The
end of the meditation from 10/04/04 moves on to an alternative path and away from the
geographic that was the focus of yesterday’s commentary, which was entirely place based. The
‘negative’ that is described by Kant in his discussion of the sublime, and that
enabled me to think in terms of an altitude that allows for the higher
perception, is taken up in the place that is encountered at the completion of
the descent that “takes [us] down into the ground of Being.” The downward movement is completed in an “encounter
with the bottomless, profound, and unfathomable, ‘primeval chaos’…with
mortality.” And here we are thrown into
what for the early Heidegger in an ultimate boundary that is always confronting
us, the existential abyss: death. “Death, having no mercy, exceeds the measure
of an ‘appeal’ standing before the mortal as the ‘most’ un-appealing, for it
remains the wholly in-accessible, and in-determinate…”(BL 228)
This
ultimate boundary we encounter in the descent on to the ground of Being is the
focus of the meditation from this day ten years ago, which begins with a
citation from Heidegger’s Contributions
To Philosophy from Enowing:
“The
uniqueness of death in human Da-sein belongs to the most originary
determination of Da-sein, namely to be en-owned by being itself to ground its
truth (openness of self-sheltering). What is most non-ordinary in all of beings is
opened up within death’s non-ordinariness and uniqueness, namely be-ing itself,
which holds sway as estranging.”
Here,
the originary is discovered existentially as the originary determination of the
human condition in terms of its place,
standing-now, or time/space: Da-sein (being-there). Death is the absence, the withdrawal that
grants possibility, the openness of the open.
What is offered by the disclosure of the withdrawal as the impending
(close at hand v. ready to hand) of death is the compelling strangeness of of
possibility, the freedom that is granted and remains in the wake of the event
of appropriation. The encounter with
the finality of death is the estranging unavoidable implication of
dwelling in the time in-between the
disclosure of death and its imminent return.
“Death has no mercy. Its finality
is uncompromising…Death is that strange inevitable and certain event that
remains wholly undetermined, and concealed.
Death is a hidden presence that reveals itself as the mysterious
agreement of mortal being as granting.”(BL
228)
The
meditation on death returns me to a description of the preparatory, which I
would now prefer to call the initial gathering into the presence of Logos.
Either way, what is taken up is the prompt into learning that is
happening with an interruption of the ordinary.
On 09/05/14 it is called the “originary displacement”. Death is the most familiar stranger, the
intimate other; and encounter with this foe/friend reveals what is always
closest to us: freedom in the form of possibility. “The wholly
indeterminate yet determinate character
of death points to the sheltering of possibility and the abiding of learning. Learning is thus always unfolding upon and in
relation to that originary standing that opens up as the openness of
possibility. Death ‘stands before the mortal’ as ‘most’ in-determinate and
hence ‘most’ open of all events that frame mortal existence.”(BL 229)
Death
is thus a confirmation of Life, and with its disclosure the totality of
existence presents itself, and in this sense its disclosure is not unlike the
encounter with the sublime and the experience of perceiving from that high
altitude. In both cases the ‘self’ is
perceived in its most mortal, finite and diminutive. From the altitude this perception
understands the self in the midst of things, and from the ground in the
specificity of the place where it has been gathered. The sublime reveals the ineffable grandeur of
the totality and unity of things; death reveals the immediate specificity of
place. “Death is the affirmation of the
be-ing of the particular being: only a living being can ‘pass away’.”(BL 229)
3.0 (Saturday, Portland, ME) Yesterday I wrote about the consistent confidence I have had for the past three years in my thinking/writing/teaching. An example was the presentation I made a year ago at NEPES with my students, Georgia and Makenzie. We presented some results from my HC seminar on the blues, focusing on Ma Rainey as a cultural educator, drawing inspiration from August Wilson, Angela Davis and James Cone. I brought a portable LP player and we started off by listening to Ma Rainey on vinyl. It was most definitely another moment in this project as an ongoing experiment. And it was also another example of doing independent intellectual work and regardless of how others receive it. It's all about the process and where it take you. This is why I have always hesitated to write for an audience, as opposed to just writing. If others want to write for an audience and in this sense are seeking readers, that's fine. There may be a connection here with the OPM from this day. The need for readers, for an audience, might not that be part of a desire for affirmation that isn't just a recognition of the value of one's contribution, but the possibility of one achieving lasting fame and thus "immortality"? Arendt talks about the ancient performance of excellence (areté) and how it would live on in cultural memory, through story, song, and perhaps even monuments. I see my writing otherwise, as just a documentation of my thinking, nothing more and nothing less. That doesn't mean that I'm not attempting to contribute something original to the Academy. I most certainly am! But I'm not concerned about whether or not my contribution is recognized as original in the time that I have written it. Having it published (by a press or journal) is already an affirmation of the work as a contribution. Beyond that, the author has no control over who will read the work, and how it will be read. The work becomes independent, and here the final fragment of the OPM from today resontates. Indeed, "death [as] the affirmation of the be-ing of a the particular being" can be understood as the death of the author and the affirmation of the written work!
ReplyDelete3.0b. (Here's an excerpt from "LEARN" part 2 that expresses well the point I just made): This second moment of the dialectic turns the student away from reading the book and towards the collection of fragments. Noli me legere can be heard as the invitation to begin writing a précis. And the invitation to suspend reading in order to start writing is received as an echo, a reverberation of the original Noli me legere that was directed at the author. The fate of the book’s essential solitude includes its turning away from its author. This turning around of the book away from its author is a turning towards the reader who can receive its being, neither finished or unfinished.
ReplyDeleteThe original Noli me legere was directed at the author, and is received as a mortal blow to his authority over the text. The book appears “unreadable” to the author. Blanchot says the situation “can also be described this way: the writer never reads his work. It is, for him, illegible, a secret. He cannot linger in its presence.” (SL, 23) Does this situation indicate La mort de l’auteur, the proverbial death of the author? Perhaps. Or perhaps the Noli me legere merely exiles the author, which is a kind of mortal blow. (Socrates was offered the possibility of exile from Athens, but he chose to drink the cup of hemlock. For him, exile from Athens would be akin to a living death.) Blanchot: “No one who has written the work can linger close to it.”(SL, 24) As soon as the composition is completed by the author the book’s autonomy “dismisses him, cuts him off, makes him a survivor…He becomes the inert idler upon whom art does not depend.”(SL, 24) While she may be exiled from her work, the author appears “dead” to the reader who has been invited to engage the book/text phenomenologically but not historically or culturally. The essential solitude of the book/text locates it “outside” history and “inside” the deconstructed library, which has “timeless” quality to it, what might be described as an ekstatic temporality, the time of study for the student who has been turned away from the certainty of the self and invited to enter the modality of being “outside” of oneself: ekstasis. This location of philosophical study, the deconstructed library, allows all books to endure with significance, to live on beyond the author and to experience its own fate at the hands of the ones who study it. Blanchot helps us understand how the dialectical negation of the author, the exile which renders him incapable of reading his book/text, opens up a space for another writer to take up the project. When the student is writing a précis they have moved into that location.