When Aristotle ascended into the first heaven, he saw the Prime Mover writing long hyphenated words in a language with which he wasn’t at all familiar.
Said Aristotle, “Cause of Causes, Who requires you to do this?”
Replied the First Principle of Philosophy, “One day there will come a man who will grasp the ideas behind these words and derive pages and pages of philosophical insights from them.
Said Aristotle, “Being qua Being, reveal this man to me.”
Replied Being qua Being, “Turn around.”
Aristotle turned around and found himself in the back of Heidegger’s classroom at the University of Heidelberg. Aristotle could not follow the discussion and felt dizzy. At a certain point, one of the students asked, “Herr, Heidegger, how does your distinction between the factical and the existential or the ontic and the ontological bear out in terms of the relation between one’s thoughts and one’s actions?” Heidegger replied, “This distinction is one given to us in the works of Aristotle. Aristotle’s life may summed up as follows: Aristotle was born. He thought. He died. What matters is that he thought. This is the unveiling revelation given to us by Being through Aristotle.” Then Aristotle felt relieved.
But Aristotle turned back to face the Ground of Grounds, and he said, “You have such a mind, yet you give the question of the meaning of Being through me?”
Replied, Thought Thinking Itself, “Shush. This is the way my thoughts ascend me.”
Replied, Aristotle, “Reason of the Universe, you have shown me his insights, show me his life.”
The Reason of the Universe said, “Turn around.” Aristotle turned around and saw Heidegger shouting, “Heil Hitler.”
Said Aristotle, “Source of Sources, such is his knowledge and such his life?”
Replied Being, “Shush. This is the way my thoughts ascend me.”
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Friday, July 4, 2008
Some reflections on History and the Story
The power of the story, which the historian grasps as the means for reenacting the past and for bringing it into the present, comes through in the following tale:
And here it is, as I have heard it told by the great Hebrew novelist and storyteller S.Y. Agnon: When the Ba’al Shem Tov [Founder of Hasidism, 1698-1760] had a difficult task before him, he would go to a certain place in the woods, light a fire, and meditate in prayer – and what he had set out to perform was done. When a generation later Dov Baer, the “Maggid” of Meseritz [1710-1772] was faced with the same task, he would go to the same place in the woods and say: We can no longer light the fire, but we can still speak the prayers—and what he wanted became a reality. Again, a generation later, Rabbi Moshe Leib of Sassov [1745-1807] had to perform this task. And he too went into the woods and said: We can no longer light the fire, nor do we know the secret meditations belonging to the prayer, but we do know the place in the woods to which it all belongs—and that must be sufficient; and sufficient it was. But when another generation had passed and Rabbi Israel of Rishin [1796-1850] was called upon to perform the task, he sat down on his gold chair in his castle and said: We cannot light the fire, we cannot speak the prayers, we do not know the place, but we can tell the story of how it was done. And, the storyteller, adds, the story he told had the same effect as the actions of the other three.
This story, which Gershom Scholem, the great historian of Jewish mysticism, recounts, gets at the center of what history is. The ancients had their temple rituals and the medievals had their sacraments. We moderns have our histories. As collective members of a secular and technological age, we are unable to free ourselves from the scientific paradigms that govern our experience and cloud our faith with skepticism. We no longer know the prayers or how to light the fire or even where to go. But we are able to tell the story of those for whom faith was a precondition of experience. And in telling the story, in believing that others could believe, we ourselves take the leap of faith. The previous ages found meaning in space, but we find it in time. We enter the woods to say our prayers and light our fires when we enter the library archives and when we fill them with our own writings. If it is enough that Rabbi Israel Rishin told the story of his forefathers, it is enough that S.Y. Agnon told the story about Rishin telling the story, and it is enough that Scholem told the story about Agnon telling the story about Rishin telling the story. In every retelling, the story changes slightly with its storyteller. But in effect, the truth of the story is preserved, since the story is itself simply about telling the story. No matter who tells it or how, the story remains. Historians, the “scientific” bards of the modern age, may revise their stories as certain facts come into and out of favor and as modes of causal analysis change, but the ultimate importance that they serve in all of their writings and rewritings is not so much in the stories they tell, but in the fact that they tell a story. The historians tell the story of humankind not as omniscient narrators, but as characters. The histories they write do not capture the plot so much as they drive it.
