OPM 208, September 10th Mediation (2004 & 2014)

 Something tells me that that THIS was the ‘off day’ the day, the day ten years ago that was a break from the experiment.  I know I was in Edinburgh, Scotland, which by coincidence had just inaugurated its new national assembly building, and, by further coincidence, is voting this week to become independent from the UK.  I hope they vote for independence.  How couldn’t a majority of Scots want to be independent from England? But that’s not what I want to write about today…

…I was in Edinburgh for the myth and education conference, sponsored by some Scottish members of PESGB, and I was working on the story of Socrates in the shadow of the porch just before entering Agathon’s house, as indicated by Plato in the Symposium.  I haven’t been able to locate a copy of the story (legend, ‘myth’…yes, it is a ‘myth’ in a very general sense as denoted by the following dictionary definition: “traditional story, esp. one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.”  Ok, so it’s an untraditional story insofar as there is no tradition that told this story…and this seems to be an important qualifying facet of a ‘myth’; a story around which a group of people organizes its understanding of itself.  Can philosophers have ‘myths’?  Or, better, do we have myths?  And if we do, what are they?  [now these would have been the kinds of questions I would have asked ten years ago as a way of setting up the reading of my piece!]  I suppose, for the sake of the conference – and that’s what a good conference, especially one organized around them, is all about: setting the stage for folks to present conjectures, theses, bring new work onto the scene – I presumed that the figure of ‘Socrates’ wasn’t just legendary, but was the result of a number of legends, the most important of those emerging from Plato.  And that presumption was based on the very simple and straightforward understanding of a legend is someone who stands out from others in the history of any particular community.  That is precisely what a hall of fame is about: legends.   Now, one could argue the tradition of philosophy is based on the study of legends, or the reading of and commentary on those principle figures.   That is essentially what I told my students in my Intro class on the first day, when I posed the rhetorical questions: How do we decide what we are going to study in a course like this?  and, Why is it that we are excluding other ‘philosophical’ texts, such as those offered in literature, or the arts, specifically, painting, drama, or music?! These questions were only rhetorical in the sense that the students weren’t really supposed to engage with those questions.  But they were earnest questions insofar as 80% of my students are music majors, taking a philosophy course in the School of Education for credit toward the teaching degree they will be awarded alongside their music degree.  They are all musicians (players and singers), who prefer have a steady day job that lets them teach their craft, and also gives them benefits (health insurance, retirement funds, etc.), while they pursue the music.  

The answer to those questions was as straight forward and simple as the everyday meaning of ‘legend’:  we study things that have been written, because that’s what philosophers have always done: write.  And, in turn, we’ll do a bit of writing in this course, primarily commentary, because that’s what beginners have always done.   But, we’ll also try to include some music in this class, because I’m not convinced that we have to be limited by the tradition.  As for the question concerning the legend of Socrates, or Socrates as a legend, this is supported by an important fact that follows from the tradition of philosophy something made by writing, and studied by reading and then commenting on said writing:  Socrates never wrote a word.  Well, he did supposedly write something…song lyrics/poetry…in prison…according to Plato’s Phaedo.  And I’ve written too much on that already (cf. OPM 103, May 27th Meditation, Being and Learning, ch. 7, pp. 171-174).  Indeed, I’m trying to revert back to the tradition that knows ‘Socrates’ from Plato, mostly, and has nothing written by Socrates, but only his words as recounted by Plato.  And leads me back to my all too lengthy prelude to my recollection of my whereabouts and actions on this day ten years ago when, I believe, I decided to take a day off from writing and thereby a day off from the daily writing experiment.  Again, I know I was in Edinburgh, and I know I was writing and then presenting a story about Socrates, based on the beginning, when Aristodemus (who is crashing the party as Socrates’ uninvited guest) is explaining to Agathon (the host) that he was just arriving with Socrates who, it appears, has remained outside: 

But how is it that you are not  bringing our Socrates?"  "And I turn around," he said, "and do not see Socrates  following anywhere. So I said that I myself came with Socrates,  on his invitation to dinner here."  "It is a fine thing for you to do," Agathon said, "but  where is he'?"  "He was just coming in behind me. I am wondering myself  where he might be."  "Go look, boy," Agathon said, "and bring Socrates in.  And you, Aristodemus," he said, "lie down beside Eryximachus."  And he said the boy washed him so he could lie down; and  another of the boys came back to report, "Your Socrates has  retreated into a neighbor's porch and stands there, and when I  called him, he was unwilling to come in."  "That is strange," Agathon said. "Call him and don't let  him go."  And Aristodemus said that he said, "No, no, leave him  alone. That is something of a habit with him. Sometimes he  moves off and stands stock still wherever he happens to be. He  will come at once, I suspect. So do not try to budge him, but  leave him alone."

