Will DADDARIO
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Drafting Table
​(writings, classes, and thoughts in process)

4/28/2020 1 Comment

With grief, acceptance (ἡσυχία)

A couple years ago, I wrote a follow-up to my essay on grief that meditated on the perplexing subject of “acceptance.” During a multi-day silent retreat in the mountains of Boone, North Carolina, I had an eye-opening realization about “acceptance,” which, up to that point, had appeared to me like a cruel and unrealizable fantasm, a point on a horizon I would always be able to see (through a perpetual squint) but never reach. The realization brought me closer to acceptance by, surprisingly, revealing the extent to which it was already upon me. In other words, I had at the retreat a leap in place facilitated by many hours of silent meditation and reflection.

Recently, I decided to go back to this essay on acceptance and get it ready for publication. As a warm up for myself, I revisited the term “acceptance” in Ancient Greek to see what it could teach me. What follows is the lesson.

Part 1: An Act of Translation
The “acceptance” I’m grappling with is more than the simple reception of some idea or thing or state of mind. The “acceptance” in front of my eyes is the mythical at-peace-ness that is, ostensibly, the aim of the grieving process. To accept one’s grief is to be ok with it all, to understand one’s losses not as lacks or pure absences but, rather, as additions to the manifold self. The roadblocks to this realization are many, not least of which is the anger and sadness that produces wave after wave in the wake of loved ones’ deaths. More than that, the roadblocks are all somehow supposed to be metabolized by this mythical acceptance in an almost-magical transubstantiation of hardship into insight. Is there a word for this, a word that names something real and tangible?

It turns out that this kind of “acceptance” does not have a direct equivalent in Ancient Greek. The verb λαμβάνω, meaning to take hold of or seize, for example, is too literal. Even its connotation of “understanding” is not quite right because of its mostly cognitive meaning, as in “I understand what Plato means when he says _____.”

The most poetic word is λῆψις. Spoken or written in this way, to accept is to take one’s medicine. Acceptance is the cure for what ails us. The word also has a musical connotation: it is the setting of the key. In what register am I being asked to sing? Can I reach this pitch without straining, or do I need to train my voice? What kind of vocal regimen will allow me to reach the extraordinarily high pitch of Acceptance without hurting my voice over time? How can I sustain the pitch of Acceptance? Each of these questions opens into an ongoing musical practice that has as its end not an aesthetic beauty but a sustained cosmological consonance. Finally, this word also connotes the choice of poetic matter. In the context of my thoughts here, I might ask, what is the best way to tell the story of Acceptance? What story will adequately portray the humongous magnanimity of Acceptance’s act of giving?

There is one more word that approaches the wide semantic range of “acceptance” I am exploring: δεχεσθαι or δέχομαι. Dio Chrysostom, in his 30th Discourse, relays the dying words of Charidemus, which shows why the word appeals to me:

What has happened to me has happened in accordance with God’s will; and we should not consider anything that he brings to pass as harsh, nor bear it with repining: so wise men advise us, and Homer not least when he says that the gifts of the gods to man should not be spurned by man—rightly calling the acts of the gods ‘gifts,’ as being all good and done for a good purpose. As for me, this is my feeling, and I accept the decree of fate calmly, saying this, not at any ordinary time, but when that fate itself is present, and I see my end so near at hand.

(Τὰ μὲν καθ᾿ ἡμᾶς οὕτω γέγονεν ὡς ἔδοξε τῷ θεῷ, χρὴ δὲ μηδὲν τῶν ὑπ᾿ ἐκείνου γιγνομένων χαλεπὸν ἡγεῖσθαι μηδὲ δυσχερῶς φέρειν, ὡς παραινοῦσιν ἄλλοι τε σοφοὶ καὶ οὐχ ἥκιστα Ὅμηρος, λέγων μηδαμῇ ἀπόβλητα εἶναι ἀνθρώποις τὰ θεῶν δῶρα, καλῶς ὀνομάζων δῶρα τὰ ἔργα τῶν θεῶν, ὡς ἅπαντα ἀγαθὰ ὄντα καὶ ἐπ᾿ ἀγαθῷ 9γιγνόμενα. ἐγὼ μὲν οὖν οὕτω φρονῶ καὶ δέχομαι πρᾴως τὴν πεπρωμένην, οὐκ ἐν ἑτέρῳ καιρῷ ταῦτα λέγων, ἀλλὰ παρούσης τε αὐτῆς καὶ τὴν τελευτὴν ὁρῶν οὕτως ἐγγύθεν.)

