David Michael Levin (Redux)

[Balder]

On the previous IPS forum, I started a thread on the work of David Michael Levin -- primarily based on his book, The Opening of Vision.  [You can find an archived copy of the discussion here.]  Recently, I just picked up another of his books, The Listening Self: Personal Growth, Social Change, and the Closure of Metaphysics, and I have continued to appreciate his articulation of an embodied, postmetaphysical approach to spirituality (as well as psychological and social well being).  In The Opening of Vision, Levin explored the 'spiritual' possibilities inherent in the transformation of the field of vision or seeing; in The Listening Self, he approaches the transformation of the self (and society) in the context of a phenomenological hermeneutic exploration of the evolution of our listening.

 

As in The Opening of Vision, he traces out a developmental sequence which involves an hermeneutic recovery, and 'integration,' of a primordial form of embodied experience.  Here is his summary of the four main stages of this developmental process:

 

"Stage I

 

The first stage is one I am calling our Zugehorigkeit.  Taken from Heidegger, this word will refer to the fact of our inherence in, belonging to, and attunement by the dimensions of the auditory field as a whole.  Since this field, an utterly open, incommensurable matrix of sonorous energies, is how the Being of beings primordially manifests itself for the organs of our hearing, Zugehorigkeit is a pre-ontological understanding (or an ontological pre-understanding) of Being.  Heidegger never recognized in this Zugehorigkeit a pre-ontological understanding of Being.  Although he introduced this term into his texts because he wanted the auditory significance it carries (horig, gehorig) to resonate within the discourse he was setting in motion, he did not in fact use the term as we shall here, namely, to describe the hearing modality distinctive of our earliest infancy, when our hearing is minimally complex and is functioning with relatively little figure-ground articulation and little differentiation of the positional being of the listener from the encompassing being of the whole auditory field (the sonorous topology of Being) as a whole.

 

In this 'first' phase, our hearing may be said to inhere in, and be attuned by, the field of sonorous Being as a whole: the infant lives in a bodily felt inherence in the openness of the sonorous matrix and hears with -- hears through -- the entire body.  The infant's ears are the body as a whole.  Hearing in this rudimentary phase is global, holistic, syncretic, synergic, ek-static; it is an elemental hearing, deeply, symbiotically embedded in the elemental ecology of nature.  Our experiences during this phase are constellated under the influence of familiar feminine archetypes: the 'uroborus,' roundness, wholeness, openness, receptiveness, embodiment, feeling, communion with the matrix of soundings.  During this earliest phase of our lives, our hearing is pre-personal and pre-egological: since no selfconsciously continuous centre of experience has yet coalesced and no strong-boundaried ego-logical identity yet emerged, the auditory situation is not yet structured as subject with object.

 

By grace of this initial state, the gift of a primordial openness to the sonorous dimensionality of Being, the infant may be said to 'enjoy' the gift of a pre-ontological understanding of the Being of beings.  Naturally, the infant is not (much) conscious of this relationship with Being; nevertheless, this experience of being so related, with which, as a hearing being, the infant is always and already graced, is at work in all motivations, movements, and gestures: it is an understanding borne entirely by the auditory body as a whole.

 

In the next chapter, I shall tell this story -- about the embodiment of our pre-ontological understanding and the development of this initial gift -- in more detail.  Heidegger tells us only that there is a pre-ontological understanding of Being always assigned to us, and that we have an inveterate tendency to 'forget' it, to conceal it from ourselves.  He gives no account of our self-development in this regard; nor does he explicitly embody this pre-ontological understanding, although he writes of the fact that Dasein is always embodied.

 

In the process of socialization, we inevitably lose touch with this pre-ontological relationship to, and understanding of, Being; and as we mature, the utterly open dimensionality of our hearing is increasingly repressed -- sometimes getting psychotically split off.  This 'renunciation' of our primordial ecstasy is in fact a necessary condition for the further development of our auditory capacity.  What is unfortunate is not its Aufhebung, its sublimation, in stage II, but our continued abandonment of Being, in the time of our maturity.

