"Catapulted" into the Religious Sphere

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 4 August 2014.

As for messages getting buried: That was one of the issues that I thought would get handled by taking the emphasis off mimesis and taking a diegetical approach--or at least more diegetical. We can talk about the story just like we do in our emails and, by extension, the blog. I was actually of the opinion we should go totally diegesis in our podcast. I think it lends itself to our strengths of telling not showing and it is a classical, Platonic solution to the problem of having the opposite of our desired, edifying effect on our audience.

Where is Jimi Hendrix located?

In deference to St. Augustine, I'm going to disagree that the ethical sphere is absurd and banal (I'm of the opinion that Kierkegaard got his ideas for the spheres of existence from Augustine's City of God). Augustine just betrays too much admiration for the highly ethical Romans he uses as examples of how close some pagans came to the kingdom. I would say that most churchgoers are actually in the aesthetic realm trying to work around or bargain with the ethical when absolutely necessary. The ethical realm is characterized by a willingness to die rather than to sin. I think ethical is rightly considered the realm from which one is "catapulted" into the religious sphere.

So where are Jimi and Arthur and prostitutes and Carlton Farthington located? It might be difficult to locate. But modern artists and would-be mystics might consider the ethical sphere impossible to stomach without the more complete revelation of the religious. They are different than the aesthetic types who just want to burn their eyes out on Netflix every weekend and buy a cottage someday.

For this reason, I also think Arthur would have picked up on the unnaturalness in Lena's charitable activities. The Sweet World is way bigger than that. It wouldn't feel as natural as breathing to him, but it might have been a womb-like place where he found some nourishment.