Existential Inventions

As an example of contrapuntal improvisation, inventio is the quintessential form of a musical exercise. In J. S. Bach’s work, inventions (or Aufrichtige Anleitugen) usually entail a short exposition, a longer development, and, sometimes, a short recapitulation (Invention # 5, for example). In contrast to the fugue, inventions do not generally contain an answer to the subject in the dominant key. They are less developed, less complete, not so grand. Frequently, the recapitulation is left open, hanging as it were, unfledged and without finality. Inventions are meant for developing students, for personal development of competence, and as a rule do not aspire to the limelight of concert halls, although many outstanding recordings of Bach's inventions exist (Glenn Gould!). When practiced regularly, they form the body to respond adequately to the stimuli of notes and measures, keys and metronomes. They require an embrace of askesis, a disciplined reiteration of practices whose stated aim is to turn us into proper practitioners, masters of the fundamentals of music performance. In a sense, they are both initiation rites and “technologies of the self” (Foucault), preludes to greater musical complexities with their balance of innovation and structure, predictability and surprise.

I want to utilize this simile of inventio as a symbolic shortcut for a particular existential style, a way of thinking about God, culture, and self through a cluster of interrelated metaphors: elaboration, incompleteness, discipline, practice, thematic unity, and performance...

Engaging Stoicism (2014)

Some time ago, in 2014 to be precise, I jotted down a few thoughts Stoicism attractive. I read through to them the other day and made a couple of changes. Nothing comprehensive, just a brief take.

First, I agree with how the Stoics treat happiness in light of broader metaphysical and cosmological questions. In other words, happiness isn't simply about feeling better, but about living in tune with reality. By “reality,” I mean questions of cosmology, human nature, various natural and supernatural ends, basic goods, etc.—in other words, the struggle to aligned ourselves with how things actually are. That my understanding of ultimate reality diverges from Stoics in key points does not detract from this basic premise.

Second, I agree with the Stoics that living in the present is essential to living a meaningful life. For me, as a Christian, that includes a nurturing of continued God-consciousness.

Third, most of our problems come from passions (negative emotions) and wrong judgments. Getting a handle on automatic negative thoughts is thus essential to personal well-being. (CBT is built on that basic insight.)

Fourth, that is why attentiveness (prosoche) or vigilance is so important. To capture the swelling up of negative emotions such as anger and self-pity, to detect the birthing of prejudical or uniformed thoughts—that deserves our utmost energy.

Fifth, I agree with their contention that eudaimonia (happiness or subjective well-being) comes from the possession of moral and intellectual virtue; of acquiring, in biblical terms, the fruits of the Spirit. At the same time, I recognize that full human flourishing—flourishing understood in a holistic sense—demands the promotion and protection of basic human goods. It is always better to be healthy, have friends, have food and shelter, live in conditions of justice, be accorded basic rights, and so on than to be deprived of them.

Sixth, difficult situations afford opportunities for growth. By facing them with courage, hope, a growth-mindset, and positive reframing, we nurture resilience. So, rather than allowing fear and self-pity to overwhelm us, we can say, “Good, here is an opportunity for me to grow,” or, “Here is an opportunity to live in the kingdom of God.”

Seventh, I believe that happiness is related to training, to a craft of living that allocates an important space to “spiritual” exercises (askesis) such as reflective meditation on events, expressions of gratitude, negative visualization, journaling, etc. As a Christian, I would add: prayer, Bible meditation, imaginative contemplation, fasting, etc.

Eight, the key aim of these exercises is greater self-awareness, which we all need desperately. Of course, inwardness on its own has significant limits, plagued as it is by mental foibles such as introspective illusion. We need feedback from others as well. Above all, we need the Spirit to lead us into all truth.

The Craft of Living as "Technical" Knowledge

Thematically, this is a follow-up to the post “Straying Afield of Oneself.”

An essential part of this blog has been a repeated reflection, metacognition of sorts, on the activity practiced in this space. There is an intentional double-meaning to “practiced” as I intend it, referring both to the “production” of content and a type of “exercise” on myself. With all proper deference, I see such a double-meaning at work, for instance, in the Ecclesiastes and Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. These authors produce meditations, and they meditate. Thus, to see their works merely as collections of inspirational sayings is to miss the point of it all. True, there are some good thoughts to be had in there, but it is the art of inscaping, the continual immersion into those essential axioms, that unlocks their power. Sustained growth and mindfulness rather than originality of thought carry the day here.

With that as a backdrop, I thought of sharing a quote from John Sellars’ The Art of Living. Sellars notes that

in the technical conception of philosophy, philosophy is conceived as an art (techne) directed towards the cultivation of an ideal disposition of the soul, a disposition that may be called excellence (arete) or wisdom (sophia). Thus one might say that the subject matter of this art is one’s soul (psyche) and its goal (telos) is to transform or to take care of one’s soul. The product (ergon) will be the transformed disposition of the soul, namely excellence or wisdom. This transformed disposition will… necessarily impact upon an individual’s behaviour, expressing itself in their actions. Alternatively, one might say that this art is concerned with one’s life (bios), that this is its subject matter, and that its goal is to transform one’s life. Thus one might say that the product of this art will be the actions (erga) that constitute one’s life, highlighting its status as a performative art (praktike techne) in which the performance itself is the product. This product conceived as an activity may be characterized variously as a good flow of life, as living well, and as well-being or happiness (eudaimonia).*

Rather than carrying the usual connotation of “specialized,” therefore, Sellar’s concept of “technical” knowledge tracks the word techne or craft. It is a type of knowledge that amounts to an acquisition of intellectual and moral skills through exercises such as clarification, repetition, restatement, and visualization for the purpose of appropriate action and the pursuit of the good life. (The fact that Christians insist on the necessity of divine intervention and aid on all these levels does not take away from the structure of “technical” knowledge.)

