Philosophy, the Arts, and Richard Rorty

I bought a book called Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature by Richard Rorty. I am excited to read this book because I think he is the clearest and best defender for various feelings I've been having about the analytic tradition in philosophy. To say the least, I haven't really favored the analytic tradition. I've had a falling out with it. But it hasn't been a complete divorce. It's almost like I'm telling it, 'It's not you, it's me.' Let's not get married; let's be 'just friends'. I want to make it a tool in my tool-box. Analytic philosophers want to make their philosophy the actual tool-box! They want it to be 'the privileged discourse'. More and more, I've wanted to make analytic philosophy a branch of something else, of something more ultimate - as long as it's not the trunk of the tree, or the roots from which the trunk grows.

My personal philosophy is very nascent, but I have strong intuitions about its truth. I can't put it into words to my satisfaction, but I can hint at it by saying how I priviledge certain modes of expression over others. Music is high on the list; but then another part of me wants to call it Art in General, where Music can be branch. This view is highly influenced by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Nietzsche wrote the Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music. I have trouble relating to 'Tragedy', but I don't think it's too far off from a Movie, which I am very acquainted with. I want to say that these kinds of things 'come first'; but I have trouble putting into words exactly what I mean by this. Is it the very nature of my scheme that I can't analytically justify the order of the scheme itself? For if I could, the scheme itself is subsumed under the analytic tradition, and the tradition isn't a branch of something like I intially wanted it to be.

There is something very real in Music, however: something so real that when I am immersed in musical rapture, Descarte's demon almost seems like a harmless mirage. It's almost like the demon is only meant to haunt a mind dominated by the tyranny of the analytic tradition. But I want my philosophy to transcend that tradition's shortcomings: over-reliance on the mind, neglectful of intuitions, the arts, music, and movies. I really want to incorporate movies into my philosophy of life. For everything seems to come to a head in the movies: we can be moved by music, we have the visual representations who act, we have the arousal of emotions by the actor (which are feigned) and the audience (which are real), the themes and motifs which the film might want to indirectly transfer, and a host of other things.

Literature seems like a good candidate for making philosophy a branch of. But then Literature is a form of Art.

It's so funny to hear about the vexation people feel when a philosophy isn't direct and clear. But, as Nietzsche mused: what if truth is a woman? What if it really is? What if truth has to be coaxed out of us, or aroused in a certain way, and what if the most efficient way to do this is through the Arts? Even Rudolph Otto, in his 'The Idea of the Holy' admitted he was going to be talking about things which couldn't be directly mentioned. He had to invent or point out analogies and metaphors that were meant to arouse in us certain emotions. Why? Because the next step is to say that these emotions - the ones you feel now as a result of the metaphor - are analogous to the emotions you'd feel if you were in direct contact with that X of which we can't directly describe or communicate. He says that things of the Spirit have to be awoken in this way. Spiritually, we are all asleep, trying to wake up with the illusion of Reason, not realizing that such an illusion may be a part of the dream.

I'll see how Rorty can help me on my trek.