Heidegger and Mormonism: A Possible Literary Aesthetic
In my last post, I discussed the idea of Mormon literature as an aesthetic–an idea of how writing should be, rather than a specific genre. I briefly mentioned one possibility for a Mormon aesthetic, the idea of respect towards all human beings and the belief in the power of human choice. Many commenters rightly suggested that this idea is not unique to Mormonism–it is a general Christian, or even humanist, ideal.
So I’d like to present another possible “Mormon” mode of writing, this one derived from the philosophies of Heidegger. The major realization of Heidegger’s philosophy is that one can gain only so much from creating a system of knowledge. He believes that conceptual knowledge is reductive of reality, imposing limitations where none exist. The key to overcoming the barrier of human thought is not more human thought but human experience, for in situations that our intellect cannot make sense of, our experience has no trouble participating. As a result of this emphasis on experience, Heidegger thought that writing ought not to seek systematic views but out to be participated in as an experience–a poem should not represent a world view, but be experienced as a world of its own. This idea about writing seems to fit well with Mormon conceptions of what the written word can do and what it is.
I have often wondered over the fact that there is no explicit written Mormon theology. Sure, we have our scriptures and the Articles of Faith, which serve as at least a foundation, but when you think about it, they define only a very basic outline of our faith. It’s extremely easy to find points that can be and have been interpreted in multiple ways. And outside of scripture, any theological Mormon writings are a very delicate balance. Do we have room in our society for someone like CS Lewis, whose theological writings are mostly logic based rather than scripture or modern prophets? I don’t think so: I have yet to read any good logic-based theology from any LDS author. Yes, we have scholars like Hugh Nibley, but even those types are viewed warily from inside the establishment, and from outside of the establishment, it’s clear that they don’t derive LDS theology but use it as their assumption and continue from there. There seems to be a general perception that theological writings could get too scholarly and therefore detract from testimony and revelation.
From within Church correlated literature, the same is true: the ideas stay at a superficial level, never diving into the deep and controversial questions. I often feel a frustration over the fact that the Church doesn’t issue statements solving some of these basic controversial issues (particularly, of course, the ones on which I am right and other people are wrong, if they could only just understand properly). For this reason—not having a highly codified collection of doctrines like the Summa Theologica—Mormonism has often been called an orthopraxic religion, one that cares more about practice than an orthodoxic religion which emphasizes belief. This designation often feels like an accusation, and as a Mormon, I tend to be resistive to anyone who calls my religion a system of practices rather than a mode of belief. From this point of view, it would seem that writing in Mormonism is a futile exercise. The only texts that could be produced are essentially dogmatic propaganda or instructional books on practices.
But perhaps Mormonism is not really really all about practices but about their results. Like Heidegger, Joseph Smith believed there were some things that could not be understood only with words. When he commanded his followers to know the nature of God, he did not mean that we should be able to define Him in vague theological terms: to know the nature of God is not a command to study or think about him. In Mormonism, it is a command to reach out a meet him, face to face (a term that Levinas surely would have approved of). We believe that a knowledge of truth comes mostly through experience. The Book of Mormon is full of instances in which God told things to men which could not be written with language, not just that they were forbidden to write these things, but that they were unable to do so, perhaps because of the nature of language. Written things are seen as a limiting force in our religion.
Even our demand for correct practices, like daily scripture study, are really commands to find out truth through experience. In our reading of the scriptures, it’s not necessarily the words of the scriptures that we need. Rather, we seem believe that our presence in reading those books can open us up to receive other signs in our mind. It’s as though writing is not meant to convey knowledge, but to trip a switch, to create another experience all its own. We believe in revelation acting through the written word, not just through what it says, but through the very act of reading.
Perhaps this idea of literature as an experience could be a way around the much complained of didacticism of Mormon writing about spiritual matters. Instead of trying to explain our doctrines or show how those who make the right choices come to the right ends (one of the main faults of the Home Literature movement), our literature could focus on the reality of spiritual experience, trying to create literature that generates genuine spiritual experience. Of course, there are obvious problems with this: first, the highest Mormon spiritual experience, the temple, is mostly off limits in terms of writing. I have always seen this as a huge problem with taking Mormon literature seriously as a minority literature–we can’t immerse our outsider readers in the culture because it is forbidden to do so. Second, how does one go about creating a spiritual experience for the reader without presuming to be God and creating false revelations? And how do we keep this from becoming an aesthetic of manipulation? (Especially in film–cue the emotional music and fuzzy close-up.)
