Saturday, October 03, 2009
Taking a cue from Morris, who posits a deep connection between asymmetrical postures, openness and extroversion (Sense, pp. 164 ff.), let's provisionally categorize questions as either being symmetrical or asymmetrical. Symmetrical questions are exemplified by polar questions, though they include other types of presentation of either/or alternatives. Asymmetrical questions appear open-ended. They appear to transcend the horizon of the question considered as merely a more or less polite form of a request for information. They engage.
The asymmetrical question is grounded in an open posture. It arises as from a vulnerability, even as it negotiates a scaffolding that will support and inform noesis down the road ahead. Alternatively, the asymmetrical question leaps from the leap, comes to earth late in the process of questioning.
Does the asymmetrical question reflect the primitive condition of the question? Does the question initially spring from an asymmetrical posture or acture?
I'm assuming that a question arises from either a symmetrical or asymmetrical posture, and, secondarily, that it has either a symmetrical or asymmetrical form, which has its own shakiness as an assumption.
Regarding the secondary concern: How do we describe the commensurability of the question? Tacitly I have been assessing the symmetry of the question by balancing it against the answer. This is revealing. As argued previously, the question rather implies an answer or answerability, even in the form of refusals to answer. Answerability appears embedded in the horizon of the question, even as we acknowledge the delight people take in playing with unanswerable questions. Our assumptions then are all wrong?
So what is the question commensurate to? The request? Do we know the request well enough to measure the question against it? Is the question commensurate to the utterance in general? Dialogue? Are there, after all, dialogues without questions? (I've tried this, it's very off-putting.) So we face a conundrum of using questions without knowing what a question is, measuring the question ever provisionally, ever by a method open to questioning.
Does the aporetic arrive through an asymmetrical opening of the posture? Where does this lead? Do we ever, in questioning, pass beyond all measure?
Labels: dialogue, form, Morris, posture, questions
Friday, December 19, 2008
Recalling my statement that "[i]mprobably the plus one, as in 'infinity plus one,' will be revealed as something other than thought," I now read that Levinas defines infinity as the desirable, which he explains as "that which is approachable by a thought that at each instant thinks more than it thinks" (Totality and Infinity, p. 62). In pointing to the improbable I expressed symptomatically a desire to escape a noetic enclosure I will now call metaphysical, knowing too well that our understanding of that term could quickly come undone. If I wanted to steer a philosophical discussion away from metaphysics would I not be aided by the desirable? Escape is not so easy, I know–or so experience has taught me so far.
Is language easy? Language is so plainly multifarious we might well point to its improbabilities. Hmm. Here Levinas reveals (which according to my grasp of English is synonymous with saying "Levinas discloses," a grasp which doesn't fail to realize that Levinas draws a meaningful distinction between his idea of aperspectival revelation and Heidegger's thinking about "disclosure") a key to his dialogism:
One can, to be sure, conceive of language as an act, as a gesture of behavior. But then one omits the essential of language: the coinciding of the revealer and the revealed in the face, which is accomplished in being situated in height with respect to us–in teaching. And, conversely, gestures and acts produced can become, like words, a revelation, that is, as we will see, a teaching. But the reconstitution of the personage on the basis of his behavior is the work of our already acquired science.
Absolute experience is not a disclosure; to disclose, on the basis of a subjective horizon, is already to miss the noumenon. The interlocutor alone is the term of pure experience, where the Other enters into relation while remaining καθ αύτό, where he expresses himself without our having to disclose him from a "point of view," in a borrowed light. The "objectivity" sought by the knowledge that is fully knowledge is realized beyond the objectivity of the object. What presents itself as independent of every subjective movement is the interlocutor, whose way consists in starting from himself, foreign and yet presenting himself to me.
