Given that my blog posts from the past two days re-visited the 'music-making Socrates' it's no surprise that OPM 103 returns to that figure. OPM 103 begins with a question inspired by Heraclitus' fragment 18 ("Of all the words yet spoken, none comes quite as far as wisdom, which is the action of the mind beyond all things that may be said."): "What is this 'action of the mind beyond all things that may be said?'" Painstaking listening, poetic dwelling, the repose of Gelassenheit, the calm and dignified composure of waiting. It is geleassenheit -- the word identified in an email today by J. Wozniak who is slowly/mindfully reading Being and Learning chapter 7 -- or 'letting-be' that captures best this 'action' beyond 'saying.' In OPM 103 I identify Heraclitus at his home and Socrates in his jail cell as examples of this waiting. And I'd like to suggest that something significant happened to Socrates when he was forced from the hustle and bustle of the agora and compelled to remain 'still' in his jail cell, often by himself. Further, I'd like to suggest that it was this forced time alone that located him that contemplative space where he was able to reflect on the recurring dream he discusses in the Phaedo, and, what's more, experience that full force of that dream. The dream urged him, he says, like a spectator at a sporting event, to 'practice and cultivate the arts,' and his whole life Socrates had understood this to be precisely what he was doing with the dialogic form of philosophy. But the time of waiting, alone, in the jail cell located him otherwise, and in that different time and space he was compelled to rethink what the dream figure was encouraged him to do. That rethinking lead him to writing a kind of poetic philosophy, or what is called 'wisdom poetry.' I've already registered my take on this as a prophetic moment, when Socrates took up a philosophical writing of the future, something of the sort I have been attempting with my project of originary thinking, which got underway with this year of meditative writing. If wisdom is the action of the mind beyond all things that can be said, then wisdom poetry is the writing that offers a kind of phenomenology of wisdom, an account of thinking beyond language, which sounds like a contradiction if by 'account' one means a 'representation' rather than a 'prompt' or even a 'recollection.' For me, such writing is a combination of both: it is what one writes post-meditation, making contemplative writing a recollective thinking about the meditation. In turn, such writing, like Heraclitus' fragments, or even Lao Tzu's, prompts us toward meditation. And this is why I describe the saying of the sage as 'en-chanting' or 'in-toning' because it prompts a particular kind of thinking through 'musicality.' Again, the 'music-making Socrates' that Nietzsche identifies is precisely the figure that appears in the time and place of waiting, representing a future philosopher.
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 - Memorial Day, Philly, morning of the lax championship, Lafayette hotel across the street from Independence Hall. The music-making Socrates, is the iconic figure, more so now that in 1.0. And the fragment from Heraclitus around which the original writing was organized expresses well how music arrives: "What is this 'action of the mind beyond all things that may be said?'" In 2.0 I described the "action" that Heraclitus may be referring to as 'gelassenheit,' that word Heidegger used to describe the receptive modality of thinking, the phenomenological modality of letting-be. Today I would emphasize how that modality emerges with listening, and reiterate a claim that has emerged in 3.0: learning begins with listening. "Beyond all things that may be said" can refer to the familiar, to the 'speaking' that is habitual. When we are re-placed into the modality of learning those familiar ways of speaking are silenced. Hence we are moved into the Open region of learning, which is organized by silence. In the Nancy paper I wrote last summer, the Open was described as the opening of (h)earing, and referred to the opening through which music circulates and captivates us, capturing the listener. Music can capture us if and when we are 'beyond' our own words, beyond the familiar. When the familiar is silenced we are ready to learn. The figure of the "music-making Socrates" is the Sage who can be described as making the music that moves others and draws them into learning. When philosophy as dialogue is described as music the emphasis is placed on philosophy as poeisis, as a technē, as making. What is made? In 1.0 the answer is "community." Today I am inclined to say that was is made or constructed is "meaning." I am also inclined to say "freedom." Making that assertion 500 feat from where the Declaration of Independence was "made" might appear trite, but it is actually works if the second moment of the dialectic is writing. And with this example, and with the description I will be making of the dialectic of a philosophical education writing is "poetic" in the most original sense of technē: making, or bring into being that which has not been made before. This is how originary thinking happens with a philosophical education, it is what defines an education as "philosophical." The making of something original, unique, and thus meaningful. This is the "making of music."
ReplyDelete3.0b - After finishing just now I realized that the "Declaration of Independence" is actually a powerful example of originary thinking and thus a powerful metaphor for what is happening with a philosophical education, especially if we are describing it as "making" freedom. Making music is thus making freedom, and a declaration of independence from the familiar, the creation of something original, even if that original is only what is unique and meaningful for the author, the artist, the maker.
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