https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=caM9fhWA3EU
I’m very excited about this conversation. I have butterflies before each time we speak. Me too. Anticipating it was germinating for me. When I was walking this morning, and I had been at Rebel Wisdom yesterday doing all this work. I actually ran the Dia Logos workshop talking with Jordan Hall and with Nora Bateson. All of that was in my mind. All the work that Chris and I have been doing, and then our previous dialogue about soul, all of that just came together for me. I wanted to propose something to you. I don’t know if you got a chance to read that email I sent you. Yes. I love the idea that you might have a theory about Hans or something to do with beauty, right? Yes. I have two motives for this. Two reasons, I think. They’re more than just motives. I think I can justify them. I think there are reasons. One is I think it’s an argument that’s designed to try and not completely answer all your questions, but at least give an integrated way of it answering the questions that you pose. I thought it would act as an excellent platform for the discussion because it’s going to talk about beauty and soul and Dia Logos, all of that. Great. Then what I also wanted to do was I wanted to start playing, and I mean in serious playing with, what does argumentation look like now within dialectic? What does that look like? Right now we’re doing a lot of this other stuff, and we can talk a little bit later about what I did in the workshop if you want. And it’s all great. You’re doing this amplification, and you’re doing all this work. I was already getting people to start moving off of propositions into, I propose that and that kind of move. But I also want to try and start playing with, okay, but what does like what, because argumentation, dialectic is not foreclosure, right? And it’s not about coming to a conclusion. So what role does argumentation have? So the thought that came to mind is exactly what I’m proposing here, that an argumentation is kind of like a setting forth of a platform that is supposed to lead to something beyond the argumentation as the dialectic unfolds. Well, anyways, I want to- Maybe I could just step back just a little bit and say that our last conversation was about, I proposed this notion of soul. Yes. And I asked you to speak about that. And then John came up with the idea of reinventio, which is the Latin word for reinventing. And reinventing, which also means discovering, right? Yes. Have I got that right? And I also thought rediscovering, because these notions are very old. So what we’re inventing and we’re discovering at the same time. And then after our conversation, I thought, geez, we could reinvent everything, you know, we could reinvent soul, we could reinvent beauty, we could reinvent the world, you know, I don’t mean to be inflationary, but it’s like, if we’re moving into a new paradigm, we have to reinvent how we see practically everything, right? That’s exactly right, Andrew. I think reinventio is one of the central functions of dialectic. It’s reinventio that’s a reanimation. If it’s going to be a meta psychotechnology, it has to be able to reinventio all over the place if it’s going to be effective and functional for us. I think that’s a pivotal point you just made there. I don’t think it’s inflationary at all. I think the job of this is to exactly allow us to return to wherever we want to speak and find how to reanimate it and bring the logos to it. Because all of these concepts become lifeless in a sense, and they become cliches and they become truisms and they stop meaning something. And yet we have a sense that they’re deeply meaningful on some level, but we stop using them in any meaningful function. And the only way we could bring them back is by, let’s say, redefining them. Which also is not just redefining the words, it’s redefining how we see the world. Yes, and reforming ourselves in the face of that. What kind of transformation do we have to undergo to conform to the reality that’s being disclosed? Because whenever there’s a disclosure, there’s also a demand on us that we need to conform to that new disclosure if we’re going to realize it. And so I think you’ve provided me a good way of reframing what I was saying earlier. I think there’s a better way of saying it. I want to try and reinventio argumentation. So that it’s no longer what it has become, which is just the logical coherence of propositions in order to just establish a conclusion that’s supposed to defeat your enemy. I want to try and understand what was going on in this Socratic use of argumentation. Because very often those arguments don’t come to conclusions. In fact, the arguments devolve into something else. Yeah. And the problem perhaps with arguments generally is, yeah, as you say, the rivalrous. They’re painful. Whereas I probably a good argument if you come into the right spirit, probably has some kind of a joy associated with it. If the two like people are having a wrestling match, you know, you might disagree. But I think we’re afraid to kind of disagree. We’re in the social media age, we’re afraid to wrestle with each other on some level. You know, the Plato is a nickname because he was a broad shoulder because he was a wrestler, Plato, right? You’re a martial artist. And so yeah, the point, I was saying this in the workshop yesterday, the point is not being right. The point is to come into right relationship, both with the topic and the other person. That’s what respect originally meant. Respect, spectio res, to see the thing properly. It doesn’t mean the same thing as the UNIV. And I said, what we’re trying to do is steer a middle path, a very Buddhist notion, between merely attacking people or merely agreeing with them. We’re trying instead to afford each of us getting to a place where we can’t get to on our own. Right. Because if we have too much agreement, then we fall into a bubble of some kind. Yes, yes. You know, and things get very dull and cliche. But if we’re too antagonistic, then we just, you know, then it’s just bloody blood everywhere. And nothing gets nothing. We don’t develop friendships and that kind of thing. Well, there’s no conduction to respect. And I want to reinvent the old app because it’s also been trivialized by some of the social justice discourse. But notice, again, to resonate with another topic we’re going to hopefully bring into discussion today. Notice how both agreement and antagonism lead to an ugliness of speech. Right? The one is the ugliness of dead conformity. The other is the ugliness of confrontation and threat. And again, trying to instead get back to what it is to beautify speech. I want to try and get argumentation, and Chris and I were talking about this, is like that my thinking isn’t set and then I speak it to convince you. It’s instead, as I try to articulate to you my thoughts, my thoughts, I’m actually reinventing on my thoughts that in speaking them, I discover something in the speaking that I didn’t have before I spoke them to you. That’s what I’m really trying to get at. So this kind of metaphor, the wrestling metaphor works well for that purpose too, because if you think every particular proposition, every proposed speech act, and the way that you and I have talked about it, John, makes a particular space in the interaction. And so the entire form of the dialogue is an act of spatialization, right? That you test the spatial awareness of your body, even as you exert and are exerted by your dialogic partners. So the co-creative act is actually an act of using the form of embodiment, in this case, the embodiment of speech itself, as a way of making exploratory space to then venture ever further, ever further, ever further into that space. Definitional discussions are interesting for that reason, because if we’re thinking of the definition of a term as a multi-vocalist soul or dialogue or love or any of the things that we might be able to put into this arena and then rest with, I think it’s helpful to think metaphorically of each of these definitions as spaces in which to play, that the definition is something to be inhabited in order to then elume more territory around it, as opposed to something that we treat as leading to a fixed point of closure. I think that’s exactly right. And that’s where, so like when I was doing the workshop, I tried to move people, I made people actually engage in the speech act to remember that proposition originally comes from the speech act of I propose, which is not the same thing as this is the case, right? It’s a very different things. I’m trying to bring that back out. It’s the metonym again, right? Everything is put for something greater, put for something beyond it. So everything, if there’s an acknowledgement that every proposition, every gesture in the dialogue is abbreviated knowingly and self-consciously abbreviated, then it always has its, I fixed beyond its point of meaning. Beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. So it never becomes reified or stuck. And there’s always a living force moving through it, which again, I think all of these things keep coming together in my mind, which leads to soul and beauty because what has soul is what is alive, right? What continues to move through us and what is beautiful is also what is alive and what is meaningful and not what is stuck and frozen and broken and fragmented and ugly and right? No, that’s what I spoke over you, Andrew. I didn’t mean to. I was excited when you said, you know, all of these things are coming together in your mind because that’s the original meaning of logos, bring things together so that they come to belong together. And that’s something much, much more than what we’ve reduced