“Death
is…‘the highest and utmost corroboration of be-ing.’”(citation of Heidegger, BL 230, 10/6/04)
The
figure of the descending Zarathustra overflowing with ‘too much wisdom’ is
likened to the one who has transcended into anatman,
the Buddhist modality of non-self achieved in meditative thinking’s letting-go
and letting-be. Zarathustra,
speech-maker, the one who enjoins close listening is the sage, teacher who ‘teaches’
by letting learning be learned. He is
the exemplar of the poetic teacher, one initiates and guides (orchestrates,
conducts, leads) the making (poiein)
with others a community of learning (koinonia). In this making all are learners, students because they dwell together in the
studio. [To understand my project it is
necessary to think the link between study, study, and studio]. Because he becomes one with the others, dwelling together in the studio of learning,
his demonstrates the diminishment of what Heidegger calls the ‘authoritative
know-it-all’. And “this letting-go, this
renunciation of the juridical voice, is the enactment of the incomplete self,
the unfinished…that unfolds in the company of others, in the building of the
common world together…”(BL 230,
10/6/04)
When
Zarathustra descends from his mountain cave with ‘too much wisdom’ he makes his
way down and on to the ground mapped as the open region. But this ground is also the fallow and fecund
ground ‘ready-to-hand’. Ready-to-hand
for what? For learning. For making learning. For making learning dialogically. The ground Zarathustra descends upon with
‘too much wisdom’ is the ground ready-to-hand for cultivation. How does cultivate this ground? Carefully; with care.
Cultivation
of the open ground via learning is another way of describing the making of
learning as the making of culture. Poiein is making, forming, and building
of the community (koinonia). Now, as a mimetic re-presentation of the
organic totality, the formation of the
learning community is human working out of gathering (legein) of Logos via
human dia-logos. All the while this is worked out first and
foremost via listening, but one “that is not simply ‘close’ but compassionate
listening.”(BL 231, 10/7/04)
[above written on the morning
ride from 29 Sunset Dr to Hofstra…then teaching….] During the day, the
uncanny…again…disclosed in the ‘coincidental’…second discussion of Heraclitus
with my sections, today, the sharing of selected and translated fragments. Student, anxious to begin, selects fragment
68, and a conversation ensues regarding death, specifically, death of the self:
“To souls it is death to become water, and to water it is death to become
earth, but from earth comes water, and from water, soul.” I link 68 to fragment 25: “Fire lives the
death of air, and air lives the death of fire; water lives the death of earth,
earth that of water.” And from the
discussion we reach a consensus on an exegetical reading of Heraclitus (paraphrased
here): “Life follows the renewal of the past (tradition); death of the self
follows the non-renewal.” First section
begins with this fragment, and second section concludes with student sharing of
his fragment – the additional assignment [to write a Heracliteanesque fragment,
and be prepared to discuss]. Discussion
comes to a conclusion with the inability to distinguish life and death, the
dream being the third/middle that disorients and makes the distinction impossible
to sustain. This is Heraclitus writing
about ‘living death’, which can and must be read as the coincidence of life and
death, their play, and the gathering force of a death.
Death’s gathering force…the
withdrawing granting… “the highest and utmost corroboration of be-ing.” What does Heidegger indicate with
‘corrobation’? To read the sign we must
have the larger context of meaning that assigns to death an ontological
possibility, or what I would call its disclosure of the imminent future
unknown, the not-yet. This possibility is what grabs our attention, what
arrives in the granting withdrawal. It
is what is invoked by the evocation, the call vocare of death. In response
to this granting withdrawal we show gratitude, thinking as thanking, and we are
grateful. Here then the play of
gratitude and death: Grateful Dead. This
gratitude is corroboration of the ontological possibility granted by
death. Heidegger calls the grabbed
attention ‘care’. Care is the
affirmation of the phenomenological stance, the reception granted to the one
standing ready to receive. “When
Heidegger says, ‘With regard to its ontological possibility, dying is grounded
in care,’ he adds further, ‘But care presences out of the truth of being.’ Being-toward-death, or ‘dying’, understood
existentially, is a corroborating response to the ‘truth of being’ that appears
in the invocation to care. To
‘corroborate’ is to support a claim or assertion with evidence.’”(10/7/04, BL 231)
Corroboration is a confirmation
of the affirmation of the ontological possibility granted by death. Death is the reminder of the remainder, of
the Life that remains to be lived. The
propose show of gratitude to death is Yes!,
which is the living of life, the proverbial carpe
diem, tempest fuget, vita breve. If
the phenomenological attitude of reception is rewarding with the gift of life,
with the presencing of Being, then corroboration is a confirmation of the
granted presencing and the possibility of caring, which is another way of
saying, the possibility of living the life still to come, to experience
being-toward-future. “To corroborate
Being’s truth as…presencing…is to bear witness to the situation of caring…to
‘offer’ testimony is to ‘bear witness’ of a situation.”(10/7/04, BL 231)
All this points back to the priority
of listening, which is now happening as compassionate listening, the stronger
