(Slide:) quintillian portrait

On the Subject of the Fyctional History (and Most Tragicall Mystery) in the Arte, Philosophie and Wrytings of One Quintillius Quintillian, and Concerning the Forme and Substance of that which He Created.

In this presentation I will attempt to make the case for a doctorate whose central thesis is based on the life and work of the obscure and marginal figure Quintillius Quintillian.

(Slide: manuscript and exhibition)

Alongside a presentation of a selection of his works, artefacts and objects in the form of an exhibition, with a new annotated publication of his manuscript Midas Rex, I propose to undertake the writing of a microhistory of sorts, on Quintillius Quintillian’s life, providing an analysis of the events we know of, in relation to his work, highlighting a philosophical shift in his thinking.

(slide: ginzburg micro history..)

The respected historian Carlo Ginzburg, describes microhistory as, an analytic approach to history, often the intensive or microscopic study of a case (or a subject which may be considered marginal or obscure), which could lead to a better generalisation.

In the case of Quintillius Quintillian, we find ourselves dealing with a figure, whose own internal struggles result in a philosophical wound in his thinking, forcing him to move away from what we might call his materially materialist period, to his essentially essentialist ouvre,

(slide: materially materialist vs essentially essentialist.)

and it is through focussing on this shift the research will attempt to draw from it the implications, in broad terms, of the tensions arising from what I will describe as the conflicting materialist/essentialist dichotomy, as it relates to the shifting historical paradigm. It is the particular details and peculiarities of his works, which will provide us with the means through which we shall be able to address these issues.

However, it will not be the place for this brief paper to focus on the complexities of the schism, but rather will focus the attention upon Quintillius Quintillian’s use of language (in his art and mainly his writing) and the significance of the modalities he chose to employ during the latter phase, which are intended to be the guide for the writing of this research, and will, as we shall see, ultimately throw light on the internal transformation that occured, and the reasons for it.

After his stint in the asylum, and sudden rejection of science and material claims to truth or reality, he also left behind him the belief that any one language could access reality directly. “The mystery at the heart of existence” was “precious”, he wrote, and could not be got at via the “corrupt forms of existence” (in particular civilised culture, and languages), and neither should they aim to.

Hence Quintillian moved towards an artful philosophy, and a belief in work which might act in a way which opened up an awareness of the world not limted by materialism, though with the knowledge that it would never describe reality itself. He plays the constraints of convention in art, and language against themselves, in order to open up a space for perception, onto the realm of the real, inaccessible without this artifice.

(slide- picture)

Through his work, he plays with irony, and depictions of the uncanny, asking that the viewer or reader face the horrors of the surface of the shifting historical paradigm, in order that they might find it in themselves to see beyond it. His art is not an escape from reality, but the call to face it, in order that we see the discrepancy between the surface forms and our true aims, and the ultimate need to reject the idea of necessary sacrifice at the base of existence, in order for life to go on, which leads towards the further corruption of substance, and it is from this which paradoxically we are trying to escape. To accept materialism as reality is to accept hell, and it is this reason Quintillius Quintillian needs urgently to find a way for himself, and others to look beyond it.

For him it is the possibility of being critical of the world, without the loss of faith or belief in love and forms, which exist for the sake of themselves, and can never be defined by a materialist trajectory, which again paradoxically, he aims towards often through dark and grotesque visions.

(slide- Kierkegaard)

Having only recently begun to look at the work of the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, it has been remarkable for the researcher to uncover how many parallels there are in his thought, with the work of Quintillius Quintillian, beginning with the rejection of science as a means to true knowledge and the necessity of the subjective in relation to faith and understanding.

Kierkegaard published the majority of his works under a host of pseudonyms (examples include, Victorin Victorius Victor, Constantin Constantius, Johannus the Seducer and Hilarius Bookbinder) all of which relate to the subjects being addressed.

