Seeing the old in a new way

    I believe in the evolutionary development of consciousness, meaning that human consciousness has changed and evolved over time.  Further, I believe that the proper response to modernity is not to go back to an earlier stage, but to go through modernity by developing new ways of thinking.  But one thing I always try to do is to imagine what this would look like in detail.  How does it work?  

    One big way that I think this has happened through history is that people find new insights and new ways of understanding by looking at what is old through the lens of a new way of thinking.  

    One example is painting.  I believe that the history of painting in the 19th century shows the development of consciousness that Rudolf Steiner says took place in this time.  In the 19th century, there were many painters skilled in realism and detail, exemplified by such paintings as John Constable's 1825 Painting Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds:

    In his lecture, "Materialism and the Task of Anthroposophy," Steiner wrote: "It was in the middle and second half of the nineteenth century that materialism had its period of greatest development."  Whatever one's opinion of Rudolf Steiner, in many ways this was a century where the development of the physical was at a high point.  And we can understand the physical more broadly to mean the objective world, as well as skills in arts and crafts and manufacturing.  This was also the heydey of the naturalistic and realistic novel.  

    Then, with impressionism, we see something change.  The artist now attempts to depict the impression of a scene.  Painting moves inward to show the subjective.  An example is Alfred Sisley's View of the Canal Saint-Martin: 

    This matches the development outlined by Steiner.  After the high point of materialistic consciousness in the 19th century, human beings were supposed to move towards a consciousness that recognized the reality of the spiritual.  But, there are two crucial points.  This new consciousness would not recapitulate the old, where the spiritual was perceived by the senses.  Instead the spiritual would be perceived in consciousness.  Furthermore, this new development must be chosen, it cannot be forced. 

    It is only natural that such a development would be expressed in art.  Another way of development in art is using modern realistic painting techniques to render the legendary or mythical.  If you think about it, this is taking the legendary or mythic and recasting not as foggy or vague, but taking it up with the rational consciousness.  A good example is Frederick Sandys's painting Queen Eleanor: 

 

 

    where a medieval queen is depicted, but in such a detailed way that it is like we are seeing her in person.  Both of the developments in painting were also reflected in novels.  The move towards the subjective is reflected in writers like Dostoevsky with the psychological novel, while the depiction of the legendary in a modern manner by fantasy and other imaginative fiction.     

    Another example is critical history, the view of history as a science.  Yesterday I was reading an encyclopedia article about "Isaac Newton's Occult Studies."  The article discussed how Newton studied Biblical prophecy, ancient chronology, and the sacred geometry of the Temple of Solomon.  The article states: 

    "As a Bible scholar, Newton was initially interested in the sacred geometry of Solomon's Temple, such as golden sections, conic sections, spirals, orthographic projection, and other harmonious constructions, but he also believed that the dimensions and proportions represented more. He noted that the temple's measurements given in the Bible are mathematical problems, related to solutions for and the volume of a hemisphere, , and in a larger sense that they were references to the size of the Earth and man's place and proportion to it."     

  In all three of these areas, Newton is applying modern critical historical and scientific thinking towards the Bible and other ancient sources.  I am not endorsing any of Newton's conclusions on these matters, but his example shows how what we have here is an attempt to tease out new knowledge from old sources by applying new ways of thinking to them.  As a whole, I think the project of critical, rational history has provided many insights.  One being chronology.  Even as late as Newton's day, the dates of many ancient historical events were not known accurately.  We have been able to order and catalogue the years of many events and so gain new insights into history.  

    Yet another example is Plato and the Neo-Platonists.  Many modern scholars dismiss the Neo-Platonists who added to Plato's teachings.  However, the impression  I get is that some of the Neo-Platonists themselves would say that everything they teach was already in Plato.  And this was characteristic of ancient people.  When something was indeed a new development, they would say that it was contained in the original all along.  

    To stick with the Greeks, the Greek approach to mathematics was truly something new.  They learned mathematics from the Egyptians and Chaldeans, but recast the earlier discoveries in a new light by looking on them not just as facts, but as theorems, statements to be proven.  No doubt the earlier civilizations had reasoning they used to arrive at their conclusions, the Greeks made a study of proof and thereby brought forth a new development in mathematics. 

    One last example is J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.  Both of them wanted to write stories that would incorporate what they loved from mythology.  But they did not simply rewrite myths.  Tom Shippey has written in The Road to Middle Earth that The Lord of the Rings is in some ways very different from an ancient story such as Beowulf.  Frodo's quest to destroy the One Ring forces him to do battle in a subtle manner very different from the out and out confrontation of Beowulf with Grendel.  Tolkien recognized that he could not actually live and think as a man of the past and did not try to.  He took up what was good from the past into his own consciousness and brought forth something completely new but that was still an organic development from what had come before.  

    Likewise, in Lewis's That Hideous Strength, angels and Merlin exist alongside a technocratic organization.  In this book and the others in his Space Trilogy, Lewis gives much thought to how such things might appear in the modern world and how modern people might think of them. 

    One reason why this way of bringing forth something new is is good is because it is development rather than mere change.  When an acorn grows into an oak, this is a dramatic shift, but it follows nature rather than going against it.  An organic development does not destroy the past to bring forth something new.  Thus, this is one way forward for us.  It has been used by ancient and modern people.  If we want to move forwards in consciousness,  is we can take something good from the past and try to develop what is good in it in a new way.