Obsessive Engines

We said in a previous post that all men are philosophers because everyone in the course of his/her life keeps building a constantly evolving grid of concepts (& connections among them) thus shaping his/her unique conception of the world. So philosophy is not such a weird thing belonging to a specialized category of professionals only. It is on the contrary a natural feature of our species, exactly like talking or walking on two legs.

There is another element I want to point out here (since we only mentioned it briefly in the past). These concepts and their linking seem to me related to inner motives each of us nourishes, unconsciously or not. These motives, often of biographical origin, are like filters that highly influence the way we see the world. Everyone has his/her unique way of doing this, the uneducated and the educated alike, the simple-minded and the great pros of thought (traditional philosophers and scientist philosophers).

To those who are maniacal about ancient Roman stuff, for example, their craze can filter out what they see accordingly. They can look at a Renaissance façade and notice only the Roman elements that were reinvented by Renaissance architects, the semi-circular (or triangular) arches of the windows for instance, which they can mentally link to Rome’s Pantheon niches on its walls which probably hosted the statues of Caesar, Augustus and Agrippa. Me being one of those maniacs, when within the walls of a Roman Basilica I am seldom hit by religious feelings and am rather inclined to imagine business people and magistrates doing their jobs in ancient Rome. What I tend to see is in fact the public building the Romans utilized for business, markets and legal matters, and not the place of Christian religious cult Basilicas were converted into (when they were not created from scratch for this purpose by the new religion). You can see above the huge Constantine’s Roman Basilica in German Trier, used today as a Protestant church (courtesy of Dulcevisa).

What I mean is that we all have our obsessions, themes and leitmotivs. They not only greatly influence our view of things, I believe, but also tend to push our ideas towards some kind of order, thus helping us to become little or great philosophers. Well, let’s face it, these obsessions can energize our ideas, although this doesn’t lead automatically to real philosophical consistency, something one can attain only through great study and effort (it is the work of the pro.)

These themes are evident in people we know well, close friends, family members or colleagues. We know well their fixations (which sometimes bore us so much,) it can be a father (or mother) figure obsession, a pervading mental escapism that comes out in many comments or behaviours, it can be anything. These leitmotivs are also present in the works of writers, musicians, scientists etc., although they are more complex to detect and it is the big part of a critic’s job to probe these works in search of elements which make the stylistic imprint of an author.

To provide an example, one of the reasons why a melody of Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff is recognized as his and only his is this bizarre (to Western ears) Arabic-scale obsession he has and that is surely related to some deep experience in his life. It’s because he had some Tartar ancestors? Was he desperately in love with a Muslim girl? I have to check, and it might be for both reasons. I read somewhere he was desperately in love with a Muslim girl and that he lost her love forever. I may be wrong (plus I may sound corny) but I couldn’t check this information in the books I have or in the Internet.

Let us in any case listen to a typical Rachmaninoff’s orientalizing melody from Piano Concerto N. 2, III, Allegro scherzando.