Mimesis: On Appearing and Being

80 Pages·1997·3.76 MB·English

by  Samuel Ijsseling

Samuel IJsseling
M IMESIS
ON AP PEARING AND BEING
Samuel IJsseling
MIMESIS
ON APPEARING AND BEING
Translated by Hester IJsseling & Jeffrey Bloechl
Mimesis is one of the root words of Ancient Philosophy
and again plays an important role in contemporary
French thought. In this essay, an original interpretation
of mimesis is given which throws new light on art and
literature, reading and writing, the mirror and the exa·
mple, identity and difference, and last but not least
on the traditional opposition between reality and
illusion, between appearing and &eing.
Samuel Usseling is professor of contemporary
philosophy and philosophy of language at
the Hoger lnstituut voor Wiisbegeerte
(Higher Institute for Philosophy)
of the Katholieke Univeniteit in Leuven, Belgium.
He is an expert on Heidegger and
contemporary French thought.
ISBN 90-390-0273-8
KOK PHAROS Publishing House
Kampen • The Netherlands
NUGI 611 I ISBN 90 390 0273 8

Mimesis

Mimesis:
On Appearing and Being
Samuell]sseling
translated by Hester IJsseling and Jeffrey Bloechl
Kok Pharos Publishing House
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Originally published as Mimesis: Over Schi.jn en Zi.jn,
© Ambo, Baarn 1990.
Translated by Hester IJsseling and Jeffrey Bloechl
English translation © 1997 Kok Pharos Publishing House
P.O. Box 5016, 8260 GA Kampen, the Netherlands
Cover disign: Geert Hermkens
ISBN 90 390 0273 8
NUGI 611
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Contents
I. Mimesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
II. Drama and Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
III. Similarity or Difference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
IV. Mimetic Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
V. Examples, Mirrors and Identity . . . . . . . . . . . 31
VI. Mimesis and Intertextuality . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
VII. Heidegger and Mimesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
5

I. Mimesis
Supple is the tongue of mortals,
and in it are many words of every sort,
and wide the field of speech on every side.
(Horner, Iliad, XX, 250)
Since the Pythagoreans, in Plato and Aristotle, and in the
whole of the Greek literary and rhetorical tradition, the
notion of mimesis plays an important role. It is one of the
root words by which all sorts of widely divergent
phenomena are voiced in European culture. The domain
of the mimetic is extensive and interwoven with many
other issues. It branches out on all sides and is therefore
difficult to determine or delimit. As well, even translating
the original Greek term mimesis poses considerable
difficulties, first because its meaning is not always the
same from one author's text to that of another, but also
because the meaning is in each case dependent on the
domain of phenomena to which it is supposed to apply.
The usual Latin translattQ.O is imitatio, a word which is
~-'---·- ·- ----------------- ----------------- -·- --- - ·-- - ---
equally polysemous and, moreover, does not fully comply
~th what the Greeks have tried to express by the notion
of :;mmesis. Among the possible English transla!io_ns of the
Greek
mimesthai are:tO i':l:litate, to follo~~-t~ mi~i.c,-ro
ape, to counterfeit, to forge, to reproduce, to copy, to
mirror, to double,--t~ depict, to' represent~ io"rend.er, to
to
impersonate, to repeat and to translate, to recite and.
cite, etc. Each of these again poses all sorts of new
problems. A certain ambiguity is striking in most of them.
This ambiguity has to do with the common but not self
evident opposition between the real and the unreal, the
7