Meaning

The last post I wrote was ambiguous. I have been thinking about different "publics" and the problem of dialogue. Possibly because of my multicultural background (multi-culti being a word that can have as many negative as positive connotations), I am less interested in arguing and more interested in finding ways forwards for discussion.
My concern is that the devotion to dialogue is not universally shared.
I asked an expert on dialogue what to do if dialogue is not invited and, granted that the question could be construed as being out of place at a conference where the purpose of the paper was to extol the benefits of dialogue, I never got an answer. I am not an expert. And I am only beginning.
I just hope my beginning will not be my end.
Meaning: will I be afforded space in which to speak? Or will I be mowed down - the green, inexperienced grass that I am, immediately?
What is it that I want to say? That dialogue is a balsam, that it is possible to disagree without needing to destroy, that dialogue is like marriage: something for shared good, and because of this, is worth making some concessions to. One example of such would be the patience to listen to what the other side is saying. It can be difficult because sometimes we do not like the way that messages are packaged. But if we let the message wash over us, we may be left with talking points.
But sometimes I wonder if my ideal regarding dialogue is unrealistic.
For example, interacting with one who describes Plato as going off on "bizarre, loopy speculations" could make it difficult to have a conversation about Plato if one has a different understanding of the premise of life that one considers Plato to be exploring. Wondering about how one would come to such a statement (of the "bizarre, loopy") caused me to think that some texts function as a Rorschach test: this is an unformed idea as of yet, but what I mean is that for some, perhaps, interaction with Ideals/Ideas/Infinite (? - I need to figure out what I mean here, basically, deep abstraction) - where it ceases to engage becomes a Rorschach test. By ceasing to engage I mean entering into what I will call the hermeneutic suspension of disbelief. In other words, the entry into the meaning of the text, even where this will require difference from personal meaning.

Source: Old Hong Kong in Colour, Otto C. C. Lam, Chung Hwa Book Co. Profiled here.

While it is interesting how freely some use older works as inspiration for their own work, I am also concerned with the question of the work involved in getting as close to the original contextual meaning of a text as one can. But here is a fun exercise (by which I mean not so fun): try teaching a course in reading comprehension, and seeing how many (especially of the more intelligent!) students will take the time to write an accurate summary of an extract - when this is exactly what you ask for, after teaching strategies to check comprehension.
Maybe I should have highlighted that paragraph somehow, because I think it is actually central to my main point here.
It seems to me that some 'contemporary' work borrows more from the technique of the sophist: refusing to stop long enough at words and ideas to flesh them out, being more inclined to verbal gymnastics where words are in Heraclitian flux. But I mention Heraclitus, and I often wonder how equipped anyone not an expert in him and on pre-Socratics is to understand him. Still, the reason I bring him up is because I like how eloquently this popularizer of change being the only constant that seems to be the underlying component to much thought today also stressed the importance of wariness of opinion. Opinion is another 'problem area' that comes up in class.
Here is another 'fun' class exercise. Invite students to explore their 'opinions' with the qualification that merely stating it is not enough: asking that they support it, and then find a counterargument, and either refute or make a concession. The counterargument happens to be a feature of many business plans - which is to say that this should be a skill that is 'pragmatic enough' to warrant practise, but it is an exercise that is consistently met with resistance, despite how it is packaged.

Source: Old Hong Kong in Colour, Otto C. C. Lam, Chung Hwa Book Co. Profiled here.

On my blog, I have been wont to skirt around certain topics. In real life, because of the nature of my decisions and the early zeal I once demonstrated (ah, zeal, the trait of the puberty that some never grow out of), I am not so concealed. I feel sorry for the zeal, but know that I have been taking the path that I needed to take, that I am growing how I want to, given that this is the only life I am given and I only have a certain amount of time to pursue... I am going to say it... the truth. I find it fascinating how the acceptance of plurality that has emerged from cultural studies (in my opinion through the Boasian cultural relativism - though of course he is criticised for not being relativistic enough today) has come to mean complete denial of the validity of an attempt to pursue truth. I find it so necessary to do so much reading because this is one of those points where dialogue is shut down entirely. 'If you believe in the possibility of truth, you must be a bigot' the reasoning seems to go, 'how backwards you are and not aware of contemporary reality - you must be an enemy of progress.' But if applied to me, I would think such reasoning unfair. Among other things, I am quite a fan of the internet, and think it has renewed a Republic of Letters' type exchange.
I could be asked at this juncture why I care so much about dialogue. Why do I spend so much time reading "verbal gymnastics"? Firstly, I think there are many forms of communication and do not think that everything is to be read in the same way. Nietzsche, for example, may be viewed as a poet of provocation. One need not agree with everything he writes to see value in thought-provoking nuggets.

