Like Father, Like Son, or Like Mother, Like Son?

Recently I walked through Middelheim, the outdoor sculpture "museum" of Antwerp, Belgium, where I live. Middelheim is a beautifully landscaped grounds with sculptures dotting the pathways, sometimes even hidden amongst the trees, and only the discerning eye will catch all of them. It boasts of ranging from Rodin to the modern day, which it does deliver, and one could spend hours and hours wandering through the pathways, encountering various styles, manners, and media of sculptures. My daughter remarked that they were all naked as well when they were images of humans.

Some are in a very Neo-classical style, which made me think of how statues have been such a fixture in our society, especially those of human images. It is almost as if this is a way for us to freeze a moment or emotion in Time, trying to salvage it from the ever-changing world.

Socrates was the son of Sophroniscus, a stonemason, and his mother, Phaenarete, was a midwife, so far as we know, since Socrates himself never left us an autobiography, so we have to rely upon the few sources we have, most prominently, of course, being Plato.

However, that got me to thinking about the curious mixture of parental occupations and how one could (and I am merely playing a thought experiment here, nothing more...) imagine how each of them influenced his later Philosophy, and what an impact this has had on Philosophy ever since. For, it is a marriage of opposites, or perhaps it is a paradox, which Socrates was so found of using for examples.

A stonemason, if he does sculpt a statue of a human, is a Reductionist by nature and takes the material at hand and removes the outer husk of appearance to "find the reality" or "essence" of the Form inside. I believe it was Michelangelo who said that he always attempted to "free" the figure from the marble block, its silent tomb and to bring it to life. But, the life that even such a Master as Michelangelo was, can only bring a suggestion of life. This of course gives rise to the mythology of the likes of Pygmalion, the attempt to bring the inanimate to the animate world.

On the other hand, a midwife, such as Socrates' mother, brought the animate into the animate world. And, unlike a stone cutter, who chips away, the midwife is the conduit of that which is growing, not reducing.

Being raised by such parents, it is no wonder that a young Socrates might be curious as to the process of the Permanent and Impermanent, the Animate and the Inanimate, and the concepts of the Image versus Reality.

Unlike the Romantic version of the statues of Antiquity being ivory white statues with no eyes and stoic countenances, the statues of Socrates time were actually at the time painted with eyes and garments, and were more rather like Madame Tussauds House of Wax than the ghostly figures we see in the British Museum, or in Greece or Italy. They were more attempts to look human than not.

Socrates is often criticized, via Plato, as expounding upon the idea that men can be "pregnant" with an Idea, and that a Philosopher is merely a midwife for bringing such an idea to the world. This he learned from the initiated teachings of the only teacher Socrates ever mentions, a woman named Diotima in the Symposium.

Well, is that such a horrible thought? Does it have to be sexist? Pre-gnant, merely means, pre-- before and gnant--which comes from the root of "gen" which is to be born, or simply, coming into existence. So, a Pre-gnant Idea, is merely one that has not yet come to fruition, has not yet been delivered from its source. It is likewise, the block of marble without the sculptor's hand having "freed" the figure within.

Maybe we can imagine a young Socrates idly sitting by thinking about the two professions of his parents, the wheels beginning to turn, and instead of championing one or the other, he actually tried to fuse the two together, finding, like the connection between pleasure and pain, life and death, and being and not-being, where there was a common ground, an Idea, whose Time had come.

Perhaps...

I, I, and Not-I

I went to see the movie, “Looper” the other day, and I will say that movies and other narratives that deal with the aspects of Time and Time travel are amongst my favorite. Need I say that I am a freakishly ardent fan of Dr. Who?  (Tom Baker, Jon Pertwee, and Matt Smith at least)

I am not sure what planted the seed, though I suspect that it was the original “Cave of Time” series that I began reading in elementary school. No, in fact, writing that last sentence, I know that it was. That, and Mrs. Whitworth reading Madelaine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time to us in the 5^th grade. Between those two events, I was forever stuck in a time-warped sense of reality. That is not to blame, by any stretch of the imagination, and my imagination was stretched by those books and has been ever sense—beyond many imaginations out there—but merely to trace the roots of this.

