First and foremost, in my pre-reading commentary, I share the text of PPM38, originally written
this date in 2004, as pp. 60-61 in Being and Learning, the book that is was the ultimate outcome of this yearlong experiment. Last night I completed a review essay for Education Theory on my dear friend and colleague, the late Ilan Gur Ze'ev, and so this morning I was able to enjoy a relatively relaxing Saturday morning with my wife Kelly and son Jaime. As I was sitting in the living room I noticed a stack of books that seemed to be anxious to be brought off of the shelf: one of them was Being and Learning, and the other was Robin Kelly's dense biography of Theolonius Monk. The third book was The Philosopher's Touch by François Noudelmann, who takes us through a reading of Sartre, Nietzsche, and Barthes at the piano. After deciding that I needed to do something with Monk as a music-making philosopher, I started flipping through Being and Learning, and found the spot where I am in this experiment 2.0, and then decided that I would locate each PPM within the book, so that folks who might be watching these videos and/or reading these posts can 'follow along' in the book. (Coincidentally I received an email today from Simon Fraser University grad student Michael Derby who informed me that he had just received a copy of the book! Derby, along with Roxanne Desforges and James Owen who I mentioned in this blog, is one of the grad students I met at PES in Albuquerque, where last week's PPMs were recorded. Those three, along with others, including Derek Ford, Emily Sadowski, and Nasim Naroozi, are on the 'watch out!' list for me. They are amongst a group of up and coming philosophers who are going to make a big impact! )
this date in 2004, as pp. 60-61 in Being and Learning, the book that is was the ultimate outcome of this yearlong experiment. Last night I completed a review essay for Education Theory on my dear friend and colleague, the late Ilan Gur Ze'ev, and so this morning I was able to enjoy a relatively relaxing Saturday morning with my wife Kelly and son Jaime. As I was sitting in the living room I noticed a stack of books that seemed to be anxious to be brought off of the shelf: one of them was Being and Learning, and the other was Robin Kelly's dense biography of Theolonius Monk. The third book was The Philosopher's Touch by François Noudelmann, who takes us through a reading of Sartre, Nietzsche, and Barthes at the piano. After deciding that I needed to do something with Monk as a music-making philosopher, I started flipping through Being and Learning, and found the spot where I am in this experiment 2.0, and then decided that I would locate each PPM within the book, so that folks who might be watching these videos and/or reading these posts can 'follow along' in the book. (Coincidentally I received an email today from Simon Fraser University grad student Michael Derby who informed me that he had just received a copy of the book! Derby, along with Roxanne Desforges and James Owen who I mentioned in this blog, is one of the grad students I met at PES in Albuquerque, where last week's PPMs were recorded. Those three, along with others, including Derek Ford, Emily Sadowski, and Nasim Naroozi, are on the 'watch out!' list for me. They are amongst a group of up and coming philosophers who are going to make a big impact! )
As for PPM38, a few key moments: first, a reiteration of the unfolding of Learning from an effacement with Being's presencing, and a clarification of the process that takes/carries us from that ecstatic moment into thinking and further into making something worldly that we offer up to others and through
which the dialogic community is formed, which is yet another kind of making. As I emphasized yesterday, this is how the 'philosophy of the people' arises as an intentional community. In
PPM38 I cite Heraclitus for emphasis, and also introduce him into the scene. He will be the focuss later down the road. The quotation from Heraclitus is: "The (familiar) abode for man is the open region for the presencing of god (the unfamiliar one)." This quotation actually deserves much more attention than I offer it in PPM38, and, hence, why Heraclitus is given almost exclusive attention later. However, the quotation serves to emphasize the movement of the learning community 'outside' the 'safety' of domestic philosophy, the safe haven for 'professional thinkers,' or those who I call, in the aforementioned review essay, 'educationists.' Heraclitus allows me to say that, in fact, what is 'closer' to us is the open region where Being's presencing happens. This is why philosophy is an 'unsafe' practice (best undertaken with others whom are quite trustworthy and capable, i.e., dear friends), and thus, as I mentioned yesterday, something both the State and the family, must insure is possible but can not interrupt without delegitimizing their respective claims to authority. Philosophy is the undertaking happening in 'the wilderness' or in 'the exotic,' as I describe in my recently completed and presented -- at PES New Mexico -- paper. Finally, I draw on Arendt who offers one of the most powerful descriptions of thinking's dwelling in the modality of spontaneity and what she calls natality. Later, as I discuss in my commentary, I will describe the first encounter with Being, Learning, as happening in the the close proximity of Being's ceaseless nativity. In turn, thinking>philosophy -- an expression of thinking that makes an offering to others in the world -- is a 'copy' or mimetic replication of ceaseless
nativity. This is why, as Sam Rocha and Troy Richardson know from our most intense discussion at PES Pittsburgh last year, I talk only of making, but not of creation. That we are creative is as far as I will go when I talk of Learning as a mimetic replication that 'transmits' our attunement of Being's ceaseless nativity.
