The needs of the physical world, our bodies, our things, our environments, aren’t limitations so much as they are opportunities to experience new things and see old things in new ways.
Your description about experiencing a working sink as though it were the first time reminds me of Heidegger’s notion of circumspection in everydayness, and how the experience of a breakdown brings something out from circumspection into consciousness. We only think of the true meaning of a door when it fails to do what we take for granted; that is, open when we pull on the knob or push at it.
Oooh! I like that distinction... can you source it for me, Jim? Heidegger is a fair distance in the rear view mirror for me these days, but that sounds like something I should dig into. Thanks for reading and engaging! I'm grateful.
Sure. Heidegger's use of 'circumspection,' translated from 'Umsicht' in "Being and Time" (Division 1, chapter 3) where Heidegger talks about "average everydayness." His example is of a carpenter using hammer and nails and wood and the work-bench. In the act of 'carpenting' all objects and the carpenter himself dissolve into the background of everydayness. There are no objects, no subjects, just the act. Not at all unlike Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's "flow experience," or even Robert Pirsig's "moment of quality" mentioned in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." It's only under close scrutiny in, say, the study of natural science, or in the case of more mundane everyday objects, when a object does not fulfill its unconsciously expected function, that that object -- that TOOL -- is transformed into itself, separate from the action of its function. In "The Question Concerning Technology," Heidegger's point is that we should pay closer attention to the tools, objects -- THINGS -- that serve as technology to lead to a more intimate realationship with the world around us.
A decent summary of this concept can be found in a number of places, but I am a big big an of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy online. It's an awesome resource! https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/
FANTASTIC! Thanks. I'm more of a Michel de Certeau person and a Mihail Bakhtin person when it comes to the practical poetics of everydayness. On Zen thinking, have you read Herrigel's Zen in the Art of Archery (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_in_the_Art_of_Archery)? I think you'd dig.
Heidegger has interesting and important things to say about everydayness, but they tend towards hermeneutics of the phenomenological. And he's dense AF with a boatload of made-up words. And he was a card-carrying Nazi. Doesn't have a lot going in his favor on all those fronts. But he was a helluva philosopher at the end of the day! And when I was doing my Ezra Pound thesis for Peter Dale Scott, Heidegger's work underpinned a lot of my analysis, so he's still stuck with me. De Certeau, also dense AF, has a focus on the aesthetic of everydayness, with a little more 'how to live' bent vs. 'what is living.' I've not read any Bakhtin, so far as I can recall. Zen in the Art of Archery sounds familiar, but I've not read it. I'll have to slot Herrigel and Bakthin on my list!
Jim, the best intro to Bakhtin is this biography co-authored by my friend Saul:
Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics https://a.co/d/97qZJFG
It’s still dense, but not dense AF.
Herrigel is less of a performance art piece about Zen than Pirsig, which I couldn’t get through.
Your description about experiencing a working sink as though it were the first time reminds me of Heidegger’s notion of circumspection in everydayness, and how the experience of a breakdown brings something out from circumspection into consciousness. We only think of the true meaning of a door when it fails to do what we take for granted; that is, open when we pull on the knob or push at it.
Oooh! I like that distinction... can you source it for me, Jim? Heidegger is a fair distance in the rear view mirror for me these days, but that sounds like something I should dig into. Thanks for reading and engaging! I'm grateful.
Sure. Heidegger's use of 'circumspection,' translated from 'Umsicht' in "Being and Time" (Division 1, chapter 3) where Heidegger talks about "average everydayness." His example is of a carpenter using hammer and nails and wood and the work-bench. In the act of 'carpenting' all objects and the carpenter himself dissolve into the background of everydayness. There are no objects, no subjects, just the act. Not at all unlike Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's "flow experience," or even Robert Pirsig's "moment of quality" mentioned in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." It's only under close scrutiny in, say, the study of natural science, or in the case of more mundane everyday objects, when a object does not fulfill its unconsciously expected function, that that object -- that TOOL -- is transformed into itself, separate from the action of its function. In "The Question Concerning Technology," Heidegger's point is that we should pay closer attention to the tools, objects -- THINGS -- that serve as technology to lead to a more intimate realationship with the world around us.
A decent summary of this concept can be found in a number of places, but I am a big big an of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy online. It's an awesome resource! https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/
FANTASTIC! Thanks. I'm more of a Michel de Certeau person and a Mihail Bakhtin person when it comes to the practical poetics of everydayness. On Zen thinking, have you read Herrigel's Zen in the Art of Archery (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_in_the_Art_of_Archery)? I think you'd dig.
I'll dig in on the Heidegger... after my vacation. ;)
Heidegger has interesting and important things to say about everydayness, but they tend towards hermeneutics of the phenomenological. And he's dense AF with a boatload of made-up words. And he was a card-carrying Nazi. Doesn't have a lot going in his favor on all those fronts. But he was a helluva philosopher at the end of the day! And when I was doing my Ezra Pound thesis for Peter Dale Scott, Heidegger's work underpinned a lot of my analysis, so he's still stuck with me. De Certeau, also dense AF, has a focus on the aesthetic of everydayness, with a little more 'how to live' bent vs. 'what is living.' I've not read any Bakhtin, so far as I can recall. Zen in the Art of Archery sounds familiar, but I've not read it. I'll have to slot Herrigel and Bakthin on my list!