case that complements the act of being witness of the granting withdrawal, the
opening of the open region (for sound and light). “Whereas ‘close’ listening is attuned to the
other as arriving from beyond, from ‘outside’ the habitual habitation,
compassionate listening is the movement toward that beyond.”(10/7/04, BL 231) Compassion is the modality of
one diminished, the existential awakening of anatman in the letting-go of the will to power and letting-be of
all things (ta panta). This twofold letting is a twofold suffering,
a compassion that arises from the death of the will and the subsequent arrival
of a unification with many (another birth, the other beginning). The redemption of the real. “To become
learner is to become preserver through the being-toward-death that is the
mindfulness of the inevitable but unpredictable ‘tomorrow’. Death is thus the
sacrifice of the today as the conservation and preservation of tomorrow.” (10/7/04,
BL 231)
3.0 (Monday, Portland, ME). Today I begin the first stage of editing part 3 - Discussion of "LEARN." During my workout at the gym I was wondering if I should swap "dialectic" for "phenomenology," with the result being the new title: "LEARN: a phenomenology of a philosophical education." But when I type it out it doesn't pop as well as the current subtitle: "the dialectic of a philosophical education." I don't need to make that decision this morning, so I'll move along. Below I will share an excerpt from "LEARN" that resonates with a fragment from above: "The figure of the descending Zarathustra overflowing with ‘too much wisdom’ is likened to the one who has transcended into anatman, the Buddhist modality of non-self achieved in meditative thinking’s letting-go and letting-be." The description of the student of philosophy as the 'no self' or 'beyond self' is central to "LEARN." The move is a nuanced critique of identity politics, and, as such, an example of the 'conservative' character of the project, something I realized after completing the first draft. It's conservative, I suppose, both in the Arendtian sense of a 'conservative education' but also in the Hutchins liberal arts sense, which I'm just beginning to appreciate. I'm excited about the way I am using Arendt's category of the 'world' to describe the significant object of study, i.e, 'the book.' There is a sense in which "LEARN" is not only a defense of the liberal arts, but a defense of the book as an 'endangered species.' I'm not clever enough to pull that off in a way what would probably draw in more readers. And in this time of AI and digital education, the book is indeed an endangered species and is calling out for conservation! The move is to prioritize and privilege the book, and diminish the "private" self of the student. But that's how phenomenologically works, and why the 2nd draft of "LEARN" is emphasizing philosophical learning as an enactment of phenomenology.
ReplyDelete3.0b (Here's an excerpt from "LEARN" that resonates with the 2.0 fragment cited above): If writing is incessant and interminable this is because the “chattering” cogito ego has been silenced. “The writer, it is said, gives up saying ‘I.’” (SL, 26) Blanchot describes the situation of the philosophical learner. The turning away from self-certainty and the conversion that takes the student to the significant object (the book/text) is a silencing of the cogito ego, the “I.” Borrowing Blanchot’s description of the writer we can describe the student who has moved into the location of gathering in the following way: “the writer who enters this region…what speaks to him is the fact that, in one way or another, he is no longer himself; he isn’t anyone any more…such is the solitude that comes to the writer on account of the work.” (SL, 28) The existential modality that a student inhabits when writing a précis is analogous to the Buddhist anatman: “what [the student] affirms is altogether deprived of self.”(SL, 26) This existential modality enables the student to produce a précis that affirms the significance of the work, its essential solitude, its existence that precedes each and every reading. This existential modality enables the student to take up a writing that proceeds phenomenologically and lets be the existence of the book/text. The précis is the gathering of whatever essentials have been spoken to the student during the time of readin, the essential that proceeds from the existence of the book, from phenomenological reading that “devotes itself to the pure passivity of being.”(SL, 27)
ReplyDeleteThe silencing of the self-certain “I” situates the commentator in-between the past event of reading and the coming event of the seminar. The précis anticipates the third moment of intersubjective interpretation: discussion.
3.0c (Here's an excerpt from "LEARN' that resonates with the fragment the OPM cited at the end of the 2.0 post above): In Being and Time Heidegger describes human existence (Dasein) as the temporality that is “ecstatic and horizontal.” (BT, 339) This essential characteristic is “practical,” and describes well how the location of learning is made (constructed) by the attention or care exercised by phenomenological reading and its documentation in a précis of what has called out to the reader. The studio of philosophical learning is “made” when the student responds to the “riddle” of ecstatic temporality by receiving and thus renewing the book. Study is a recurring return to the origin, the place where the text can be heard anew, as new, and, as such, dwelling out of historical time and in time of thinking, the present. The philosophical student is “‘absorbed in the matter’...which is founded in ‘making present’...the making present that brings something near from its wherefrom, making present loses itself in itself.” (BT, 369)
ReplyDelete