it to. Logos is the basis of our word logic. And we’ve reduced that to a coherence between propositions. But what you were talking about there, Andrew, about how things come together so they belong together and they’re in sold together and become alive together. That’s the meaning of logos and logical coherence is only one aspect of that much richer manifold. Right. So we’re trying to reinvent logos, right? To mean something not in this narrow logic, just a logicians kind of game. And we’re also trying to, what about, what about my friend Alexander always talks about mythos and pathos as well. Sure. That those two kind of work together. So mythos is the story is the the formal form of the story and pathos is the deep sort of feeling aspect to it. And if you get, perhaps if we get too hung up on logos, we lose our sense of feeling. And if we get too hung up on mythos, you know, the story becomes too sealed or closed or I’m making sense here and that all those three need to work together logos, mythos and pathos. But that’s, and that’s what makes. Go for it, John. Okay, I’ll go ahead. I’m just going to say, but that’s, that’s the point of the likes when you’re doing the dialectic, when you want reading one of the dialogues, the, I, you know, this is a point I think is really important to do. Heinlein and others have made, you don’t pay attention to just the argumentation. The argumentation is where you see the putting forth of propositions, but the drama is where you see a putting forth of ways of life. And drama is exactly where the mythos and the pathos you, that’s why, that’s why Plato does his philosophy in dialogue, because it’s only in dialogue that you can get the wedding of the, of the drama and the discourse so smoothly together. Yes, yes, exactly. And only in, and only in the dramaturgical context can logos to have a questing character. Right. There is an implicit narrativity to the dialogues precisely because there’s a quest, right? And that’s why the dialogues are such a beautiful marriage of the logos and the mythos, because the characterization of the quest of logos is implicit to the function of the dialogue itself. Yeah. The questions which are propositional are actually just the affordance of the speech act thinking of questing. That’s exactly the right way to put it, Chris. I think that’s really good. Yeah. So shall I begin some of my proposals? Please, please, yeah. So maybe let me go through sort of the four main things, the proposals, and then we can go back and trace through it however you gentlemen wish to. And then we’ll just follow, as Socrates often says, we will follow the argument wherever it goes. Okay, so the first thing I wanted to do was I wanted to bring up the connection. So I want to first more make clear to everybody who might be listening that Andrew was very kind to send a set of questions. And I thought originally I was just going to think about how I was going to answer each question. But then I thought maybe what I should do is try and logo. So I should try and draw them together into mutually supporting proposals. And so the first, so Andrew had some questions that he’s just also spoke it earlier about, you know, connections between beauty and soul. And so I want to pick up on our previous discussion about this idea of the reinvent you of soul as that which mediates metaxu is the alive in between us between moreness and suchness. And we talked quite a bit about that. The mediator. Yeah, yeah. As well as the mediator, like, I don’t know if you know this movie Metropolis, this course I do talk, he talks to the mediator as the guy who brings together the head and the hand and the heart brings together the head and the heart. So yeah, yeah. My wonderful partner has a big poster of Metropolis. It’s given me the original, like a print of the original poster for Metropolis. That movie just sings to me repeatedly. So yeah, it’s a beautiful illusion, Andrew. Thank you for that. Okay, so I was thinking about and so when we come back and review the first proposal, I was thinking, especially what you said, because, Andrew about Hans book on saving beauty, because I also think it’s a really important work. And so we can come back to that. But I was thinking, I’ve been thinking a lot about beauty. And of course, because it plays this very important role and beautification within the dialogues. And so I was trying, I was thinking about the correlation between soul and beauty that you were making, Andrew. I want to unpack that in this proposal. So I want to propose to you that there’s a continuum. There’s a continuum in our experience in right and now I’m doing a tonus attention, right? There’s a continuum between experiences that emphasize suchness and experiences that emphasize moreness. So overwhelming moreness is horror, right? And then a little, little less overwhelming is awe. A little less overwhelming is wonder. Now let’s go on the other side. When you’re really picking up on the suchness, people express that with this positive term of intimacy. I know you intimately, right? And then if that’s taken a little bit deeper, people talk about being at peace with each other. And then even more deeper, a sense of being at home with someone. And you know, Chris, what I’m doing here, I’m picking up on, right, home and horror as aspects of the sacred, right? But if you take it too far, we get that thing where, right, it’s all, it becomes too enclosed, right? What I’m proposing to you is the following. Beauty is that sweet spot. It’s the sweet spot on that continuum. It’s kind of a meta-optimal grip, right? It’s the tonus between being alive to the moreness and wonder and being alive to the suchness and intimacy. And this is picking up on Skari’s notion that when I encounter something beautiful, I both get a sense of, wow, she gives the example of the tree, right? You come across a beautiful tree. I didn’t know trees could be like that. There’s a sudden moreness. But this tree is also not like any other tree. It has a suchness to it. An individuation to it that is, right, non-repeatable. There’s a here-ness and now-ness that’s precious. So the intimacy gives a preciousness, if you’ll allow me that. Sorry, I sound like Gollum and I shouldn’t, right, to the moreness. So the moreness is not an abstract conception. It’s presence, right, into the suchness. So you see what I’m trying to do, Andrew? I’m trying to propose to you that the faculty of soul that mediates between moreness and suchness is actually the faculty of the reception of beauty. Because beauty is the aesthetics, the forming of our sensibility, that’s finding that sweet spot between the moreness of wonder and the intimacy of suchness. And so I think that picks up on Skari’s notion of how beauty is actually a deep kind of training for us. Okay, so that’s the first proposal. The first proposal is that there’s a deep, so I’m trying to, I think you had a really important insight there, Andrew, and you see what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to propose how to unpack it. And that’s what the argument’s doing. It’s saying, here’s some things that I think come from that, unfold from that. So that’s the first proposal. Is that okay? Yep. Here’s the second proposal. The second proposal is a notion of wisdom that I get from Socrates, of the relationship between wisdom and virtue. That each virtue is just a particular way of being wise in a particular kind of situation. So being wise in this situation is to be courageous. To be wise in this situation is to be kind. So the idea is that virtues are particular instantiations, particular ways of fitting to a particular context. So now making use of Aristotle’s notion of virtue always being between too much and too little. So now I’m going to try and draw them together. Here’s the logos in the proposal. I think that wisdom has a, has a, a moreness aspect to it, a self-transcendent aspect. And the Greeks had a word for this aspect of wisdom. This was Sophia. This is the moreness. But they also had another word that’s often translated as wisdom. And we’ve lost this, right, in our translations because we translate them both by the same word. They had phronesis. And phronesis was the ability to fit yourself well to a particular situation. Right? So Sophia is the moreness. And you see what I’m doing here? It’s the ability to pick up and resonate with the moreness. Phronesis is the ability to pick up and resonate with the suchness. Okay. The very small and the very big. It’s the most intimate and the most comprehensive. Okay. Yeah. So then the espousal, the espousal of a particular virtue in fittedness to a particular situation is precisely the phronesis dimension of wisdom. That’s right. Right. The fittingness, the fittingness of the… That’s right. But the picking up on how there’s always so much more behind any aspect of wisdom, right, that there’s so much more to being kind than what just happened here, that’s the Sophia. Because the kindness that I show towards Andrew is not the kindness that I show towards my son. It is not the kindness that I show towards my partner or the kindness I show towards my student. Right. There’s more to kindness, but notice that’s the Sophia, but being kind to Andrew in the right way as distinct from how I’m kind to Spencer, right, that’s the phronesis. Did that work? Did that make sense? Absolutely. Okay. So now I can put these two together. Virtue is the beauty of wisdom. Because beauty is to get the moreness, the sweet spot between the moreness and the suchness. And wisdom, right, is virtue is where you bring the moreness into the suchness. That’s what virtue is. So virtue is the beauty of wisdom. Virtue is wisdom. This is why Plato says you start first by looking at