which the dialogic community is formed, which is yet another kind of making. As I emphasized yesterday, this is how the 'philosophy of the people' arises as an intentional community. In
PPM38 I cite Heraclitus for emphasis, and also introduce him into the scene. He will be the focuss later down the road. The quotation from Heraclitus is: "The (familiar) abode for man is the open region for the presencing of god (the unfamiliar one)." This quotation actually deserves much more attention than I offer it in PPM38, and, hence, why Heraclitus is given almost exclusive attention later. However, the quotation serves to emphasize the movement of the learning community 'outside' the 'safety' of domestic philosophy, the safe haven for 'professional thinkers,' or those who I call, in the aforementioned review essay, 'educationists.' Heraclitus allows me to say that, in fact, what is 'closer' to us is the open region where Being's presencing happens. This is why philosophy is an 'unsafe' practice (best undertaken with others whom are quite trustworthy and capable, i.e., dear friends), and thus, as I mentioned yesterday, something both the State and the family, must insure is possible but can not interrupt without delegitimizing their respective claims to authority. Philosophy is the undertaking happening in 'the wilderness' or in 'the exotic,' as I describe in my recently completed and presented -- at PES New Mexico -- paper. Finally, I draw on Arendt who offers one of the most powerful descriptions of thinking's dwelling in the modality of spontaneity and what she calls natality. Later, as I discuss in my commentary, I will describe the first encounter with Being, Learning, as happening in the the close proximity of Being's ceaseless nativity. In turn, thinking>philosophy -- an expression of thinking that makes an offering to others in the world -- is a 'copy' or mimetic replication of ceaseless
nativity. This is why, as Sam Rocha and Troy Richardson know from our most intense discussion at PES Pittsburgh last year, I talk only of making, but not of creation. That we are creative is as far as I will go when I talk of Learning as a mimetic replication that 'transmits' our attunement of Being's ceaseless nativity.
FINALLY Arendt offers me inspiration to make this move when she writes: "the business of thinking is like Penelope's web; it undoes every morning what it has finished the night before. For the need to think can never be stilled by allegedly definite insights of 'wise men'; it can be satisfied only through thinking, and the thoughts I had yesterday will satisfy this need today only to the extent that I want and am able to think them anew." THIS QUOTATION captures the entirety of the spirit of the original experiment, the book that it made, and, subsequently, the project of originary thinking that names what I am not completely caught up in!
