Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

Archive

Volume 2 Number 3, December 2001

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Particularities and Universals, Ethics and Aesthetics –

How Art Can Lead to Spiritual Experience

by

Sybille Fritsch-Oppermann

I. The Thought Forms of Dialogue and Understanding 

Interdisciplinary, intercultural and interreligious dialogue always means to talk about particularities and universals. All the more so, if we deal with questions of ethics, aesthetics and spirituality, trying to avoid any essentialist statements, which can only be agreed upon –if at all- by a community sharing the same faiths and confessions. But it is unavoidable to at least try to communicate ethical, aesthetic and spiritual world views to the Other, if we aim at a common understanding of world and society in late modern times and times of growing globalisation – and if we aim at developing common concepts and at least minimal standards of ethics and aesthetics. As a philosopher of religion, my contribution for the time being is, to show how on the one hand, interreligious dialogue and dialogue with religions in general is a necessary pre-requisition for a common ethics and aesthetics –for understanding the Others ethics and aesthetics at least- and on the other hand show, how art can lead –and maybe is the best starting point for- spiritual experiences.

Of course all understanding is rooted to a certain extent in discourse; no dialogue and hermeneutics is possible without language (not denying non verbal forms of hermeneutics, but concentrating on the language aspect of it here for the sake of starting the written, i.e. verbal, argument). Let me therefore at this point say a few words about thought forms which influence and vice verse are influenced by language and language theory as a sub discipline of hermeneutics, about new concepts of language as one product of new scientific insights and insights into scientific methodology in modern 20^th century science, showing, that even the new insights of natural sciences shape our world view and ways of perception.

*The thought form of formal logic contents per definitionem universal rules, which should be true/valid in all thinkable worlds and cannot be proved empirically; the realm of application however can be discussed. This logic works with the axioms of identity, contradiction and exclusion of the third. A further condition for practical applicability is, that those elements for which the logic should be applied, are intrinsically independent of each other and –if given- only connected by ”outer” relations. The temporal consistency of the elements is presupposed as well. Operations are reversible and can be repeated as often as wished. It is important to also be aware of the boundaries of their application. This thought form/logic however is rooted in the logic and philosophy of enlightenment (Kant’s critical idealism) based on Newton’s physics and is far away from chaos theory for example and its new non-causal logic, or quantum theory, at least on a micro level. It’s presuppositions  are not given for biological, psychological and social processes and events. Artificial intelligence for example is still not as developed as some would wish, since it is built upon formal logic. But human logic and the logic of human art for example and human ethics, is ”fuzzy”, not black-and-white. Many events in human life are not reversible.

*The thought form of dialectics (in theology cf Barth and Kierkegaard for a twofold logic) is especially important for the individual and development of society. From Being and Non-Being, through dialectical Becoming, new Being and new Non-Being develop. Dialectic pairs as Being and Non-Being constitute each other, a double negation does not lead back to the starting point, but to a new temporary balance (Parmenides, Hegel). As far as self consciousness is concerned, what is contradictory for formal logic, namely identity and difference, can be seen as One from the point of view of self consciousness, when the ”higher” self consciousness recognises the unity between questioning subject with its unique identity (and ”lower” self consciousness) and questioned ”object” (namely the same person and her self consciousness). Unsolved however stays the question of causality: was there first self consciousness or the discovery of the self?

For Piaget the development of the thought form of formal logic can be understood through assimilation and accommodation, although it is a weaker form of dialectic (not really contradictory). A person develops within the dialectic of devotion and approbation, from a reciprocity of world and self.

