The
descending Zarathustra is the figure around which the 9th chapter of
Being and Learning is organized. From his mountain cave Zarathustra descends
‘overflowing with wisdom’, ready to gather a community (koinonia), ready to enter into a fellowship. His readiness is not to gather a community
around him, but upon the ground of the open.
He is both threshold scholar (the one who abides in the opening through
which one enters the Open) and the sage (the one who orchestrates the movement
in the Open by prompting close listening via speech making aka evocative
invocation, questioning). Welcoming through the opening (threshold) and
prompting upon the Open constitute
the work of the one who is already ‘unbound’ and ready to ‘make music’ (i.e.,
take up the command of the muse to Socrates and undertake what Nietzsche calls
‘music making philosophy’). “To ‘un-bind’ is to place in the condition of the
essential swaying of freedom.”(10/11/04 BL
235) If learning together in a dialogic community is ‘music making’ then
the music that is made is improvisational.
And because the undertaking is an experiment – a learning event like the
work happening in a laboratory, drafting room, dance or acting studio, etc. –
the music is ‘experimental,’ which is to say, ‘unbound’ from the degenerated
teleological of the accountability regime.
“Poetic dwelling ‘breaks away’ from one-sidedness of one-track
thinking’s instrumentalization of ‘be-ing’ and moves into the realm of the
Open…” (10/11/04 BL 235) Of course there is an aim, because there is
something being made. And even though process is highlighted it
should not be understood as precluding the outcome; the making is not the some
total of the event. However, being an
experiment we don’t know in advance exactly what this ‘something’ will be. We enter the Open space of learning with
materials, ideas, etc., and let happen what is going to happen. The gathering
of the learning community is an event.
The
‘Open’ (capitalized because it is proper, or an exclusive designation like
Being or Logos) denotes the place
where beings (ta panta) appear and
are gathered together. The Open grants
the ‘in’ (the place) for a being to be together with other beings, so that when
we say in media res the ‘in’ designates the place where we are in
the midst of things. While there is
distinction between things when we think the ‘in’ (the place) we understand the
many to be equal. The open is thus “the
‘equalizing space’ where all beings are mutually related yet ‘infinitely
unbound.’”(10/11/04 BL 235)
Heidegger
uses term raum (phonetically linked
to the English word ‘room’) when he describes the Open. The translation of the essay “What Are Poets
For?”, which was/is the basis of my exegetical work on the Open, translates raum as ‘space’, which is entirely
misleading. As Scott Henstrand
(Brooklyn School of Collaborative Studies) emphasized during his remarks at the
Lapiz launch, space is a geometric
(quantitative) measuring. Raum indicates the spatial, and when it
is combined with Welt (world) as Weltraum it designates ‘outerspace’
(i.e., beyond the Earth). And while
‘space’ does have a kind of neutrality that appears well suited to designated
the equalizing power of the Open, it fails to express the specificity of the
work granted and only granted there. And this is why it is a “precinct”. “Precinct denotes a space designated by
particular confines, the ‘boundaries of a place.’…a ‘precinct’ also identifies
a particular location or environs, an areas that surrounds, extends round,
encompasses so as to protect. Understood
as encompassing, a precinct indicates a location within a location, and points to a dwelling, or abode, within a
protective sphere that surrounds or encircles it.”(10/11/04 BL 235)
Here
the critique mounted in yesterday’s commentary returns in the discovery that
before it was appropriated by “the all encompassing marketplace logic,”(10/11/04
BL 235) the word ‘invest’ denoted the
protection of the protective sphere.
‘Invest’ originally mean to care for by embracing, to place in and protect “as in the wrapping of a
blanket around an infant.”(10/11/04 BL 235) Like the relation between potentiality and
actuality, we encounter an amnesia with the contemporary use of the term
‘invest’ and ‘investment’. The more
primordial and originary is forgotten.
With
Heidegger we re-call the link between the Open as a precinct for the appearance
of the many and ‘freedom.’ The link
happens through the word ‘peace’, which designates the quality of the
place. The Open is not merely the space
granted in-between the many, but the place of peace where they can appear
together. And here we move closer to
understanding the gathering unity of the many into a one through and upon a
common (koinon). The koinonia
of the learning community is a fellowship of peace and freedom, the two
qualities issued by the same precinct. “Here
we recall further the link between peace and freedom identified by Heidegger in
his unpacking of the German word for peace, ‘Friede,’ which ‘means the free, das
Frye, and fry means: preserved
from harm and danger, preserved from something, safeguarded. To be free really means to spare.’ Our
re-collection enables us to consider the un-binding as the space that the openness
of the open establishes between beings, that gap that protects or guarantees
their freedom, that openness that spares the alterity of the other by
protecting its appearance as otro. [Heidegger:]‘The equalizing space is the
world’s inner space, in that it gives [place] to the worldly whole of the Open.
Thus the [place] grants to the one and
to the other draft the appearance of their unifying oneness. That oneness, as the integral globe of Being,
encircles all pure forces of what is, by circling through all beings,
in-finitely unbounding them.’”(10/11/04 BL
235) **I replace ‘space’ with ‘place’
when retyping the quotation from Heidegger, but as I reflect on my reading of raum it seems, perhaps, that Heidegger
meant to make a place on inner and outer space,
as a way to push us to think about the unifying force of the Open and its
universal implications?
3.0 (Friday, Portland, ME). I finished the pencil edits of "LEARN" part 3 this morning over at Forage cafe. I try to get down there on Fridays, but sometimes it's a challenge to work at a cafe. Too many distractions. But this morning I was able to focus and finish the edits. I'm excited with the project and feel really good about the draft. Writing a shorter book has helped me to stay focused. But it's also helped me to write something that is dense, yet somewhat repetitive or reiterative, and, hopefully, inspiring of a response from the reader. The book is designed to elicit thought, but not in the critical or analytic form. Thought in the way "wondering" and "wandering" way that Arendt and Heidegger describe it. And with Heidegger, who gets the last word in "LEARN," I'm trying to write in a way that discloses the poetic and thereby a relation with language that is suggestive and not explanatory. In other words, I'm expressing what the book is attempting to say, writing the kind of philosophy I am describing. And in this way I'm definitely continuing the project that was initiated back in 2004. Continuing it both in form but also in content. Today's OPM includes the following fragment that was recited above: "If learning together in a dialogic community is ‘music making’ then the music that is made is improvisational. And because the undertaking is an experiment – a learning event like the work happening in a laboratory, drafting room, dance or acting studio, etc. – the music is ‘experimental,’ which is to say, ‘unbound’ from the degenerated teleological of the accountability regime. “Poetic dwelling ‘breaks away’ from one-sidedness of one-track thinking’s instrumentalization of ‘be-ing’ and moves into the realm of the Open…” (10/11/04 BL 235). And here is a fragment from part 3 that resonates with the foregoing: " Inspiration arrives from the Latin inspirarem, which means to ‘breathe into’ from in - ‘into’ + spirare ‘breath.’ Inspirarem originally denoted a supernatural being imparting a truth or idea to someone. Can we ascribe such power to poesy, to the poetics of the libro? Discussion compels us to say “YES!” So long as the dialogue is poetic, so long as the discussion is a performance of freedom, so long as the conversazione is registered poetically. Recall the mantra that the Muse delivered again and again to Socrates: “Make music, and work at it.” Inspired by the Muse, Socrates made music with his friends, practiced philosophy dialogically, performing a discussion with others that remained open and inconclusive."
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