This particular kind of acceptance is, first, a mode of mental reception, but it is, moreover, a full “taking upon oneself” of one’s own fate. The “gift” of the gods is the perfect primer for the acceptance yoked to grief because it is a gift you cannot, are simply unable to, refuse. Even if you don’t want it, the gift only exists as something already given, and no mental or physical acrobatics can make it ungiven. In fact, we humans accept this gift in the same gesture as it is given, or else we suffer through a tragic farce of attempting to shake off something already part of ourselves. This is especially the case with our own death, which is given unto us as soon as we are conceived.

Ultimately, however, even δέχομαι stops short of the acceptance I seek. I decided instead to follow a path marked in the dictionary by the word “acquiesce.” My act of translation senses harmony in the “quiet” of this verb. But “acquiesce,” with its French sensibility of “to yield or agree to; to be at rest,” leads back ultimately to Latin and, therefore, doesn’t have a Greek cognate. As such, the path forces me to leap toward something less common, a word near to “accept” but more capacious and mysterious.    

Part 2: To be at peace
My act of translation leads me, eventually, to the enigmatic word ἡσυχία. The word’s mysterious quality comes from the shadow cast upon it by Christianity. That is, looking back from the present toward the classical emergence of this word requires us to pass through its employment in Biblical verse, and specifically its usage in Orthodox Eastern Christianity where it refers to an inner quiet that leads to a oneness with God.

Thinking historiographically, it seems likely that Christians first encountered ἡσυχία through pluralistic scholars like the Hellenstic Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria. In Philo’s On Flight and Finding, for example, we see the following:

To these inquiries the other gives the only right answer, “God will see for Himself” [...] For it is by His taking thought for them that the mind apprehends, and sight sees, and every sense perceives. As for the words [i.e., idiomatic expression] “A ram is found held fast,” this is reason keeping quiet and in suspense. For the best offering is quietness and suspense of judgement, in matters that absolutely lack proofs. The only word we may say is this, “God will see.”

(ταῦτα πυνθανομένῳ δεόντως ἀποκρίνεται· “ὁ θεὸς ὄψεται ἑαυτῷ”· θεοῦ γὰρ ἔργον ἴδιον τὸ τρίτον. ἐπιφροσύνῃ γὰρ αὐτοῦ ὁ μὲν νοῦς καταλαμβάνει, ἡ δ᾿ ὅρασις ὁρᾷ καὶ πᾶσα αἴσθησις αἰσθάνεται.“κριὸς δ᾿ εὑρίσκεται κατεχόμενος,” τουτέστι λόγος ἡσυχάζων καὶ ἐπέχων. ἄριστον γὰρ ἱερεῖον ἡσυχία καὶ ἐποχὴ περὶ ὧν πάντως οὔκ εἰσι πίστεις. ῥητὸν γὰρ μόνον τοῦτο “ὁ θεὸς ὄψεται [...]”)

If we seek to understand how so many Ancient Greek philosophical ideas wound up in early Christian thinking, we could investigate points of contact between figures like Philo and, say, Paul the Apostle. 

The historiographical challenge requires seeing through Philo back into spaces where ἡσυχία acted in its Ancient Greek clothing, so to speak. To do that, we have to keep digging into texts by the likes of Plato and Pindar whose thinking predates the Christian episteme. For example, in Book IX of Plato's Republic we find Socrates asking questions about pain and pleasure. He wonders whether, for people in pain, the relief (ἡσυχία) of pain is more desirable than the feeling of wellness. In usual fashion, Socrates’ interlocutor is quick to agree with the great philosopher when he says,

“And you notice, I think, when people get into many other similar situations in which, when they’re in pain, they praise not the feeling of joy but not being in pain and the relief from that sort of thing as the most pleasant sensation.”
“Yes, this is perhaps what then becomes pleasant and desirable: the relief.”