(p. 67)
My views on teaching are way more relaxed than Levinas'. Apparently my views on the difference between writing and speech also differ from Levinas', not merely because I favor the trismegistic over the magisterial, I reckon, but because I don't regard writing as an act of simply representing spoken language, and this permits me to be cautious about the kind of qualities or deprivations of qualities I attribute to writing. Notwithstanding our differences, Levinas may have something to teach me about language. The following passage (it's long, but worth studying) occurs as an elaboration of a response to Buber's philosophy, which Levinas reads as a corrective to a kind of "neutral intersubjectivity" (p. 68) he finds in Heidegger. Again the field is language:
The claim to know and to reach the other is realized in the relationship with the Other that is cast in the relation of language, where the essential is the interpellation, the vocative. The other is maintained and confirmed in his heterogeneity as soon as one calls upon him, be it only to say to him that one cannot speak to him, to classify him as sick, to announce to him his death sentence; at the same time as grasped, wounded, outraged, he is "respected." The invoked is not what I comprehend: he is not under a category. He is the one to whom I speak–he has only a reference to himself; he has no quiddity. But the formal structure of interpellation has to be worked out.
(p. 69, Levinas' emphasis)
Hi. It's me again. Sorry to interrupt. I wonder if the best antidote to the notion that one understands before one listens is the notion that, in conversation, one simply does not understand the person to whom one listens. I have a few books on the topic of listening on my wish list, including Nancy's. We'll see where that leads in the coming year. To continue with Levinas, then:
The object of knowledge is always a fact, already happened and passed through. The interpellated one is called upon to speak; his speech consists in "coming to the assistance" of his word–in being present. This present is not made of instants mysteriously immobilized in duration, but of an incessant recapture of instants that flow by by a presence that comes to their assistance, that answers for them. This incessance produces the present, is the presentation, the life, of the present. It is as though the presence of him who speaks inverted the inevitable movement that bears the spoken word to the past state of the written word. Expression is the actualization of the actual. The present is produced in this struggle against the past (if one may so speak), in this actualization. The unique actuality of speech tears it from the situation in which it appears and which it seems to prolong. It brings what the written word is already deprived of: mastery. Speech, better than a simple sign, is essentially magisterial. It first of all teaches this teaching itself, by virtue of which alone it can teach (and not, like maieutics, awaken in me) things and ideas. Ideas instruct me coming from the master who presents them to me: who puts them in question; the objectification and theme upon which objective knowledge opens already rest on teaching. The calling into question of things in a dialectic is not a modifying of the perception of them; it coincides with their objectification. The object is presented when we have welcomed an interlocutor. The master, the coinciding of the teaching and the teacher, is not in turn a fact among others. The present of the manifestation of the master who teaches overcomes the anarchy of facts.
We must not say that language conditions consciousness, under the pretext that it provides self-consciousness with an incarnation in the objective work language would be (as the Hegelians would say). The exteriority that language, the relation with the Other, delineates is unlike the exteriority of a work, for the objective exteriority of works is already situated in the world established by language–by transcendence.
(pp. 69-70, Levinas' emphasis)
By transcendence. Is it so unrespectable that I should want to emerge from metaphysics, or that I should want to emerge from metaphysics and still have something to say about the journey, something honest, if that's not being too assertive? Let's back up, take a look at this world established by language, and see what, if anything, distinguishes it from other worlds. Speaking of temporality, Levinas says, "This world that has lost its principle, an-archical, a world of phenomena, does not answer to the quest for the true; it suffices for enjoyment, which is self-sufficiency itself, nowise disturbed by the evasion that exteriority opposes to the quest for the true" (p. 65). It's my opinion that one should not put antipluralism ahead of the quest for the true. }∅{ presents an opportunity to listen to questions that come from other worlds (as many as it takes); so, following my own advice, the world of dialogue that exclusively identifies the quest for the thing itself with the quest for the true, indeed creates an opposition between "evasion" and this quest, as if there could only be one true path, this world of dialogue commands respect as a place where ideas are put into question. Surely one emerges from this world with the power to improvise. What of this power? Has one called upon this very power in order to come to the assistance of instants of dialogue, utterances really? Did it never cease? Was it never held in abeyance? Should we not apologize for the incessance of our improvisations? If we do have to reason to apologize, however, if we must put our powers of improvisation on hold for the sake of the quest for the true in this special world of dialogue, don't we then at the same time call upon those powers in order to put thought into question? Or could it be that our entrance into this world of dialogue entails–a cutting to shape–a transmutation of the power to improvise into a power to question. Two points then: such a transmutation would provide a reason for understanding the work of this world as maieutic in a meaningful sense, though the malleability of this power would teach us to be careful of conflating the transmutational with the permutational; such a transmutation would be accomplished by virtue of an abiding power of improvisation which belongs to a world ordered not in line with the arch but in departure (starting) from the breach (}∅{), as far as departure (starting) goes. That is to say, this special world of dialogue is not one but many. Hasn't Levinas already said as much, already spoken of plurality, and in particular the plurality "required for conversation"(p. 59). But he also said, "The inner life is the unique way for the real to exist as plurality" (p. 58, Levinas' emphasis). Shall we put into question then the idea that plurality pertains to worlds? And why not? Is there a question of plurality not enjoying itself with our conversation? Does our respect for plurality obey a principle or are we free to put our respect into practice, free to extent that it's meaningful to speak of freedom, to the extent that we can depart from plurality, that we can go so far as to disrespect it. Is it plurality that's an entailment of freedom, or freedom that's an entailment of plurality? How do we question these sometimes premises apart from each other? Transmutation? And aren't we free to distrust transmutation?
