I continue to be preoccupied with Descartes. It has been many years. 2006 that I first read the Meditations.
I go deeper into my preoccupation with Eugene Gendlin. I first heard of him in September of 2017.
A sound interpretation of Descartes is an important element in the task of making sense of Gendlin's work, its implications for our situation, and how to carry his work forward.
Ultimately, I take issue with Gendlin's analysis of the meaning of modernity. Descartes is often said to be 'the father of modern philosophy' or some other such statement.
Modernity, since Heidegger, becomes synonymous with forgetting: something is amiss, we are missing something, about ourselves, the world... what have we lost? And how do we get it back? Heidegger's answer is quite famous: We have lost the question of Being, we speak only of beings. The question of Being was obscured chiefly by Plato's profound and complex answers to these questions. With Plato and beyond the Western tradition is fundamentally locked into 'metaphysics', or technical analyses that make unjustified and unjustifiable presuppositions about Being, thinking, and their relation. Heidegger's account, I think, suffers from a failure to appreciate the significance of irony in ancient writers. The technical analyses of Plato's Republic cannot be taken at face value. They must be understood as belonging to the highly tactful, rhetorical, situated quality of Socratic speech. Heidegger, in short, failed to understand the relationship between irony, philosophy, and politics.
Gendlin's account of modernity is also an account of forgetting. In Gendlin's case, however, we have forgotten not Being, but 'implicit intricacy'. We have become convinced, he says, that 'all order is imposed order', that there is no such thing as 'nature'. Gendlin in this way was addressing the postmodern conviction that human beings are culturally constituted, pure and simple.
Gendlin tells a story in which the intricate order was forgotten in the progress of the modern project. Descartes, he says, knew that there was a 'wider order' in addition to the logical or symbolic orders. Yet, Gendlin claims, Descartes advocated for the imposition of mathematical order for the sake of usefulness. "Yeah yeah this mathematical grid isn't in accordance with this thing's nature, but I don't care. The mathematical grid allows me to master it, reduce it to its usefulness in my schemes."
It isn't until after Rousseau that the intricate order slips from view, and we begin to regard all order as imposed order. "With Rousseau the natural order has its last moment," Gendlin writes in Thinking Beyond Patterns (43). It is with Kant's response to Rousseau that we begin to lose the intricate order altogether. According to Gendlin, Kant wanted to understand how the hypothetical sciences could be so successful: Why does the imposition of order seem to work? He answered rhe question with a reversal: "The order we impose is the objective one, he said, because the same order is imposed not just in thought, but also on experience. All order found in experience is put there in the very making of experience. Nature is a product of our thought-forms." (TBP 44).
Kant is unfortunately still a blind spot for me, having glanced at the Prolegomena and read the introduction to the second Critique. The second Critique gave me enough of a sense of the truth of Gendlin's arguments. Kant admits that the attempt ground metaphysics in speculative or theoretical reason failed. He will now attempt to ground metaphysics in our experience of practical reason. The primacy of practical reason can potentially be interpreted as asserting that there are no existing external measures: Man is the measure of all things. (I am currently reading Plato's Theaetetus where Socrates takes up the Protagorian claim that 'man is the measure of all things'. Plato saw quite clearly the possibility of an ontology based on flux, becoming, imposition, the impossibility of saying what 'is'. As Gendlin knew, Plato already knew about these problems).
I think Gendlin is generally on the right track with his account of the imposed order. Clearly prior to Kant and Hegel there wasn't so much absurd denial of a natural order. Something happened here, no doubt. And naturally Gendlin is right that this transforms through Nietzsche and the romantics, again in Heidegger and phenomenology. Gendlin and Strauss both agree that posistivism and historicism are the chief antagonists of sound rationality, or philosophy, in our time. And both of them would agree that they share a common root: the unit model, materialism, or atomism.
But there is a crucial political dimension that I think Gendlin is missing. Because the significance of 'imposed order' in the early modern period needs to be understood as a type of effective or Machiavellian metaphysics. I write about this constantly: the early modern philosophers were simultaneously preoccupied with significant metaphysical questions, and with concrete political change of their situation. Beginning with Machiavelli, atomism or physicalism is viewed as a metaphysics that legitimates a politics of mastery. If we do not understand the political motivations of early modern materialism, then we will miss many of the important political implications of Gendlin's work, or the rediscovery of the intricate or natural order.
This is where the evaluation of Descartes becomes crucial. Gendlin is right that something crucial happens with Descartes, that a new type of science is crystallized and disseminated. Gendlin is further correct that Descartes was aware of the intricate order as well as the imposed order. But why did Descartes champion the imposition of mathematical orders? Why did Descartes value control or domination or mastery so highly? And is it really just Gallileo that Descartes is acting in relation to or carrying forward?
I think that Descartes' more significant predecessors are Machiavelli and Bacon. Descartes is the inheritor of a philosophical propaganda campaign initiated by Machiavelli and transformed by Bacon. According to Strauss, Machiavelli's chief goal is to make philosophy political useful so as to disrupt the rule of the Catholic church that was so persistently involved in the affairs of his home of Florence. Machiavelli begins writing books that reach towards propaganda; that seek to influence, agitate, and provoke change, rather than simply inquire into the truth. According to Richard Kennington, Bacon makes modifications to Machiavelli's project. He introduces the notion of Christian charity, and he introduces the notion of the mastery of nature.
Descartes picks up where these two leave off. He advocates for a collective, progressive project of mastering nature, and for the creation of an 'infinity of devices' that could help a class of philosophers win the favor of the common people. Descartes praises 'generosity' in this context of the mastery of nature for the improvement of the human situation. These are admirable goals. But clearly they had unintended consequences. Several hundred years later, we have many many sophisticated weapons, and we no longer believe that there is such a thing as a natural order, and therefore no natural restraints on what we do. All is possible for the human being.
All three of these figures are interested in atomism or materialism because it is conducive to the project of mastering nature. All three, moreover, were in the business of rejecting central presuppositions of ancient philosophy. Chiefly, all three rejected the notion of teleology; or the idea that nature is a nature of natural ends: goodness has a place in the world. Teleology, as a theoretical account of the world, placed goodness front and center, and demanded that the world be evaluated in moral and ethical terms. Caroline Merchant tracks the political tension between mechanism and teleology beautifully in The Death of Nature.
Descartes' texts, then, are not just philosophical documents that led to the assumption that there is only imposed order. Descartes' texts are more like Marx's Communist Manifesto than most would think: these are propaganda pamphlets, invitations to join in a revolutionary project. Indeed, as Arthur Melzer reports, D'lambert praised Descartes as " 'a leader of the conspirators'... who had the courage to be the first to 'rise against a despotic and arbitrary power and who, in preparing a resounding revolution, laid the foundations of a more just and happier government, which he himself was not able to see established'." (Melzer, Philosophy Between the Lines, 252). This view of Descartes seems out of style. It is the only way I can make sense of his texts.
The politicization of Descartes' writings also casts greater light on his ability to navigate the relationship between the intricate and imposed orders. Descartes was a skilled practitioner of what is known as esoteric writing. Esoteric writing is a complex phenomena that points to the relationship between philosophy and society. More specifically, esoteric writing is a response to the fact that intellectuals or heterodox thinkers have almost universally been persecuted. Socrates, Bruno, Gallileo, countless others, were murdered or coerced for doubting the views held sacred by their political community. Censorship, however, cannot simply stop the occurrence and dissemination of heterodox thoughts. Descartes, after all, says that the Church's authority is over his actions; his thoughts he regards as subject only to his own reason.
Descartes skill as an esoteric writer is that he manages to conform sufficiently to the political-theological situation, accommodating certain statements about god, promising to respect conventions. He adopts a rhetorical front in which he seems to accept certain words, allow certain premises. Let us take the Discourse on the Method as an example. I recently read this book quite carefully. On its surface, it appears to be a peculiar 'fable' or tale whereby Descartes lets people know about his personal, private, very non-revolutionary project that he has been undertaking. Don't worry, this is harmless stuff. Descartes is very respectful, and just wants a good solitary life.
(Esoteric writing also possesses a 'metaphysical' as well as a political dimension. The esoteric text self-consciously works with the relation between surface and depth, imposed order and intricate order, because the world itself contains surfaces and depths, logical orders and intricate orders. This also explains what Melzer calls the pedagogical element of esotericism: the obscure text is an image of nature. Metaphysical and pedagogical esotericism belonged more solidly to ancient philosophy. It is not until the Enlightenment that esotericism as philosophical-political-propaganda begins to be more widely and aggressively practiced. Descartes is employing some mixture of these forms of esotericism, but the political dimension predominates in a way that is not true of, say, Plato).
As the text progresses the political context of the work emerges. Sections 2 and 3 are book ended by references to the wars of religion that were dominating Europe at the time. Descartes himself tells of us his soldiering and traveling. The violence of the wars of the religion is the backdrop to the entirety of the Discourse. I think it is reasonable to think that Descartes did not mention the wars of religion by accident.
At the beginning of section 6 Descartes becomes more explicit about his concerns with the theological-political situation. He tells us that he had intended to publish a book, but that the persecution of Galileo has made him apprehensive. Surely, he thought to himself, nothing in this doctrine of geocentrism could be offensive to the church? I have a hard time believing him here. I also have a hard time believing that Descartes doesn't perceive the revolutionary implications of the project he is laying out in the Discourse. The core of the project, after all, is the mastery of nature through a technologized form of natural science. Tell me, how is it that a project of mastering nature is supposed to be a solitary, apolitical project anyway?
Further into section 6 Descartes entirely drops any pretense of his project being merely personal. He essential makes a call for other like-minded scientists to join with him, to conduct their own experiments, to share their experiments with him. Descartes, in short, is inviting other philosophers to join in a joint and progressive project of mastering nature. And it is medicine, health, moreover, that presents itself as the chief good that the mastery of nature can offer.
The Discourse, then (I have insufficently demonstrated), is a politically charged document in which Descartes is attempting to gather like-minded philosophers. He hopes that these other philosophers will gain in a long term progressive project of mastering nature with the hope of improving the conditions of human beings through the development of medicine. The wars of religion and the persecution of Galileo are the backdrop to this writing.
