Abstract
This essay considers the intertwined histories of writing and performance. Beginning with the earliest invention of writing in Mesopotamia, it focuses on the emergence of master teachers in the centuries before the Common Era, when Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, and Jesus attracted large followings in the midst of literate cultures without writing a single word. Their embrace of live teaching and performance at the expense of writing was channeled back into literature by their students, who produced dialogues, anecdotes and sermons attributed to these masters after their deaths. This dynamic between writing and performance continues to the present day with such figures as Ludwig Wittgenstein and demonstrates the importance of performance for the understanding of foundational figures in philosophy and religion.
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Notes
- 1.
“die Epoche der Welt-Literatur ist an der Zeit und jeder muß jetzt dazu wirken, diese Epoche zu beschleunigen.” Johann Peter Eckermann, Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens. Vols 1–2. (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1837), 325.
- 2.
Based on Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, from Epics of Sumerian Kings: The Matter of Aratta, ed. J.L.J. Vanstiphout and Jerrold Cooper (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Library, 2003), 49–96.
- 3.
Sunjata: A West African Epic of the Mande Peoples, recorded, ed., and trans. by David C. Conrad, narrated by Djanka Tassey Condé (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2004).
- 4.
The Original Analects: Sayings of Confucius and His Successors, a new translation and commentary by E. Bruce Brooks and A. Taeko Brooks (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). Also consulted, Chinese Text Project. Accessed July 17, 2015: http://ctext.org/analects.
- 5.
Account based on a variety of sources. The Buddha’s Path to Deliverance in its Threefold Division (Colombo: Lake House, 1952). Also used: Peter Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History and Practices, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); The Collection of the Middle Length Sayings (Majjhima-Nikaya), Vol. I, The First Fifty Discourses, trans. from the Pali by I.B. Horner (London: Pali Text Society, 1954), 107.
- 6.
Wiebke Denecke, The Dynamics of Masters Literature: Early Chinese Thought from Confucius to Han Feizi. Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series no. 74 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011).
- 7.
One place where aspects of this understanding are articulated is Theatre Histories: An Introduction, edited by Phillip B. Zarrilli, Bruce McConachie, Gary Jay Williams, and Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei (New York: Routledge, 2006).
- 8.
Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologization of the Word (London: Methuen, 1982), 80. Ong draws on Eric A. Havelock, Preface to Plato (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963).
- 9.
Martin Puchner, The Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theater and Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
- 10.
Laertius, Diogenes, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, with an English translation by R.D. Hicks, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972).
- 11.
Karl Jaspers, Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (Munich: Piper, 1983).
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Puchner, M. (2017). Scenes of Instruction. In: Street, A., Alliot, J., Pauker, M. (eds) Inter Views in Performance Philosophy. Performance Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95192-5_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95192-5_3
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