THIS WEEK I'M IN A CABIN WITH NO WIFI! I'LL BE BLOGGING, AND THEN, WHEN AND IF I FIND MYSELF IN A COFFEE HOUSE THIS WEEK, I'LL POST MY DAILY REFLECTIONS ON THE ORIGINAL DAY OF WRITING!
OPM 128. Day one of a week long retreat on Mt. Desert Island, Seal Cove, on the Quiet (west side of the island). We have a three room cabin that reminds me very much of the Kairos Cabin that I built as my own place of poetic dwelling when I lived in Amityville, N.Y., where I lived when I conducted the year long writing experiment. Most of these meditations were written Amityville, either in my house, or at a café, Brownstones, where I often discussed my writing with a yogi who lead meditation at an ashram across the street (Merrick Road). For whatever reason I haven’t thought about, much less documented in this commemoration blog, the Kairos Cabin, Brownstones, nor Amityville. Perhaps as this week unfolds I’ll arrive at a place where I will feel called to write something about that primary context for writing those meditations, Amityville. I will say here and now that the ‘amnesia’ about Amityville that has been lifted as I sit in Pine Cove Cabin, and I’m prompted to wonder about then and now, specifically, I’m reminded that much of what I was writing was motivated by the need to work through frustrations I was experiencing both in my professional and personal life. Perhaps there is something to be made of the recurring theme of peace and freedom. Enough self-analysis!
OPM 128. Day one of a week long retreat on Mt. Desert Island, Seal Cove, on the Quiet (west side of the island). We have a three room cabin that reminds me very much of the Kairos Cabin that I built as my own place of poetic dwelling when I lived in Amityville, N.Y., where I lived when I conducted the year long writing experiment. Most of these meditations were written Amityville, either in my house, or at a café, Brownstones, where I often discussed my writing with a yogi who lead meditation at an ashram across the street (Merrick Road). For whatever reason I haven’t thought about, much less documented in this commemoration blog, the Kairos Cabin, Brownstones, nor Amityville. Perhaps as this week unfolds I’ll arrive at a place where I will feel called to write something about that primary context for writing those meditations, Amityville. I will say here and now that the ‘amnesia’ about Amityville that has been lifted as I sit in Pine Cove Cabin, and I’m prompted to wonder about then and now, specifically, I’m reminded that much of what I was writing was motivated by the need to work through frustrations I was experiencing both in my professional and personal life. Perhaps there is something to be made of the recurring theme of peace and freedom. Enough self-analysis!
June
21st, longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. Summer Solstice. OPM 128, the appearance of Aristotle via
Arendt: “While Plato still held that the true arche, beginning and principle of philosophy is wonder [Theatetus, 155d], Aristotle in the
opening paragraphs of the Metaphysics,
interpreted – and was the first to do so – this same wonder as mere
astonishment or puzzlement (aporein);
through astonishment men become aware of their ignorance of things that may be
known…Men, he said, ‘philosophized to escape ignorance,’ and the Platonic
wonder was no longer understood as a principle but as a mere beginning: ‘all
men begin by wondering…but one must end with the opposite and with what is better [than wondering], as
is the case when men learn.’ [Metaphysics,
982b & 983a] Learning is better
than wondering! Why? Because learning is the ‘end’ the telos (natural conclusion) of the
thinking (philosophy) that is sparked by wonder. In other words to have learned (knowledge)
is ‘better’ in the sense of completion, in the sense of fulfillment. In turn, learning is the process of becoming
learned. But not all knowledge is the
same. To know about trees is different
from knowing about fish. And the
knowledge obtained by philosophy is distinct because it is the first or primary
science. OPM 128: “The pursuit and
acquisition of the understanding of these ‘original causes’ identifies ‘first
philosophy,’ or the thinking of the
primary, most fundamental root of the cosmos. Aristotle calls this the ‘best science’ for
it is the ‘most divine.’…The most wise is the one who practice this divine
science and thereby ‘thinks with God,’ [he writes] for “God is thought to be
among the causes of things and to be a first principle, and such a science
either God alone can have, or God above all others.” (Meta. 983)
All
this is most revealing and almost represents the fundamental thesis of these
meditations, if, by following an Aristotelian method, we were to distill a
fundamental claim. This, of course, is
the manner of the phenomenological reduction.
And perhaps the reduction of these meditations, and of Being and Learning, happens at the
conclusion of OPM 128 with the citation of Aristotle that makes the link
between the knowledge arrived at by the
thinking of the divine science and freedom: “Evidently then we do not seek it
for the sake of any other advantage; but as the man is free, we say, who exists
for his own sake and not for another’s, so we pursue this as the only free
science, for it alone exists for its own sake.” (Meta., 982) Meditative thinking is emancipatory: we think therefore we are free!
3.0 (Friday, Portland, ME) - Back home I'm surprised to encounter that documentation of being up at Pine Cone cabin 10 years ago. That would have been the first of what became an annual trip that happened 7 years in a row. I was there two summers go by myself, on funding from Hofstra, completing a paper. Ten years ago the cabin didn't have wifi and I do recall going to a cafe to post my daily writing. So it will be interesting to note what, if any, difference in tone not to mention substance appears in the writing the upcoming week.
ReplyDeleteThe appearance of Aristotle is noteworthy. Today, working within the current project, I can't help but read the cited text as a dialectic. Wonder is negated by study that culminates in learning.
"We think there we are free!" That definitely needs to be qualified. Meditative thinking, as the OPM is describing, is different from the rationalistic cognitive style that was established by Descartes. And i would say that what Aristotle is describing is not what Foucault identifies as the "thinking" that is ready made for knowledge. Foucault calls that "philosophy" and contrasts it with "spirituality," which is the work that needs to be done in order to have an experience with the truth. Meditative thinking is akin to that work or transformation that needs to happen in order to have an encounter with the truth. And what Aristotle is describing as freedom is something like "emancipation," which is to say, freedom from others. When he says its the only "free science" he means that it's the only one that exists in and for itself, or doesn't serve others. Now this presents challenges for my work, and my students are often challenged to understand how philosophy does not serve teaching. And there questioning may or may not be coming from a place of wonder, although it is the result of feeling confused by what they experienced as a field of study that is detached and even aloof. Some, but not all, and I'm not sure that even most, recognize that when they study philosophy they are encountering the principle of autonomy. That needs to be spelled out to them, and Plato's Allegory is helpful. What is learned through meditative thinking is autonomy in the sense that it is experienced as such. This is what I'm currently taking up in my writing through the idea of solitude, which is another way of describing the autonomy of the work of art or what I am calling the object of study. The encounter with the work is an experience with autonomy. This the educational moment of the aesthetic experience.