OPM 214(5), September 16th (2004 & 2014) Meditation

[OPM 214(5): see below comment on discovering the numbering error on June 30th, when I forgot to change the date, thus creating two OPMs 136.  All OPMs between 137-213 are off by one day, hence, moving forward I will label the incorrect number, along with the correct number in the parentheses. And, eventually, I'll correct the numbers...or I won't!]  

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At the end of the a long day, I write of endings, and it is not surprise that one of the two prompts for the commemorative writing this day is from Heidegger’s essay “The End of Philosophy and the Tasking of Thinking.”   Today marks the end of the period that began on July 1st. Since that day all of the material I have been revisiting consists of writing that was not included in Being and Learning.  And the end of that period of the ‘unpublished writing’ also coincides with the end of the legend of Zarathustra  The two prompts I encountered today speak to much of the writing that has happened in the weeks that I have been revisiting this unpublished material, a return that produced a series of meditations inspired by Thoreau, which culminated in the articulation and announcement of what I am calling the phenomenology of the forest.  I can’t predict if I will continue to explore that project in this blog,  but regardless of whether or not I do, I’m feeling confident about what’s been initiated in these past months, confident that I achieved a focus on a dimension of the cartographical turn I made in April with the LAPES paper, achieved something that I am tempted to call the prolegomena to a methodology that will support the larger huacaslogical project announced in the aforementioned LAPES paper, which is scheduled to be published in Lapiz volume one in a little over a month when the journal is official unveiled at Columbia U’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race.   

So the beginning of this ending happens by way of Heidegger’s essay, at a moment where he is revisiting one of the questions that preoccupied throughout, but that became even more pressing later when he focused on the possibility of a post-metaphysical thinking in an age increasingly dominated by technological applications of the natural sciences, specifically, physics.  It was not simply the beginning of the age of technology, as we would use that term today to denote the predominance of information technology made possibly via the microchip.  Digital machines, which, by and large, have increased the range and speed of communication, and have made available gigantic mountains of data, remain tools that have created new possibilities of relaying information that was one monopolized by the state and commercial interests.   The question is whether or not the tools -- like the one I am using to type this commentary and, ultimately, post it on a blog that is also made available through the digital communication – are working on us…are working on us more than we are working with them?    Heidegger’s preoccupation lead him to wonder, again and again, what kind of thinking would be possible for us in this age of technology, the epoch of what was then called cybernetics.  [The first time I heard that term was in 1987, when Timothy Leary visited Fordham and delivered a bizarre lecture on the future of humanity.  Leary was toast,  or seemed to be fried from too my acid trips.  Remember that talk almost thirty years later, and it seems Leary, fried or not, was completely prophetic about the direction of humanity towards a cybernetic reality.  Coincidentally, when reading the Fink/Heidegger seminar on Heraclitus last week,  I encountered Heidegger speaking of cybernetics, and I immediately recalled the Leary lecture.   I’ll quote Heidegger here, as I intend to use it in my lecture on Heraclitus in two weeks: “In the experiment which we undertake, there is no question of wanting to conjure up Heraclitus of wanting to conjure up Heraclitus himself.  Rather, he speaks with us and we speak with him.  At present, we reflect on the phenomenon of steering.  This phenomenon has today, in the age of cybernetics, become so fundamental that is occupies and determines the whole of natural science and the behavior of humans so that it is necessary for us to gain more clarity about it…The phenomenon of steering is ever and again unclarified in reference to Heraclitus and to our present-day distress.  That natural science and our life today become ruled by cybernetics in increasing measure is not accidental; rather it is overshadowed in the historical origin of modern knowledge  and technology.”

From here we can wonder with Heidegger if we are being ruled and steered by cybernetics, and to the extent that we are, wonder if its possible to take up a thinking that can some how resist this steering and/or is outside of this steering?  For me, this is what Heidegger is pushing when he wonders about the possibility of a thinking beyond metaphysics. 

