Phronesis

In Aristotle's Ethics, the philosopher distinguishes between two distinct types of knowledge, phronesis and sophia. Sophia, often translated as "wisdom," is the type of episteme characterized by the perception of Truths about the nature of Being, e.g. the perception of forms and scientific truths. In contrast, phronesis denotes a level of expertise--the right action performed at the right time-- a sort of acquired ability or expertise. Aristotle describes a person who has acquired this type of knowledge as continuously acting appropriately with expertise, and always acting with the Good in mind.

In his Sein und Zeit (Being and Time), Heidegger describes the Dasein, his own take on one who has achieved phronesis. The essential
distinction between these two somewhat similar takes on expertise is Heidegger's omission of the Dasein acting for the Good. Hence, the Dasein could fully realize his phronesis by acting in the right moment without acting for the good. Much like most 19th and 20th century thought, teleology or acting with a telos it seems as if the Heideggarian Dasein acts without regard for Right action, only consciously proper action performed without thought, only mere expertise.

I am not sure what to do with these two takes on expertise as of yet. Does a master craftsmen also have to use his craft for the Good or does the perfection of his craft in itself represent the supreme pursuit?

L'art pour l'art

Reading Gauthier this summer (the man, poet, writer, and super écrivain who is probably most famous for coining the expression 'l'art pour l'art' or "art for art's sake") I came to a number of startling conclusions about myself as an artist and an enjoyer of art. Firstly, although I have been profoundly moved by works that seek to convey a message, politically or other (the Russo-Israeli photgrapher, Jonathan Tordovnik and his show INTENDED CONSEQUENCES about children borne from the Rwandan genoicide comes immediately to mind), that sort of work does not seem to bear the same immediacy as art that is viewed as an end in and of itself.

In his novel, La Captaine Fracasse, Gauthier utilizes the "cloak and dagger" intrigue cliché perhaps made more famous by his contemporary, Dumas, as a skeleton onto which he grafts fleshy layers of profound poetry and precise words. Unlike the modern aesthetics which often seek simply to entertain on a lower level, or provoke on a "higher level," Gauthier weaves a tapestry of words and ideas that exist in, of, and for themselves and entice the reader to enter a pantheistic world where the inanimate is imbued with life.

Reading this novel, some of his poetry, and subsequently beginning the brilliant, Roman de la momie, I have come to realize the aesthetic of poetry exists within a moment, a moment during which the poet is a seer able to view what is behind the curtain of "reality" to glimpse and later display what exists behind this veil. As Rimbaud writes "je suis poète. je veux me faire voyant." This is the highest level of art, the ability to see and transcribe beauty, which seems to have been lost in our world of immediacy and superficiality. I am reminded of Keats' famous verses "Beauty is truth, truth beauty ,--that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

In my theology, beauty is paramount, it is the Essence (in the Platonic sense) that supercedes the others, at least in my own perception and it is because of that that I am committed to art for its own sake; beauty as social justice, if you will. This is an idea I hope to continue exploring during this coming year of Jewish texts, musical performances, and poetry.

Personal Stuff

After a two-month tenure at a Maine music camp this summer, one all-too brief month of visiting friends in Europe (France and Germany), the stroke of my beloved grandmother and the month of yamim noraim (Jewish holidays), my blog activity has been less frequent than I would have liked. But one of my New Year's (Jewish) resolutions is to be more consistent with all of my writing, literary and other, and perhaps this is an all too small attempt to stay true to my goal.

I now find myself driving back and forth almost weekly from New York to Boston (la mia patria) to visit my recovering but despondent grandmother. I also find myself studying by day at an egalitarian yeshiva (www.yeshivathadar.org), teaching guitar, ESL and French, writing and studying for the GRE by night, and as always, being crazy in love. Riding a 1970 Raleigh English bicycle between all these activities has given me a near ornithological sense of freedom, as if I too am only subject to the winds and Atropos--to be inappropriately pompous in my language.

Just to cover a lot of time before jumping back into the philosophical forum that I so very hope this blog will become, here are some of the many events that have also transpired in the last five months, highlighted by month:

May: I had my favorite guitar stolen; was not accepted to doctoral programs in Medieval Literature or Comparative Literature most likely due to less than ideal GRE scores; I was, however, accepted to study for the year at a new, year-long egalitarian Jewish yeshiva for people aged 20-36 (more on this in later posts).

