Concordant or consensual connection between the two
contrasting themes of a
counterpoint is essential to an understanding of its impact on the
mind. A counterpoint is not simply two distinct themes set together.
There must be intrinsic
relationship between
them. Grasping this relationship can lead us into deep neurological and
philosophic
waters.
Neurologically, the receptors in our brain can
in certain circumstances image the same object in opposing ways. The
painting of the Mona Lisa is
an example. Try putting a card on a print with
the edge
down her nose to split her face into two halves.
If we 'see' the painting by viewing the left side of her
face, where she is unsmiling, the brain receives one image. If we now
change to the right side, where she has the gentlest of smiles
(the cat who has licked the
cream
in one description) the brain will
record a counter image. Flipping from one version to the other, the
brain instinctively seeks a resolution of the two counter-images, and
this intriguing
feature
may be the source of much of the painting's 'mystery'. For
practical
demonstrations of the opposing ways the brain can see 'reality', go to
internet references to 'Necker's Cube' and especially to 'Mark
Newbold's
Animated Cube'.
Philosophically, a counterpoint is formed when it is appreciated that a
thing - an entity or concept
- is mirror-imaged as both 'being' and 'not being'. In our
thought-world, an entity can be said to 'be' (to exist) when we
have it in the forefront of our mind. But what can said of it when we
do not have it in mind? It cannot cease to 'be' simply because we do
not happen to be thinking about it. It must have another form of
existence, which we can label as 'not being'. In other words, when we
think about an entity, it becomes a shape we
recognise as part of our consciousness - eternal
to us - but which, when we are not thinking about it, is still
'eternal' but
is now an
entity-shaped 'hole' in our thought world, an opposite or a
diametric. The
function of a counterpoint is to show that these two existences can be
brought together in the mind simultaneously to generate a unity, a concept Stanley clearly
appreciated.
Here is Professor Mary Warnock explaining the implications of the
notion in her Introduction to the English edition of Sartre's The Psychology of Imagination:
.........he
[Sartre] insists that man's freedom to act in the world is a function
of his ability to perceive things not only as they are, but as they
are not. If a man could not, first, describe a present given situation
both as it is and as it is
not; and if he could not, secondly and consequentially, envisage a
situation as possibly being otherwise than how it is, then he would
have no power to intervene in the world and change it........One must
have the power of imagining a thing as well as perceiving it;
that is, of imagining it otherwise. For the power to see things in
different ways, and to form images about a so far none-existent future,
is identical with the power of imagination.