 

Stage II

 

In the second phase, extending from later infancy to adolescence or adulthood, our hearing is gradually developed.  In the course of our socialization, the biological potential naturally manifests; by the time the infant is a year old, there is already, in fact, a well-developed auditory competence: the child can discriminate between and recognize many different sounds and sources of sound; can recognize different patterns of sound; can accurately imitate tones of voice.  Stage II culminates in a hearing that is personal, adequately skillful in meeting the normal demands of interpersonal living, and ruled over by the ego, which habitually structures all the auditory situations in which it finds itself in terms of subject and object.  In the modern age, this structuring has become peculiarly willful and oppositional: the auditory Gestalt, manifesting the distinctive character of our present historical situation, accordingly becomes an enframing -- a Gestell, obliterating the ontological dimensionality of the field.

 

Stage III

 

As adults, we are capable of assuming responsibility for our hearing; hearing is a skillfulness we can develop beyond what normal living, normal socialization, minimally requires of us.  In stage III, the individual is committed to further training, a practice of self-discipline.  By virtue of this commitment, this work on oneself, the self-responsible individual grows beyond an ego-logical identification and begins to live the more creative becoming of a Self.  Recognition of the difference between (the being of) the ego and (the being of) the Self is crucial.  Whereas the ego is a defensively adaptive structure identified with an essentially fixed, socially conforming content, the identity which begins to form in the work of stage III, the way of living I am calling the 'Self,' is an ongoing process of self-development, a structure of individuation creatively open to change, a structure organized by, and identified with, processes that carry forward learning and growth.

 

There are many different goals that can motivate such work on oneself.  We shall be considering four specific fields of self-disciplinary practice: in Chapter Four, the ecology of nature, the art of music, and the interactions of psychiatry; and in Chapter Five, the discourse of politics.  In Chapter Four, I will argue that, in the third stage of listening, we are essentially involved in developing our listening as a practice of compassion, increasing our capacity, as listeners, to be aware of, and responsive to, the interrelatedness and commonality of all sonorous beings.  (Although distinct from this compassion practice, the development of hearing as an aesthetic skill both contributes to, and is in turn advanced by, the development of hearing as an organ of compassion.  For the aesthetic is precisely the cultivation of sensibility, a deepening of our capacity for sensuous and affective appreciation.)  In Chapter Five, then, I will argue that the development of a deeper awareness of the reversibility dynamics in all auditory situations -- an awareness necessary for the emergence of a sense of justice, an understanding of reciprocity principles, and participation in rational processes of consensus formation -- is a third-stage development; and, moreover, that it is a developemnt which must take place, if our capacity for hearing is to be fulfilled in the good life of a just and democratic society.

 

Stage IV

 

Borrowing a term from Heidegger, we will be calling this stage 'hearkening' (das Horchen).  Very few people ever attempt to continue the development of their hearing beyond the kinds of skill belonging to stage III.  Even fewer attempt to do the kind of work necessary for the achievement of 'hearkening.'  Hearkening requires the disciplined practice of Gelassenheit, i.e. letting-go and letting-be, as a mode or style of listening.  In learning Gelassenheit, the art of 'just listening', listening without getting entangled in the ego's stories and preoccupations, one learns a different way of channelling, focusing, attending.  There is a restructuring of the figure-ground difference, with an awareness that it manifests the appropriation of the auditory field by the double tonality of the ontological difference.  Hearkening makes, or lets, this ontological difference -- the difference between beings and Being -- be manifest, be audible, within the Gestalt of the auditory situation. 

 

The Gestaltung of stage IV is a distinctively spiritual accomplishment.  The work of this stage begins with the practice of Gelassenheit and gradually performs an ontological recollection, a recollection of the utterly open dimensionality of the auditory field, as which the sonorous Being of beings manifests for our (properly) listening ears.  Though never finished, this recollection realizes and fulfills our potential as human beings in relation to the Question of Being.  With the achievement of this ongoing recollection, not as a cognitive operation separate from our listening, we may enjoy an authentically ontological relationship to, and an existentially meaningful understanding of, the Being of beings: in particular, (1) Being as such and (2) the dimensionality, the radical alterity, of other human beings.  The pre-ontological relationship and understanding that we once inhabited (during our infancy), and that we subsequently lost touch with in the course of our socialization (our ego-logical development), we begin to retrieve in stage IV, getting it back, this time, in a highly conscious, thoughtful, and articulate experience, meaningfully integrated into the auditory situations of our daily lives.

