metonymy4u

Our contemporary understanding of the distinction between concept (noumenon) and experience (phenomenon) is due largely to models described by Kant. In doing so, he was re-invigorating the ancient Greek dialectic between theory (episteme) and practice (techne). He does seem to have preferred the theoretical side of the model, however this does not mean that he was insensitive to the practical. And Kierkegaard, in emphasizing the practical, should not be taken as being the enemy of philosophy (theory) as he often is painted. Both I think were quite aware of the dialectical nature of experience. Both tried their best to span the horizon of human possibility.

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We pragmatists are often accused of not understanding. The implication being that if we understood whatever it is we are held to not understand, that we would then suddenly understand the truth of the thing we are not understanding, and the falsity of the thing we are understanding. At the same time, the pragmatist is attempting to shift understanding of understanding. Our goal is not to say that what other people understand, being different from what we understand, is wrong and that what we understand, being different from what others understand, is right.

We just want to stand under something differently. Find shelter from the storm. Come in from the cold.

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What is art and what does it teach us about conscious experience? Are you one of those people who holds to the individualistic side of the polarity, or the social? Do you affirm the heroic quest of the artist towards herself alone, or do you seek a more sublime vision? The universal in the individual or the individual among the masses? Private irony or public hope? I think we cannot have one without the other. For if none of us had ever experienced the inexorable march of time, the attenuation of will and the contingency of intent, who among us could connect with a line like “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…?” A simple one manded vision of the sequential addition of time, that is nevertheless universal in its appeal: life measured out by discarded tea bags and cotton swabs, a notion of seriatim, the set of markable episodes in your personal novella. Our science driven society has encumbered us with a notion of separation: to divide and conquer the world. And yet, the very idea of non-selection, of disinterested inquiry is itself an illusion, is it not? When any endeavor seeks to wall itself off completely from all others, I would think we shall all shudder from the consequences.

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The paradigm for happiness presented by our culture is often of the form: “obtain X and happiness will be the result.” On the X list are often things like cars, money, lovers, houses, extra houses, boats, trips, food, drugs, freedom, rights, democracy, truth, virtue, etc. An alternative perspective, that deserves much more merit than it usually receives, is the idea that emotional balance is a state achievable independently of all of the events on this list. That one can still notice and work for emotional peace even in the absence of all of these things.

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Sugimoto the photographer once wrote about a Japanese word which means “to take up the melody.” It refers to the emulation of someone who came before you and is considered an honorable task. It reflects, to me, a difference in cultural practices which I think we have overlooked.

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I have learned that one of the key elements to my emotional health is learning how to shape my own behavior. Being my own teacher, basically. And the most talented teachers know that rewarding students for what they do well is far more effective than punishing them for their mistakes. Great teachers also adore their work, and the students can feel it the moment they walk in the classroom. They communicate trust, understanding, compassion and love. My life is now my classroom. Awareness, the curriculum.

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The distinction between one and many appears to be a fundamental paradigm of human reason. One could tell a story in which such a distinction forms the basis for all mathematical, and therefore all abstract, reasoning. But what was it really like, for that first hominid, who discovered the patterns we now call “one” and “two?” Was this really the jumping off point? Thence, that all reason sprang, like Athena from Zeus’s brow? Or is it possible that line, curve and texture were also among the primal discoveries? Could reason be a product of form just as much as function? The functionalists certainly would like to believe otherwise. But could this be nothing more than a favorite community tale, true only by virtue of having been repeated so many times that we can’t think of anything else? I wonder, what use do we have any more, in our technological world, for forms? And how much flexibility is left, once the last remaining prime is factored away?

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The point is that if we liberals give up on ultimate concerns, for fear of getting it “wrong,” (or getting it “right” even!) then others less sympathetic to the liberal agenda (the end of cruelty) will take over. And I don’t think we’ll like what they’ve done with the place.

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For Kierkgaard, irony stood out most splendidly in the modes of aesthetic and ethical self creation. In these areas we routinely see figures dedicating themselves unqusestioning and unquestioned, to the realization of public hope in private vision. The artist who struggles against every poverty of the flesh, painting or playing their instrument to the end, the jurist who battles the law’s delay and the insolence of the prideful, holding fast the ethics of a universal good will, these we know and have a place for in our hearts, our lives. But the pious? Those pious who pair word and deed, heart and hand, where do we keep them now? With all their strange, scary, sacred ideas coming and going all day and all night? Too often I think (mea culpa) they are seen as the fanatics, the deluded, the “over the top,” and those who might have a vision of the good life are therefore afraid of speaking out too much. What secular visionary have we had, since Dr. King? And where along the way did we lose the public idea of meaning, of effort, of commitment? Does it always have to be sacrificed to the consequences of cruelty and narrowness of hope?

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