Indeed, listening is
fundamental. Today, this day, and this
day a decade ago, listening remains fundamental. In preparing for my lecture on Heraclitus,
this morning, on the train from New Providence to Penn Station, I read from
Heidegger’s last undelivered lecture (XII) from the summer semester 1952, that
is published in the book edited by my old New School friend and classmate David
Jacobs. In the lecture, ostensibly
about the fragments from Parmenides’ poem, Heidegger says, in his preliminaries,
that the challenge before us is to establish a dialogic relation with the
earliest thinkers, so that we can hear them in their thinking as opposed to
through our own. Listening is
fundamental. “Everything depends on
whether the dialogue initiated by this later thinking opens itself freely from
the outset, and constantly, so as to let itself be addressed in an
authoritative manner by the earlier thinking…”(p. 175) Listening is fundamental, and the first
challenge is to think under the banner of ATTENTIVE, PAINSTAKING, and
COMPASSIONATE LISTENING, but before we meet that challenge we must think the
practice of this listening, and we must practice the thinking that is this
listening. Listening is fundamental in
the sense that it is the original and originary, it is the practice through
which learning begins, the beginning practice of learning, and also the
practice through which learning begins.
We listen, first, and hear the old adage: Learn to Listen, Listen to Learn.
I was listening to Sappho this
morning, before reading Heidegger.
Today’s lecture takes up Sappho.
Her fragment 10 grabbed my attention,
and I wondered about the oak tree, and whether it grew on the island of
Lesbos, and, if it did, whether it grew on the highest ground? I wondered if there was a tree line on the
mountains of Lesbos? These are strictly
empirical questions, and ones I will find answers to when I arrive to campus
within the hour. For now, I conclude
these alba remarks with Sappho’s 10th
fragment, as translated by my Hofstra colleague Tom MacCary, who will be
delivering today’s lecture:
10.
Eros d’etinaxe moi…
Eros has
stirred my senses
Like a wind whipping through the oaks
On
a mountain top.
Listening
is fundamental.
This is where the meditation from this day ten years ago begins,
declaring it to be the central focus of concern: “”our interest is is to
describe this precondition, this hearing that is presumed and demanded by all
narration, by all saying. This is the
hearing of painstaking and compassionate listening that mus be practiced as the
invocation of the learning that unfolds from the letting-be of questioning,
from the releasement of the juridical voice.” The chapter where this material is organized
is given the title “Zarathustra’s Descent,” and it is the existential modality
of Zarathustra that gathers the focus of the meditations. And this modality is identified as the formation he has received on the
mountain, which, in today’s hegemonic language would be described as the
‘outcome’ of his education.
“Zarathustra’s going under,
his descending is a carrying forth of
the one who bears the openness of reception…”
His descent begins when he
declares to the great star that he is
overflowing from the wisdom he had received, he is weary “like a bee that has
gathered too much honey, I need outstretched hands to receive it. I would give away and distribute…For that I
must descend to the depths, as you do in the evening when you go behind the sea
and still bring light to the underworld, you overrich star.”(Nietzsche) Zarathustra has much to say because he had gathered much, too much, and is
overflowing. The title of Nietzsche’s
book, which emphasizes the speech making of Zarathustra, only works because
Zarathustra has reached the capacity of his listening. And this is why I needed to write a legend
of Zarathustra’s ascent; the story of the listening that formed him into the
speech maker.
What kind of speeches are those
given by the one who is overflowing from what he has gathered in listening? Hardly speeches at all, but stories,
parables, and above all else messages.
The German Sprache, which is
the word Nietzsche uses in his title, does not suggest speeches in the formal
sense of that word, but the more everyday speaking. ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’ is the way the title
is usually translated, and with the translation we hear better the sonic force
as well as the common character of his speaking, his voice. In the reading that informs the meditation from
this day ten years ago, the force Zarathustra’s is measured by his capacity to
deliver what he has gathered; it is a
force that he does not produce or make but only transmits. In this sense he is a messenger of the
wisdom he has gathered. Like Hermes, the
one who brings the message, and for whom hermeneutics owes its origin,
Zarathustra offers hermeneuin, or
“that exposition which brings tidings because it can listen to a message.” This
is the citation of Heidegger I make in the meditation to back track into the
fundamental receptivity of listening.
