Die Schere #59: Note: Looking back at the stages of a long digression Since #49 EJ has gone far afield: defining the idea of the invisible by differentiating it from the idea of the Nichtvorhandene he brought in the ainmals, particularly the cat that is unable to make that distinction [#50]. In #51 he added the note that the cat has no religion but has something which is more than religion: pure existence. Being aware that this belief is contrary to the teachings of Descartes and Lamettrie he followed in #52 the new trail of Lamettrie, starting out from the latter's denial of the existence of the soul. In #53 he took up another thread from #52, namely the role of Lamettrie being the "father of modern surgery". In ##54-57 he pursued the consequences of a medical art that has discarded the concept of a soul and transplants organs more and more promiscuously. He concealed his horror by introducing both image and concept of the chimaera. Turning to Greek mythology he linked the chimaera with the age of the Titans. Applying his brother Friedrich Georg's and his own private mythology of Titanism being the essence of our modern age he came to the conclusion that the chimeric horrors of transplantation are less to be shuddered at than to be registered coolly as signs of the times. In ##57 and 58, taking up a word from Goethe, EJ added as an afterthought that also a positive potential might be detected in the chimaera: Leibniz, fusing extreme opposites, might be right after all, and sometimes seemingly chimeric combinations have turned out to be fruitful. In #59 he returns to where he has left off in ##49 and 50: the concept of the invisible and the cat as his favourite graphic paradigm.
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