the beauty of physical things and then what the physical things have in common. And then he moves this move, which many people have found mysterious, but he then goes to say, then you consider the beauty of virtue. That’s because that’s the move that gets you in. That’s the form of beauty that is particular to wisdom. And this is the beautification. This is the kind of beauty that we’re trying to make in the dialectic. Okay. So that’s the third proposal, that virtue is the beauty of wisdom. So this leads me to the fourth proposal. And you see how this is so, this is right, that this is also an insolvent process, Andrew. This is simultaneously, right, because virtue is again that process of mediating appropriately between the more and the such. Okay. So dialectic, here’s the proposal, the fourth proposal. Notice how this is not a strictly logically coherent argument. It’s an argument, but it’s a logos argument. I’m gathering things together and then gathering together and gathering together. Right. Dialectic is the beautification of thought and speech in order to conform to virtue. And this is how we practice wisdom. So dialectic is the beautification of thought and speech in order to conform to virtue. And this is how we practice in wisdom. What does this imply? Dialectic is about virtue in two senses. Virtue is always the topic of every dialectic. And it is, every dialogue is about a virtue. It is both the topic and it is the enacted tonus. We are supposed to be talking about courage in a dialogue, but we are also supposed to be enacting courage. And Socrates always exemplifies that. In fact, the enactment of courage takes precedent over, right, the topic, anything that is spoken about courage, the speaking and the enactment, right. The topic and the tonus are wedded together because the ultimate goal is to conform to virtue, to love the beauty of wisdom. So that’s the, those are the four proposals. Okay. I have one question about the word virtue because it seems to be a word that’s been kind of abused and it has a moralistic tone to it. Whereas it’s actually a bigger word than that. It’s a more being virtuous doesn’t mean being goody two shoes or something, you know, it doesn’t mean just being good, right? No, no, no, not at all. More to it than that. So I think maybe we should unpack it, define and we should reinvent virtue as well. Right. What that means. So let’s, let’s pick up on something that everybody’s familiar with. Virtual reality, the virtual world. Why do we use that term? Because the meaning of virtue is actually a power, right? It’s a power in act. It’s a, it’s, it’s a potential. It’s not just near possibility. It’s actually a living potential that’s being enacted, right? It’s being actualized. So the virtue of honesty is to have the potential, the set of skills, sensibility and sense of self that when it comes into a particular situation will be actualized as courage or actualized as honesty. That’s what a virtue means. Which explains why the virtues are associated with the platonic forms because of the batonic forms are these exponent powers of knowing then the expression knowing in virtue. Yes. All of a sudden makes a whole lot of sense. Exactly. And notice how we do that. We, we’re knowing in virtue while we’re doing this in virtue of exactly, exactly. So what I’m, what I’m trying to do, Andrew, I’m trying to do the, I’m trying to do this thing. And I don’t know if I’m succeeding or not. It’s like an open, but you see what I’m trying, instead of just giving you, you know, sentences about your particular question, I’m trying to logos them together. I’m trying to bring them together so they belong together and they unfold and they take on a life of their own and, and, and, and they afford exploration. They afford more discussion. They afford more conversation. I’m not trying to foreclose on anything. Yeah. Well, when you were talking about potential and relating that to virtue, I was thinking about soul again. Yeah. And I was thinking that, um, the soul is kind of an echo of the future, of your future potential of the beauty that you could become. Yes. That’s well said. Notice what you’ve just done. You know, when you said, you know, the of your potential futures, you’re gesturing towards the nor moreness, but you’re talking about what you could become. Like, so the moreness is the mystery of participation. It’s how we unfold into being, but the suchness is the mystery of our individuation, how we become what we particularly are, what we individually are until it’s great insight, right? Is that that’s, that’s the, that’s the fundamental grammar, the fundamental tonus of human existence. We’re always in tension between individuation and participation. And beauty is a way in which we enact, uh, and become virtuous within that tension. Within that tension. So, sorry, actually argues in her book, not that beauty is truth or goodness. She says that beauty, and this is one of her core arguments and inspired what I was saying here, that beauty is basically where we practice being just and we practice looking for the truth. We practice the show. We pro she uses the, what she’s basically saying is beauty is where we practice the kind of seeing and being and talking and thinking that prepares us for, for, you know, moral virtues like honesty, which is perhaps also an intellectual virtue and also intellectual virtues like, you know, you know, wisdom and things like that. It prepares us for both of those. It’s, it’s basically the schoolhouse for both the intellectual and the moral virtues. And that’s what I’m trying to bring back here because I think she’s articulating something beautiful. That was a central idea in Plato. And that’s kind of counterintuitive to how we think of beauty. We kind of think of beauty as something primordial that has nothing to do with, uh, you know, you know, any kind of moral virtues. It’s just, it’s just, uh, it doesn’t have moral virtues. It’s like, it’s a, it’s the, it’s just a flower. It’s, it’s just bare, bare truth. That brings up Han, right? That brings up Han. So notice what, what Han’s saying with the, the aesthetics of the smooth, right? How he said how we’ve reduced beauty to things being smooth, right? Because smooth is comforting. It challenges us in no way. No. So what, but he’s, and what, to use my language, one of his complaints is, cause he uses alterity. He said, we’ve lost the more I’m using my language now, but I think it’s peripherally consonant with it. We’ve lost the moreness of beauty. And the, uh, the pathos also, uh, yes. And so we, the smooth, just smoothness, he talks about Jeff Koons and his like balloon, his balloon dogs, and they’re all, they’re, they’re very cute and they’re, they’re colorful. And there’s obviously, they’re not like Rode, they don’t have that gravity, right? No, they don’t have this like intense gravity that, that, that, that beauty also has, like it does pull you, uh, it doesn’t just send you off into bliss. It also brings you into, um, into the earth as well. I think that’s exactly right. So what I was picking up on and Han is smoothness. I mean, think about like the smoothness of caress. So smoothness, uh, marks out a kind of intimacy, but it’s intimacy without challenge. It’s an intimacy. And this is Han’s point that is deadening, right? It’s deadening because they’re the, the way in which beauty, right. Affines the suchness and the moreness to each other, the educational aspect you do to draw out that’s being left out of beauty. That’s Han’s main complaint. Beauty is a veil. It’s not a, it’s not a, it’s not everything being presented to you. And it’s always behind a veil. That’s right. Because it’s always got moreness to it. Think about the veil again, the veil again, it connotes an intimacy, but it also, right, there’s a beyondness, right? There’s a, there’s a way in which it has the moreness it receives from you and it challenges you. It draws you forth. It puts a demand on you. Every disclosure from it puts a demand on you to go through transformation to keep in conformity with what has been disclosed. And that’s the training for virtue. That’s the training for truth. That’s the training for goodness. Beauty and beauty is what actually trains us. It’s like, it’s the, it’s the common educational ancestor of the pursuit of truth and the pursuit of goodness. Yeah. He also said, Han, that within the smooth, right, we don’t even have a notion of ugliness anymore. That’s right. There’s no gravity to ugliness either. So, and it occurred to me that in order to understand beauty, right, we also have to understand, you know, the ugliness of our world, you know, or the ugliness of when we depart from beauty, like we need that contrast. We need that dialectic. We can’t just, you know, again, this is, we, this is why you probably mentioned horror, you know, in some sense, because there’s, there’s, there’s, beauty is, is, is tearing you to pieces on some level. If it’s taken too far, right. And that’s what Rilke said. Right. And I, but I think what you’re pointing to, Andrew, and I’m going to shut up so Chris can talk, but what I think what you’re pointing to is what I’m trying to argue for. Notice that when you start up bringing in and you, if you, and this is what I think Han is doing. When you want to bring in that contrast and you want to enhance it, you’re talking about a normativity. You’re talking about judgments. There’s something deeply wrong with ugliness. There’s something contrastively, deeply right. And I think the only way we can do that without falling into facile definitions is to realign beauty with virtue again. Ugliness is conducive to vice as virtue is as beautyness is conducive to virtue, to virtue. That’s what I want to say. That’s gives