The
writing from this day is as fragmentary as any I’ve revisited during this
commemorative project. The meditation
from 11/14 reads like a litany of assertions cobbled from any number of the
preceding (here then is that repetition that gives the writing an ‘epic’ quality). And there is a sudden return to the story of
Heraclitus, which is the focus of the writing that was published as chapter 5
“The Dwelling of Heraclitus” in Being and
Learning. However, reading this
material from the perspective of this day, specifically, in the wake of the writing/thinking that has
been framed by koinonia, agape, and the technē of the learning
community, it is impossible for me to overlook the move that is made through
the story of Heraclitus to describe re-conciliation – introduced the day before
to qualify the formation of the learning community through the ‘gathering
reconciliation.’
The key moment of the
story, recounted by Aristotle and then retold by Heidegger in his “Letter on
Humanism,” is the one line Heraclitus speaks to his visitors: “Here too the
gods are present.” On 11/14/04 the sudden
return to this line seems have been prompted by an attempt to describe “the
diminishment of the self” – what I have been calling in my commentaries total
subjectification. The meditation on
11/14 begins by qualifying the ‘gathering reconciliation’ as a moment of agapē that flows from by compassionate
listening, “the compassion offered in the receptivity…makes way for the
re-conciliation that occurs in the extended arms that embraces friendship.”(BL 272)
The self diminishes into agapē,
into the self-less love of friendship. “Friendship arises as the abode of the
learning community, as the common
ground of the world constructed through dialogue.”(BL 272)
To call friendship the
‘abode’ of the learning community is to describe learning as happening ‘within’
the place of friendship. And it is also
to recall the description of the work (technē)
of learning as building, the building of the community. As I noted a few days ago, I am bending
Arendt’s notion of the world, so much that it appears I have made a total
reversal from the post-humanist mood of the writing that happened earlier in
the year with the so-called naturalist turn I made in my commentaries via
Thoreau. To describe friendship as the
‘common ground’ is to use figurative language that captures what today is
denoted by koinonia. Figurative because ‘ground’ lacks the
materiality of the ‘world’ in an Arendtian sense, but only if we insist on
limiting the community to the people who constitute it. And here is where the necessity of
Heraclitus’ line shows itself.
“Here too the gods are
present” reminds us that the gathering of the learning community is always more
than the sum of the people who are gathered together. Indeed, if it is a learning community then it is by definition always related to
excess, to what exceeds it, not to mention what stands in opposition to it, and
also what it interrupts. But with
Heraclitus the excess is understood as a matter of a disruption of the
community from within, a disruptive ‘presencing’ alongside or in the midst of
those who are present. Recall the sudden
disruptive arrival of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. “These ‘gods’ convey the ek-static de-stuktion of the ‘mortal’ and ‘finite’ present. To be-with
the ‘gods’ is to dwell in the company of the eternal breaking through as the presencing of Being.”(BL 272)
What needs to be
thought, then, is how learning is always moved by kind of dialectical force, a
dynamic that arises from the relation of opposites [nature/human, human/gods,
matter/spirit, etc.] While there isn’t a
resolution or synthetic outcome, there is reconciliation. And this reconciliation of opposites is
precisely what generates the force or power.
Reconciliation is misunderstood if we understand it as the loss of
difference, or the resolution of opposition, of difference. Reconciliation is a
coming together that retains the vitality of each.
When Heraclitus tells
his visitors “here too the gods are present” I don’t read this as denoting a
politics of recognition, but a politics of reconciliation, or the formation of
the political as a community neither marked by difference, nor plurality,
but by dynamic power and movement.
3.0 (Thursday, Portland, ME). Much of what was selected and commented on ten years ago resonates with the writing/thinking that happened these past 6 months. Here are fragments from above, which include the writing/thinking from this day 20 years ago, and their echo in "LEARN": (OPM/2.0) - "The writing from this day is as fragmentary as any I’ve revisited during this commemorative project." LEARN: "When the students collectively return to the original moment of inspiration they find themselves at the origin of speech, the birth to presence of ideas, when something new is said. From that location they can take whatever path of possible interpretation they are moved by the poesy of the book to explore. The poetic spirit that inspired the author (re)circulates in the learning community, returning it back to the moment when the author was composing. Again, the book is not rewritten, but remixed by the discussion that focuses on singular “breaks” or fragments. What is discussed is the book, neither finished or unfinished, but existing open-endedly and incomplete. The fragments that are collected in the précis disclose the principle of insufficiency and thereby communicate the illegibility of the text as never yielding a final and definitive analysis. The text remains open, and the discussions it yields will always be inconclusive." OPM/2.0: "The meditation from 11/14 reads like a litany of assertions cobbled from any number of the preceding...'gathering reconciliation.’ “the diminishment of the self.” "LEARN: "The first moment of study begins after the student is turned away from themself. They are turned away from their private self and toward the text. To be turned away from one’s “self” is to be turned around and turned toward is what convers, the root word of conversion, denotes. A phenomenological form of reading requires an attentiveness that requires a suspension or interruption of a student’s internal dialogue. This kind of reading is receptive, a welcoming of what is new." AND "The précis is a reception of what carries over from the text, a gathering of what exceeds the author’s intentionality, and a recollection of that “indecisive” beginning. If a technical denotation of ‘translation’ is “the process of moving something from one place to another,” (e.g., the movement of relics) then a précis is the movement of the text into a fragmentary form, the digesting of the text into aphorisms. Again, the précis is a form of phenomenological writing that does not attempt to extract meaning or explain the text. It is only the gathering of meaningful fragments. In the language of music, a précis is akin to an arrangement of an original composition, but one that is a provisional reduction of the text to whatever fragmentary essentials call out, a remixing of the text into these breaks."
ReplyDelete3.0b (more reverberations from OPM/2.0/LEARN): OPM/2.0: “the compassion offered in the receptivity…makes way for the re-conciliation that occurs in the extended arms that embraces friendship.”(BL 272) The self diminishes into agapē, into the self-less love of friendship. “Friendship arises as the abode of the learning community, as the common ground of the world constructed through dialogue.”(BL 272)". LEARN: "But like Zarathustra who sought the company of others, friendship, the insufficiency of solitude is dialectically negated when the student is gathered into the dialogic learning community." AND: "The learning community is thus an “organized disorganization,” an experience of “friendship (camaraderie without preliminaries) vehiculated by the requirement of being there, not as a person or subject.”(UC, 32) The amor fati that is expressed in the phenomenological receptivity of the discussion is complemented by another expression of love, the love of friendship: philia. As Arendt describes it: “The community comes into being through equalizing, isasthénai” and the “noneconomic equalization is friendship, philia.”(PP, 83) The commonality is a sharing, a circulation of whatever essentials have broken through and spoken to the students. And because their appearance has arrived spontaneously the essentials remain free when they are shared. No one claims ownership. The discussion circulates around the openness of the open text through which the circulated aphorisms arrive and are received."
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