marginal note: "Derridean desire for s.th. NEW"
It is through interactions with Others that people can learn the new vocabulary they need to tell the stories of their lives differently - in other words, to become a different person. Such change is a social process, not an internal, individualistic event whereby some "central information processor" decides which aspects of one's personality to keep and which to discard (58).
I recently read the chapter on the master/servant relationship in hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Granted I hardly understood what i read, I did understand enough to conclude that men are really ill equipped to write about relationships between people! (this conclusion is supplemented by two other books, authored by dudes, on the question of ethics and mitsein in Heidegger.) i'm totally generalizing here, but it seems that when male philosophers consider relationships between people, it always turns into a question of strategics and dominance to the lamentable neglect of the entire affective realm, which i suppose is merely a vestige of the mind-body dualism. for all their self-consciousness of this historical prejudice, these really smart guys are still under its influence bc when one considers relationships in terms of strategy and (dominant) action, they are treating the individual as a pure ego/rational agent - ignoring the "agent's" corporeality and all the feelings and emotions that have been arbitrarily assigned to the body.
i haven't made much progess in levinas' Totality and Infinity (it's been shelfed for the meantime) but I'm still reserving hope that he'll at last treat the entire human being rather than an abstracted concept.
For that reason, Lessing, the most honest theoretical man,
ventured to state that for him the search for the truth counted for more than
truth itself. With that statement the fundamental secret of science is
unmasked, to the astonishment, indeed, the anger, of scientists. Now, of
course, alongside occasional recognitions like Lessing’s, prompted by excessive
honesty if not high spirits, stands a profound delusion, which first
came into the world in the person of Socrates, the unshakeable faith that
thinking, guided by the main idea of causality, might reach into the deepest
abyss of being and that thinking is capable, not just of understanding being, but
even of correcting it. This sublime metaphysical delusion is
instinctually part of science and leads it over and over again to its limits,
at which point it must turn into art, something which is really predictable
with this mechanical process.
~Birth of Tragedy, §15
Philosophy leaps ahead on tiny toeholds; hope and intuition lend wings to its feet. Calculating reason lumbers heavily behind, looking for better footholds, for reason too wants to reach that alluring goal which its divine comrade has long since reached. It is like seeing two mountain climbers standing before a wild mountain stream that is tossing boulders along its course: one of them light-footedly leaps over it, using the rocks to cross, even though behind and beneath him they hurtle into the depths. The other stands helpless; he must first build himself a fundament which will carry his heavy cautious steps. Occasionally this is not possible, and then there exists no god who can help him across. What then is it that brings philosophical thinking so quickly to its goal? Is it different from the thinking that calculates and measures, only by virtue of the greater rapidity with which it transcends all space? No, its feet are propelled by an alien, ilIogical power-the power of creative imagination. Lifted by it, it leaps from possibility to possibility, using each one as a temporary resting place. Occasionally it will grasp such a resting place even as it flies. Creative premonition will show the place; imagination guesses from afar that here it will find a demonstrable resting place. But the special strength of imagination is its lightning-quick seizure and illumination of analogies. Subsequent reflection comes with measuring devices and routinizing patterns and tries to replace analogy with equation and synchronicity with causality.
~Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (sec. 3)
Without trying to compare myself to Nietzsche or anything but a philosophical scholar (as in, not a philosopher), I would nevertheless like to add my own confirmation of this passage. A major critique of mine about the current philosophical system (i.e. as a career path) is that we are taught skills rather than how to think. and yes, please read 'skills' as dripping in sarcasm. maybe, like art or literature, one cannot be taught how to think as one cannot be taught to paint great art or to write exceptional prose. and i suppose if philosophy in practice was more selective of its practitioners, i might be without a position. oops.
i remember in a late-night car-ride home, half in earnest and half in jest, i joked about being dictated by a devilish gnome whenever i actually write something original. the fact of the matter is, i trust my philosophical instincts more than i trust my powers of argumentation and analysis. it's what i rely on to distinguish the fakes from the genuine thing. and, so far at least, i don't think my instincts have led me astray.
and though nietzsche differentiates intuition from reasoned argumentation, the two are not always disconnected. let me share a story from a very boring phil of lang lecture, on one of those days where you're just fighting to keep your eyes open. in my bleary-eyed state, the prof is relating some silly argument on behalf of an analytic philosopher (note: the first thing my instincts told me was to stay clear of most analytic phil). i didn't hear much until we got to the conclusion, when i just knew something was amis with the argument. led by this feeling of 'something's not right here' i pressed my prof w/some questions in order to reconstruct the argument i wasn't paying attention to and was finally able to locate the (imo) flawed premise. what i like to think this story shows is that reason doesn't work purely at the conscious/cognitive level. i think even the subconscious, home of inuitions and instinct, still has access to the powers of reason.
in the end, what i prefer is leaping to ideas first, and then coming up with the proofs later. this is my current dissertation 'process', so we'll see in a few years how effective it is. ;)
i don't know why heidegger said dasein is Care when we are clearly Hunger.
wednesday, i saw a hopper exhibit at the Chicago Art Institute. rather, i should say, i listened to the hopper exhibition. the first couple paintings produced the most vivid auditory hallucinations: the swoosh and whistle of a speeding train, the muffled bustle of a city heard from indoors, quiet suburban sounds. as i dived deeper into the exhibition the sounds became more muted until they disappeared altogether, leaving me alone with thoughts and visual impressions. if van gogh's colors are blue and yellow, hopper's are red and green. a rusty, orangey red (unless it's the crimson of his immaculately dressed women) and yellowish, diner-shop green.
sometimes i read the printed plaques next to the occasional painting, mostly to get a some info on the details of its production. i shook my head, though, at their clumsy interpretations. a common them was the "ambiguity" regarding the status of relationships, marked by the apparent silence between his figures. another was the "alienation" of modern life. i'm not so convinced by these normative readings. it struck me that when hopper painted people, he was aiming for a description of their everyday interactions rather than a judgment of their life. in a society that values chatter over stillness, we forget how common it is for us to spend a majority of our time together in silence. by painting what is most familiar, hopper turned it into something alien, unfamiliar. silence need not always indicate an ambiguous relationship; it can also be a feature of the most intimate relationships, ones where you enjoy your solitude together.
nevertheless, i did find hopper's compositions involving people to be more interesting than his city/suburban/ocean-scapes. for there was not only a relationship between people to consider, but also the relationship between the subjects and their environment. for me, his portraits don't depict individuals alienated by their environment, rather these are individuals in perfect harmony and completely infused in the world of their environment - as extensions of the places they inhabit. these women are not alone; they are connected to their city through an organic synthesis of place and practice.
Painting the inside and the outside at the same time brings to mind an earlier discussion of ambiguity and silence based on Leach's work. Accordign to Leach boundary zones and entities with ambiguous status are sacred, abnormal, and subject to taboo. Transposing the last of these characteristics (taboo) into linguistic terms, we can say that transitional, or boundary, zones are characterized by silence (or formulaic speech). Hopper's paintings abound in such transitional, ambiguous, silent areas.
~Adam Jaworski, The Power of Silence, p150
one of my students use the phrase "economy of exchange" in their essay on existentialism! and correctly, might i add.