it back. It’s gravitas. That gives it back. It’s gravitas. Yeah. I think in order for that too, to be possible that that particular reinvent you of beauty, it has to be understood. It has to be understood. Transjectively. It can’t be, it has to be a property of the relation with being and not a property that presents as an object of the world. Right. Because you know, much of what we consider to be ugly on its face, um, can be pronounced beautifully within the right frame of perspective, within a frame of perspective that is attentive selectively to certain detail. The ugliness can be buried beautiful. Like you could see beauty and decay, for example. Absolutely. You can see beauty in the absolute squalor. And, um, but, but in that case, beauty, beauty is the affinity of your particular relation to the, your, your like, I mean, I mean, that, that’s why, that’s why beauty emerges. So, so naturally within dialogue, because it’s a, it’s a, it’s an affine property of the relation between the I and the thou. And in the same way that it is in the, in the matrix of the dialogue between persons. So it is between, so it is perceptually right in terms of your relationship with your being in the world itself. It’s a property of that relation that you strike. I think that’s exactly right. I was trying to portend that when I was talking about it as meta optimal grip. And I’m alluding back to the previous discussion, the three I almost had about soul as the faculty of faith, where faith isn’t any closure, right? Faith is actually maintaining right relationship through change. And I think that’s what I’m trying to say. Beauty is, is exactly, it’s, it’s a faithful right relationship. It’s transjective between you. It’s not in the eye of the beholder, nor is it in the object, but it’s, it’s, is your relationship to the world a virtuous one or a vicious one? That’s right. That’s right. It has to do with renewing too. When you brought faith in, I thought it’s, it’s renewing your vows constantly. It’s renewing. Yes, yes, yes. Yes. It’s exactly that. It’s, I mean, we’re exemplifying it here. The reinventio is that renewing because we’re constantly trying to breathe new life into these terms so that we can do exactly what I’m talking about here. Exactly. Great. Great. That’s right. That’s right. There’s no, the logos cannot gain traction, cannot gain any traction in realism without beauty for that very reason. So it’s really interesting. It’s really interesting because when I was doing the workshop with people, because what, so what, what, what, what, what it came to me, Chris, as a practical consequence of, of this, because I’d always wondered and, you know, Cornford and others have made sort of this weird thing about soccer. It’s always wondered why the dialogues always figure on virtues, either moral virtues or intellectual virtues. And then I realized that’s not happenstance. That is not happenstance. The, the logos has to always be about the topic of virtue. And it always has to be the enacted tonus of virtue. That is not happenstance. That’s how you get the metonymy. What you’re talking about is actually, right, metonymically related to what you’re actually enacting. That, that is not a coincidence. And this is a necessity of the very constitution of dialectic. We have to be talking about a virtue as we enact it, as we, and we, and we resonate between. There’s no other way. Right. In order, in order for the meaning and the meta meaning to be properly defined into relation in order to, in order for the, in order for the meaning of the logos to become conversant with the meaning of the logos, the higher order meaning of the logos that gathers the entire dialogue. It, you have to start with it’s, you have to start with its metonymic child in order to then aspire to the parent. If I can put it that way. No, I think that’s right. So what has been happening when people, other people have been doing some of these experiments about trying to bring argumentation and they just bring in a topic like a problem and it doesn’t go anywhere. But when I told people, I meant in the sense of instruction, I said, no, no, this is what you’re going to do. We’re going to break up into groups of four. Right. And then what you’re going to do is you’re going to do four of you are going to choose a virtue. And then one person is going to begin by saying, I propose, let’s say honesty is this. And the other person is going to amplify it. They’re going to say, well, can you say a little bit more? Or I noticed you were making this gesture. They’re going to try and reveal the beauty of how the person is enacting it and use that as a, as a scaffold for getting them to say more and more and more. And then the second person has to come to a place right where, right. The first person sort of said, I’m done. And the second person says, well, this is how this is what I understood you to be saying. And they have to make sure that they understand them, right. They have to, the other, the first person has to be heard. And then they have to, the second person has to say what they appreciate about it in the, not only in the sense of understanding, but what was valuable, what did they see that they didn’t see before? And then, then they have to say what was missing, what was mysterious, what was slightly off. And then what they do is when they, and then they do that and they turn to the next person, they do what was off, what was missing, and then they make their proposal about what honesty is. And you keep cycling that through people. And then what you do is you get the groups and you bring all the groups together. And this group was doing courage, this group was doing honesty, and you get all the groups and you say, okay, now what is virtue itself? And you, and you know what everybody keeps talking about, about how, how they were amazed by how this, the topics just exploded and they felt deeply engaged because they’re enacting and they’re seeing them. And then, and then, and then they’re all willing to do this. What normally people say they don’t like to do. They’re willing to go into this abstract discussion about what, what is virtue itself? It’s an agogay. That’s what you’re describing is a simulation of the anagogic process. Well, it’s a simulation of both the sensibility transcendence and the anagogay, because when you’re doing that appreciation, that’s the sensibility transcendent. I’m not sure if I understand that the term anagogic, I’ve heard before, can you clarify that just a little bit? What you mean by anagogic? Is that like, analogy is like making an analogy? No, no, no. And although I think for all kinds of reasons, they’re deeply, they’re deeply interpenetrating, but no, what I mean by anagogic is the kind of the, the ascent to theosis that’s associated with graduating orders of ontological abstraction. So that would play to talks about that, that the questing eros ventures from beautiful bodies to beautiful customs, beautiful ideas. Got it. Got it. I remember now it’s the reciprocal opening. That’s also a kind of ontological transcendence, right? And so the idea then being that the reciprocal opening that happens interpersonally between diologists symbolizes the process of, of the reciprocal opening that happens anagogically in your relationship with the world itself. That somehow is the logos of those. So anagogy is the trans, trans continual transcendent movements. Yes. Yes. And let’s say, and then there’s the other movement, which is the grounding movement. What would you call that? That’s, that’s the intimacy. That’s the sensibility transcendence. Suchness. This is a term from John Lake. That’s the suchness, right. If you and I really getting really mutually fitted to each other, really mutually fitting each other more and more and more. Right. So, and that’s where the amplification process. It’s like breathing in and breathing out in a sense. Very much so. Precisely. We’re respiring. I mean, that, you know, before it became a vicious term, that’s what conspiring meant. It meant to breathe together. Yeah. Right. Which is, which is also why, you know, which is also why, you know, the, the, the, the diagnosis of despair as Kierkegaard figured it had everything to do with asphyxiation and hyperventilation, right? Not being able to get a purchase on your relation, your proper relation with being the, the particular sickness of the soul that is despair is precisely not being able anymore to respire in this, this new language now, John, respire between your suchness and moreness. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So then the reinventio, the process of then this, this anamnesis of reinventio that we’re undertaking is in some ways a process of, of renewing, renewing our respiration. Bringing breath, you know, into the breathing, breathing life would be the more. Right. And that’s the original metaphor for a souling, right? Yeah. Yeah. Because the soul, soul, soul is, is related to the breath, isn’t it? Right. The Pneuma. Yeah. The Pneuma. Very much. Yeah. So that listed as it blows. When people were in this practice, like, of course it was the first time I did it and, you know, you know, dialectic should be, you know, on top of a whole bunch of other prac, an ecology of practices, and there should be a whole educational program before you get into it. But it never, so, you know, it was the first time, so it was very clunky in a lot of ways. But nevertheless, the way people were clearly resonating the moreness and the suchness, and they were willing, like they were getting, they were starting to get caught up in the beauty of it. And, you know, and it was interesting to see how people, they start, they’re starting to catch in the light of their eyes. Wait, wait, you know, and because it’s making, it’s making virtue come alive to them, but not as a topic, but as a way of being, right? It was very, it was very exciting. And a multi-dimensional way of being rather than just, you know, however, whatever our very reductive versions of all of these concepts are, I guess when you enter into their aliveness, that’s pretty, that’s exciting. That’s like, okay, wow, there’s life here. It’s not just, you know, a world of dead language or something. Exactly. And notice the poeticness, you can feel the poetry of it, right? Exactly. It’s poesis. Notice, like think about when a poet, I mean, I write poetry, right? When you’re writing poetry, it’s exactly that process, like it’s reinvented, because as you’re speaking these words, you discover a thought in them, that, right, that comes back to you from the words. Like that’s what’s happening when you’re doing poesis. And notice that the connection, that’s the connection you were intuiting, Andrew, between the aliveness, the insolvent and the beauty. We’re doing all of those together, but these are just three different aspects of the very same thing. It also happens not only when you’re doing, when you’re writing poetry, but when you’re writing dramatically. It happens, right? Because the whole process of rendering character is precisely that you’re giving such a form to the, to, to like, you’re, you’re embodying the virtue and in the embodiment of the virtue as such, you’re giving it a particular formal, a particular, the particular, the formalization in context of virtue, I think emerges as character. No, that’s great. Yeah. That’s so important because we really need to bring, we need to reinvent art as well, because we need to bring narrative art back in. Absolutely. And it’s, that’s, that’s how we embody a lot of these things. That’s how we go to the next, next level, perhaps. That’s one form of gathering the logos, right? Gathering the logos is precisely the process of dramatic characterization. You play through in an exploratory fashion, you play through the embodiment of virtue. And that’s why deep, deep forms of characterization are justly celebrated because they disclose an unconcealed dimensions of being in virtue that are otherwise unavailable to us. That’s what good, that’s what good storytelling does. That’s why we revere good storytelling is because it, it, it, it, it, it immerses us, it immerses us in an embodied enacted fashion into the moreness of being in virtue. Yeah. This connection between character, which is the faculty of virtue and characterization and drama. That’s brilliant, Chris. I hadn’t thought about that. That’s exactly right. You know that Keith Oatley, he’s a, he’s one of my colleagues at the university of Toronto has all this research showing that, you know, working with drama, working with literature is our primary way of training ourselves to be more virtuous. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Which also means, it doesn’t mean, again, I’m trying to get away from this sentimental idea of virtue because, because in drama is usually about going into the human darkness, right? Going into the horrors, right? It’s often that way. I mean, a tragedy is that in any case, you know, Kurtz goes into the, he sees the horror, the horror and that’s, so there’s, it’s not just beauty as some kind of really terrible sort of like sentimental version of reality. It’s something else. But look, I always want to bring gravity to these concepts when we talk about them because, because they have become, because, you know, it’s become so Disneyland. Yeah. Virtue is the power to lead a good life in all the dimensions of goodness. That’s what virtue is. It doesn’t mean the moralistic, you know, think the following rules, right? I’m thinking of, you know, I want to live the kind of life that Socrates led or the Buddha led or Jesus of Nazareth led. And that can’t be captured or reduced to following this rule or that rule or this rule. Well, it’s an adventure, isn’t it? It’s an adventure to look out, to look beyond, right? And think about Marlow in the heart of darkness and think about the beauty of Conrad’s prose. I know the heart of darkness is contentious because of colonialism, racism. I’m going to put that aside because that’s another thing to talk about. But I mean, think about what Marlow represents. Marlow represents virtue in the face, right, of this because he practices self-restraint and that’s not reducible to any sort of, you know, he’s not a prude. He’s not just adopting, you know, a moralistic set of rules. He is constantly continuing the journey. He keeps good faith in that sense with Kurtz, but he, dedicates himself to remaining, right, true to his humanity. He practices, he keeps talking about self-restraint. He doesn’t get swallowed by the horrors, but he doesn’t avert his gaze either. I remember like, what was it, Kurosawa, when he was a kid, he walked through Tokyo after the earthquake and there were corpses everywhere. And his brother said, his brother said, look, look, you have to look because, you know, the poet doesn’t avert his eyes. I just wanted to say that Marlow, I think Marlow finds the sweet spot that I’m talking about. He’s open to the horror, but he’s also, but he’s, the self-restraint is he maintains that intimacy with himself. He maintains intimacy with his suchness and he maintains those two. And that is what actually affords him going on the journey, the quest. And how does he, like one of the ways formally in which he does all of that is think about the form of the novella itself. He’s relaying the story to a chorus of onlookers bearing witness to the very character that he’s conveying, right? That’s a story within a story. And that’s why that particular device, the in framing of the story with it’s, I mean, we were talking in our last conversation together, we were talking about the function of the heavenly host, the choral function of the, the, the, the, the moreness of the choral function of, of, of, of witnessing transcendently without being enclosed by the, the perspective of the character that’s playing through and that, and that the way that the novella is structured lends that kind of higher order perspective that sees the narrative in virtue of its possibility, of its possible implications, of its possible meaning beyond its meaning, because he relays the story to the people on the boat, right? And they’re, and they’re not saying anything. They’re just being, they’re silent, but they’re, they’re bearing silent witness to the very dynamic that he’s exemplifying. And so is the reader, because the story starts with your personal narrator and then takes you into that. Yeah, that’s right. There’s all the playing with that framing. That’s really good. That’s a great observation, Chris. But well, I mean, it’s to your point and you too, Andrew, it’s like that there’s a reason why, and there’s a, there’s a reason why there’s such sublimity to that and similar narratives. It’s, it’s precise and it’s precisely their inexhaustibility, right? That, that the way in which they enact the, the, the narrative as such enacts patterns that intimate the moreness beyond the narrative as such. And then that moreness beyond the narrative as such is precisely what is enclosed and born out by the witnessing presence that surrounds it, both the reader and perhaps the ancillary characters and onlookers. And that’s why, right? Conrad has Marlow and he explicitly says that, that Marlow is sitting there like a Buddha at the end, right? Oh, that’s, that’s in the dark too, by the way, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I guess then there’s the scene where the Buddha meets Mara or something and is, is him or, or, uh, yeah, exactly. Exactly. You know, he’s, um, so Andrew, this was my attempt to, not like I say, I wanted to way of like, can we bring when somebody is asking us questions, can we reinvent to argumentation? Not as I’m going to like establish things, but what I’m going to do is logos. I’m going to try and gather a whole bunch of things together so they belong together. They sing together. They start to beautify each other and then they afford discourse and discussion and involvement. That’s what i’m trying. That’s why i’m trying to reinventio argumentation here Making of proposals and the consideration of how they fit together and belong together Beyond just logical coherence I was also Go ahead chris Um, I was just gonna say it’s interesting because one of the things that happens is when you bring you bring these You bring these particular definitions in proximity to one another they I’m okay. I’m going to personify them for a minute, but I don’t think it’s inappropriate to give an all our discussion about character they begin to The virtues when they’re brought in within range of one another Allow us to see they allow us to to I Mean the the way in which they become and conversant is that the virtues begin to know in virtue of one another Yes, right so the so so so one virtue begins to know in virtue of its of its neighboring virtue and is then so and is then so articulated it’s It’s a virtue knowing in virtue of another virtue which sounds like a mouthful But essentially that once you bring these things into proximity they begin to know by means of one another And in being so known by means of one another there’s the shared reflection and sub depth begin to appreciate This is an image you find in both the neoplatonic western tradition and the buddhist eastern tradition So in the eastern tradition, it’s indra’s net, right? Yes, you mentioned that in one of your I think I think andrew You mentioned that in one of our previous conversations that that image everything is reflected in everything