Deep Thoughts: the Greeks thought they were beheld; we behold

From Long Sunday's Mark Kaplan:

Heidegger’s essay on the Age of the World Picture remarks on the distinction between a time when man was a spectacle for the gods, the object of a perception which was itself beyond conception, and a modernity wherein man is fundamentally the perceiver of a world that offers itself to him as, or is posited as a picture. Benjamin, in his Artwork essay, also alludes to man’s former status as an object or show for the gods. Fascism, he famously remarks, turns humanity into a spectacle for itself. At the same time, the gigantism of this spectacle – the rallies, the giant screens, the massive advertisements careering towards the random city dweller from the sides of buildings, magnifies man to God-like proportions. The modern citizen is miniaturised before the Olympian powers of industrial society but also watches them, agog, and lives vicariously though them.

The older sense, of an inhuman presence watching humanity, means that there is a dimension of existence which is incalculable, unknown, beyond your ownership or objectification. The subjective stance corresponding to this doctrine is, therefore, a kind of humility and receptivity to an Otherness which has preceded us both temporally and ontologically and which we can, so to speak, never get round the back of. If we are all, equally, objects for an inconceivable Other, we are less likely to become objects to one another, so it goes. According to some, the place of non-human Other is supposed to be a kind of guarantee.

It is important to stress the non-humanity of the observing gods. We are not speaking of some transcendental panopticon staffed by a familiar Patriarch, it is not the burning eyes of a peer, albeit one elevated above you in the Symbolic Order, watching your every move. The position occupied by the god-observer is outside your reach and the reach of the Symbolic. It is a non-position, beyond place. The ‘appearances’ performed by you on the world stage are submitted to it, and it is their custodian. It observes them without ego-rivalry, without envy, competition. It has affinities with the position said by Lacan to be occupied by the psychoanalyst, but which I suspect cannot be humanely occupied. The analysand delivers his incoherent stream of images to an anonymous inhuman place, the place of the analyst. An older world had faith that the incoherent appearances of mundane life were seen by and submitted to a non-human place.

But whereas formerly, the endless contradictory appearances of the human stage were submitted to the hidden gods, the contradictory spectacle of modern humanity is submitted to itself for entertainment. Some of you may remember an episode from John Berger’s way of seeing (the TV version) where he flicks through a Sunday Times magazine. Photos of starving refugees in Bangladesh, advertisements for aftershaves, life insurance, a grinning TV celebrity, back to the pictures of starving refugees. Incommensurate realities, co-existing on the same glossy visual plane. The culture that has produced this incoherent visual language, Berger declares, ‘is insane’. The ‘plane’ on which these images co-exist is inhuman, there is no human point of view where all these images converge. But the non-humanity is not of course that of the hidden gods, but the logic of spectacular society. It is this inhuman plane that the spectator is made to occupy. Here's that quote from Benjamin:

Mankind, which in Homer's time was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, now is one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicizing art.

From another Mark Kaplan post on Long Sunday:

In contrast to the modern age of the world picture, Heidegger invokes the world of the Greeks. For the Greeks, says Heidegger, the world is an extended or continuous question addressed to man. Man is defined by this answerability to this address; he is beholden to that which beholds him. The presence of the non-human works to distribute across humanity a kind of ontological humility.

“Man is the one who is looked upon by that which is; he is the one who is to be beheld by what is – that is the essence of man in the age of the Greeks.”

All this (irrespective of whether it accurately ‘depicts’ the Greeks) is significant as the exact reverse of modern man. We look at, direct and interrogate the world – an interrogation always for human ends. We do not apprehend the world, we represent or enframe it. We render it as a picture.

The idea is that to render something as a ‘picture’ is to render it manipulable. The proverbial Lacanian mirror image: the self has slipped inside a frame and become, thereby, an object of control. To say picture is to imply frame. The picture is framed by and for us. And the frame sunders us from the world, is an immediate exemption certificate.

It’s here I’d like to pause again. I wonder if the notion of the modern world picture, and its contrast to that other sense of being ‘beheld’ by the world, can productively be brought into proximity with some of what Lacan says about picturing and about the ‘gaze’ as embedded in the world outside us. For Lacan too speaks of being seen by things, by ‘points’ outside us in the world, but this within a rather different set of concerns and problems from Heidegger. So there may be no overlap here. These two ‘genres’ of thinking may be simply on different planes. Any comments welcome.

Comment:
Sorry, my argument is kind of fragmented...but these are tough questions you raise...and maybe you can join together what I am saying. And kindly avoid any type of "blogger depression".

For me, it comes down to: these are varying opinions about what is "behind" the image or "picture."

For Heidegger, it is Dasein. Some thing real and supersenuous, but "hidden," that manifests itself in the image of the "World." In other words, our "being" is a picture that is framed by "Being" or the "One". Dasein preceded the world; It will even survive without the existence of the World! Hell, it will even eventually create a world without man at all, but possibly a "higher" technology. But still, this superior "Dasein" manifests itself through the totality of "being"...aka the "World"...in whatever form that takes.

But when I capture an image, I am not capturing the World...or any totality at all. As a matter of fact, I only see one side of the subject; the rest remains hidden. I can either turn the subject, for my purposes, to see the other sides, or, I can change my location as an observer and travel around the subject to see the other sides. But whichever I choose, something that was once visible, now disappears, or it is blocked by a "fold." And yet, I know that it is there, on the "other" side...and if I reverse my directions, it will become visible to me again. This is the nature of our vision: it is always limited or enframed or blocked.

For "modern man," what stands behind our limited vision is not Dasein, it is nothingness. And, if I travel around a mirror, I will find nothing there. But, because I know that nothing is behind the mirror, I become fascinated with what I see in the mirror. An image opens our future up to new possibilities and critiques. Yes, a mirror has a frame. But, I can move in the frame or out of the frame at will.

I look at a mirror to critique - to see how something appears to me - before I decide to buy 'it' or take 'it' back...since changes / exchanges can be made at will. Whereas, I have no way of critiquing "Being" or essence: these things have merely become my constraints. An image, on the other hand, as you say, Mark, is "manipulable".

With "being," you have nothing "special"...because there is no real possibility to change it. One's life has already been decided by the "One"; and the "nothingness" one feels as a result is called "anxiety." Yes, one can choose to become "inauthentic" in response to this "nothingness," or, they can resign themselves peaceably to their "thrown-ness"..but no "being" can really critique the "Being" it is a small part of.

Image, on the other hand, loans us its prestige. We can even make something appear to be real, when it is not.

So with an image, our vision, which is our interpretation, structured upon possibility and critique, is based upon error and false representation, since nothingness is behind it. Whereas, with Heidegger, we have an anxiety or a "nothingness" that blinds us to any real possibility and critique...since representation (or "truth") comes before any kind of interpretation.

Question: What kind of nothingness would you rather have?