Levinas says, "The distinctive characteristic of forms is precisely their epiphany at a distance." Does the transmutation of this δυναμις–perhaps we could say faculty if we knew what to make of the question–this power of improvisation into this power of questioning, a transmutation that itself is not beyond question, but only appears in this world of dialogue, does this transmutation occur at a distance? Well, it appears at a distance in our case. We observe our experience of dialogue.
The absolute experience is not disclosure but revelation: a coinciding of the expressed with him who expresses, which is the privileged manifestation of the Other, the manifestation of a face over and beyond form. Form–incessantly betraying its own manifestation, congealing into a plastic form, for it is adequate to the same–alienates the exteriority of the other. The face is a living presence; it is expression. The life of expression consists in undoing the form in which the existent, exposed as a theme, is thereby dissimulated. The face speaks. The manifestation of the face is already discourse. He who manifests himself comes, according to Plato's expression, to his own assistance. He at each instant undoes the form he presents.
(pp. 65-66, Levinas' emphasis)
How will I come to the assistance of my persona when he comes asking about the unformulated question, brings it into conversation, opens it to incessant deformulation? Is this not a true inquiry, this deformulation of the question? It too may have as its horizon the }∅{.
Labels: anarchy, dialogue, form, improvisation, maieutics, plurality, questions
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Every word I set before me violates the thinking I want to venture, thinking I ask you to take up, knowing all too well that in asking I present you with a dilemma. To talk about loneliness is to disturb loneliness. Loneliness makes itself difficult to talk about, and, concomitantly, difficult to talk to. Its withdrawal is complete. Look. Already I've offended it. Is this reticence the only recourse loneliness has against thought? Is that the problem, that loneliness not only does not want to be spoken to, but that it does not want to be thought, not even in loneliness, not even in being desolate, in being able to say, in full conviction, "I am desolate." Cruel loneliness, because it's also the case that to be lonely is to be alone with one's thoughts.
I am forsaken. Wonder flees from the things of this world. The trees refuse understanding. Has wonder taken refuge in solitude? Solitude. I should hesitate to think that loneliness would be content to die in its own arms. Loneliness does not say "contentment" on its own. Yet neither does the impulse to fly into another's arms arise from loneliness alone. Such an impulse, with respect to loneliness, can only be a response. Loneliness doesn't do responses. Perhaps a philosophy of loneliness could only be like an invitation to a dialogue that couldn't be refused because it couldn't be responded to, an invitation as if from the dead.
