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\u201cWell, the dialectic of belief and vision is the path I have to go down now.\u201d\u00a0 \u2013\u2013Late Notebooks<\/em>, 1:73<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0Joe Adamson’s reference earlier today to “The Dialectic of Vision and Belief” reminded me of some notes I made for my students several years back.\u00a0 Page references are to the essay as reprinted in<\/em> Myth and Metaphor, 93\u2013107.\u00a0 The students were undergraduates, so here and there I provided a bit of background on Hegel, Derrida, McLuhan, et al.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a01.\u00a0 Frye calls his title \u201csomewhat forbidding.\u201d\u00a0 We might consider first what dialectic<\/em> means.\u00a0 The word comes from the Greek dialektos<\/em>, meaning dialogue or debate.\u00a0 In Plato, dialectic is the science or discipline of drawing rigorous distinctions.\u00a0 In the Middle Ages dialectic was treated in partnership with logic as being one of the trivium in the medieval education system, the other two being grammar and rhetoric.\u00a0 The word dialogue<\/em> also comes from the Greek root, and this seems to be the sense in which Frye is using the word.\u00a0 Plato wrote his earlier works in dialogue form, using what we now call the Socratic method, which is a way of doing philosophy through discussion between two or more parties.\u00a0 Hegel was the preeminent modern philosopher for Frye (he makes an appearance in this essay on p. 98), and there might be a touch of the Hegelian sense of dialectic in Frye\u2019s title.\u00a0 For Hegel, dialectic refers to the process of overcoming the contradiction between thesis and antithesis by means of a synthesis.\u00a0 So in this essay Frye perhaps means to suggest that something might emerge from the opposition between \u201cbelief\u201d and \u201cvision.\u201d<\/p>\n The dialectical method involves the notion that movement, or process, or progress is the result of the conflict of opposites. Traditionally, this dimension of Hegel\u2019s thought has been analyzed in terms of the categories of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. \u00a0Although Hegel tended to avoid these terms, they are helpful in understanding his concept of the dialectic. \u00a0The thesis, then, might be an idea or a historical movement. \u00a0Such an idea or movement contains within itself incompleteness that gives rise to opposition, or an antithesis, a conflicting idea or movement. As a result of the conflict a third point of view arises, a synthesis, which overcomes the conflict by reconciling at a higher level the truth contained in both the thesis and antithesis. \u00a0This synthesis becomes a new thesis that generates another antithesis, giving rise to a new synthesis, and in such a fashion the process of intellectual or historical development is continually generated. \u00a0Hegel thought that Absolute Spirit itself (which is to say, the sum total of reality) develops in this dialectical fashion toward an ultimate end or goal. \u00a0For Hegel, therefore, reality is understood as the Absolute unfolding dialectically in a process of self-development. \u00a0As the Absolute undergoes this development, it manifests itself both in nature and in human history. Nature is Absolute Thought or Being objectifying itself in material form. \u00a0Finite minds and human history are the process of the Absolute manifesting itself in that which is most kin to itself, namely, spirit or consciousness. In The Phenomenology of Mind<\/em> Hegel traced the stages of this manifestation from the simplest level of consciousness, through self-consciousness, to the advent of reason.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a02.\u00a0 Notice Frye\u2019s rhetorical stance at the beginning.\u00a0 There\u2019s the opening apology.\u00a0 There\u2019s the disclaimer that he\u2019s got a corner on truth: I\u2019m speaking of only one<\/em> model, he says in effect: there are other legitimate models.\u00a0 In par. 2 Frye says that he simply wants to make a \u201cfew suggestions.