Source: Old Hong Kong in Colour, Otto C. C. Lam, Chung Hwa Book Co. Profiled here.

Further, as I only intimated yesterday, those of us who entered postgraduate work in recent times will likely demonstrate in the titles of our work - as Perloff noted in her PMLA address -  the markings of the effects of Theory in our work. Until I read that address, I had not fully realised the extent to which my approach is indeed something in between the before and the now. It is a fact that I was instructed to interact with Theory in my dissertation, though I was permitted to deviate. One thing I would like to point out is that while these older Theorists had the advantage of 'having' to read the works that I gave myself the task of reading (e.g. Plato), I do not see this as being the case today. I think pursuit of these texts is becoming a matter of personal choice.
So, this means that there is ever less potential for there being a 'shared language' of exchange. Some will immediately cry: good riddance! How oppressive to learn that Language! To which I would reply (taking a line of thought from Freire) that indeed it does take effort to learn, and time but (again calling on Freire) this does not mean having to deny your 'own langauge'; rather, it is to give you the chance to be bilingual.
My feeling is that while there may actually be a move to shut down bilingualism (whether explicit or not - Freire suggests that this is implicit and internalised, then reproduced), there is also a great need for it, for it is also understood - somewhere, and again, maybe not explicitly - that cross-fertilisation can be a great source of vital ideas that bear fruit.
I think it is very important to rid one's 'real life dialogue' of the banter of negative critique, because this quickly deteriorates into argument. The art is in taking the time to sort through the common areas, and consistently cultivate these.
I do not think I am ready to enter into public discourse fully, because I still need time to figure out where those areas are. All I know is that I do not want to be contributing to the argument: I'd rather give up ideas and tend to a literal garden before doing that.

Source: Old Hong Kong in Colour, Otto C. C. Lam, Chung Hwa Book Co. Profiled here.

Baring

"Life itself, which is a membership in the living world, is already an abundance," Wendell Berry writes in a lecture printed in The Way of Ignorance.
So much can take away from this abundance, such as that terrible movie screen that is also crammed with the victimising, materialistic, and ego-fuelled junk that poisons our minds, seas, and water tables. Speaking of that which is "victimising" is trauma, which "violates aspects of the person's self and world". Trauma is contagious. Among the syndromes listed as defining organizational trauma, Pat Vivian and Shana Hormann is "stress and anxiety contagion" (emphasis added). The traumatised can be better versed at multiplying destructive negativity than their vital talents.
But as a degree-bearing philologist (one who loves words), I task myself to improve articulacy (the necessary joints) to relate from the confusing temporal appearance to the abundance that is essential, and life-giving.

We are all naked to begin with - and under whatever clothes we do our social posturing in. What is essential can be reached through "baring"; through uncovering to reach the core of something.
Want has the potential to strip away, and so does trauma - if one can bear it, and hold out like an 'initiate of life': if one takes the leap of faith into that which is life-bearing. The alternative is to believe in destruction as a terminal inevitability. In that context, consider this phrase: "a smile, an inheritance, and laughter is a gift."

Who has not felt the sweet release from the gerbil-wheel of depressive thought?  A single smile, help along the trail. Life is like a thru-hike. Or, an endurance run. What I'm trying to say is that we pick our destinations. In other words, whether we accept responsibility for it or not, our actions demonstrate which destination we serve. (Yes, I am referencing Aristotelian τέλος.)

Many times, because of the glut in which we live, if we are not facing hardship, we need to impose on ourselves some form of austerity to reach the essential. This is why people choose thru-hikes. Stripping away the bells and whistles that distract us, we can better appreciate that which is already abundant in this life, like just how beautiful it is to be warmed by the sun (...after a cold night out at camp). Read about a much more compelling experience of the same, along the Altiplano Traverse, here (by Ryan "Dirtmonger" Sylva; it's his quote about the smile, above).
But other times, sickness and injury strip us down to the same result (hear one such account here). Personally, I am coming out of a summer filled with myriad traumas, with two ongoing, and feel a great need to reconfirm the kind of destination I want to be headed towards. I discovered (again - it's funny how much amnesia can occur, for weeks even, until the nervous system calms down) that one can even feel abandoned in hard times. This isn't to say that abandonment is real. But...we can make it real, if we don't watch out. Anyone who doesn't know what I am talking about should count their blessings.

