A New Horizon

Benjamin

I really like this fragment. I feel, if I ignore Benjamin’s mysticism and theological bent, that this quote really captures the way in which human understanding unfolds through time. Benjamin moves on, in his fragmented way, to say:

“What matters for the dialectician is to have the wind of world history in his sails. Thinking means for him: setting the sails. What is important is how they are set. Words are his sails. They way the are set makes them into concepts”.

This ties very nicely into Gadamer’s notion of historicity, the past living in the present, enlightening our view of the now in terms of the past. I’m not sure if I follow Benjamin’s movement of juxtaposing the past against the present in order to, in a very dualsitic move, bring about a new understanding of the present through difference of the past. Though, it must be said, that I am not sure that I understand what exactly this means. If the new understanding is framed in the Kuhanian sense then I understand what to know the new means. If is to be taken in a materialistic sense, as I believe it should be, I’m at a loss.

Ironically - time will tell.

Relocated: Finding My Stride

We’re here, we’re all moved in and settled, and I’ve completed one week of school. I feel like I have yet to find a balance between school and teaching. So far I’ve been doing very well in school, but I feel like I am not doing as well as I would like to in my teaching duties.

I’m not sure how I feel about school just yet. Today we got our first papers back; the ones that were supposed to be the “welcome to graduate school kid, now get your act together” papers. Needless to say, I’m ahead of the curve. On one hand this is awesome. I know where I stand and can expect to pull great grades if I continue to do what I do. If I am able to continue to achieve at this level I’ll be able to get into a top ten ph.d program. On the other hand - I could just be spinning my wheels until then. It’s possible that I’ll need to really work hard at challenging myself. In my 801 Class the “you’re going to have to struggle to get a B class” we’re not going to ever be reading primary texts. Who knows though? We’re only one week in. I could be singing a much different tune as soon as midterms or by finals.

I love it here, by here I mean Manhattan. It is such a cool little town full of character. I swear I saw a storm trooper riding a crotch rocket yesterday. Today it must have been the unofficial “wear your huge cowboy hat to school” day. It was bizarre to see that many people wearing huge hats. It is a different world down here.

Relocated

First day in Kansas where the temp is below 90 during the day. There is a God.

Boarders and Boundries

Last week I returned from Iowa,  contrary to the bumper stickers that I saw plastered on cars adorned with Iowa plates, Iowa is not heaven nor is it an abysmal hell.

Portions of residential area in downtown Cedar Rapids looked as if the flood waters had just receeded. Row’s of abandoned homes wich still reaked of flood waters stood next to homes which had already been restored. The disparity between the the economic classes was impossible to ignore. Despite the overwhelming disparity the people themselves were enthusiastic and hopeful about not only their future, but the future of their city. The resiliency of the human spirt is astouding.

the sounds of the night

The streets are filled with the sounds of fire.

Out of Touch

I just logged onto twitter and was excited to see the trend “Wolverine”; however upon further inspection it turns out that there has been a movie released with this very same title. Much to my dismay this trend was not about Michigan nor Michigan athletics. 

Connecting the Dots

I spend the majority of this past week in Dearborn  at the Michigan Nonprofit Super Conference. While many of the speakers were inspiring, I found myself far more moved from my drive home. 

From Dearborn to Grand Rapids I intentionally took a detour to pass through Ann Arbor (A2). A2 has been a place of refuge for me over the past few years. While attending a extremely conservative school I knew that A2 and my closest friends were only a two and a half hour, or two hour drive away, depending on how quickly I drove. After transferring, despite my parent’s unyielding protests, A2 became a way for me to measure myself against some of the best and brightest minds in the world. More than anything else, A2 allowed me to explore my own identity without the process resulting in negative social ramifications. I grew there, I became who I am today largely due to the time I spent there deconstructing the social/religious programming of my youth. 

Looking forward, I believe that my time at Kstate will echo my time spent in A2. I will have complete social freedom, freedom from worrying about who knows me and who can connect me to the organization that I work(ed) for. My past will be in Michigan while my present and my future will be lived and simultaneously determined while in Kansas. 

Community and the Other

Consciousness, or rather, the other has always interested me. I am, at least on some level (for this moment we’ll omit Freud) privy to my own thoughts and desires, yet I can access only the thoughts that others make known to me. 

Despite Derrida we communicate - despite linguistic uncertainty and finitude we understand. 

And yet I feel that I never truly know myself or any other: there is always an surplus of alterity, always a degree of otherness.

Often I fail to acknowledge this otherness:

“One claims to know the other’s claims from his point of view and even to understand the other better than the other understands himself. In this way the Thou loses the immediacy with which it makes its claim. It is understood, but this means it is co-opted and preempted reflectivity from the standpoint of the other person… withdrawing from the dialectic of this reciprocity, in reflecting himself out of his relation to the other and so becoming unreachable by him. By understanding the other, by claiming to know him, one robs his claims of their legitimacy” - Gadamer

The moment of understanding closes off the other to us by removing our openness to the other as the other becomes a type, a that rather than a person who is subject  to sudden tumultuous change. 

I find that the moment I type someone; the moment I understand is often the very same moment that them I lose interest in them or they begin to irritate me. Whereas, the people who most intrigue me are those who I can never quite understand. Yet, philosophically I know that this very same understanding is an impossibility, theory has yet to meet praxis. 

I believe, and I do not know if Gadamer ever ventured to make this argument, that if we never know ourselves (Freud) or are not a self but selves (Derrida) then we may fall into this very same pitfall by claiming to be a holistic self that we understand. If I know who I am then I remove myself by reflecting myself out of my relationship with the other, or myself. Pragmatically this feels much like William James claims of, “Pure Experience”, but differs radically epistemologically in that “Pure Expirence” is not an extension of understanding of the self, but rather a state of being in relation to the universe and oneself that leads to a knew understanding of a experience, “the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories… a that which is not yet any definite what, tho’ ready to be all sorts of whats…” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). The key,  or so it seems, is to remain in constant dialogue with the self without ever reaching a definitive conclusion of the self in contention with what I learn about myself through dialogue with others. 

Thus the self, the other, and by extension the community (taking into account Gadamer’s thoughts on tradition) are inextricably linked to any understanding of the self or the community; to understand without understanding.

Theory meets praxis.