June & July: Moved to Sweden, Maine to teach an assortment of mainly jazz guitar and beginners at Camp Encore Coda where I found myself transcribing Tal Farlow, Django Reinhardt, running a rock and jazz ensemble, teaching music theory, getting ripped apart by mosquitoes like Orpheus by the Maenads and walking back and forth between shacks that boasted quite an array of technology as far as shacks go; made a number of ostensibly close friends in a very short time and also consistently ate salad for two meals a day (cereal for breakfast) in order to observe laws of kashrut (kosher) as much as possible in a "non-kosher world." Read voraciously (including Gauthier, Molière, Rav Soloveitchik, Chaim Potok, Vonnegut et al.), lost ten pounds from this strange diet of mine despite drinking Maine brews nightly with colleagues; saw my father weekly and drank more beer; ran either "right" or "left" with the vocal teachers almost every day; met my own beautiful Beatrice (never clothed in green for the angelica festa) at York beach and Portsmouth more than once; watched movies including BRUNO and THE ORPHAN; made passionate love; missed her like a rib or an organ; was visited by my grandmother and mother on the retour from Prince Edward Island; Nana was 100%, perhaps for the last time; wrote more for Milton Johnson's Pipe; found my bosses at camp super nice, almost troublingly nice (did they have dead kittens in their closets); played a number of concerts and grew close to more of my students than I thought I would; spoke French with a talented student from Paris; found it hard to be observant and missed yiddishkeit (even though the camp was predominantly Jewish) but managed to not break Shabbat.

August: Found myself in Paris, alone, mocked by the Seine and the lovers on bicycles; more rosemondes; stayed with Le Club des chats who are a truly kind couple with a great eye for detail; needed to make love to purge myself of demons but they remained and I did not; silently fell in love for a few seconds at a time with a numbers of rosemondes whom I had mistaken for my semitic Beatrice who had been teaching at a Jewish camp where I too had applied at Brandeis University; went to Germany to see my best friend; he is busy(young doctor) and I had a series of long and beautiful conversations with his beautiful girlfriend (about to be a young doctor); began undertaking a project to write poetry using either the form or motifs of a number of famous poems (more later); took a walk, drank café and sat by the Dreisam with my best friend's sister whom I was insane for in high school; heard about my grandmother's stroke and cried for hours in front of my best friend's girl which strangely did not make me feel embarrassed; missed my best friend even though he was there; went back to France and for the first time felt so very French even though I am not and probably never will be; spent time with Asia and my super kind in-laws; saw a high school friend and walked around Provence; missed Paris but angry with French friends for not caring about my visit as much as I had hoped.

September: Saw my grandmother and for the first time realized that she is not immortal and I cannot imagine living my life without her; started yeshiva: love my khavruta, the people, teachers; too much talk about "sin" and "repentance" in Elul for someone who thinks G-d can be found in everything and every act has the potential to become imitatio deiwith consciousness; bought a bike and love riding it; realized there are people I love in New York and was pleased to see them again; determined to live my American life as much as possible as if it were European; worried about Nana and my own future constantly; love being with Asia; long for more personal relationships beyond the superficial; afraid to toss the ashes of the little punk, mulatto, philosopher kid from New England in the wind of Jewish time; love being with Asia.

The Ontological Pursuit

As a teenager, perhaps simply to define myself as something--
as is the natural tendency-- I envisioned myself as an existentialist. Perhaps that may have been the only way that I understood the pursuit of truth and authenticity, as an existential one. Truth be told (pardon the pun), Sartre's classical existential argument that "existence precedes essence," has always been difficult for me to accept. First of all, I thought of it as ostensibly ducking the very search for truth that defines philosophy. The essence of Being, and the Truth that goes along with it, is what philosophers seek. Only recently have I come to to understand that in the existential philosophical climate, it is existence, posited precisely as essence that defines the philosophical argument.