\u201d\u00a0 To paraphrase: I make no grandiose claims here: others have written whole books about the issue (Wilfred Cantwell Smith\u2019s Faith and Belief<\/em> [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979]: I think I understand the distinction Smith has made: what I\u2019m going to say is really quite crude.\u00a0 This is Frye assuming the role of what he called the eiron<\/em> in Anatomy of Criticism<\/em>, the self-deprecating character, the one who draws attention away from himself.\u00a0 Or we might see it as a Socratic gambit: here\u2019s a 73-year-old man who is claiming in effect that he doesn\u2019t know anything much.<\/p>\n \u00a03.\u00a0 Back to paragraph one: Frye\u2019s announced topic: What is the relation of the imagination, and our response to literature, to study of religion and the Bible?<\/p>\n \u00a04.\u00a0 Top of p. 94, first line.\u00a0 Frye announces his \u201ccrude form\u201d of the relation of faith and belief at the beginning: belief = state of mind; faith = expression of it in action.\u00a0 At first blush, this doesn\u2019t seem to be particularly extraordinary, and it\u2019s easy enough for us nod approvingly.\u00a0 Still, the formulation may run counter to the more or less common understanding of faith.\u00a0 That is, we would not be surprised if someone were to say, \u201cMy faith is an expression of what I believe.\u201d\u00a0 But Frye is rejecting the notion that faith is a matter of what goes on in our heads.\u00a0 More about this later.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What happened to vision<\/em>?\u00a0 Does Frye mean to equate vision<\/em> and faith<\/em>?\u00a0 That is, we began with the dialectic of belief and vision, and now it seems to have become a dialectic of faith and belief.\u00a0 Has Frye switched the terms on us here?\u00a0 Well, yes, but hang on.<\/p>\n \u00a05.\u00a0 First par. on p. 94.\u00a0 Here we encounter the typical Frgygian move, the establishing of a framework<\/em> into which he can put the issue or question.\u00a0 We\u2019ve read enough of Frye already to understand the binary opposition he sets up.\u00a0 In reading there are two processes involved, and they descend from or are based on the time\/space<\/em> opposition that is everywhere in Anatomy of Criticism<\/em> and elsewhere:<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 a.\u00a0 linear narrative movement: temporal: ear: musical metaphors<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 b.\u00a0 act of attention: spatial: eye\u00a0 (the Gestalt): conceptual space; architectural metaphors (structure)<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This is a version of the mythos<\/em> and dianoia<\/em> opposition: things move in time (we \u201clisten\u201d to the sequence) and things organize themselves in space (we \u201csee\u201d the structure or pattern).<\/p>\n \u00a06.\u00a0 Frye\u2019s next move is to consider two \u201cconfused metaphors\u201d about all this:<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 a.\u00a0 McLuhanism: book = linear process, but electronic media = simultaneous vision.\u00a0 Frye doesn\u2019t buy this, for the book has to be understood (experienced as dianoia<\/em> or understood spatially) as well as read (experienced as mythos<\/em> or in a linear way), and electronic media have a narrative (experienced in a linear way, as well as seen as a simultaneous pattern).\u00a0 So the kind of either\/or opposition one finds in McLuhan won\u2019t work for Frye.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [Marshall McLuhan, Frye\u2019s colleague at the University of Toronto, is the great guru of contemporary communications theory, the person responsible for coining the expression \u201cthe medium is the message.\u201d\u00a0 To some degree, Frye and McLuhan, both of whom had international reputations, were rivals for attention.\u00a0 Frye is always careful to attack, not McLuhan himself, but what he calls elsewhere McLuhanism, the perversions of McLuhan\u2019s insights about the media by lesser communications people.\u00a0 We get a version of that here, where Frye says that McLuhan had been \u201cground up in a public relations blender\u201d (94\u2013\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 5).]