one, meaning that it is a false god, a god that does not exist. In the Ancient Greek it was thought that the God resides within its image. The imagistic ornaments belonged to the divinity itself. The idol is an image that lacks content, lacks its god. Thus, for the Christians, the images of the pagan gods were idols, because they lacked the faith in their deities (Danca, 2008, p. 58). Such an object would have no religious value whatsoever for a non-believer. From the perspective of the faith, the idol is closer to the esthetic experience and can only have the truth value of a (fictional) art work. The truth of the icon, on the other hand, consists of the fact that it is not a simple art object, nor is it a fictional object. The icon represents divinity. So the question we pose next are what kind a truth could poses an art object whose represented is fictional and has the esthetic experience any truth value at all? If so, what is its relation with the truth value of the religious experience? What kind of experiences the icon and the idol require?
The truth value of the art work depends on its fictional nature. All genuine art forms are fictional. An art work is not truth if its represented is not fictive, but because it is. Fiction is "the most appropriate manner to offer a better knowledge of our world" (Purcaru, 2011, p. 137). Paul Ricoeur believes that it is through its fictional world that the art offers new "ways of inhabiting the world" (Ricoeur, 1985, p. 5) through the reconfiguration process based on mimesis. The role off mimesis is not that of helping object recognition, but to reconfigure the real world, to restructure it and reveal new aspects of the real world that were not noticed before. The truth value of the art is not its scientific correspondence with the outside world and does not subsist in a mere imitation of it. Actually, a perfect imitation is not even possible, not even in the case of the mirror, less alone in the case of the art. Gadamer argues that the cognitive value of imitation is not offering a mere correspondence with reality. There is no manner of rendering a perfect copy of reality. The very mirror "throws back an image and not a copy" (Gadamer, 2004, p. 134). Along with Hegel, Gadamer argues that the ideality of the art work is not reproducing an idea, but in the "appearing" of the idea itself (Gadamer, 2004, p. 138). The truth of the art subsists in understanding this idea, in what the art work tells us new about the world in the hermeneutical (conversational) experience we make of it. Michael Kelly beliefs that there is an ontological truth of the art, as it is autonomous, but form the fact that we experience truth in the art, we may not conclude that art has truth content; in order words, we do not know that art reveals a truth other than itself (Kelly, 2004). In our opinion, art re-signifies the world we live in and enlarges our world horizon. Art is meaning and, as meaning, it can only be meaning about the world. The fact that art manifests itself as autonomous is no annulment of its truth understood as "dialogical disclosure of meaning" (Purcaru, 2012, p. 534).
From a phenomenological hermeneutical point of view, during the esthetic experience there is no room for the question concerning the correspondence of the art with reality outside itself. This is because, Gadamer explains, we do not experience art with an esthetic consciousness in the sense of an epistemological consciousness, meaning that we do not approach art as an object that we judge and of which we assess the truth value, but with a hermeneutical consciousness. In the Modern Era, esthetic had become a sort of epistemology, a methodology of beauty, one that approached the art work as an object. But the esthetic consciousness is the experience of alienation, because it offers the possibility of approaching art in a critical manner. This way, art loses its unquestionable authority. This form of consciousness is a secondary one. The authentic art experience is made through a hermeneutical consciousness, where there is no longer the possibility of assessing and rejecting the art work's truth claim. The hermeneutical consciousness offers the non-mediated, genuine experience of art. In this experience, we relate to art as to a subject, not an object. This does not mean, however, that esthetic becomes subjective. This relation with the art work is one of communion (Gadamer, 2004).
In order to clarify the structure of the art work and the type of presence it becomes during the hermeneutical experience, Gadamer describes the structure of the play. Dialogue and truth both share the play structure of the art work. Play is its own subject, because it is "self-movement" that pursues the purpose of "movement as movement", it is "self-representation of its own movement". Play is a communicative activity, because "it
requires a playing-along with" (Gadamer, 2002, p. 24). The play is not a mere self presentation of a movement, it is "representing for someone" that becomes absorbed by the play and is unable to oppose the outside world to the world of the play, because playing means having a "sacred seriousness". Playing is not pretending. Play, considers Gadamer, comes to "its true consummation" by being art". The world of the play emerges into reality, becoming the only reality. Not even the players exist as players anymore, as if they were conscious of the fact that they were playing. Only what they are playing exists. This phenomenon Gadamer calls "transformation into structure and total mediation" of the play. This transformation is not a simple transposition from our world into that of the play, it undergoes a metamorphosis. The play has its own reality and it measures itself by nothing outside it. Transformation into structure is "a transformation into the true" and describes a superior and independent mode of being. (Gadamer, 2004, 110-112). The mode of being of the work of art is the self-presentation, believes Gadamer, in which player belongs to the play, and it is similar to the structure of religious rites. During the "mimetic representation" of a play, what is brought in the existence is the play itself and all the representations belong to the art itself. In the case of the art, there is a double mimesis, Gadamer thinks, one made by the author of the art work, the other by its receiver. But this double mimesis is actually one, because the author and the receiver play the same play. What is represented is the art work.