*The complementary thought form helps to coordinate different theories of one fact, when those theories are partial and concurrent, categorically different and not possible to be reduced one to another. Within each internal perspective they give a sufficient presentation, but are necessary altogether for a sufficient explanation. The complementary thought form owes its logic not the least to quantum theory and the end of strong causality on the micro level (not to be mixed up though with determined, non causal chaos). Knowing, that results depend on the experience’s setting and the inseparability of certain events: the term ”not compatible” is introduced for statements which are true in different contexts. For this thought form again the ”tertium datur” exists. Contrary to the dialectical thought form ”contradictory” statements do not constitute each other, but with respect to a third (for example representation or perception). Strong complementarity means that different ”statements” apply in different moments and all other conditions for complementarity are given. Nipkow therefore suggests, to use post formal, dialectical paradoxical and complimentary thought forms in the case of religious/faith crisis and conflict. We may add: in the case of interdisciplinary and interreligious dialogue.

*The graduating i.e. subdividing thought form has its roots –strictly speaking- from a theory of quantities with blurred edges. Human beings are judging with a somewhat ”blurred” scale (never – seldom – sometimes – often – always). And this ”fuzzy” logic is an alternative to dichotomies and dualism.

*Meta cognition is a persons knowledge about her own cognitive acts and about those of others. It is also (after Fredi P. Blüchel) controlling and watching those processes (for example in the case of learning strategies). The question here is how at all perception, recognition, argumentation and judging come about in our brain. Procedural meta-cognition co-ordinates the different thought processes, conceptual meta-cognition concerns the declarative knowledge about cognitive proceedings. Constructive meta-cognition deals with our own cognitive development, the knowledge about it and its conscious promotion. Meta-cognition (and also theory of perception in general) helps to differentiate inner and outer proceedings and realities.

Jaynes for example has the theory, that human consciousness came into being only about 1000 b.C.. Before that time the hallucinatory processes of the right half of the brain were interpreted from the left half as divine message. Varela, Thompson and Rosch add newer insights gained in observing the experiences in meditation of Buddhist monks.

            Those five ways of  observing, perceiving and arguing can be easily completed by others, for example one, which deals with emotions in a way, that they can be understood, expressed in words and contextually taken into consideration –which would and should be a way of aesthetic perception. Altogether they should help to gain better patterns of problem solving, argumentation, judging and hopefully ability for result consensus and also to develop the Ego positively in the sense of higher  self knowledge and self determination. This would help for better sketches of identity in a world of growing complexity and plurality. Here skills and education go hand in hand, since human activity and receptivity is always multi- dimensional in developing cognitive, emotional, aesthetic, social and practical and technical skills – i.e. the new insights of natural science will inevitably shape our aesthetic perseptions etc.[1]

II Logology and Religion: The Metalinguistic Dimension of Language and Com­munication as Means to Rescue Ethics and Spirituality

Coming from scepticism, the theory of language as logology is one meta-theory in philosophy, where science, religion and art can start innovative and creative dialogue. We started this essay with new concepts of language and perception as one product of new scientific insights and insights into scientific methodology in modern 20^th century science. Burke’s logology certainly is an early effort to deal with the fifth thought form of meta-cognition in the discipline of philosophy and linguistics.

Let us therefore now ask, how new insights in the philosophy of language and linguistics - and later aesthetics - can be made fruitful for theology, spirituality and ethics. How does the meta-linguistic dimension of language and communication in­fluence the theological concept of person and consciousness?