However, I think it still can be legitimately done. Actually, I think many Mormon artists are already out there trying to do just that–just think of the history of Church cinema. Some may think it a little manipulative, but at other times, it’s completely genuine in the world it immerses you in. The Mormon arts seem distinctively different than most post-modern literature in this way–we always genuinely have faith in the ability of arts to be an immersive experience, rather than a distant and cold examination of the world. Much of Mormon art has less regard for the nature of the medium and more focus on the subject matter.
What Mormon art has touched you in an experiential way? How can we develop this aesthetic into something legitimate rather than allowing it to devolve into a culture of propaganda and manipulation?
March 5th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
I’ve left a longer response to this on my blog, but I did want to say that as far as Mormon art that has touched me in an experiential way, Low’s music has done this. To my knowledge of ‘Mormon art” they are the greatest example of someone getting it right. I know that Alan Sparhawk has battled with depression and that has definitely come out in their last albums, but “Secret Name,” the album before they toured with Radiohead and received more acclaim (available on Kranky still) has more to say about the Temple than any other artistic endeavor I’ve yet encountered. And formally, though it comes from a ‘post-punk’ background, I find it more reverent than any EFY music.
Yet it doesn’t search for a Mormon audience, but only a temple-aware audience will understand certain discussions.
March 5th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
To me, the Mormon Aesthetic seems to be one of possibility and discovery, which is one reason we do speculative fiction so well. In a religion that collapses the distance between God and man as completely as we do, all things are possible.
I would add a faith in progress, or eternal progression too, but I am not so sure this can be done consistently well. After all, progress is a heresy in modern literature, obsessed with deconstruction and tearing down, rather than building because that is a “worn out” theme, as old as mankind. I wonder if the literati culture really has room for a structure that we can succeed in.
March 7th, 2008 at 8:28 am
The affinity between Heidegger and Mormonism is worth noting–it can help account for our lack of formal theology and our focus on what I’d call spiritual phenomenology (the imminent experience of God). This could translate into a general affirmation of standard arguments for art over philosophy: art immerses us in sensuous and temporal experience, while philosophy is an intellectual world of abstraction. (And by the way, we ought to acknowledge the significnat work being done with Mormon theology by the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology). But I think an aesthetic based on spiritual experience needs more thinking through. Formal religious rites (temple or other wise) do not always reflect or embody a Mormon’s spiritual life. Believing Latter-day Saints will look for spiritual experiences within such practices (check D&C 84:21 regarding the power of godliness being manifest in priesthood ordinances), but spiritual experience is much broader than rites, or meetings, or the formal bearing of testimonies, etc. I think the joy of art is in discovering and making manifest profound human experience, and I think that’s what Liz is getting at when she talks about the power of writing. I disagree, however, that an LDS aesthetic can/should be based on generating spiritul experiences–or at least that needs enormous qualification. This has been the problem with the institutional church’s cinematic aesthetic. For example, in such films it is often the case that rising violins cue a spiritual experience for those in the film and, purportedly, for those in the audience. As Liz notes, this sort of thing can be manipulative. The immersive qualities of art (paritcularly music and cinema) may be the most “experiential” but also the most problematic. Baptizing by immersion works well (I believe) for religious faith; for art, I’m not so sure.
March 7th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
I wanted to add two more things: the term ‘experiential’ can mean the cuing of the strings that we so often think of for Church institutional movies (and further down that genealogy, modern Hollywood). But the term could also be used to describe art which challenges the audience to create their own experience. Maya Deren described her avant-garde films as being ritual itself, but refused any use of music in the majority of her work. I would describe Godard’s latest films as experiential in their use of music (cutting in mid-phrase, often) because it requires you to create your own experience independent of the film. Jonathan Rosenbaum has made the distinction that he prefers movies which ‘acknowledge that movies are an integral part of life, not a replacement of life.’ This seems similar to the statement “the key to overcoming the barrier of human thought is not more human thought but human experience.” Perhaps a ‘mormon’ aesthetic should acknowledge that when we turn off the music we should go to work and actually experience our trials, not forget them. The first version of the word “experiential seems to negate this in my mind.