It wasn't until I began delving into the work of Simone de Beauvoir, most known not quite ironically as Sartre's life-partner, that this concept began to be clarified for me. I am currently immersed in the first tome of her pivotal feminist, and really existentialist, text, Le deuxième sexe. In framing sexism as a type of unceasing destiny rooted in the very situation of the body, and female alienation de Beauvoir eloquently writes "il est impossible d'en rendre compte sans partir d'un fait existentiel: la tendance du sujet à l'alienation, l'angoisse de sa liberté conduit le sujet à se rechercher dans les choses, ce qui est une manière de se fuir, c'est une tendance si fondamentale, qu'aussitot après le sevrage quand il est séparé du Tout, l'enfant s'efforce de saisir dans les glaces, dans le regard de ses parents son existence alienée. Les primitifs s'aliènent dans le mana, dans le totem; les civilisés dans leur propriété, leur ouvrage: c'est la preemière tentation de l'inauthenticité."

(To be continued...)

The Woods, Acoustic on February 8th, 2009

People tend to enjoy this song. As much as I don't like stating that one particular song is my trademark, and my material is stylistically varied, perhaps lyrically this particular reflects who I am and my thoughts more than most. One of my favorite poets who has been a great influence on my style is the 19th-century French poet, Mallarmé (see www.mallarme.net for poetry, bio, and more links)
I'm quite taken, perhaps more than I should be, by the concept of la poèsie pure, as well as symbolist poetry in general, that is to say poetry that speaks without a subject, pure unmitigated objectivity (N.B. Mallarmé was one of the artists that influenced our Uptown Salon). The problem I see with this method is it tends to be overambitious. How can our poetry be emotive if it lacks subjectivity, emotion's source. We are of course subjects, first and foremost;
However, when we focus too wholeheartedly on that subjectivity, our artistic lives exist in a unique vacuum, open to no one else.

Although I usually try to write in this objective, highly evocative but not so emotive style, I think many of my best moments as a poet and lyricist come when I bulk this ideology and embrace subjectivity. Perhaps this is evidenced in this particular song, "The Woods."

I wrote it when I was first feeling like a stranger in Boston, hoping to go abroad for some time (which I did upon graduation from the Berklee College of Music in 2003), considering conversion to Judaism, living in Christian simple suburban Boston, and having both a love and discomfort for my environs.
On the one hand, it was the only place that I had ever truly known at that point in time, with the exception of travel throughout the U.S. and Europe. I have long since made my peace with Boston, and consider it my rightful home where I would be satisfied settling and having a family one day, but when I wrote this I was quite torn.

For many years I had a Boston brogue, it still rears it beautifully hideous head periodically, and I took diction classes as a child to subvert it. This is actually a fact that I struggle with quite frequently as I don't speak at all in the same way as my family, people from whom I came. Although this seems like a minor point, it has deeply affected me, as did the eerie view of woods that I glimpsed from outside my room as a child. Although my town, Billerica, was by no means rural, it did have a rural past. The colonial in which I grew up on the main residential strip touts woods to the back of all the houses on the left as you enter town. There was something truly eerie but at the same time welcoming about those woods, like the memories that I have both of them and my past. Perhaps nostalgia itself is glanced as from a glade within foreboding woods. In any case, here are the lyrics to the song. The performance featured here comes from the Bitter End and was recorded along with Andreas Brade on February 8, 2009.

The Woods (leave it all behind) (track 2)


Written by: Andres Wilson


In the woods behind my house
When November haunts the air
I would swear to you that I have
Seen some ghosts at play out there
They are something like the wind
Pining for the orange sky
Bearing nothing but a sound
Have they left everything behind?

Behind, can I leave this all behind?

In the woods behind my house
Where I used to carve my name
I can’t find it anymore
Does that mean it is not the same?
Could I still pronounce it right,
If I read something I’d signed
Or would it become something foreign if I left it all behind?

In the woods behind my house
Where I tripped and scraped my knee
And the old dogs met their rest
Is that the place I’ll bury me?
In a strip that bears no leaves
Under branches in a bind
If a man equals his land
How can I leave it all behind?

Metaphysics and the Search for the Truth

In the thought of Aristotle, metaphysics, which our contemporary society has perhaps mistranslated as “beyond physics” was actually made up of the most basic yet seemingly unattainable considerations of philosophy. In scholarly circles it is widely acknowledged that this type of teaching in the written works of Aristotle simply follow what are known as the physics in his writings. Thus, the Greek “meta” really means “after,” as in “after the Physics.”