else Everything is reflected in everything is reflected in soul, which is reflected in virtue, which is reflected They all become eyes unto the world yeah, right And platinus says right that all of the forms are have exactly that relationship to each other They’re all like indras nets. They’re all reflect and each one captures the moreness in its own particular suchness and but it for Right for us it has to unfold in time But for in you know for for platinus that’s that’s happening sort of in eternity And the logos of eternity that sort of holographic Intelligibility we have to try and capture it in the sequential logos of speech as best we can And that’s exactly what so that metaphor is exactly the resonant metaphor the way the virtues speak to each other bespeaks right The ground of intelligibility itself Which is then again echoes with the analogy of the dialogic practice of the two conversation partners So as as we as we do as we do between ourselves as conversation partners So then do the virtues in version of each other exactly exactly I like that turner phrase the virtues in virtue of each other. That’s beautiful. Chris. The way you do that is so impressive Well, i’m just i’m just riffing off of you Riffing is exactly the right thing the jazz of this The jazz of this is you know constitutive of its beautification It’s not just riffing it’s integral to what we’re doing here And that was what’s really and when when we did the workshop and you got to people at the end They were riffing off their own particular virtue that they discussed Courage or honesty, but they were they were jazzing they were they were finding resonance and convergence Right and divergence, but in a harmonious fashion between each other. They were doing the deep learning They were converging and varying and converging and varying it was beautiful Yeah Hmm and and sometimes uh, you know, I like it when some jazz music just falls apart Or psychedelic music or sometimes, you know what I like I listen to these like the grateful dead they just fall apart and the whole band just Disassembled itself completely and and then they kind of find their way back to each other. Oh, yeah Uh, I think that’s an interesting process that the falling apart and coming back back together Like recovering from an aporia Yeah, exactly. That’s what it’s gonna say and instead of going always for the high right? Like pop music is always like an orgasmic trying to be an orgasmic type of experience or a complete orgasmic bars whereas the Jazz is a deeper thing because it it doesn’t always go for the the peak right it it falls into the valleys it That’s beautiful. You know It lingers like that’s another word that han uses. I think yeah Lingering when it comes to beauty it lingers a while and then it just It lets itself go and then it then it becomes intense again and But that’s that’s the aporia is criticality, you know in self-organizing systems They get stuck and what you have to do is you have to put you have to you have to You have to perturb them. You have to disturb them Yeah, right They get to a point of criticality where they’re almost breaking apart falling apart and only then sure them or something structure Pardon me a puncture is the word that came to mind. Yeah. Well, it’s called punctuated equilibrium. Uh-huh Interesting Yeah, when you were when you were describing initially john in your open pracy about the you know, the the the equilibrium between the suchness and and the moreness I think of the um the complexifying dynamic between the assimilation and the medic and the meta accommodation that you talk about within within the cognitive science nomenclature and it sounds like virtue it sounds again maps on more or less identically It does I think virtue is very much about sort of getting that’s what it’s a meta optimal grip on Right meta assimilation and meta accommodation Right totally totally and that for those of you who are watching I mean this is discussed at length in some of the videos within my within awakening from the meaning crisis And in some of the stuff that chris and I have written I think we talk about this in the zombie book, don’t we? Do we I don’t know. I don’t know how I don’t think we get we we I don’t think we get too Too deeply into the the cognitive science Vocabulary, but yeah, it’s in there somehow. Yeah Do you guys know that the work of renee gerard? Because one of my questions for for john was and one of my thoughts about what beauty is it’s beyond mimetic Desire on some level it’s it’s when you when you when you when you experience uniqueness that is beyond imitation of some kind It goes beyond this this sort of and that’s what we’re kind of looking for because we’re always trapped in a mimetic Uh hall of mirrors on on some level we’re always we’re copying each other and we’re we’re stumbling around with with concepts at least I am And uh, and then and we kind of break through and then we we have this fresh moment. That’s that’s that’s beyond Yeah, um Mimetic desire does that does that make any sense? Makes total sense and gerard’s thing. I think is apropos here and his idea of you know of jesus Undermining like jesus being the criticality and think about the word critical in crisis and cross and how they’re all related jesus being the criticality that disturbs that that whole Mimetic self-enclosure. I think that that’s exactly right because Right the the so the the thing to do is remember that there’s always not always silent, but more often silent partner Uh, because gerard is I mean his prototypical instance of uh of what you’re talking about. Mimetic desire is covetousness, right? It’s envy or jealousy, right envy. Yeah, he said envy is the most hidden desire the one we don’t admit to ourselves So we’re we’re always being dragged around Right envy so compare envy to admiration Which is a virtue What is it when you admire somebody and you don’t envy them, right? Is it you? so think about eros as so When I want to be one with someone I can reduce that to consumption. I’m going to be one by by consuming you Or it can be an eros that is turning its face towards agape I’m i’m going to generate i’m going to be generative as as plato says i’m going to generate beauty within beauty, right? So i’m going to try and create a life That you know that is in some relevant sense similar to socrates but not socrates It’s mine. I’m not trying to take from socrates. I’m trying to generate in admiration And so I think this is exactly what we’re talking about here, right if we have a beauty that’s just the smooth That is just the act of assimilation consuming making it one with me in no way disturbing me in no way being a critical Moment for me, but if I have genuine beauty then i’m going to be drawn beyond myself Yeah, but the critical moment also is recognized perhaps recognizing one’s envy at times Rather than just Trying to aspire to to an ideal, you know state of admiration Uh is that that we noticed that we feel that that way at time But that but that’s exactly the point right this is to add to what you’re saying about how we’re trying to reinvent your virtue Socratic virtue is always inseparably bound up with self-knowledge right, and it’s the kind of it’s This is this is one of the great socratic insights There’s aspects of myself that I can’t know by introspection or even reflection I can only know them in interaction with you because they call forth both the potential for virtue and vice In me that I can’t call forth of myself or make available to myself But if I pay attention if I come in good faith To the dialogue I can become aware of my envy and I can open myself up to a different possibility therein Yeah Because at that moment you’re no longer seeing through you’re no longer seeing and knowing by means of your envy when it becomes opaquely knowable to you as such When you can reflect the possibility of transcending it becomes then available right by knowing it That’s a bit like the shadow as well. Isn’t it about you? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah Exactly you get your shadows by how you you have to pay it if you just think you can give your shadow by just doing Active imagination and sitting inside your room you have missed young’s point You’re going to get your shadow when you realize how you’re projecting onto other people Yeah, it’s only when you recognize your projections and hear the other person’s right What what like hear the other person behind what you projected on them when you open up to the otherness beyond your projection? So they can break through the projection then and only then do you realize your projection? Yes, and then the process of doing that could just be called dialectical, of course Of course So so the beauty is is uh, perhaps also a moment of deep sincerity, right? Rather than let’s say it’s a pretension or or yeah totally totally I mean that so, you know socratic humility is important. Um, I think that’s the proper We talked about this last time the proper response to beauty is reverence and reverence has humility within it, right? It’s reverence is is this bi-directional realization there’s right there. You recognize who you are There’s an intimacy with who you are and there’s also a recognition of the moreness beyond you that can nevertheless afford your transformation And and beauty beauty is such too that it it even as it Even if even as it contradistinguishes your supreme inadequacy it also Saves you from it. Exactly. It kills you and it rescues you from the interminable death at the same time It is it is it it it inflicts upon you death without um Without the undying death. Yeah, that makes me think of um, uh ulysses, uh, you know, uh, There’s the homeric version of ulysses and then there’s