A Wrinkle in Time is celebrating its 50^th anniversary this year and I just purchased a copy for my friend’s 11-year old daughter, so I will be curious to see how it has stood the test of “time” in some regards. I just remembered being mesmerized by every chapter that unfolded before us as Mrs. W. read them, always leaving off a critical moment, leaving us to hang out there in Space. Though, the flipside was that because of the genius 5-year old Charles Wallace protagonist, she would always say, “even a 5-year old could do this…” much to our chagrin and dismay if we could not perform such feats of genius, though she challenged us like no other, and if you rose to the challenge, you were rewarded with rare praise. And, as you may know, rare praise is cherished oh so much more than mere flippant everyday praise.

Don’t get me wrong, I give positive feedback, encouragement and loving support daily to my daughter, but I make a distinction when she really does something special, and she knows it. And, there is no substitute for the beaming of your child’s face when she does something awesome and you acknowledge it. As a proud father, EVERYTHING my little girl does is worthy of praise, but I do know how to single out the really “super-cool” things too.

But, back to Time.

When I saw “Looper” I was very impressed, and as for “Time” movies, it is hard to impress me as I usually see the “loop-hole” in the plot or logic of the time travel as there always is one at some level. Although I saw a couple in this one, for the most part, it was pretty well done. The attention to detail such as the bandage on the ear and the missing piece of the older version of Joe was excellent.

However, there was one sentence that stuck out for me, oddly enough. It was the scene when Old Joe meets Young Joe face-to-face in the diner. Old Joe remarks how odd it is to look at Young Joe. Young Joe says, “your face is backwards…” or something like that.

Hmmm…I saw that in the previews and it meant nothing to me. When the line was delivered in the movie, it was interesting, but I did not really let it sink in.

Then, later, when I saw a picture of myself that my friend had posted online and thought of that as compared to what I see daily in the mirror, it did hit me. I know that this is no great revelation, but it is actually if you really, really think about it.

In the mirror, my rather prominent scar on my forehead appears to be on the right side of my forehead. In pictures, and to everyone who sees me in real life, it is on the left side of my forehead. For 30 years, I have become accustomed to seeing this scar on my right side. However, were I to meet myself, in the Future or the Past (or at least after I received the scar, of course), I would see it for the first time in person on the LEFT side!

Then it hit me.

How many times do people say, when they see a picture of themselves, “that doesn’t look like me!” Well, it DOESN’T. Because, what you see of yourself in the mirror is not what the picture shows. Nor is it what everyone else sees, so, no it does not look like “you” because “you” have been looking at a different “you” than everyone else.

So, what if you came face to face with “you”?

How would “you” view “you”? As a familiar from the mirror, falsely represented, or as a stranger, for the first Time?

That simple scene, very necessary in the movie’s trajectory, set off many thoughts in my mind when I was processing it later that evening. Much of my philosophy is based upon the Socratic/Delphic motto of “Know Thyself,” but in a flash, I realized that the “Thyself” that I have known in the mirror each day was not really “me”!

Jacques Lacan is well known for many things, but one of them is the importance of the “mirror phase” in which an infant finally recognizes his/her image in a mirror and thus gains a sense of “self” with respect to the “world order.” Well, that vision of the “self” is incorrect. It is distorted and well, simply put, an illusion. Lacan was brilliant, however, I’m not sure he took this into account (please correct me if I am wrong and missed something in his lectures). The mirror stage is merely furthering deception, not revelation, nor awareness on the visceral level.

So, where does that leave us with “know-ing Thy-self” and the “mirror stage” as a crucial philosophy or turning point in development if both of them are based upon a fallacy of perception?

Suddenly, I feel out of the loop…