            In the intellectual context of structuralist writing Kenneth Burke was fascinated by language inasmuch as it makes the human species as one ”endowed by mutation” the only one able to comment on itself. This ”second-level” dimension which allows words about words and symbols about symbols makes possible the development of human personality as we know it. The pattern of complicated symbol systems about other symbols, Burke sees indicated in Aristotle’s definition of God as ”thought of thought” or in Hegel’s dialectics of  ”self-consciousness” (going still into a direction to be criticised by process thought for it’s dualism between God and creation and being still rather close to the second thought form of dialectics and idealism). This ability to comment on a situation or to comment on comments is truly human. Some higher primates and cybernetic machines seemingly can refer to their own plans as well, but they never can appreciate the concept and self-consciously participate in an Aristotelian divine or Hegelian dialectic. Words about words in this sense (not just explanatory statements in general, but words used systematically to chart the general principles of word use) Burke calls ”logology”. Later Burke explained the forms and purposes of a meta-linguistic aspect of (for example religious) language as ”language as symbolic action” as these give away their own secrets. ”...the movement of lan­guage becomes the primary reality: communication as the exchange of word centres; words coming together at each nexus to form patterns; the patterns interacting, structurally modifying each other as they clash, testing their bonds, then eventually disintegrating into units that will later recombine in new patterns at new loci – a veri­table verbal swirl that, at points, folds back onto itself, producing an awareness of its own dynamics.”(Carter, page 3) Indeed their could be many logologies stressing different rules of the game of words, but in a strict sense for Burke, it means "words about words as these reveal their own moral obsession”. So in his return to the issue of surrogate victims (in the Judeo-Christian tradition) and in his theory of the ”ubiqui­tous scapegoat" he is similar to theories of Eliade and René Girard in their broaching the subject of ritual violence (but this would be another article).

In many instances –and I have to leave out the concrete examples here for the sake of paper length- Burke discovers linguisticality masquerading as spirituality. The realms of language and spirit are analogous and Burke never comes to the conclu­sion, that ”the show has no meaning” (page 10). ”First, Burke isolates the logological dimension from the expressive or the persuasive or the referential or the poetic to remind us that our world is primarily linguistic.” (page 10). So if nothing else, logology reminds us, that, though we act with many different motives, we cannot escape from words. ”Burke is structuralist in his emphasis on the semiotic character of these dy­namics. [...] Our reality, to paraphrase Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, is a ‘lin­guistic construction’” (page 10)

Long before Derrida and de Man became read, Burke made a point, that linguistic reality has neither firm foundation nor essence. ”Our symbolic landscape is not so much a realm of literal truths or of simple one-to-one correspondences between clearly defined terms and clearly demarcated objects as an insubstantial realm of metaphor, of what Burke calls ‘analogical extension’.” (page 10) He is deconstruc­tionist in his focus on the figurative or literary nature of our linguistic reality and his emphasis on the unstable character of these dynamics, but not in his assumption of dramatic presence. The narratives with which we frame our lives are ethically charged. The above mentioned ”scapegoat mechanism” is a linguistic mechanism serving as the overall category for human relations, that language reveals, even if blind to its own insights, in its metalinguistic or logological dimensions. The biblical dialectics between sin and obedience, love and punishment searches finally for a perfect scapegoat as an end of the others line: the final mediatory principle is the Son’s crucifixion and resurrection. Other similar stories/”plays” are found in different religions/cultures. ”Eliade begins with the rise of religion, which he discusses as an encounter with sacred mystery, out of which meaning is formed and order established. Primitive men and women confront the enigma that all life risks death and that evil is enmeshed with good. For Eliade, the essence of the human is a re­ligious courage in the face of these existential contradictions, a courage which finds ex­pression in myth, symbol, and ritual [art, we may add, knowing, that early art had its roots in religion as well], including human sacrifice.” (page 13) The con­nected rites are of human/cultural choice, mythology or theology more than nature or instinct. For Girard religion rises with an encounter with finite ressources: from pos­sessive mimesis the process goes to conflictual mimesis. The origins of violence and (ritual) killing are forgotten; what remains are the warring ”doubles”, pairs of antago­nists locked in mortal combat. ”In a moment of paroxysm, all blame some more or less innocent party for their own troubles and then sacrifice him, her or it.” (page 14) The new world order and the new laws for it will be erected on these deads’ grave­s and the world will deify them. ”For Girard, the essence of the human is this paradox of sanctions, a concoction of legal thou-shalt-not’s that maintain order and of ritualis­tic thou-shalt’s that administer homeopathic doses of a return to chaos.” (page 14) This is structuralist in stressing the transindividual nature of the cultural pattern. Re­ligion for Girard, who is here much more final then Burke, is nothing else but this im­mense effort to keep the peace. ”For Girard, the scapegoat precedes the law. For Burke, the law precedes the scapegoat. [...] At the very least, both try to explain why the more empirical Eliade unearths, when he surveys the history of religions, so much sacred violence.” (page 15)