james joys ulysses and uh the character Is so flawed. He’s he’s he’s he’s so human, right? So we have this Ideal and then we have our you know, both those things and he becomes the hero just through his Um, I don’t know I guess there is authenticity on some level the the uh, Yeah, that’s just what came to mind when you were speaking about this. Yeah. No, I like that. I think that fits very well so so what about the specific proposal of because we Because there’s also a specific proposal I made about under which is part of the reinvent of beauty And also simultaneously the reinvent your uh virtue to see virtue as the beauty of wisdom And this is a different way. I’m trying to propose a different way of thinking about both virtue And beauty in light of or in virtue of wisdom itself. What do you think about that as a proposal because there’s there’s there’s It’s always been mysterious to me in play-doh when he talks about the beauty of virtue And why we should care about it and why it’s superior to sensual beauty But if if it’s a way in which we’re affine to wisdom itself, then I can understand why it should matter to us so much I think it makes it Existentially available it provides an entree into wisdom. Wait, what’s that is ordinarily the the so an entree virtue? The virtue right so the the Because virtue is both Speakable and possessible it’s participable Right, it straddles both levels of signification So you can speak about virtue That’s right, and you can inhabit virtue and your body virtue and so because of that it provides a kind of access It provides a kind of It provides a way to inhabit beauty So when you were talking about the the idea Of that that that beauty when it being in right relation to beauty is such that you can’t You can’t have a consumptively mimetic relationship to it, which I think is is a profound point and yet also Being in right relation to beauty is somehow also mimetic in the sense that Is that mimesis of that which is not imitatable? I don’t know if that’s the word imitatable. Let’s go with it If if if mimesis of that which is not able to be imitated is precisely what induces The aporetic experience. Oh, and there’s something about inhabiting the virtue that is a a An it’s an effort and it’s like it’s an effort to imitate that which is in him inimitable. That’s what I was Inimitable it is it is the imitation of that which is inimitable And that is precisely what induces the aporia But but the attempt to embody the virtue makes available the aporetic experience that is beautiful In its nature, is that why you would wear masks in theater in a sense? Yeah, yeah, I think that yes. Yes, absolutely because you’re trying to imitate something That’s the beauty of doing that that’s beyond you on some level. Absolutely. I mean theater, but also I mean I think of liturgy as well Right in a more overtly religious sense, right? You are trying to imitate that which is inimitable. You’re trying to You’re trying to affect a gesture Toward a meaning that cannot be espoused in gesture and yet the precise the the that kind of Aporetic effort you’re teetering on the precipice of intelligibility at that moment Um but precisely that at that that precarious point that precarious edge that that beauty walks that as john described it that optimal balance of beauty between the horrific And the confirmed I have to admit i’m having a hard time connecting beauty to wisdom those two things don’t Don’t go together for me on some level. Well, well perhaps again, this is my romantic disposition because I always think that It’s it’s when you cast off Uh when you cast off any pretense of of wisdom or non-wisdom, it’s it’s it’s just a full full embrace of some kind but Well wisdom wisdom feels to me Wisdom feels to me a step removed um, of course Does that make any sense? but For us perhaps this is me being argumentative In the sense This is a good point this is a good this is a good point This is a good point I think I think so maybe one place to start is that beauty Beauty becomes a way of affecting profound changes in our advertings attention right beauty is what calls out and directs our attention and And attention can be subject to all kinds of self-deceptive patterns patterns that recur patterns that are enshrined and entrenched into forcible habituated modes of being Or modes of having I suppose And what beauty does is it somehow beauty can debilitate? Those patterns precisely because it can recover our attention and repurpose it and refocus it So I think maybe that’s one way to start is that I think of beauty as like the herald Of wisdom, right? It’s what calls our attention to it. It’s not necessarily identical with it, but it is the very thing that It is it is the very thing that draws out aspiration because it’s capable of of Laying waste to the particular patterns by which we see and know at any given point in time Like the sirens that are calling to like the sirens right which is a great example of how it can be used cyclops That call Ulysses to his doom And somehow he has to uh make it home to his that’s right To his wife who has been surrounded by suitors and all that so it’s like Yeah, so so yeah, there’s always this I get beauty is is is bound up in seduction and pathos, right? It is but it’s also bound up in insight right and like We talked about this last time about the the machinery and the attentional machinery of beauty Is also the same machinery, especially if there’s been criticality in it, right? You have to break out of a frame, right that that being struck by beauty there’s insight and and and So if we if we get the training of attention and the affording of insight These are integral to the cultivation of wisdom. They’re integral to the cultivation of wisdom That’s I mean, that’s why you know, that’s why meditative practices have been associated with the the cultivation of wisdom Yeah, because precisely what you’re doing is training attention and affording insight Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah, it allows you beauty somehow the onset of beauty allows you to recast Your to recast your your Recast the mode the forecast your form of life recast your mode of being in relation I think if we think of it as a fundamental relational dynamic, then it can Re it can refigure the way in which that is framed for you at any given moment. You must change your life Yeah, you must change your life. Okay says right That’s right. Yeah, you must yeah, that’s what beauty that’s what beauty does That’s what beauty does it tells us, you know very directly that you know, uh something some radical shift is is necessary That’s right. Virtue is the ability to appropriate to take responsibility to appropriately respond To how every true disclosure puts a true demand on you Because That’s good between disclosure demand is exactly proportioning the relationship between Morness and suchness which is what I propose to you what beauty is And I think insofar as we’re trying to get the sophia of wisdom and the furnaces of wisdom That’s virtue and that’s a kind of beauty Virtue is the right relation of beauty You get struck by beauty in a sense, yeah, and then the virtue is Is how you navigate that pathos, how do you navigate that I would say so I would say that that that thing that is that can bring out all the you know, the demons in you and and and also bring out Your most heroic Soulful being right it can it can it can do both I think so and this is what play dough. I mean so right Philosophia is the virtue of one like it’s the appropriate virtue to the experience of wonder and reverent Just like reverence woodruff argues is the appropriate virtue for the you know for the experience of awe But is but is philosophia is philosophia one among the virtues john or is it the harmony of the virtues themselves? Well, I think of philosophia in a higher order sense. I think of it as the the orchestration of the virtues Oh, it is and I think it’s it’s but but Philosophia begins in wonder wonder has a special role for philosophy Platonic vision because wonder is exactly the moment of what we’ve been talking about It’s the moment of so if we compare if we if we if sorry if we contrast wonder to curiosity Where curiosity is there’s something missing and I want to have it, you know, which is good But where wonder is i’m willing to call myself in my world into question. There can be no pursuit It’s it’s a wonder has I think in a special role. I think you’re right philosophy is about all of the virtues But to use your term, I think wonder is the entree it is the right it right philosophy First of all is the virtue of appropriately wondering because if we can’t call ourselves and our world into question None of the other virtues are attainable for us Right, can I throw another formulation here just for yep just for fun? Um In the buddhist tradition you have sutriana, which is about renunciation It’s about training and moral virtue and it’s about uh, you know it’s about taming and controlling your your emotions and desires and and Becoming becoming wise And compassionate in the world and then the next level tantriana you step into another kind of world Which which isn’t isn’t it’s no longer It’s no longer a process of training. It’s it’s it’s more like you’re hit directly by the by the energies Yeah And so so those two things, um um So so and of course once you enter Tantriana you also have to to to to have embodied sutriana like you have to become a morally virtuous person before you can You can you can wrestle with those those more direct energies It’s deeply analogous to the neo-platonic ascent right, so so they the Platinus has you have what he calls the civic virtues which is the virtues and you know This is the virtue of of being