Studying Descartes in a political way, then, opens up a deeper dimension of his awareness of the relationship between the imposed and the natural orders. Descartes is advocating for the imposition of mathematical order at the exact moment that he is also navigating and conforming to the imposed theological-political order: Descartes skillfully conforms the demands of the Catholic church and the possibility of persecution. Yet, on a deeper level, he is able to communicate to careful readers precisely what he is doing. Implicitly, between the lines, Descartes is not simply engaged in a personal project: he is trying to agitate others to imitate him, trying to get others to join him in the project of mastering nature so as to bring about a new theological-political order.
The real intricacy of the Cartesian texts is clearest in this navigating of the exoteric level (imposed order) and the esoteric level (the intricate order). The possibility of political revolution, major change, lies in the esoteric or intricate order.
This reevaluation of Descartes does not invalidate Gendlin's reading, so much as add a different dimension to it. Because Descartes is not the only practitioner of esoteric writing. Esotericism was practiced by basically all thoughtful philosophers for several thousand years. The forgetting of the esoteric tradition happens when governments became more tolerant of or involved with philosophy. Persecution lessens, the need for esotericism goes away. We don't need to write this way, we don't need to read this way.
The disappearance of the esoteric tradition lines up pretty neatly with Gendlin's claim that the intricacy disappears with Kant and Hegel. It is after the French and American revolutions that the tradition of esoteric writing seems to wane. Suddenly the older texts start to look like everyone is locked in their time. Conformity is mistaken for historical-lock-in syndrome.
Fleshing out Gendlin's narrative of modernity not only explains the forgetting of the intricacy. It opens the door to a practice that can unite the public and the private, the imposed and intricate orders, in our being. Socratic being is esoteric being.
Wednesday, April 29, 2020
Sunday, April 19, 2020
The Being of the Body is The Being of Language: An Exercise in Building Intricacy, Fashioning Concepts, Tracking Logos, Carring Forward..... Imitating Gendlin
The being of the body is the being of language.
My goal is to explain what this phrase means to see precisely in what sense it is true. Because there are senses in which it is true.
The phrase is likely not intelligible from the outset because I am using the words 'body', 'language', and 'being' in peculiar or idiosyncratic ways. I will explicate what I mean by these words. I will repeat the phrase, 'the being of the body is the being of language', as I proceed. I hope that as I explicate and repeat the central terms a reader, and myself as the writer, will begin to perceive the intricacy or complexity of the terms. In this way the writing will be a self-instancing of what Eugene Gendlin refers to as 'carrying forward' or the 'fashioning of concepts capable of displaying their intricacy'. I am currently hard at work on Gendlin, so this will help.
The being of the body is the being of language.
When I use the word 'body' I am likely to conjure a host of connotations, the most prominent perhaps being the idea of the 'physical' body that operates principally through mechanisms that we measure through physics, chemistry, physiology, and biology. The body, in short, is thought of as a type of machine. A machine, Gendlin argues, can be broadly defined as "a set of known patterns separated from the thing in which other factors could cross with them. Now we can notice that science renders everything as a machine!" ("The Responsive Order,"1997, in Saying What we Mean, 2018, 272). If the body is a machine, as science and medicine presuppose, then of course the being of the body is not the being of language.
The being of the body is the being of language, but not in the sense of the body as a machine. This would require an image of language in which it were also a collection of 'units' that could be interchangable with one another. It would require what Whitehead refers to as 'the fallacy of the perfect dictionary': it requires a misunderstanding of language in which it consists of 'logical atoms' (Re: Russel, Ayer, early Wittgenstein). The body is not a machine, it is not comprised of units. Language is not a machine, it is not comprised of units.
The body is an organism, not a machine. Language belongs to organisms, and itself resembles an organism.
The being of the body is the being of language in the sense that the body is an organism that makes its way in the world via its aims, or its sense of pleasure, goodness, or value.
To think the body as an organism as opposed to a machine requires that many presuppositions be reconfigured. The body as an organism implies an account of language in which it is more than a collection of parts, but a part of a holistic organismic process. Language must somehow be a subordinate element in the total functioning of the organism. I quite like Peter Levine's definition of organism as "a complex structure of interdependent and subordinate elements whose relation and properties are largely determined by their functions in the whole. Therefore, the whole of the organism is greater than the sum of its individual parts." (Waking the Tiger, 67). The existence of organisms is a direct contradiction to the account of the universe whereby it is defined by the chaotic movement of its smallest parts. The organism is a problem for physicalism.
I think it more promising to rethink physicalism than to explain away the organism, although many think otherwise.
Organisms as genuine wholes driven by aims raise the question of the place of goodness or value in the universe. For if the existence of organisms is a challenge to the account of physicalism, atomism, the unit model, then the organism demands a fundamentally different picture of the cosmos. In particular, the organism challenges the Lucretian, atomistic view of the universe in which it is made of empty space and atoms. The smallest things are not the most important things. Mereological nihilism is not a defensible position (and I have never taken it to be). Genuine wholes exist.
The existence of organisms presents us with the problem of the radical discounting of life that has taken place during the modern period. If we examine the reasons for the radical decentering of life we find political motivation. Beginning with Machiavelli and passing through Bacon, Descartes, and much of the early modern period, the physical sciences, particularly atomism, are viewed as a politically useful tool. Robert Roecklein explicates this problem in provocative ways. Machiavelli knew that by borrowing terms from physics he could think of the 'people' as 'masses' to be manipulated. Bacon and Descartes furthered this project of mastering nature and applying physicalist models to the workings of politics. I am unsure if behaviorism, B.F. Skinner, and transhumanism would have pleased or horrified the early modern founders. Transhumanism, I have been claiming for a while, is the logical outcome of the early modern philosophers.
The being of the body is the being of language.
If the body is an organism, then the organism has some fundamental connection with language, and language has some fundamental connection with being. For if the body is not a machine and language not a series of units being deployed by that machine, then language must be something other than a series of 'signifiers' pointing to unknowable 'signified'.
The body as an organism must also have its own politics. For we see that the account of the body as machine leads to an account of language as machine leads to an account of politics as mastery, as techne.
The being of the body is the being of language.
The being of language is the being of the world.
The being of language is being.
The being of the organism is necessarily being through time. As an organism moves through time it necessarily 'moves through' or 'occupies' space. As an organism moves through time and space it leaves traces of its activity in the world. An organism can not move without effecting the environment around it.
These traces seem to possess an inherent intelligibility. I imagine that animals smell each other, notice each other's tracks and droppings. The movement of an organism implies the existence of other organisms that are 'related to' or 'accounted for' within the movement of the organism.
The existence of the organism implies the existence of other organisms. Just as the existence of hunger implies the existence of food, implies the existence of digestion, implies the existence of defecation, implies the existence of hunger.
The being of an organism implies the total environment that 'facilitates' or 'contains' the organism's being. The being of an organism implies other organisms that inhabit this environment. The being of the organism thus implies an intelligible world in which there are necessarily others who are both intelligible and intelligent.
The being of the body is the being of language.
The being of the world is the being of language.
The body is the language of the world.
Language is the body of the world.
The world is the speaking body.
The world is alive.
The being of the organism implies the existence of memory.
The existence of memory implies the existence of story.
The being of the world is the being of language.
To say that the being of the body is the being of language forces us to confront the intimate intertwining of ideas about ourselves, other animals, politics, and the cosmos. For the if the body is a machine it implies: the existence of empty space, the existence of atoms, a strictly formal account of language, and a politics of mastery. If the body is an organism it implies: the existence of a living universe; the primacy of wholes over parts; an account of language in which it is synonymous with being; and a politics of tragedy (which I will not explicate here).
The being of the body is the being of language.
Being is Language.
The body is being
The body speaks, incessantly.
The most appropriate name for the world is: The Tale.
My goal is to explain what this phrase means to see precisely in what sense it is true. Because there are senses in which it is true.
The phrase is likely not intelligible from the outset because I am using the words 'body', 'language', and 'being' in peculiar or idiosyncratic ways. I will explicate what I mean by these words. I will repeat the phrase, 'the being of the body is the being of language', as I proceed. I hope that as I explicate and repeat the central terms a reader, and myself as the writer, will begin to perceive the intricacy or complexity of the terms. In this way the writing will be a self-instancing of what Eugene Gendlin refers to as 'carrying forward' or the 'fashioning of concepts capable of displaying their intricacy'. I am currently hard at work on Gendlin, so this will help.
The being of the body is the being of language.
When I use the word 'body' I am likely to conjure a host of connotations, the most prominent perhaps being the idea of the 'physical' body that operates principally through mechanisms that we measure through physics, chemistry, physiology, and biology. The body, in short, is thought of as a type of machine. A machine, Gendlin argues, can be broadly defined as "a set of known patterns separated from the thing in which other factors could cross with them. Now we can notice that science renders everything as a machine!" ("The Responsive Order,"1997, in Saying What we Mean, 2018, 272). If the body is a machine, as science and medicine presuppose, then of course the being of the body is not the being of language.
The being of the body is the being of language, but not in the sense of the body as a machine. This would require an image of language in which it were also a collection of 'units' that could be interchangable with one another. It would require what Whitehead refers to as 'the fallacy of the perfect dictionary': it requires a misunderstanding of language in which it consists of 'logical atoms' (Re: Russel, Ayer, early Wittgenstein). The body is not a machine, it is not comprised of units. Language is not a machine, it is not comprised of units.
The body is an organism, not a machine. Language belongs to organisms, and itself resembles an organism.
The being of the body is the being of language in the sense that the body is an organism that makes its way in the world via its aims, or its sense of pleasure, goodness, or value.
To think the body as an organism as opposed to a machine requires that many presuppositions be reconfigured. The body as an organism implies an account of language in which it is more than a collection of parts, but a part of a holistic organismic process. Language must somehow be a subordinate element in the total functioning of the organism. I quite like Peter Levine's definition of organism as "a complex structure of interdependent and subordinate elements whose relation and properties are largely determined by their functions in the whole. Therefore, the whole of the organism is greater than the sum of its individual parts." (Waking the Tiger, 67). The existence of organisms is a direct contradiction to the account of the universe whereby it is defined by the chaotic movement of its smallest parts. The organism is a problem for physicalism.
I think it more promising to rethink physicalism than to explain away the organism, although many think otherwise.
Organisms as genuine wholes driven by aims raise the question of the place of goodness or value in the universe. For if the existence of organisms is a challenge to the account of physicalism, atomism, the unit model, then the organism demands a fundamentally different picture of the cosmos. In particular, the organism challenges the Lucretian, atomistic view of the universe in which it is made of empty space and atoms. The smallest things are not the most important things. Mereological nihilism is not a defensible position (and I have never taken it to be). Genuine wholes exist.