It appears that it is perhaps through the acknowledgement that one’s perspective is never enough, and hence the choice to juxtapose alternate or even conflicting ‘philosophies’ through different ‘voices’, that we might see the arguments more clearly. There is the understanding that from one’s subjective position, an individual is bound to get many things wrong, in spite of his or her ability to uncover at the same time, profound philosophical insights. Through these clashing of wrongs, there is the chance that we might get at that which we cannot ordinarily perceive.

Though the philosophical writings we have thus far uncovered in the work of Quintillius Quintillian cannot hope to approach the sagacity and erudition found in the works of Søren Kierkegaard, the researcher contends that his manuscript Midas Rex, together with his paintings, along with his treatise on the Grand Scission or the Cut, corresponding to the fall of man, are nonetheless, at the very least, worth coming to know, and might offer an interesting, albeit macabre, counterpoint to this multi-faceted and authoritative body of work, which Quintillius Quintillian would, no doubt, have deemed exceptional and inspiring.

(slide: “not only treats of irony but is irony”)

Kierkegaard wrote his magisterial thesis on the subject of irony, with the title The Concept of Irony, with continual reference to Socrates, and was reviewed at the time as a work which, (quote:) “not only treats of irony but is irony” (end quote).

(slide- irony types)

In it Kierkegaard gives an account of the use of irony in the Socratic dialogues and sees himself in keeping with the maieutic tradition of Socrates, which seeks to uncover the falsity of a particular line of thinking, or ill founded philosphical beliefs through a particular mode of questioning. Socrates claims a position of ignorance, though through his guiding questions and responses, leads a person often to an aporia, where they uncover that they too are not able to come to a final answer, although at least now they are able to see the false basis of their previous ideas, and now know that they do not know. Although it is impossible for Kierkegaard to simply reproduce Socrates approach in his work, he is faithful to the idea that one must assist the participant or reader to give birth to the ideas he has inside himself, and since he cannot seek to teach a person from the standpoint of authority, which is ultimately false: obscuring truth, rather than revealing it. Therefore his work must come from a place which consistently provokes questions in the reader, who must qualify for him or herself what is being said.

Kierkegaard is critical of romantic irony, exemplified in the work of Friedrich Schlegel, which he condemns for undermining all ethics, not simply those unsupportable aspects of society, which suppress the individual without being at the service of any higher purpose. Schlegel’s novel Lucinde, he proposes, does not simply revel in a whimsical joke, which turns everything on its head, but earnestly places importance on the belief in love, which must be followed against the repressive elements of bourgeois culture, but in the end falls into the realms of sensuality, and any higher purpose is lost.

We can ourselves here note a distinction with a use of irony within postmodernism, which points towards the undoing of meaning, and is essentially cynical; a posture which laughs in the face of the meaninglessness of existence. (An arguably immature, and impotent gesture.)

Kierkegaard rather bases his own use of irony, which he terms controlled irony, not as a destructive or alienating force, but that which is able to look at the whole of the world, whilst allowing for the poetic distance required to not be destroyed by it, and, it is through this ironic distance, Quintillius Quintillian might add, that we become able to recognise of the paradox at the base of existence, in order that we might escape it within ourselves.

The space of the aporia, in the dialogues led by Socrates, can be related to the unfathomable mystery, or the space defined by Quintillius Quintillian, which allows creation to be possible, the gap which allows for difference, and a separation between things, and which does not require the negation of one thing or another.

The limits of existence, are not those of original Creation, her purports, and the opposition of opposites is not reality, but due to the imperfect and corrupt image and fragmentation of our perception which occurred as we cut away from it. What Quintillius Quintillian aims to do is to bring us back to this understanding, through his own use of distancing, showing us the tension between that which we think we are, and the substance of what we do which we are unaware of.

(slide- quote)

In his concluding unscientific postscript, Kierkegaard wrote, that “the most one person can do for another is to unsettle him” and surely the strangeness of the imagery in Quintillian’s work, is there to do this.

It is too soon to comprehend all of the ways in which Quintillius Quintillian’s use of irony, imitates or differs from Kierkegaard’s notion of controlled irony, and in any case the repeated use of this term, could only hope to misrepresent what he meant, by the fact of its application....

