フェルメールが描いたDelftの光景、それはオランダと呼ばれるものとイコールではないだろうし、かといって観念から完全に独立しているのでもない。光景に同一できるかという話はまだ先の時代のこと。失われた観念はスペイン帝国だったかもしれないが、失われた全体性に依拠した大きさ。全体性という観念が先行する、そういうイメージ。そこから、プルーストが見抜いていたように、外に閉ざされた、航海中の遠くの恋人にラブレターを綴るときのような昂まる感情、延期されているが、なんともいえない親しい空間を呼び出す。スピノザの哲学はフェルメール絵画と関係があるか？もちろん関係があるとおもうよ
View of Delft ( from "the story of philosophy ")
・The painter Vermeer and philosopher Spinoza were both born in Holland in 1632. Vermeer spent his life in Delft, and Spinoza in Amsterdam and The Hague. It is doubtless somewhat bold to assert, alongside this external relationship between the two men, a certain internal relationship in their works. And yet Vermeer's pictures can provide us with a very impressive illustration of the idea of substance in reference to which everything is one; the space in his paintings come across as transparent against space as such, and the light does not seem substantial lly different from what it illustrates. Determinatio est negatio, says Spinoza, " definition is negation". Every concept is defined by its being different from other concepts, by what is "not". It thus takes on a distinct from only by virtue of its place within the totality of things; the whole precedes the individual. And in the same way , the thing painted by Vermeer are not put together from ready-made modules, but seem to have emerged into the light from the totality of the picture, while the painted points of the picture derive their material significance only from the picture as a whole.
