One may be interested in the manifold interactions between the various spheres of a culture and yet reject what I have called the “exegetic method,” the method, that is, that bases its interpretations on the detection of that kind of “likeness” that leads the interpreter of the scriptures to link the passage of the Jews through the Red Sea with the Baptism of Christ. Hegel, it will be remembered, saw in the Egyptian sphinx an essential likeness with the position of Egyptian culture in which the Spirit began to emerge from animal nature, and carried the same metaphor through in his discussion of Egyptian religion and Egyptian hieroglyphics. The assumption is always that some essential structural similarity must be detected which permits the interpreter to subsume the various aspects of a culture under one formula.
E.H. Gombrich, Symptoms and Syndromes chapter excerpt in In Search of Cultural History, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1969
Wishing you and your family a good Sunday! Hope you have a beautiful spring!!
ReplyDeleteFalling apart from exam tiredness here, trying to relax by making some pictures, not sure it works though. Exams 18TH/20TH June. Two days off to rest!! Oh dear. Please keep fingers crossed.
Good luck -- really good luck -- with exams. They're just around the corner here for Jane. Such an enervating period, enlivened by your work, actually. It's finally spring but it feels like we have lots of stuff to clear away before summer. Love from us here. Curtis
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