 

Our practice at stage IV is a practice that needs to take place under the influence of the feminine archetypes: there ust be an appreciation of and a recovery of experiencing modalities that, in our culture, have been traditionally constellated through these archetypes.

 

By virtue of our existential work, our channelling is opened up.  In this state, it 'invites' a gathering of all sonorous, audible beings from all sonorous dimensions, bringing them into a Gestalt that we will call, again borrowing from Heidegger, das Geviert -- the Fourfold.  Whereas, at stage II, the auditory Gestalt is enframing, is a Gestell, here the structure becomes a gathering of sonorous Being: a gathering mindful of its utterly open dimensionality, attentive to the primordial difference by grace of which all auditory structures are possible, and respectful of the incommensurability of the Being of sonorous beings, letting the inaudible be inaudible.

 

... The developmental model I am proposing in this study -- and not only the model, but also the design of the table [see below], which cannot accommodate a hermeneutical time-dimension -- will be open to some very destructive misunderstandings unless, anticipating them here, I can successfully ward them off by clarification.  That is what I shall now try to do.

 

First of all, it is essential to understand that the developmental process is not a straightforwardly linear progression, but rather a dialectic of sublimations and sublations: a dialectic for the evolution of which Hegel introduced the term Aufhebung.  In other words, each phase of the process is carried forward: not only transformed, but also preserved, as transformed, by the subsequent stage.  Thus, the first stage, Zugehorigkeit, is never entirely left behind, nor is it ever totally split off, when the infant undergoes the process of socialization.  To be sure, socialization gradually installs an ego-logically boundaried centre in the 'place' where an ecstatically open centre once functioned; but the auditory body always continues to bear within it some 'traces,' or an echo, of this primal experience with the sonorous dimensionality of Being.

 

In this regard, it is crucial to keep in mind that the 'primordial relationship with Being' attributed to infancy is a past that has never really been present -- a past that never was what it now, i.e., from the vantage point of stage IV, presents itself as having been.  Zugehorigkeit is a projection, a reconstruction, an understanding constituted after the fact, redeeming an experience that 'from the very beginning' fell short of itself; fell short, I mean, of being 'the beginning,' a primordial experience of the pure and total presence of Being...

 

...Even though there never was an 'original' experience with Being as absolutely pure and total presence in the first place, the advances of stage II are not achieved without a loss: a loss that we may call, using Heidegger's phrase, a 'loss of Being,' or a loss of contact with ecstasy (ek-stasis) of Being -- 'Being' understood here as the utterly open ek-static dimensionality of the auditory field, the sonorous field.  And yet, this loss of contact (which, as noted, never was an experience of pure presence) is not total, and therefore not irrevocable and irremediable: by grace of our embodiment, echoes of our earliest experience with the Being of sonorous field are preserved and continue to resonate, so that, later in life, after the ego is firmly established, it becomes possible to 'return' to these echoes, not only making contact with our bodily felt sense of that pre-ontological openness -- whatever sense of that 'primordial ecstasy' we may now, by virtue of some directed exertion, be able to feel -- but also 'retrieving' it and freeing it for an ongoing integration into present living.

 

In principle, then, the infant's experience of Zugehorigkeit, a 'primordial' inherence in the openness and wholeness of Being, is always to some degree retrievable.  And when it is retrieved, it is always also more than retrieved, as well as less, since it is only nachtraglich, after the fact and belatedly (as Freud would perhaps have wanted to suggest), that this experience, which the infant lived through without (much) consciousness, gets to be recognized for what it was (is) and accordingly comes to be understood as an ontological relationship.  The 'retrieval' therefore retrieves in two senses:  it brings back what was 'forgotten'; but it also redeems it by 'making' it what it never was.

 

The recollection of Being -- the very same movement by which we grow beyond our ego-logical identifications -- is a hermeneutical movement: we must first 'go back' to Zugehorigkeit, 'back,' as it were, to the 'beginning,' in order to develop beyond the ego-logical stage of ontological forgetfulness in listening.  Or rather, to state this point more accurately, since in truth this 'beginning,' this 'origin,' can never be retrieved now as it actually was then, we must first generate within ourselves a presently felt sense of our 'pre-ontological beginning.'  This movement forward, this growth, requires a hermeneutical movement backward: a movement, however, that must not be confused with an infantile or psychotic regression.  It is essential to understand the difference between this hermeneutical 'return' and a pathological regression.  Regression is a movement in one direction only; it repeats what came earlier instead of redeeming it; and it is always a movement, therefore, that closes the process of personal growth.