Faith that all of the conflicting histories will resolve themselves into one historical truth and that all of the characters on the stage of history will come together in unity, a Hegelian transmutation of Smith’s notion of the “invisible hand,” is dogmatic if we conceive it to mean that a conscious absolute spirit operates within the world as its driving force. To posit that history is moving toward an “end of history,” and to claim knowledge of what such an end of history entails is unduly orthodox. But to believe that the story will continue and that every telling of the story is an end in itself— that history, in a sense, occurs so that it may be told and retold —this is the courageous leap that the historian must, on some level, make. The historian cannot prove the truth of such a claim except by accepting it. Only by striving to tell the story does the historian show that history is the telos of history.
And here it is, as I have heard it told by the great Hebrew novelist and storyteller S.Y. Agnon: When the Ba’al Shem Tov [Founder of Hasidism, 1698-1760] had a difficult task before him, he would go to a certain place in the woods, light a fire, and meditate in prayer – and what he had set out to perform was done. When a generation later Dov Baer, the “Maggid” of Meseritz [1710-1772] was faced with the same task, he would go to the same place in the woods and say: We can no longer light the fire, but we can still speak the prayers—and what he wanted became a reality. Again, a generation later, Rabbi Moshe Leib of Sassov [1745-1807] had to perform this task. And he too went into the woods and said: We can no longer light the fire, nor do we know the secret meditations belonging to the prayer, but we do know the place in the woods to which it all belongs—and that must be sufficient; and sufficient it was. But when another generation had passed and Rabbi Israel of Rishin [1796-1850] was called upon to perform the task, he sat down on his gold chair in his castle and said: We cannot light the fire, we cannot speak the prayers, we do not know the place, but we can tell the story of how it was done. And, the storyteller, adds, the story he told had the same effect as the actions of the other three.
This story, which Gershom Scholem, the great historian of Jewish mysticism, recounts, gets at the center of what history is. The ancients had their temple rituals and the medievals had their sacraments. We moderns have our histories. As collective members of a secular and technological age, we are unable to free ourselves from the scientific paradigms that govern our experience and cloud our faith with skepticism. We no longer know the prayers or how to light the fire or even where to go. But we are able to tell the story of those for whom faith was a precondition of experience. And in telling the story, in believing that others could believe, we ourselves take the leap of faith. The previous ages found meaning in space, but we find it in time. We enter the woods to say our prayers and light our fires when we enter the library archives and when we fill them with our own writings. If it is enough that Rabbi Israel Rishin told the story of his forefathers, it is enough that S.Y. Agnon told the story about Rishin telling the story, and it is enough that Scholem told the story about Agnon telling the story about Rishin telling the story. In every retelling, the story changes slightly with its storyteller. But in effect, the truth of the story is preserved, since the story is itself simply about telling the story. No matter who tells it or how, the story remains. Historians, the “scientific” bards of the modern age, may revise their stories as certain facts come into and out of favor and as modes of causal analysis change, but the ultimate importance that they serve in all of their writings and rewritings is not so much in the stories they tell, but in the fact that they tell a story. The historians tell the story of humankind not as omniscient narrators, but as characters. The histories they write do not capture the plot so much as they drive it.
Faith that all of the conflicting histories will resolve themselves into one historical truth and that all of the characters on the stage of history will come together in unity, a Hegelian transmutation of Smith’s notion of the “invisible hand,” is dogmatic if we conceive it to mean that a conscious absolute spirit operates within the world as its driving force. To posit that history is moving toward an “end of history,” and to claim knowledge of what such an end of history entails is unduly orthodox. But to believe that the story will continue and that every telling of the story is an end in itself— that history, in a sense, occurs so that it may be told and retold —this is the courageous leap that the historian must, on some level, make. The historian cannot prove the truth of such a claim except by accepting it. Only by striving to tell the story does the historian show that history is the telos of history.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Deconstructing "Analysis"
The word "analysis," from the Greek, ana-lysis, literally meaning to un-tie or dis-entangle, suggests, in its place in the word "psycho-analysis," an untying of the soul, or to put it crudely, a disentangling of consciousness.