That is to say, in the thought of Aristotle, metaphysics is concerned with defining Truth and knowledge of Being and, ultimately, the true nature of reality itself. Why has contemporary society fallen into such subjectivism on all levels so as to deny that absolute Truth could, and in fact surely does, exist? This is a critique that I am making on all levels of society from theism, i.e. in religious faiths to atheism.

My teacher, philosopher Paul Edward Guay, perhaps quoting someone else, said that classical atheism used to meet the idea of G-d with a shaking of the fist. Thus, from this perspective, if G-d exists than we must hold Him accountable for the presence of what would seem to be evil in the world. However, modern atheism, as the saying goes, is more of a shrug of the shoulders. We just don’t care. This is troubling, for if one doesn’t struggle to make sense of what sometimes seems a crazy and chaotic world, what is the point of life?

However, my critique here is to extend that same criticism to modern theism, or religion more generally. Organized religion has in many cases become subjective and/or draconian and patriarchal, focused either more on how it makes one feel or what one believes and the laws themselves, respectively, than in the pursuit of Truth. Why is this? Have we as a society as a culture abandoned the belief that there is an absolute reality that can be attained?

I was really struggling to find a way to use this blog constructively, beyond the shameless self-promotion of my literary work and music. What could I uniquely bring to the oversaturated kingdom of blogdom? What do I have to offer that no one else does before my own individuality, a value which truly seems to be stressed in Western and perhaps all modern culture.

Finally, I decided on what I would bring to the world and format of blog-writing: an overview than superficial conceptual analysis of texts that I am reading and learning in a given week. Though I am sure that hardly anyone is or will be reading this blog, I can use it as a source reaction journal simultaneously updating the blog with my recent publications and thoughts on music.

With that being said, I want to begin this blog with a quick d’var Torah, or overview of this week’s Torah (Bible) passage. This week, we read about Matan Torah, B’nei Israel receiving the entire Torah from G-d at Mount Sinai. We also read about Yitro (Jehtro), the father-in-law of Moshe Rabbenu (Moses). As a convert to Judaism, Yitro has always been of great interest to me. The Sages, on them Shalom, tell us that Yitro was a convert. But he was a seeker, perhaps unlike Ruth— the prototypical convert— who joins Naomi and the Jewish people ostensibly more out of desperation then a desire to serve HaShem.

Yitro was a Medianite priest (Kohan mediani) who nevertheless is overwhelmed upon learning of the experience of the Jews at Mount Sinai. Was he there along with them or not? The Sages tells us that all who souls were, are, or ever would be Jewish were at Sinai, but the Meforshim (commentators) puzzle over whether Yitro was there. They tell us that the etymology of the name Yitro is from Yeter, meaning “to add.” Yitro’s presence “adds to” the Torah and the experience of the original Jews of Sinai. Moshe says upon marrying Zipporah that he hopes to, and forgive me for paraphrasing Torah, “sit by Yitro,” perhaps to benefit from his spiritual seeking.

Perhaps all Jews and people should strive to see all things , life, theology and really everything as a wholly new experience at all times, as Yitro does. Perhaps it is not that he adds to the Torah anything but fresh eyes, thus allowing him to advise Moshe from his own opinion to set up law courts so as not to be overwhelmed by the inquiries and demands for guidance from the people.

At Sinai, the Midrash tells us that HaShem held the mountain over the heads of the people and threatened them; either the Jews accept the Torah or that there would be their grave. My teacher, Rav Uri Topolosky once said that this was not a threat but the mountain acted as a marriage canopy, surrounding the people Israel as they “married” G-d through the b’rit (covenant). Maybe each individual must ratify this kiddushin to make it real through a commitment to mitzvoth, than an understanding of what that entails.


N.B. Much of my thoughts herein were influenced by drashot by R. Alex Israel of Pardes and their wonderful podcast series.

Universal Aesthetics

What is it that makes a great artist? Is it innovation or perspiration? Is it the ability to adhere to and bring about universal forms or is it instead the unique vision of a form that seemingly was yet to be conceived? To answer these questions in brief--yes.

