Transcript
What is your take on the idea of beauty?
I think it's fascinating that you even feel you have to ask the question. Do people still appreciate beauty? I don't know. I think they must. I'm sure they do. But it's because it's not measurable and it's not quite productive. It's one of those things that has been, as I say, airbrushed out of the picture. And now all the talk interestingly about creation is not about beauty, but about power. So you pray somebody's work as strong or powerful because that's the only currency we now have is that somebody is powerful. But what about being humble and serviceable and beautiful? What about the idea of the non-self-vaunting, self-promoting artists who actually spend time learning how to acquire the skill to do something very beautiful? So I do think, of course, beauty is all around us. And maybe one of the things that comes from not being surrounded by the natural world is that we've lost our intuitive sense of beauty because it's everywhere in the natural world.
Roger Scrutin does a one hour documentary, which is well worth watching.
But you wrote a book on beauty, which I've read.
There we go. Trump's the ... But he makes a really good point, which is that he's looking at architecture and he's saying that so often now people are designing with utility and saying, "We need to make this building useful, but it's ugly." And then it sought being used. Whereas if you make something beautiful, it will then become useful. And the example he gives is the Richard Rogers Millennium Dome, which originally had the use of being a millennium exhibition,
Which
Was a total disaster. And everyone spoke of how the millennium dome was a failure, but it's now the most profitable music venue in the world.
I didn't know that.
And for him and for me, it's because when you stand outside the millennium dome, there is a sense of awe. It's a structure that never existed before. And it is a good example of something that is both structurally sound whilst also organic.
Well, it's good we talked about architecture because I think that is something that has improved a very great deal in recent years. And I don't know if you know the Finnish architecture, Yuhani Palace Ma. He wrote a book called The Eyes of the Skin, I think. It's called that. But in any case, he is very keen on the idea that although architecture is something that we apparently taken through the eyes, we also appreciate it with the whole of the body. And therefore things like the texture of it, the feel of the space around us, and all of that is necessary as part of the way in which the building works and achieves its goal of being a beautiful space, which is also therefore a useful one. And I think that's a very important insight. I was very struck at the age of 18. I was in Florence and I went to the church of Santa Spirito by Bruneleski. (03:34): It's very severe inside. It's very plain. It has very orgmentation. It has a row of columns and some simple arches and it's impossible to describe the feeling of awe, beauty and something very fulfilling that comes from being in that space. And I couldn't ... The last building in the world that you can put into words why it's beautiful, but it has something to do with the way in which space is articulated in it. It's something about that quite imponderable way in which the space works.
And I like how you're alluding to the idea of where of one cannot speak, thereof, one must not speak. If that's quoted correctly, Witchenstein, which-
Thereof one must remain silent.
There of one must remain silent. Yeah. And I think that's an absolutely crucial phrase for people to remember when they're trying to appreciate a building, appreciate a piece of art, or even appreciate a character, a personality. And in fact, you've spoken before about how if we want to understand buildings and paintings and music, we should appreciate them as personalities, as people. And I do think that can be really useful. The words useful. I hear the word useful and then it's sort of down the utility, but I think it is useful. I think it generally helps. It genuinely helps. And I personally have an experience where we talk about the intellectualization of art. When I was 18, I'd go into a gallery and you look at the paintings and you ask yourself the question, "What am I meant to think? " That creates a huge barrier, a distance between yourself and the art. (05:30): And if you, rather than ask yourself that question, say to yourself, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof, one must remain silent." Then suddenly you're putting thinking to one side and you're bringing feeling, giving space to feeling and creating an intimacy between yourself and the piece of art. Well,
I think that's a great point. And I resonate with it very much because of my own experience of coming to know music. I was introduced to The Sources Apprentice by Duka and Peter and the Wolf. God, that's beautiful. I don't understand it. What's it about? And it really troubled me until somebody said to me, "Look, it's not about anything. It's just what it is. " And the fact that you respond to it and love it is the beginning of a relationship that can be complexified and deepened in various ways, but it's about that relationship you already have. There's nothing there to articulate. And I fortunately caught nonto that about the age of 14, but nonetheless, there was an initial impediment there.
It's such an important point to make. And I feel if everyone realized that you don't need to understand the music, so to speak, it doesn't have to mean anything in particular. No. It's a liberating realization, but one that's not taught in schools, which is a shame, but maybe it will be over time.
Yes. I think you should give children the best, not to start with the simplest, but show them a vision of what this is really about. And then they were willing to take the steps of hard work that will lead them to that.
Yeah. That reminds me of George Steiner talking about, although this wasn't music, it was grappling with a really difficult text, which he was given aged 18. It was Heidi's being in time.
Oh my God.
And he thought he was as ... And he was a smart man, but anyway, he said he took it to the library and ran away because he could have just had absolutely no idea what it meant. So he came back to it a few years later and he described it as like someone trying to climb a tough face. He says, at first, you can barely get your hands onto the rocks, but on returning time and time again, you've become stronger and more able to see where you can place your hands and where you can place your feet. And once he was able to climb up to the summit, then the view that materialized changed his life forever.