This seems rather odd, at first, given that psychoanalysis claims to understand consciousness and the inner-symbolic structure of the psyche. Yet further reflection leads us to notice that psychoanalysis can only make its claims to knowledge by arguing that it is an objective science. And so, while psychoanalysis focuses on subjectivity, it does so at its desk, observing its "cases" reclining on distant sofas. Psychoanalysis seeks to untie itself from its subject in order to know it. How gloriously paradoxical! How senseless one would be, on the one hand, to study a subject one has no interest in, yet how doomed one would be, if one was so invested in one's subject so as not to be able to reflect upon it.
There is, I believe, a solution to this paradox, and one which extends beyond the bounds of mere psychoanalysis. And that is that the untying which psychoanalysis seeks to accomplish is not simply an untying of itself as a science from its "patients," but an untying of the patients from themselves. If both subject and object are untied, somehow they are able to meet in the atopological between, a between as easy to miss as the Hogwart's Platform 9''3/4 (See J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter).
Analysis of anything, be it of the psyche, of the divine, of culture, music, geometry, algebra or rhetoric, succeeds when subject and object are able to untie from themselves and from each other in order to meet in non-space. I use the metaphor of space, simply because space is most obviously relational. Something is here in relation to this over there, but it is never here in virtue of itself. Hereness and thereness are contingent and contextual, but analysis brings them to an ec-static level.
Thus, analysis, though it often seems dry and forced, can, if it succeeds in doing what it's name suggests, truly un-knot the obvious and open up the secret. And this, I add as a footnote, is why religion must be critical and analytical if it is also to be spiritual. For spirituality is not opposed to analysis. Rather, it is what analysis, what thought, what deconstruction, make possible. The mystical experience is founded on doubt and skepticism, and this is what makes it especially powerful. For in the words of Franz Rosenzweig, "the mystic and the atheist shake hands."
This seems rather odd, at first, given that psychoanalysis claims to understand consciousness and the inner-symbolic structure of the psyche. Yet further reflection leads us to notice that psychoanalysis can only make its claims to knowledge by arguing that it is an objective science. And so, while psychoanalysis focuses on subjectivity, it does so at its desk, observing its "cases" reclining on distant sofas. Psychoanalysis seeks to untie itself from its subject in order to know it. How gloriously paradoxical! How senseless one would be, on the one hand, to study a subject one has no interest in, yet how doomed one would be, if one was so invested in one's subject so as not to be able to reflect upon it.
There is, I believe, a solution to this paradox, and one which extends beyond the bounds of mere psychoanalysis. And that is that the untying which psychoanalysis seeks to accomplish is not simply an untying of itself as a science from its "patients," but an untying of the patients from themselves. If both subject and object are untied, somehow they are able to meet in the atopological between, a between as easy to miss as the Hogwart's Platform 9''3/4 (See J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter).
Analysis of anything, be it of the psyche, of the divine, of culture, music, geometry, algebra or rhetoric, succeeds when subject and object are able to untie from themselves and from each other in order to meet in non-space. I use the metaphor of space, simply because space is most obviously relational. Something is here in relation to this over there, but it is never here in virtue of itself. Hereness and thereness are contingent and contextual, but analysis brings them to an ec-static level.
Thus, analysis, though it often seems dry and forced, can, if it succeeds in doing what it's name suggests, truly un-knot the obvious and open up the secret. And this, I add as a footnote, is why religion must be critical and analytical if it is also to be spiritual. For spirituality is not opposed to analysis. Rather, it is what analysis, what thought, what deconstruction, make possible. The mystical experience is founded on doubt and skepticism, and this is what makes it especially powerful. For in the words of Franz Rosenzweig, "the mystic and the atheist shake hands."
