The modern agony made the relation with nature more emotional, ambivalent, provoking terror, admiration and pleasure. The opening to mystery was still included in the revelation of Isis's statue in the 19th cent.
But, according to Hadot, in contemporary world, we aren't talk anymore about the mystery of nature and Isis has gone with her voile to the land of dreams. Even Martin Heidegger transferred the mystery of nature to the mystery of Being. At the end of the book, the writer proposes, repeating the words of Holderling, that we must become one with all living creatures and come back, throught the happy oblivion of self, to the Whole of Nature.
Jul 13, Rhys rated it it was amazing. A thoughtful and elegant exploration of the idea of Nature. I also appreciated the 'decency' of discovering the 'truth' of Nature though leaving her veils on - by leaving alone its 'vital illusions': Hadot's extraordinary essay was very challenging to read. It took me nearly a year of discontinuous reading to bite through its three hundred pages. The sheer amount of referenced literature and analyzed sources is nearly inconceivable and so is the diversity of motives, theories and thoughts that he analyzes with unrivaled rigor of his long career.
At some points I got lost even repeatedly , sometimes I had to put the book away for a few weeks, because I was too overwhelmed with information. It seemed to me that the essay itself was withholding its secrets as if paying respect to Isis and her veil. Nevertheless, I'm compelled to give it the absolute rating, because all these troubles are mostly due to my lack of historical and philosophical knowledge. This is no popularizing book, it's an honest work of history and philosophy and it deals with a motive hardest to seize.
After all, fysis kryptesthai filei. Apr 16, Laura marked it as to-read. Nov 03, I-kai rated it liked it. I think reading half of it was enough; the book gets a bit repetitive from the discussion of Bacon onwards, and I just couldn't continue I've learned a lot, it shattered my life!
I was concerned though by the amount of time Pierre Hadot said he couldn't go deeper into the subjects he was writing about. Matthew Lopez rated it it was amazing Apr 03, Adam rated it really liked it Dec 24, John Ervin rated it it was amazing Nov 20, Stevie rated it really liked it May 08, Bobby George rated it it was amazing Jul 22, Finja rated it it was amazing Nov 15, Jason rated it liked it Oct 31, Matthew rated it liked it Jan 18, Matthew rated it liked it Jun 23, Kelsey rated it it was amazing Feb 12, Tamara Mikoto rated it it was amazing Aug 23, Yuli rated it it was amazing Sep 20, Dalton Looper rated it it was amazing Dec 19, Alex Yang rated it it was amazing Nov 10, Alisa Alig rated it it was amazing Nov 23, European art has a long tradition of personifying nature as a motherly figure.
Starting in the 16th century, this motif was influenced by the iconography of the goddess Artemis of Ephesus also known under the name of her Roman equivalent, Diana. The Ephesian Artemis was depicted with round protuberances on her chest that may originally have been jewelry but came to be interpreted as breasts.
Isis was sometimes compared with Artemis, and the Roman writer Macrobius , in the fourth century CE, wrote, "Isis is the earth or nature that is under the sun. That is why the goddess's entire body bristles with a multitude of breasts placed close to one another [as in the case of Artemis of Ephesus], because all things are nourished by earth or by nature.
A second influence was a tradition that nature is mysterious. It goes back to an aphorism by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus in the late sixth or early fifth century BCE, which is traditionally translated as "Nature loves to hide. In the s, Athanasius Kircher 's Oedipus Aegyptiacus explicitly explained Isis's veil as an emblem of the secrets of nature. The frontispiece to Gerhard Blasius 's book Anatome Animalum , engraved by Jan Luyken , was the first depiction of a many-breasted Isis-Artemis figure with her veil being removed. It shows a personification of science removing the veil, as an allegory for the way science uncovers nature's secrets.
This metaphor was reused in the frontispieces of many of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek 's works, and then in illustrations to other scientific works throughout the 18th century. In some cases the veiled figure is a statue, reminiscent of the original statue of Artemis at Ephesus, while in others it is a living woman. The motif was sometimes elaborated with other metaphors, so that, for example, in the frontispiece to The Philosophy of Nature by Jean-Baptiste-Claude Delisle de Sales , Nature unveils herself to a philosopher as he overthrows Despotism and Superstition.
The unveiling of the Isis-figure thus expressed the hope, prevalent during the Age of Enlightenment , that philosophy and science would triumph over unreason to uncover nature's deepest truths.
This motif continued beyond the Enlightenment into the 19th century. An example is Louis-Ernest Barrias 's sculpture Nature Unveiling Herself Before Science , in which the multiple breasts are omitted and the Isis-figure wears a scarab on her gown that hints at her Egyptian background. Another interpretation of Isis's veil emerged in the late 18th century, in keeping with the Romantic movement that was developing at the time, in which nature constitutes an awe-inspiring mystery rather than prosaic knowledge.
This interpretation was influenced by the ancient mystery initiations dedicated to Isis that were performed in the Greco-Roman world. To do so, he interpreted the first statement on the statue at Sais, "I am all that has been and is and shall be," as a declaration of pantheism , in which nature and divinity are identical.
Reinhold claimed the public face of Egyptian religion was polytheistic , but the Egyptian mysteries were designed to reveal the deeper, pantheistic truth to elite initiates. He also said the statement " I am that I am ", spoken by the Jewish God in the Book of Exodus , meant the same as the Saite inscription and indicated that Judaism was a descendant of the ancient Egyptian belief system. Immanuel Kant connected the motif of Isis's veil with his concept of the sublime , saying, "Perhaps no one has said anything more sublime, or expressed a thought more sublimely, than in that inscription on the temple of Isis Mother Nature.
The ecstatic nature of ancient mystery rites themselves contributed to the focus on emotions. He said it prepared the initiate to confront the awe-inspiring power of nature at the climax of the rite. Similarly, a frontispiece by Henry Fuseli , made for Erasmus Darwin 's poem The Temple of Nature in , explicitly shows the unveiling of a statue of Isis as the climax of the initiation. Helena Blavatsky 's book Isis Unveiled , one of the foundational texts for the esoteric belief system of Theosophy , used the metaphor of the veil as its title.
Isis is not prominent in the book, but in it Blavatsky said that philosophers try to lift the veil of Isis, or nature, but see only her physical forms. She added, "The soul within escapes their view; and the Divine Mother has no answer for them," implying that theosophy will reveal truths about nature that science and philosophy cannot. The "Parting of the Veil", "Piercing of the Veil", "Rending of the Veil" or "Lifting of the Veil" refers, in the Western mystery tradition and contemporary witchcraft , to opening the "veil" of matter, thus gaining entry to a state of spiritual awareness in which the mysteries of nature are revealed.