So, on the days I was in Edinburgh I broke from the legend of Zarathustra and wrote another legend, or a story about a legend, or a perhaps even an arrangement, in the musical sense of that term, of a part of the much larger legend of Socrates written by Plato.  Indeed, if Socrates is a legendary philosopher who is studied through a legend composed by his equally legendary student Plato, then, it seems to follow, when we study Socrates via Plato we are in fact studying a legend around which the philosophical community, in part, organizes itself.   And, what’s more, it seems to me a completely legitimate and worthwhile endeavor to participate in the telling or retelling of this legend by adding something to it.  Isn’t that the essence of tradition?  That is to say, isn’t tradition only alive to the extent that we preserve it?  And doesn’t the preservation of a tradition require that we renew it?

But, perhaps I was finishing the story of Socrates on this day ten years ago…and as I wrote yesterday, my off day was September 11^th, for reasons that are obvious, especially given it was 2004, or three years after the tragic day.

Today, in anticipation of writing something during the time of writing,  I was anticipating writing a phenomenological account of sitting here in the back yard at 29 Sunset Drive.  I was looking at a pine tree, which is no simple pine tree.  Well, no tree is simple, and I was saying to my father this morning as we were discussing the trees around the house and in the forest behind it, trees seem to have a unique presence that, I believe, offers a kind of hope and source of strength for humans: they are able to endure through wind, rain, snow, sun, ice, year after year and continue to grow.  They are stable, secure, and appear, almost symbolically as representations of our desire for endurance amidst change.   But the pine tree I am referring is no simple tree in the sense that it is the one and only tree that was planted by our family.  My sister, Ana, brought the tree home as an 9 inch sapling.   She planted it over thirty years ago, and it has grown to over what appears to be thirty feet.   The tree is now the centerpiece of the back yard, and stands almost like a sentinel at the edge of the forest.   I had anticipated describing this tree, standing above the bed of pachysandra, slim yet strong, with disproportionately long limbs that are extending outward.  In fact, the tree has all the physical qualities of an adolescent.  But here I am falling into the very trap I was cautioning myself against: anthropomorphizing the tree!  Here is the phenomenologist dilemma, and the somewhat viscous aspect of the hermeneutical circle:  our descriptions always return back to our human situatedness.  Remain silent, and let the tree be the tree.  Sit close to it and feel its needles gently stroke your cheek.  Notice the very very few groups of needles that have turned brown, and the very very few thin branches that are dried and without any needles at all.  The breeze at this twilight is slight, and from the north, and sometimes shifts with gusts from the west.  A storm system with rain is on its way, arriving tomorrow, behind warm and humid air that is coming from the south and will collide with the cool air that is moving in from the north, autumn is arriving.  The limbs of the pine hardly move, and only the ends bop up and down.  I resist describing that scene as the like the movement of hands.  But the tufts of needs, which is how they appear, seem to me like tufts of hair, again reminding me of adolescents, and then conjure up snowflakes.   Of course!  I was myself a teenager when Ana planted the sapling!  Does the tree hold within itself that time when it was planted?  How strange and mysterious is this interaction between place and self.  (I try to capture that in the series of still photos I took and present below).  I was thinking of that mystery last night when I was walking to 29 Sunset Drive from the train station in downtown Summit.  Those streets, especially Prospect with its hill, and Blackburn, the one that takes me, for a mile, directly to Sunset, passing the appropriately named Oak Knoll school (where my sisters, all three, went and graduated, and two were married), and finally past my own first school, Franklin, with its own row of grand oaks, as tall and powerful as those up the hill on the knoll.   So many of those trees have I have passed and ‘known’ throughout the 45 years I have been walking and riding on these streets.   To have a connection with these trees, to recognize them and to wonder if in some way they recognize me.  In what way might they perceive me?  They grow toward the sun, and downward in the soil.  They drink water, and breath the air, the same air as I do.  We exchange the air, and share the ground, the water.   Perhaps it is enough to understand that, although such understanding is not so straight forward and simple as the statement of fact would suggest to be.  There’s where meditative thinking begins…at the very moment when we recognize the complexity of that sharing.