Music and Gymnastic/Soul and Body

The kind of music we’re talking about includes sorts of rhetoric and philosophy as well as what is usually called music. In any case, “music” is made up of rhythm and harmony, form and content. For Plato (and I expect many other ancients), music is an art for the soul. Well ordered music leads to a well ordered soul and vice versa. What can a well ordered soul do? Souls it would seem can influence other souls. The teacher influences the student. This is the primary relationship between teachers and students. But can the student also influence the teacher? Sure, why not? Before the teacher influences the student, the student’s soul is disordered in some way. The student thus influences the teacher to take the steps to be a good influencer of souls. Levels of transmission and receptivity are involved. How is one “moved” by a speech, a bit of philosophy, or what we call music? Our best orators, intellectuals, and musicians hold a special place in society, even if it is posthumously. . . . so do our best athletes and warriors.

I probably don’t need to get much more specific when it comes to gymnastic because it follows along the same lines as music does. But here’s the bottom line. Balance is key. Too much music and not enough gymnastic leads to a weak physical condition. Too much gymnastic and not enough music leads to bodily strength but intellectual dullness. For the top citizens a balance between the two encourages smooth sailing.

Pure Becoming

The subject suggests that the discussion will be of an ontological nature. What does “pure becoming” mean? It is paradoxical. Deleuze suggests that there is a sense in which two opposite things, on the same ontological level (e.g., a becoming today and a becoming tomorrow), occur at the same time. This is to say that the two oppsite things which occur at the same time are at the same temporal level. The things or senses are determinate in themselves, but at the same time they happen concurrently due to what  is termed as pure becoming. This is what makes it a paradox.  As Deleuze says, “This is the simultaneity of a becoming whose characteristic is to elude the present” (LOS 1). The holding power of the present is precisely what is at stake here. “Good sense affirms that in all things there is a determinable sense or direction (sens); but paradox is the affirmation of both senses or directions at the same time” (LOS 1). Deleuze suggests that Plato institutes a dualism here in order to tame the wild horse. Thus we have the world of nouns. A “chair” is no longer even this happening whose existence can at least be pointed at. (It seems to me that Hegel makes a somewhat similar move which acknowledges this phenomenon in the very first section of the Phenomenology of Spirit.) The pure immediacy of becoming must already be mediated in order for communication to even occur at all. A pure becoming, in order to be controlled, must be taken as a specific determinate instance of a fixed something, i.e., of a thing. Hardcore becoming has the quality of not being pidgeon-holed so easily (or at all). Two senses, determinate yet dynamic, trump common sense.

“The paradox of this pure becoming with its capacity to elude the present, is the paradox of infinite identity (the infinite identity of both directions or senses at the same time–of future and past, of the day before and the day after, of more and less, of two much and not enough, of active and passive, and of cause and effect). It is language which fixes the limits (the moment, for example, at which the excess begins), but it is language as well which transcends the limits and restores them to the infinite equivalence of an unlimited becoming. . . Paradox is initially that which destroys good sense as the only direction, but it is also that which destroys common sense as the assignation of fixed identities” (LOS 2-3).

 

Work Cited

Deleuze, G. The Logic of Sense. trans. Lester, M., Stivale, C., ed. Boundas, C. (Colombia University Press: New York, 1990.)

Heroes and Villians

When I was younger, I caught one of the return waves of the Star Wars phenomenon. This was somewhat before the release of the prequels. So I had gotten a good taste of what a genuine saga of heroes and villians is about. This is not to say that  that I hadn’t before experienced fictional representations of worlds with good guys and bad guys (and all of the marketing hoopla that goes along with it). I was into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles way before Star Wars. One of the rules is that the heroes win at the end of the story. Another rule is that there has to be some sort of love interest or sidekick of some type, and, unless there’s going to be a sequel, everything in the story should be resolved by the end. I have one overarching question, though. How should we, as makers of worlds, generally portray our heroes and villians, and what should we teach our young in the stories that we tell them so as to prepare them for their specific callings in life?

The beginning of Book III of the Republic deals with this issue. Let’s stick with the Star Wars example for this one. Ok. The first item of business is the issue about what we should say about death and the afterlife. (Don’t read on if you don’t want any spoilers to be revealed.) There is no explicit teaching about the afterlife in Star Wars. The closest we get to something like it is when, in The Empire Strikes Back, Yoda waxes philosophical aboout the Force. Even then, we don’t get an account of what happens after you die in the Star Wars universe. We only see certain things that suggest what might happen. Dead heroes are portrayed as “luminous beings.” We never see dead villians. Perhaps their energy (which is lacking spiritually itself) simply dissipates into the void. In any case, we never see or hear about the realm of the afterlife. However, we ultimately take the living heroes and the dead heroes to be decent “men” and, as Socrates said, “We surely say that a decent man will believe that for the decent man–who happens to be his comrade–being dead is not a terrible thing.”[387d] We eventually see that this is the case when Skywalker, Kenobi, Yoda, and Anakin acknowledge each other at the end of The Retun of the Jedi. The Star Wars saga, though, is all about the hero’s journey, and it traces Skywalker’s path from a young man to a lower level warrior towards a philosopher guardian (a similar path is taken by Anakin in the prequels).

[I'll write more on this and Book III later. Right now I have to get ready for the day's errands.]