OPM90 (Being and Learning, pp. 150-151) leads up to the introduction of Plotinus, the thinker who is a kind of hybrid figure who is not entirely a ‘philosopher,’ nor a ‘mystic,’ but something in-between. In lecture I gave on Plotinus for the Hofstra Honors College in Fall 2013 (available via Duarte HUHC 2013 Plotinus Lecture) I categorize Plotinus’ work as a phenomenology of contemplation: “How can we ‘understand’ The One? We can not. We can only share an account of our experience with The One. The emphasis here must be placed the account, the description being truthful insofar as it as an authentic rendering of the experience with The One. This is all we can expect from a discourse that insists on a prosaic description of an experience of/with ‘something’ that escapes language. This is philosophy in the form of a phenomenology of contemplation: a descriptive account of an experience of moving inwards/upwards/around The One. Contemplation is a practice quite different from analysis, dialogue, confession and meditation. So different is contemplation that, unlike the others, we don’t enact it when we write or talk about it. Rather, ‘philosophy’ arrives after contemplation, as a re-collection of the experience; a phenomenological description of the mystical union with The One.”
In OPM 90 Plotinus is introduced in the midst of a description of ‘the ineffable.’ Here again is the matter of language pointing beyond itself, and the Sage as the pointer. The move ‘beyond’ is the movement into freedom, and this movement happens via what I am calling ‘learning/thinking’. The Sage points towards learning by indicating the ineffable, or what is ‘beyond language,’ yet available for and beckoning thinking. In OPM 90 I write: “The ineffable is not simply that which can not be described in words, but that which exceeds the forms of expression we find immediately available to us…The ineffable denotes the sublime, or that which initiates awe, wonder, that which is evocative. A saying is poetic when it is evocative and thereby points beyond itself. In pointing beyond itself it thereby conveys an excess to be taken up through the work of meaning making….Plotinus, who recovers the wisdom of Heraclitus that is a silent presence in Plato’s work, calls our attention to the ineffable when he speaks of The One that ‘is absent from nothing and everything…present only to those who are prepared for it and are able to receive it.’ Plotinus emphasizes the experiential or phenomenological manner of the encounter with Being’s processural unfolding, and experience that always exceeds language, specifically, propositional logic, and can thereby only be conveyed poetically. To speak ‘precisely’ about the ineffable requires one to speak tentatively and evasively, that is, evocatively.”
Plotinus, who does not receive his own chapter, is one of the most important figures for this project, both in the style and substance of his writing; although, if truth be told, he is bit more systemic than I am, albeit he had a student, Porphyry, who edited his lectures, which probably made them even more organized.
OPM 90 ends with a quotation from Plotinus that includes a citation from Plato: “We must renounce knowing and knowable…that is why Plato says of The One, ‘It can neither be spoken nor written about.’ If nevertheless we speak of it and write about it, we do so only to give direction, to urge towards that vision beyond discourse, to point out the road to one desirous of seeing. Instruction goes only as far as showing the road and the direction.”
In OPM 90 Plotinus is introduced in the midst of a description of ‘the ineffable.’ Here again is the matter of language pointing beyond itself, and the Sage as the pointer. The move ‘beyond’ is the movement into freedom, and this movement happens via what I am calling ‘learning/thinking’. The Sage points towards learning by indicating the ineffable, or what is ‘beyond language,’ yet available for and beckoning thinking. In OPM 90 I write: “The ineffable is not simply that which can not be described in words, but that which exceeds the forms of expression we find immediately available to us…The ineffable denotes the sublime, or that which initiates awe, wonder, that which is evocative. A saying is poetic when it is evocative and thereby points beyond itself. In pointing beyond itself it thereby conveys an excess to be taken up through the work of meaning making….Plotinus, who recovers the wisdom of Heraclitus that is a silent presence in Plato’s work, calls our attention to the ineffable when he speaks of The One that ‘is absent from nothing and everything…present only to those who are prepared for it and are able to receive it.’ Plotinus emphasizes the experiential or phenomenological manner of the encounter with Being’s processural unfolding, and experience that always exceeds language, specifically, propositional logic, and can thereby only be conveyed poetically. To speak ‘precisely’ about the ineffable requires one to speak tentatively and evasively, that is, evocatively.”