The Trauma of the Wound: Some Graeco-Judaeo-Christio Thoughts
In Greek, the word "trauma," means wound. And modern thought rightly understands a traumatic experience to be one which stays with us even after its occurrence and passage, just as a scar remains even after its aboriginal wound has healed. Yet there is something negative in our use of the word trauma, and by association, in our conception of the wound. It's as if the wound and the trauma that it leaves behind are things we'd like to avoid altogether. Initially and for the most part we believe that wounds are crippling. We do not realize that they are often what stirs us to walk.
For if the wound is that which cannot close, or which, upon closing, leaves a trace, a sign, a memory, in its place, is the wound not something necessary for our self-consciousness? For without a wound, that is, without a past, who are we? Without the wound of heritage, the wound of history, the wound of temporality, do we not become simply still-lifes in a stagnant, albeit beautiful painting? We would "be," if we can even use that verb, like a vibrantly painted pear that has no knowledge of the painting in which its presence is illuminated and no knowledge of its creator in whose absence its vitality is substantiated. Thus, the wound, opens us, in its opening, not to be the fruit that hangs in paintings and on trees, but to be the painters and pluckers of such fruit. The wound, the opening, out of which the inner "elements" flow, brings us out of hiding and into a "there," into a context. The wound is our pretext. Trauma is our pretext. The life-force that grounds us and is begrounded by us is not, then, dirt or clay, water or fire, or even energy, but trauma, understood as the wound.
Now, if in Christian theology, the wound of Christ, functions as a symbol of his selfless suffering which makes possible salvation, it becomes evident why such an image is powerful, moving, traumatic. The wound signifies all of the problems that accompany a state of post-Edenic falleness. The wound signifies suffering, evil, death. The wound of Christ is traumatic, not simply in its graphicness, but in its allusion to the primordial wound, the wound man supposedly caused to God when he disobeyed him and lied to him (evidenced by the line, "And the LORD called out, 'where are you?'") and the wound God assuredly caused to man, when he banished him. With the repetition of the wound in Christ, the underlying meaning is not salvation in the obvious, orthodox sense. For since Christ's death we do not live in Eden, we do not live in the garden of innocence so awesomely painted over the centuries. Christ's wound offers salvation not in a return to Eden, for Eden is a world free of wounds altogether, but salvation through being wounded, salvation through accepting memory, suffering, death, change. What it means to find salvation in Christ, then, is not to be transported into Eden, not even in regards to the soul. Rather, the salvation that the wounded God-man offers is one in which Eden becomes a wound of which we are proud, a wound on whose existence we depend for our being. Christ's acceptance of death, of the wound, offers us an opportunity to reject with joy any longing for eternity, immortality, concepts which exist only in the mindless world of the painting, and encourages us to find redemption in the wound in itself. We must become attuned to our wounds, and we must do so, never once and for all, but progressively and repeatedly. And we must do this not as despairing and troubled children "traumatized" by the wound, but as heroes "dramatized" by it, brought to life by it, "ekked" on by it.
For if the wound is that which cannot close, or which, upon closing, leaves a trace, a sign, a memory, in its place, is the wound not something necessary for our self-consciousness? For without a wound, that is, without a past, who are we? Without the wound of heritage, the wound of history, the wound of temporality, do we not become simply still-lifes in a stagnant, albeit beautiful painting? We would "be," if we can even use that verb, like a vibrantly painted pear that has no knowledge of the painting in which its presence is illuminated and no knowledge of its creator in whose absence its vitality is substantiated. Thus, the wound, opens us, in its opening, not to be the fruit that hangs in paintings and on trees, but to be the painters and pluckers of such fruit. The wound, the opening, out of which the inner "elements" flow, brings us out of hiding and into a "there," into a context. The wound is our pretext. Trauma is our pretext. The life-force that grounds us and is begrounded by us is not, then, dirt or clay, water or fire, or even energy, but trauma, understood as the wound.
