I'm reading OPM 98 and blogging about it after a long day of driving back from Ithaca to Portland. And the short commentary I'll offer is inspired by the conversation I had this morning at with good friends and colleagues Troy Richardson and Sofia Villenas, who teach at Cornell and whose home I stay in when I am in Ithaca. The discussion focussed a bit on the formation of community, and why the intentional building of community happens through education, or is an educational process. We also talked about the cultural practices that make up this community building process, and wondered if these practices are themselves ways of thinking, and thus offering an alternative way of doing philosophy. While I'm not sure I have much more than an intuition about this move, I would say that the story of Heraclitus that I explored at length in the meditations that make up chapter 5 offers an example of how an everyday practice (warming one's hands by a hearth) can draw others into dialogue. But the point is that everyday cultural practices are not simply mediating dialogue, but can communicate on their own.
All this leads me to say something about OPM 98, which is a bit different insofar as it includes a big excerpt from a dialogue between Heidegger and a visitor from Japan. The dialogue takes up the nature of language, of course, and in doing so indicates the non-verbal forms of communication that are as meaningful as the verbal. In all cases when we experience the exchange of meaning, we are experiencing 'Saying.' Saying brings about 'real dialogue.' And in the exchange Heidegger's visitor says: "The course of such a dialogue would have a character all its own, with more silence than talk." To which Heidegger responds, "Above all, silence about silence..." It seems to me that when they speak of silence (which is itself a kind of complicated move), they are not simply indicating the non-verbal forms of communication, but elevating it to the highest level. If silence is 'authentic saying' then it is not the lack of communication, but the opposite: the most complete form of communication. But what could it mean to say 'silence' is the 'most complete form of communication'? Or better, what are the ways we communicate in silence (non-verbally)? Affectively? Physically? For a moment I wanted to use the example of art, but I'm not sure if this is non-verbal.
All this leads me to say something about OPM 98, which is a bit different insofar as it includes a big excerpt from a dialogue between Heidegger and a visitor from Japan. The dialogue takes up the nature of language, of course, and in doing so indicates the non-verbal forms of communication that are as meaningful as the verbal. In all cases when we experience the exchange of meaning, we are experiencing 'Saying.' Saying brings about 'real dialogue.' And in the exchange Heidegger's visitor says: "The course of such a dialogue would have a character all its own, with more silence than talk." To which Heidegger responds, "Above all, silence about silence..." It seems to me that when they speak of silence (which is itself a kind of complicated move), they are not simply indicating the non-verbal forms of communication, but elevating it to the highest level. If silence is 'authentic saying' then it is not the lack of communication, but the opposite: the most complete form of communication. But what could it mean to say 'silence' is the 'most complete form of communication'? Or better, what are the ways we communicate in silence (non-verbally)? Affectively? Physically? For a moment I wanted to use the example of art, but I'm not sure if this is non-verbal.
3.0 - The 2.0 commentary reinforce the passage of time, faded friendships that were at one time vibrant. Ten years ago I was still quite connected to Troy Richardson, who I collaborated with on a number of projects beginning in 2007. I haven't heard from Troy since that last time I saw him at his home when he hosted my family for a barbecue during Kat's graduation weekend in 2016. I suspect he is still at Cornell. But while that friendship has faded, ones that were diminished are not revitalized, especially those at Hofstra, where the faculty in the School of Education is as unified as ever. And that brings me to the theme of community building, which I discuss above. There are the slow and steady everyday actions that build community, the small moments and gestures. And then there are the more spontaneous and grander gestures that happen during moments of crisis. The faculty of the School of Education has just endured an attempted take over by a would-be autocrat. Our collective resistance has been one of the highlights of my academic career. And somehow I found myself at the center of that struggle, called down from the mountain, as it were, to be part of the leadership group that organized the resistance. In the process it has become clear to me that resisting injustice must be a collective effort. While history has shown many examples of this, it is only now that I fully appreciate and understand how that works, especially after the failure to respond to the systemic cruelty that my son's school has demonstrated to him. Collective resistance and the forging of the community are political. The forging of a community via dialogue is educational. I follow Arendt's distinction between the political and the educational.
ReplyDeleteThe OPM from today made a turn toward an exploration of Heidegger's dialogue on language with a visitor from Japan, who I quote as saying "The course of such a dialogue would have a character all its own, with more silence than talk." To which Heidegger responds, "Above all, silence about silence..." The last few days I've been reiterating the claim: learning begins with listening. And I've been exploring the move into the Open and being-with the Nothing, emptiness. To be "empty" is to be with silence. And thus to be turned around to learning is to be emptied. The word I have acquired this week is kenosis: an emptying that positions one in the place of reception. To be with silence is to be ready to listen. Here I'm thinking of the signs posted throughout the famous Bodleian library in Oxford: "Silence Please." This would be an excellent way to begin chapter 1, musing on the library and mandated silence. But the silences in a dialogue are different from those in the library, the silence that encompasses reading and writing. The two forms share the modality of emptiness, the readiness to receive the voice of the other. The silence of study is encompassing of the situation. We are surrounded by silence, but internally there is a sustained dialogue between text and reader. And in study there is more silence than talk, if by talk we mean the generation of symbolic sound. Study is a form of thinking, in the Arendtian sense: the silent dialogue. But in the case of reading, there is less dialogue and more monologue. The text is speaking to the reader. To read is to remain silent and to listen to the text. Learning begins with listening.