(slide- ironical irony)

Thus I propose for this research to be based in what is to be called ironical irony, for the exposition of the work of Quintillius Quintillian, an irony which may be said to be used also in some way against itself, in order to get at serious matters, which are inaccessible to it through other means.

The narrator of Midas Rex, feigns ignorance, and plays with rhetorical tropes, a nod perhaps to his namesake the Roman rhetorician, Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, pre- empting the opposition of the reader through pursuing wrong avenues of thinking, misuse of logic, and without arguing against them directly, showing the duplicitous nature of tropes which simply aim to sway or convince, they often say the opposite of what they are saying, hence the reason they are unviable.

One becomes aware of the many positions one cannot take in relation to the text, and the conclusions one cannot make, if one is not to fall into the trap of an existence, which believes in nothing more than the logic imposed by material materialism, towards a life which simply feeds off itself. The structure of the book does not afford the reader the opportunity to take just any position if they are to avoid being consumed by their own false logic.

(slide- caputo)

In his exposition of a radical or postmodern hermeneutics, John D Caputo, points towards the need for a non-objectifying discourse, which calls for a responsiveness towards the world, recognising its uncanny nature, and the fact that we are not entirely at home in it. Caputo posits that there is a necessary faith, which has nothing to do with organised religion, at the base of our reality, in which we must share, for us to exist, and one might add, to forgo an understanding of this is to move further towards the current global escalation of dangerous points of conflict, and without which we will have no hope of possible dialogue.

...
(slide- quote)

Kierkegaard’s magister thesis was criticised heavily by his supervisors for what were deemed his excesses, and one might say his immodest use of irony, in his writing on irony.

Professor Johan Nicolai Madvig in June 1841 commented, “with respect to the dissertation itself...it is characterised by such a stamp of intellectual liveliness and fresh thought, and by multi-faceted studies, .... That it seems to me to entirely qualify for the degree of magister. But on the other hand, not only is it burdened with a certain free and easy carelessness of composition, but even its exposition of concepts lacks scholarly form and firmness. ...The exposition suffers from a self satisfied pursuit of the piquant and witty, which not infrequently lapses into the purely vulgar and tasteless.”

(slide- ginzburg )

In his recent article Casuistry and Irony: Some Reflections on Pascal’s Provencials, Carlo Ginzburg problematizes the use of irony in the writing of Pascal’s Provencial Letters, (originally written under the pseudonym Louis De Montalte) which had as their aim the criticism of what was deemed to be the lax morality of the Jesuits, whose use of casuistry (that is the practice of resolving problems by applying a logical framework) had condemed fellow Jansenist, Antoine Arnauld to the status of heretic.

Ginzburg emphasises the discrepancy between the code of the literary work and Pascale’s religious ideology, in addition to the aims of the work and its long term effects, claiming that Pascal’s use of irony was ironically, in the end, used in support of the Enlightenment move away from faith, and inadvertently served a secular project. We might mention here, that likewise, Kierkegaard’s own work is thought of as a precursor to Existential philosophy, in stark contrast to his own belief that his work be in the service of faith, and towards an understanding of the true basis of Christianity.

And whilst this difficulty of the aims of the work, and their ultimate effects, is no doubt important to address, it is perhaps too far advanced a question for the tentative beginnings of this research, though it will be sure to tackle this point in due course.

Thus for now we may need to content ourselves with the notion that it cannot but choose to maintain its distance, through its poetical position, if it wishes to get at the deeper truths in Quintillian’s ouevre, which it considers may be impossible, at this time, without this conceit.

And so, we are left with a fine art doctorate, whose claim to knowledge is that it cannot make claims to knowledge, which contradict the very substance of the art it claims to make claims for. Hence the need to maintain its stance within ironical irony, in order that it does not undo the very foundations of the work it aims to support. It is for the researcher to make the attempt, and for the examiner to judge.

(slide- refs)