Abstract
This paper suggests ways in which a philosophy modelled as dance provides the means of challenging political structures that emphasise control and constraint at the expense of spontaneity and creativity. Through combining Arendt’s claim that spontaneity is the quintessential human quality with Nietzsche’s modelling of philosophy as disruptive dancing, the possibilities of modelling philosophy as dance are explored. Envisaging philosophical practice in this way provides a corrective to the prioritising of certainty in philosophical method, thus enabling further reflection on what it means to promote human flourishing.
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Notes
See for example Nixon (2012, chapter 1) for reflections on how a target-led approach to higher education has affected understandings of what a university is for.
For example, Arendt makes a distinction between the bureaucracy of totalitarian governments and ‘the mere outgrowth and deformation of civil services which frequently accomplished the decline of the nation-state—as, notably, in France’ (1968: 244). In the case of the latter, she notes that there has never been a suggestion that such officialdom rules the country. ‘The French atmosphere of government has become one of inefficiency and vexations; but it has not created an aura of pseudomysticism’ (1968: 245).
As McLuhan (2005) notes in his comments on the relationship between ‘environment and anti-environment’, any society’s norms and attitudes can be taken for granted that its members find it difficult to consider the possibility that there might be any alternative way of being. We fail to see ‘our environment’ and it takes conscious effort to make that which is unconsciously accepted open to critical reflection. For Foucault, describing the way in which past societies lived makes us more able to challenge those aspects of our society that we take for granted (see [1975] 1991 for one example of his method).
For a particularly fine example, see Kafka’s Der Process (The Trial) (1914).
Arendt identifies this ideal in the methods of administration and the promotion of this kind of administrator in the structures developed by the British to effectively manage their empire (1968: 212).
See Hélène Joffe (1999) for an analysis of the links between this ‘risk society’ and the attempt to control the transient.
This comment is taken from a conversation with Günter Gaus (in Baehr 2000: 4).
There is also the question of the political failure of philosophers to identify injustice as injustice; most notably, her mentor and erstwhile lover Heidegger’s inability to see Nazism as something to be resisted not accepted. As Dana Villa describes it, in Heidegger there is found ‘the “strange alliance” between philosophy and thoughtlessness’ (1996: 192). Abstract thought of the kind in which Heidegger excelled means little if there is no ‘care for the world’ (Villa. D 1996: 192).
As the UK Labour Party expresses it in its statement of intent: ‘we believe that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone’, and for those of us involved in practical politics, it is difficult to conceive of the kind of political system that Arendt supports where the pressure of individual voices is able to achieve more than collective action.
For a philosophy of religion that seeks to offer a similarly engaged account of critical thought through application of continental thought, see Goodchild (2002).
For a variety of interpretations, see Kelly Oliver and Marilyn Pearsall (1998).
For examples of feminists reading Nietzsche, see Oliver and Pearsall (1998), and particularly their introduction, ‘Why Feminists Read Nietzsche.’
As Giles Fraser puts it, under eternal recurrence: ‘“salvation” is about learning to love the view, whatever it is and however ugly’ (2002: 110).
Given that she cites him extensively in The Human Condition, this should not surprise us.
‘The ideal of a spirit that plays naively i.e. not deliberately but from overflowing abundance and power’ (Gay Science §382; 2001: 247)
See Lesley Chamberlain’s (1996) moving and insightful account of Nietzsche’s final year before his collapse.
We might think here of Nel Noddings, Carol Gilligan, Beverly Harrison: feminist philosophers who have all drawn attention to the importance of relationship for philosophising.
For a readable and entertaining account of this quest for ‘duende’, see Webster (2004).
See Bowie (1991: 88–121) for a discussion of the multilayered nature of this concept in Lacan’s work.
In The Birth of Tragedy (1886), Nietzsche draws attention to the fragile relationship between the wildness of Dionysus and the intellectual rationality of Apollo: out of the unity of both come Greek drama and the arts.
For a moving reflection on what this might mean for medical practitioners engaging with those at the end of life, see Frank (2004, especially chapter 6). Frank draws upon Marcus Aurelius to argue that in an age of scientific advances, we need to recognise that ‘physical survival is not the most important value’ (p. 135); that death need not always be versed as ‘failure’.
See Goodchild (2002) for a socially engaged philosophy of religion that addresses the issue of sustainability. We might also consider Arendt’s comments on the nineteenth century imperialistic age of expansion: ‘the human condition and the limitations of the globe were a serious obstacle to a process that was unable to stop and to stabilize’ (1968: 144). For Goodchild, it is time to reflect critically on the idea that there are no limits.
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Clack, B. ‘Beginning Something New’: Control, Spontaneity and the Dancing Philosopher. SOPHIA 53, 261–273 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-014-0418-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-014-0418-0