For my inquiry, this notion of relief is central to acceptance since, after all, the accepting of one’s grief ought to bring not the erasure of the conditions that brought the pain to be but relief of that pain’s sting. “Relief” is absent from the translations of acceptance I mentioned above.

Another resonant morsel sings out through Pindar who, in his 8th Pythian Ode, reminds us that the noun ἡσυχία is derived from Ἡσυχία (same pronunciation), the daughter of Dike, goddess of Justice. Her name is synonymous with Peace, specifically peace within the polis (city). Justice presides over the political practice and philosophy of a place and Peace presides over the place itself as a kind of adjunct to Justice. When Justice is present, so too will be Peace.

My train of thought leads from acceptance to ἡσυχία and moves through a series of stations. First, acceptance is most certainly a state of mind, a kind of mental reception that allows one to understand the events that have befallen them. But this cognitive understanding is only the first blush of acceptance. (Think, for instance, of times when you say that you know something to be true but you don’t yet feel it. Here, the mind grasps some truth but the body has not yet fully metabolized it.) Mental acceptance must be accompanied with a full-bodied acceptance of the gift of one’s fate. It seems to be the case, however, at least in my experience, that acceptance of this gift is a perpetually repeating action. Each moment asks of acceptance insofar as each moment of life is a gift given. The consequence of this is something like an acceptance seizure that shudders through the body and can only be calmed by a kind of inner peace. Attainment of this peace begins with an inner quieting (acquiescence), and the quiet allows the self to sense the great expanse of the self (something usually muted or occluded by the ego and/or traumatic memories). Here we reach the stations of Pindar and Plato since inner quiet is truly a relief and Peace, and this Peace is offspring of Justice insofar as the sense of self that results from ἡσυχία is tantamount to finding balance.

Here we find another way of thinking about the “stage” of acceptance. The so-called stages of grief are not thresholds through which we pass but are, rather, environments in which we fully immerse ourselves. The environment of acceptance is everywhere a space of peace and calm. Plato’s Timaeus contains a discussion of the “inner fire” going away when sleep befalls us. A quiet ensues within the mind and body right before deep sleep. Thus, in the moment of falling asleep we sense the environment of Peace that marks the domain of acceptance. In his “Twentieth Discourse: Retirement,” Dio Chysostom speaks of the silence and quiet needed by the sick to fully recover from illness, and this peaceful environment is also the space of acceptance where those who ail become receptive to their state. All of this is to say, the acceptance yoked to grief is an environment, but—and here’s the mind-blowing thing—we’re always already in this environment. Delusion and temporary blindness distract us from the fact that we are always already dwelling within this Peace. If we seek acceptance, then we already walk in the wrong direction since no seeking is required. To seek is to assume not to dwell.

No seeking. Only being. A being-with oneself and one’s grief. This revelation stops any attempt at moving through grief’s stages and convinces us to fall quiet.
This blog entry is a portion of a multi-part sequence of posts dedicated to the Ancient Greek language. You can read the rest by following these links:
  • "How to Attend: From Nursing to Teaching"
  • “Forget your story. Think about your plot.”
  • “Repeat yet again”
  • “Nomos”
1 Comment

4/20/2020 0 Comments

What of No?

In anticipation of the 2021 Performance Philosophy conference, I've been thinking about "problems" in the sense that Deleuze discussed them. I particularly like Bourassa's parsing of the term in the book Deleuze and American Literature:

"Problems, far more than solutions, open our eyes. It is said that every solution is worthy of its problems and that every problem gets the answer that it merits. So we can talk about good and bad problems, problems that are more or less worthy. And this is truly the challenge of thinking. Not to get the 'correct' answers, but to formulate the worthy problems, problems that carry their answers with them in the clarity and rightness of their form. [...] The difference between a bad problem and a good one is that the bad problem demands a solution that will quickly be recognized and validated. When we read the essay that portentously comes to the same conclusion as the last dozen essays of its kind, we are in the presence of a worn-out problems. A good problem is one that changes our vision, makes new things visible, breaks up the previous divisions, and installs new ones (which may themselves be replaced). The good problem is often the articulation of a mystery that has not been voiced, and in the setting out of the mystery, much comes to us, not as answers, but as singular points of the question we have posed" (2009, 195; this appears in the conclusion where the problem being put forth is that of the Nonhuman)."

