The last of the Fourth Street porch readings in Stubenville, Ohio, OPM 85 picks up where OPM 84 left off, specifically, from the long Heidegger citation that includes: "Man first speaks, when, and only when, he responds to language by listening to its appeal...to the appeal of language...which speaks in the element of poetry. The more poetic a poet is -- the freer (that is, the more open and ready for teh unforeseen..."
OPM 85 begins by asking "What does it mean to be 'most poetic'?" And then goes on to explore the link between the particular poetic way of 'saying' (writing, speaking) that both Heraclitus and Lao Tzu exemplify. Their fragments are important examples of 'wisdom poetry,' which conveys the force of pointing the presence of what appears to be absent, and is thereby a pointing toward the limits of language, the ineffable. The encounter with the limits of language, with the ineffable, is precisely and encounter with the open, with possibility, or what I have been calling 'human freedom.' In sum, wisdom language conveys or discloses the offering made by Being. To receive and then to take up this offering is to 'do something' with freedom, which is to say, to undertake thinking/learning.
In OPM 85 I emphasize that language is always already conveying its own limits and thereby pointing beyond itself, which is both the further possibility of language (iteration) but also the reception of the spoken word (interpretation, translation). Here we see the 'twofold play' of Being as the co-relation between appearing/disappearing, disclosing/hiding. What is written, spoken, 'said' in language (appearance, disclosure) is always partial, incomplete, part of a greater whole, yes, but even in the fragmented stand-alone form, is always understood and received within a seemingly infinite context, or boundless field of meaning. Heraclitus' fragment that calls our attention to the hidden presence of the gods is an exemplar of this dynamic of language. It is a short sentence, standing alone, and within the context of the story, the only thing he says to his visitors. And the brevity discloses the vast 'hidden' field of meaning, because in speaking only one short line Heraclitus conveys the presumption of the larger field of meaning. And he indicates this through the sign "the gods," which symbolizes the hidden presence of a field of meaning. The gesture of warming his hands by the fire is also significant, especially for those who know something about Heraclitus' cosmological terminology. The truth appears to us in Fire. "Fire" is a 'representation' of the truth (logos), which is sometimes translated as 'word,' which brings us back to the way language conveys the truth, and places us into a relationship with human freedom, that is, when we take it up and think from and through language. This is why it was 'fire' that Prometheus (that hero of the young Karl Marx) gave to humans. With the possession of fire, humans were emancipated, offered their 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 - "Man first speaks, when, and only when, he responds to language by listening to its appeal...to the appeal of language...which speaks in the element of poetry. The more poetic a poet is -- the freer (that is, the more open and ready for the unforeseen..." Thankfully the entire quotation is included in the 2.0 commentary on OPM 85. Yesterday when part of the fragment was cited I didn't recall that Heidegger was the original source. I thought it something I had written in OPM 84! That reveals how immersed in Heidegger the project was and continues to be. Heidegger and Arendt were and continue to be my primary guides. A colleague once remarked with some snark that was intended to be humor: "So I hear you learned to speak Heidegger." I wasn't in the mood to hear that, because he seemed to be mocking me. Another colleague at another conference remarked: "You are a poet." The conference was a gathering of analytic philosophers at Rutgers who Trojan horsed me into believing the conference of Latinx philosophers was a conference taking up Latinx philosophy! Was I ever wrong! Talk about the distinction between philosophy and philosophers (one of Rocha's best). I also wasn't in the mood to hear that comment, but in this case my colleague was making a kind of compliment, I think. That Rutgers gathering was awfully alienating, and recalling it here in relation to the Heidegger fragment cited in OPM 85, I am compelled to wonder if this "freedom" that Heidegger refers to is not happening in the place of solitude where the artwork emerges and resides? If the poetic sets one free by placing one in the location of freedom (scholē?), then this place is set apart from the busyness of everyday life, but also the conformity of the "everyday" as it appears in academia. The struggle against herd mentality and conformism in academia has been a major part of this project. It is the inspiration for the method or pattern of the writing. It demands courage, and the risk of solitude, which, as Arendt reminds us, is never an experience of loneliness because in solitude we remain in the company of ourselves, remain in the two-in-one plurality of meditative dialogue, the spiritual meditation between me-and-myself. As I emphasized in the last week of classes, when we think through the Heideggerian claim that the poetic sets one in freedom, we recognize that this setting apart happens via a periagogē (a turning around of the self) that turns one away from the self and carries one over (diagogē) to the location of freedom. That is, we are turned around by the work of art and carried over into the place where the artwork emerges and dwells. Recalling the "Late to Love" sessions as an example I could describe this place of freedom as "the studio." This place is where learning unfolds, the place of study. Again, as I wrote 10 years ago, when we are moved into the place of learning we are moved (inspired) by the artwork to make art, which is a more precise way of say "do something." The poetic isn't just doing anything. Rather, it is the generation of something new, which Arendt describes as initiating something.
ReplyDelete