The mode of being of the play also stands for picture. Gadamer includes in this category the painting, the Byzantine icon and the sculpture. In the case of the picture, there is a unique relation between the original and its picture. In the case of the play, without mimesis, there could be no appearance of what is presented. In the performing arts, the reproduction is the real being of the work. Even if in the case of plastic arts, there appears to be a resistance of the picture to reproduction and, even more, an ontological superiority of the original in opposition to the copy. In the case of the picture, the ideal copy would seem to be a mirror image, whose success is measured by recognition. In the mirror image, the original itself is reproduced. The mirror image depends of the original for its appearance, unlike the case of the picture. The picture as a copy is not something negative, as a lack of the original, it is not a diminution of being, it is an autonomous reality, through which the being presented experiences an "increase in being", because the presentation of the picture is an ontological event at the same ontological level as what is represented (Gadamer, 2004, p. 135). The picture is the emanation of the prototype. Moreover, it is only through the picture that the original becomes the original, because it enlightens it. Art is an event of being. What matters for Gadamer is not necessarily the relation between the original and its picture, but the various possibilities of being reflected in the image (Wischke, 2010, p. 123). In the case of the picture, too, the work is presentation to someone. In this feature of the artwork lies its conversational nature.
Like the other pictures, the icon is also a form of self presentation. In this case, it is a presentation of the divine. The icon is a form of presence and "bringing into presence" of its prototype (Chitoiu, 2008, p. 74). The icon is "representation as re-presence", a way of achieving a presence that is not a complete presence, as such, of the represented prototype, but "an exclusive act of the person", because only the person is capable of such an encounter (Chijoiu, 2008, 75-76). But from Jean Luc Marion's point of vu, the icon is contradictory to the other forms of image. Icon, like the cross, is typos. The question of its relation with the prototypon arises. The icon, thinks the author, steps outside of the mimetic logic of the image. Recognition of the typos in the case of the icon is mimesis free, the icon is not an attempt of copying the invisible, it is drawn to it. Unlike the imitation, that tries to steal the perfection of the model, the icon is a sending to the invisible prototype. Idolatry's origin lies, according to the author, in the interpretation of the icon according to the mimetic logic, as where the interpretation of the icon as typos excludes any imitation report of an original. The icon is not a re-presentation, it is presentation, not in the way that it produces a new type of presence, like in the case of the painting, but in the sense of "making present the holiness of the Holly One" (Marion, 2004, p. 77). The icon operates anatyposis, meaning that it denies its image status and reveals the person of the other. Its presence is that of its prototypos. The icon is "the instrument of a communion" (Marion, 2004, p. 86) between visible and invisible similarly to the will communion of natures in Christ.
Marion apparently admits no truth merit to the mimetic relation in the case of the image. The discrepancy between the original and its image is a consequence of the Modern Era, because than the original is forgotten. Without the original, man remains the judge of all things and the only origin. The spectator's relation with the image is that of self-idolatry. The visible is deprived of the invisible and man finds only himself in the spectacle of the visible (Marion, 2004, p. 71). Whereas in the case of the icon, the encounter with the invisible renders man visible. Marion considers that the painting is a saturated phenomenon very different to the idol. The idol belongs to the sphere of the esthetic, because it is approached as a spectacle. The original is less valued than its image, it even becomes useless, because the image becomes "the phenomenal original". The painting can overcome the esthetic sphere and send to the ethical one by the fact that it sends to an original, freeing the look from the visible. But the painting can also become an idol. An idol is "the excellence of phenomenality of the painting" (Marion, 2002, p. 71). The painting is not a reproduction, it is the production of a "new visible" (Marion, 2002, p. 69). What is represented is dependent on the creator's perspective. Furthermore, the painting requires experiencing it in order for what is represented to present itself. Each experience of the painting renders a different perspective on what is represented. Because the painting requires our experience in order to appear, it is reduced to the sphere of the visible. In the case of the icon, on the other hand, it is enough to experience it once, repetition is impossible, because the experience of receiving is endless. The face as an icon requires an endless hermeneutic because the face as an icon addresses a call to endless love and to experience oneself through that love (Marion, 2002).
We will argue next that both Gadamer and Marion react to the same modern epistemology of the esthetic consciousness that is unable to offer genuine understanding of the self or of the art work, because it is based on a superiority relation with what is experienced.
