Thinking/Writing in the stream of
[skipping ahead to and repeating
“Deal” a few times…in light of the previous evening’s polemos]
There was no mediation
written on Christmas Day 2004, which surprises me given the unfolding of the
category of ceaseless nativity. So
there is a curious fecund silence
that I am tempted to commemorate by letting be the reverential modality
beckoned by the Feast of the Nativity.
But there are two prompts that call me to write and think for today for
the better part of an hour this morning, in the time in-between the unwrapping
of gifts and gathering ourselves for the trip this afternoon over the bay to
brother Pepe’s house for a celebration.
There was no meditation
on Christmas Day 2004 but there was an additional sentence written on 12/24/04
that was intended to prompt the beginning of the next meditation. I printed the meditation on 12/24 with an
olive color, and the next meditation in standard black. The first sentence of the meditation on
12/26 has the olive color; and it is fragmented and meant to express that style
of drumming identified in the commentary from 12/22/14 on dialectic: “On 12/22/14 this enactment is described as a “dialectical process”
that “ ‘ends’ with en-opening, with openness.”(BL 320) [nb: concealed in
that description is an Eastern (from India) form of drumming whereby the ‘last’
beat is ‘not played,’ which is to say that the percussion performance ‘ends’
with the hand up and away from the drum head, suspended so as to demonstrate
that the drumming has not in fact ended but only paused.” The sentence written at the conclusion of the
meditation on 12/24 is meant to express a transcendence via the suspension of
thinking. Contemplation? Prayer?
A return to the originary, the beginning, to the fecund Silence via listening.
The sentence bursts from 12/24 and remains suspended on 12/25; and on
12/26 the flow of writing -- which feels more and more like drumming…. – [Why am I reminded at this moment that the typing on my
keyboard is not unlike the feeling I have when I am drumming?!] -- hence the flow is rhythmic, and so when I
describe music-making philosophy these descriptions, this phenomenological
work, this writing, is properly a rhythmic thinking, or writing as drumming,
typing as a form of percussion! Perhaps
I should call the form of my work: ῥυθμός, rhythmos [rhythm: origin mid 16th cent. – also originally in the
sense of ‘rhyme’): from French rhythme, or via Lain from Greek rhythmos (related to rhein ‘to flow’).
n
[nb: Flow thinking,
rhythmic thinking; writing via drumming (typing); rhythmic typing?] –
The fragment
written on 12/24, which is suspended on 12/25, begins with a question: “How does this rapture with the Being of
beings unfold?” (BL 323) And then continues “First and foremost, the
aesthetic state is the principal modality of learning as…”(BL 323) transcendental suspension Vertical and horizontal transcendence: upward (the hand suspended from the drum,
from the keyboard); inward (inhaling toward silence); outward (Leap, turn, conversation). “First and foremost, the aesthetic state is
the principal modality of learning as…”
As?
As? brings me to the two prompts that I
document here. Both concern Paul. The first comes from Kierkegaard. It is an excerpt I was returned to yesterday
when writing on the Leap and the absurd, and is published in Kaufmann’s Existentialism, a book I have used many
times in my phil of ed course. The
excerpt is from the only published section of Kierkegaard’s On Authority and Revelation: The Book on
Adler, Or a Cycle of Ethico-Religious Essays, “Of the Difference Between a Genius and an
Apostle”:
“As a genius
Paul can sustain no comparison with Plato or with Shakespeare, as an author of
beautiful similes he ranks rather low, as stylist his is an obscure name…and
then comes the really serious thing, the serious fact that Paul was an apostle,
and as an apostle has no affinity either with Plato or Shakespeare….
A genius and an apostle are
qualitatively distinct, they are categories which belong each of them to their
own qualitative spheres: that of immanence
and that of transcendence. (1) The
genius may well have something new to contribute, but this newness vanishes
again in its gradual assimilation by the race, just as the distinction ‘genius’
vanishes when one things of eternity.
The apostle has paradoxically something new to contribute, the newness
of which, precisely because it is paradoxical and not an anticipation of what
may eventually be developed in the race, remains constant, just as an apostle remains
an apostle to all eternity, and no immanence of eternity puts him essentially
on the same plane with other men, since essentially he is paradoxically
different. (2) The genius is what he is
by reason of himself, i.e., by what he is in himself: an apostle is what he is
by reason of his divine authority. (3)
The genius has only immanent teleology; the apostle’s position is that of
absolute paradoxical teleology…”(106)
My intention
here is to document this important statement by Kierkegaard, one that demanding
and exegetical reading. But that will
have to wait for another day. Here I
merely want to highlight a few moments:
first and foremost, the distinction between genius and apostle, which
have to be thought together, dialectically; thinking them together draws one
into a thinking of the dialectical relation between immanence and transcendence. But Kierkegaard’s resistance to the dialectic
forces me to think experimentally the togetherness of immanence and transcendence. This is the second highlight: the supplement
of the dialectic by the paradoxical, which recalls to mind 12/12/14 OPM
(296(297): “With Kierkegaard we encounter a return
to the sentiments of earliest ‘philosophy’ of the Christian era that is
organized around the absurdity of
faith: credo quia absurdum
est.” The enactment of
faith is an enactment of the belief in what is absurd; it is a decision to
enact the paradoxical: to make or contribute something new, mimetically; the
absurdity of making a new copy; the absurdity of re-presenting the Present; “an
apostle remains an apostle to all eternity…he is essentially different.” This is the third highlight: the reduction to
difference (diff’rence) The apostle, the one who replicates what is
always already Present by mediating (delivering by way of proclamation) Logos.
He stands distinct from and unequal to others. Where is standing? What is the standing
(position) of the apostle?
As I way of
responding to that question I recall the commentary from OPM
296(297), December 12th:
“Here’s how Critchley puts it:
“The basic Pauline subjective attitude is anguished waiting…it is anguish in
relation to a calling…If Christian life is enacted in a proclamation, then what
is proclaimed is a calling. Such is the
core experience of faith.”(170) The
Pauline decisive decision is to enact life by saying Yes! to the calling. Paul
receives the call, or what I describe as the evocative invocation (note: vocare at the center), and once
turned-around/(re)turned/converted, he writes his gathering letters, his
epistles, which convey the “euaggelion,
announcement or gospel.”(170) We know
the importance of Paul identifying himself at the beginning of Galatians, but also in Romans, as ‘apostle,’ which announces
him as messenger of the Gospel. And it
also positions him as the one who is gathering together the (small) communities
of faith.”
He is
‘unequal’ because he is servant of the Holy Spirit; and he is different because
he moves in the realm of homo sacer.
And he is made different; is
exists in and through difference.
That brings
me to the second prompt, the sonic conversion of Saul. The calling of Paul that is so profound, and
powerful, sonically, that all who hear it are rendered speechless, and, Saul is
without sight, and can only hear, for
three days. From Acts III: 9:
“On his
journey, as he was nearing Damascus, a light from the sky suddenly flashed
around him. He fell to the ground and
heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ He said, ‘Who are you, sir?’ The reply came, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are
persecuting. Now get up and go into the
city and you will be told what you need to do.’
The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, for they heard the
voice but could see no one. Saul got up
from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing; so they led
him by the hand and brought him to Damascus.
For three days he was unable to see, and neither at nor drank.”
How does this rapture with the Being of beings
unfold? First and foremost, the
aesthetic state is the principal modality of learning as…
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