Burke’ s work can help us to isolate the foundational violence, in order to appreciate what is still valid in religion – often hidden. He is deconstructionist in his assumption that a disruptive energy constantly bursts into the world, but on the other hand he states, that these bursts can be given a more constructive direction at the locus of the person. Burke does not completely decenter the self. It has no firm foundation or any substance and is a product of the verbal swirl, undergoing transformations all the time made possible by the symbolic resources of language. Nevertheless it is an unique nexus of experience and can attain an understanding of its own dynamics. ”A place where language folds onto itself, the self can face its own moral obsessions.” (page 16) The self can act to reverse its own dangerous trends. Language itself furnishes some of the absurd theatre of human emotion, and though we cannot break from the circle of language, we are responsible for our freedom and can choose our words more carefully and form our narratives more towards love.

Burke never affirmed God’s existence in any orthodox way; he concentrates on language, where it tells its own story and where words open to the mystery of their own operation, but his warning and optimism that we can make use of our freedom reaffirms his faith in our species and its logological talent. ”Burke is deconstructionist in his belief that language gives away its own self-destructive secrets, but, unlike the deconstructionists, he openly admonishes us, with some real urgency in his voice, not remain blind to the still-too-seldom-remarked secret of the ‘scapegoat mechanism.’ Logology in the very strictest Burkean sense is a metalinguistic attempt to decrease the number of sacrificial victims.” (page 18)

It is a plea as pessimistic as realistic; taking serious the sceptical approaches towards ethics and any form of religion in late modern times; trying to avoid any essentialism and nevertheless, with the help of what he calls ”logology”, using the specific human capacity of reflecting ones ability to reflect, of talking about language and its misuse and influence and shaping our perception of reality up to our very acting, in order to step by step learning to learn from language (language of art and language of faith etc.) a better behaviour for the sake of individuals and community – maybe even for the sake of that loving reality which transcends our human reality, but therefore all the more so transcends language and words – shows itself from time to time in the beauty of paradoxes and poetry/art.[2]

III. Art and Religion – A Dialogue Initiating World Spirituality through Aesthetics

There are no transcultural norms to define art within history of religion. However, accepting for the time being as working hypothesis, God in a Christian sense as unmoveable and moved/suffering at the same time, we can take ”functional” and ”magic” as significantly global iconographic features. It’s divine presence makes the work of art at the same time a ”fascinans” and a ”tremendum”. Then art is perceived in the sense of a mythical act, in which the powers of the ”essence of primordial time” are to be reactivated. Ancient Greek art for example, understood in it’s iconography, is imitation of nature in as far as it tries to grasp nature’s true substance. The artist can understand the latter, because the divine Spirit runs through cosmos as well as through the artist and through the viewer of art, because God and human beings are substantially related. Seen from this point of view it is clear, that not always those times without images were the culmination points of history of religion.

Although this rather religious and essentialist world view is not shared today neither by theologians nor by artists and philosophers, we learn from these descriptions, that from early times and in almost every culture history of art and religion are inseparably connected. As far as the 19^th century is concerned, we are confronted with a dogmatic and ideological misunderstanding, that this is the century of the ”loss of the centre” (the loss of God). It is argued, that the reason for this loss is the extreme individualism of our period of history. Nevertheless faith itself has an irreversibly individualistic structure, which is the presupposition of the communicability of religion against modernism’s horizon. The second, morally dualistic misunderstanding is the presupposition, that there is a wide gap between transcendence and religion on the one hand and worldly piety which affirms being on this world’s side and transfigures sensual beauty. But even early romantic ages knew the general in the specific, which is structurally comparable to the principle of incarnation as known in many religions, especially in Christianity and is nowadays, for example in process thought, interpreted in non essentialist, cosmological and/or historic way.