In Gadamerian terms, the idol that Marion describes is what we receive when we make the experience of art with the esthetic consciousness. This type of experience offers a deformed perspective on both experiencer and art, the first as self-sufficient and the second as an object ours to judge. As in the hermeneutical experience, there is genuine self-understanding. An idol is an idol because of how we experience it. For Jean Luc Marion, the idol is not dependent on the nature of the object. There is a "symbolical convertor" of the idol into icon, and that is the way we look (gaze) at it (Neamtu, 2003, p. 76), namely the way in which we experience it. The icon requires participation and love. Through the icon what is given is the true meaning of the person, namely person as "alterity" (Neamtu, 2003, p. 85). The icon is "an exclusive act of the person" because it implies "meeting the other face to face" (Chi^oiu, 2008, p. 76) and recognizing the other as a person. As Marion states, the idol and the icon are not two distinct classes of beings, they are two ways of being of the beings and they refer to the manner in which we receive the divine. The idol is mirroring oneself, as the icon means mirroring the other (Danca, 2008, 60-61). Icon is an invitation to commune with Christ, it is an invitation to enter the same communion that Christ natures share and acknowledge the other as a person. In order for the icon to be an icon, genuine hermeneutical experience is required, this means conversational experience. The image is actually a type of language. The icon is both image and word, it is "transindividual language" (Danca, 2008). There is no opposition between word and image, there is a conjunction report between the two, because the word is the soul of the image. The icon speaks to whoever listens and communicates a "spiritual vision of the world" (Danca, 2008, p. 57). Only a "conversational attitude" would allow the icon to reveal its meanings. The icon unites the receiver with the invisible, demanding to be understood. It is, for this matter, similar to the symbol (Danca, 2008, p. 67).
Art itself comes to us in the type of presence of the symbol. In the opinion of Neamtu, the symbol is reconciliation between the idol and the icon, the esthetic and the religious, because it is a third type of phenomenality: a "conjugation of the two". For both Gadamer and Marion, the symbolical function of the art is important, because the symbol is capable of expressing anything, including the sacred (Neamtu, 2003, p. 76). In our opinion, the symbol is able to reconcile idol and icon, because it can explain the type of presence art has and the experience it requires. The concept according to which art is a lie originates from differencing between the image and its original (Kelly, 2004, p. 104). But Gadamer breaks the mimetic circle between the two (Purcaru,
2011, p. 86). The symbol is a new kind of relation that nor is it based on a separation between the art and what it represents (giving us the possibility of judging their resemblance and their degree of truth), nor is it based on a
confusion between the two (confusion on which idolatry is based). Like the Eucharistic Sacrament, art contains its
meaning. Art does not simply refer to something, because what it refers to is "actually there" (Gadamer, 2002, p. 35). The art work is not a vehicle for meaning, it is the meaning. What is represented is itself present. Art's representation is re-presence. If the sign is self-cancelling, as it refers to its referent, the symbol does not refer to something outside itself, it presents its own meaning. It is true, however, that its meaning is never given completely, but, art has a speculative nature. The speculative character or the word and image means that art's excess of meaning is "inherent within it", hence "the hermeneutical sublime" (Nicholas Davey, 2007, #6) and endless hermeneutic.
The hermeneutical experience of the art means understanding it as a celebration. Art is the experience of communion. Celebrating a festival (including holidays, like Easter) means being a part of a community of meaning: festival is meaningful only for those taking part of it and it unites everyone. Celebration is not a repeating the experience, but an encounter (which is also an encounter with oneself), it is "a question of allowing what is to be" (Gadamer, 2002, p. 48). Things become clearer when Gadamer analyses the Greek concept of theoria (actively contemplating a superior reality by participating to it). Theoria means "to participate in a festive act and to be in it", not just as a spectator, but "to be fully there" (Gadamer, 2007, p. 213).
4. Conclusions
In the present study we did not aim to give a religious perspective, we aimed to analyze the content of the opposition between the idol and the icon. We found that the main difference between the two is one of truth. Next, we analyzed the concept of the truth from a hermeneutical phenomenological perspective. We found thus that the truth question is related to the conversational experience. Next, we analyzed art experience and religious experience from this perspective, in the belief that this analysis would lead us to the answer concerning the difference between the idol and the icon.
Art experience and religious experience are, in fact, very similar. They are both hermeneutical experiences. In the hermeneutical experience we have access to a certain kind of truth, a conversational truth. Making the experience of art is letting art speak to us, understanding its meaning, without questioning its authority. The difference between the idol and the icon is not a difference in the nature of the two, it is a difference in the way we relate to them and experience them: aesthetically or hermeneutically. The hermeneutical experience is the only one capable of rendering their dignity to the art, to the artist and to the art receiver. Both the artist and the receiver let the art reveal itself; both understand themselves through art's revelation. Whatever the truth contained by the art work, it is a conversational truth, given during the communing experience of the art, in which the question of its truth is no longer posed. Its truth is lived.
From this perspective, making the aesthetical experience of a religious art form would allow us to understand it as addressing us a message. Understanding what is told means living the truth of that art form, independently of the religious belief, and, with that understanding, we enlarge our world horizon and we enrich our self-understanding. The truth of the art is also a truth about the art's experiencer, because, as Gadamer states it so eloquently, it is a "mode of self-understanding" (Gadamer, 2004, p. 83). The truth of the religion is also a truth about its experiencer. Thus, the question involving the idol and the icon is a question of self understanding.
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