In this sense, a Performance Philosophy problem would be one of the mysteries that have evolved within the seams of the organization since its emergence in 2013.

I'm interested in the problem of "No," and I'd like to explore it along the following lines:
  • Given that arts and humanities fields have gradually turned away from "Criticism" as a means of knowledge production in favor of a "productive" approach (in which Deleuze is often cited as a main point of inspiration), what has happened to "No"? 
  • By "No," I mean the articulation of refusal. There are times when an approach or an ideology is wrong. Full stop. I believe, for example, that the protests of Trump supporters who wish to "Liberate" states from the Covid-19 quarantine are wrong. I want to say no to them. They may be productive expressions of specific modes of thinking, but they are also to be challenged.
  • Is there a way that Performance Philosophers could challenge them, a way that employs the artistic-academic methods we have come to know from the field?
  • Historical precedents for this type of "no" include: Dada's refusal of rational language through their poetry and performance practice; the creation of new calendar systems in the wake of political revolutions, which essentially negated the entire temporal scheme on which previous regimes were founded; hacktivist virtual sit-ins and the "classical" embodied sit-ins of the Civil Rights movements in various countries.
  • I'd like to elaborate on each of these historical events so as to more fully understand what a Performance Philosophy "No" might look like.
  • Ultimately, I'm interested in forwarding a specific "No": No to the current educational system (specifically Universities).
  • I'll probably have to deal with Deleuze and Guattari's unique deployment of "No" towards the end of What is Philosophy?
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4/11/2020 0 Comments

Notes on acceptance (ἡσυχία)

The Ancient Greek word for the type of acceptance I've been thinking about is most closely related to "acquiescence." [I'll have to explain why I think that word is best.] But that word is from Latin, not Greek, so I started looking at the Greek words for "quiet" and "to become quiet."

I find: ἡσυχία, rest of quiet personified; to be at peace or rest

In the Loeb Classics, it shows up in a number of places, but most interestingly in Pindar's 8th Pythian Ode where it is offered as a proper name: Ἡσυχία. The translator flags it for footnoting: "Hesychia, peace within the polis, is the daughter of Justice."
  • Orthodox Eastern Christianity took over this term and changed it to me inner quiet, which leads to oneness with God
    • There could be some classical antecedent in Philo’s On Flight and Finding: “To these inquiries the other gives the only right answer, “God will see for Himself”; for the third term is God’s special work. For it is by His taking thought for them that the mind apprehends, and sight sees, and every sense perceives.As for the words “A ram is found held fast,” this is reason keeping quiet and in suspense. For the best offering is quietness and suspense of judgement, in matters that absolutely lack proofs. The only word we may say is this, “God will see.” (ταῦτα πυνθανομένῳ δεόντως ἀποκρίνεται· “ὁ θεὸς ὄψεται ἑαυτῷ”· θεοῦ γὰρ ἔργον ἴδιον τὸ τρίτον. ἐπιφροσύνῃ γὰρ αὐτοῦ ὁ μὲν νοῦς καταλαμβάνει, ἡ δ᾿ ὅρασις ὁρᾷ καὶ πᾶσα αἴσθησις αἰσθάνεται.“κριὸς δ᾿ εὑρίσκεται κατεχόμενος,” τουτέστι λόγος ἡσυχάζων 136καὶ ἐπέχων. ἄριστον γὰρ ἱερεῖον ἡσυχία καὶ | [566]ἐποχὴ περὶ ὧν πάντως οὔκ εἰσι πίστεις. ῥητὸν γὰρ μόνον τοῦτο “ὁ θεὸς ὄψεται,”)
And also of interest, Book IX of Plato's Republic where Socrates is asking questions about pain and pleasure. He wonders whether, for people in pain, the relief of pain is more desirable than the feeling of wellness:
“And you notice, I think, when people get into many other similar situations in which, when they’re in pain, they praise not the feeling of joy but not being in pain and the relief from that sort of thing as the most pleasant sensation.”
“Yes, this is perhaps what then becomes pleasant and desirable: the relief,” he said.