Appearance disappears as appearance, disappearance behind disappearance. Loneliness remains as an unknown–I ask that we resist thinking that we know what the unknown represents in order to appreciate the dilemma of loneliness, to contemplate the dilemma of loneliness a moment, just one moment, before discussing it. When I say "I know loneliness" I believe I'm speaking honestly, yet at the moment I can honestly say "I don't know loneliness." It resists being known. Does it merely resist being the object of a thought, destined for speech, perhaps, or does it resist knowledge as such? It has occurred to me that loneliness can only be known as a dilemma. That would mean, however, that loneliness would be open to being philosophically exposed as a dilemma, as an unknown that we can all remember, despite its turning its back on discourse. Could loneliness then only be approachable through philosophy? Not all discourses are equal. It needs to be said. Does loneliness preliminarily refuse every discourse, or just those directed at it? Those directed at exposing it as contradiction? Those may be the least able to speak to loneliness. At the same time, I feel that its contradiction, its stance against saying, means something.
Loneliness has a world, but it is an empty world. I risk contradicting myself. "Loneliness doesn't do responses." Yet its inwardness could be seen as a response to an emptying of the world, or to another movement of discourse away from a soul that has the auxiliary effect–loneliness doesn't do auxiliary, it would isolated from that effect–of emptying the world. I hesitate to note a difference between the manifestation of loneliness and the existence of loneliness if only because, in setting loneliness before consciousness in this way, in treating it as a thing that can be set before us, we risk talking about something else instead of loneliness, risk losing it in our very approach. Nevertheless I feel that loneliness wants to be talked about, that perhaps its suppression holds a secret to centuries of conversation. I see symptoms of a desolation, symptoms of a powerful it, though I may perhaps find that loneliness is first experienced as happening to me, or even as purely me happening to me. (Apparently now I am speaking of events in an inner world, an inner stage, and yet....) How do I feel about being separated from loneliness? Do my feelings about loneliness matter if they appear in an empty world?
Fragile, irrefragable loneliness–I've already said too much.
Labels: dialogue, loneliness, noesis, philosophy, solitude
Monday, October 27, 2008
John Caputo offers defense of deconstruction as an act of love. I'd like to accentuate a relation Caputo makes apparent between the transcendence of the other–if it's okay to use terms I don't yet fully understand–and the ongoing nature of conversation, which I'll venture to say is constitutive of philosophy. The latter:
To love the tout autre, which phenomenology calls "transcendence," is to love and respect its inaccessibility. Let us return to this phenomenological point for a moment. Our access to what is transcendent is always limited, not because of the limits of our faculties, but because of the transcendence of the other, because of the recessiveness or structural withdrawal from us of the transcendent. The transcendence of the tout autre is not a function of our limitations; rather, our access to the tout autre is limited because it transcends us. It is the absence or non-givenness in what is given that bears testimony to its transcendence, which is why the thing itself always slips away.
Now, I respect your inaccessibility, but I wouldn't say I love you for your inaccessibility. In any case, let's move from the former to the latter consideration. Here Caputo, having previously identified speaking with response, talks about the ongoing nature of interpretation, taking the idea of the secret as a launching point.
This is not to say that the secret refers to an uninterpreted fact of the matter, like a Kantian noumenon, an unknowable Ding an sich, whereas all knowledge would have to do with appearances. The inaccessibility of the secret for Derrida refers rather to the inescapability and inextinguishability of interpretation, to the ongoing and incessant need to interpret anew. There is no “end” of interpretation, neither a telos nor a terminus, in which we would sink into the arms of the Ding an sich and fall fast asleep, all our limited perspectives having melted away in the presence of the thing itself. On the contrary, the effect of the secret is to multiply interpretations, to interpret without end, so that the end is without end, and this for love of the things themselves which always slip away. In the place of the idea of some uninterpreted fact of the matter, the inescapable necessity of interpretation, which is what I have also called a radical hermeneutics, thinks in terms of the sum total of all possible interpretations, what the classical tradition calls a potential infinity, which means it does not end and you cannot in principle get there from here. All you can do is to try to go where you cannot go, to go on multiplying interpretations, which must shift with the shifting sands of the situation, and cope with the swift and choppy currents of changing historical circumstance.
Actually I'm a little uncomfortable agreeing that it's the secret that multiplies interpretations, or the secret that defers. Rather, I'd suspect that it's the engagement which also means the withdrawal of the tout autre that creates différance, meaning, I suppose, that we can more or less hold others responsible for their adventures in dialogue. And we have our own motives for engaging and disengaging anew, for responding in particular ways to the call of the tout autre, which can be scrutinized if we'd rather they not be shrouded in secrecy. Of course I'm not trying to interpret Derrida here. I appreciate Caputo's work and I recommend this brief essay to you.
