Thinking/Writing in the stream of
[repeating “Hat Trick” 6-7x. Has to be Soulive from earlier last month in Boston; last night’s
New Year’s show at the State Theater in Portland, Maine was classic
Soulive. Just the trio of Kras and the
Evans bros. No shady horn section. Just the trio: SOUL LIVE, SPIRITUAL, PURE SOUL MUSIC! On to 2015.
On to Memphis! We’re high steppin’ the rest of the way!!!]
Today marks the
beginning of the twelfth calendar month of this experiment, which got underway
in February, 2014, and the beginning of the year 2015, which gets underway with
the highest of expectations regarding music-making philosophy, responding to
the call of Memphis:
we are not
only grounding the conference in the local historicity of Memphis, but also
reaching back to the very beginnings of philosophy, when it was literally
understood to be soul music, understood quite generally as education. For the ancient Greeks μουσική (mousike) meant the art of the muses,
and, with respect to education, was the foundation of all practices
contributing to the proper formation of the soul. In this sense, when we retrieve ‘music’ as μουσική (mousike), we find ourselves taking up the education of
the soul, or, perhaps, a soulful education, which better captures the way we
are situating philosophy of education within the Memphis context.
Making Philosophy,
and Delivering the Good(s) to the Absent Monarch
By framing the conference around the
blues and soul music, and emphasizing our gathering as a showcase for the ways
we make philosophy of education, my
interest, as program chair, is to encourage papers and proposals that express
an experimental spirit, and understand our meeting as an occasion to exhibit
new theoretical and conceptual strategies, novel discursive forms, alternative
ways of approaching perennial questions and authoritative figures, as well as
bold initiatives for organizing the way we gather to share and support the work
of philosophy of education. I am inviting anyone who will be
submitting papers, and alternative session proposals to understand our
gathering as not just ‘another’ PES, but as philosophical event or happening,
as a moment in what late Ilan Gur Ze’ev described as an Orcha: “an improvised moment that is to find/create its own
destiny.”
Soul Music, Soul Live! For the ancient Greeks μουσική (mousike)
meant the art of the muses, and, with respect to education, was the foundation
of all practices contributing to the proper formation of the soul. In this sense, when we retrieve ‘music’ as μουσική (mousike)…
we are practicing music-making philosophy
The
project, this project, proclaimed as
music-making philosophy. [hear today the
omega commentary to come in six weeks…Omega
(end, last): Ω, ω, transliterated as ‘o’ or ‘ō.’ -- the twenty-fourth, and last,
letter of the Greek alphabet. Recall: from yesterday’s commentary: “Originary
thinking is signified as 1.0. Being signified as 0.” Stop and think; listen,
think, teach.]
The proclamation issued before the meditation from this day
ten years ago that returns to the very beginning of the project, Plato. 1/1/05 begins: “We concur with Plato when
insisting that lovers of are those that are attuned to Being, who abide in/with
Being’s essential sway, and who express the reception of this movement through
action, with an en-acting of the creative making.”(BL 331) An en-acting is a
gesture towards modesty that I appreciate ten years later as the attempt to
offer fundamental ontological description without somehow lapsing into
metaphysics. Isn’t this our greatest
challenge, the steepest part of the ascent/descent?
An
en-actment of creative making. ‘Creative making’ is also on target,
communicating the mimetic mediation happening with en-actment. “Such en-actment embodies the initiative of
the originary dispensation by performing a (re)presentation of the initiative
process, conveying the unconcealment of Being. This performance unfolds, first
and foremost, in the receptive modality of steadfast openness…en-opened to /by
the awakening of the imaginative occurring with the mysterious arrival of the
ineffable, the ‘not yet’ said, the new.”(BL
331)
Attunement to the originary dispensation; enactment of music-making
philosophy: “In
this sense, when we retrieve ‘music’ as μουσική (mousike), we find ourselves taking up the education of
the soul, or, perhaps, a soulful education…”(PES Memphis 2015 CFP) –[ “Alladin” from 12/12/14 so
freakin funky! Has to be the Memphis PES revival jam!]--
Socrates, he’s the sage, the patron, the padrino, the godfather of this camino
Mafioso. 1/1/05 returns to the
beginning of the project that begins under the heading: “Tune in, Turn on, Let Learning Happen”. And then proceeds: “In what follows I offer
an account of teaching as the art of turning on the desire to behold Being.”(BL 1)
Teaching turns on the desire
for attunement. Learning is the
enactment of that attunement. And
teaching is only just letting learning happen.
But it is not just letting in
the negative libertarian sense, but showing, demonstrating. The teacher is always the first in learning, the
original learner, the one attuned to the essential sway – the originary swing, the fundamental funk. “To be attuned to Being’s essential sway is
to be awakened by/to the excessive radicality of difference, the presencing of
Being as the ceaseless arrival of the
new…”(BL 331, emphasis on
1/1/05) [nb: I continue to wait upon the arrival of the category ‘ceaseless
nativity’. Perhaps I missed it? Perhaps it has already arrived and
departed? No question these alternative
phrases demonstrates the disclosure force of aletheia.]
“In
the sixth book of the Republic Plato
describes the philosopher as ‘the real lover of learning.’”(BL 1…September 03?...nb: remember: the project was put
underway in the fall of 2003…and this is why the beginning of Being and
Learning, the Introduction, and even before
that, the Prologue, were written
months before and then years after the B&L
1.0) So “From the onset we have
identified Socrates as the exemplar of the lover of learning who abides in the
confusion and paradoxical happening of Being, conveying this uncertainty, this
aporetic condition of be-ing human to all who…enter into the dialogic encounter
with him.”(BL 332) He who abides is attuned; and he who
conveys, enacts.
For
me all the paths of thinking/writing/learning/teaching lead back to Socrates;
back to the agora and back to that
Athenian jail cell. Socrates is the
exemplar against which all others are heard; all others, specifically: Heraclitus,
Paul, Lao Tzu, Arendt, Irigaray, Heidegger, Thoreau, DuBois, Nietzsche,
Aristotle. “Socrates…the
exemplar…Socrates’ questioning evoked the constant arrival of the ex-cessive,
the presencing that spills over the present…Socrates welcomed the new in every
encounter where he (re)presented ‘his’ ‘self’ as a question, as estranged, and
thereby en-acted the truth of the human condition by expressing the wisdom of
ignorance and humility, the diminishment be-fore the un-canniness of
possibility offered in the encounter with the otros, our ‘out’ others who un-bind and release ‘us’ into the
un-knowable.”(BL 332) Today I would describe this releasement as
the emancipation in/to koinōnia. Socrates, as Heidegger reminds us,
was ‘pure’ in strength. He did not run for the shelter…of
writing!! Until the end, when he sat on
death row and from his prison bequeathed to us music-making philosophical
writing.
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