After recording my reading of OPM 116, which constitutes the first pages of the short eighth chapter of Being and Learning "Meditative Thinking," I re-read the final lines twice because the quotation from Heidegger, like the one that appeared in OPM 115, strikes me as showing so well how Heidegger offered me the lexigraphical space to move in. OPM 116 concludes: "As Heidegger indicates, in order for philosophy to be meditative thinking, 'philosophy must return to the beginning, in order to bring into the free-space of its mindfulness the cleavage and the beyond-itself, the estranging and always unfamiliar.'"
Both in form and content, Heidegger's writing, especially from the later period, provided me with an example of what one could do with philosophical writing if one was so inclined. Of course, this 'inclination' is precisely a manner of being, specifically, an urge or feeling to act in a particular way. To be inclined to write in the 'manner' of Heidegger, which I must confess to being guilty of, as long as this is not confused with 'copying' him!
When we read passages such as the one I cited at the end of OPM 116, we recognize that this inclination is the disposition of meditative thinking itself, a modality of thinking, or modality per se (because the 'thinking' is merely the perception or consciousness of that modality). This modality is the existential situation that I describe as being rooted in the effacement with Being's dynamic disclosure: presencing. The unmediated encounter with presencing places one into the flow of things, and, for me, there is no more powerful place to be than in that flow, which one can experience with any practice, such as writing, playing music, etc. This project is an attempt to write from within the flow, and at the same time to describe, from memory, teaching and learning from within the flow, which is the essence of Being and learning.
The effacement with presencing is an experience with the originary. Contemplation is the word that best describes that non-cognitive experience. And this is why 'meditative' is offered as the qualifier of the kind of 'thinking' that re-collects contemplation (both in the sense of 'remembering' and 'gathering again/re-locating') Indeed, 'thinking' is a precarious term to use, because it inevitably leads us back precisely to where this project is attempting to 'escape'; namely, the self-certainty of the Cartesian ego. And with the awareness of this danger, OPM 116, and chapter 8, begins: "Destruktion is, first and foremost, a response to the need to deconstruct or dismantle (Abbau) the reifying gaze that stifles the organic growth of community, thwarts the development of intersubjectivity. Poetic dialogue is hermeneutics that follows upon the diminishment of destruktion of the self-certain subject who stands apart, above, and against the horizon of beings." By starting the meditation with Destruktion, a term first introduced way back in OPM 16, I am deploying it as a term that is part of the conceptual arsenal meant to respond to what I called in my libretto for Rocha's Late to Love 'the specter, haunting us into doubt and despair, mocking artists, dancers, musicians, poets, and all who say Yes!' But is this enough to avoid the danger? Can writing ever avoid the 'problem' of self-certain subjectivity? Isn't the very practice dependent upon a confidence in the very reliability of a self to speak to itself, or for itself, or from itself?
Both in form and content, Heidegger's writing, especially from the later period, provided me with an example of what one could do with philosophical writing if one was so inclined. Of course, this 'inclination' is precisely a manner of being, specifically, an urge or feeling to act in a particular way. To be inclined to write in the 'manner' of Heidegger, which I must confess to being guilty of, as long as this is not confused with 'copying' him!
When we read passages such as the one I cited at the end of OPM 116, we recognize that this inclination is the disposition of meditative thinking itself, a modality of thinking, or modality per se (because the 'thinking' is merely the perception or consciousness of that modality). This modality is the existential situation that I describe as being rooted in the effacement with Being's dynamic disclosure: presencing. The unmediated encounter with presencing places one into the flow of things, and, for me, there is no more powerful place to be than in that flow, which one can experience with any practice, such as writing, playing music, etc. This project is an attempt to write from within the flow, and at the same time to describe, from memory, teaching and learning from within the flow, which is the essence of Being and learning.
The effacement with presencing is an experience with the originary. Contemplation is the word that best describes that non-cognitive experience. And this is why 'meditative' is offered as the qualifier of the kind of 'thinking' that re-collects contemplation (both in the sense of 'remembering' and 'gathering again/re-locating') Indeed, 'thinking' is a precarious term to use, because it inevitably leads us back precisely to where this project is attempting to 'escape'; namely, the self-certainty of the Cartesian ego. And with the awareness of this danger, OPM 116, and chapter 8, begins: "Destruktion is, first and foremost, a response to the need to deconstruct or dismantle (Abbau) the reifying gaze that stifles the organic growth of community, thwarts the development of intersubjectivity. Poetic dialogue is hermeneutics that follows upon the diminishment of destruktion of the self-certain subject who stands apart, above, and against the horizon of beings." By starting the meditation with Destruktion, a term first introduced way back in OPM 16, I am deploying it as a term that is part of the conceptual arsenal meant to respond to what I called in my libretto for Rocha's Late to Love 'the specter, haunting us into doubt and despair, mocking artists, dancers, musicians, poets, and all who say Yes!' But is this enough to avoid the danger? Can writing ever avoid the 'problem' of self-certain subjectivity? Isn't the very practice dependent upon a confidence in the very reliability of a self to speak to itself, or for itself, or from itself?
3.0 - (Sunday) Continuing a theme that I was exploring yesterday, the difference between my current book project and this original project of Being and Learning. The key difference isn't so much the style of the writing, but the principles that are guiding each project and the different kinds of thinking that follow from those principles. It must be repeated that by method I believe thinking is organized by the principle that is being taken up. It's circular. The principle takes hold of the thinker and the thinking that is enjoined is documented by the writing. The 2004 project was moved by Being as becoming, and the thinking that was inspired was ontological, phenomenological, poetic, meditative and contemplative. In OPM 116 (has it already been 116 days?!) the principle is described as "presencing." But is "presencing" the organizing principle, i.e., the "logic"? I'm not sure. I can say with some conviction that the current project is organized by the dialectic. And as happened when I first encountered Hegel in the spring of 1987 at Fordham under the guidance of Quinten Lauer, S.J., the dialectic is not a method or idea that one examines from a distance. The dialectic grabs hold of you and reveals the truly contradictory nature of things. Like it or not, the dialectic is unsparing. 10 years ago I wrote, "this project is an attempt to write from within the flow, and at the same time to describe, from memory, teaching and learning from within the flow, which is the essence of Being and learning.The effacement with presencing is an experience with the originary." The "originary" is a principle of poetic inspiration, and in this sense it does not engender phenomenological writing. The dialectic, on the contrary, produces phenomenological thinking/writing, a description of the dynamic conflict endured.
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