you know living with others what we normally call the moral virtues but they’re much more like we said here the understanding that Um this that the even the the moral virtues are not Purely individual projects they have to be done in community and in concert with other people and then you have what he calls You know the cathartic or the purging virtues These are the virtues that take you beyond moral virtue because now what you’re trying to do is not You’re not trying to be honest Or be good you’re trying to see that about which the depths of you and the depths of reality afford this There’s this is a trans moral sense of goodness and this is what takes you to Also, you can I was thinking rational trans rational. Yes exactly Exactly, that’s exactly what it is in platinus. That’s exactly what it is You take you take the you take rational or what we could call here argumentation as far as it goes And what it’s done is it’s basically a scaffold that brings you up to a place where you can now see And be opened up to you can so I I sometimes think of it like building a structure Have you ever been in one of the pyramids in the mayan jungles? You climb up the pyramid and the point of the structure is to get to a place Where you you you are struck in a way you can’t be struck when you’re in the forest And you’re open to calling yourself and your world into question Argumentation is the building of the pyramid But when you can then be open to the sky And to the forest below you and you’re willing to call everything now into question And is that is that moving from the teleological propositional sort of understanding of things to a more spontaneous and let’s say Dynamic it’s moving into things Perspectival and participatory or does it yeah It’s like the teleological suspension of the ethical for yeah, and also I think it moves more into beauty It does it does it does beauty becomes more more Beauty and play Yeah, become become more important where in the beginning you’re you’re just slogging away and trying to understand and you’ve got your machete And you’re cutting your way through the jungle and Yep, but the thing you have to remember is is there’s I mean for and this goes back to um Back to the stuff we were saying earlier about how beauty You know how it kills you in resurrection like, you know You you’re never going to become a god in playdough at most you’re always going to be godlike And and and you come out of the cave and see the sun but you return back into the cave So the moments in my practice where I touch the one or the sun or the ground of being They then feed back into when i’m doing the right the propositional most ordinary sort of thing, right? No, yeah, of course. I think of the the zen, you know, the he comes back to the marketplace with yeah exactly, what’s it called the I forget the you know, the zen, you know the The the zen parables where where he you know, he’s he’s chasing the the bull and then he’s looking for the bull Writing the right he’s riding the ox and then and then um, and then there’s nothing there’s emptiness and then he comes back with with gifts Yeah, exactly so for me those moments those moments of Transrational they they shine into they empower they in soul they enliven they beautify the rational moments And then the rational moments have appropriate reverence to what is disclosed in the transrational moments. Okay, that’s nice Although I guess I guess for for someone like kellard that the entire process we’ve just described is rationality per se Well, yeah the aspiration to rationality and the aspiration to transrationality is itself proliptic rationality and more comprehensive sense Yeah So far as we’re aspiring to any even be not even just a virtue But as to edu said to something that is beyond virtue, right? um The good beyond moral goodness Um, I think we’re engaged in that in in some kind of proliptic process. Yes for sure. Yeah We’re generally we’re engaged in aspiration And the other thing I was thinking about is how normal you think of beauty as something very high high up there Yeah, very sublime and we’re very very up here You know, it’s it’s associated with high culture and and and you know all that sort of stuff But it’s also you can find beauty in a rap song. You can find beauty everywhere like The lowest you know in the most uh, you know banal things. It’s it’s not something that that Is necessarily hierarchical or or isn’t that the same for virtue? Hmm, we find virtue in our highest ideals, but if that’s useless if you can’t find it in the minutia of your life Yeah Right Yeah Well, yeah, it’s like the it’s it’s like the in the way that the the Well, not by analogy by identity the way that the neoplatonic hypostasis are dispersed Ontologically dispersed without somehow being Diminished yeah, right. Yeah, the sun shines but it doesn’t the but it’s not diminished by its shining Uh, yeah, even though our physics says that’s not true But I I get I get I get platinus’s metaphor at least right that being is inexhaustible who cares about the physics The one overflows or or or or like the tau Pechen right the the the dao is a well that you can and you can just continually draw forth from it. Yeah. Yes Yes, I should get going soon gentlemen Um, and I see we’re seeming to fall into kind of a wonderful convivial silence anyways Um, yeah. Yeah, there’s a silence descending on the conversation somewhat. I agree and it’s a good one though It’s a really wonderful one. So what are we getting? We’ve reinvented beauty and we’ve reinvented the soul and and So what are we gonna and we’ve reinvented virtue? So what are we gonna reinvent next? Well, like I said, i’ve been trying to reinvent Rationality and today I was trying to bring them together with reinventing argumentation within dialectic. I just want to keep going Because great synthesis john incidentally like that was a fantastic theoretical synthesis that you opened with very very well Well, thank you for that. I mean i’m trying like I said i’m trying to get at what would Dialogical argumentation look like rather than monological argumentation and i’m trying to get more the sense of logos as drawing together You know fording insight that moves you to the next proposal that draws together Like it’s different than just premise premise premise. I’m I’m I’m Well, it’s embodied in feeling isn’t it? It’s it’s it’s it’s brought into into the entire realm of feeling in the body rather than than than just Upstairs Well very much very much it goes back to your metropolis thing We’re trying to link hand and heart and head together, right in in this sense of argumentation And so And trying to in soul and and hearten and and you know make make beautiful um all of these things Because notice how we were willing I mean we came in good faith and we were willing to probe and push and move and challenge But all that did was afford right it just afforded more and more and more and that’s again, I I I like i’m I’m i’m working my way towards this. I i’m not complaining. I’m not claiming anything complete here But i’m trying to get what this would look like for us And incidentally helping me yeah, well it’s uh, it’s um Um I also want to say andrew that it’s very helpful because john and I john and I do this All the time and because there’s a certain shorthand and there’s a certain shared vocabulary One thing that you introduce that we don’t really have as much on our own is you introduce the kind of more the more sort of interrogative challenge That’s actually very helpful which it diminishes it diminishes a little bit because once you become very very Fluent and how conversant you are with another person once there’s such a shared Once there’s there’s so much of a shared vocabulary that things become you you don’t realize how like when i when don’t clairvoyance or something Yeah, when john and I speak just the two of us there’s we’re standing on so many unspoken presumptions and so many sort of shared Axioms that a lot goes unchallenged simply because there’s there’s there’s so much You know, there’s so much underfoot that that sort of goes unacknowledged but one thing that you add to this One of the many things you add to this is that you challenge some of those some of those presumptions Used to challenge some of those sort of those um those unspoken Premises that we’re standing on without realizing that we’re standing on them whether they be having to do with Vocabulary or having to do with the use of certain terms, etc And that’s very very helpful In the proper sense of the term to humiliate the conversation and call it into proper question and you I think you bring that beautifully and very and very um definitely and I think you guys are really teaching me something here about about listening and finding the the right moment to interject and I do feel like i’m stumbling around a lot of the time Um, but but a bit less so I feel like there’s a harmony coming into these conversations that You know each time That that’s a little bit And then I just it kind of strikes me and makes me you know go. Wow, you know, that’s amazing um, you know something is really happening here to me, um, so so so What you were saying about dialogos being this process where? Um, something is being brought out of you that you you um That you couldn’t find on your own. I I think that’s happening to me. So yeah Yes, that feels that feels really exciting. Yeah And and alive that was maybe the most important thing that was just said of this whole conversation what you just said there For me, that’s exemplifying everything that i’m trying to bring to life what you just said That for me is the golden moment what you just said Hmm So, thank you for that. Oh, well, thank you guys so much here here