Now, if in Christian theology, the wound of Christ, functions as a symbol of his selfless suffering which makes possible salvation, it becomes evident why such an image is powerful, moving, traumatic. The wound signifies all of the problems that accompany a state of post-Edenic falleness. The wound signifies suffering, evil, death. The wound of Christ is traumatic, not simply in its graphicness, but in its allusion to the primordial wound, the wound man supposedly caused to God when he disobeyed him and lied to him (evidenced by the line, "And the LORD called out, 'where are you?'") and the wound God assuredly caused to man, when he banished him. With the repetition of the wound in Christ, the underlying meaning is not salvation in the obvious, orthodox sense. For since Christ's death we do not live in Eden, we do not live in the garden of innocence so awesomely painted over the centuries. Christ's wound offers salvation not in a return to Eden, for Eden is a world free of wounds altogether, but salvation through being wounded, salvation through accepting memory, suffering, death, change. What it means to find salvation in Christ, then, is not to be transported into Eden, not even in regards to the soul. Rather, the salvation that the wounded God-man offers is one in which Eden becomes a wound of which we are proud, a wound on whose existence we depend for our being. Christ's acceptance of death, of the wound, offers us an opportunity to reject with joy any longing for eternity, immortality, concepts which exist only in the mindless world of the painting, and encourages us to find redemption in the wound in itself. We must become attuned to our wounds, and we must do so, never once and for all, but progressively and repeatedly. And we must do this not as despairing and troubled children "traumatized" by the wound, but as heroes "dramatized" by it, brought to life by it, "ekked" on by it.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
The "miracle"
"The miracle of creation was not that when God said 'Let there be light,' there was light, but that God said 'Let there be light.'"
--Reb Logos
--Reb Logos
What we notice is truth
Though Heidegger has already elaborated, through his analysis of the Greek word for truth, aletheia, a notion of truth as unconcealment, as a-letheia, as un-forgetting, an opportunity opens up for an even more precise elaboration on Heidegger's etymological unconcealment of the word.
For in Greek, a verb closely related to the noun letheia, forgetting, is lathonai, which means to escape the notice of. We might say, then, that truth is not unhiding or unforgetting, but simply noticing.
Truth is what we notice. Or to put it more powerfully, what we notice is truth.
For in Greek, a verb closely related to the noun letheia, forgetting, is lathonai, which means to escape the notice of. We might say, then, that truth is not unhiding or unforgetting, but simply noticing.
Truth is what we notice. Or to put it more powerfully, what we notice is truth.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
The Purloined Letter
It occurs to me, upon reading Poe's "The Purloined Letter" and several interpretations offered by Lacan, Derrida, Shoshana Felman, and Barbara Johnson, respectively, that literature itself is the "purloined letter." Allow me to explain:
Literature draws words from the world and assembles them or frames them. In a sense, it purloins them from language. Literature says, "Out of all the possible words which make up the ever altering universe, I am telling you to look here, at me, and find an example, a blueprint, a representation, in my finite words, in my beginning, middle, and end, a basis for relating to all that I have left out." Literature says, "I am the epigram to life. Do not overlook me for the narrative. Do not dismiss me as fiction posing in a shop window as you pass on to reality! I am the meaning." Literature says, "Do not ask from where I gather my authority. Do not seek out my origins, which will lead you only into darkness, but simply accept me as I am, a text, in your hands. Only do not merely accept me. Rather accept me by challenging me."
Literature is an illicit letter, illicit because in its finititude and framing, it has undermined the authority of language. For literature is always unfaithful to the law, to ideology. No matter what motivations drive literature, its letters always disseminate that its meaning is engaged in an affair with something besides the letter of the law. Literature, in its illicitness, in its subversiveness is guilty of a crime. Perhaps, guilty is too strong a word. Rather, it is framed of a crime. (We are always guilty of the crime of framing). The crime of literature, however, is never detected by those against whom it does violence. For the laws which literature, in its sheer presence, dissolves, are blind. Blind justice cannot see the letter whose contents spell mutiny for the law. And blind justice does not want to see. For if it saw, it would indeed be undone. Its tenacity lies in the fact that it is oblivious.
Literature, on the other hand, thinking itself to be invisible because it is unseen by the law is vulnerable to theft. Literature, when its letter is stolen, cannot protest, since in protesting, it would call attention to itself, awaken justice, and bring down judgment upon itself. And furthermore, it cannot prosecute anyone of theft, since to do so would be to invoke the law, a bond to which it itself has repudiated in its very act of existence.