The existence of organisms presents us with the problem of the radical discounting of life that has taken place during the modern period. If we examine the reasons for the radical decentering of life we find political motivation. Beginning with Machiavelli and passing through Bacon, Descartes, and much of the early modern period, the physical sciences, particularly atomism, are viewed as a politically useful tool. Robert Roecklein explicates this problem in provocative ways. Machiavelli knew that by borrowing terms from physics he could think of the 'people' as 'masses' to be manipulated. Bacon and Descartes furthered this project of mastering nature and applying physicalist models to the workings of politics. I am unsure if behaviorism, B.F. Skinner, and transhumanism would have pleased or horrified the early modern founders. Transhumanism, I have been claiming for a while, is the logical outcome of the early modern philosophers.
The being of the body is the being of language.
If the body is an organism, then the organism has some fundamental connection with language, and language has some fundamental connection with being. For if the body is not a machine and language not a series of units being deployed by that machine, then language must be something other than a series of 'signifiers' pointing to unknowable 'signified'.
The body as an organism must also have its own politics. For we see that the account of the body as machine leads to an account of language as machine leads to an account of politics as mastery, as techne.
The being of the body is the being of language.
The being of language is the being of the world.
The being of language is being.
The being of the organism is necessarily being through time. As an organism moves through time it necessarily 'moves through' or 'occupies' space. As an organism moves through time and space it leaves traces of its activity in the world. An organism can not move without effecting the environment around it.
These traces seem to possess an inherent intelligibility. I imagine that animals smell each other, notice each other's tracks and droppings. The movement of an organism implies the existence of other organisms that are 'related to' or 'accounted for' within the movement of the organism.
The existence of the organism implies the existence of other organisms. Just as the existence of hunger implies the existence of food, implies the existence of digestion, implies the existence of defecation, implies the existence of hunger.
The being of an organism implies the total environment that 'facilitates' or 'contains' the organism's being. The being of an organism implies other organisms that inhabit this environment. The being of the organism thus implies an intelligible world in which there are necessarily others who are both intelligible and intelligent.
The being of the body is the being of language.
The being of the world is the being of language.
The body is the language of the world.
Language is the body of the world.
The world is the speaking body.
The world is alive.
The being of the organism implies the existence of memory.
The existence of memory implies the existence of story.
The being of the world is the being of language.
To say that the being of the body is the being of language forces us to confront the intimate intertwining of ideas about ourselves, other animals, politics, and the cosmos. For the if the body is a machine it implies: the existence of empty space, the existence of atoms, a strictly formal account of language, and a politics of mastery. If the body is an organism it implies: the existence of a living universe; the primacy of wholes over parts; an account of language in which it is synonymous with being; and a politics of tragedy (which I will not explicate here).
The being of the body is the being of language.
Being is Language.
The body is being
The body speaks, incessantly.
The most appropriate name for the world is: The Tale.
Saturday, April 18, 2020
Where I've Been
I have not written here in two months.
Why?
I have had several false starts, several essays/posts begun and not quite finished. The writing was fruitful, and perhaps I will post it as a 'fragment'. Perhaps those fragments will be useful for me to display and study.
More likely I have been distracted by the pandemic that has seized the world. I live in Seattle. I have been working from home for 6 weeks. I do therapy over the phone for the time being.
I also recently learned that there is a conference in October on the work of Eugene Gendlin. It is hosted by SU and the Focusing Institute/Gendlin Center. I am preparing an abstract so to present at the conference. I hope to give a paper on the implications of Gendlin's work in forensic environments. I will be connecting Gendlin to the esoteric writing tradition in some capacity.
I seem to quickly grow weary of writing in this format.
Thinking in an organized way...
I have a complete draft of an abstract for a paper on Gendlin. It'll be done by the time it needs to be done.
I have been reading quite a lot.
I've read many of Gendlin's essays in Saying What we Mean. I numbered the paragraphs and made an outline of the first chapter of Thinking Beyond Patterns. I did the same thing for the entirety of Descartes' Discourse on the Method. That was very satisfying and confirmed my general reading of Descartes as political conspirator. The Discourse is somewhat like the Communist Manifesto, in that it is kind of pamphlet inviting others to join in a mass joint enterprise. Quite a document. I have looked at portions of Merleau-Ponty's Prose of he World and Phenomenology of Perception. I am almost done with the final lecture in Whitehead's Modes of Thought. I am 75 pages into Peter Levine's Waking The Tiger: Healing Trauma. I read a very interesting essay on clinical epistemology in Naomi Scheman's book Shifting Ground. Very interesting and relevant to my pscychotherapeutic clinical practice.
I keep meaning to look at Plato's Thaeatetus. I took Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy off the shelf today. Descartes' reading of Machiavelli seems to be of significance. I have a big biography of Descartres by a guy named Gaukroger that I just pulled off the shelf. A few significant references to Bacon, a good Machiavellian, but only a few thin references to Machiavelli. I need to look directly at Descartes' correspondence with Princess Elisabeth (I just found them online).
My project on Gendlin in some ways hinges on a reframing of Descartes as an inheritor of a tradition of philosophic propaganda that moves from Machiavelli and Bacon to Descartes.
Gendlin's project of rediscovering the 'implicit' or natural order relies on a narrative of the forgetting of the natural order. It doesn't happen until sometime around Kant. Coincidentally, this lines up with the forgetting of esotericism. Descartes, however, he claims, laid the groundwork for this by championing Gallileo's method of imposing geometric form onto problems for practical utility. Descartes made spherical cows politically useful and pursuable through a joint political project. Gendlin understands the first half of this formulation. I'm not sure he understands the depth of Descartes' political thought.
Gendlin's philosophical narrative needs to be broadened. Strauss and Melzer have a richer, more compelling account. And it has implications for work in forensic mental health.
Why?
I have had several false starts, several essays/posts begun and not quite finished. The writing was fruitful, and perhaps I will post it as a 'fragment'. Perhaps those fragments will be useful for me to display and study.
More likely I have been distracted by the pandemic that has seized the world. I live in Seattle. I have been working from home for 6 weeks. I do therapy over the phone for the time being.
I also recently learned that there is a conference in October on the work of Eugene Gendlin. It is hosted by SU and the Focusing Institute/Gendlin Center. I am preparing an abstract so to present at the conference. I hope to give a paper on the implications of Gendlin's work in forensic environments. I will be connecting Gendlin to the esoteric writing tradition in some capacity.
I seem to quickly grow weary of writing in this format.
Thinking in an organized way...
I have a complete draft of an abstract for a paper on Gendlin. It'll be done by the time it needs to be done.
I have been reading quite a lot.
I've read many of Gendlin's essays in Saying What we Mean. I numbered the paragraphs and made an outline of the first chapter of Thinking Beyond Patterns. I did the same thing for the entirety of Descartes' Discourse on the Method. That was very satisfying and confirmed my general reading of Descartes as political conspirator. The Discourse is somewhat like the Communist Manifesto, in that it is kind of pamphlet inviting others to join in a mass joint enterprise. Quite a document. I have looked at portions of Merleau-Ponty's Prose of he World and Phenomenology of Perception. I am almost done with the final lecture in Whitehead's Modes of Thought. I am 75 pages into Peter Levine's Waking The Tiger: Healing Trauma. I read a very interesting essay on clinical epistemology in Naomi Scheman's book Shifting Ground. Very interesting and relevant to my pscychotherapeutic clinical practice.
I keep meaning to look at Plato's Thaeatetus. I took Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy off the shelf today. Descartes' reading of Machiavelli seems to be of significance. I have a big biography of Descartres by a guy named Gaukroger that I just pulled off the shelf. A few significant references to Bacon, a good Machiavellian, but only a few thin references to Machiavelli. I need to look directly at Descartes' correspondence with Princess Elisabeth (I just found them online).
My project on Gendlin in some ways hinges on a reframing of Descartes as an inheritor of a tradition of philosophic propaganda that moves from Machiavelli and Bacon to Descartes.
Gendlin's project of rediscovering the 'implicit' or natural order relies on a narrative of the forgetting of the natural order. It doesn't happen until sometime around Kant. Coincidentally, this lines up with the forgetting of esotericism. Descartes, however, he claims, laid the groundwork for this by championing Gallileo's method of imposing geometric form onto problems for practical utility. Descartes made spherical cows politically useful and pursuable through a joint political project. Gendlin understands the first half of this formulation. I'm not sure he understands the depth of Descartes' political thought.
Gendlin's philosophical narrative needs to be broadened. Strauss and Melzer have a richer, more compelling account. And it has implications for work in forensic mental health.
Wednesday, February 12, 2020
Making Things, Showing Them: Thoughts on Art and Putting it Somewhere
I recently hung some of my paintings and poems in a coffee shop that I used to work at. That I used to work at the shop is an important part of the story. I probably would not have sought out the opportunity on my own, and am grateful that my former manager, a friend, was kind enough to invite me to show my work.
It feels strange to have hung my art there and I have been reflecting on why I began painting and writing poetry more seriously. I want to take some time to reflect on the process and what it has to do with my larger learning in philosophy, psychology, and psychotherapy. I have no doubt they are all connected, but it is unclear how.
I am uncomfortable with the word ‘art’ or the idea of identifying as an ‘artist’. Those words have peculiar connotations in modern philosophy. In the seventeenth century when Francis Bacon spoke of ‘the arts’ he meant something like the technical arts or what we call technology. Bacon dreamt of god-like mastery of the world through science and ‘the arts’. Indeed, a large part of what I resist in the notion of ‘art’ is an implication of control, mastery, or god-like power. Twentieth century philosophers make this legacy apparent: Camus speaks of the artist ‘giving the void its colors,’ while Sartre praises the god-like creativity of authentic human beings. Even Bob Ross says peculiar things like ‘On this canvas you have complete control, absolute freedom, you can move mountains.’ One of my best friends, a professional illustrator and designer once joked that artists are often ‘control freaks.’ She and I both prefer to talk about ‘making things’ or being ‘makers, rather than ‘art’ or ‘artists’.
I think that the peculiar masterful or theological character of the notion of ‘art’ has something to do with the modern orientation towards control, and something to do with the biblical notion of ‘creation’. Nowadays we praise ‘creativity’; I see children wearing shirts with the word ‘Creative’ displayed in colorful and exciting letters. I find it strange because creation is a fundamentally biblical notion: God creates, and God creates from nothing.