<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 b.\u00a0 Derrida: extreme emphasis on writing; writing is the speaker\u2019s presence.\u00a0 But prose depends on rhythm, and it is a written structure, not a speaker\u2019s presence.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Now this is pretty dense stuff.\u00a0 A bit of background.\u00a0 During the 1970s and 1980s Frye had been displaced from the center of critical attention by poststructuralism, of whom the high priest was Jacques Derrida, the French intellectual who has become known as the father of deconstruction.\u00a0 Frye considered Derrida as a threat (you might glance at what I say about Derrida and deconstruction of pp. xv\u2013xvi of the Introduction).<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What\u2019s all this \u00e9criture<\/em> business about anyway?\u00a0 In Of Grammatology<\/em> Derrida tries to upset the traditional notion that \u00e9criture<\/em> (\u201cwriting\u201d) is secondary, or, to put it in the opposite terms, that in our conventional ways of thinking about language, speech comes first, that it exists on a level above writing.\u00a0 For Derrida both speech and writing are unstable: both lack what he calls a \u201cpresence\u201d (that is, there\u2019s nothing at the center of either on which one can ground a position).\u00a0 There is no \u201cmetaphysics of presence,\u201d as Derrida says.\u00a0 There is no determinate meaning.\u00a0 Speech for Derrida is already contaminated by writing, and writing (\u00e9criture<\/em>) takes the place of speech as the norm of language.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Well, Frye thinks Derrida is quite off base.\u00a0 (He has already taken a swipe at contemporary critical theory on p. 93, calling it a \u201cwasteland.\u201d)\u00a0 Frye wants to disabuse us of the notion that the important issue is not the speaker\u2019s presence or absence.\u00a0 This is just a conventional pretense.\u00a0 The important thing for Frye is that there is structure<\/em> in written discourse.\u00a0 (Derrida would deny that there is structure in anything: show me a structure, he would say, and I\u2019ll deconstruct it for you.)<\/p>\n \u00a07.\u00a0 Next move.\u00a0 But what does structure<\/em> mean as a metaphor?\u00a0 It\u2019s a confusion to say that to understand literature we must seek the destruction of the work.\u00a0 This is another jab at deconstruction, which claims that we can\u2019t ever really construct meanings from texts: all we can do is deconstruct the meanings.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Frye makes a concession here.\u00a0 He agrees that understanding never becomes definitive.\u00a0 But he is unwilling to concede that structure is unimportant in reading literature: all literature has a structure<\/em>.\u00a0 Notice now the metaphor of incarnation on p. 96 (lower-case \u201ci\u201d but with a clear religious meaning).\u00a0 All works, Frye says, have something about them of the paradox of incarnation: enclosing the infinite in a finite form.<\/p>\n \u00a08.\u00a0 Next a fairly enigmatic paragraph on metaphors of seeing and hearing again.\u00a0 What\u2019s the purpose of this paragraph about Zen and the Mass, etc.?\u00a0 It\u2019s an illustration of what Frye means by seeing a structure.\u00a0 Such seeing is a part of our experience.\u00a0 It\u2019s particularly an aspect of ritual, where we literally see something: the elevated host, the ear of corn, the golden flower.\u00a0 Frye\u2019s aim seems to be (again, Frye is a bit difficult to follow here) that, as against deconstruction, we actually do experience structure when we read, and in ritual we have an analogy of this.<\/p>\n \u00a09.\u00a0 Now, we finally come to belief, and Frye\u2019s discussion of belief is in the context of the different kinds of verbal structures, from fiction at one end to the descriptive prose of newspapers at the other.<\/p>\n \u00a0[Outline of the main themes from here on.]<\/p>\n \u00a010.\u00a0 No process of belief involved in reading literature: acceptance: suspension of disbelief.\u00a0 Range of responses: newspaper: acceptance of what we read is continually involved: whether news stories are true is the issue.