Istanbul, 11/30/14
(AP) “Francis, who represents
the 1.2 billion-strong Catholic Church, and Bartholomew, the spiritual leader
of the world’s 300 million Orthodox Christians, called for ‘constructive
dialogue’ with Islam ‘based on mutual respect and friendship.’…And it seemed
that the message was reciprocated: The grand mufti of Istanbul, Rahmi Yaran,
who received him at the [Sultan Ahmet] mosque, said he hoped that Francis’
visit would ‘contribute to the world getting along well and living in peace.” Portland Press Herald, Mon, 12/1/14
I receive the preceding
news wire report in the context of BL 2.0,
and the last two weeks of intense focus on dialogue, friendship, and the
dynamic interaction between the spirits of agapē
and agon – not to mention the
ecumenicalism and inter-religious dialogue I have identified with since I was introduced to it by Ewert
Cousins at Fordham. And, upon receiving
this news the question that arises for me is one that takes up the possible denotations of
‘constructive,’ the term that weighs most heavily in the call made by Francis and Bartholomew. I have attempted much writing/thinking on the
‘construction’ (building) of the learning community vis-à-vis the repair and
renewal of the world, but I have understood this as the exclusive work of the learning community, which is happening, first and foremost, within the Schumacherian small-scale economy
of the local (petit recits), and second, as the gathering of a relatively small
number colleagues who are gathered by the spirit of fellowship (koinōnia). What’s more, this small-scale and modest
gathering is formed within and departs from the threshold (the ‘margins’). And from the view of center (the ‘dominant’) seats of power, the gathering of the learning community appears
as a counter-cultural work ('construction'), and counter-hegemonic movement, which I have described as
emancipatory (nb: in the past few
weeks ‘emancipatory’ has appeared to me as distinct from ‘liberatory’ insofar
as I’m reducing the latter to liberty and not to liberation, which means
something entirely different, especially as it arises within the discourse of
liberation theology. The learning
community as a collectivist and congregational praxis is making their emancipation. Finally, I am placing the
learning community’s praxis within the
history of freedom movements that is captured under the Exodus narrative aka
“the movement of Jah people,” to cite
B. Marley’s authoritative lyric on this matter of emancipation via music-making
philosophy.) In turn, I wonder if a billions of Christians (Catholic, Orthodox, et al) and Muslims (Sunni, Shia, et al) can, despite the quantitative measure of so many people nevertheless congregate dialogically and in that gathering constitute a counter-cultural 'construction' and counter-hegemonic movement? And, anyway, given my most recent thinking on dialogue and friendship I wonder how we might imagine such a ‘constructive
dialogue based on mutual respect and friendship’? Perhaps the polemical logic of creative love
of the learning community that I have been describing in these commentaries can actually apply in the case of the dialogue that
Francis and Bartholomew are calling for?
“In turn, if the learning community is the gathering of friends via agapē then this love of friend strengthens the
members of the community to resist and oppose the implied imposition of one
voice over the other. The collective
work is one of renewing isonomia,
the rule of no one, and no thing. This
demands an uncompromising faith in the total reality of the present moment.”(11/30/14)
And this brings me to
the meditation from this day ten years ago, which begins by pivoting around
Arendt’s ‘conservative education,’ that insists on ‘protecting’ the old (world)
from the new (child) and vice versa.
“Contrary to Arendt…[I] identify the community of learning as a dynamic,
risk-taking venture where the ‘new’ and ‘old’, the dynamic of freedom and the
stillness of peace co-arise, one welcoming the other and the other returning
this hospitality with an offering, a gift of teach-ability.”(12/01/04 BL 292)
First and foremost, the preceding represents a more fundamental and
universal language that appears to be ‘translatable’ across traditions. Of the two, ‘Peace’ is the originary
universal. ‘Peace’ is the ‘old’, while
‘freedom’ is the ‘new.’ Today (12/01/14) the dialectic is assigned to agapē and agon. And it strikes me that
‘peace’ and agapē already denote the a priori condition for the possibility
of the ecumenical inter-religious/transcultural dialogue: Being, Primal Unity,
Holy Spirit, et al. And with this
rendering agon is the polemical
spirit of contest making its appearance as the difference that insures the
tension necessary for saying something new;
and this is the manifestation of human becoming as the contrary of Being. [nb: a complementary but distinct logic
organizes learning as the mimetic representation of Being’s ceaseless
nativity. In this sense, we can identify
multiple complementary logics at work.]
