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?
Friday, October 9, 2009
Friday, October 2, 2009
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.
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.
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.
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