I feel much more clumsy, uncertain, and relatively out of control. I do not feel masterful in the things I make. I make because I am trying to learn, not because I am trying to master. Of course, I have gotten better at controlling certain types of paints, certain brushes, certain techniques. But technique is not of the essence of making things. Perhaps that is the simplest distinction I can make right now: Art is an ambiguous word that is not sufficiently distinguished from technique. I suppose ‘making’ is comparably ambiguous, but it is also broad in a way I like.
The big questions I want to try and unpack in this writing is, What, if any, is the difference between making and creating? Why am I so resistant to the notion of art and creativity, and associate them so readily with problems of control, mastery, and aspirations to god-hood? And how can I develop an account of making that is simultaneously sincere, ironic, clumsy, and human?
This thinking will follow several sets of distinctions:
1. Body, Language, Image
2. Creating and Making, Mastery and Irony
3. Opacity, Traces, Encountering
There is a story in all these words for me.
1. Body, Language, Image
I started painting and writing poetry more seriously while I was in graduate school to become a psychotherapist. I took a class called 'listening skills.' Once a week me, four students, and an instructor sat in a small room, probably 10x12. We were told that we would be splitting into pairs; one person would be the speaker, the other would be the listener. Our task was to speak and listen as carefully as possible. Listening carefully is surprisingly difficult, as is speaking carefully.
The question that arises is: how do you know when you have understood a person correctly, and how do you know when you have spoken carefully? We are using words in order to express or communicate experience. What is the relationship between words and experience? My mind melts under the weight of such a question.
The wager of the course, and one I am largely persuaded by, is that words and experience meet most intimately in the experience of the body. We know we have spoken carefully, in other words, when we feel it in a visceral way. Similarly, we know we have listened carefully when we can feel what a person is saying, and when we can reflect back to that person what we are hearing-feeling in a way that they recognize. If we reflect what someone has said in an inaccurate way the person will generally tell us, either explicitly or with their bodily presence.
The listening skills class was thus spent developing this embodied awareness while speaking and listening.
The class was built around Eugene Gendlin's notion of 'focusing'. Gendlin is a gifted philosopher who happened to get hooked up with Carl Rogers after writing a dissertation on language and embodiment. 'Focusing' is a process whereby one tries to track the way that different words relate to a bodily 'felt-sense' of a problem, situation, or experience. When I think of the fact that I am happy or unhappy at my job, a whole slew of bodily feelings come along. I feel my shoulder joints tighten, my hands feels restless, and my mind is flush with images. All of these various phenomena are the 'felt-sense' of a situation. In therapy, and in focusing, there is an effort to give voice to this 'felt-sense' of things.
There is a characteristic pattern of speech, reflection, and correction, that therapist and client go through. "It feels like I'm underwater." "Oh, underwater?" "Yeah, underwater, but its more like I'm trapped beneath some ice, and I'm trying to get out from under the ice." "You feel trapped under this water, like you are drowning below this ice." "Yeah, but that's not quite right, it's more like..." When we go through this pattern of correction and deepening of description, what are we checking the words against? How do we know that one image fits more than another image? Gendlin's wager is that we are checking the words against our 'felt-sense' of the whole situation. This all rhymes very well with Bessel van der Kolk's claim that visceral awareness is the beginning and core of emotional awareness. The body, as our intelligent organism, as the home of our lives, is more intelligent than we know, and if we can learn to listen to it, we will see how often it speaks.
Gendlin's work raises questions about the place of images in life and thinking. Why would it be that images intersect with the emotional-embodied life in this way? Why do so many of my clients effortlessly use metaphors to describe their situations? Why do we dream in images, scenes, that we know are connected to our daily lives? I recently read portions of Freud's dream book, and I am aware of the work of Lakoff and Johnson on the place of metaphors.
I am interested in the idea that the image is a kind of intermediary between the world of the body and the world of articulate speech. I believe this is how Dr. Krycka at SU spoke of it: focusing relies on the murky space between the pre-symbolic body and the more purely symbolic world of language. The image is the original form of language. But the image is an extrapolation from the experience of the visual field.
The conclusion I want to draw from all this is that the world is already a type of language or logos or meaning... The world is a wild logos and our bodies are our most intimate place of interfacing between us and that wild logos. Dr. Risser at SU said he talked to Gendlin about how 'if the bodily felt-sense is capable of being rendered in language then it must already be languaged in some sense.' For if the body were somehow radically other than language, if language were mere symbol, imposed upon the world, then language would have no way to make contact with the body.
The experience of focusing, the experience of the image as interfacing intimately with the body, seems to be evidence of the fundamental or primordial status of language. The world is language. Our bodies are the language of the world speaking itself.
But why would we have to interface with images in a self-conscious way? Why do certain images reveal portions of reality better than others?
One thing I want to insist on is that the point of engagement with images as they meet embodied felt-sense is not to interpret the images. The images are to be communed with. The power of the dream is to be felt. It isn't important to unpack, analyze, interpret the dream or the image. It is important to dwell with, commune with, indulge the image or the dream. Feel what the image says.
All this is relevant to me because I have been busy making images... like this one:
This image somehow gives voice to my philosophical concerns. I wonder about celestial bodies. I wonder about monuments. I wonder about towers and trees and living things. But am I interpreting the thing I made? How do I look at the image and not interpret it? How do I not wonder what it means? Are there images that are more self-sufficient? When is an image sufficiently pregnant? When does it need to give birth to richer content other than itself?
As I read Plato, for example, all his images seem to beg to be interpreted, wondered about. But the analysis of the image will always fail, and at some point there is only the pregnant suggestions of the images. The image needs to have the status of self-sufficient-pregnant-being, and implication, or suggestion of analysis.
Enough of this. I make images because images are somehow in-between the-body-as-language and speech-as-language. This could be made to sound boring by saying that all thought is metaphorical or some other platitude. But something very mysterious and peculiar is going on with the status of images. The image gives us access to ourselves as the speech of the world that is capable of knowing itself as the speech of the world.
This, somehow, leads me to the problem of art, mastery, and irony.
2. Creating and Making, Mastery and Irony
When I make images that give rise to my philosophical questions I am limited by in my technical ability and in my ability to know what it is I'm saying. I am limited by technique and implication. What I've said above implies that the images I make will always say more than I realize I'm saying. In that way I do not feel in control of the images, and I do need to analyze the images.
Yet why is it that the notion of art has so much of a connection to divinity? What is up with the idea of the muses? The idea of creation and creativity? What is up with the existentialists replacing the philosopher with the artist and praising the god-like power of art? Why, in short, is art spoken of as a form of mastery? and what else could we be?
I have explicated in another post my questions about the relationship between art and mastery. I don't care to do that now. But what I would like to juxtapose is an ironic account of making, in a very specific sense of the word irony.
Irony is about sincerity.
Jonathan Lear has a wonderful book I have not yet finished called A Case for Irony. In a series of lectures he lays out a vision of irony in which it is no longer synonymous with insincerity, obfuscation, and distance, but rather with sincerity, seriousness, and the pursuit of truth. His major models for this kind of irony are Kierkegaard and Socrates. And Kierkegaard, of course, read the shit out of Plato and had much admiration for Socrates.
The core of irony, Lear claims, is a kind of erotic uncanniness. It is an experience, or an attitude, in which we long for something after we realize that we do not know something we thought we knew. Let's look at these two words, beginning with uncanny.
The uncanny (Unheimlich) is an unsettling experience in which the normally familiar becomes extremely unfamiliar in an unsettling way. We are sitting on the bus, on our way to work, and suddenly it becomes radically strange that we are all here, in this place, going to our fucking jobs, to make this money, that we need in order to pay rent and buy food to nourish our poor bodies. All of these things (places, jobs, money, rent, food, bodies) are so ordinary. But when we stop and look at them we don't really know how any of it works... the uncanny rises up to greet us when the world presents itself in its constant unfamiliarity.
If we were simply to be struck with the strangeness of things, the perhaps ungroundedness of things, we would arrive at a spurious or derivative form of irony, one in which we are tempted to say 'well I guess there is no such thing as truth, no reason any of this is like this.' If that were the case, we would be free to present and act however we want. We wouldn't know how to take ourselves seriously, and we wouldn't ask anyone to take us seriously. We would be ironic like the worst kind of hipster: is the torn band t-shirt and the mustache and the mullet cool because it's so uncool? Or has it somehow broken through to being so uncool that it is actually cool?
Whence sincerity in this form of the uncanny? Whence the ground for wanting and believing in the truth?
Eroticism, or eros, is necessary to transform the experience of uncanniness into the experience of irony (as sincerity). Socrates is the most erotic of philosophers. He wants nothing more than to know the truth of the unchanging things. He spends his days in constant serious, albeit playful, pursuit of the truth of things. He longs to know. Philosophy, as the love of wisdom, is driven chiefly by desire, desire culled originally from the experience of desire for the body and soul of the beloved. When the familiar becomes unfamiliar, as it often does in Socrates' dazzling dialectics, we do not throw up our hands; we look further afield, we continue to long and to wonder what these things really are. With the addition of erotic longing for truth the experience of the uncanny becomes a fertile breeding ground for the emergence of the ironic longing that is constitutive of Socrates' being.
With all of this said, it should be clear why Lear says that irony expresses itself most characteristically in tautology. Kierkegaard asks, 'In Christendom are there any Christians?'. Socrates asks, 'Among the philosophers are there any philosophers?'. I ask, 'Among all the therapists are there any therapists?' In each case these words (Christians, philosophers, therapists) appear in two distinct senses. The first use of the word points toward the social role and all of its incumbent attitudes and practices. The second use points towards the ideal or real form of the word. In tautological questions such as these we open up a gap between the supposed or socially sanctioned existence of a phenomena, and we begin to wonder about what really makes the thing we are after.
I work as a therapist. A therapist ought to be a healing person. This is what it means to be a therapist: to be a force for healing in the lives of others. There are many people, however, who have occupied the social role of therapist and may not have taken themselves as healing persons very seriously (although I'm sure most do). Getting a degree and a license, we all know, is not sufficient to making one a therapist, just as going to church every Sunday does not make one a Christian, nor does getting a philosophy degree make one a philosopher.