And it seems to me that a probable possibility, if there is one at all, would have to be identified in what may seem like a neo-Romantic quest for an experience with Nature unmediated by the phenomenon of steering.  Unless, of course, it is the case that the desire to locate a place for thinking is itself already part of the steering phenomenon.   That would imply something like the internalization of the steering phenomenon, which manifests in something like what the Frankfurt School called ‘instrumental reasoning.’  But Heidegger, like Foucault immediately following him, and, in a kind of parallel way the Frankfurt, asserted was what might even be called a lingering faith, a philosophical faith in an alternative kind of thinking (communicative reasoning, meditative thinking, counter-hegemonic, et al) that can both identity the way out and move us through that exit.    Such thinking, for Heidegger, is the thinking that thinks the thought that remains after metaphysics; the thinking that remains unthought by philosophy.  What remains unthought is the openness or the open region that grants the place for philosophy; because it can never think in what I call a huacaslogical manner (think the place, or the ground aka move along the primal ground) philosophy comes to an end; because it can only think in terms of the things that appear in that open region, and, think in terms that render those being ‘objects’ of knowledge, control, domination, exploitation, etc., philosophy comes to an end.  A thinking of the open region, which is a thinking in the open, or an open thinking, is the thinking that will appear at the closure of philosophy. 

There is nothing coincidental in Heidegger articulating  the place based thinking, or open thinking, by turning to an etymology that reveals the origin of the open as clearing; specifically, a clearing that opens up in a forest:

“Only this openness grants to the movement of speculative thinking the passage through that which it thinks.

         We call this openness which grants a possible letting-appear and show ‘opening.’ In the history of language, the German word ‘opening’ is a borrowed translation of the French clairière.  It is formed in accordance with the older words Waldung (foresting) and Feldung (fielding).

         The forest clearing (opening) is experienced in contrast to dense forest, called ‘density’ (Dickung) in older language.  The substantive ‘opening’ goes back to the verb ‘to open’. The adjective licht ‘open’ is the same word as ‘light’.  To open something means: To make something light, free and open, e.g., to make the forest free of trees in one place.  The openness thus originating is the clearing…Light can stream into the clearing, into its openness…However, the clearing, the opening, is not only free for brightness and darkness, but also for resonance and echo, for sounding and diminishing of sound.  The clearing is the open for everything that is present and absent.”(p.65)

When I first read this passage while riding on the Hofstra campus to train shuttle, I was startled by the example Heidegger uses for something being opened: making the forest free of trees in one place?!?  Really?  Really?  REALLY?!?!!  [cf. yesterday’s commentary for the context for this incredulity] In all the years I’ve been studying Heidegger, and focusing on dwelling, the open, opening, moving into the clearing for the dwelling that is meditative thinking, etc., I had never imagined this clearing as a human made place.  But, paradoxically, this is what Heidegger seems to mean by the clearing that is open, especially if it is emerging from foresting and fielding. Aren’t these the activities that ‘clear’ the forest of trees so that humans can build, or even farm?  The history of this practice in the Amazonian Rain Forest is one of the great tragedies of the late 20^th century.  I’d always imagined the clearing as something already existing in the forest, and something we encountered as we hiked through the forest, moving through the pathways, those famous forest paths that provided Heidegger with so many metaphors to describe the way of thinking that is non-linear, non-instrumental.  I have often said to my hiking companions when we come across an opening in the forest, “This is what Heidegger calls a clearing.”  We even enjoyed a picnic in clearing during our time on Mt. Desert Island.  Indeed, I wrote about this on Day 4 of our stay at Pine Cone Cabin, OPM 131, June 24^th:  “The first prompt of today’s commemorative blog post is the forest clearing we found ourselves in after hiking the Gorham Mountain trail. The three of us sat on three boulders having  a well earned lunch after the hike.  The big rocks formed a kind of triangle, and I noticed this before looking up and seeing there was a open circle above our heads, revealing the blue sky and puffy white clouds above.  “This is a clearing,” I said.   For Heidegger a clearing, or opening in the forest where the sunlight can shine through.  Klärung is the German word for clearing, and Aufklärung is the German word for Enlightenment. Heidegger emphasizes the one side of this monumental  word as part of his ongoing critique of humanism, or that Enlightenment legacy of placing the human subject at the center of things.  Human thinking, specifically meditative thinking, is an ontological even that happens in a specific time and place that is given to us.  Es gibt (it is given).   It is not made, and the thinking that arises there (da) characterizes the being-there of the human being.  This is always the way things work for humans, according to Heidegger, and that’s why it’s always a matter of ontological modalities or the specific being-there (Dasein) that arises from what is given.  The clearing, which Heidegger derived from his daily walks in the Black Forest where he spent much time in his famous hut.   While he claimed that he didn’t have a normative or ethical project, but only a descriptive and phenomenological one, it’s impossible for me to accept this claim, especially from the later Heidegger, the one I rely on almost exclusively in these meditations. So while it’s true that the existentiale modalities are like Kant’s categories: a priori conditions for the possibility of action, the almost exclusive concern for the later is locating the ground for meditative thinking; that is to say, the clearing that gives the space and time for such thinking.”  

