PPM33, the last of the readings from the Hotel Albuquerque veranda, on a desert day when the powerful winds are sweeping across the valley, and the sun is shining and offering significant heat. 'Significant heat.' This is a very interesting phrase, in light (there is goes again) of my starting point with Plato, and his thesis that the question is not whether we can contemplate Being, but whether or not we can be turned around to contemplate Being. This whole project is orbiting around this thesis, wondering how this turning might occur and, when it does, what might happen. I recall Plato here for two reasons: first, because he likens contemplation of Being to looking at the sun, which is brilliant today; second, because the I re-turn to the turning in my meditation and my commentary. PPM33 picks up from the preceding day's focus on the Sage, with several citations from Lao Tzu, "Therefore the sage puts his own person last, and yet is found in the foremost place; he treats his person as if it were foreign to him, and yet that person is preserved."(Tao, I:7:2) PPM33 focuses on how the sage opens up the possibility of dialogue, the gathering of the learning community, by indicating the modality of silence, and through this pointing indicates the gap over which language arises and passes. With this gap we arrive at what is now the third iteration of the Nothing: now the silence and gap. The first iteration was of the nothing appeared in the question, How is it with the Nothing? which is Heidegger's question that introduced us to evocative speech, but the question is an example of that kind of expression that produces philosophy via provocation. Here the nothing signifies the potentiality/possibility of human freedom. The second iteration of the nothing happened as the reduction of the first to Being's presencing. If the nothing first appears as human possibility (freedom), then in the turning toward this possibility arises the excess of Being as presencing, what is not-yet something. As I explain in my commentary 'not-yet something' signifies both the ineffability of 'Being' (existence experienced pre-linguistically), and the 'pure potentiality' of existence. The third iteration of the nothing appears with the taking up of this pure potentiality, and here the nothing is the space or gap that allows for the appearance of that which is made in the making something from the not-yet something. Here is where philosophy as making (poiein) happens, both in the sense of fabrication in the making and forming of things (sounds into music, words; painting, sculpture, crafts, etc.). The nothing is here the clearing opening up for the appearance of making and forming. Music-making philosophy is perhaps the most general category for the work that happens in this gap, which is why it is also called silence. All three iterations come together in this moment with the actualization of 'music': the appearance of human freedom (possibility) in the perception of the not-yet something (potentiality) and the formation/making of something (the now actualized freedom).
February 13, 2014 was the 10th anniversary of the original experiment that produced 363 phenomenological mediations, published as 'Being and Learning' (Brill: 2012). Each day between Feb 2014-15, I returned to the original meditations, and my commentary is documented here. And then, again, on February 15, 2024, on the 20th anniversary of the first days of the original experiment, I revisit and comment on a daily basis, once again.
3.0- Continuity, continuity, continuity (as opposed to location) jumps out again in the commentary on the original meditation. First and foremost, the naming of "music-making philosophy" as "the most general category for the work that is happening in this gap, which is also called silence". YES!! Continuity is even a bit of an understatement as I am still wholly engaged with mapping this place that enables the dialogue to unfold: the gap, the clearing, the opening, even the studio. Second important move that jumps out to me is the introduction of Lao Tzu. Again, just today, I was outlining the dialectic structure of the Routledge book and thinking about how I will begin, what the Preface will begin with. I noted in yesterday's 3.0 commentary that the first line will be "I work in a circular building." And I want to introduce circularity, the movement in circles that chararacterizes the way of Socrates dialogue. But Socrates is not alone in this work. Lao Tzu's category of the Sage helps me to engage with the evocative saying of the teacher that inspires and continues to move the dialogue. But while the evocative saying of the Sage is fundamental, even more primary and originarym is the silence of the sage. And here is a key fragment from the 2.0 commentary: "PPM33 focuses on how the sage opens up the possibility of dialogue, the gathering of the learning community, by indicating the modality of silence, and through this pointing indicates the gap over which language arises and passes. With this gap we arrive at what is now the third iteration of the Nothing: now the silence and gap." Indicating, pointing (perhaps through writing) to, the modality of silence, and thereby pointing to the gap over which language passes. Today via my writing on Nancy, I have been describing this gap as the opening, the hole, even the portal or threshold, which are terms I have been using for some time. The Nancy manuscript describes the movement of sound (music) through the hole, which is both the silence and the gap in time, but also the opening that allow sound to move through us, resonating and reverberating in our bodies. Silence is the receptive modality that en-opens, receiving the flow of sound, in the case of the learning community the voices of others, the evocative questioning sayings that circulate in the dialogue. The silence of the Sage (teacher) embodies the receptivity that receives and gathers these sayings. But this silence also indicates the encompassing clearing or opening, the place where the dialogic learning community is gathering. Both 1.0 and 2.0 also take me back to the clearing, opening, gap, etc., as the Nothing, i.e, Heidegger's, How is with the Nothing? And here, Lao Tzu is powerfully informative. In his worldview the subject, even the Sage, is diminished, reduced to Nothing in relation to the Tao (the Way). In turn, to ask How is with the Nothing? is to ask, How is it with the Tao, or Are you attuned to the Tao? Today I might not ask this question, but there is not question of the reduction of Heidegger's Nothing to the condition of human subjectivity in relation to the Tao.
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