Zarathustra offers an exposition of a received message; he speaks after
he has listened. He is conveying a
message, put it out there, putting into the public, but stopping short of
explaining. His is an offering.
The meditation from this day concludes:
Zarathustra “brings the tidings as the one who has remained, essentially, the one who can listen.”
3.0 (Wednesday, Portland, ME). Before I even read the 2.0 commentary on the OPM from this day 20 years ago, I want to share an edit I made towards the end of the Intro to "LEARN," which includes a citation from Heidegger's "Country Path Conversations," one of the few dialogues he wrote - Of course, if by “result” we mean something lasting or even permanent, like a new skill that is learned, then, yes, a philosophical dialogue can appear to finish without a result. On the one hand, this is because there is always more to take up, and thus when the discussion is finished there is a collective sense of To be Continued, as opposed to The End. On the other hand, there is a sense that the seminar discussion has produced a result, the production of something truly meaningful, which is to say, a meaningful learning experience, or what I will describe below as a collective performance of freedom. “Meaning…must be permanent and lose nothing of its character, whether it be achieved, or rather, found by [students] or fails [them] or is missed by [them].” (HC, 155) What Arendt calls the durability and permanence of meaning can be disclosed by significant objects students are invited to study. To say the students are “invited” is to acknowledge that they may reject the offer, or not be captivated by the book, and feel uninspired by the works they are asked to study. Still the invitation extends beyond the solitude of study because it may be that during the discussion they are inspired by what others have to say about the text. Like Socrates, a philosophical education is patient and recognizes that dialogue has an uncanny power to take on a life of its own. And when that is happening the experience of learning together with others can be lasting and can have a formative effect that seems like an outcome or result. Even the errantry of philosophical wandering on crooked paths takes us somewhere. Heidegger, who like Arendt figures prominently in this book, calls the liberation described in Plato’s cave allegory “releasement” (Gelassenheit), and suggests that philosophical dialogue “brings us onto that path which seems to be nothing other than releasement itself.” (CPC, 76) Dialogue happens by way of Gelassenheit, which is “the way” and also “the movement,” both path and process.(CPC, 77) “Where does this strange way go?,” he asks in the voice of the Scholar who is one of the characters in the dialogue Country Path Conversations. He responds in the voice of the Guide, “Where else than in the open-region”(CPC, 77) that remains “nameless.” Might we tentatively call this nameless strange path that leads to the open-region the crooked path of thinking?
ReplyDelete3.0b - And, of course, the coincidence of reading a Heidegger citation that refers to "dialogue"! - 'Listening is fundamental. “Everything depends on whether the dialogue initiated by this later thinking opens itself freely from the outset, and constantly, so as to let itself be addressed in an authoritative manner by the earlier thinking…”(p. 175)'. Listening was back then (20/10 years ago) and remain today the central modality of the practice I am calling a philosophical education. Sharing another edit I made, which moved the following from the Intro to the beginning of Part 1 - Reading:
ReplyDelete"Leaning begins with listening, which means it begins in silence. To be silent is not only to restrain from speaking, but to prioritize listening without reference to speaking. This kind of listening is a readiness to hear, as opposed to not speaking. If listening were only the absence of speaking, then it would only be a pause in speaking. Listening that is a readiness for hearing is neither a reduction from speaking, nor an absence of speaking. Such listening is a modality of reception that anticipates meaning, and it is essentially experiential." In turn, it's worth reciting the end of the 2.0 that ends with the ending of the OPM from this day: "The meditation from this day concludes: Zarathustra 'brings the tidings as the one who has remained, essentially, the one who can listen.'" I suppose it's fitting that Part 1 - Reading has as its epigraph a citation from Nietzsche!