Even more misunderstandings arose in the realm of painting through historic speculations (like Hegel’s theory of the end of art and Comte’s theory of the end of the theological age for example). The argument is, that from now on art reproduces experienced reality and this relieves it of it’s character of revelation. New symbols for God –for God incarnate especially- are faded out.

Sociological misunderstandings play off against each other high and trivial art and techniques of reproduction. The sacral romanticism of the school of Nazarenes for example is either valued too highly or misused for ”indicating” the lack of the religious theme from 1820-1840 in other schools. But we do have for sure sacral art on an equally high level represented by avant-garde artists like Delacroix, Cézanne, Liebermann, van Gogh and the Moderns since Expressionism, and also a broad range of so-called ”trivial art” dealing with religious questions and themes.

In the 1850ies impressionism is taking over the leading role in ”religious art” and from 1850-1870  this is the case for critical and middle class realism.

The political domestication finally of critique and of the ugly leads to a new idealism at the end of the 19^th century. Later, the new symbolism, art nouveau, shows a religiosity which has it’s sources in Goethe’s oeuvre. Expressionism and abstract painting remember early romanticism and suggest a new convergence of art and religion in the 20ies century.

            In philosophy art can be seen as the sensual appearance of the idea –and overcome in time finally- (Hegel), as the art of the principle of Dionysos in contrary to the crucifixion (Nietzsche) or art is seen as worldly religion – just to name a few examples.

At the end of classical modernism in Heidegger’s theory of art (i.e. aesthetics) modern times is seen as time of mere worldviews and the claim to represent a necessary development is questioned as a point of view, which only takes from reality what makes up it’s reproducible part. World becomes an image; world becomes available. The ”thing” in art and especially plastic art for Heidegger stands against the conception of an available world – as that which is closest, it withdraws (i.e. apophatically fragments) itself. And the other experience of the thing turns up, when seeing itself transforms itself; ceases to be a seeing of fixation. (In this sense, plastic art and sculpture are good examples: they are arts of the invisible and need emptiness as music needs silence.)

            Unfortunately middle class churches often follow the above mentioned misunderstandings and misjudge pilot projects of religious and art developments. Most of the latter therefore arise aside and in opposition to church institutions. Methodologically however it can be argued, that every piece of art, because of it’s sign syntax and internal structure can and should be perceived in the field of aesthetic and theological horizons. One has to recognise of course the complexity of the sign ensemble and it’s unites and structures. But then, the game of form, content, referee and interpreter has to be and can be recognised in an aesthetically and theologically appropriate way. Works of art are not religious in the sense of an a priori system. On the other hand, the religiosity of a work of art cannot be denied through aesthetic principles as long as those do not supply a sufficient explanation of the conception of religion and the conception of transcendence.

If we follow Tillich’s definition of religion as experience of the absolute, as experience of ultimate reality because of the experience of ultimate nothingness, then art in the sense of a transformation of images comes also close to reformation and the prohibition of images in the Hebrew Bible: Structurally it comes close to the cross, following God’s incarnation and so crossing through death itself and transforming human finiteness. (From this point of view we come to also understand better the religiosity of expressionism, faith mystics of abstract art, religious metaphysics in surrealism, prophetic-social realism, religious contemplation in new object art, search for myths and naive piety and also religious ritual in action art etc.)

