The reading of OPM83 represents the last of the Jersey readings, and today marks the end of the academic year 2013-14 insofar as the next time I'll be on campus will be in early September. Of course, there are finals to be read, but that will be done from Portland!
So, appropriately, on this day of transition there was a page missing from the original material, so I had to read half of the meditation as it was published in Being and Learning (pp. 120-121). And unlike the material from the past two days, OPM 83 offers less compression/rhythmic repetition (although there is some of that for sure). Put differently the repetition of the past few days distills the new category of 'wisdom poetry,' which is named at the end of OPM 83 as the name for the writing of Heraclitus that exemplifies what I have been calling the evocative speech of the Sage. I build up to this category by repeating an important claim: "To be struck by wonder is to be enchanted....Evocative speech is an en-chantment. It is thus a celebratory song, a singing, or intoning." And then I underscore this with a citation from one of my favorite pieces by Heidegger, his 'Conversation Along A Country Path': "the horizon is the openness which surrounds us...we say we look into the horizon. Therefore the field is something open, but its openness is not due to our looking...It strikes me as something like a region, an enchanted region where everything belonging there returns to that in which it rests...And the enchantment of this region might well be the reign of its nature, its regioning..."
In turn, I write that the dwelling of the Sage appears in and through this enchanted region through his en-chantment, and "The enchantment of this regioning appears in its openness, which is not due to our looking, but is 'seen' and 'heard' in the dwelling of learning. The 'seeing' and 'hearing of this enchanted regioning unfolds in the poetic dialogue that we might call the reciprocal exchange of wisdom poetry."
February 13, 2014 was the 10th anniversary of the original experiment that produced 363 phenomenological mediations, published as 'Being and Learning' (Brill: 2012). Each day between Feb 2014-15, I returned to the original meditations, and my commentary is documented here. And then, again, on February 15, 2024, on the 20th anniversary of the first days of the original experiment, I revisit and comment on a daily basis, once again.
3.0 - I appreciate how 2.0 situates the location of the re-collection of the original meditation. The old place in Summit, 29 Sunset Drive, although it's now been 8 years since the family relocated, still remains an important place for me. As important is the cataloguing of the original material, specifically on this day ten years ago including the citation from Heidegger. While the description of the evocative saying of the save as "enchanting" is one that continues to circulate, although rare deployed, I had forgotten that source that initiated that move. The fragment from Heidegger is worth citing again: "It strikes me as something like a region, an enchanted region where everything belonging there returns to that in which it rests...And the enchantment of this region might well be the reign of its nature, its regioning..." Yesterday I emphasized the third moment in the dialectic is the enactment of poetic praxis, the mimetic response to the encounter with the significant object. Here the first and second moments are reiterated with description of the Open region of learning as an "enchanted region." The Open as enchanted underlines the place of learning as a location of poetic praxis, which begins with the turning around (periagogē) and continues with the crossing over (diagogē) and culminates with the circulation, which, to be consistent, we might identify as the paideia, the learning, which Heidegger suggests is not bildung (cultural education) but an encounter with freedom. I see the two as so closely related as to be almost indistinguishable. Of course, for Heidegger, bildung has denotations and historical connotations that have almost no resonance for me. I'm borrowing the term and translating into "cultural education," but emphasizing the technical aspect of it. Cultural education remains an encounter with significant objects, with works of art, but this encounter is dialectically countered with production, with praxis, with making. This is the trajectory of an Arendtian education: first the student learns to care for the world because they are exposed to the "enchanted region," they are enchanted by an encounter with the world that reveals it to be resonating and glimmering with significance. Next they remain within the enchanted region and are inspired to repair and renew the world. Circulation of significance as mimetic repetition. Poetic praxis as imitation, which is not copying, but following the model, or the pattern. "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." Arendt says that our desire to repair and renew the world is one of love for the world (amor mundi). If we love the world such that we will work to save it from ruin, then that an expression of that love is an imitation of what's encountered therein, imitation in the form of flattery, an expression of admiration. Admiration: from ad - 'at' and mirari 'wonder'. If philosophy is born of wonder (thaumadzein) then the turning around is an experience that leads to admiration: to be at wonder. The response to this modality (being in wonder) is immitation: the reproduction of something significant. Poetic praxis: "Socrates, make music and work at it!"
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