Last
evening, as I was writing my commentary, I received an email from my daughter Sofia, who was at the big eco-march in NYC along with a cohort of Bates students.
Her enthusiasm was over the top:
“THE
CLIMATE MARCH IS FREAKING INSANE”, “Over 300,000 ppl marched”, “It was an
unbelievable experience. I'll never forget this day!”
This morning when I was
reflecting on her messages I couldn’t help but do some freakonomics and connect
the 300,000 marchers to the six hundred thousand paths I wrote about in
yesterday's meditation and commentary; because it is safe to say that 300,000
marchers were using 600,000 feet to move the march. Here is the
movement forward, the forward movement propelled by the force of Nature’s
law.
And
before the marching (sojourn, journey, path-breaking/walking>) of the 600,00
feet beyond the human, a resignation>renunciation>Silence
Silence…then
listen…to the roar! The roar of the crowd.
The roar of the lion…who became the child.
This indexical reference to Nietzsche’s parable brings me back to the meditations, and to the writing from this day ten years ago, which, coincidentally begins with a citation of Heidegger that echoes my reflections on the 600,000 marching feet: “Those who go-under are the ones who constantly question.”(Contributions,p. 278) [I suspect my good friend and colleague Stacy Smith -- with whom I met with today to talk about Thoreau, the Gita, and all the apparent Zeitgeist that is gathering us around that place where the two came together…and I don’t mean Walden Pond! – would say there’s no coincidence.]
There’s
no question that there is a kind of coincidence with the writing from 9/22/04
and my reflections on yesterday’s march. Following the Heidegger citation I
wrote, “Going under is
the…comportment…of those who…are gathered into the situation of learning. This gathering is the appropriation of the
receptive modality, or openness.” The
gathering into the situation of learning is what has been called the event of
appropriation. The going-under is the
event of appropriation, with ‘under’ representing the force of the law,
Nature’s law, that is subjecting the human.
This is why Nietzsche writes of six thousand feet beyond the human. The event
of appropriation places the human subject – the subjectivity of the human will,
will to power, will to dominate – under
its rule. Nature’s law is the arche, the originary, and the primal
order, what Aristotle calls the Universal Law (cf. OPM 171, August 4th)
The
meditation returns to the beginning, declaring the rule of this originary law
to have been at work from the beginning of the project: “From the outset we
have identified the turning away from the juridical speaking as the originary
event of learning. We spoke of this
turning around, this tuning, as an attunement to Being’s processural
unfolding…”(9/22/04) What is new, seventh months
later, is the thinking under the banner of close listening, of learning close listening, which is now
identified as living under – being subjected by, being a subject of – the Universal
Law: being opened by the force of Nature. This being subjected
is described as being thrown, a throwing that “is the irruption of the repetitious
status quo, the wresting of the hidden form concealment and the spontaneous
arrival of the unforeseen with the improvisational performance…Going under is, first and foremost, that
improvisational performance that enjoins close listening.”(9/22/04)
This
mediation marks the return of the Sage as the title bestowed upon Zarathustra,
the speech maker whose speaking compels close listening. “Zarathustra has learned close listening,
and bears the comportment of the one who is overflowing, ‘suffused’, with the
saying that will enjoin the learning of close listening.” Suffused is from suffuse –
‘poured into,’ from sub – ‘below,
from below’ + fundere ‘pour’. The one who is overflowing pours from below.
OVER flow from BELOW: Over
Below, Going Under.
Here I
recall OPM 217(8), September 21st:
“We have to
think Way, convey and going under
together. And the medieval Latin roots
help us do this: con and via. Together-Way. This is how we can think the place where
Zarathustra is descending.”
Overflowing, those who go-under
are on the Together-Way. (600,000 feet beyond
human)
Conclusion
from today ten years ago: “To learn close listening is to heed the call of…the
ones who invoke the freedom of the creative making and building that is enacted
by those overflowing with the ‘what is coming, what is futural.’…learners,
collaborators in the dwelling that is a constant building of the future, a
waiting upon the unforeseen…the call of Being, the call to care, preserve and
cultivate.”(9/22/04)
3.0 (Sunda, Portland, ME). I remember well when Sofie went to the Climate March at Bates. She was only a few weeks into her first semester at Bates and had already connected with likeminded peers. Her enthusiasm is and continues to be contagious! There's an obvious connection between she and her peers who marched and the category of learners that I am describing above as those who listen closely and heed the call of 'what is coming, what is futural.' However, there is an important difference. The passivity of the learner I described above and more so am describing these days is a modality of receiving and waiting. And this does not seem to be the activist modality of the ones who make history. "LEARN" (surprisingly) describes a particular kind of fatalism. I hadn't anticipated (no pun intended) that outcome. It arrived with my use of Benjamin and the old adage he uses in the essay on unpacking his library: habent sua fata libelli. The 'fata' of the book introduces the 'fate' into the narrative. And this culminates when I describe the openness and receptivity of the learner, which includes both the learner in the solitude of study and the together with others in discussion, as guided by 'amor fati,' an acceptance of all that is. This was a category I hadn't encountered before in my writing/thinking, although in some of my commentary on Gloria Anzaldua, I singled out her fragment about the mestiza embracing all the contraries, "the good, the bad, etc." And it turns out that Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence of the Same, which appears in section 2: Writing, is an deployment of amor fati. The category feels counter-intuitive, and is certainly a negation of the history making praxis that for many years I took for granted as the so-called "aim" of education. It seems then with "LEARN" I have arrived at what could be deemed a 'conservative' position. Of course, that's not entirely accurate, unless one registers this with Arendt's 'conservative education,' which is intent on conserving what she calls the 'revolutionary' in each student, i.e., their capacity to initiate something new. And if 'tikkun olam' expresses this Arendtian category, then the students is not only repairing but also renewing the world. Renewal has to be understood as a form of praxis. The major difference, it seems, is with the intentionality of that renewal and practice. There is not a pre-determined 'goal' or 'aim' of the renewal. Rather the act of renewal, the initiating something new, is an end in-and-for-itself. This is why it is improvisational and spontaneous. And this is also why 'whatever' is offered is accepted. In this sense, the learning that I am describing and calling 'philosophical' is limited to the moments of study (reading, writing) and discussion (dialogic interpretation), and does not participate 'in' history. The educational sphere is 'outside' history, and can perhaps be placed within an 'ekstatic' temporality. It is apolitical. It is akin to art that does not carry or express a 'message.' It is akin to art that is a demonstration of the human capacity to make beauty things, to express beauty (kalon).
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