            Ontological systems with their determination of substance, when they want to explain the artistic cosmos, often miss that character of art which aims at autonomy from systems like spirituality claims freedom from all religious institutions. Here art is only an answer, not a statement in itself. Models of compensation or of correlation try to built up a bracket between theory and praxis and so unite historical development, divine transcendence and psychic reality. There is also a worldly interpretation of religious language (Dorothee Soelle) to be seen as concretised compensation of the desire for the absolute (the ”perfect”) on the level of experience. Finally: the meaning of hermeneutic categories  and linguistic entities/units (Bultmann) show texts as relational texture of elements of meaning and the structural activity of their production before any intentional and affective operation. Not to forget the cathartic function of art.[3]

”Erfahrung” on the other hand, following Gadamer’s hermeneutics of ”Wahrheit und Methode” is the consciousness of an earlier event in the past and, as far as art, literature and history are concerned, understanding aims at the experience (”Erfahrung”) of truth and comes before all scientific methodology. As for Heidegger, understanding is a fundamental ”Existential” of human existence (although this hermeneutic is not free from essentialist terminology in his ”Fundamentalontologie”), for Gadamer all understanding is interpretation (of oneself), is ”application”. The universal claim of philosophy is, that the phenomenon of understanding lies at the ground of all relations to the world. Understanding needs language, but language ”is” only in the actuality of understanding, is only in conversation/dialogue.

On the other hand, as Nietzsche put it, idealism does not get out of the trap, that interpretation/hermeneutics/understanding as a process always aims at understanding oneself better, being enriched by the encounter with the Other. Reflexivity has it, that norms are constituted by the interpreter, even if the Otherness of the Other is made a point. This is especially true for Habermas: he fails to let the Other be the Other and does not take its context seriously enough. Instead he brings in the Other into his own world of symbols and complex life-world. In doing so he universalises his own context and looses the claim for universality. Gadamer is not free from this reflexivity either, but to my point of view his reflexivity (and finally also Habermas’ ”Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns”) can be interpreted in the late modern sense of self-reference – as is the case for Burkes logology: therefore it is very important for both of them, that to act means to change oneself (in theology, influenced by Heidegger, it meant to decide). Understanding finds its goal in acting, acting leads to new understanding - ”of oneself” we should add again, more then of the Other.

This becomes different again in the situation of ritual/sacramental event, since in the event of the Transcendent Reality –from beyond space and time into space and time- the subject-object-dichotomy is overcome to a certain extent at least – as is the dualism between Self and Other.

The dialogue between art and religion, in front of the above described background, can be seen as one representative dialogue between what ultimately concerns us aesthetically and spiritually – and so as bridge building between art and religion. The silence as incarnational ground of music, the void as incarnational ground of art and the cross as incarnational ground of human beings becoming divine (or nothingness as incarnational means of beings becoming Buddha) are only variations of the ultimate divine reality encompassing the world – the world of art and religion- and experienced in the rituals of religion and play. 

IV How Spirituality and Play Get Together – How Art Can Lead to a Spiritual Existence

Let us now in more detail discuss the question how theatre and ritual, i.e. art and the sacramental and ritual aspect of spirituality go together.

In any case it is rather obvious, that modern and late modern theatre has religious aspects. When modern producers use religious symbols and contents, they signal a typical phenomenon of 20^th and 21^st century theatre. The ”Aristotelian dramaturgy” aims at ”katharsis” through the primarily positive aspects of fear and compassion as is due to the antique understanding of fate. Knowledge is possible, not change of the situation. But modern theatre, like religion, starts from claiming the possibility of change – of structures, or, as very impressing in Barlach’s theatre plays for example, of persons. Even when –as logology in the philosophy of Burke- theatre shows the rather pessimistic situation of modern anonymity, there is from time to time something utopian one could call ”hoping against what is before one’s eyes”.

