OPM 291(292), December 4th (2004 & 2014) Meditation, Being and Learning, pp. 295-296

I’m struck by the consistency I maintained back in 2004 with regard to the necessity of discordance in the learning community; the necessity of what the past few months I have identified with Heraclitus’ polemos.  But I’m not entirely surprised.  After all, by 2004 I’d taken to heart one of the most compelling questions raised during my defense of a dissertation that held out polyphony as the principle under which we could bring peace to the culture wars that were then raging on the campuses of colleges and universities in the decade of ‘90’s, back in the 20^th century.  As a member of the counter-culture movement, which by then had become an anachronism, if not an anomaly, I found myself a late arrival to the fierce struggle unfolding over the ‘soul’ of the University, a struggle over what is being taught, how we are teaching, and who is doing the teaching, not to mention the learning.  A classic case of who, what, where, when, and why; that is, the perennial power/knowledge struggle.   And because  I took the long view of the struggle, I built my argument on the optimism I perceived in Habermas’ theory of communicative action:  peace could be made through dialogue because we were always already drawing on  ethical principles when we entered into dialogue.  The question was not whether we could end the culture wars, but whether or not we could find a way to gather for dialogue.  The first error I committed was to presume the desire for dialogue.  This was a war after all, and when one side is gaining ground in what they see as a full blown revolution (and for reactionaries that is precisely what they perceived was happening) they have no incentive to sit down for peace talks.   My first error was related to  a second:  the presumption of peace talk presumes not simply the will and desire for such talk, but, more fundamentally a common language for such talk.  But therein lies the premise of my argument, which was built on the existence of a praxis capable of working out a common language, literally in and through the very process of talk, now categorically identified as dialogue.  And what’s more, this praxis – as a technē – was orchestrated (and not overseen or managed, but applied) by what the medieval university called a master (in the way we today would identify a ‘master craftsman’).  To make this move it was necessary to trace the culture wars (at least in form, as case of the perennial power/knowledge struggle) back to, at least, the Athenian agora and thereby introduce Socrates and the dialogues he orchestrated via maieutics.   Arendt was, of course, very helpful and I recall at a crucial moment in the process of writing dissertation reading her essay “Philosophy and Politics,” that had just been published in the Spring 1990 issue of Social Research, a volume that featured essays by Sheldon Wolin, Seyla Benhabib, Jerome Kohn, and one by Richard Bernstein that had at one time been on my desk as a handwritten manuscript that I was charged with typing. Oh, the nostalgia of grad school!   Arendt on Socrates figures prominently in the meditation written this day ten years ago, which I’ll turn to in a moment.  But first, in order to make clear the significant shift that was happening in 2004, a few final words on the dissertation that was defended in 1996. 

Maieutics.  The technē of working out a common language.   Based, finally [because there has to be a reduction!] on Heraclitus:  thinking is common to all, because Logos gathers all things into unity.  To cite John 1:1 (only for emphasis, because with progenitor Heraclitus and progeny Socrates we are generations removed from the Gospelist): In the beginning was the Word.  Logos is the originary, and with Logos we encounter the ceaseless nativity of Being, and for us the ceaseless nativity of learning: the working out of the common.  Maieutics: bringing forth, bringing into the world something new, something that is ready to be born; learning as the encounter, engagement with, the event of, ceaseless nativity.  Being (Logos, always already gathering, always already offering), and learning (always ready to receive, always reading to deliver, ready to witness, recognize and participate in the advent).  Ceaseless nativity: Being and learning.  

But here’s where the memory of what was perhaps the most compelling question asked of me during my defense:  You describe this dialogue [what this day I am calling ‘peace talk’] as a form of polyphony, of many distinct, separate voices ‘singing’ in harmony.  But what of dissonance?  Yes!!!...was not the answer I offered in response to what was, let’s face it, a devastating question [classic New School!].  For what was a long moment I stared at the famous cannoli Bernstein had brought for me in case “You get in trouble…then just pause, and take a few bites and chew slowly!” [I really can’t express enough my gratitude to Richard Bernstein for this support.  He taught me so much, and perhaps more than anything, about the strength gathered in maintaining grace, elegance and dignity in the face of violence.  That day, with the simple gesture of placing the Italian pastry before me, he offered nothing short of a blessing in the literal sense of a benediction and invocation.  It means everything to set the proper tone when we begin these academic rituals.]  I stared at the cannoli, thought to take a bite, but, instead, responded, You are right, of course, that polyphony is the principle that moves this work, both in the theory I am offering with this dissertation and the practice the theory is describing and also being distilled from.  And then I paused again, and I said, finally...and that’s all that can be said in response to the question concerning polyphony and dissonance. The question was asked late in the proceedings by the external reviewer (from the Psychology department!), and it really was the beginning of the end of a successful defense.  In fact, it may have been the last question, and, now that I recall it, the question was asked almost as one of those questions for-the-future. 

And here I am, 18 years later, where I have, finally, ready-to-hand a slick one line answer to the question concerning polyphony and dissonance:  Schoenberg said, There is a higher, more inclusive ‘harmony’ that includes both melodic and rhythmic consonance and dissonance.  And that is what I have in mind when I deploy polyphony as the principle enacted by the learning community with its praxis of dialogue.