Plotinus, who does not receive his own chapter, is one of the most important figures for this project, both in the style and substance of his writing; although, if truth be told, he is bit more systemic than I am, albeit he had a student, Porphyry, who edited his lectures, which probably made them even more organized.
OPM 90 ends with a quotation from Plotinus that includes a citation from Plato: “We must renounce knowing and knowable…that is why Plato says of The One, ‘It can neither be spoken nor written about.’ If nevertheless we speak of it and write about it, we do so only to give direction, to urge towards that vision beyond discourse, to point out the road to one desirous of seeing. Instruction goes only as far as showing the road and the direction.”
3.0 - It's only now, after reading the 2.0 commentary that I recall Plotinus appearing in the original meditations and then in "Being and Learning." I know, it seems strange that an author would forget or not recall a specific idea or thinker that appears in their writing. Not so strange for me, actually, although my forgetfulness might be questioned by an outsider. But here's the thing, and this thing actually relates to some of the text from 2.0 and OPM 90: the poetic praxis I'm describing in this project is very much an undertaking that is unfolding in the present, and the more intensely it remains in the present the less likely it will be recalled as memory in the way, say, I can recall a random conversation, or detail from a place I've visited, or some other memory that is less significant. Why might this be the case? Because the flash of illumination, the lightning bolt of insight or inspiration that strikes me when I go into the zone of thinking/writing, is in many respects unexpected, although the daily routine of writing, for example, does set up the conditions of the possibility of receiving the flash of inspiration. But the protocol initiated with the original daily writing experiment that happened 20 years ago insists that I don't sit down with a plan. There is nothing pre-meditated. Instead, the content of the meditation is emerging spontaneously and under the inspiration of the muse Improvisation, the name for the spirit of philosophy that arrived to me last summer when I was writing my Nancy paper.
ReplyDelete3.0b - But like jazz and jam musicians, the writer who is inspired by Improvisation certainly anticipates that moment of inspiration, yet can never ever know for sure what is going to be played or in my case written or said. And that brings me to the writing from this day 20/10 years ago, specifically when I described ‘philosophy’ as arriving "after contemplation, as a re-collection of the experience; a phenomenological description of the mystical union with The One." I'm no expert in phenomenology, but my sense from reading an essay by Merleau-Ponty is that, in part, phenomenology is the novitiate philosophical practice par excellence. Studying, say, Husserl is one thing, and a challenging one that at. But practicing phenomenology is a matter of taking up the steps articulated by Husserl: the epochē, the reduction, etc. It is the novitiate practice because emerges from the positionality of the newcomer, the novice, which is a modality of radical openness and receptivity. Listening is fundamental for phenomenological description. And there it is, the two moments of phenomenology: the moment of reception/perception and the moment of description. When Plotinus makes his appearance he offer "contemplation" as the name for the first moment. Contemplation is prelinguistic, and this is one reason it is described as the moment of captivation. And when we are captivated and placed in a modality contemplation, there is a replacement of cognition, of distance from the significant object. This is what is entailed with what Plotinus describes as "union" with the One. For me the One is not a 'thing' per se, but a location, a time/space, a place. We experience "Oneness" in/with "the One." Oneness is the gathering of significance, harmony of meaning. This gathering occurs and is present in the significant object, the work of art. And thus Plotinus describes beings (things, what is "real") as emanating from the One. What emanates is an emission or radiates from/with its origin. If the One is the name for harmony and significance, then the emanation is encountered in the work of art, in the significant object of study. And that encounter happens first and foremost in the moment of contemplation, when we are "one" with the object, captivated. And this moment is what I describe 20/10 years ago as "The move ‘beyond’ is the movement into freedom, and this movement happens via what I am calling ‘learning/thinking’." On the one hand 20/10 years later, I would emphasize that the whole event can be called "learning/thinking." But on the other hand the moment of contemplation is identified as the pre-linguistic experience of receptivity. Writing emerges after, in the moment after contemplation, and perhaps "meditation" is the name for the thinking that occurs as the descriptive modality after the aesthetic experience.
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