<\/p>\n \u00a0With newspaper, acceptance of words is accompanied by belief or disbelief.\u00a0 With Bible, this doesn\u2019t enter in: we accept the myth and metaphor: we postpone commitment until after linear stage is completed.<\/p>\n \u00a011.\u00a0 P. 98.\u00a0 One\u2019s lifestyle is a manifestation of one\u2019s faith.\u00a0 Faith must be powered by vision.\u00a0 Faith = pursuing the for itself<\/em> (Hegel) which is the burden brought into the world by consciousness.\u00a0 Vision = pursuing the model world in itself<\/em>.\u00a0 Very abstract philosophical terms here that Frye takes from Hegel\u2019s Phenomenology of Spirit<\/em>, pp. 294 ff.\u00a0 For Hegel, for-itself<\/em> has to do with thought, with the self-consciousness that comes from our being post-Enlightenment people.\u00a0 It\u2019s limited.\u00a0 It\u2019s related to faith expressed in conceptual or Enlightenment terms.\u00a0 On the other hand, in-itself<\/em> is a matter of getting beyond Enlightenment rationality to something above and beyond historical self-consciousness.\u00a0 It\u2019s a matter of vision, or arriving at what Hegel calls Begriff<\/em> (notion).\u00a0 For-itself<\/em> belongs to the world as it is.\u00a0 In-itself<\/em> belongs to the world as it might or should be.<\/p>\n \u00a0For itself: related to<\/em> self-consciousness, actuality, human law, the external world of culture and civilization<\/p>\n \u00a0In itself:<\/em> consciousness, possibility, faith, harmony, consciousness of the Notion (Begriff<\/em>), the spiritual world<\/p>\n \u00a012.\u00a0 P. 99.\u00a0 Hope = constructing the model world.\u00a0 Can\u2019t separate hope from vision.\u00a0 Faith = the activity of realizing the model world suggested by hope.\u00a0 Belief without vision = anxieties about secondary concerns.\u00a0 Vision without belief = \u201cbad faith\u201d = contemplating the timeless in itself<\/em> without looking at the historical for itself<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u00a013.\u00a0 P. 101.\u00a0 Apocalypse = getting beyond time and history.\u00a0 Apocalypse = a vision of a body of imagery where all categories are identified with the body of Christ.\u00a0 This can\u2019t be grasped in doctrinal terms.<\/p>\n \u00a014.\u00a0 P. 102.\u00a0 [Section break here, indicated by the spacing.]\u00a0 Myth as distinguished from ideology.\u00a0 Myth has to do with primary concerns = food, freedom of movement, sex, shelter.<\/p>\n \u00a0Secondary concerns = ideology<\/p>\n How to connect mythology to faith?\u00a0 Bible provides a clue.<\/p>\n \u00a015.\u00a0 P. 104.\u00a0 Eden = identity of the human and the natural<\/p>\n The Fall = the mythological (or imaginative) and the ideological begin to separate<\/p>\n \u00a016.\u00a0 P. 106.\u00a0 The Apocalypse = total transformation of reality; not the millennium, because there\u2019s no connection with history or the future.\u00a0 Apocalypse is a metaphorical structure in which there\u2019s no separation of subject and object.<\/p>\n \u00a017.\u00a0 P. 106.\u00a0 Function of literature is to keep the metaphorical habit of thinking in identities alive.\u00a0 <\/strong>This is a refrain that is sounded throughout Frye\u2019s work.\u00a0 There is always a certain anxiety underlying the idea; that is, there\u2019s a danger that we might lose the habit of thinking metaphorically, and if this happens, we are, for Frye, doomed.<\/p>\n \u00a018.\u00a0 P. 107.\u00a0 Imaginative identity or the metaphorical structure of the Bible can be extended back to recapture some of the existential force that the metaphor once suggested.<\/p>\n At next stage of imaginative identity, agape makes its appearance.<\/p>\n The divine initiative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u201cWell, the dialectic of belief and vision is the path I have to go down now.\u201d\u00a0 \u2013\u2013Late Notebooks, 1:73 \u00a0Joe Adamson’s reference earlier today to “The Dialectic of Vision and Belief” reminded me of some notes I made for my students several years back.\u00a0 Page references are to the essay as reprinted in Myth 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