If we therefore take for granted the possibility of a theatrical play as a therapeutic process, the rediscovery of this staging of human worlds and counter worlds is to be seen very close to the rediscovery of myth and ritual (cf. Schopenhauer’s, Nietzsche’s und Heidegger’s discussion of Meister Eckart’s mystic). Art and theatre, but also religion and myth are to be understood as a reflection of our own understanding of and suffering from world and it’s finitude. The meaning of spirituality in our today’s form of life often is silenced to death. Nevertheless more and more people show a great yearning to rediscover exactly this playful art of theatre and religious rituals for their life and deeds as the only form of expressing and experiencing/perceiving the paradox truth of God’s incarnation/the Transcendent. This is clearly expressed by the rediscovery of the playful element in liturgy and theology on the one hand and through the rediscovery and regain of ritual and myth for theatre on the other. It is now our task to discover and think through anew the connection between spirituality and body, between word and form, not only for theatre pedagogy, but also within Protestant Theology. A theology, which has lost it’s spiritual dimension, is in all cases well advised, to recollect an understanding of God, which understands God as creator also of our corporal being and God’s Son and the incarnation of God into humanity as motivator for all ethical deeds, all beauty and all faith. If we believe into incarnation, senses are as divine as is reason and emotion, up to a point, where we could speak about erotic as sacrament for example. Playfully we can experience life and death no longer as contradictory, love and emptiness and profane and sacred as complementary – as for example in Buddhism and in the idea of maya’s creational play in the beginning in Hinduism.

In a world, in which the relation of the own and the Other is broken up always anew and every day, religion or theology and theatre at the same time, have to think about the fact, that especially in Western societies there lies a great interest in the ideal of Egolessness, whereas in China, after a phase of Confucianism and then communism, individuality and subjectivity are celebrated totally new and in an individual manner: seen globally there is a correlation between subjective and collective structures – and in art as well as in spirituality the search starts with senses, mind and emotion.

Then another interesting question is, in how far mystical/spiritual experience can be compared with artists’ body exercises. And whether we start from singing as essence of the aesthetically bodiless, or whether we –as Pnina Bausch for example- are not interested, how human beings move, but what they move, or whether we take body work as starting point of all intellectual work: in all cases it holds true, that the body necessarily has to be seen as bearer of reason (and spirit) and therefore an absolute separation is not possible. Hermeneutically said, the body is the bearer of our ideas and emotions, in fact the bearer of our faith and art.

Since hundreds of years especially the theatre insists on this ”incarnational function” of the unity of body and spirit and, in doing so, has emancipated itself from literature. The visitors are (in most cases) no longer just spectators, but present. If we try to understand the poets as translators of God, then for sure theatre is -beyond the crisis of the metaphysical- still the seesaw place or in the best sense of the word the ”playground” of God’s incarnation (and this not meant in a purely Christian sense).

Therefore as a conclusion we dare the thesis, that spiritual, ethic and aesthetic authenticity depend especially on the playful and staged (incarnational) potential. This playful potential enriches our language and discourse (with it’s cultural boundaries). It overcomes the dualism of obscene and holy, body and soul, human and divine. Liberation and salvation is possible in the playful ”Now” of theatre (and of poetics). But it is a salvation in the realm of the provisional – the latter also better suitable for theological apophatic reflection. We are passers by in the playful process of liturgy, ritual and theatre. We learn, to overcome the trench between taking ourselves back and authenticity several times daily. If we know since Wittgenstein, that we do not know anything at all, then it is the noblest task for the players, to take position for the moment, aesthetically and ethically –and even faithfully- and in doing so, enable humans to be capable of decisions and life again. To my opinion, a newly understood theology of the cross can do a lot for the mutual understanding, paradoxically stating and ”singing about” the truth, that holy and profane, time and space, mortal and rescued are not the same but at the same time unseparable.

Maybe Jesus did not play theatre, but he –if we may say so- set on stage himself and the Reign of God, where he lacked words, to express God literally and even poetically. And so on the other hand sacredness can happen in the theatrical. If by the veracity and authenticity of this prelude cognitive perception of truth can be set aside for a moment, also here profane and holy are meeting, erotic becomes a sacrament in the not yet ”performing” the unspeakable, which we then may perceive by aesthetic and spiritual intuition.

