{"id":16538,"date":"2024-05-13T12:55:49","date_gmt":"2024-05-13T11:55:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=16538"},"modified":"2024-05-13T12:55:49","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T11:55:49","slug":"long-read-the-sleep-of-reason-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2024\/05\/13\/long-read-the-sleep-of-reason-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"LONG READ: The Sleep of Reason II"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor’s Note: This is the second part of an extended essay<\/a><\/span> by Irish artist Terence O’Connell<\/a><\/span> but can be read as a stand alone piece.<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Rationalism is a psychosis; a dissociation of intellect and feeling; the suppression of our intuitive, emotional, and sensual being (the heart\u2019s domain). Enlightenment thinkers wished to replace the credulity of religious compliance with reason. They put their faith in human progress and an expansive intellect \u2013 and some, it should be said, in a deeper and more natural spirituality.<\/span><\/p>\n

They thought they could reform society, but radical social reform has rarely, if ever, been generated by external pressure. It arises when an established worldview reaches the limit of its credibility and its possibilities.<\/p>\n

For all the fine words and egalitarian instincts, what emerged was a restricted and abstracted rationality, blinkered by the narrow focus of scientific empiricism: a civilization devoid of core significance that was to become a kind of megalomania. Mathematical abstraction<\/span>, reductionist precision and the crushing urgency of capital\u00a0 accumulation could never have generated a benign culture.<\/p>\n

Without consent to meaning and an imaginative response to the innate feelings that evoke a deeper sense of being, Western civilization will continue its fragmentation and decline until it succumbs to incompetence, overreach, and inner contradiction.<\/p>\n

At this point, Goya\u2019s Capricho 43 comes to mind once more. There he sits, Goya himself, slumped over a table, looking like he has the whole world on his shoulders and wishing it would all go away.<\/p>\n

However, the words on the panel are stark: \u201cThe sleep of reason produces \u00a0monsters\u201d. And the owls, bats and lynx are generally presumed to symbolize a resurgent irrationality always watching for reason to lower its guard \u2013 a clear expression of Enlightenment values. It is balanced somewhat by the caption for the print: \u201cImagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with her she is the mother of the arts and the source of their wonders\u201d.<\/p>\n

This is fine so far as it goes, but it ultimately amounts to the same thing. It implies that you can\u2019t trust imagination without reason to almost police it. But in art \u2013 so in life generally \u2013 the imaginative impulse is primary. It is not going to lead you down the road to ruin as in some Victorian morality tale.<\/p>\n

Imagination is the<\/em> indispensable quality, a benign compulsion in an unfolding life. A creative leap, the capacity to conceive the new<\/em>, is essential if life is to evolve rather than merely repeat.<\/p>\n

Even mathematics, the very rock on which the rational world is built, is itself a brilliant act of imagination; an original, symbolic system, independent of life as lived, and that may in turn be applied to our practical engagement with its process.<\/p>\n

Reason elaborates the idea<\/em> in a kind of inner dialectic that bridges the gap between inspiration and cultural expression, between the imaginative realm and the everyday. In practice, this is an indivisible, spontaneous process \u2013 not linear and mechanical \u2013 and its accomplishment is a sensitive art.<\/p>\n

However, we can\u2019t really be sure what Goya meant. He was unhealthy, overworked and disillusioned. But the sleep of reason is not loss of control; the sleep of reason is rationalism, reason without heart.<\/p>\n

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"The peremptory watchword "believe in God" has been superseded by \u201ctrust the science\u201d. Its dogmatic purpose is no different and it was used to effect during the pandemic as a marketing slogan for social compliance and pharmaceutical profit."https:\/\/t.co\/QtqRvZn2Co<\/a><\/p>\n

— CassandraVoices (@VoicesCassandra) April 24, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n