Jeffrey L. Kosky
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226451060
- eISBN:
- 9780226451084
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226451084.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
This book concludes by discussing the encounters with artworks that act as emblems of modern disenchantment, two images of a light that clears the clouds and leads us to solid ground. Together, the ...
More
This book concludes by discussing the encounters with artworks that act as emblems of modern disenchantment, two images of a light that clears the clouds and leads us to solid ground. Together, the encounters with these artworks have pointed to another way to organize the picture, another format for lighting and illumination other than the mode that leads to the world picture of modern disenchantment. Other things and other ways of human being get into the picture when things come to light in it differently. The author’s response to these artworks has been motivated by a sense, shared by many today, that the smile on the smiling sun has become less welcoming than it seems and more sinister in its saccharine cheer. We have grown disenchanted with the disenchanted world laid bare by the light of demystification and disenchantment. We suspect that something has gone missing from the world mastered by the apotheosis of electricity.Less
This book concludes by discussing the encounters with artworks that act as emblems of modern disenchantment, two images of a light that clears the clouds and leads us to solid ground. Together, the encounters with these artworks have pointed to another way to organize the picture, another format for lighting and illumination other than the mode that leads to the world picture of modern disenchantment. Other things and other ways of human being get into the picture when things come to light in it differently. The author’s response to these artworks has been motivated by a sense, shared by many today, that the smile on the smiling sun has become less welcoming than it seems and more sinister in its saccharine cheer. We have grown disenchanted with the disenchanted world laid bare by the light of demystification and disenchantment. We suspect that something has gone missing from the world mastered by the apotheosis of electricity.
Jeffrey L. Kosky
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226451060
- eISBN:
- 9780226451084
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226451084.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
This book starts with a picture that serves as a depiction of modern disenchantment. What it shows has become almost commonplace, hardly worth remark, much less, years of obsession. The book presents ...
More
This book starts with a picture that serves as a depiction of modern disenchantment. What it shows has become almost commonplace, hardly worth remark, much less, years of obsession. The book presents here the frontispiece to Christian Wolff’s emblematic work of the European Enlightenment, Reasonable Thoughts on God, the World and the human Soul, and All things in General. Communicated to the Lovers of Truth by Christian Wolff. It is an image of enlightenment and of revelation—of seeing the light and seeing it according to the format of light as a cone of illuminating rays streaming from a point source. This gives voice to a certain dualism: light and dark are opposed and irreconcilable, the light coming only after the darkness. It also gives voice to a sense of novelty or uniqueness, a break with how things have been in that dark past. Finally, it implies that light, at some time, departed, if it now returns or is brought back.Less
This book starts with a picture that serves as a depiction of modern disenchantment. What it shows has become almost commonplace, hardly worth remark, much less, years of obsession. The book presents here the frontispiece to Christian Wolff’s emblematic work of the European Enlightenment, Reasonable Thoughts on God, the World and the human Soul, and All things in General. Communicated to the Lovers of Truth by Christian Wolff. It is an image of enlightenment and of revelation—of seeing the light and seeing it according to the format of light as a cone of illuminating rays streaming from a point source. This gives voice to a certain dualism: light and dark are opposed and irreconcilable, the light coming only after the darkness. It also gives voice to a sense of novelty or uniqueness, a break with how things have been in that dark past. Finally, it implies that light, at some time, departed, if it now returns or is brought back.
