Goethe
in Faust (verse 1,549): “Entbehren
sollst du! Sollst du entbehren// Thou
shalt forgo, shalt do without.” As I
learned from reading Hamilton Beck’s excellent article on DuBois’ two years at
the University of Berlin (1892-94), DuBois quoted these lines from Goethe twice
in his autobiography as was to describe the sacrifice (specifically in the
private domain) that was demanded of him and the work he set out to do as an
intellectual leader. I was also
astounded to learn that one of the signature concepts in his work, double
consciousness, which underwrites the plural form of ‘souls’ in the title of his
magnum opus The Souls of Black Folk,
was most probably borrowed from the same Goethe. In the first chapter from Souls, “Out Our Spiritual Strivings,”
DuBois famously writes: “On ever feels his twoness – an American, a Negro; two
souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark
body…” According to Beck, this very line
is but “a paraphrase of one of the most famous lines (verse 1, 112) from Faust: ‘Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! In
meiner Brust//Two souls, alas, reside within my breast/ And each withdraws
from, and repels, its brother’.”(trans. Bayard Taylor). [pn (promissory note): explore further this internal struggle as the
existential occurrence of the dialectic\\the dynamic
equilibrium between ἀγάπη
(agápē)
and ἀγών (agón)]
The
careful study this semester of DuBois in my undergraduate philosophy of
education class was the highlight of the course, and I documented some of that
work in this blog (cf. OPM 263(264), Nov. 4th, OPM
265(266)-267(288), November 6th-8th) I shared the discovery made from reading
Beck’s article because yesterday’s commentary was organized around Prometheus’
redemptive sacrifice. While it may seem
a relatively straightforward point, I consider it revealing, especially for one
who has spent time making a close study of
Souls with an attention to “On
The Coming of John.” The story of John
Jones is an exemplar of the redemptive descent, the return made by one who,
like the bee who has collected too much honey, has much to say. Indeed, the first place where the trope of
‘sacrifice’ appears in this blog is with the citation of my “Feeling the Funk”
paper that takes up Nietzsche’s Birth of
Tragedy and “the
sacrifice of the subject, the individual…‘the annihilation of the ordinary
bounds and limits of existence,”(BT 23)
and the subsequent birth or resurrection of the Dionysian artist: the artist as
artwork, the individual human subject as subjected to the totality of Being,
the Primal Unity.’”(OPM 271(272), November 13th)
And the second is with the reflections on Gutierrez (OPM
279(280), November 22st) and his citation of Camilo Torres on the a priori
existential condition of sacrifice that is required for one to partake in the
Eucharistic celebration: one “cannot offer the sacrifice in an authentic form
if it has not first fulfilled in an effective manner the precept of ‘love of
thy neighbor.’”(Gutierrez, 264) Four
distinct yet related modalities that disclose the essence of sacrifice of the
self/subject made via the force of faith
in the redemption offered in the reception of the offering, the empowering
diminishment into the Primal Unity, Justice, Freedom and/or the Love of the
Holy Spirit.
On
11/26/04 the meditation is initiated by further thinking/writing under the
force of philia that is disclosed as
en-opening “the openness of compassionate listening.”(BL 286) How does this force
open the opening that is described as “the cup…capturing the excess arriving
with the saying of what has still not be said…”? The mediation return all the way back to the
beginning of the project [here, again a moment of what I’ve been calling
didactic repetition] and recalls the First Questions, which bear the force that
en-opens, and here for the first time is described as an expression of
love. How so? How do these questions, specifically
Heidegger’s “How is it with the no-thing?” express the (selfless) love of
friendship? By (re)calling “the
originary dispensation, stamped upon the heart, vestige of Being’s dynamic
processural unfolding.”(BL 287) The expression of a ‘self-less’ love is the
expulsion of the subject (ego) via originary questioning [First Questions are
originary in the sense that they recall the original originating dispensation
or offering from Being]. A gap or
opening appears in the expulsion of the subject (ego); the heart is externalized;
compassion makes its worldly appearance.
“The First Questions…re-turn
towards what is most intimate, what is nearest, namely…Being….Can it be said
that Being appears with these fundamental questions?” (BL 287)
With
the preceding question I pivot through Augustine and Heidegger and emphasize
this question is one that I would today describe as cartographical or huacaslogical. Like Augustine, who asks not What?, but Where is God?, the First Questions point
to the place where Being’s Becoming (presencing) resides, and from this move
unfolds the phenomenology of learning I have been undertaking. On 11/26 I described this place as a ‘field’
and because it is a dynamic (dialectic, syncretic, etc.) the place is further
qualified as ‘force field’. Today I
would emphasize the location of learning as field of forces. On 11/26 I had a limited lexicon, and, as I
noted the other day, I was under the
guiding influence of Arendt’s appropriation of Aristotle.
3.0 (Wednesday, Basking Ridge, NJ). I just realized I'm a day behind...don't know how that happened, but I'm a day behind, so I'll post twice today in order to catch up. Didn't remember that Du Bois citation of Faust! I'd forgotten it, but will not. As for resonances, here is one from "LEARN" that echoes the note on Heidegger’s “How is it with the no-thing?” - "This is why in his “Preface to the Reader” Descartes defends himself against the objection that he his project is too narrowly focused by writing: “thus my meaning was that I am plainly aware of nothing which I know to pertain to my essence, beyond the fact that I am a thinking thing, that is, a thing having within itself the faculty of thinking. But in what ensues I will show how it follows from the fact that I know nothing else that pertains to my essence that nothing else at all really pertains to it.” But as I will describe it, this “nothing else” is the khaos (void) around and through which philosophical learning is happening. This is the chaos that Heidegger points to with the question, “How is it with the nothing?” He adds “Science wants to know nothing of the nothing. But even so it is certain that when science tries to express its proper essence it calls upon the nothing for help. It has recourse to what it rejects.”
ReplyDelete"Tolle legge, pick up and read! This call to the student, the negation of the self-certain “ego” that turns them away from their own self-interested concerns, is the first moment of the dialectic. The call (evocation) is an invitation beckoning the student towards the place of study. The negation is an interruption of the “self” as the center of attention, and a call to learning that turns the student about and invites them to focus on the object of study, the book/text. If learning begins with listening, then the first moment happens when the student receives the call: tolle lege, pick up and read! This invitation made by the teacher not only turns the student towards the solitude of study, but also invites them to take up a receptive form of reading, which is to say, take up philosophical study through phenomenological reading."