3.0 - 10 years ago I was definitely in the flow and the zone! A week or so after I return from a conference, specifically PES, I riding high. And ten years ago I was riding really high on the Camino Mafioso, I was calling the road to Memphis! The mention of Sam and Troy reminds me how close I was with the two of them 10 years ago (although the moment recalled is from Pittsburgh 2013, the "creating v making" conversation). Unfortunately, we've drifted apart since then. I'm still in touch with Sam, but haven't heard from Troy since he hosted our family for a bbq during Kat's Cornell graduation weekend. Nevertheless, so much was happening 10 years ago, as noted above. The evening before this day 10 years ago I completed my review essay of my late colleague Ilan Gur Ze' ev's last book 'The Possibility/Impossibility of a New Critical Language in Education,' which was published by Sense, the same publisher that printed 'Being and Learning.' (They were acquired by Brill.). Yesterday when I wrote my 3.0 commentary I hadn't recalled that it was the 10 year anniversary of completing that essay, and it was only by yet another coincidence that I mentioned Ilan's category of "orcha," which for me is the key one that appears in his last book. I also didn't realize, until I just discovered it now on JSTOR, that my colleague Tova, who I met through Ilan, has also published a review in 2005 of the book Ilan had edited, which my essay that featured my writing on Lao Tzu that must have pre-dated the writing on Lao Tzu and Taoism that appears in the original project and then in 'Being and Learning.' And by yet another coincidence (again) Tova singles out my essay. It's coincidental because Lao Tzu's figure of the Sage is the focus of the writing that happened 20 years ago on this day (as well as the days before and after). To discover this morning that Tova singled out my essay on Lao Tzu plays to my 'mystic' inclinations, for sure, and continues to feed my curiosity with respect to Synchronicity.
ReplyDelete3.0b - The 2.0 commentary's identification of the precise page numbers in 'Being and Learning' where this day's original meditation appears, inspired me to get out the old 3 ring notebooks where I collected the originals, printing them immediately after a writing session, and punching 3 holes. I would often run out of black ink, so many of the pages are printed in blue, like today's. The original begins, "When we say that the Sage gets wandering underway and, is, thereby, an initiator, one who begins, a beginner, we refer to the Sage as the teacher, or one who offers the gift of teachability." Today I'm not focused on the teacher as gift giver, nor on teachability. 20 years ago I was riding high into and through PESGB New College, Oxford on the teaching and turning the student around. Hence when the student receives the gift, they are turned around. (Apparently that paper I presented in 2004 at PESGB is still resonating with some, as it was mentioned to me in Salt Lake City by a colleague from Poland). But I continue to focus on the teacher as one who begins, and I have written in many of the recent 3.0 commentaries, the Intro to the Routledge book will focus on learning as beginning, the teacher as an initiator, and the student as a beginner. Lastly, the 2.0 commentary on the Arendt fragment on Penelope from "Thinking" (Life of the Mind), reminds me of the paper I presented last fall at NEPES, which was organized around that same fragment. Seems as if I continue to move on the same paths! Back to the original meditation from this day, and that mystic inclination. The writing is spontaneous and thus poetic, but not following a grand design. It waits for inspiration, and to respond accordingly. And on this point, here is a fragment from the original that calls out: "To Learn is to find oneself in the ecstatic abode of ek-sistence, which designates our belongingness to Being." That designation is re-called; we called back to Being, which is to say, re-placed in the Open Region, that place I describe as the 'proper' abode, and where we practice "primordial thinking." This is the thinking that takes up the "ultimate questions." But today I would be a bit more humble, or slightly more circumspect (with the multiple connotations of that word), and want to refer to "originary" rather than "primordial." While the mystic inclinations are still very much present, I find myself in the mood to find a way to not only communicate but to connect the project to those same "beginners" (specifically, my students), and to do so with a writing that continues to be inspired by the originary relationship between Being and Learning, but can communicate that without necessarily requiring readers to make a decision with respect to the mystic overtone, which they may or may not hear in the more circumspect writing, but that is resonating somewhat loudly in the original meditations, and then the book. This is why today I focus on examples, especially from the world of performance art. And also on the 'poetic' and 'phenomenological' without 'meditation' despite the history of that practice in the Modern rationalist aka non-mystical philosophy of Descartes. 'Poetic' emphasizes the making happening with learning: reading>making meaning, writing>making critique, dialogue>making conversation; the three gathered triadically through the dialectic of listening, speaking, acting. All to say, with apologies to Nietzsche, that today the communication of the project to 'beginners' (perhaps who my colleague René Arcilla called "initiates") is an endeavor that is human, all to human. This is not to say the "human" is without spirt, soul and the possibility of mystical experience. Rather, it is to say that the communication of the project can be a bit more 'ordinary' and thus accessible!
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