“Conversation is not an enterprise designed to yield an extrinsic profit; a contest where a winner gets a prize, nor is it an activity of exegesis; it is an unrehearsed intellectual adventure. It is with conversation as with gambling, its significance lies neither in winning nor in losing, but in wagering. Properly speaking, it is impossible in the absence of diversity of voices: in it different universes of discourse meet, acknowledge each other and enjoy an oblique relationship which neither requires nor forecasts their being assimilated to one another.” (Michael Oakeshott, “The Voice of Poetry”)
“…taking hold of [it], of turning it around slowly, in the light”
(Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway)
“For it is true of every object…that the more one looks the more there is to see.”
(Woolf, “Life and the Novelist”)
“The most inventive, the most innovative jazz musician is also the one with a very rich apperceptive mass or base, a very rich storehouse of tunes, phrases, ditties which he uses as a painter uses his awareness of other paintings, as a writer employs his literary background to give his statements richer resonances. As a matter of fact, the musician is always engaged in a dialogue or a conversation or even argument — not only, as in a jam session, with his peers — but also with all other music and musicians in the world at large. Indeed, his is an ongoing dialogue with the form itself. He achieves his individuality by saying ‘yes and also’ to that with which he agrees, and by saying, ‘no,’ or in any case, ‘on the other hand,’ to that with which he disagrees….Yes, all of this is as applicable to science and engineering and political procedure as it is to music and literature and all of the other arts.” (Albert Murray, “Improvisation”)
“One would try to decide how many positions one thinks are important enough to be represented by ‘voices,’ and then one would do all in one’s power to let each voice state its position as ably as possible. No voice deemed relevant to the particular issue or controversy would be subjected to the quietus, and none would be inadequately represented (as were one to portray it by stating only its more vulnerable arguments). But although one would be as fair as possible in thus helping all positions to say their say, a mere cult of ‘fair play’ would not be the reason. Rather, one hopes for ways whereby the various voices, in mutually correcting one another, will lead toward a position better than anyone singly. That is, one does not merely want to outwit the opponent, or to study him [or her], one wants to be affected by him [or her], in some degree to incorporate him [or her], to so act that his [or her] ways can help perfect one’s own—in brief, to learn from him [or her].”
(Kenneth Burke)
“Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weight and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but no curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.” (Francis Bacon, “Of Studies”)
“To read a book well, one should read it as if one were writing it. Begin not by sitting on the bench among the judges but by standing in the dock with the criminal. Be his fellow worker, become his accomplice. [Even, if you wish merely to read books, begin by writing them.]”
(Virginia Woolf, “How to Read a Book”)
“Herbie Hancock, when you play with him — at least at that time; I haven’t played with him in years — he heard everything that you did. It was like being tracked by some kind of radar mechanism. He heard every breath that you took while you were playing, he felt all of the vibes. It was amazing how sensitive this guy was.”
(Mike Clark, drummer in the Herbie Hancock group in the mid-70s)
“Thinking, existentially speaking, is a solitary but not a lonely business; solitude is the human situation in which I keep myself company [. . .] It is this duality of myself with myself that makes thinking a true activity, in which I am both the one who asks and the one who answers. Thinking can become dialectical and critical because it goes through this questioning and answer process [. . .] The only criterion of Socratic thinking is agreement, to be consistent with oneself. (Hannah Arendt, Life of the Mind)
“It may, therefore, be a subject worthy of curiosity, to enquire what is the nature of that evidence which assures us of any real existence and matter of fact, beyond the present testimony of our senses, or the records of our memory. This part of philosophy, it is observable, has been little cultivated, either by the ancients or moderns; and therefore our doubts and errors, in the prosecution of so important an enquiry, may be the more excusable; while we march through such difficult paths without any guide or direction. They may even prove useful, by exciting curiosity, and destroying that implicit faith and security, which is the bane of all reasoning and free enquiry. The discovery of defects in the common philosophy, if any such there be, will not, I presume, be a discouragement, but rather an incitement, as is usual, to attempt something more full and satisfactory than has yet been proposed to the public.” [Hume, *An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding*]
“There may be another reason why my aversion to Indian classical music turned to devotion. It has to do with the unpredictability of our lives as readers and writers, listeners and musicians. What’s bored us might begin to obsess us. What seemed important might, one day, lose its interest. You can’t be prepared by education, say, for Indian classical music. A change of direction may occur without warning. You find a point of entry you hadn’t been looking for. This might also happen with a book. The book could be a canonical one. You read three pages, and it does nothing for you. A year later, you pick it up and you read to the fourth page. It does nothing. One day, you read it determinedly, without pleasure, and, on page one hundred and twenty-five, you’re struck by a phrase or simile; it unlocks the book’s language and teaches you how to read it. The point of entry comes unawares; it makes a world or work available which you’d had no time for perviously.” (Amit Chaudhuri, “Finding the Raga”)
“When I read the “Exordium,” I feel that Kierkegaard is trying to get me into a state of readiness for a consideration of the actual biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, which is essentially inexplicable. The “Exordium” is a rehearsal: it lays out a series of rational explanations the better to demonstrate their poverty as explanations. For nothing can prepare us for Abraham and no one can understand him – at least, not rationally. Faith involves an acceptance of absurdity. To get us to that point, Kierkegaard hopes to “attune” us, systematically discarding all the usual defenses we put up in the face of the absurd.