What do we really mean by these god damn words that we use all the damn time? Do we have any idea what we mean when we say that we want to be a good person, a philosopher, a therapist, a friend, a lover, a human being? What do these words mean?
The experience of irony is the experience of knowing that we do not know what these words really mean. Irony means continually encountering the familiar as unfamiliar, and continuing to move towards it in a desire to understand what it really means.
I love Lear's account of irony. Irony is erotic uncanniness: it is longing for the truth of a thing after running over and over into the unfamiliarity of the socially sanctioned, defined, 'known' things.
I regard my experience of making art as one of ironic making of images in an attempt to feed my larger ironic process of attempting to understand. Among the artists, are there any artists? Of course there are, and it isn't my job to tell someone they aren't an artist. But what does it mean to be an artist? Does it mean to make things, artifacts? Does it mean to be technically skilled? What does it mean? It has something to do with artifacts, with technique, no doubt. But doesn't it mean more?
When I make images, paintings, poems, I do not know what I am making. I am surprised by what I make. Like Flannery O'Connor and E.M. Forster said, 'I don't know what I think until I see what I write.' I don't know what I think, what I'm after, until I see what I make. In this way my process of making objects is ironic in the sense described above: it is about continually trying to encounter the unfamiliar in an attempt to continually long for the truth of things.
What am I trying to understand when I make images like this and I write poems on top of them?
I am not trying to be in control. I am not trying to master anything (unless the term mastery is used very carefully). I'm not trying to be creative. I'm trying to understand, and to support myself in my longing to understand.
Thus the image of ironic making that I am offering is in contradistinction to an image of making or creation that is masterful or god-like. I thought about a lot of this while reading Genesis recently. The God of Genesis is so Ungodlike: he's absolutely clueless about what he is doing. 'Oh, I really fucked up making these people, I'm going to drown them all'. He is described as being sorrowful and regretful about what he has done. God in the bible has no idea what he is doing when he makes us. His makings immediately get out of hand for him.
How could it be otherwise? How could what we make ever be anything that we know entirely? Don't our makings always get away from us, reveal more to us than we knew? Then how could an account of making possibly be about control or mastery? Or am I just so poisoned by my encounters with existentialism? I suspect this is the case. Other people must have more moderate accounts of making that aren't about power, mastery, or control.
But then there is the supposed modern maxim: we only know what we can make. Thus mathematics as a privileged form of knowledge, as some believe it to be a human construction. Thus the power of social constructionist views (to which I am largely sympathetic).
What is the relationship between knowing and making anyways?
I transition to a hasty conclusion, for I grow weary of this writing.
3. Opacity, Traces, Encounter
I am deeply opaque to myself. I become most tranparent to myself in retrospect. It is not until I have seen what I have done that I say, 'oh, now I see what I was up to.'
Why did I get reiki trained as a teenager? Why did I study military history as an undergraduate? Why did I dive headlong into self-imposed scholarship? Why did I spend so many years making coffee? Why was I so afraid of graduate school? Why am I working in the job I work in now?
All of these things have been attempts to heal, to grow, to learn the things I needed to learn.
Kierkegaard was onto something when he said, to paraphrase, 'life has to be lived forward, but it can only be understood backwards'. Irony has something to do with this, but as of now I am not sure what.
Making objects gives me the opportunity to encounter traces of myself in the world. Collingwood: 'If I want to see what kind of person I am, I need to go out into the world and do things. Only once I have done those things will I be able to examine the traces of my activity and say "aha, this is the kind of person I am".'
This, I hope and think, is what I am up to with my making of objects, whether it be paintings, poems, or the thousands of pages of writing I have and will produce. I am looking to know what I am, what kind of person I am. I am studying those traces. I am leaving those traces. I am studying those traces.
I encounter myself, I see what I am, and I long to know more.
It feels strange to have hung my art there and I have been reflecting on why I began painting and writing poetry more seriously. I want to take some time to reflect on the process and what it has to do with my larger learning in philosophy, psychology, and psychotherapy. I have no doubt they are all connected, but it is unclear how.
I am uncomfortable with the word ‘art’ or the idea of identifying as an ‘artist’. Those words have peculiar connotations in modern philosophy. In the seventeenth century when Francis Bacon spoke of ‘the arts’ he meant something like the technical arts or what we call technology. Bacon dreamt of god-like mastery of the world through science and ‘the arts’. Indeed, a large part of what I resist in the notion of ‘art’ is an implication of control, mastery, or god-like power. Twentieth century philosophers make this legacy apparent: Camus speaks of the artist ‘giving the void its colors,’ while Sartre praises the god-like creativity of authentic human beings. Even Bob Ross says peculiar things like ‘On this canvas you have complete control, absolute freedom, you can move mountains.’ One of my best friends, a professional illustrator and designer once joked that artists are often ‘control freaks.’ She and I both prefer to talk about ‘making things’ or being ‘makers, rather than ‘art’ or ‘artists’.
I think that the peculiar masterful or theological character of the notion of ‘art’ has something to do with the modern orientation towards control, and something to do with the biblical notion of ‘creation’. Nowadays we praise ‘creativity’; I see children wearing shirts with the word ‘Creative’ displayed in colorful and exciting letters. I find it strange because creation is a fundamentally biblical notion: God creates, and God creates from nothing.
I feel much more clumsy, uncertain, and relatively out of control. I do not feel masterful in the things I make. I make because I am trying to learn, not because I am trying to master. Of course, I have gotten better at controlling certain types of paints, certain brushes, certain techniques. But technique is not of the essence of making things. Perhaps that is the simplest distinction I can make right now: Art is an ambiguous word that is not sufficiently distinguished from technique. I suppose ‘making’ is comparably ambiguous, but it is also broad in a way I like.
The big questions I want to try and unpack in this writing is, What, if any, is the difference between making and creating? Why am I so resistant to the notion of art and creativity, and associate them so readily with problems of control, mastery, and aspirations to god-hood? And how can I develop an account of making that is simultaneously sincere, ironic, clumsy, and human?
This thinking will follow several sets of distinctions:
1. Body, Language, Image
2. Creating and Making, Mastery and Irony
3. Opacity, Traces, Encountering
There is a story in all these words for me.
1. Body, Language, Image
I started painting and writing poetry more seriously while I was in graduate school to become a psychotherapist. I took a class called 'listening skills.' Once a week me, four students, and an instructor sat in a small room, probably 10x12. We were told that we would be splitting into pairs; one person would be the speaker, the other would be the listener. Our task was to speak and listen as carefully as possible. Listening carefully is surprisingly difficult, as is speaking carefully.
The question that arises is: how do you know when you have understood a person correctly, and how do you know when you have spoken carefully? We are using words in order to express or communicate experience. What is the relationship between words and experience? My mind melts under the weight of such a question.
The wager of the course, and one I am largely persuaded by, is that words and experience meet most intimately in the experience of the body. We know we have spoken carefully, in other words, when we feel it in a visceral way. Similarly, we know we have listened carefully when we can feel what a person is saying, and when we can reflect back to that person what we are hearing-feeling in a way that they recognize. If we reflect what someone has said in an inaccurate way the person will generally tell us, either explicitly or with their bodily presence.
The listening skills class was thus spent developing this embodied awareness while speaking and listening.
The class was built around Eugene Gendlin's notion of 'focusing'. Gendlin is a gifted philosopher who happened to get hooked up with Carl Rogers after writing a dissertation on language and embodiment. 'Focusing' is a process whereby one tries to track the way that different words relate to a bodily 'felt-sense' of a problem, situation, or experience. When I think of the fact that I am happy or unhappy at my job, a whole slew of bodily feelings come along. I feel my shoulder joints tighten, my hands feels restless, and my mind is flush with images. All of these various phenomena are the 'felt-sense' of a situation. In therapy, and in focusing, there is an effort to give voice to this 'felt-sense' of things.
There is a characteristic pattern of speech, reflection, and correction, that therapist and client go through. "It feels like I'm underwater." "Oh, underwater?" "Yeah, underwater, but its more like I'm trapped beneath some ice, and I'm trying to get out from under the ice." "You feel trapped under this water, like you are drowning below this ice." "Yeah, but that's not quite right, it's more like..." When we go through this pattern of correction and deepening of description, what are we checking the words against? How do we know that one image fits more than another image? Gendlin's wager is that we are checking the words against our 'felt-sense' of the whole situation. This all rhymes very well with Bessel van der Kolk's claim that visceral awareness is the beginning and core of emotional awareness. The body, as our intelligent organism, as the home of our lives, is more intelligent than we know, and if we can learn to listen to it, we will see how often it speaks.
Gendlin's work raises questions about the place of images in life and thinking. Why would it be that images intersect with the emotional-embodied life in this way? Why do so many of my clients effortlessly use metaphors to describe their situations? Why do we dream in images, scenes, that we know are connected to our daily lives? I recently read portions of Freud's dream book, and I am aware of the work of Lakoff and Johnson on the place of metaphors.
I am interested in the idea that the image is a kind of intermediary between the world of the body and the world of articulate speech. I believe this is how Dr. Krycka at SU spoke of it: focusing relies on the murky space between the pre-symbolic body and the more purely symbolic world of language. The image is the original form of language. But the image is an extrapolation from the experience of the visual field.
The conclusion I want to draw from all this is that the world is already a type of language or logos or meaning... The world is a wild logos and our bodies are our most intimate place of interfacing between us and that wild logos. Dr. Risser at SU said he talked to Gendlin about how 'if the bodily felt-sense is capable of being rendered in language then it must already be languaged in some sense.' For if the body were somehow radically other than language, if language were mere symbol, imposed upon the world, then language would have no way to make contact with the body.
The experience of focusing, the experience of the image as interfacing intimately with the body, seems to be evidence of the fundamental or primordial status of language. The world is language. Our bodies are the language of the world speaking itself.
But why would we have to interface with images in a self-conscious way? Why do certain images reveal portions of reality better than others?
One thing I want to insist on is that the point of engagement with images as they meet embodied felt-sense is not to interpret the images. The images are to be communed with. The power of the dream is to be felt. It isn't important to unpack, analyze, interpret the dream or the image. It is important to dwell with, commune with, indulge the image or the dream. Feel what the image says.
All this is relevant to me because I have been busy making images... like this one:
As I read Plato, for example, all his images seem to beg to be interpreted, wondered about. But the analysis of the image will always fail, and at some point there is only the pregnant suggestions of the images. The image needs to have the status of self-sufficient-pregnant-being, and implication, or suggestion of analysis.
