First
things first, the music I’m streaming while writing is from a show I attending
this day 29 years ago with my Fordham U bandmates https://archive.org/details/gd85-11-11.sbd.doughty.14862.sbeok.shnf
Second,
the meditation from this day prompted me to return in earnest to the very first
moments of this project, both the first meditations I wrote back in February
2004 and the commemorative ones I wrote in February of this year. And that is because after meandering here and
there the writing/thinking on 11/11/04 arrives suddenly back to the originary
question “How is it with the Nothing?,” one I borrowed from Heidegger’s essay
“What is Metaphysics?” When I
encountered this question I immediately returned back to the commentaries from
February, and was startled to see the minimalistic approach I took early
on! Back at the start of 2.0 I write
very brief summaries of the meditations, and those summaries were meant to
provide a thumbnail sketch of the meditation I was reading in the video. In
fact, the content of the commentary on the blog was initially written as an
overview for the video. What a long
strange trip 2.0 has been! The
commentaries show that this has been much more than a nostalgic return to
the meditations that were published as Being
and Learning.
Although
it is brief, the commentary on 2/22/14 (the 14th), discloses how the
originary questions are calling
learning:
“The reading of PPM10
offers further exploration of what Heidegger calls "heeding the claim
arising out of the thoughtful word." Any 'word' that is evocative,
or offered through a provocative question is 'thoughtful,' but the example I
continue to work with is the word 'Nothing,' which is heard in the question,
How is it with the Nothing? PPM10 discloses that the heeding of
'Nothing,' in silencing our juridical voice (cf PPM9) empties us. [On
02/22/04] I write, "Evocative speech is a calling (vocare) which
enjoins us in emptiness, the condition of learning where were are addressed in our
steadfast openness. In heeding the saying of 'Nothing' we are made vacant
(vacare). It claims us in our relationship with the
'Nothing'."”(02/22/14)
What has remained
consistent is the attention to the singular word, and this is part of a
philosophical methodology I have inherited from Schürmann, a methodology that
is on the list of topics for further thinking that will be made in a year when
I mine these field notes. In the early
part of 2.0 I was writing/thinking a lot about the power of the singular word,
specifically the word ‘Nothing’. And
since the beginning of this project I’ve been fascinated by the phonetic link
between vocare ‘calling’ and vacare ‘emptiness’. Reflecting back on the beginning of this
project allows me to identify how the reception of the single word calls us by
emptying us; the word ‘Nothing’ represents the power of evocation, the
gathering force of Logos to enjoin us
in compassion via listening. The
calling compels us to listen.
And that brings me to the
writing from this day 11/11/04, when there is a return to the question ‘How is
it with the Nothing?’ “To respond to
this question is to remain steadfast with the openness that is en-opened by the
appearance of the heart…ready and waiting to receive the ‘not yet,’ the excess
of the ‘now,’ the ‘everyday’ that spills over with the ‘birth of the new,’ the
improvisational.”(BL 270) This is how the meditation from 11/11 ends,
which is to say, improvisation is
identified as the ontological quality (ποιότης, poiotēs) of the call (klēsis, calling
or vocation). Put otherwise, the vocare (call) empties (vacare) us in the sense of preparing or
making us ready for the arrival of the new.
The evocative calling offers an annunciation, and this is why I have
described the preparatory stage of apathetic
reading as that time of restraint or holding back. The preparatory stage of the novitiate is
one that teaches us to listen; the force of the book conditions one to be
able to take up the asymmetrical relation between the calling and the
called. There is a double preparation
in the sense that we are made ready for a call that is making us ready to learn
and to take up philosophical music-making.
Another
way of reading 11/11/04 is to connect the reception of the ‘not yet’ with the
openness of the Open that is located in the open heart. The open heart was signified under the sign
of “the ‘outward’ appearance of the implicit supplication, the offering that
offers close hearing of the new, the otro,
the ‘not yet’ said.”(BL 269) But there is an obvious contradiction
happening on 11/11 with the equating of the “invocative quality of evocative
speech” and the “appearance of the implicit supplication.” The contradiction could be resolved by
reading these as complementary in the way Logos
and Aletheia relate. Such a move
becomes possible in the sentence that follows, when the “strange quality of the
implicit supplication” is identified as “related to the mysterious quality of
the ‘outward’ appearance of the heart…the comport that bears ‘no-thing,’ and
thereby remains ‘most open’ to receive the saying of the…song.”(BL 269)
What is crucially important with this second reading of
11/11 is the recognition that the openness of the open heart is a vestige of
the originary offering, the ontological appearance of the very gathering
force. This is why the original question
concerning the ‘turn’ to learning is answered by thinking this event as a ‘re-turn’
or ‘turning around’ or ‘conversion’ in the sense of rebirth, or second birth.
