One of my favorite summer books, which I return to almost every
summer, is Susan Casey's The
Wave, which is a
popular science book on enormous freak waves and those who encounter them, and
the few who ride them. I was reading it this morning and came across her
emphatic assertion that the fundamental origin of everything are waves.
The sentence jumped off the page. It read like a fragment from one of the
pre-Socratics because it was reducing Being to a material element (air, fire,
water, or earth). What's interesting about the reduction is that waves
are movements of discernible force (sound, electricity, air, liquid,
etc.) And while I'm not inclined to reduce what I call Being's ceaseless
nativity to a measurable entity, there is a part of me that is attracted to
Casey's assertion, especially because it seems to connect so well to
Heraclitus' logos, and Lao
Tzu's tao.
The reduction to waves also relates well to the writing that was
made this day ten years ago. Picking up on the ongoing musings on ereignis (the event of
appropriation), OPM 147 goes straightaway at the 'strange ownership' that was
introduced with via Heidegger with the requisite Modernist alienation in OPM
146. At the end of the fragment I distilled from OPM 147 I wrote: everything is lost in translation.
Until we recognize the radicality of the asymetrical relationship we have
with Being. Translation:
Being owns us.
The implications of this truth are far reaching, but the crux of the
matter might be reduced to our experience of becoming. Why becoming?
In OPM 147 the experience of the 'strange ownership' of humanity
by Being is identified with gelassenheit (releasement
into letting-be), which is itself reduced to the principle of impermanence.
Keeping with what I am now calling [after Warburg's epigram cf. OPM 145
& 146] "the old songbook of ancient philosophies," the word that
is at the center of 147 is the Buddha's term for impermanence: anitya. In OPM 147
I write: "Shortly before his death the Buddha is heard to have said, 'All
conditioned things are impermanent. They are phenomena, subject to birth
and death. When birth and death no longer are, the complete silencing is
joy.'" Putting aside for the moment that context of the Buddha's word (aka
'shortly before his death') the statement discloses the 'strange ownership' of
humanity by Being, and the radicality of the asymetrical relationship it
implies.
A main ingredient of the strangeness of this ownership is the
implication that we are made 'unfree' aka that we discover ourselves to be,
after all, conditioned. We are subjects first
and foremost, and because of this can make a subjectivity. And
meditative thinking, insofar as it is retreat that brings us into an attunement
with the totality (Being), can from an ethical or practical point of view
be described as a form of homage to Being. This is why the meditation is
often compared to prayer. Meditative thinking is the arrival into the
non-willing of the passive subject. Of course, this is why Heidegger
speaks of meditative thinking as 'dwelling,' because a subject or denizen is
defined as a native inhabitant. The strange or uncanny arises from the
realization, after the experience, that freedom is indeed an achievement (cf.
OPM 140), something we realize in making our subjectivity. Further, as
conditioned we are gathered by impermanence, and this implies that we are
'conditioned' to be free subjects aka to enact the fundamental process of
bringing together. If we imitate Being's becoming we are making art,
bringing things together that are destined to perish over time. But what
of this silence that follows the diminishment of what we make? Is this
the silence of the sage identified with his recognition that he does
not produce but only conveys the force that forms and cultivates? (cf.
fragment distilled from OPM 143) If this is the case, then the modality
of the sage would represent a post-artistic state, which is consistent with the
claim that he is teacher, not student, and the one who let's learning be
learned. Learning, then, remains the modality of the one who is formed
and who forms himself.
With all that as context, here then is a fragment distilled
from the writing made this day ten years ago:
Despite the dominant
cultural narratives of liberalism that overstate the active role of the
student, learning always originates from a receptive modality. This beginning remains throughout learning as
the student encounters the materials of study, an encounter that is a reception
of a possibility. The first moment of
learning, when the learner is born, is a reception.
3.0 (Thursday, Portland, ME) - Waves or rivers? I've just finished my sabbatical book writing for the day. Heraclitus' river made an abrupt cameo. It's not entirely Heraclitus' river, because I described it as a muddy river, borrowing from Glissant's category of "opacity." I am describing "commentary" or the writing that happens in response to the philosophical text that is picked up from what I am calling the Deconstructed Library. This resonates with the fragment distilled from this day 20 years ago. Learning does indeed originate from a receptive modality. Learning begins with listening. And it is sustained by listening, and that is why "the beginning remains throughout learning as the student encounters the materials of study." I haven't been using the term "materials," which entirely too vague. Rather, I have been using the category "significant object of study," which is a euphemism for work of art. It would be too audacious to describe the object of study as a work of art. Instead, I am deploying all the assumptions I have about the work of art and the aesthetic experience to my descriptions of study and the object of study. At times I will use the term work of art, and that's mostly happened with Blanchot, who has been a major figure in the part 2 Writing.
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