Enough of this. I make images because images are somehow in-between the-body-as-language and speech-as-language. This could be made to sound boring by saying that all thought is metaphorical or some other platitude. But something very mysterious and peculiar is going on with the status of images. The image gives us access to ourselves as the speech of the world that is capable of knowing itself as the speech of the world.
This, somehow, leads me to the problem of art, mastery, and irony.
2. Creating and Making, Mastery and Irony
When I make images that give rise to my philosophical questions I am limited by in my technical ability and in my ability to know what it is I'm saying. I am limited by technique and implication. What I've said above implies that the images I make will always say more than I realize I'm saying. In that way I do not feel in control of the images, and I do need to analyze the images.
Yet why is it that the notion of art has so much of a connection to divinity? What is up with the idea of the muses? The idea of creation and creativity? What is up with the existentialists replacing the philosopher with the artist and praising the god-like power of art? Why, in short, is art spoken of as a form of mastery? and what else could we be?
I have explicated in another post my questions about the relationship between art and mastery. I don't care to do that now. But what I would like to juxtapose is an ironic account of making, in a very specific sense of the word irony.
Irony is about sincerity.
Jonathan Lear has a wonderful book I have not yet finished called A Case for Irony. In a series of lectures he lays out a vision of irony in which it is no longer synonymous with insincerity, obfuscation, and distance, but rather with sincerity, seriousness, and the pursuit of truth. His major models for this kind of irony are Kierkegaard and Socrates. And Kierkegaard, of course, read the shit out of Plato and had much admiration for Socrates.
The core of irony, Lear claims, is a kind of erotic uncanniness. It is an experience, or an attitude, in which we long for something after we realize that we do not know something we thought we knew. Let's look at these two words, beginning with uncanny.
The uncanny (Unheimlich) is an unsettling experience in which the normally familiar becomes extremely unfamiliar in an unsettling way. We are sitting on the bus, on our way to work, and suddenly it becomes radically strange that we are all here, in this place, going to our fucking jobs, to make this money, that we need in order to pay rent and buy food to nourish our poor bodies. All of these things (places, jobs, money, rent, food, bodies) are so ordinary. But when we stop and look at them we don't really know how any of it works... the uncanny rises up to greet us when the world presents itself in its constant unfamiliarity.
If we were simply to be struck with the strangeness of things, the perhaps ungroundedness of things, we would arrive at a spurious or derivative form of irony, one in which we are tempted to say 'well I guess there is no such thing as truth, no reason any of this is like this.' If that were the case, we would be free to present and act however we want. We wouldn't know how to take ourselves seriously, and we wouldn't ask anyone to take us seriously. We would be ironic like the worst kind of hipster: is the torn band t-shirt and the mustache and the mullet cool because it's so uncool? Or has it somehow broken through to being so uncool that it is actually cool?
Whence sincerity in this form of the uncanny? Whence the ground for wanting and believing in the truth?
Eroticism, or eros, is necessary to transform the experience of uncanniness into the experience of irony (as sincerity). Socrates is the most erotic of philosophers. He wants nothing more than to know the truth of the unchanging things. He spends his days in constant serious, albeit playful, pursuit of the truth of things. He longs to know. Philosophy, as the love of wisdom, is driven chiefly by desire, desire culled originally from the experience of desire for the body and soul of the beloved. When the familiar becomes unfamiliar, as it often does in Socrates' dazzling dialectics, we do not throw up our hands; we look further afield, we continue to long and to wonder what these things really are. With the addition of erotic longing for truth the experience of the uncanny becomes a fertile breeding ground for the emergence of the ironic longing that is constitutive of Socrates' being.
With all of this said, it should be clear why Lear says that irony expresses itself most characteristically in tautology. Kierkegaard asks, 'In Christendom are there any Christians?'. Socrates asks, 'Among the philosophers are there any philosophers?'. I ask, 'Among all the therapists are there any therapists?' In each case these words (Christians, philosophers, therapists) appear in two distinct senses. The first use of the word points toward the social role and all of its incumbent attitudes and practices. The second use points towards the ideal or real form of the word. In tautological questions such as these we open up a gap between the supposed or socially sanctioned existence of a phenomena, and we begin to wonder about what really makes the thing we are after.
I work as a therapist. A therapist ought to be a healing person. This is what it means to be a therapist: to be a force for healing in the lives of others. There are many people, however, who have occupied the social role of therapist and may not have taken themselves as healing persons very seriously (although I'm sure most do). Getting a degree and a license, we all know, is not sufficient to making one a therapist, just as going to church every Sunday does not make one a Christian, nor does getting a philosophy degree make one a philosopher.
What do we really mean by these god damn words that we use all the damn time? Do we have any idea what we mean when we say that we want to be a good person, a philosopher, a therapist, a friend, a lover, a human being? What do these words mean?
The experience of irony is the experience of knowing that we do not know what these words really mean. Irony means continually encountering the familiar as unfamiliar, and continuing to move towards it in a desire to understand what it really means.
I love Lear's account of irony. Irony is erotic uncanniness: it is longing for the truth of a thing after running over and over into the unfamiliarity of the socially sanctioned, defined, 'known' things.
I regard my experience of making art as one of ironic making of images in an attempt to feed my larger ironic process of attempting to understand. Among the artists, are there any artists? Of course there are, and it isn't my job to tell someone they aren't an artist. But what does it mean to be an artist? Does it mean to make things, artifacts? Does it mean to be technically skilled? What does it mean? It has something to do with artifacts, with technique, no doubt. But doesn't it mean more?
When I make images, paintings, poems, I do not know what I am making. I am surprised by what I make. Like Flannery O'Connor and E.M. Forster said, 'I don't know what I think until I see what I write.' I don't know what I think, what I'm after, until I see what I make. In this way my process of making objects is ironic in the sense described above: it is about continually trying to encounter the unfamiliar in an attempt to continually long for the truth of things.
What am I trying to understand when I make images like this and I write poems on top of them?
I am not trying to be in control. I am not trying to master anything (unless the term mastery is used very carefully). I'm not trying to be creative. I'm trying to understand, and to support myself in my longing to understand.
Thus the image of ironic making that I am offering is in contradistinction to an image of making or creation that is masterful or god-like. I thought about a lot of this while reading Genesis recently. The God of Genesis is so Ungodlike: he's absolutely clueless about what he is doing. 'Oh, I really fucked up making these people, I'm going to drown them all'. He is described as being sorrowful and regretful about what he has done. God in the bible has no idea what he is doing when he makes us. His makings immediately get out of hand for him.
How could it be otherwise? How could what we make ever be anything that we know entirely? Don't our makings always get away from us, reveal more to us than we knew? Then how could an account of making possibly be about control or mastery? Or am I just so poisoned by my encounters with existentialism? I suspect this is the case. Other people must have more moderate accounts of making that aren't about power, mastery, or control.
But then there is the supposed modern maxim: we only know what we can make. Thus mathematics as a privileged form of knowledge, as some believe it to be a human construction. Thus the power of social constructionist views (to which I am largely sympathetic).
What is the relationship between knowing and making anyways?
I transition to a hasty conclusion, for I grow weary of this writing.
3. Opacity, Traces, Encounter
I am deeply opaque to myself. I become most tranparent to myself in retrospect. It is not until I have seen what I have done that I say, 'oh, now I see what I was up to.'
Why did I get reiki trained as a teenager? Why did I study military history as an undergraduate? Why did I dive headlong into self-imposed scholarship? Why did I spend so many years making coffee? Why was I so afraid of graduate school? Why am I working in the job I work in now?
All of these things have been attempts to heal, to grow, to learn the things I needed to learn.
Kierkegaard was onto something when he said, to paraphrase, 'life has to be lived forward, but it can only be understood backwards'. Irony has something to do with this, but as of now I am not sure what.
Making objects gives me the opportunity to encounter traces of myself in the world. Collingwood: 'If I want to see what kind of person I am, I need to go out into the world and do things. Only once I have done those things will I be able to examine the traces of my activity and say "aha, this is the kind of person I am".'
This, I hope and think, is what I am up to with my making of objects, whether it be paintings, poems, or the thousands of pages of writing I have and will produce. I am looking to know what I am, what kind of person I am. I am studying those traces. I am leaving those traces. I am studying those traces.
I encounter myself, I see what I am, and I long to know more.
I've said enough. I've done enough. I will study this writing in the coming days, and encounter these traces too.
Tuesday, January 21, 2020
Leaving Our Nature for Nature: Compressed Thoughts on Political Philosophy as First Philosophy
We are the kind of being that by nature makes things. Nowadays we speak readily of ourselves as constructing or co-constructing reality. There seems to be something about being human that makes it necessary for us to make things.
The most characteristic thing that human beings make are laws, rules, nomoi, or, in a word, culture. Invariably human communities are bound by shared practices and customs that regulate the range of acceptable action and thought.
The laws or cultures of human communities generally originate in some relation to the sacred or the divine. Mythical founders were the children of gods, knew the gods, learned from the gods, or were the gods. In the last few hundred years we have seen for the first time governments or states that claim to be fully human, finally non-theological. These governments, states, and peoples, however, retain an awareness and a relationship with the notion of the divine. It merely takes different shapes, like scientific mastery, or history (as in 'history is watching you').
The most characteristic creation of the animal that by nature makes, law, is intrinsically linked to an awareness of goodness. The laws given to the founders were meant to be the laws of the good or best society. The law says what is good. Awareness of goodness implies awareness of badness, both of which imply awareness of better and worst.
The human being enters the world as a being most familiar with the sacred laws and customs made by the community. Nothing other than an ability to obey and fit into these laws and customs is required for a human life. The human being can live entirely within what they have made.
The being that makes by nature has the peculiar ability to hide nature from itself by its makings. Laws and customs about sex and gender, for example, can profoundly obscure the fluidity with which sex and gender and actually exist in the world. That men should have short hair is a social construction. That certain beings are capable of reproducing with others is not.
Nature should be understood principally as contradistinct from law, custom, and convention. Nature is precisely that which is not constructed. The natural is unchanging, and true simply.
Nature is obscured to the being that by nature makes.
In order for the being that by nature makes to attain knowledge of nature that being must learn to make things in a way that points beyond or transcends the thing made.