Again: the challenge is not of putting eyesight into eyes that cannot
see, but of turning those most capable eyes to what they are most capable of
perceiving [paraphrase of the challenge issued by Socrates in Plato’s Republic that initiated my whole
project!]. The ‘most capable eyes’
signifies our capacity for learning aka for thinking
aka for being…fully being.
And the realization of this total being happens in community (koinonia) via love (agape). Further, the
capacity to enter into this community and to experience this love is always
already with us; held in our hearts. The
challenge of ‘turning around’ is the challenge of ‘turning out’, and is thus a
matter of total self-disclosure and the revelation of the love we carry within
our hearts. The question, ‘How is with
the Nothing?’ is thus a question that not only points horizontally to what is
‘not yet’ (the imminent arrival of the new, the unknown, the unpredictable) but
internally to a heart that is capable of seemingly bottomless depth of
compassion. “The dialogic situation
situates the learner as the one who is attuned with be-ing. To be attuned is to be engaged with
compassionate listening…the learning situation…the call to care.”(BL 270)
3.0 (Monday, Portland, ME) Apropos the above, here are some fragments from material that was edited today in "LEARN": "Philosophical discussion is an interruption of the expectations of schooling’s teleology of outcomes, a logic that falls under what Roberto Unger calls the “dictatorship of no alternatives.” (LA) And it is this dictatorship, which is endemic to schooling, that is interrupted by philosophical learning. And because of the apparent immovable status of this dictatorship its interruption appears to be improbable, and perhaps is a rare occurrence, so much that we might borrow from Arendt and describe the event of philosophical learning as a “miracle.” The solitude of study and the formation of the learning community, which each time brings about a renewal of the book/text, is a rebirth or “new beginning [that] is by nature a miracle when seen and experienced from the standpoint of the processes it necessarily interrupts.”(IP, 112) Learning is the dialectic of new beginnings, the dynamic of human initiative. Against the predictability of automation and the artificial intelligence -- that ruse and artifice of thinking -- philosophical learning happens as an event of the “miracle of freedom [that] is inherent in this ability to make a beginning, which is itself inherent in the fact that every human being, simply by being born into a world that was there before him and will be there after him, is himself a new beginning.”(IP, 113) What is unique and perhaps truly miraculous within the current epoch enframed by the dictatorship of no alternatives is a student’s turning away from the distractions of digital technology and the so-called “promise” of artificial intelligence, their accepting the teacher’s invitation to move into the solitude of study and the deconstructed library, and then gather into a learning community with other. In an epoch dominated by the power of the visual image, it seems to be a miracle that the sonic force of the human voice is able to break through. In this sense there is a jubilee character to the learning disrupts the fatalism of schooling and restores human initiative. The rejuvenation of the book is thus a reclamation of the original inspiration and the writing that followed. Discussion is the reclamation of that originary moment and the arrival of the presence of the poetics of the text, that spontaneity that was recorded in words and then heard again as if for the first time, resonating anew when they circulate in the dialogue." AND "Philosophical education as tikkun olam is a repair and renewal of a common world: for Arendt, this is the primary purpose of education. It happens with the affirmation of the enduring significance of the object of study. This affirmation is a recognition of the book’s gravitas, its power to gather the students together while at the same time distinguishing each one in their singularity. The affirmation also comes about through the recognition that the objectivity of the world is saturated with the subjectivity of those who have made it: the common world is built and renewed by the singularity and natality of those who have initiated something new, something unforeseen, something unheard. The affirmation is thus the students’ recognition of their own power to initiate each time they receive the text as if for the first time. Although Arendt does not say it in so many words, repair and renewal of the common world is inspired by amor mundi (love of the world). But the proverbial love of learning (an alternative translation of philosophia) emerges from a love expressed in the non-judgmental and pre-critical acceptance of the object of study in its arrival, its presencing as it is. A philosophical education, which is an expression of amor mundi, is also an expression of amor fati, which is not the fatalism rendered by the dictatorship of no alternatives, but the radical openness of the listening that receives the sonic force of the human voice."
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