Those who purloin literature, or the letters of literature, are bound to have their letters purloined in turn. For in so far as letters exist, they inexorably give way to purloinery. Which is why, Lacan tells us, the word "purloin" also means "prolong." The cycle of theft can never be escaped, since in so far as we as selves are creating, we are stealing. Even when we put words in quotes, we are putting them in quotes. We are choosing them out of all the other words and phrases.
If in the beginning, according to one purloined letter, God created the world with words, with speech, this suggests that God purloined from language, and in so purloining, in so framing, gave way to existence. Thus, from the dark and void depths of language itself, God spoke, "Let there be light." There was light not simply because God said so, but because God didn't say all the other things that God could have said. God didn't say let there be sand or ^*T%()% or *&^^5^).
But creation, too, if it is a kind of framing of infinity in finitude, can never cease.
For as authors, readers, interpreters, and indeed, mere characters on the stage of nothingness in which all things appear simply as holes in the nothing, we are always creating in our very act of perceiving, existing, comprehending, and feeling. And we are creating because we are purloining. Because we are signifying the unnamed signified.
Literature draws words from the world and assembles them or frames them. In a sense, it purloins them from language. Literature says, "Out of all the possible words which make up the ever altering universe, I am telling you to look here, at me, and find an example, a blueprint, a representation, in my finite words, in my beginning, middle, and end, a basis for relating to all that I have left out." Literature says, "I am the epigram to life. Do not overlook me for the narrative. Do not dismiss me as fiction posing in a shop window as you pass on to reality! I am the meaning." Literature says, "Do not ask from where I gather my authority. Do not seek out my origins, which will lead you only into darkness, but simply accept me as I am, a text, in your hands. Only do not merely accept me. Rather accept me by challenging me."
Literature is an illicit letter, illicit because in its finititude and framing, it has undermined the authority of language. For literature is always unfaithful to the law, to ideology. No matter what motivations drive literature, its letters always disseminate that its meaning is engaged in an affair with something besides the letter of the law. Literature, in its illicitness, in its subversiveness is guilty of a crime. Perhaps, guilty is too strong a word. Rather, it is framed of a crime. (We are always guilty of the crime of framing). The crime of literature, however, is never detected by those against whom it does violence. For the laws which literature, in its sheer presence, dissolves, are blind. Blind justice cannot see the letter whose contents spell mutiny for the law. And blind justice does not want to see. For if it saw, it would indeed be undone. Its tenacity lies in the fact that it is oblivious.
Literature, on the other hand, thinking itself to be invisible because it is unseen by the law is vulnerable to theft. Literature, when its letter is stolen, cannot protest, since in protesting, it would call attention to itself, awaken justice, and bring down judgment upon itself. And furthermore, it cannot prosecute anyone of theft, since to do so would be to invoke the law, a bond to which it itself has repudiated in its very act of existence.
Those who purloin literature, or the letters of literature, are bound to have their letters purloined in turn. For in so far as letters exist, they inexorably give way to purloinery. Which is why, Lacan tells us, the word "purloin" also means "prolong." The cycle of theft can never be escaped, since in so far as we as selves are creating, we are stealing. Even when we put words in quotes, we are putting them in quotes. We are choosing them out of all the other words and phrases.
If in the beginning, according to one purloined letter, God created the world with words, with speech, this suggests that God purloined from language, and in so purloining, in so framing, gave way to existence. Thus, from the dark and void depths of language itself, God spoke, "Let there be light." There was light not simply because God said so, but because God didn't say all the other things that God could have said. God didn't say let there be sand or ^*T%()% or *&^^5^).
But creation, too, if it is a kind of framing of infinity in finitude, can never cease.
For as authors, readers, interpreters, and indeed, mere characters on the stage of nothingness in which all things appear simply as holes in the nothing, we are always creating in our very act of perceiving, existing, comprehending, and feeling. And we are creating because we are purloining. Because we are signifying the unnamed signified.
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