In listening to a lecture by the great Israeli, Chabad Kabbalist, Rabbi Ginsburg, I came to hear the scriptural validation from the Jewish tradition that I needed. Rav Ginsburg, Shlit'a, tells us that the inspired, gifted artist commands a level just below a prophet but above a judge. That is because an artist is one of the few who is able to synthesize the wisdom (HOKHMAH) of the masculine cognitive side of experience and the feminine (NAVU'A) or the intuitive imaginative side. Both sides are essential and it is the duty of the artist to assimilate them as did Betzalel in fashioning the Tabernacle. I found this to be a lovely thought that I felt obligated to share.

Religion, Nihilism and an Old Poem that Just Got Published

I consider myself a deeply religious person. I pray three times daily, only eat what I consider to be allowed by G-d, and my Shabbes observance has grown to new and ever strict levels. Judaism and the performance of divine demands has become central to my life, even informing my views on love and the reasons and ways in which I create art; however, I was not always this religous person. My teenage years were riddled with the pain of not being able to "fit in," as well as intense dissatisfaction with American culture. This dissatisfaction manifested itself in the near deification of music, which I to this day will contend saved my life.

Mastering rock guitar (I'm usually quite humble but I am by most opinions a monster guitarist) was the only thing that saved me from a sense of nihilism that I now view as having been based more in love of G-d and a desire for people to live by the highest of ethical standards than anything else. Through guitar I was able to discover myself and conversely the silence within myself that is the same silence within us all. In Hebrew, the word for soul is the same as the word for breath, "neshama." Music allowed me to breathe and understand what breath truly is.

I had been an absurdist because people did not act in the way in which I felt that religion mandated we should. I was an absurdist because every human action, when done without awareness of some final end cause (not necessarily a practical one), seemed ridiculous and absurd. Also, as a prep school graduate, I was so disgruntled by ubiquitous materialism that I rejected all aspects of it.

Later as documented in the song "The Forces that Be" from my debut album Ink and Sound, I attempted to fit this mold, to be someone that I disliked and am not, to play a game in order to do something besides "not playing at all."

I am sometimes criticized for having forgotten about my punk rock ideals because my willingness to obey rabbinic laws and customs (minhagim). However, it must be noted, that I find many of the desires and the modes of living in our secular, materialistic society to be upsetting. That is not to say that I dislike the secular world. I am not Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) because there are many aspects of the modern world, such as education, arts and culture, film, that are central in my life. But the traditional American attitude that all things that are not pragmatic are unnecessary is a disgusting one and must be rejected because teleogical concerns should always trump utilitarian ones. Although science does it part, many of the mysteries of life cannot and will not be explained in our time and it is those mysteries that I have embraced because they feel so much more real than much of what our society clings to.

Anyway, that was a rather longish introduction to a new poem that I have published at Bibliophiles, a new print and digital zine based in Massachusetts. I wrote this poem nearly seven years ago when I had all but rejected my punk rock lifestyle and was in the midst of playing the social game as it were. I was miserably unhappy, frequently thought of suicide, and felt I had betrayed some sort of ideal that was higher than myself.

I had been sitting on a park bench in Harvard Sq. a few days after my 18th birthday and was debating getting a tattoo (this was in my pre-Jewish days). All of a sudden, a young teenage girl started talking to me about Salinger, Hesse, and indie rock. I forget what I had been reading at the time, but it was neither of these holy authors. Anyway, she shook me up. It almost reminded me of that Borges poem where he meets himself as a young man on a bench by the Charles River. She was me from three years before, complete with a gang of unkempt but cute punkish indie rockers. It was then that I realized either how far I had come as a citizen or how low I had stooped as a human being from who I may have been. Please read it and give me feedback. Again, it's an old poem:

http://thebibliofiles.weebly.com/virtual-zine.html

To close, a very dear friend of mine seems to have disappeared. More than anyone else, she epitomized the punk delusion and anarchist ideals of my youth and she was one of my best friends. I was told by a girl I used to love that this girl another one I used to love in a different way ran away to join the circus. Laura Carrig, if you are reading this, I dedicate this blog to you.