In the
Palabras Entre Nosotros for the song Nemo Est (Qui Non Amet) you discuss
"The completion of the prescencing of All happens with reception of what
is given. All is thus an offering that we may or may not receive. Reception
happens when we hear the offering. And we hear the offering when we prepare
ourselves for it by listening. All is given. All can be received. The
completion of the presencing all is made possible when we wait in
silence.” You all reference the word
presencing, what do you mean by this word, and when you say "the
completion of the presencing all is made possible when we wait in silence"
referring to Nietzsche when we reach the moment of solitude? Are they similar?
Question posted by PJ for philosophy
of ed class study of Late to Love
We didn’t
have the opportunity to take up PJ’s question today in class. We will on Thursday when we complete our
study of LTL in my philosophy of
education class that is made up mostly of music education students. I wanted to respond here to PJ’s post because
it compels me to take up a fundamental question, and also refers to Nietzsche,
who is cited in the meditation written this day ten years ago.
To ask about
presencing is to ask about one side of Being; the side (or dimension) of
disclosure, appearance, and what is offered to thinking; indeed, what puts
thinking underway by compelling our attention. This relates to the LTL
discussion we had this morning, specifically, to the distinction between
hearing and listening. While we may hear
lots of sounds (such as the humming coming from the ventilation system in the
Hofstra library where I am sitting at this moment), when we listen to something
we are focusing our attention. To listen
is to attend to sounds. That which grabs
our attention is compelling. And what is
compelling put thinking underway. And
when thinking is put underway we are experiencing the movement of learning;
learning is happening when we are compelled to focus our attention on
something. Presencing is the name for
the disclosure of that which is compelling.
In this sense it is not just the fact of existence, but the disclosure
of existence in a captivating way. We
are held captive by presencing. And
this is why I claim that "the
completion of the presencing All is made possible when we wait in silence." Silence is the modality that anticipates the
reception of the compelling. To wait in
silence is to anticipate listening; or perhaps to listen for. In this way we might
describe the modality of intentional listening, or the intentionality of
silence. [nb: here I have to push myself to think within the dialectic and
move in its open-ended and inconclusive flow.
And with this I am describing the desire to avoid the trap I often set
for myself via romanticism. It is one
thing to describe the completion of the presencing All as happening through the
anticipatory silence. It is another
thing to imply that what is disclosed is
the All, which we is not synonymous with ‘everything’. Indeed, by All what is denoted is the full
presence of Being’s presencing in what is presenting itself as compelling. Furthermore, resisting the trap of
romanticism entails recognizing the fullness of presencing is the disclosure of
the real, or what Nietzsche scholar Clement Rosset calls the ‘effacement with
the real,’ an encounter that is unmediated by the faculty of judgment.]
The Palabras that prompted the question by
PJ coincidentally picks up on the line of inquiry into two forms of meditation
I was addressing in the past few commentaries: “Is meditation a form of silence? In
some cases, Yes!, in other
cases, no. The meditations of St.
Francis are quiet forms of contemplation, a listening to the heartbeat and
rhythm of God’s Creation pulsating, vibrating throughout all Nature with the
fecundity of Life. The meditations of
Descartes are the noisy incessant chatter of the skeptic, beyond cynicism and
precariously close to the edge of nihilism.
The fact of God’s Existence, which guarantees his own, saves the skeptic
from leaping into the abyss.
On the via
contemplativa of Francis we encounter Grace in the form of the original and
singular Creative Force. All is given,
and on this way of contemplation Francis finds himself to be with All. His body and soul have entered into
Communion, the Holy Congregation gathered by unending Love.”
On 12/2/04 the
description of the effacement with the real is focused not on presencing but on
absencing. And what is described is the
dialectical encounter with the friend who represents the withdrawal of Being,
in the sense of revealing the ‘not-I’ of the thinker. The friend is described first and foremost
as offering the revelation of absence and withdrawal in the form of the
guess (conjecture, speculation).