Of course, loving Joni Mitchell does not require an acceptance of absurdity. I’m speaking of the minor category of the aesthetic, not the monument of the religious. But if you want to effect a breach in that stolid edifice the human personality, I think it helps to cultivate this Kierkegaardian sense of defenselessness. Kierkegaard’s simple man makes a simple mistake: he wants to translate the mystery of the biblical story story into terms that he can comprehend. His failure has something to teach us. Sometimes it is when we stop trying to understand or interrogate apparently “absurd” phenomena – like the category of the “new” in art – that we become more open to them.
Put simply: you need to lower your defenses.” (Zadie Smith, “Some Notes on Attunement,” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/17/some-notes-on-attunement)
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
“I want to cultivate the capacity for second thoughts, by which I mean the stance and the competence that makes it feasible to inquire into the obvious. This is what I call learning.”
(Ivan Illich, “ASCESIS. Introduction, etymology and bibliography,” 1989.)
“It is only personal weakness that makes us content with what others or we ourselves have found out in this hunt for knowledge. An abler man will not rest content with it. There is always room for a successor, yes, and for ourselves, and a road in another direction. There is no end to our researches; our end is in the other world. It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness. A spirited mind never stops within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength; it has impulses beyond its powers of achievement. If it does not advance and press forward and stand at bay and clash, it is only half alive. Its pursuits are boundless and without form; its food is wonder, the chase, ambiguity.” (Montaigne, “Of Experience” 1587)
- Plato, Republic: (Rep. 394d); Socrates: “…For I certainly do not yet know myself [where the argument is going], but whithersoever the wind, as it were, of the argument blows,3 there lies our course.”
- Immanuel Kant: “It is absurd to expect to be enlightened by Reason, and at the same time to prescribe to her what side of the question she must adopt.”
“In meeting people, living together, and common dealing in conversations and actions, some people seem to be ingratiating; these are the ones who praise everything to pleasure us and never cross us, but think they must cause no pain to those they meet. In contrast to these, people who oppose us on every point and do not care in the least about causing pain are called cantankerous and quarrelsome.
Clearly, the states we have mentioned are blameworthy, and the state intermediate between them is praiseworthy; in accord with it one accepts or objects to things when it is right and in the right way. This state has no name, but it would seem to be most like friendship; for the character of the person in the intermediate state is just what we mean in speaking of a decent friend, except that friend is also fond of us.
It differs from friendship in not requiring any special feeling or any fondness for the people we meet. For this person takes each thing in the right way because that is his character, not because he is a friend or an enemy.” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Trans by Terence Irwin, 1126b11-1126b25)
There is no symposiarch or arbiter; not even a doorkeeper to examine credentials. Every entrant is taken at its face-value and everything is permitted which can get itself accepted into the flow of speculation. And voices which speak in conversation do not compose a hierarchy. Conversation is not an enterprise designed to yield an extrinsic profit, a contest where a winner gets a prize, nor is it an activity of exegesis; it is a n unrehearsed intellectual adventure. It is with conversation as with gambling, its significance lies neither in winning nor in losing, but in wagering. Properly speaking, it is impossible in the absence of a diversity of voices: in it different universes of discourse meet. acknowledge each other and enjoy an oblique relationship which neither requires nor forecasts their being assimilated to one another. (Michael Oakeshott, “The Voice of Poetry and the Conversation of Man”)