And that brings me to the meditation from this day, 12/04/04, which is organized around this very problem/question concerning the necessity of harmony. [nb:  I’m completing this commentary at the end of the day, on the way back…on the bus, now, and soon on the LIRR and then NJT.   I mention because as it happens I made an attempt to work out today in my C&E sections the Aristotelian influenced formula worked out by Arendt in the above mentioned “Philosophy and Politics” essay; the formula that, as I was working it out today, begins with equality between people who because of their being equal can become friends, and, further, through that friendship  make community. “That’s what friendship achieves,” is how Arendt puts it.  How do they make that community?  Through politics.  The technē of politics: agape infused agonistic dialogue.  I have to give kudos to Hayley for pushing me on the matter of technē, which was not a term we took up this semester but, as was made clear in our seminar today, is the only word that can hold our thinking on learning, which, in the end of the day, is what we are really talking about: the formation of the learning community (and this isn’t just talk about, but enactment).   I mention this because after making an earnest attempt to retain ‘friendship’ as the keystone principle, it became obvious that the learning community is not a gathering of friends but, as the student Austin put it, a gathering of fellows: a fellowship, which, as I quickly indicated is translation of koinōnia.  In sum, friendship drops out of the equation, or so it seems.  But this was already anticipated in much of the writing I’ve done over the past weeks, specifically when I explored the link between fellowship, fellow, colleagues, collegas, college. Fellowship i.e., the realization of koinōnia, its wordly appearance.]

The question that arises is if koinōnia denotes the ‘higher’ harmony that Schoenberg is indicating, the one that is inclusive of consonance and dissonance?  This question arises as a response to the meditation on 12/04/14 that contrasting Zarathustra’s (Nietzsche’s) and Arendt’s (Aristotle’s)  depiction of the ‘friend.’  “Zarathustra’s identification of the friend as the ‘third’ who emerges on the scene of meditation to dis-rupt the conversation  of the ‘self-study’ stands in contrast to Arendt’s depiction of the ‘friend’ as the condition of unity and plurality. Her point of departure is Plato’s Gorgias, when Socrates says to Callicles, ‘And yet I think it better, my good friend, that my lyre should be discordant and out of tune, and any chorus I might train, and that the majority of mankind should disagree with and oppose me, rather than that I, who am but one man, should be out of tune with and contradict myself.’(482c)”(BL 295)  The issue here is not so much about friendship, which, on this day, is dropped in favor of fellowship (the gathering of colleagues), but, rather it is about ‘higher’ harmony achieved by koinōnia.  One we make this move we can reply to Socrates (and Arendt) that the one can remain ‘in tune’ and be in disagreement with and even contradict others, and even oneself.  To contra-dict is, after all, to speak against, which doesn’t necessarily imply a denouncement but could denote critique or the offering of an alternative.  Dialogue (dia logos) the dynamic movement of many voices in relation to each other (polyphony), and dialectic is that same movement organized around opposition, discord, strife (polemos).

 The ‘correction’ of Arendt’s appropriation of the harmonious Socrates happens by offering an alternative reading of Arendt, one that invokes that ‘higher’ harmony.  “…the matter at hand for Arendt would be misunderstood if we characterized the ‘harmony’ achieved through ‘self-study’ as the identity of ‘I-and-I.’*  On the contrary, the conversation of the self with self (eme emauto) indictes the preparation for the dialogic event…because the ‘one’ that emerges from this conversation is a ‘two-in-one,’ a plurality…a relation between two that can not be reduced to one, a self-same likeness.  For this reason the self, as a ‘two-in-one’ retains the possibility of becoming discordant…Discordance is a real possibility.”(BL 295)  I’m not sure if I’m reading Arendt against Arendt, or simply making a critique of Arendt.  Whatever the case, it seems to me that she is not consistent in her use of what she calls the fact of plurality.  And by this I mean that often she uses the fact or reality of plurality to criticize the so-called ‘measuring stick’ of philosophers that are ideal and thereby unreal.  I am taking this a step further to suggest that this fact of plurality is better denoted by difference (differance), by this other name, which is to say, the category that can name the  fact of a ‘higher’ harmony that can be either one of discord or concord.  Difference does the work of denoting the relationality that grants a ‘higher’ harmony.  In contrast, with plurality we have the libertarian gathering of singularities.   But this is quite far from the two-in-of thinking, which, in Arendt, never has its equivalent in the political sphere.   Perhaps friendship comes closest, but, again, this doesn’t suffice because it is equality and not difference that is the basis of friendship.   Equality is not sameness, of course.  But, the reduction to equality is always privileging the desired outcome of concordance, consensus and/or community as unity.   Or, perhaps it doesn’t?  What is true from the Gorgias is Socrates’ non negotiable desire to be ‘in tune’ with himself.  “But, in the end, this ‘harmony’ which achieves a ‘unity’ of mind, an “agreement with himself (homognomonei heauto)”…designate ‘harmony’ as a ‘unity’, and thus ‘friendship’ as an ‘agreement’.  The result is the foreclosure upon the difference and distinction achieved with…alterity.”(BL 296)  

*[nb: B. Marley’s ‘I-and-I’ denotes the fellowship of koinōnia]