Thinking/Writing [again!] in the stream of
John Medeski/Billy
Martin Mago [repeating track 2 “Crustaceatron,”
6-7x, then 3, then en fin the
gospel/blues/soul track 4 “Apology” repeated 7-8x…]
[This afternoon commemorating
from Arabica Café on Free Street after picking up tix for Soulive New Years
Eve, State Theater]
Yesterday’s commentary
was organized around Words signified in their importance by
capitalization. Apparently, I was
anticipating the mediation from 12/29/04, which begins: “When we say ‘Life’ and
‘Nature’ we refer, first and foremost to the biosphere, what Arendt refers to
as our essential ‘Earthly’ abode, where all action, work, labor unfolds as human. But in using these primary terms [thereby
capitalizing them to emphasize the ‘proper’ role they play] we are drawing upon
the ancient Greek philosophical discourses for whom ‘nature’ (physis) identified the essential nature
of Being as the ‘unity’ of an emergent process of actualization.”(BL 328)
I don’t have the
citation ready-to-hand, and so I’ll need to follow up on the Arendt reference,
which, I’m certain, is taken from The
Human Condition, most likely from the preface or introduction [at the
moment I can’t recall if Arendt’s opening bit on the launching of the satellite
is published as prefatory or introductory remarks]. But I’m perplexed by the claim that the
claim that the ‘Earthly’ is a category in Arendt, and that the category is
inclusive of all spheres that include the basic trinity of labor, work, and
action. If this accurate then I may have
resolved an issue that has been puzzling me for some time now; the issue
arising from the action v. work & labor distinction that contrasts the
so-called ‘world’ against ‘nature.’
Here’s a rehearsal of the distinction:
labor and work arise from the logic of necessity; they happen because
they have to happen. Labor, generally speaking, part of the cycle
of life and death, is rooted in the biological (e.g., the work of our bodies);
work, not rooted but ground upon the same biological sphere of necessity,
specifically the repetitive and teleological character. Work is a translation of technē, a term that has emerged as one of the 12-13 central
categories in B&L 2.0. Here are two exemplary commentaries that
highlight my use of technē under the
lasting influence of Arendt:
OPM
245(246), October 17th Like an
Arendtian conservative education, poetic building is a careful cultivation that
sustains our capacity to make new things: techne
phusis. It is always mindful of the
coming community, the community to come, the arrival of the anticipated yet
unknown newcomers. The learning
community remains, like the bountiful field, in an almost eternal fecundity
(like the Earth), ready and waiting, but only insofar as it is taken care of,
that it is constantly repaired and renewed.
OPM 270(271), November 12th Indeed, the installation of studio sessions where the
emphasis will be on techne τέχνη is one way I am positioning myself as part
of that long tradition of ‘outsider’ thinkers/writers/artists; the studio
sessions aren’t simply avant-garde but counter-cultural and counter-hegemonic;
and the installation qualifies for those designations because of its being
organized around τέχνη.
The categorical opposition between action
and technē breaks down when we see that freedom is
happening under the logic of necessity and dependence. And this is where the description of
the learning community as the ‘gathering reconciliation’ emerges from, not to
mention the thinking that has identifies learning as mimetic music-making
happening via the call of compassionate listening and the servitude toward the
other. And here we see the
occasion for Arendt’s sense of horizontal dependence: “Performing artists –
dancers, play-actors, musicians, and the like – need an audience to show their
virtuosity, just as acting men need the presence of others before whom they can
appear; both need a publicly organized space for their ‘work,’ and both depend
on others for the performance itself.”(154)
After locating the
preceding commentaries I’m less inclined to read ‘Earthly’ as an exaggeration
or a caricature of Arendt. This is
important and reveals something about the ‘method’ or ‘style’ of my project,
which, first and foremost, wants to hear accurately what is being said; then
and only then, from the faithful reception of what has been said, can the
exegetical and/eisegetical proceed.
First phenomenological reception and decription – this is the original
that proceeds from the Originary and preceeds the originary. First
philosophy begins as phenomenology.
Poetics follows, and builds upon what has been received by taking up the
excess, what remains. Hence the maxim of
the project of originary thinking, more
poetry, less prose, indicates the poetics as taking up the excess, as
building up (both repairing and renewing), but the prosaic – the descriptive
following the reception, the listening, the hearing – is fundamental, and, thus
foundational. The prosaic in this sense
remains beneath the surface, the roots, below ground, primary in the sense of
primal because it is closet to the fecund
Silence. Originary
thinking/learning is thus always dependent upon the proper reception of the
call, which is a generic way of describing what is happening when thinking is
propelled by the force of a thinker, and not by a locomotive force. Here, again, we encounter the displacement
of the autonomous by the heteronomous.
Thinking is propelled by
the force of a thinker, and this force is one conveyed by another; this is the
style of what Schürmann calls the ‘retrospective’ gaze of originary thinking;
the re-collection that calls back
from the original effacement, the original phenomenological description; this
is the inherently conservative or tradition bound character of my project: “If
we follow Heidegger’s reading, Plato’s understanding of from the original effacement, the original
phenomenological description; this is the inherently conservative or tradition
bound character of my project: “If we follow Heidegger’s reading, Plato’s
understanding of physis retains some
of the earlier Greek discourse, specifically the dynamic of Heraclitus’ logos.
‘Surely physis still means
emergence for Plato, as it does primarily for the first beginnings of Greek
philosophy, emergence in the way a rose emerges, unfolding itself and showing
itself out of itself…Physis is the
primordial Greek grounding word for Being itself, in the sense of the presence
that emerges of itself and holds sway.’”(BL
328)
On 12/29/04 the
heteronomy experienced via learning is described as working under the force of
Life (and with the description of Life the category of ceaseless nativity appears nascent): “Life signifies not simply the
ceaseless creative activity of Nature, but the eternally creative spirit of
art, embodied and enacted in the work-of-art, in artwork. And learning is the
existential abiding expressing the attunement with Life. The learner is to learning as Nature is to
Life. But the former is not simply an
‘imitation’ but its essential expression, its (re)presentation.” (BL 328)
[nb: 12/29/04 (BL 328-329)
has inspired me to make a top ten list of meditations and commentaries. Indeed, I might henceforth recommend pp.
328-329 as the place to begin for anyone who expresses interest in reading Being and Learning, or teaching it – as
my younger brother proclaimed to me that he will do some day…manaña, manaña, manaña….in the excessive
time that remains!]
“The learner is to
learning as Nature is to Life.” A syllogism?!
Not exactly, or, exactly in
the strange logic that organizes Being
and Learning; the strange logic that allows the first part of a syllogism
to (re)present the second half. But
what of this re-presentation? The presentation, first and foremost, of the
relation of Nature and Life. Here’s a
qualification: “When we say ‘Nature’ and
refer to the ongoing creation of Life, we do not separate ‘Nature’ and ‘Life’
in the same way that we do not separate the artistic performance and the
artist, nor the learner from learning.”(BL
328)
Not simply an
‘imitation’ but its essential expression…[that
should suffice, and this is where the mimetic
becomes complicated]: on 12/29/04 the full force of the heteronomy that propels
Being and Learning is described: “Learning unfolds with the learner as the
en-actment of the attunement to Being. To learn is to be with Being, to emerge as a
created be-ing. To learn is to dwell as artwork, to abide existentially
(in/with Life) as creation.”(BL 328,
emphasis placed on 12/28/14) Less mimetic
imitation, more originary mediation.
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