 

We are always free, of course, to continue living in the stage II reality of anyone-and-everyone (das Man), virtually deaf to the dimensionality of Being that resounds all around us.  But after we have achieved the maturity of stage II, we can still continue to grow, committing ourselves to a practice of the Self by virtue of which we begin to grow beyond the ontologically alientated condition of being-an-ego to find ourselves more opened up to this dimensionality of Being and enjoying a spiritual wholeness not otherwise possible.  The hearkening of stage IV, a gathering embrace of whatever may be given to our ears for their hearing, is an achievement that brings with it a self-fulfillment altogether different from that which comes at stage III: a self-fulfillment that is not possible at all in stage II."  (Levin, 1989, pp. 45-56)

 

[I will include Levin's table of the stages of listening here later this evening, once I have a chance to copy it out]

 

 

[Balder]

Early in the talk, Levin's discussion of the alchemical change worked in the flesh of the world, when we or other beings attend deeply to the body, another human being, a worm, an orchid or animal, reminded me of Bonnie's collective insight project -- so I want to highlight it here.  The flesh is an alchemical crucible, where deep listening of one being to another works creative change:  a play of transformation and alembication, as he says at the beginning of the talk.  This relates, of course, to Bonnie's concern with insight, with co-emergent truth.

At around 1:08:46, Levin begins a beautiful reflection on Heidegger's conception of aletheia and the interplay of the elements.  Listening to it, I was struck again that I am not entirely satisfied with the term, alethia (or unconcealment).  The notion of "unconcealing" still seems to hew too closely (in my ear) to a mirror-of-nature view, where consciousness is able ultimately to expose or capture the given thing-in-itself.  I believe *some* sense of this is still important to carry forward, but the conception remains a bit too static for me -- and doesn't get at the profoundly relational, participatory sense of truth that Heidegger's meditation on the temple suggests.  The way Heidegger shows the temple, in its being, to gather, evoke, reflect the elements of air (sky, ether), earth, water (raging sea), and fire (sun and moon), suggests to me a participatory or relational understanding of truth as co-invocation, mutual sounding, inter-reflection or -enaction.

There is one context where I would feel more comfortable with a word like unconcealment or disclosure.  In some earlier writings, I played with two related terms:  generative (en)closure [whether of the body, or temple, or tradition, or discipline] and dis-enclosure.  With the latter, I meant to invoke a sense of body and temple alike as generative sources of vision, of knowledge and insight, where in their very (autopoietic) closure they enable unique forms and modes of enactment: they establish lineages.  I was thinking here of von Uexkull's biosemiotic notion of bubbles.  Talking to Bobby Richards about these ideas, he suggested I introduce a third term, disclosure, for a trinitarian play: generative (en)closure, disclosure, dis-enclosure.  In this context, disclosure is inseparable from the formation of generative (en)closures, spaces which allow for the "amplification of light" or vision.  Here, disclosure is how beings self-other, how they disclose themselves uniquely within the autopoietic regimes or resonant chambers or alchemical chambers of other beings.... Here, disclosure is a self-revealing, but it is self-revealing through self-othering.

What do you think?

[Edward theurj Berge]

What this brought up for me is partner dance. Talk about the flesh as crucible for creative transformation via deep listening/feeling with another. And through this partnership in art communicating that to an audience, all without words, just bodies moving to the music, connecting us on a deep felt level from our ancient heritage. That is what the word disclosure meant for me when reading the above. How we disclose our very personal selves through this art, lay bare our deepest feelings, hopes and fears through our movement, and how this disclosure or unveiling resonates to the audience and they feel it too. Philosophy in the flesh indeed.

[Balder]

Beautifully put, theurj.  Yes.  Collectively embodied alchemy.

[Balder]

Saw this quote on FB today...

"Symbols do not represent; rather, they relate to what we want to say in much the way that feeding relates to hunger. Feeding does not represent hunger; nor is there a hidden feeding underneath hunger." (David Michael Levin, "Language Beyond Postmodernism")