This early morning on my way back down Sunset Drive I
encountered my own footsteps from the night before. Note, the steps, on the other side of the line are the fresh ones taken on the way back down the hill this early morning
[anticipatory writing,
happening on the NJT back from the GD at 1am 2/10/15 Porto Delgado time…]
Yesterday, when we reviewing articles, I asked about Αριστοτελες basic question τί τό ον;
[the semi-colon signifies the question mark for our work in Attic Greek]. Presuming the question asks about existence
in the infinitive sense of ‘being’, which is to say, Being, I sought
clarification. Indeed, the question does
ask about Being, and even though it can be translated as “What is Being?” we
should not be distracted by the τό as
if it were reducing existence to a thing.
And it is precisely the peculiarity of the question of Being that causes
it be the fundamental philosophical question, the originary question, because
Being is already presumed in the question by the τό. ‘What is
Being?’ already presumes the existence of existence. Peculiar and already drawing us into
thinking. This is why the question is
rephrased as ‘How is Being?’ in order to emphasize the manner in which
existence appears to us. How is Being appearing to us? How is Being for us?
Of course, there is a bit of anthropocentrism and humanism lingering in
this way of phrasing the question, because why should the matter be for us?
The straight forward answer affirms that it can only be a matter for us because it is a question raised by us.
Indeed, the whole project of originary thinking as an educational
project only makes sense because of the inevitably of the lingering
anthropocentrism. This does not reduce
Being to a thing, object, nor to an idea, much less a person. Rather, the reduction is only a delineation
of the question as the one that designates the response to the appearance of
things that leads us back to the question ground where this appearance is
arriving. The question of Being
arrives through δοχα, which is mistranslated as opinion, or, worse, mere opinion
that stands in contrast to knowledge. Δοχα makes several
denotations that are all related by to the fundamental showing of Being as
presencing, that is, are all reduced back to becoming. Δοχα denotes glory,
appearance, shining, and thinking. I was
startled by the conviction with which Stephen Smith identified δοχα
with thinking, but remained reticent, because it was eminently clear to me why
phenomenology stood along with the exegetical work of hermeneutics as the only
philosophical methodologies capable to moving past the frozen ‘problems’ of
theoretical discourse – ‘word’ problems, or ‘puzzles’ – and thereby return to
original question. And here it must be
repeated, again, the responding to the fundamental question does not lead us to
‘science’ nor to ‘knowledge’ but to the poetic making, because the response to
the fundamental on-to-logical question is a mimetic one:
1.
What
is Being?
2.
Being
is what is happening.
3.
How
is Being happening?
4.
Being
is happening via becoming.
5.
How
is becoming happening to us?
6.
Becoming
is happening to us as poetical
actuality, as the working out of humanity.
7.
Are
we participating in the working out of humanity?
8.
Thinking
takes us the matter of this working out.
9.
How
is the thinking happening that is working out humanity?
10. The thinking working
out humanity is learning, which is the (re)presentation of what is presencing;
the mimetic expression and at the same time realization of poetical
actualization.
[--the second set of
11.29.80 from Alligator Alley, U Fla is sublime, especially on an the early,
cold crisp train ride --]
Back to Aristotle’s
fundamental question τί τό ον ? Again, the retrospective gaze of originary
thinking demands a retrieval, but the prospective qualifies such bringing back
is qualified by the hermeneutical horizon where we find ourselves. It is within that horizon that the question
appears to us as our being-then in
becoming. The error it seems to me is to
mistake this horizon for the place of thinking, and to get lost in double
hermeneutical move, and thereby make an interpretation of the horizon from
which the interpretation is happening.
There is a kind of solipsism and self-referential move happening that I
perceive as a dead end, philosophically.
At the very least, I want to claim that such work is not thinking the
fundamental question of ontology, is not hearing
the question τί τό ον ? So
called educational theory and the complementary cultural studies are examples
of work in my field that don’t hear the question τί τό ον ?
I haven’t returned to the fundamental question in order squabble with my
peers, but, rather, to indicate how I am retrieving the fundamental question as
a way to guide the project of originary thinking, and its poetic turn, which is
to say, its turn toward praxis and techne.
The retrieval turns on the translation/interpretation of the question τί
τό ον ? as both What is Being?, but also
Why is Being?, and perhaps Who is Being? (although I’m not yet prepared to make
that translation, at least not in this last week of 2.0). τί is the interrogative pronoun/ adjective,
that along with τις is
used to introduce questions: τί τό ον ? τί can also be used as an adverb meaning
‘why’, but this would would compel us to re-write the fundamental question, and
thereby push beyond the exegetical and into the eisegetical. Indeed, the re-writing makes the
complementary educational question that arises from first philosophy, or that
expresses the fundamental educational question of first philosophy. Put differently, the re-writing that issues
from the adverbial writing of τί shows
how the reception of the fundamental ontological question τί τό ον is one that
responds to the question existentially.
This reception is the crux of the dynamic betwen Being and learning, and
why I have been emphasizing in this commentary the fundamental question as one
that appears for us. Learning is an existential undertaking, which is to say, the working out of the
human being, a working out of our humanity, in the sense that working out constitutes the free
presencing of the human expressed poetically, understanding, of course, that
there is a force compelling and propelling that work, and this understanding is
kept close at hand in the constant recollection – living memory – of the
originary question that is heard as the original question, the question
concerning the human as a beginning because he can begin, and maker because he
is being made. All this to say that
thinking the question τί τό ον ? leads
us to hear it as τί as Why?, which then compels us to rewrite the question as
Why Being?, and thus as along the
continuum that lead Heidegger to translate the fundamental quesiton as
Why is there something rather than nothing?