So with this last commentary on the non-published material, I more or less return to that exact place in my the naturalist turn toward the phenomenology of the forest got underway!

[nb: I’ve just now searched back and I discovered that I repeated OPM 136, which means the numbering from that day forward on July 1^st is off by one day!  Classic!]

The second prompt launches me write into the chronicling of the final day of writing the Zarathustra legend.  It is from the Song of Songs, which was presented today in lecture by Jane Huber:

“Who is this who ascends like the rising dawn, beautiful as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army drawn up in battle array?”

On this day, ten years ago…it was Zarathustra!

“Zarathustra made the final steps of his ascent at dusk.  He stood upon the peak and watched the flight of an owl, wings spread, which drifted slowly down, down, down, following the course of the path Zarathustra had taken in his journey.• He watched as the great bird rose again at the borderland, and soared above the expanse of the forest range.  Now but a shadow, a floating phantom against the pink and orange sky, the owl became a point, vanishing into the western horizon.  And suddenly Zarathustra saw that place he had called home. 

“ ‘For thirty years did I dwell upon the rock and sand of that desolate place.  I called that place ‘home,’ abiding upon that forsaken land, rooted there. I was that land, my home was ‘I’, and alone did I remain, an island unto myself.  They called me by my first name, Dreamer, as I lingered in that realm of delusion, within the habitat of my singular vision.  In those dreams, those nightmares, alone did I dwell with the certainty of my conviction.  I was as I dreamed, and no one gained entrance through the gates behind which I remained, apart from all.  Secure in my distance, the vision I secured for myself could not be disrupted.  I remained at the center of things, soundly sleeping.  Awoken I was, one morning, by the call of those who had burst upon my gates.  Splintered were the planks and rusted were the locks and latches. ‘We are alone!’ I cried, in despair, with the voice of the xenophobe, desperate to ward off the unexpected arrival of the stranger.  These were my guides, these strangers, who offered the embrace of fellowship.  Absurd is that place where I lived, sleeping, dreaming.  I have been thrown onto the shore and have been recovered by the grace of friendship.  From this peak all is laid bare and appears as it is. That world, my old ‘home’, drifts away from me into the abyss of absurdity.  But does it founder into the unfathomable depths, that lake of despair upon which it floats?  No! 

“Awake, now, in this twilight, I am offered the clearest vision from this threshold between day and night.  This place from which I have sailed, taken by wind and tide, appears to me from this highest peak as a devastation that encroaches and moves upon the east; creeping, crawling, slithering towards the fertile wooded country.  The Wasteland Grows!•• The spirit of growth, of creation, of regeneration, life itself, does this Wasteland seek to block and stall and destroy.  Memory, daughter of Heaven and Earth, see how she rises, first and brightest above, as her brother moves onward to the West.  Releasing us from the last, lingering, remnant of that wasteland, that fear and dread we held close to our heart.  ‘Woe to him who hides the wasteland within.’

“Now, in the rising of this beacon, Memory, are we lead from these peaks and descend to that House, our new dwelling, in the East, where we shall heed the songs of the sages with whom we shall greet the arrival of that great star.  One quarter of our life shall we dwell before going under, into the awaiting embrace of those whom we shall call friends.” (Thus spoke Zarathustra for the last time in the legend I wrote, yet never published, and completed on this day 09/16/04, and retyped today, with only minor changes)

Tomorrow, I return to the material that was published in Being and Learning!

•The opening line of this final scene in the legend begins with an indexical reference to Hegel’s owl of Minerva [who spreads her wings at dusk].   The path of the owl is based on the knowledge I have gained from winter hiking, and the lessons I learned at the AMC Highland Center in Crawford Notch, where they taught me about the animals who share the trails we hike on.  I’ve seen the signs of this in the tracks left on the trail.   But the downward movement of the owl is also a prophetic sign, for it indicates that Zarathustra will ultimately descend from his mountain cave.

••The footnote in the manuscript cites this from Heidegger’s What is Called Thinking?, and then reads: “The allegory [legend] culminates with this line that Heidegger assigns to Nietzsche.  This final speech [in the legend] is inspired by Heidegger’s text, where he associates the condition of thoughtlessness with the growing ‘wasteland,’ the devastation, the expulsion of Mnemosyne, memory.”

‘Woe to him who hides the wasteland within.’  This is from Nietzsche!