Abstract
Our philosophical understanding to “rationality,” explicitly and implicitly, is involved with or dominated by the metaphor of “architecture” (considering Kant’s “the architectonic of pure reason” and other philosophers’ stances). It roughly means that every action, every decision, and even everything should be rested on a rational “foundation.” Without rational foundation, they are nothing. Instead of it, in the last chapter, the author moves to the metaphor of music: there are no rational “foundation”; the rational actions, the rational person, and even many other things standing in opposite are rationality itself. Human intellect is generated when it is played. By this, the author wants to turn our philosophical exploration from inquiring into the foundation of rationality to the phenomenological survey of the various presences and performances of it.
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Notes
- 1.
Richard Rorty, in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton University Press, 1981 (1979), says, “A historical epoch dominated by Greek ocular metaphors may, I suggest, yield to one in which the philosophical vocabulary incorporating these metaphors seems as quaint as the animistic vocabulary of pre-classical times” (Rorty 1979, p. 11). Here Rorty correctly points out how the conception and conceptualization are infused by some primitive and sensory thought, e.g., telepathy. George Lakoff reveals several basic modes of central metaphor that shape folk psychology and philosophical conception which possibly cannot be escaped from this account (Lakoff and Johnson 1980).
- 2.
English translation: “By an architectonic I understand the art of systems. Since systematic unity is that which first makes ordinary cognition into science, i.e., makes a system out of a mere aggregate of it, architectonic is the doctrine of that which is scientific in our cognition in general, and therefore necessarily belongs to the doctrine of method.” (Kant, Immanuel, 1974, The Critique Of Pure Reason, translated and edited by Paul Guyer & Allen W. Wood, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 691).
- 3.
English translation: “When it is a matter of determining a particular faculty of the human soul as to its sources, its contents, and its limits, then, from the nature of human cognition, one can begin only with the parts,…But there is a second thing to be attended to, which is more philosophic and architectonic: namely, to grasp correctly the idea of the whole…” (Kant, Immanuel, 1963, The Critique of Practical Reason, translated and edited by Mary Gregor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 8).
- 4.
English translation: “And what meaning should be given to the “system” for which we yearn, which is supposed to gleam as an ideal before us in the lowlands where we are doing our investigative work?…… Or is it to be a philosophical system of doctrine that, after the gigantic preparatory work of generations, really begins from the ground up with a foundation free of doubt and rises up like any skillful construction, wherein stone is set upon stone, each as solid as the other, in accord with directive insights? …” (Husserl, Edmund., 1965, Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy: Philosophy as Rigorous Science, and Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man, translated by Quentin Laue, New York: Harper & Row Publisher, pp. 75–76).
- 5.
Gosepath (2002).
- 6.
English translation: “The principle of reason reads: nihil est sine ratione. One translates this with: nothing is without reason…Whatever happens to be actual has a reason for its actuality. Whatever happens to be possible has a reason for its possibility. Whatever happens to be necessary has a reason for its necessity. Nothing is without reason.…We have an eye out for grounds in all that surrounds, concerns, and meets us. We require a specification of reasons for our statement. We insist upon a foundation for every attitude.” (Heidegger, Martin., 1992, The Principle of Reason, translated by Reginald Lilly, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, p. 117).
- 7.
English translation: Here the “while” in no way means: “since-because,” rather “while” denotes dieweilen [whereas], which means, as long as—the iron is hot—during. “To while” [Weilen] means: “to tarry,” “to remain still,” “to pause and keep to oneself,” namely in rest. (Heidegger, Martin., 1992, The Principle of Reason, translated by Reginald Lilly, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, p. 127).
- 8.
The using of dieweilen here and Heideggerian unique word formation that combines the die and weilen partly reveals Heidegger’s attitude towards rationality or reason (and this is related with our philosophical inquiring). He appeals us to change our understanding of reason from a fundamental but distant and independent entity to process of duration which is maintained in the being itself. Not only one scholar points out that there are some kinds of mystical elements in this transformation. (See Pöggeler 1994; Caputo 2002) J.D. Caputo even comments that “[b]y this [‘dieweilen’], Heidegger meant a process in which one suspends calculative thought” (Caputo 2002, p. 99), which seems to fit our notion of “deliberation” in this book: “deliberation without calculation.” And the verse of Goethe (Die Fiedel stockt……) can also be parallel read with Japanese versifier Angelus Silesius (who influenced the later Heidegger and contributed to encourage him to set the thinking into the presenting) “The rose is without why, it blooms because it blooms”.(Pöggeler 1994, p. 83).
- 9.
Aesthetics, in Gadamer in Conversation (Gadamer 2001, p. 71).
- 10.
Ross (2003).
- 11.
However, I think it is problematic to distinguish “being” and “doing” in this way and identify the asking questions of “being” as inquiring into “essences” of things.
- 12.
Shana Komitee, A Student Guide to Performance Studies, as commented in the Acknowledgments: “for Professor Julie Buckler as a teaching resource for Literature128: Performing Texts”
- 13.
See McDowell (1979, p. 331).
- 14.
Literally, fabric is different from form (J.L. Mackie). Similarly, John McDowell objects to the mysterious conception of “Plato’s forms” and says: “The remoteness of the Form of the Good is a metaphorical version of the thesis that value is not in the world, utterly distinct from the dreary literal version which has obsessed recent moral philosophy.” However, fabric means that it involves and is interwoven with, which people cannot “simply squeeze content out of formal conditions.”
- 15.
Cited from Dammann (2010).
- 16.
That is why Guy Dammann draws together Williams’ interest in opera with his philosophical project. See: Dammann (2010). In fact, Williams’ dislike of unsuitable theorization is even illustrated in his dislike of musicology: musical analysis, musical theory, and musical history (see: Williams 2006). He specially mentions avoiding “architectural terms” in music criticism. “The complaint is not merely that the work is in some formal or purely architectural terms awry, a technical failure; it is rather that the strain which develops between the text and music generates something which is not just imperfect but unacceptable” (Williams 2006, On Opera, p. 48).
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Yuan, C. (2018). Rationality as Architecture and/or Music-Playing. In: Practical Intellect and Substantial Deliberation. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8651-9_6
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