I hear the fundamental question as calling us to hear the Why and What
together, as qualifying each other, so that the fundamental ontological
question of Being is received as the fundamental existential question ‘are
you’. This is precisely how I discovered
the movement of the fundamental ontological question to the fundamental
topological question that co-arises with the fundamental existential
question. This discovery was confirmed
in the encounter with Thoreau in July, and the reading of his epiphanic Where are we? Who are we? τί τό ον ?
is not quite Where are we?, but can be heard both as What is Being?, and
Who are you?, with the latter qualified as a question that is re-directing us
back to a mimetic re-presentation of Being’s becoming, so that the question of
Who is taken up as a making. And this
returns me to the reading of τί in the adverbial Why?, and the writing of the
existential question τί ἒτεις? [--I’ll need to confirm that with Smith, but for now, on the
LIRR, I’ll go with it under the influence of Garcia’s bluesy singing of
Shakedown imploring me “just gotta poke around…”--] that is my attempt at writing in ‘the
original’ the fundamental existential question, Why are you Being? The Spanish of my childhood seems to phrase
it well, Porque estas haciendo eso niño?, which is not simply the parental Why
are you doing that child, or my child, but, more importatntly, For what reason
are you doing that child? Porque,
por que [not to be confused with para...] captures well the significance of the
fundamental existential question as asking us at one and the same time Why?,
and What?, and both indicating the sense of service and servitude: for what are you doing that?, for whom are you doing that? And in this way the fundamental question that
addresses each of ‘us’ is directing us away from ‘our’ selves, and via
self-overcoming towards others and the world.
[--arriving at Mineola station...time to move from train to campus shuttle
bus...to WRHU studio...to undergrad seminar room. When I return to this commentary it will be
to distill Sentences from 2/10/05 --]
First, before distilling Sentence from 2/10/05, I
want to share something I came across in
Heidegger as I was doing some prep work before the seminar discussion of
Plato’s Allegory. I was leafing quickly
through Heidegger’s analysis of the Allegory, but also took off my office book
shelf his lectures from Freiburg in the summer of 1930, published under the
title The Essence of Human Freedom. The second chapter is titled «Leading
Question of Philosophy,» which is organized around Aristotle’s fundamental
question. At the onset he akss «what is
supposed to be worth of questiong in the traditional leading question of
philosophy τί τό ον ?...It
inquires in the being of beings, not
into what beings are. What is worthy of
questioning is precisely being.”(28)
And then, further along, he distills the lecture into three Sentence,
the third that is important, because it not only reminds out that the
alternative, and perhaps traditional, word for Being that is handed down form
Attic philosophy is οùσια:
“3. The traditional conception of οùσια as substance likewise involves the primoridal meaning of οùσια
qua παροùσια.”(46)
And
then Heidegger adds in the brief one line commentary after the writing of the
summary Sentences: “After all this, the fundamental meaning of οùσια in the sense of παροùσια still remains obscure.”(46)
It
is the obscurity of παροùσια that remains the prompt
for thinking, and that is the source of the call to learning. This calling is received by the teacher and
shared when he conveys via questioning his primordial intuition into becoming.
[--now back in the studio, finishing up, and recording
the DZ, and thus at the present moment writing/thinking in the stream of Marco
Bennevento performance from 11.9.13 from the 8x10 in Baltimore http://youtu.be/tyKd4ayQvxE--]
1. ‘Learners are [the] performers...taken up by the welcoming embrace, and
seized...in that clearing en-opened by the primordial intuition.’ (BL 383)
2. ‘teaching...in this way...(re)calls the...improvisation of learning through
the reception that welcomes the (re)presentation of Being’s becoming in the
be-ing of human, the performance of freedom...brought forth, liberated, with
learning.’ (BL 383)
3. ‘The philosopher without standpoints!, is the teacher, caught up and seized
by the movement of Being’s essential sway that we here identify as liberation.’
(BL 384)
4. The primordial intuition reveals the fundamental phenomenological attitude,
what Heidegger describes as the “fundamental life-stance
of phenomenology: the sympathy of experience with life!”
1.2Disclosed
in the fundamental-life stance via the conveying of the primordial intuition is
the force (fuerza) of life itself,
such that in learning we are enlivened.
1.3The
teacher is thus “the one en-raptured with the bringing-forth of the
new…enlivened by the ceaseless nativity…the particularity and uniqueness
brought forth with each creative moment in the work of art.” (BL 384)
2.
In showing (pointing) to what is more original, primordial, and thus
originary, the teacher’s first teaching forces the student beyond themself.
3.
In pointing to the originary the teacher is turning the student toward what
is always already holding them, the ground of their existence, Being.
4.
«In this way teaaching ‘admits,’ by delivering, akin to the midwife...the
improvisational saying of the ‘not yet’ said, the birth of the new, the
ceaseless nativity of the be-ing of human, the becoming of Being.»(BL 384)
1.1.
In being pointed away from themself and to the ground, the student is
(re)turned to Being and to becoming
1.2. «With this circum-turning...the teacher
en-opens the clearing that estranges and thereby releases the student from the
confines of ‘identity’ and ‘self’...turned around to their ownmost
possibility...and thus turned around full circle and beyond the location from
where they arrived.»(BL 384)
1.3. «Turned around full circle and beyond, the student emerges as teh one who
takes up a dialogical modality...incomplete and (de)construccion.» (BL
384)
The marginal note alongside the concluding moment of the original
meditation is the encircled number 363, which identifies the full circle and
some, which is precisely where I am about to cross as I complete this 363rd day
of commentary!
See Sentences May 15, 2015 http://duartebeinglearningsentences.blogspot.com/
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