That's great. And I think it's also, it's also slightly a matter of getting your ear in, rather like the moment of revelation for me about Wordsworth is that although I've read the words, I hadn't really ... Something clicked. There's a little bit like that with Heidegger, I think, because to begin with, you don't know what's going on. And as you say, you have to keep sort of finding, "Oh, that bit's familiar and I know where to go with that. " But I think Haida works a little bit like Zen Cowan that he's deliberately disconcerting. He's deliberately trying to stop you from assuming all the things you normally assume. And so to begin with, you're totally disorientated and you have to, in a way, give yourself up to the notion, have some faith that there is something here. If you don't, then you'll just go, "Oh, I don't know what he's all about. (09:07): This is rubbish." But people don't keep returning to him for no reason. To me, what Heidiger writes is revelatory. And I must say that George Steiner was the most, to me, illuminating person writing about Heidigo. If anybody feels they don't understand Heidegger and wants to, just read his very short book on, it's something that's just called Martin
Heidi. Well, I should probably read that myself, because I must admit I'm still standing at the bottom of the mountain. Just read it
And you'll get it.
I've tried it. I've tried. I've tried. I really have. I've watched not all but some of Dreyfus' lectures which were available online. And some of the ideas, the readiness at hand versus presence at hand. Some of these are starting to make a little bit of sense, but I'm-
Well, I think I recommend Trey Steiner, but I mean, in my book, I deal very, very briefly with Heidiger in just a few pages, less than 10 pages. And quite a few people have said to me, "One of the things your book did was make me understand what the point was about Heidiger." And then I feel like, well, I must have done a disservice to Heidi because I've obviously simplified something that I shouldn't because the wrong reaction is probably to feel you understand it, but everything.
Well, but potentially he didn't have to use language that was quite as challenging to be-
But I think the problem is that language always takes you back to the same bunch of already their concept and he was trying to say, "No, the concepts we're using are themselves wrong. The language is not helping us." So we have to do some rather odd things to language just in order to ... I think he deliberately obfuscated as well, to be honest. I think, in fact, I remember hiding somewhere, I can't find the passage now, but he does say, "What I write is deliberately not easy." And I think this is a very good point, that if you say things too simply, and that's why I say I may have done a disservice to Heidegger, you don't think there's anything much there because you think, "Well, that's obvious." And it sort of somehow glides over your mind rather than engaging with your mind. It's slightly like being driven somewhere and you don't really find the path because you're being good. (11:26): When you actually have to drive it yourself, then you know the path. And in a way, if you don't actually have to battle to find the way through Haida and the image of a way, a holds vague, a wood path, a woodland path, that kind of idea of a way in philosophy is very much his image.
This idea of way immediately made me think a bit about Sidatha. He's trying to find the way. He leaves his settlement with a friend and along the way they bump into Buddha, who's got a whole suite of followers and he recognizes that Buddha is wise and has trolled the path, but he also realizes that if he joins Buddha now, it'd be like he's been in the car with someone else driving and he won't in fact know it. So his friend stays and he goes off on his own journey that leads to pursuit of power and then realizing he should go back to being a rumor man.
He may be behind the Zen saying, "If you meet the Buddha on the way, kill him."
Right, okay.
I think I recognize it again in my own experience in that I have followed my own slightly eccentric path to many of the conclusions that I've reached, in that I didn't find them predigested. I didn't do any sort of formal philosophical work until I was already in my mid 20s or late 20s. And even then, it's very much a personal thing, not a formal academic course or anything that I submitted myself to. But in a way it meant I often found myself reinventing the wheel, but when you have invented the wheel for yourself, rather than just accepted, "Oh, there's a wheel." You really know how this thing comes about and why it's important. So at least I can say that none of the things I say are said purely on authority or because that's what people have told me or that's what I've learned. There are things that I discovered and then found that philosophers were saying. (13:47): So I like that idea. I think it's very important that you must feel your way to something from the inside, not glide into it too smoothly from the outside, otherwise you have no real understanding of what it is you think you know.
I don't know. We just mentioned that he shouldn't reduce hiding it to something that he's not, but the word authenticity is very much a word of our age and whether the debt is Otahideka over that or not remains to be seen, but it's certainly a huge feature of his thoughts. And one of the things I liked about this chap, Eric Dodson, I mentioned yesterday, is that he says the thing about Heidegger is that he's asking for two things. One is for people to reflect on what it means to be, what it means to exist, which is broadly the school of phenomenology. But at the same time, he's asking people to live an authentic life, to pursue your deepest destiny, but one does not necessarily mean that you're doing the other. There could be people who are studying philosophy reflecting on being, but not in fact leading their deepest destiny. (15:09): And I wondered whether you could talk a little bit about authenticity as you understand it. Very challenging.
Yes, it is, but no doubt it's important. I think your image of the person who might be pursuing an academic course of philosophy and even perhaps doing well at it, but not actually increasing in understanding all wisdom really might be one way of distinguishing between authentic philosophy and what I would consider a lot of modern academic philosophy to be rather lacking in authenticity, it seems to have lost its moorings in the big deep questions, the gut wrenching questions of life and to be too fussed around somewhat remote and technical issues. When you look back at the great philosophers of the past, they were very rarely of this kind. It's far easier to have a relationship with most philosophers of the past and understand what it is they're talking about, at least at some level to be doing that and seeing why it's important. And it may be with a lot of people now in the academy and they weren't afraid to bring ... In fact, it's impossible to do philosophy without bringing life to bear on it. (16:50): That's one of Socrates' main points is that philosophy should not be written down. And in Plato, his follower betrayed him in a way by writing it down, but it can't be done on paper, that it has to be done in the context of lived experience of life. I