“…the highest intelligence in the freest body.”

This phrase was spoken in a television show that I saw years ago about the life of Isadora Duncan, one of the early 20^th Century’s most revered dancers.  She was reputed to have portrayed such awe-inspiring intelligence in such a beautiful body through her dance.  The words signify an attitude (lost in modern times) that glorified intelligence and freedom.  They offer just one more clue to the fact that the earlier part of the 20^th Century was a more romantic period that offered a more uplifting view of man than we find today.

But the quote is more than an artistic goal.  Art, as a selective recreation of reality, offers a concrete expression of values.  An artist presents values that he/she thinks are achievable or proper.  The words can apply, not only to dance, but also to life.  They can apply to the values an individual seeks or has achieved in the course of his/her own life.

As with all matters, there is and must always be a point of reference, a philosophical abstraction that guides the interpretation of moral and artistic issues.  It will be the purpose of this article to discuss the two fundamental approaches to the interpretation of artistic and moral values.  These two fundamentals are Idealism and Realism.

Idealism

The concept of Idealism came to the Western world via Plato and the Greek philosophers.  It held that the universe contained two dimensions, the world of particulars and the world of essences.  The world of particulars was held to be an imperfect projection of the world of essences.  This is the world in which we live.  It contains all that we see, hear, touch, taste and smell.  Yet in this world, nothing is fully real except as a mere projection of its more perfect counterpart in the world of essences, a transcendental world that we hold in our memory and that is remembered only through the particulars in this world that jolt these memories.

Man’s basic imperfection for the Platonist is that he is caught in the unreal world of particulars and yet is able to comprehend the real and more perfect world of ideas.  This dichotomy pits man’s mind against the carnal nature of his body in favor of unreachable yet profoundly high values.  The result is constant defeat, constant failure by man.  His only consolation is the proximity to the ideal that he attains; an attainment made possible by the denial of all worldly interests and pleasures in favor of spiritual values.

To an idealist, the lines about Isadora Duncan would represent a goal that does not and cannot exist in the real world.  Ideals serve mainly as inspiration but have no practical consequence except that man always falls short.  Man, because he is an imperfect image of God or the ideal man, can never attain the ideal.  He can only conceive of it, not only as the impossible, but also as the goal for which he must and should strive if he is to approach even a semblance of perfection.

It is the essence of idealism that it pits man against himself and leaves him in the state of a being chained to the earth until he is released by death.  Morality, by this view, requires tremendous, yet futile, effort.  It demands a battle against the body’s biological needs, engendering repression of thoughts related to those needs.  And it requires an effort toward values that have little relation to the individual and hence, have little motivational value. 

Self-love is most vehemently damned by idealists of all kinds.  A man of self-love can’t be ruled and idealism is a philosophy most energetically advocated by those who would rule.  Plato believed in an authoritarian system of government.  Hegel, another philosopher, was an idealist without whom Hitler and Stalin could not have done their atrocities.  These monsters were the “Supermen” of Hegel’s ideal.  Today we have the descendents of Kant who believe that in order to be free, man must be irrational – an indirect way of destroying self-love, since the irrational man can have no basis for pride; he is too much a failure.

Realism

Realism holds, in brief, that existence is real independently of man’s consciousness.  According to this view, there are not two worlds; there is only the world that exists and it is a projection of nothing.  It simply is.  To a Realist, the quoted lines above would represent a goal that is achievable, one that can be possessed by man.  The lines serve as a moral beacon of potential accomplishment.  A person’s distance from the beacon depends upon his character.  In contrast to the ever-elusive ideal of the Platonist, the Realist holds no ideas in the Platonic sense.  He holds values, and within the context of his life he is able to determine which actions can achieve them.  In this way, he need not project an “ideal man” to become.  He knows that virtue is an ever present act, that within any given context there are only so many alternatives and that only one act will most adequately assist him in the achievement of a given value and he knows that even if the act only brings him a step closer to his value, it is an act he can take and that taking that act is a sign of moral perfection.

Realism is a philosophy of individualism.  Even more, it is a philosophy of self-love.  This, it proudly emphasizes, is crucial to a healthy man.  By the Realist philosophy, a person is not imperfect by nature, he is perfectible by choice; but born as a being with a certain nature, a nature he need not fight; a nature that must be respected and understood.  There is no dichotomy between mind and body; they are part of the same existence, tied to existence and no other realm.  By this view, virtue is an act taken by a rational consciousness.  No massive effort is required in any given context, provided that man’s mind clearly knows where he is and what he must do.  There is no excruciating battle against uncontrollable urges and unacknowledged motivations.  The highest intelligence in the freest body is an everyday state.

Today, genuine intelligence is not a desirable trait to possess.  Anyone interested in achieving the highest intelligence possible to him/herself is isolated, ostracized or ridiculed to such an extent that many young are discouraged about intellectual pursuits. 

Without intelligence how can one reach a free body?  Today’s free body, lacking intelligence, is achieved by nothing more than mindless whim worship.  Today’s psychologists advise: “Do what you feel like doing.  You are free.  You are in control of your own life.”  All of this ignores, however, the unfortunate truth that the individual they are freeing has not learned how to think about moral issues, so that “what he wants” may not be to his benefit. 

The highest intelligence in the freest body is locked in a cultural chasm deep within the soul of every man and is felt only as a submerged wish that escapes from time-to-time and is best described as a wish that life was better or happier or freer, or as a wistful longing for more romance or more excitement.  It is a long way to the highest and the freest.  Those who wish to achieve this state, because of negative cultural influences, must often go to the depths in order to rise up.  But what a goal!!

 Posted on 5/28/04