The thing (the object of art) stands as much against the availability of the world as does God incarnate stand against the availability of the cross. A common ethics therefore starts with accepting the Others truth as far as it is a truth incarnate in religion or in art. There is no possibility to judge between religious confessions (since we do not confess objects but reality itself as divine revelation in it’s deepest ground) or between works of art as better or worse in terms of expressing final reality in finite expressions. If we then become skilful in enduring diversity seen from the revelatory background of it’s unity in the Divine Beyond, we learn how to, anew and newly  born, come back to world in it’s worldliness and sinfulness and develop means, methods and ways to also act together for the sake of peace, justice and integrity of creation. In other words: ethics becomes art and religion itself and therefore no longer is a heavy law imposed on moral beings who, as a minority, strive hard for a better world: ethics is now founded in spirituality and art on a global level without being uniformed.

Conclusion

Let us go back now once more from the visual to the audible, from art to poetry and literature, to the (W)word in its spiritual and aesthetic and, following from both, liberating (ethical) meaning.

That poetry expresses a certain form of truth has never been denied by poets themselves, as theologians agree that in spirituality/in faith and the deed that follow we can find an expression of a divine ultimate truth - even when poets tried to develop a syntax free of the use of prose, a symbolic/sign language, a language of images not dependent on the laws of logic argumentation or a diction which is defined more by acoustic values then by semantic necessities (as Baudelaire or Mallarmé did contrary to classic poetry and its goal to mediate a thought for our understanding). But this truth can be a one to one sign – describing reality as it is or at least coming to it as close as possible, or it can be a symbol or even a description by the help of above mentioned fuzzy logic.

Religion and art are historically close and systematically connected through the image/picture as symbol, as sign for something else, which refers to the Holy, the Divine, the Transcendent in any case. Of course since the age of Renaissance art and religion became counter-players – both as founders of sense. Whereas Plato’s verdict, that artists deal with the senses and miss the truth, art is mimesis and therefore only appearance, is easier to deny for poetry, since it is closer to reflection, to language as that which makes us human altogether, we should be careful in all too fast neglecting fine arts and theatre, since we learned, that the ritualised experience of the Transcendent happens in play and especially in play. From here we have to critically approach classic and (late) modern avantgarde’s statement, that in order to re-construct the importance of art for our society we have to let go all mimesis. The worst thing to do would be to use art as instrument of mission, instead of watching the independence of theology and art and profit from their mutual enrichment in searching the truth and the Transcendent.

Again: Kant was the first to declare, that aesthetic phenomena and art cannot be defined through objects, but only through the conditions of perception and those of the production of art. Besides reacting towards reality theoretically and practically, there is an aesthetic reaction referring to our senses and emotion, but also to our intellect – this Kant calls ”Reflexionsgeschmack” (taste of reflection). To sense an aesthetically fitting figure for example is sensing something in freedom, in the freedom of a play and not deduct it from concepts. Art is the effort to ”make” the aesthetic. The paradox is, that the artist wants to make something which only ”luckily happens” (succeeds). There is no final theory about it. We can understand a lot in art and from art, but understanding is not the only aspect of it. One more important aspect of it is, that art is ”method out of freedom”, nothing which luckily happens out of my power or Other-power. Therefore art is never technique, it is a more or less secularised expression of –for example- the grace of the Transcendent.[4]

I wanted to show how on the one hand, interreligious dialogue and dialogue with religions in general is a necessary pre-requisition for a common ethics and aesthetics –for understanding the Others ethics and aesthetics at least- and on the other hand show, how art can lead –and maybe is the best starting point for- spiritual experiences. Moreover I hope, it became clear, how art and spirituality both enrich each other in searching for a perception of reality, which ”knows” about the Transcendent, in which all reality has it’s root and from where therefore comes hope for a common ethics in a time of growing globalisation.

Finally, with the help of the third and forth thought form, the complementary and graduating thought form, it can be showed, how –in a time of complexity and search for sense and truth- ethic, aesthetics and spirituality can be shared even when we do not agree on the other’s concept of it in detail, since we at least share the common paradoxical yearning of playing the worlds game to it’s self-fulfilling and at the same time self-transcending end.

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