Saturday, October 25, 2008
field research (the appearance of heidegger's philosophy in young adult literature, and other contexts)
"I don't like that knife," Iorek said. [...] "...With it you can do strange things. What you don't know is what the knife does on its own. Your intentions may be good. The knife has intentions too."
"How can that be?" said Will.
"The intentions of a tool are what it does. A hammer intends to strike, a vice intends to hold fast, a lever intends to lift. They are what it is made for. But sometimes a tool may have other uses that you don't know. Sometimes in doing what you intend, you also do what the knife intends, without knowing. Can you see the sharpest edge of that knife?"
"No," said Will, for it was true: the edge diminished to a thinness so fine that the eye could not reach it.
"Then how can you know everything it does?"
"How can that be?" said Will.
"The intentions of a tool are what it does. A hammer intends to strike, a vice intends to hold fast, a lever intends to lift. They are what it is made for. But sometimes a tool may have other uses that you don't know. Sometimes in doing what you intend, you also do what the knife intends, without knowing. Can you see the sharpest edge of that knife?"
"No," said Will, for it was true: the edge diminished to a thinness so fine that the eye could not reach it.
"Then how can you know everything it does?"
from The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman
Scholastic Children's Books, 2000
I was thinking about this scene in 'The Amber Spyglass' this morning as I brushed my teeth, it seems to echo what I understand Heidegger is saying in The Origin of the Work of Art—(that bit about the 'intention' of a tool)—that objects in the world are in some sense hidden (or not entirely revealed) until we are able to allow them to reveal themselves to us, and they reveal themselves when we relinquish our common sense and allow ourselves to approach a thing unencumbered by habits of ideology and use.
I was thinking about this following breakfast, when I had been listening to a podcast of a talk at Tate Modern called "On art and liberty" wherein John Russell describes how the 'clapped out ideas of radical democracy' are put to use by Clare Bishop to critique Nicholas Bourriaud's writings on Relational Aesthetics, an exercise which is 'even more tedious than Bourriaud's original idea'...'rehashing art world dichotomies of inside and outside'.
So, I had been thinking about the abuse of philosophy - primarily in the way that it can often be put to the use of entrenching ideologically strong positions, fortifying ways of being that are already narrow and inflexible, common sense as opposed to critical or independent thinking.
I was thinking about this scene in 'The Amber Spyglass' this morning as I brushed my teeth, it seems to echo what I understand Heidegger is saying in The Origin of the Work of Art—(that bit about the 'intention' of a tool)—that objects in the world are in some sense hidden (or not entirely revealed) until we are able to allow them to reveal themselves to us, and they reveal themselves when we relinquish our common sense and allow ourselves to approach a thing unencumbered by habits of ideology and use.
I was thinking about this following breakfast, when I had been listening to a podcast of a talk at Tate Modern called "On art and liberty" wherein John Russell describes how the 'clapped out ideas of radical democracy' are put to use by Clare Bishop to critique Nicholas Bourriaud's writings on Relational Aesthetics, an exercise which is 'even more tedious than Bourriaud's original idea'...'rehashing art world dichotomies of inside and outside'.
So, I had been thinking about the abuse of philosophy - primarily in the way that it can often be put to the use of entrenching ideologically strong positions, fortifying ways of being that are already narrow and inflexible, common sense as opposed to critical or independent thinking.
Labels: field research
# posted by amcqu : 2:45 pm
