So now I'm committed to reading the meditations in 9 mins (9mins 22 seconds, to be precise), because it seems to happen that at 9' 22'' my youtube recording connection is 'shutting down,' which I take to be an unintended 'sign' that I should go for brevity, and, perhaps, I'll actually have people check out these videos and the commemoration of the writing that happened ten years ago and culminated with Being and Learning.
The highlight of OPM 77 (pp. 113-114, chapter 5 on 'The Dwelling of Heraclitus) is the citation of Heidegger's translation of Heraclitus' fragment 119, and his explanation of it. The fragment, which is the key to the story that is the focus of the meditations that make up chapter 5, the story told by Aristotle and recounted by Heidegger in his essay 'Letter on Humanism," is as follows: "ethos anthropoi daimon." The usual translation, according to Heidegger, is 'A man's character is his daimon." I more or less said as much in my reading of OPM75 from Drew University, when I spoke in my commentary about the relation of 'ethos' and 'daimon' as akin to what today we would call 'conscience'. However, with Heidegger I am making the turn to 'context,' which is to say, to understand, as he puts it, "Ethos" as "abode, dwelling place. The word names the open region in which [humanity] dwells. The open region of [our] abode allows what pertains to [our] essence, and what in thus arriving resides in nearness to [us], to appear. The abode of [humanity] contains and preserves the advent of what belongs to [humanity] in [our] essence.
Now, Heidegger is more certainly pointing us into some deep ontological waters, which is precisely where Being and Learning is moving, so there shouldn't be any surprise. However, without going to deep into these depths, what is important it the point that ethos isn't something we possess as individuals. It isn't 'ours' so much as it is what makes or forms us. Ethos has us, we don't have 'it'. What's more, it has an important spatial or topographical dimension that can not be underemphasized.
Finally, the last point I wan to make in this point, is one I make in my commentary, and that is to acknowledge that further down the path of these meditations I will borrow from Heidegger this concept of 'advent.'
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 - I suspect that one day, perhaps in ten years with 4.0, I'll look back on these videos with some nostalgia, especially when I watch the recordings from my office. I already feel a bit nostalgic when I watch the vids that were recorded at 29 Sunset Drive.
ReplyDeleteAgain, I'm experiencing coincidences. The article I am reading with my independent study student, Georgia, which was selected because it related scholē to music (more specifically to mousikě) coincidentally overlapped with the presentation I made to my class yesterday on Foucault and the Nietzschean call to make one's life a work of art. And even more coincidentally mentioned the GD and "Shakedown Street" in particular as examples of a post-humanist example of music-making that transcends the musicians and seems to arrive and circulate from a mysterious elsewhere. I add the mysterious, as that is my schtick. But the other coincidence happened when I arrived to campus and was listening to the most recent DZ that featured "Shakedown St" from 4.16.84, only to see that tune highlighted in the article. But the real coincidence resides in the overlap here with the post-humanism that was initiated by Heidegger in his "Letter on Humanism." Back in the day it was called "anti-humanism," and I remember quite well when, in 2007, Troy and I were preparing a proposal for PES and he suggested we shift to using "post-humanism." The updated term works better because it underlines the de-centering or re-placement of the human subject happening in the event of learning, which is initiated by the aesthetic experience. And this is the point made in the OPM from this day, specifically with the recollection of the Heraclitus story. Heraclitus points to the hidden presence of the gods, who are also dwelling in the domestic scene, the extraordinary in the ordinary. Metaphor or not, the "gods" denote the presence of significance, the moment pregnant with meaning. This is the ethos of the dwelling, the spirit of a place, the collective aura of significance. When a learning event is occurring that aura is perceived, the room is charged with energy. When it's not happening, as was the case in second class yesterday, the room is overwhelmed by the mundane, what Heidegger would call the mood of boredom. In either case, no act of will was responsible for the situation. It's atmospheric. And this is one of the most daunting challenges of teaching: to let be what is occurring. I suppose this is why my colleagues use technology to support their teaching, creating a kind of theatrical situation by using the digital chalkboard and projecting slides. This directs the students' attention away from the instructor, and towards content. Perhaps this is what Arendt is after by emphasizing the common. I'm committed to the reading as the common, but too few students are completing the reading. Arendt's position on dialogue only applies if each of the participants has something to say about the common object. And in the learning situation it is an unspoken rule that if you don't have anything substantial to say, then you had better not say anything at all. I appreciate that, but I'm also disappointed that so few if any actually commit to preparing. This could be a failure on my part of pointing to something significant. Arendt, Heidegger, Foucault are all challenging, for sure. But it couldn't be that the material is too challenging. Something else is happening, or not happening, despite my preparation and earnest attempts to engage them. Perhaps the gods are not present in my classroom these days?