The creation of laws as the most characteristic form of human creation is logically preceded by a more fundamental feature of our nature: our ability to speak. Our ability to speak is what makes possible our nature as beings that make.
One of our principal ways of speaking is metaphor, or the making of analogically significant images.
The being that by nature makes seeks knowledge of nature by making in such a way so as to not mistake the thing made for nature.
The being that by nature makes seeks to make images that offer a potency or pregnancy that can make nature present to us.
Because the being that makes by nature always begins from the makings of the community, the pursuit of nature must begin from the predominant opinions of the community.
The laws and customs of the community structure the opinions of the community. The laws and customs are of divine character and speak to the good. The opinions of the community are thus opinions about the good way of living received from the gods.
The pursuit of nature is the pursuit of what is really good by nature, and not simply by convention or custom. The pursuit of nature must therefore ascend from the opinions of the community, the opinions of the political body.
Political philosophy is thereby a privileged starting point in the pursuit of nature.
To be a human animal that seeks knowledge of nature is to confront the prevailing views of the political community that serve as the original structure of our souls. To seek is to make images that can provide the questions obscured by the laws and provide answers that allow the next question to emerge.
Political philosophy is the necessary beginning point of philosophy.
Political philosophy in a most peculiar sense.
The most characteristic thing that human beings make are laws, rules, nomoi, or, in a word, culture. Invariably human communities are bound by shared practices and customs that regulate the range of acceptable action and thought.
The laws or cultures of human communities generally originate in some relation to the sacred or the divine. Mythical founders were the children of gods, knew the gods, learned from the gods, or were the gods. In the last few hundred years we have seen for the first time governments or states that claim to be fully human, finally non-theological. These governments, states, and peoples, however, retain an awareness and a relationship with the notion of the divine. It merely takes different shapes, like scientific mastery, or history (as in 'history is watching you').
The most characteristic creation of the animal that by nature makes, law, is intrinsically linked to an awareness of goodness. The laws given to the founders were meant to be the laws of the good or best society. The law says what is good. Awareness of goodness implies awareness of badness, both of which imply awareness of better and worst.
The human being enters the world as a being most familiar with the sacred laws and customs made by the community. Nothing other than an ability to obey and fit into these laws and customs is required for a human life. The human being can live entirely within what they have made.
The being that makes by nature has the peculiar ability to hide nature from itself by its makings. Laws and customs about sex and gender, for example, can profoundly obscure the fluidity with which sex and gender and actually exist in the world. That men should have short hair is a social construction. That certain beings are capable of reproducing with others is not.
Nature should be understood principally as contradistinct from law, custom, and convention. Nature is precisely that which is not constructed. The natural is unchanging, and true simply.
Nature is obscured to the being that by nature makes.
In order for the being that by nature makes to attain knowledge of nature that being must learn to make things in a way that points beyond or transcends the thing made.
The creation of laws as the most characteristic form of human creation is logically preceded by a more fundamental feature of our nature: our ability to speak. Our ability to speak is what makes possible our nature as beings that make.
One of our principal ways of speaking is metaphor, or the making of analogically significant images.
The being that by nature makes seeks knowledge of nature by making in such a way so as to not mistake the thing made for nature.
The being that by nature makes seeks to make images that offer a potency or pregnancy that can make nature present to us.
Because the being that makes by nature always begins from the makings of the community, the pursuit of nature must begin from the predominant opinions of the community.
The laws and customs of the community structure the opinions of the community. The laws and customs are of divine character and speak to the good. The opinions of the community are thus opinions about the good way of living received from the gods.
The pursuit of nature is the pursuit of what is really good by nature, and not simply by convention or custom. The pursuit of nature must therefore ascend from the opinions of the community, the opinions of the political body.
Political philosophy is thereby a privileged starting point in the pursuit of nature.
To be a human animal that seeks knowledge of nature is to confront the prevailing views of the political community that serve as the original structure of our souls. To seek is to make images that can provide the questions obscured by the laws and provide answers that allow the next question to emerge.
Political philosophy is the necessary beginning point of philosophy.
Political philosophy in a most peculiar sense.
Monday, January 6, 2020
The Desire for a Project as the Desire for Wholeness
I spoke with my dad on Sunday. We talked about many things, but the notion of 'projects' came up repeatedly. I was expressing to him that I don't know what my current project is. I am hanging paintings at a coffee shop in about a month, and I feel myself wanting to pivot artistically. I don't feel inclined to condense my graduate school integration paper into a piece of publishable writing, as my professor suggested. I do want to write and attempt to publish at some point. But truthfully I am still sitting with all the ambivalence that I feel about engaging with the academic world. It isn't clear to me that publishing in some psychology, psychotherapy, or philosophy journal is a very meaningful enterprise.
My dad pointed out that it was peculiar, or interesting, or curious, that I found myself so badly in want of a project. I pointed out that he, too, has projects. But he said that his projects are more modest: 'I want to work on my car,' 'I want to paint some trees,' 'I want to build a table.' My projects are of a more scholarly and philosophical bent. I have produced many large writing projects over the last ten years that span somewhere between 1,000 - 1,500 pages of writing. I just looked at my old blog, www.civilizedriley.blogspot.com and clicked on the tag 'Substantial Essay'. I immediately encountered several long pieces of writing that I had entirely forgotten about.
Why in the world am I always producing all these writings? What is going on? Why as I've grown older do I hesitate more to produce them?
I had the idea that part of what I want from a project is an experience of wholeness. Projects are, in some ways, extensive reports on a body of experiences that I have had. I move outside of myself and take stock. Collingwood talks this way about philosophical systems in his Essay on Philosophical Method: A philosophical system is nothing but an intermediary report on the progress that mind has made up until that point. All of this sounds very Hegelian.
A project allows me to stop and look upon my work as though it were done in the process of it still happening. A project is like hades: My life is over and I'm alive to enjoy it. A project allows me to die and be dead.
My final graduate school paper was such a project. That part of my life was over with that project. I was standing at the end of that experience, and I was looking back, with everything I had carried until that point. That is probably part of why I cried so much writing it, writing about my clients from my internship.
I can only conclude that I have not lived enough yet to have another project. I need to keep having experiences, reading books, meeting people, making art, working my job in forensic mental health. These things will crystallize when it is time.
It is not yet time.
There are other ways to feel whole, but there is nothing quite like the next Great Report.
My dad pointed out that it was peculiar, or interesting, or curious, that I found myself so badly in want of a project. I pointed out that he, too, has projects. But he said that his projects are more modest: 'I want to work on my car,' 'I want to paint some trees,' 'I want to build a table.' My projects are of a more scholarly and philosophical bent. I have produced many large writing projects over the last ten years that span somewhere between 1,000 - 1,500 pages of writing. I just looked at my old blog, www.civilizedriley.blogspot.com and clicked on the tag 'Substantial Essay'. I immediately encountered several long pieces of writing that I had entirely forgotten about.
Why in the world am I always producing all these writings? What is going on? Why as I've grown older do I hesitate more to produce them?
I had the idea that part of what I want from a project is an experience of wholeness. Projects are, in some ways, extensive reports on a body of experiences that I have had. I move outside of myself and take stock. Collingwood talks this way about philosophical systems in his Essay on Philosophical Method: A philosophical system is nothing but an intermediary report on the progress that mind has made up until that point. All of this sounds very Hegelian.
A project allows me to stop and look upon my work as though it were done in the process of it still happening. A project is like hades: My life is over and I'm alive to enjoy it. A project allows me to die and be dead.
My final graduate school paper was such a project. That part of my life was over with that project. I was standing at the end of that experience, and I was looking back, with everything I had carried until that point. That is probably part of why I cried so much writing it, writing about my clients from my internship.
I can only conclude that I have not lived enough yet to have another project. I need to keep having experiences, reading books, meeting people, making art, working my job in forensic mental health. These things will crystallize when it is time.
It is not yet time.
There are other ways to feel whole, but there is nothing quite like the next Great Report.
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
A Report on My Reading: Heidegger, Trauma, Other Stuff
I was just on the East coast for 10 days visiting family for the holidays. I had a very good time.
I like using this blog as a place for my future self to return to and keep track of my learning and reading. I saw an old friend and he told me he still speaks of 'future Efron' the way that I used to speak of 'future Riley.' I used to say things like 'future Riley will have this figured out...' or 'Gotta do this now, future Riley will be glad I did.' I told my friend that I was thinking about how future Riley never really exists. It's always present Riley. There is, however, a past Riley. I see his traces in the world and I learn about him and me by studying those traces.
I thus leave a trace of what I've been up to.
On the plane ride out I read Heidegger's 'Letter on Humanism'. On the plane ride back I read his 'Question Concerning Technology'. Both are tremendously stimulating pieces of writing. I am happy that I am deepening my understanding of his idea of 'destiny' and the seeming project of 'waiting for the gods'. These are thoughts I became familiar with while reading 'What Are Poets For?' and 'Building, Dwelling, Thinking.' The 'Question' also makes a claim, briefly, provocatively, that physis and poiesis are in some sense equivalent, or that physis is a kind of poiesis. This seems peculiar and problematic to me. The ancient understanding of physis, or nature, as I understand it, was always spoken of in contradistinction to law, custom, or nomos. Nomos, I am sure, is a type of poiesis, or making--it is one of the quintessential forms of making.
There is a relation between nature and making, no doubt. And Heidegger is right that the chief task of making is to show things as they are. Making reveals nature. This is of the essence of Heidegger's definition of phenomenology as a type of speaking that reveals things as they are. But to claim that nature is itself a form of making... this seems peculiar to me. We are the being that by nature makes. But I am not comfortable or convinced by the idea that nature itself is a kind of making.
Keir will be exploring this in his dissertation on the notion of production and I look forward to the fruits of his inquiry and our dialogue surrounding it.
It is clear to me now that I need to understand Heidegger's relationship to Holderlin, and how in the world Heidegger arrives at this idea of the 'destiny of being' that reveals itself as the task of thinking. He is so powerful. But as Keir said to me in a text message this morning, 'Read poetry and await destiny. Thanks H that really helps us avoid the technological apocalypse.' There is something so strange in Heidegger's neglect of politics.
I am becoming more comfortable with the idea that history is really a substitute for the ancient understanding of politics, and that relational ontology is a degraded attempt to recover something like a genuine understanding of ourselves as a political animal. Perhaps that is the post I will write next. It feels rich.