“Zarathustra says, ‘A friend should be
master of guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see
everything….”’(BL 293) But is this absencing or the disclosure of the
welcoming emptiness, that anticipatory silence that is ready and waiting to
receive the disclosure of full presencing?
The offering of absence is the offering of the emptiness of a silences
that preparing to listen; “the first gift of the teacher is the offering of
emptiness, as wholly available to receive the other.”(BL 293) In this sense the teacher is fully present,
and we can describe the Sage as the one who discloses the full presence of
presencing as what is compelling the saying of something significant, the
saying of something new. “Now we see the
initial ‘calling’ as the gesture of
hospitality that marks the first moment of the learning community’s extension. The decisive ‘turning around’ (paideia)…releasement or liberation into
freedom…beckoned by that initial ‘calling’ conveyed by the evocative invocation
of the estranging welcome.”(BL 293-294) Today I would use the term ‘emancipation’
to describe this ‘liberation into freedom’ that happens with this initial
calling. And it is worth repeating here
that the initial calling is ‘estranging’ because it calls the ‘I’ to say
something new by addressing what exceeds the ‘I’. The initial calling calls the original by
witnessing the originary, and this calling happens by way of questioning. “Estrangement releases from the confines of
the familiar, which now ‘appears’ un-familiar.
Estrangement irrupts the uncertainty and security of the habitual
habitat, rendering it ‘un-desirable.’
Desire is now directed away from this location…”(BL 294)
3.0 (Monday, Portland, ME). One of the selected OPM/B&L fragments from this day 20 years ago reveals a somewhat embarrassing error with respect to the all important turning (periagogé), which is mislabeled 'paideia'. "Now we see the initial ‘calling’ as the gesture of hospitality that marks the first moment of the learning community’s extension. The decisive ‘turning around’ (paideia)…releasement or liberation into freedom…beckoned by that initial ‘calling’ conveyed by the evocative invocation of the estranging welcome.”(BL 293-294). The thought expressed isn't in error, or rather, isn't one I would disown. In fact, it's totally consistent with what is happening in "LEARN". But I realized early on in the writing of "LEARN" and also doing this 3.0 project that I had mislabelled the turning around of the student. I have a feeling and hope that "LEARN" will be read by more than a handful of folks. Glaring errors like that will not be made! Here, then is an example of the "correct" use of the term that describes that all important turning around of the student, which is happening via an evocative invitation from the teacher: "Arendt also reminds us that Socrates and his fellow Greeks from the ancient days had a word to describe the kind of education that moved in meaningful circles. They used the word periagôgé." AND: "This education as liberation is a turning point in a student’s education because it is a periagôgé, a turning away that is also a turning-around. As Arendt describes it, “The allegory, in which Plato means to give a kind of concentrated biography of the philosopher, unfolds in three stages, each of them designated a turning point, and turning-about, and all three together form that periagôgé holés tés psychés, that turning-about of the whole human being which for Plato is the very formation of the philosopher." AND: "The first moment, the negation of the private person/self-certain ego, is an affirmation of the student, the learner. The periagôgé that invites the student to move into the solitude of study turns them towards the significant object of study: the book/text." AND: "In sum the periagôgé as a convers is an emancipation from a narrow worldview and parochial mindset." AND finally: "A dialectic of philosophical education begins with the turning of the student away from what is familiar and towards the significant object of study, the book as an open text. And with that periagôgé the student is invited to take up phenomenological reading. The student who accepts this invitation is ready to be captivated by the reading and collecting whatever essentials call out during study. Metaphors indicating the acquisition of knowledge will not suffice. This reader is not ‘grasping’ or ‘extracting’ from the text. Rather, they are (re)collecting the enduring meaning of the text into a précis of fragments. They are ready to be captivated by rather than capture the reading. A précis is a kind of abridged version of the text, and a bridge that spans between the solitude of study and the intersubjectivity of discussion."
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