Labels: Caputo, Derrida, dialogue, transcendence, withdrawal, you
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Corradi Fiumara writes, "As a result of an attention restricted to symbolic levels of discourse one can let listening to a 'concrete' language slide away an thus risk losing the chance for an authentic dialogic confrontation" (The Other Side of Language, p. 178). On the theme of confrontation, she is echoing Canetti and also Buber. What she means by "concrete" is a little difficult to pin down. She seems to be talking about an emotional relation to language, but she offers the following definition of concrete expression: that it's "intent upon eliminating inner events which can not be contained" (p. 169). Further:
Concrete language might be characterized as an 'acting out' intended to alleviate inner tensions which can no longer be handled in a purely symbolic form. The negation of reality and the projection into the interlocutor of aspects of one's own ratiocination predominate in this type of 'language' in which, evidently, the tendency to transform discourse into an emotional discharge tends to prevail.
(p. 170, Corradi Fiumara's emphasis)
That's a funny a way of talking about emotions, though Corradi Fiumara apparently means to describe a more specific psychological process. However I want to talk about emotions more broadly, and for that reason I would object to putting "language" in quotes. Language is emotional as well as symbolic and false, and frequently all of these things at once. Dialogue is risky, but it doesn't merely risk thought; it risks the whole person. That I think is at least implied in what Corradi Fiumara is saying here (elsewhere she is more explicit). Inasmuch as language is its medium, dialogue also puts at risk whole communities.
Dialogue considered as a means to truth, whether conceptual or emotional, would be anything but ideal. The ideal dialogue is pure phatic communion, or, rather, a phatic adventure. Such truths as are found in dialogue are aleatory, perhaps transitory. The endurance of concepts is paltry compared to the spirit of phatic adventure.
Labels: Corradi Fiumara, dialogue, phatic communion
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Corradi Fiumara's maieutics of listening seeks to enhance the creation of language and the growth of the whole person, freeing "humans in the making" from the constraints of using and imitating the languages that have dominant positions in the marketplace of ideas (The Other Side of Language, p. 167). She reminds us that Socrates tells Theatetus that midwives are prouder of their skill in forming unions than they are of their skill in cutting umbilical cords, and he distinguishes proper matchmaking from pandering. Corradi Fiumara skirts around the issue of whether childbirth is actually less painful than philosophical dialogue, as Socrates says. I raise it because I want to question the real consequences of bringing thinkers or concepts together.
The decision to go to war in Iraq was a bad idea with horrible consequences. From its inception to the vote to authorize the use of military force, public institutions of dialogue failed to properly evaluate the idea of going to war against Iraq. Voices of dissent were not properly heard. That is to say, I don't believe the subsitition of good ideas for bad ideas can enduringly protect a polity from making poor decisions. A culture of genuine dialogue provides a defense against making horrible decisions, but, paradoxically, it requires and even encourages the airing of horrible ideas; it requires, among other things, that we have public spaces set aside for the free play of ideas. Although I'd like to remain open to other views, I am taking a position against the proposition that the play of ideas is a waste of time.
Ideas can have horrible consequences without having the force of law behind them. However, it would be detrimental to the culture of dialogue to judge the consequences of a thought before it has been heard, or even before it has been thought. Perhaps we sometimes fear the consquences of ideas instead of directly facing our fear of horrible violence, subverting, along the way, any desire for a peaceful coexistence. If we examine our fears of violence, we may discover that fear is but one of our emotions, and desires are not without contradictions. Learning about our emotions, and assessing the entire range of consequences of thinking, requires that thoughts be heard.
I won't flatter myself that I'm anything like a good Socratic midwife, or that I'm not susceptible to making use of and imitating intellectual discourses that happen to be ready to hand. It would be desirable, though, to free myself for becoming. To that I end I am taking Corradi Fiumara's message to heart.
Labels: Corradi Fiumara, dialogue, listening, Socrates