While I don't have the luxury to go where I will, I run long distance (my typical run is over half a marathon, so I can get to the forest and lift up my eyes - I reference the motto of my first boarding school, from Psalm 121). As much as I would love to quit my job (which gives me more and more work, and less and less pay), I will instead endure it a little longer, to gain better eyes for the abundance that life already is.
There is nothing like being told you will get help at work and instead being given a helper who not only lacks basic training (an assistant with a degree in politics who doesn't know what rhetoric is!) but who is also resistant to learning, and then going for a 26K jaunt in nature and being bathed by tree upon tree, casting their fiery shadows upon you, and forgetting your worries in that light show... The random willow in the little park just means so much more when it weeps for you.

Saint Nikolaj Zicki is said to have valued his days of imprisonment in Dachau above all else, for it is there where a simple ray of sunlight meant the most to him.
It is interesting how someone whose life was spiritually rich also benefitted from a baring: a release from 'things'; situation. 

I hunt for the golden stag.

You may smile my friends, but I pursue the vision that eludes me.

I run across hills and dales, I wander through nameless lands, because I am hunting for the golden stag. 

You come and buy in the market and go back to your homes laden with goods, but the spell of the homeless winds has touched me I know not when and where.

I have no care in my heart; all my belongings, I have left far behind me. 

(from Rabindranath Tagore, The Gardener, 69)

Image (of painting) source: Pier Fracesco Mola "Oriental Warrior" wikimediacommons.

To my adolescent imagination, when I first saw this painting in the Louvre, I thought, this is someone who's hunting for the golden stag. His eyes are lifted (Ps.121); at least, aimed for more distant goals.
He's always looked to me like a janissary, though it bewilders me (I now refer to the definition at that link) how someone who is kidnapped "willingly" does anything.

What Is My Problem? (... with teaching extracts)

This post has been updated. In teaching, I struggle with which texts to assign: more fruitful, complex texts (like speeches by Cicero or Demosthenes, or Benjamin's "The Task of the Translator") can lead to drops in attendance and participation, but less dense ones (like select think pieces from, say, The Atlantic or The Millions) seem to reinforce the common view held by 20-year-olds that they pretty much know it all. It is a problem when students do not participate because if they bring nothing to the conversation, there is nothing to tie the material to, to make it relevant. Some years, I almost exclusively use excerpts from the more complex texts - if only inclusive of a few non-sugar coated ones, but I maintain that this method is rife with dangers, which may or may not have been indirectly apparent in my last post, which drew only on excerpts.
To use an excerpt is to take on the responsibility of filling in the context of what the excerpt was cut out of. This not only includes explaining parts of the text that surrounded the excerpt, but also explicating related schools of thought, historical details and precedents, specific references, etc. This is particularly challenging where it cannot be assumed that there is a shared 'cultural language' to begin with - which means that I might not know how important it is to emphasise certain points, or might not remember to point things out that I take for granted.
It may be because of these problems that I am increasingly interested in "the rudimentary" - and doubtful of whether I have a sound enough mastery of the basics: to use an example mentioned above, I might forget to explain points I have long assimilated and internalised.
There is also the problem of what "knowledge" is - for example, how can one claim to know a book when second, third readings bring elucidation of ideas one failed to see or retain the first time? Or, when further readings bring entirely new meaning? Such basic and common experiences are further warnings of the inadequacy of the outline.
Since initially publishing this post, it became clearer that perhaps the ultimate problem is that, as the late and great D. G. Myers wrote, "nothing is considered essential knowledge" in academe today; he wrote that he could not expect "any common background knowledge, not even in English majors". Among the enlightening comments to that post, is a link to another blog post, which presents a brief, invaluable exploration of the history of the "fragmentation of the curriculum". The author cites Barzun's scepticism of the trend to shop for majors, and Santayana's lament that "in the Harvard of my day we had heard a little of everything, and nobody really knew his Latin or knew his Bible."

