Schindler on Dramatic Form

D.C. Schindler makes a profound connection that may be obvious to readers of Balthasar (as it makes clear the transition from the aesthetics of Herrlichkeit to the dramatics of the Theodramatik), but it certainly struck me in its simplicity: even in the first systematic considerations of vol. 1 of the aesthetics, the contours of a dramatics can be intimated.

Balthasar's later, "aesthetic" use of the term Gestalt includes but goes beyond the relationship to personality, since it determines the more general, fundamental phenomenon of the appearing of any being at all. Nevertheless, he retains to the end a dramatic sense of form, even if the term dramatic receives more analogous application. As Balthasar employs the term in the opening volume of his trilogy, first published in 1961, Gestalt designates not an inert thing in relation solely to itself, but essentially a movement that already possesses in itself a tension. Gestalt is the appearing of the depths of a thing's being and as such has a twofold nature. This polarity, moreover, finds expression in the classical articulation of the beautiful as the inseparable instance of species (or forma) and lumen (or splendor). On the one hand, we have the hidden depths that appear, and on the other, we have the appearance of those depths...As such, it is not a static entity that may then be set in motion or inserted into a larger movement, but it is rather the "structurality" of event.

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Finally, the fact that a Gestalt appears means that the phenomenon necessarily includes a subject-object tension, since every appearing implies an appearing-to or -for. We can see that this aspect also sets in relief the essential "event" character of every Gestalt, insofar as it does not exist except in the encounter between a subject and an object. The "twofold," or polar, structure of Gestalt (as appearance [1] of depths [2]) is reflected in the twofold structure of the encounter: on the one hand, the object is seen (appearance); on the other, the seer is transported (toward the depths). The movement inherent in the object in its act of expressing its depths is, in other words, met by the movement of the beholding subject, and this interaction of movements gives rise to a situation that is clearly analogous to the encounter of figures in a drama.

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For truth to "occur," then, the subject cannot merely take the object into the mind, but must come out ecstatically to meet the object within this greater whole: hence, the dramatic structure of consciousness...Likewise, if truth is to be an encounter with a positive other, and not merely the assimilation of a "lifeless" object, being itself must possess its own inherent mystery and spontaneity: hence, the dramatic structure of being...

D.C. Schindler, Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Dramatic Structure of Truth: a Philosophical Investigation, (New York: Forham University Press, 2004), pp. 15, 16, 26.


Pax Christi,