Allen recently:
I know this subject got me into trouble once before, and I would much
rather respond to Michael's
wonderful post, but I have an "immediate" matter to discuss. We have
been reading the Euthyphro in one of my classes, and I have been
arguing, rather forcefully, that the only way to
appreciate/understand what's going on in the text, is to presume that
Socrates is being genuine, perhaps even authentic. That is to say,
he really does believe that Euthyphro can tell him what piety is and
thus, perhaps save his life, or at least help him better orient
himself to the trial. As the students examine this argument, I
include myself, claiming that this directed ("determinate" would be
something like Heidegger's word here) open way of proceeding is also
genuinely true of my approach to teaching. My questioning is "real,"
not a pedagogical device.
I was driving later in my car wondering whether I really believed
that, and then on came a Leonard Cohen C.D. with the man singing "
Joan of Arc." I was deeply taken in by the performance and
experienced myself in the narrative, in love with the woman as he was
etc. , etc. Then I thought, maybe Socrates or at least Plato was
performing his teaching similarly, and maybe sometimes, perhaps even
oftentimes, so am I, singing my lines as as if for the first time.
And when it's good, it is ( I think!).
Allen, I wonder whether we make too much fuss over the supposed difference
between speaking genuinely (spontaneously, from the heart...) and speaking
as a performance (planned, from the art...). Just a thought: in the same way
that da-sein is already always in the world of its concern, the things of
its concern are not 'innocently' found as if... new, so perhaps 'genuine'
speech is just speech that has (mercifully) forgotten it always was a
performance; we are pre-formed to per-form?
A jazz artist practices and rehearses like mad to be able to come out
performing spontaneously...
regards
michael the performer
Michael the P.,
Very helpful insight.
Innocence, of course, is not constitutive of authenticity, but perhaps
a certain measure of forgetfulness is. It's a forgetfulness that's "built into"
Dasein's possibilities as being-in-the-world, perhaps something that Dasein
gives up. . .sacrifices?
I always consider a really good performance to
be an act of extreme generosity. I can sometimes feel, if not fully understand,
the work involved in giving what's being given.
Regards,
Allen
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