Talk of multiple
complementary logics offers a clearing for the return of the figure that seems
singularly capable of granting such thinking: the Sage. The Sage makes his return as a counter-weight
to Arendt’s conservative teacher who protects world from child and vice
versa. The terms ‘new’ and ‘old’ have
been shifted such that they are described as ‘welcoming’ each other. And
like conservative teacher the Sage stands in the threshold where ‘old’ and
‘new’ encounter one another. But Sage is
not only ‘teacher’ or ‘educator’ but also ‘learner’. In this sense he finds himself both between past and future and of past and future. He is untimely. This is “the modality of the
Sage, of the teacher who takes the risk of remaining learner, and thereby
retains the fundamental question concerning the source of the originary
dispensation close to the heart.”(BL 292) To keep close to the heart is to keep close to the originary and
thus close to the fundamental question, which is to say rooted in the stillness
of the most originary peace. Today we
might describe this modality as taking up the phenomenological position of
reception. And I would want to identify
this reception as compassionate listening.
On 12/01/04 I did just that, but also attempted at the same time to
undermine the official language of the State: “Compassion bears silently the
disquiet of questioning….With compassion co-arises the strange mix of fear and
joy….Silence, the result of shock and awe, is the modality of the Sage who
remains rooted in the chaos of Being’s hiding/showing….Being’s dynamic
presencing…the Sage remains closest to what is most un-canny, our be-ing…This is
the estranging affect of the Sage upon the apprentices who learn within the
community. To conduct learning is to
arrange a space of estrangement, a strange place. [The learning community] is…a strange
place…[and learners] abide with the mysterious, the uncanny. The learning community takes on the modality
of the Sage and becomes a [gathering] of the friend, a [gathering] of the
strange.”(BL 292-293)
3.0 (Sunday, Portland, ME) - Here is how the writing/thinking back then resonates with the writing/thinking of today, specifically the "conduct" of the teacher (no longer described as "sage") as the one who "conducts" the learning community OPM/B&L: "Being’s dynamic presencing…the Sage remains closest to what is most un-canny, our be-ing…This is the estranging affect of the Sage upon the apprentices who learn within the community. To conduct learning is to arrange a space of estrangement, a strange place. [The learning community] is…a strange place…[and learners] abide with the mysterious, the uncanny. The learning community takes on the modality of the Sage and becomes a [gathering] of the friend, a [gathering] of the strange.”(BL 292-293). AND "LEARN", citing different fragments around "conduct". First, Heidegger: "“Teaching is more difficult…because what teaching calls for is this: to let learn. The real teacher, in fact, lets nothing else be learned than -- learning. His conduct, therefore, often produces the impression that we properly learning nothing from him, if by ‘learning’ we now suddenly understand merely the procurement of useful information.” Then Nietzsche: "“We are conducting an experiment with truth,” Nietzsche wrote when glossing over the plan for Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The experiment he undertook cannot be replicated, but it can be remembered, re-collected in the study and discussion of his Zarathustra, which is composed of parables. Indeed, the recollection of his experiment in the form of a précis invites “riddling on this riddle." . The philosophical educator will “conduct” the rehearsal through listening, which is to say, by remaining apart from the “music making,” yet responsible to ensure the discussion, while motivated by the principle of insufficiency, is inspired by the principle of kalon (beauty). Listening for learning, and learning by listening, the teacher is attuned to the sound of philosophical discussion. And because each discussion is unique and no seminar can ever be repeated the “real teacher,” as Heidegger puts it, is in fact the foremost student in the room. Indeed, the philosophical educator “has still far more to learn than [the students] in this alone, that he has still far more to learn than they -- he has to learn to let them learn.” The teacher as a conductor of the improvisational dialogue is the one who has been turned away from the modality of what Heidegger describes as “the authority of the know-it-all.”
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