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Breyten Breytenbach’s Boek: language (poetry) as feelinginstrument to explore consciousness One of the big questions of science is the mystery of consciousness. How is it possible that a state of consciousness, an awareness of your own being and actions, can originate from matter, from the movement of neurons in nerve tissue? While neuroscience does not have answers to these questions (yet), the subjective exploration of consciousness by means of works of art, could make a valuable contribution. Breyten Breytenbach explicitly views his art (writing and painting) as ways to investigate consciousness. In “Boek” (1987) Breytenbach explains his views on art. In this complex work, he focusses, among other aspects, on the idea that the work of art, at a specific moment, produces an “other”, a meaning that has not hitherto existed somewhere, waiting to be discovered. This hitherto unknown meaning comes into existence in the moment of creation. The creative moment in which the hitherto unknown is wrestled from the known, cannot be produced by following a recipe. The unknown, the other, virtually invades the world of the artist, as if the work of art happens to the artist, instead of him creating it. This experience has a changing effect on the artist and in the process he learns more about his own consciousness. The changing effect is not restricted to the artist, as the reader of the poem shares this experience. Because the reader is also writer, according to Breytenbach, the work of art is recreated by the reader and the reader has the same experience of a virtual invasion of the “other” on his/her own life and in the process also discovers more about his/her own consciousness.

This article is the third of four1 written to line up two extremes in the history of methodology: early 20th century Pragmatism and late-Renaissance militarism, filling in the middle period, focusing on Voltaire and the atmosphere before the French revolution. Pragmatist William James pretended to offer a purely formal method, yet strategized it as a doctrinal attack on the inefficiency of Christianity (according to his (mis)understanding of it). Machiavelli attacked Christianity's practice of justice and meekness as weakness, from his own Classicist, Romanist militaristic empire perspective. Voltaire, in middle Modernity, devised a hermeneutic from an Enlightenment position with a strong Neo-Classicist slant, by representing Ancient Classical tradition as fundamentally tolerant to difference of opinion, and by over-painting any suggestion that early Christians were persecuted for their faith. He represented the Christians of his own days (often rightly so) as unfair, criminal and violent, especially with regard to heterodox opinions. His naturalistic tendencies, contradicting his liberalism (an intolerant propagation of tolerance) must have contributed to the severity of persecution of non-compliant Christians during the 1789 Revolution. Later naturalistic liberalists, such as Dide and Booms, and several anti-Christian sites on the internet, found and find their inspiration (sometimes against his intentions) in Voltaire's criticism of Christianity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]