 

In Auerbach's his famous essay on "Philology and 'Weltliteratur'", he describes the problem of achieving "synthesis" - which, I might add, is similar to the outline, or summary, in its concern for a vision of the whole. Synthesis is difficult because of the problem of the uncertainty of what is truly known of the past, as well as the challenges of grasping "the conditions under which ... literature developed", which includes religion, philosophy, politics, etc. He explains the "problematic and the ordering categories" of literature by writing: "Most of them are too abstract and ambiguous, and frequently they have too private a slant. They confirm a temptation to which neophytes (and acolytes) are frequently inclined to submit: the desire to master a great mass of material through the introduction of hypostasized, abstract concepts of order".
The pitfalls of abstracted overviews is, as suggested above, no new concern. I think it is also reflected in the phrase non multa legere sed multum, which I will poorly render as: read not many but much. If the meaning of this phrase is not immediately apparent, I think it is rather well illustrated by the reading habits of A. W. Verall (in the foreword to his Collected Literary Essays: Classical and Modern, eds. M. A. Bayfield and J. D. Duff):

"For mere information he did not care overmuch, he preferred multum legere potius quam multa. What he asked for from serious books was nutriment, and this he got better (if I may pursue the horrid metaphor) by repeated mastication than by the hasty omnivorous feeding which makes assimilation impossible."

There are no shortcuts in learning or teaching. That is, if we care about knowledge and learning.
To return to my initial ramblings in this post: "select think pieces" offer immediate relevance to students, the familiar, the contemporary. This is important if one wishes to reach a potential audience at the crossroads between what listeners can actually apply on their journey beginning from where they are at present and more distant horizons. This crossroads represents part of the mystery of learning, as its coordinates will always be moving where there is thought.
Horizons to be striven towards can be afforded through rich history and rhetoric. I was about to add theory to that list, but after having tried to teach it alongside the former two, I cannot claim that it is as rich. Even theorists reach towards Plato, or Homer... Distant contextual horizons are important, but so is where we are standing, in more practical and immediate terms.
So the problem is how to encourage an orientation towards horizons, for students to embark on their own Odysseys. One hopes the journeys are informed, for what use is travel in the wilderness if one knows nothing of the elements or navigation (important even today). Teaching navigation through overview-courses based on extracts seems reasonable because extracts are short but deep enough to encourage star gazing and the connection to greater coordinates. But teaching via extracts is also riddled with problems. That's my problem.
And why I feel the burden of bussardes - I sometimes feel the fear of being a bussard myself (one responsible for teaching!), even though that fear is more a fallacy than a reasonable assessment. Such reactionary thinking on my part stems from my lacking proper mentors, and critical stance towards the status quo. I will illustrate what I mean by this.
In teaching composition, I found I was dissatisfied with the handbooks, readers, etc., on the topic and found I had to compile my own selection of instruction from various sources (for example, to describe essays, as so many "college handbooks" do, as "narrative", "descriptive", etc. is ridiculous, as most good essays combine these "types"; by contrast, teaching composition via rhetoric, where those same "types" are assembled under "invention" is far more constructive). But this very illustration reveals my problem: I do not have a degree in the classics: can I be sure that my occasional ("excerpted") references to classical oratory are accurate? One needs to be guided in such things by specialists. I of course make an attempt to research into what I teach, and should add that I truly enjoy the opportunity of taking a broad approach that is perhaps characteristic of a "core" approach to the humanities, but I am just trying to articulate here what I think are some of the problems of this approach.

Photo of a bee-eater, not a bussard. 

Brush: misprinted type.