I also read an excellent essay called 'Pathologizing Poverty: New Forms of Diagnosis, Disability, and Stigma Under Welfare Reform.' The essay illuminates the way that the 96' Clinton reforms of welfare essentially destroyed genuine social services in America and replaced them with a medicalized form of care that coerces individuals into accepting diagnoses, medication regimes, and inculcates new roles and identities that complicate questions of poverty and mental illness. Someone recently told me that they thought of community mental health as 'government mind control of the poor.' I am inclined to agree with this view, even if there is a part of me that wants to moderate the conspiratorial tones of it. I have, however, been becoming a more conspiratorial thinker.
I also read most of Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps The Score. A tremendous book that I am delighted to have read. My god. The research, the ideas, the practices. So powerful. I only have to read the epilogue in which van der Kolk seems to make a call for a new politicized understanding of trauma and mental illness. Indeed, I saw he wrote a 2019 article on the politics of mental health. I hope to build on that work. There are many places in the book where the significance of socialism is implied. I am more and more convinced that mental health counselors need to be advocates for socialism, and fierce opponents of capitalism, if we are to be anything other than tools of the system.
I also had a chance to see my aunt and uncle who are both therapists in the Virginia area. They told me that a while ago they were at a conference on the DSM-3. My uncle said he asked the chair of the committee, 'What about complex PTSD as a diagnosis?' to which he said 'If we let that trauma stuff in it will take over everything.' There is profound resistance in the psychological and psychiatric community to the idea that mental illness is about social and political violence and cannot be understood adequately through biological etiology. I am delighted that my uncle told me this. Delighted and horrified. It confirms so much of what I am thinking and what van der Kolk is writing about. My aunt bluntly confirmed many of my hunches as well, telling me that she really believed trauma to be at the heart of all this, and that the establishment likes to divide the world into 'those weird ones over there with mental illness and us normal people over here.'
It feels more and more urgent to understand trauma as an extreme manifestation of the violence and coercion that all of us experience at the hands of society. A conflictualist analysis of politics is invaluable in this respect.
I also read a paper on polyvagal theory that clarified my understanding of the significance of Porges' emphasis on evolution.
I also read a paper on Clausewitz and his relationship to Schleiermacher and, potentially, Plato. As Keir said 'everything is coming full circle.' I will speak to my undergraduate mentor, Jon Sumida, at some point, as his work is one of the main influence on that essay. I have been working, slowly and quietly in ways I don't understand yet, to integrate my undergraduate study of military history into my new orientation of politicized and philosophical psychotherapy/psychology. This includes a return to Clausewitz and Collingwood. I will undoubtedly do more work on Collingwood, and perhaps on Clausewitz.
I also read a fascinating essay by Jon Mills called 'Deconstructing Hermes', and when I arrived home last night my copy of his book Conundrums was at my apartment. I am excited to engage his work. He seems spot on with this critiques. I am not sure I am persuaded by his positive alternatives. I watched a lecture of his recently and he seemed to advocate for a return to modern sensibilities as opposed to post-modern decadence. I still favor something more aggressively 'natural' or ancient.
I will continue to reflect on the significance of esoteric hermeneutics. An adequate understanding of esotericism provides not only a viable hermeneutics, but also a politics, a psychology, and an ontology. It frees us from the modern emphasis on 'method', which so flippantly disregards the necessary links between epistemology and ontology.
I will leave it at this. I am excited to be back and to continue my learning. I also just received a copy of Hegel's Encyclopedia, and have 1/3 of Aristotle's De Anima to finish. From there I will be reading, soonish, Aristotle's Politics, some Rousseau, probably some Mills and some other stuff. I'm excited to be able to keep working on this all. It is good to be back. It was good to see my family. I love them very much, and feel sad that this report makes it seem as if though my time visiting the East coast was about my reading. I loved reading while I was there. But I also loved being around them, seeing my old friends, remembering and seeing more deeply where I come from, and why I am this way.
I sent back my great-grandfather's letters from while he was in Germany in the wake of WWII. He had a nervous breakdown there... I want to understand what happened to him so I can have a deeper grasp on who I am, who my family is. I will keep learning.
I like using this blog as a place for my future self to return to and keep track of my learning and reading. I saw an old friend and he told me he still speaks of 'future Efron' the way that I used to speak of 'future Riley.' I used to say things like 'future Riley will have this figured out...' or 'Gotta do this now, future Riley will be glad I did.' I told my friend that I was thinking about how future Riley never really exists. It's always present Riley. There is, however, a past Riley. I see his traces in the world and I learn about him and me by studying those traces.
I thus leave a trace of what I've been up to.
On the plane ride out I read Heidegger's 'Letter on Humanism'. On the plane ride back I read his 'Question Concerning Technology'. Both are tremendously stimulating pieces of writing. I am happy that I am deepening my understanding of his idea of 'destiny' and the seeming project of 'waiting for the gods'. These are thoughts I became familiar with while reading 'What Are Poets For?' and 'Building, Dwelling, Thinking.' The 'Question' also makes a claim, briefly, provocatively, that physis and poiesis are in some sense equivalent, or that physis is a kind of poiesis. This seems peculiar and problematic to me. The ancient understanding of physis, or nature, as I understand it, was always spoken of in contradistinction to law, custom, or nomos. Nomos, I am sure, is a type of poiesis, or making--it is one of the quintessential forms of making.
There is a relation between nature and making, no doubt. And Heidegger is right that the chief task of making is to show things as they are. Making reveals nature. This is of the essence of Heidegger's definition of phenomenology as a type of speaking that reveals things as they are. But to claim that nature is itself a form of making... this seems peculiar to me. We are the being that by nature makes. But I am not comfortable or convinced by the idea that nature itself is a kind of making.
Keir will be exploring this in his dissertation on the notion of production and I look forward to the fruits of his inquiry and our dialogue surrounding it.
It is clear to me now that I need to understand Heidegger's relationship to Holderlin, and how in the world Heidegger arrives at this idea of the 'destiny of being' that reveals itself as the task of thinking. He is so powerful. But as Keir said to me in a text message this morning, 'Read poetry and await destiny. Thanks H that really helps us avoid the technological apocalypse.' There is something so strange in Heidegger's neglect of politics.
I am becoming more comfortable with the idea that history is really a substitute for the ancient understanding of politics, and that relational ontology is a degraded attempt to recover something like a genuine understanding of ourselves as a political animal. Perhaps that is the post I will write next. It feels rich.
I also read an excellent essay called 'Pathologizing Poverty: New Forms of Diagnosis, Disability, and Stigma Under Welfare Reform.' The essay illuminates the way that the 96' Clinton reforms of welfare essentially destroyed genuine social services in America and replaced them with a medicalized form of care that coerces individuals into accepting diagnoses, medication regimes, and inculcates new roles and identities that complicate questions of poverty and mental illness. Someone recently told me that they thought of community mental health as 'government mind control of the poor.' I am inclined to agree with this view, even if there is a part of me that wants to moderate the conspiratorial tones of it. I have, however, been becoming a more conspiratorial thinker.
I also read most of Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps The Score. A tremendous book that I am delighted to have read. My god. The research, the ideas, the practices. So powerful. I only have to read the epilogue in which van der Kolk seems to make a call for a new politicized understanding of trauma and mental illness. Indeed, I saw he wrote a 2019 article on the politics of mental health. I hope to build on that work. There are many places in the book where the significance of socialism is implied. I am more and more convinced that mental health counselors need to be advocates for socialism, and fierce opponents of capitalism, if we are to be anything other than tools of the system.
I also had a chance to see my aunt and uncle who are both therapists in the Virginia area. They told me that a while ago they were at a conference on the DSM-3. My uncle said he asked the chair of the committee, 'What about complex PTSD as a diagnosis?' to which he said 'If we let that trauma stuff in it will take over everything.' There is profound resistance in the psychological and psychiatric community to the idea that mental illness is about social and political violence and cannot be understood adequately through biological etiology. I am delighted that my uncle told me this. Delighted and horrified. It confirms so much of what I am thinking and what van der Kolk is writing about. My aunt bluntly confirmed many of my hunches as well, telling me that she really believed trauma to be at the heart of all this, and that the establishment likes to divide the world into 'those weird ones over there with mental illness and us normal people over here.'
It feels more and more urgent to understand trauma as an extreme manifestation of the violence and coercion that all of us experience at the hands of society. A conflictualist analysis of politics is invaluable in this respect.
I also read a paper on polyvagal theory that clarified my understanding of the significance of Porges' emphasis on evolution.
I also read a paper on Clausewitz and his relationship to Schleiermacher and, potentially, Plato. As Keir said 'everything is coming full circle.' I will speak to my undergraduate mentor, Jon Sumida, at some point, as his work is one of the main influence on that essay. I have been working, slowly and quietly in ways I don't understand yet, to integrate my undergraduate study of military history into my new orientation of politicized and philosophical psychotherapy/psychology. This includes a return to Clausewitz and Collingwood. I will undoubtedly do more work on Collingwood, and perhaps on Clausewitz.
I also read a fascinating essay by Jon Mills called 'Deconstructing Hermes', and when I arrived home last night my copy of his book Conundrums was at my apartment. I am excited to engage his work. He seems spot on with this critiques. I am not sure I am persuaded by his positive alternatives. I watched a lecture of his recently and he seemed to advocate for a return to modern sensibilities as opposed to post-modern decadence. I still favor something more aggressively 'natural' or ancient.
I will continue to reflect on the significance of esoteric hermeneutics. An adequate understanding of esotericism provides not only a viable hermeneutics, but also a politics, a psychology, and an ontology. It frees us from the modern emphasis on 'method', which so flippantly disregards the necessary links between epistemology and ontology.
I will leave it at this. I am excited to be back and to continue my learning. I also just received a copy of Hegel's Encyclopedia, and have 1/3 of Aristotle's De Anima to finish. From there I will be reading, soonish, Aristotle's Politics, some Rousseau, probably some Mills and some other stuff. I'm excited to be able to keep working on this all. It is good to be back. It was good to see my family. I love them very much, and feel sad that this report makes it seem as if though my time visiting the East coast was about my reading. I loved reading while I was there. But I also loved being around them, seeing my old friends, remembering and seeing more deeply where I come from, and why I am this way.
I sent back my great-grandfather's letters from while he was in Germany in the wake of WWII. He had a nervous breakdown there... I want to understand what happened to him so I can have a deeper grasp on who I am, who my family is. I will keep learning.
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