OPM 82 offers lots and lots of 'compression,' which I have described in previous meditations as rhythmic repetition that over time refines the key concepts, questions, terms, etc. In my post-reading commentary I compare these daily exercises to the kind one does when training with a team, or even the disciplined daily practice on a musical instrument. Repetition is a form of practice that, as the saying goes, makes perfect. However, I'd hardly say I was going for perfection, and, on the contrary, when I was writing these daily phenomenological pieces it felt quite imperfect and somewhat messy because of the repetition. In another context I have written of 'novelty exhaustion,' which comes from the struggle of constantly saying something new. I suppose artists and some musicians feel this, although I suspect if one is 'struggling' to say something new, perhaps one doesn't have anything new to say?
Now that question goes to the heart of the project, that is, to the heart of the phenomenology of Being and learning. For, on the one hand, there is a very intense emphasis placed on 'natality' and 'novelty' as the human condition disclosed in learning/thinking. So if we are indeed learning/thinking then we are taking up human freedom, which is disclosed via natality. However, as we are reminded by the birds who were singing in the background this morning while I was reading OPM 82, there is distinction and novelty in repetition. I came to this insight at dawn when, as a result of one too many espressos last night, I found myself wide awake. Listening to the earliest of the early birds singing, I recognized the 'fee bee' call of the Black-Capped Chickadee. It seems like I have heard this call my whole life, and certainly in all the years I've lived in various places in the northeastern U.S. Listening to the 'fee bee' call, I thought, "They repeat the same call, over and over, and yet if they didn't we wouldn't recognize them, nor, I suspect, would they each other. So distinction is disclosed in repetition." Indeed, distinction is disclosed in repetition.
All this to say that because they were written each day these phenomenological meditations at times 'sound the same.' And I remember feeling at the beginning of each daily exercise some sense of frustration that what I was documenting or describing (writing phenomenologically) was appearing to me as 'the same.' Then, at a certain point I gave into this re-appearance, and finally recognized this recurrence as, in fact, the essential way of Being, or the rhythm of the relation between Being and learning. Distinction is disclosed in repetition, or Being in the Eternal Recurrence of the Same.
Now that question goes to the heart of the project, that is, to the heart of the phenomenology of Being and learning. For, on the one hand, there is a very intense emphasis placed on 'natality' and 'novelty' as the human condition disclosed in learning/thinking. So if we are indeed learning/thinking then we are taking up human freedom, which is disclosed via natality. However, as we are reminded by the birds who were singing in the background this morning while I was reading OPM 82, there is distinction and novelty in repetition. I came to this insight at dawn when, as a result of one too many espressos last night, I found myself wide awake. Listening to the earliest of the early birds singing, I recognized the 'fee bee' call of the Black-Capped Chickadee. It seems like I have heard this call my whole life, and certainly in all the years I've lived in various places in the northeastern U.S. Listening to the 'fee bee' call, I thought, "They repeat the same call, over and over, and yet if they didn't we wouldn't recognize them, nor, I suspect, would they each other. So distinction is disclosed in repetition." Indeed, distinction is disclosed in repetition.
All this to say that because they were written each day these phenomenological meditations at times 'sound the same.' And I remember feeling at the beginning of each daily exercise some sense of frustration that what I was documenting or describing (writing phenomenologically) was appearing to me as 'the same.' Then, at a certain point I gave into this re-appearance, and finally recognized this recurrence as, in fact, the essential way of Being, or the rhythm of the relation between Being and learning. Distinction is disclosed in repetition, or Being in the Eternal Recurrence of the Same.
3.0 - "Distinction is disclosed in repetition." Yesterday I wrote about my method, which, as a general category I replace with the term "pattern." I have only recently become interested in describing my "method," or the approach I use with my teaching and my writing. By definition a "method" is the strategy one repeats. Repetition is the crux of the matter when it comes to "method." And what characterizes a method is the pattern or shape it takes. Hence I prefer to use "pattern" because that term more authentically denotes the circularity of the way I return again and again to singular ideas, or to what is best described as "significant" ideas. To describe ideas as "significant" is to remain consistent with the identification of ideas with the significant object, i.e., the work of art. This is all sound awfully Platonic! But there it is, again, this suspicion that I remain inspired by Plato, or, better put, remain within the ontological framework he designed, specifically, the claim that the truth is revealed through the perceived shimmer or resonance of things, the aura of singularity and authenticity that emanates from things. Immediately it seems we are confronted with an epistemological problem: how can we perceive/receive this emanation? I have mostly avoided the epistemological, and been satisfied with describing the modality of receptivity that enables us to receive the emanation of significance. Moreover, I have emphasized how we are captivated by the aura of singularity, the power of significance. If and when we are captivated by significance, by the aura of singularity and authenticity, we are seized, enthralled, enraptured, ensnared, engrossed. The roots of "captivation" tell the story: Latin - captivare: taken captive. The dynamic paradox at the heart of the matter is the claim that in being taken captive by the power of significance we are set free from the repetition of the same, the non-educational repetition. If the relation of Being and Learning is characterized by the dynamic repetition of ceaseless nativity, which is a category that makes an appearance later in the original year of writing, then this relation is not an Eternal Recurrence of the Same, unless the "same" is the identity of the circulation that is a pattern of repeating the encounter with the new, or what Arendt calls the power to initiate. The force of initiative. "To seize the initiative" is the poetic praxis response to the encounter with significance, the so-called "outcome," the culmination of Learning. This is the "synthetic" third moment of the dialectic, and how the problem of freedom is resolved. The learner is seized, taken captive and then released but is now transformed, as Foucault describes it, and thus ready to have a further encounter with the truth, understood as what is real, authentic, and emanating the aura of singularity. In other words, the learner is now a maker, and artist. "Socrates, make music and work at it!."
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