The name is taken from the title of Plato’s dialogue, a work
that inspires me because it goes to the heart of the matter of thinking
(philosophy) via writing versus speaking.
Socrates says the true manner of teaching and learning philosophy – aka
of doing soul crafting [poetic praxis] –
is through dialogue: speaking and listening.
Of course, the key here is the priority of the spoken word,
of what, borrowing from Nietzsche, we might call ‘music-making philosophy,’ –
invoking too Wynton Marselis’ assertion that speaking is singing.
This morning I went back to my old edition of What is Called Thinking? – I bought it
[a first edition hard cover] on 9/14/92 in Santa Monica, California. I was called back to WCT in order to re-read Heidegger’s bit on memory. The principal element of The Phaedrus Project
was in large part revealed to me during a session of my Attic class, when
Steven broke down αλεθεια and
showed it to be rooted in λεθε
= forgetting. If αλεθεια = truth, then truth qua αλεθεια = not forgetting. Put otherwise, truth = remembering. Here is yet another instance of κοινονια: the
gathering of the learning community via the re-membering or re-collecting of
individuals into a collective, subjects gathered together
inter-subjectively.
«Memory is the
gathering of thought....This is why we are hear attempting to learn
thinking. We are all on the way
together...»
When we put
together the formula truth = remembering,
and understand re-membering as the κοινονια of the learning community – an
event/process of gathering – then we
understand the necessity of ‘bootlegging’ the dialogues.
The Spanish title
for Being and Leaning occurred
[presented itself] to me when I was reading the first lecture in WCT, the summary and transition section
where Heidegger introduces the category of ‘apprentice’. I thought of the conversation I had yesterday
with Rocha, when he was recounting the events of the recent weekend’s symposium
on study. At some point during the
symposium he interjected the Spanish would
for learning, aprender and
made the link between aprender and apprentice. I thought about that connection when I read again Heidegger’s «The teacher is ahead
of his apprentices in this alone, that he has still far more to learn than they
– he has to learn to let them learn.»
And this lead me to imagine the Spanish title for Being and Learning as Ser y
Aprender. Given the current movement
of the work via poetic praxis, the Spanish title might also be Ser y Hacer, which offers an evocative
sonic play of words. Or maybe the second
option is really the title of the next book, which would come out of 2.0: Being
and Making (i.e., making music/music-making philosophy aka ‘Socrates, make
music!’)
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