Peripatetic School of Thought With Magritte
“My paintings are visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, ‘What does that mean?’.” — RM
Willingly, subconsciously, or just by the semantic power of these letters, Aristotle and Magritte enter a space of conversation. A dynamic space surely; one where they — we — are allowed to walk.
There is no walk, no flight, no conversation or discourse of course here. It is just a painting — scratch that, a reproduction of a painting — depicting what our mind sees as a conversation. And the mind is the only one really there: the mind sees the flight, the mind gives meaning to the distance between the bowler hat men’s feet and the ground. The mind says: that is the flow state of discourse, getting lost in conversation so much so that you forget the road, you forget your feet are on the ground. You talk about high ideals.
High ideas… what would Aristotle tell Magritte now, if my mind’s interpretation was in fact the author’s intention.
Plato (c. 427–c. 347 BCE) believed that the facts of our world could only be properly understood by considering them in their ideal forms or abstract essences. In terms of instances, he believed that not only do numerous bowler hats exist — a little futuristic for him, but let’s go with it — but that the ideal bowler hat exists someplace, in the domain of flawless thoughts where all of our conceptions originate. This was not the thought of Aristotle. A much more down to Earth guy.
Yet, there Magritte places the down to Earth philosopher, up in the sky. And why? Why do I keep speaking about Aristotle?
“When you look at a picture, you may wonder what is imaginary and what is real.“ — RM
Aristotle’s Peripatetic school was really known simply as the Peripatos. The peripatoi (“walkways”) of the Lyceum where the members gathered gave rise to the name of Aristotle’s school. According to mythology, Aristotle has the habit of strolling while teaching. I can’t think of a better way to study than with oxygen coursing through your veins, soaking in the surroundings, thinking, walking, strolling, and getting lost in discussion. And then, you know, forgetting about what we call reality and seeing all of those in discussion above the clouds.
Discourse is the flowing of rivers of thought into words. Scorrere, discorrere, discorso. Once the flow manifests in words that reach someone, we call it conversation. Conversare in latin meant “to hang out with someone”, in a place, space. Thus, let us arrive at the end of our own hang out: what Magritte — master of thought-provoking mystery — seems to have done here is to put into visual-discourse the true meaning of discourse, and in the form of conversation. The flow-state conversation of the two bowler hat men, and that of Magritte himself , historically, and Aristotle (maybe by my mind’s doing).
“When you look at a picture, you may wonder what is imaginary and what is real. Do we talk about the reality of the phenomena or the phenomenon of reality? What is really inside and what is outside? What do we have here: reality or dream? If a dream is a revelation about life in reality, then life in reality is also a revelation about a dream. “ — RM