With that in mind, I aspire to an act of blogging—I am looping back here to the opening paragraph—as a type of self-styling, a crafting of self in view of my core identity values: surrender, essentialism, attentiveness, life-affirmation, equanimity, self-control, integrity, mind-growth, wholeness, and love. And while I would love for people to find at least some of the content useful—what blogger wouldn’t?—there is something intrinsically valuable in such an act of written self-articulation and accountability. “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on….”

*For the purposes of the blog post, I have taken the liberty of inserting simplified transliterations of the Greek terms. I have also left out some Greek words. Click here to see the original quote with all references intact.

"Straying Afield of Oneself"—Foucault and the Craft of Living

Let me begin with a few words from Michel Foucault’s The Uses of Pleasure:

As for what motivated me, it is quite simple…. It was curiosity—the only kind of curiosity, in any case, that is worth acting upon with a degree of obstinacy: not the curiosity that seeks to assimilate what it is proper for one to know, but that which enables one to get free of oneself. After all, what would be the value of the passion for knowledge if it resulted only in a certain amount of knowledgeableness and not, in one way or another and to the extent possible, in the knower’s straying afield of himself?… What is philosophy today—philosophical activity, I mean—if it is not the critical work that thought brings to bear on itself?… The essay—which should be understood as the assay or test by which, in the game of truth, one undergoes changes… is the living substance of philosophy, at least if we assume that philosophy is still what it was in times past, i.e., an “ascesis,” askesis, an exercise of oneself in the activity of thought.

There are many moving balls here, but what strikes me as deeply pertinent is his definition of philosophy as a type of askesis, “an exercise of oneself in the activity of thought”; a motto of the Craft of Living blog. More than simply striving to be informative, the posts are “athletic” feats of sorts, a type of spiritual calisthenics in the form of probing, experimenting, crafting, and holding myself accountable. They are implicit attempts to work on myself as myself, or, the appropriate Foucault’s gratifying turn of phrase, to foster the “knower’s straying afield of himself.”

I won’t go into what all that Foucault is after here, except to note his correct assumption that true philosophy amounts to a craft, an art of letting go of the self; the illusionary, obstinate, narcissistic, false, incongruous, lazy, bored self. A genuine Christian philosophy will, of course, understand such self-renunciation—the “I no longer live” aspect—entirely in christological terms.

On Wrestling and the Inconspicuousness of Reality

Initially, I had a hard time justifying the strained nature of this post title. What spiritual or art-of-living significance is there for sharing Roland Barthes' semiotic decoding of wrestling in his Mythologies? Well, I can think of several reasons. At the very least, Barthes models a punctilious askesis or discipline of noticing. Even if the "The World of Wrestling," be it as a theme or the actual spectacle of it, is not your thing—it certainly isn't mine—Barthes' interpretive perspicacity is nothing short of beguiling. Admittedly, I've had many preconceptions of wrestling, but none that distilled from it similes about the intelligibility of reality and the moral order of life. Wrestling as a saturnalia of elemental binaries—truth/falsehood, good/evil! Just add to it the aesthetics of the contest and you summarily find yourself in the realm of the three transcendentals—the true, the good, and the beautiful.

That is why reading (the early) Barthes on this point is so rewarding. It gives you the feeling not unlike one of being enlightened by an art connoisseur to perceive compositional elements of a painting that have escaped your analysis. Personally, I stand in need of guides who prompt you to attentiveness; who give you interpretive tools to uncover the unapprehended, the inconspicuous. (That partly explains my attraction to Iris Murdoch). A thinking concerned with "practices of everyday life" (de Certeau) must, at the very least, begin there. And wouldn't Jesus, as one who stood attuned to the symbolic actions of foes and friends, be a prime exemplar in this regard too?

In any case, in the concluding section of his essay, Barthes notes, somewhat convolutedly, but quite brilliantly, how wrestlers

who are very experienced, know perfectly how to direct the spontaneous episodes of the fight so as to make them conform to the image which the public has of the great legendary themes of its mythology. A wrestler can irritate or disgust, he never disappoints, for he always accomplishes completely, by a progressive solidification of signs, what the public expects of him. In wrestling, nothing exists except in the absolute, there is no symbol, no allusion, everything is presented exhaustively....

When the hero or the villain of the drama, the man who was seen a few minutes earlier possessed by moral rage, magnified into a sort of metaphysical sign, leaves the wrestling hall, impassive, anonymous, carrying a small suitcase and arm-in-arm with his wife, no one can doubt that wrestling holds that power of transmutation which is common to the Spectacle and to Religious Worship. In the ring, and even in the depths of their voluntary ignominy, wrestlers remain gods because they are, for a few moments, the key which opens Nature, the pure gesture which separates Good from Evil, and unveils the form of a Justice which is at last intelligible.