The reading of PPM29 marks exactly one month since I started Being and Learning 2.0. So I begin with the reading of the epigram, which is from Bonaventure's "The Soul's Journey Into God,"(1259) : "I ask you, then, to weigh the writer's intention rather than his work; truth rather than beauty, the exercise of affection rather than erudition of the intellect. To do this, you should not run rapidly over the development of these considerations, but should mull over them slowly with the greatest care." After reading this I push back a bit on the distinctions made by Bonaventure, but then embrace wholeheartedly his supplication that the reader take up a slow and steady pace when reading. This is the pace at which the meditations were written, and, as such, demand a kind of patience, a care, and, I would add, the approach of one who is cultivating a garden! PPM29 itself continues with Plato's Symposium, but, again, I only take up the preliminary moments, focusing now on Socrates' entrance into Agathon's house. Agathon greets Socrates, bidding him to sit next to him and "share this great thought that's just struck you in the porch next door. I'm sure you must have mastered it, or you'd still be standing there." (Symp, 175c) The porch, the threshold!! Socrates' response is precisely what we would anticipate: "My dear Agathon, Socrates replied as he took his seat beside him, I only wish that wisdom were the kind of thing one could share by sitting next next to someone -- it flowed, for instance, from one that was full to the one that was empty, like the water in two cups finding its level through a piece of worsted. If that were how it worked, I'm sure I'd congratulate myself on sitting next to you, for you'd soon have me brimming over with the most exquisite kind of wisdom. My own understanding is a shadowy thing at best, as equivocal as a dream..."(Symp, 175d-e). Of course it is a shadowy thing, emerging as it does from the threshold, from an encounter with the Nothing, the space opened up by the withdrawal/absencing of Being's presencing! But what's striking, and what I then write about and, in turn, comment on, is the contrasting position Socrates takes up when the matter has been settled and the group has decided to have a conversation on the meaning of love. He says, "Speaking for myself, I couldn't well dissent when I claim that love is the one thing in the world I understand."(Symp, 177d-e) Socrates, the one who exemplifies philosophy through his mantra, "All I know is that I know nothing at all" declares he in fact understands something, and this is perhaps the most mysterious of the human experiences, love? My response is to explore the distinction between 'certainty' and 'confidence' and compare the confidence one has in describing the reality of a dream versus the 'certainty' one has in making an apparently fool-proof argument. Philosophy, as discussed in PPM27 through Arendt and Kant, emerges from the confidence of taking up the fundamental yet unanswerable questions. Of course, much more needs to be explored on the matter of Love, and this is forthcoming. However, in my post-reading commentary, I discuss the trinity of terms: Agape, Eros, and Phyllia, and suggest that the love of which Socrates speaks emerges at the nexus where these three meet!
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3.0. - So this is a commentary that offers so much of the content of the original meditation, that 10/20 years later I find myself drawn back into the flow the original project, and being recalled to a moment that had been forgotten, this fragment from Socrates as he was met by Agathon before going into his home. And I am in fact recalled by this commentary to the sources of two important tropes that have gathered this project. The first is the "threshold" the in-between where Socrates is speaking to Agathon, and one might even identify the porch (stoa), where Socrates has paused in meditation, as also in the threshold. As with so many subtle and often unnoticed brief and almost fleeting moments in his work, Plato is inviting his readers to slow down the pace of their encounter with his work. In the years in between the original project and the 10 year...re-collection ("commemoration" doesn't quite capture the return to the project, because it makes it appear as if I am standing outside rather than finding myself within, moving again in the flow of daily meditations)...I leaned into this figure of the "threshold scholar," and wrote on this persona, and somewhere there is a short film I recorded, I believe in the fall of 2012, in the lobby of the USM library. The other is the trope of the cup filling over. "My dear Agathon, Socrates replied as he took his seat beside him, I only wish that wisdom were the kind of thing one could share by sitting next next to someone -- it flowed, for instance, from one that was full to the one that was empty, like the water in two cups finding its level through a piece of worsted. If that were how it worked..." Later in the year 2004 the meditations took me into an encounter with the Sage, the one who gathers the learning through evocative sayings, questioning, and drawing others into the open region of questioning. And the overflowing cup that is filled, emptied, and filled again was inspired by these words from Socrates, combined with the wisdom of Buddha's teaching on becoming empty. The emptiness is the silence, the overflowing the speech, and today I would emphasize, the singing, the playing. Plato is anticipating what Socrates will encounter when he descends down into the raucous party that is celebrating Agathon's victory at the poetry festival. Socrates is signaling the mystic teaching of Diotima that he will share later that evening. This is possible, alone. But one cannot communicate that experience, nor share it with another. Is there a parallel with love? On the contrary, and this is one of the significant take aways from the Symposium, and from the experience of the learning community: it is possible to share the love of wisdom (philosophy) with others. And this is how the event of Being and Learning unfolds, dialogically, between the members of the learning community.
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