Second: Even with Gideon’s observation that art by immersion may not work so well, I’d like to point out that the Spirit descended in the form of a dove only AFTER that immersion took place. The immersion wasn’t even in that instance the spiritual part.
March 7th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
[…] Trevor Banks: I wanted to add two more things: the term ‘experiential’ can mean the cuing of the strings… […]
March 9th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
“What Mormon art has touched you in an experiential way?”
For me the most touching Mormon experience is that of movement in Temple worship. Our experience from room to room, representing eternal progression, allows new spiritual realities and new understandings that can occur from such things as materials chosen or new and varying proportions of space. The act of standing up, waiting, and entering another realm of existence provides a space of learning and ritual that is as important as the ritual itself. This crossing of the threshold into a new and more sacred space aids in spiritual clarity and heightens both experience and awareness. These thresholds provide opportunities for progression from the profane to the sacred, beginning with the exterior door, and ending at the veil.
The original concept for the Mesa and Alberta Temples beautifully combined this movement, space, and material selection with the symbolism of progression. For Mesa, you moved along an axis towards the Celestial room, always returning to the axis and moving upwards until the goal was reached. In Alberta, you circled the building, from quadrant to quadrant, always upward, until you reached the Celestial room in the center. As you progressed, the wood finishes in each room became darker and richer, interestingly the opposite of the white experienced in most Celestial rooms today.
Removing these thresholds lessens the experience of purposeful progression. Fortunately, the move recently with smaller temples has been to add at least one of these actual thresholds of movement back into the ceremony.
March 10th, 2008 at 8:13 am
green mormon architect: I totally agree with you about the need for thresholds in the temple. I am perennially wishing I lived closer to the SLC temple, both because of the multiple rooms aspect (lacking in the Provo Temple) and because of the live performance, which I think is so much more experiential than the filmed version.
In fact, I think the temple is a sort of ultimate form of experiential art. There’s lots of rich symbolism with very little interpretation built in. It’s art you have to figure out for yourself, art with no singular meaning but multiple and flexible meanings. As I said in the post, I think creating similar effect in our literature, drama, etc. would allow us to avoid the didactism so often found in Mormon art, mainstream or otherwise.
Gideon: You had me up until art became focused on creating spiritual experiences. Of course that’s one way that art can function (and I’m suggesting a way we could perhaps do that better), but even art that doesn’t focus on “spiritual” experience (as we define it in church) can still be experiential. I think the contrast is between focusing on the meaning of the art vs. the experience thereof which creates meaning.
March 11th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
The Mormon art that’s affected me the most in an experiential way would have to be the science fiction and fantasy of writers like Orson Scott Card and Brandon Sanderson. I agree with Doc that speculative fiction really does lend itself towards the LDS worldview in this way.
I think that one of the reasons for this is that sf/f tends to be much more character based than any other form of literature. In Sanderson’s Mistborn, the thing that affected me the most was Vin’s transformation from an abused street urchin to a person with strengths, abilities, friends, loved ones, and a sense of purpose in her life. In Card’s Ender’s Game series, the way that Ender saw the world and the way he struggled with the knowledge that he’d killed off an entire race of sentient beings deeply affected the way that I see others–and myself. In both of these cases, the emphasis on character and character growth makes the art seem much more real, much more meaningful, and much less preachy and pretentious.
In a similar way, the endowment ceremony in the temple can also be thought of as primarily character based, and focusing on character growth and development. The principles and ordinances contained in the ceremony don’t happen in a vacuum, or happen for their own sake, but are all tied in to Adam and Eve and their experience.
The gospel is nothing without someone to grow in it–eternal progression is an empty concept without the one who experiences the progression. Therefore, if we want to draw out that experience, one way we could do it well is to create deep, believable, honest characters and focus on their personal growth. This is why I think that LDS writers do so well in the genres of sci fi and fantasy–these are some of the two most character based genres in literature right now.
March 20th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
[…] Over at a new LDS blog, Mormon Renaissance, there’s a post called “Heidegger and Mormonism: A Possible Lterary Aesthetic” […]
November 12th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
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