Neither Catechism Nor Multiplication Table

The title is from A. E. Housman's "The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism", in which Housman explains that textual criticism is more like an art than a science. Where scientists or doctors can test their theories with experiments or by noting visible effects, "the discovery merely of better and older MSS. than were previously known to us is not equally decisive". He proceeds to give specific examples of the dangerously arbitrary categorisations that are made about the quality of manuscripts, explaining that were such generalisations to be stated in concrete terms, the arbitrariness would be spotted immediately, no less by butchers and grocers, who are comparatively more thoughtful than arbitrary textual critics - as they "depend on their brains for bread". His jokes aside, Housman suggests that the way out of this mess is to "collect and compare" individual readings, and "not to ride easily off on ... false and ridiculous generalisation[s]". In other words, thoughtful textual criticism essentially works on a text-by-text basis (though this feeds back into the bigger picture, to create a more accurate general understanding) [1]. Readers of this blog, or blogs like it, may already be thinking of how much this approach resembles Auerbach's, in Mimesis.
Thus, even once philology ceases to be primarily interested in manuscripts, and becomes concerned with different sorts of comparison - let us call it "the historical experience", a "true philological" approach may be defined as an art: involving both an appreciation of rules as well as the readiness to descend into the complexities of myriad particularities, collecting and comparing. Housman writes that a nascent flair for this art is desirable - and we may note that Auerbach was praised for possessing just such a gift. Also important, however, is the habit of thought, which, while no substitute for an aptitude for textual criticism, can minimise error, Housman writes.

This approach is not a science. To illustrate, Housman considers rules vs. examples, methodically arguing that it is the weight of what appear to be exceptions to rules, and not their number, that must, on a case-by-case basis, be "ascertained by classification and scrutiny". It cannot be a science, because its subject matter is the product of the fallible (not hard-and-fast) human being:

It deals with a matter not rigid and constant, like lines and numbers, but fluid and variable; namely the frailties and aberrations of the human mind, and of its insubordinate servants, the human fingers. It therefore is not susceptible of hard-and-fast rules. It would be much easier if it were; and that is why people try to pretend that it is, or at least behave as if they thought so. Of course you can have hard-and-fast rules if you like, but then you will have false rules, and they will lead you wrong; because their simplicity will render them inapplicable to problems which are not simple, but complicated by the play of personality.

This is the lesson of what the humanities, as opposed to the sciences, can share. We are to remember human fallibility, and appreciate that science is not the best tool for more accurate understandings of things human. Of course, this is not just the idea of the philologist - although it is fascinating to me that it is possibility the influence of the philologist (Auerbach) that shaped Gadamer's philosophical magnum opus Truth and Method, for making this very point (we remember, too, that he briefly opined in the book that he had not written it sooner to argue against false objectivism in a timely fashion). This idea of the trickiness and case-by-case discernment of the human experience is part of Plato's Socratic elenctic questioning, dialectics.

To shorthand a conclusion to this post, I will refer yet again to how Jowett describes Plato's Phaedrus as a "picture, not a system". What is more, he notes that Plato "works freely" in his writing, meaning, "which is the warp and which is the woof cannot always be determined". Science is not appropriate here: knowledge is reached through "many preparations and oppositions, both of the characters of men and aspects of truth, especially of the popular and philosophical aspect; and after many interruptions and detentions ... we arrive at ... knowledge. This is an aspect of truth which was always lost almost as soon as it was found, and yet has to be recovered by everyone for himself who would pass the limits of proverbial and popular philosophy," Jowett writes.
Finally, as an educator in today's world, I would like to point out the ubiquity of the popular - with its watered-down platitudes, laid down like (psuedo-) scientific law, like: do what it takes to get where you want, which is hardly an ideal civic ethics. In contrast to this, is Auerbach's retort to accusations that he was not methodical enough in Mimesis, and bogged down in too many particularities to be appropriately scientifically philological: "If it had been possible, I would have avoided all general terms and instead suggested ideas to the reader by the mere presentation of a sequence of passages".
Neither catechism nor multiplication table, textual analysis requires engagement of the individual in a case-by-case evaluative dialectics if one cares even the slightest about the truth of the matter (and has a flair for it: cf. can discernment be taught?)

Book in background: Boucher's 20,000 Years of Fashion. Brush: Ewansim via Deviantart.

[1] cf., "The MSS. are the material upon which we base our rule, and then, when we have got our rule, we turn round upon the MSS. and say that the rule, based upon them, convicts them of error. We are thus working in a circle, that is a fact which there is no denying; but, as Lachmann says, the task of the critic is just this, to tread that circle deftly and warily; and that is precisely what elevates the critic's business above mere mechanical labour."
Post Script: at some point, I will need to change the labels of these posts. In preparation of that, and to that end, for my convenience, I am linking here to all posts I was able to find that mention Gadamer's Truth and Method: experience-experiment; interiority-nonsense; facts-of-fiction; hands-of-tongue; beyond-myth.