and connect everything to Heidegger's discussion of Leibniz's priciple of
sufficient reason but had not the four volumes in mind which I have not
digested well yet. I just don't want my mind full of those issues
necessarily. As far as throwing away the old Rene I have to smile... It's
not like someone who is descending into the dark night of knowing in search
of Persephone or innovation is exactly throwing out the old ways of moving
along. Cultivating possibility is older than the hills eh? Again the crucial
question that makes a real difference from a practical point of view is HOW
is it that we are refining ourselves by questioning the rush towards
actualization that then would make everything only a matter of our own
subjective willfulness? I'm not the one that is cutting off the traditional
ways of discussing this whole issue. I am even including taoist buddhism in
not wanting to get stuck in purely Greek-Jewish roots.
Bravo, but maybe traditions should be kept apart, they have different origins.
you already have presupposed a lot - decisive - by your easy, tolerant, popular
talk.
Of course I have thought a lot about this difficult and emotional topic and is really part of metatalk which I always enjoy because this is where thinking really shows its quality or lack of it. I said already that one has to be very careful of how innovation proceeds and as I see it this means flesh out a kind of skeletal structure whose potential energy is generative of another way that I think is international in scope. Attentiveness to our present situation is all that is necessary everything else is contingent. The real teachers or philosophers will always point this out which means that the textual heritage of whatever cultural tradition although they can be important at the beginning of a religious education in the end are purely contingent. There is nothing special about anybody's scriptural tradition or particular technology of faith as represented by a methodological doctrine. The hard truth is that no one can ever reveal or capture in the symbolic network of a particular scripture that which forever remains invisible, unknown and hidden. This argument which I make has historical antecendents in situations where many different approaches to life come into conflict which for sure is our situation today. There is classic in Renaissance studies that I think you will enjoy reading Rene if you haven't already. For me it's part of a very selective bibliography on the rhetoric of secrecy along side V&D's book on Greek intellligence and Hadot's book on the veil of Isis which refers to Edgar Wind's _Pagan MYsteries In The Renaissance_. These books are bringing out the political or strategic implications of a hidden truth. Wind in chapter xiv "The Concealed God" quotes Cusanus , "... insofar as the name truly belonging to God is infinite, it embraces innumerable such names derived from particular perfections. hence the unfolding of the divine name is multiple, and always capable of increase, and each single name is related to the true ineffable name as the finite is related to the infinite." Part of the issue here is generative. I mean that a multitude when it is restricted by a finite name or symbolic network operating as doctrine is not fertile but represents an impoverishment of faith. This is why Wind can write that "the doctrine of Pan is hidden in Proteus, that mutability is the secret gate through which the universal invades the particular." Am I not consistent? This is GA39 again where Dionysus is clearly a 'representative' of mutability, shapeshifting metamorphosis of a trickster, blank domino and joker. Chapter xiii is interesting in showing the continuity of Wind's readings and showing that mutability or flexibility constitutes man's glory and dignity: " In Pico's oration _On The Dignity of Man_ , man's glory is derived from his mutability. The fact that his orbit of action is not fixed like that of angels or animals, gives him the power to transform himself into whatever he chooses and become a mirror of the universe. He can vegetate like a plant, rage like a brute, dance like a star, reason like an angel, and surpass them all by withdrawing into the hidden centre of his own spirit (or mind) where he may encounter the solitary darkness of God." The fact that we are flexible enough to adapt to whatever circumstances, like a chameleon says Pico, is our dignity but also our glory,-- the mark of our subtle genius. Erasmus is part of this discussion he writes in the Adagia, under the heading Sileni Alcibiadis, as quoted by Wind, " the most important is always the least conspicuous . A tree flatters the eye with flowers and foliage, and exhibits the massiveness of its trunks: but the seed, from which these have their strength, what a small thing it is, how hidden... Gold and gems have been concealed by Nature in the recesses of the earth... What is most divine and immortal in man is inaccesible to perception..." A-gain Rene this is the wisdom of Zarathustra's ASS. In Spanish books there is a very famous 'children's' book call _PLatero and I_ by Juan Ramon Jimenez. It's full of anecdotes of donkey PLatero and a man. This one is number 2 called White Butterflies
Night is coming on, misty and purple. Vague green and mauve lights persist beyond the church towers. The road rises enveloped in shadows, in bellflowers, the scent of grass, songs, weariness, and longing. Suddenly a dark man, with a cap and swordstick, his ugly face showing red for a moment in the glow of his cigar, comes down towards us from a wretched hut, buried among coal sacks. Platero shies in alarm.
"Any merchandise?"
"Look... white butterflies."
The man wants to thrust his iron stick in the little basket, and i do not prevent it. I open the saddlebag and he can see nothing. And so the stuff of dreams passes free and guileless, paying no tribute to the tax collectors.
In that case, one better stop doing philosophy, and look around and maybe see,
that permissive thought is the root of destruction. It already presupposes an easyness
for what is to be thought, that does not know the nature of what is at stake.
Thinking is not easy and involves constant vigilance and attentiveness. The mind is a muscle that can be exercised like any other muscle. Yours is definitely lazy and easy going because when we listen to you we miss the effort of culture, of turning over the ground and planting seeds whose possibility we can see flowering before us because we can see how it does things like a craftsman. Pruning here and there so that this abstraction can make a vine stronger in the future. This always implies selectivity or the constant unfolding of a singular taste. You don't seem to have one Rene and mostly we get your weeds, your own inflated opinions and half-finished thoughts. You are funny, you have no tradition Rene. I show roots in a ground but you?? LOL... no, I'm trying to figure out why you see what you see. I think it's that you are too much in the world of a critic more than of an artist so for you all the issues having to do with how a future work is nurtured and emerges and becomes possible is completely ignored for issues that you project outside into the world of power and men. You have no sense for the life of a volcanoe like Nietzsche did. For us what is clearly at stake most importantly is the integrity of this medium which although supportive is always hidden. And the only way to remain true to our medium is to engage it by touching on the limits of language just when thinking stops determining itself somehow and stops being absent minded. Language now is shrouded in biting smoke but for all that we are all the more present, more whole, more situated in our particular circumstance as we read. Tradition as it has been taught means transmission of wisdom but this does not mean any kind of information but a kind of stillness and patience of thought and that's it that's all. When I read Epictetus I certainly don't get any kind of doctrine out of the reading. What I get is a an appreciation for my present as what we have in common and this is the basis for comparative alliances to emerge and crossbreeding of paths. Goldstein in _One Dharma_ is on a clear path: "The powerful combination of presence and path, of being grounded in the present moment's experience even as we navigate toward a more complete freedom, provides a significant context for understanding our lives [...] No longer do we look outside of ourselves for solutions. We have seen where the path lies. All that we require are the skillful means that will help us walk it." To be the Da is to be more present in our own moment without wanting anything else out life,-- this is the affirmation of the gateway of ER and nothing else but this yes to life that constantly we try to conquer because nothing else is most proper to who we are than this, this is our ownmost possibility where we wait for who knows what. Good things bad things no one knows really what's next. We are prepared as well as one could be for whatever and that's enough negative work to last a lifetime surely.
tympan
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