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Chapter Three: Philosophy of Posthuman Artworks
and rational soul, which is identical with their true human nature, and which separates human beings categorically from all other solely natural beings like apes, dolphins or elephants. This way of thinking can still be found in many social contexts, legal constitutions and moral laws. Having reflected upon the question of duality and non-duality for a long time, only recently I managed to connect two insights which I have had for some time, without considering that there could be a connection between them. It concerns the thought that there is a relationship between the birth of dualistic thinking and dualistic media and that there is an intricate link between the coming about and dominance of Platonic thinking and the birth process of ancient tragedy, as both are rooted in a dualistic manner of grasping the world. In early August 2013, just before attending the World Congress of Philosophy in Athens, the Spanish artist Jaime del Val and I were on the island of Aigina and decided to attend a performance of Euripides’ “The Cyclops” in the theatre of Epidauros. It is the only complete satyr play which has survived. During the performance, when I was confronted with the Architectural prerequisites which were brought about by the institutionalization of drama which took place during the 6th century BCE, I suddenly became aware of the dualities which emerged during the birth process of Ancient Greek drama. Originally, there were no theatre buildings, there was no stage and there were no spectators who were separated from the stage. Before the institutionalization of tragedy, there were only groups of human beings singing and dancing together without a rigid dualistic spatial separation between the actors and the audience. Various categorical dualities were introduced during the birth process of tragedy (Pickard-Cambridge 1927). Firstly, there was the spatial separation between the audience and the actors. The audience had to remain seated within certain linear and circular fields which were separated from but also directed towards the circle or rather stage on which the actors were supposed to fulfil their tasks. Secondly, a distinction between the chorus and the protagonists was introduced. On the one hand, there was the chorus, and the task of the chorus was to sing and dance together. On the other hand, there were the individual actors whose task was to recite their roles. Hence, the duality between audience and actors was amplified by further introducing the duality between protagonists and chorus. Thirdly, the dualistic architecture of the theatre was created which enforces these dualistic structures. All of these dualities were absent from the festivities which took place before the invention and institutionalization of the theatre which started with the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens during the 6th century BCE (MacDonald/Walton 2011). The institutionalization of tragedy which came along with the construction of the Theatre of Dionysus was not the sole event during which dualistic media (here: dramatic theatre) came about. However, it seems plausible to claim that