Robert A. Bauslaugh links the term to "neutrality," as in political inaction due to policy.

Other sources:
  • Plutarch, Moralia. Virtue and Vice: “Where, then, is the pleasure in vice, if in no part of it is to be found freedom from care and grief, or contentment or tranquillity or calm?” (Ποῦ τοίνυν τὸ ἡδὺ τῆς κακίας ἐστίν, εἰ μηδαμοῦ τὸ ἀμέριμνον καὶ τὸ ἄλυπον μηδ᾿ αὐτάρκεια μηδ᾿ ἀταραξία μηδ᾿ ἡσυχία)
    • On the phrase, “Live Unknown”: “It is the same with a man’s character, which in the inaction of obscurity collects something like a clogging coat of mould. A repose of which nothing is heard and a life stationary and laid away in leisure withers not only the body but the mind; just as pools concealed by overshadowing branches and lying still with no outflow putrefy, so too, it would appear, with quiet lives: as nothing flows from them of any good they have in them and no one drinks of the stream, their inborn powers lose their prime of vigour and fall into decay.” (οὐ μόνον στέγος, ὥς φησι Σοφοκλῆς, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἦθος ἀνδρός, οἷον εὐρῶτα καὶ γῆρας ἐν ἀπραξίᾳ δι᾿ ἀγνοίας ἐφελκόμενον. ἡσυχία δὲ κωφὴ καὶ βίος ἑδραῖος ἐπὶ σχολῆς ἀποκείμενος οὐ σώματα μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ ψυχὰς μαραίνει· καὶ καθάπερ τὰ λανθάνοντα τῶν ὑδάτων τῷ περισκιάζεσθαι καὶ καθῆσθαι μὴ ἀπορρέοντα σήπεται, οὕτω τῶν ἀκινήτων βίων, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἄν τι χρήσιμον ἔχωσιν μὴ ἀπορρεόντων μηδὲ πινομένων φθείρονται καὶ ἀπογηράσκουσιν αἱ σύμφυτοι δυνάμεις.)
      • Even though he is deliberating on the notion of “repose,” he seems to be discussing a certain kind of application of repose and shouldn’t therefore be read as dismissing the kind of “acceptance” I am talking about
    • In his “The Oracles at Delphi are no longer given in Verse”
      • “When the Athenians sought advice about their campaign in Sicily, he directed them to get the priestess of Athena at Erythrae; the name which the woman bore was ‘Quiet.’” (Ἀθηναίοις δὲ περὶ τῆς ἐν Σικελίᾳ μαντευομένοις στρατιᾶς προσέταξε τὴν ἐξ Ἐρυθρῶν10 ἱέρειαν ἀνάγειν11 τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς· ἐκαλεῖτο δ᾿ Ἡσυχία τὸ γύναιον.)
        • Footnote affixed to “Quiet” reads, “Cf. Life of Nicias, chap. xiii. (532 a), where it is explained that the god advised them τὴν ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν, “to keep Quiet.”
  • Dio Chrysostom, “Twentieth Discourse: Retirement”: “However, you will object, there is none of these occupations that concentrates the mind, steadies it, and causes it to look with disdain upon all other things; and education, apparently, and philosophy, which best accomplish this, do require great seclusion and retirement; and, just as the sick, unless there is silence and quiet all about them, are unable to get any sleep, so, you see, it is with seekers after learning—unless everybody about them is quiet, and unless there is nothing distracting to be seen or heard, their mind will find it impossible to give attention to its own affairs and to concentrate on these.” (Καίτοι τούτων οὐδέν ἐστι τῶν ἔργων ὃ συνάγει τὴν ψυχὴν καὶ καθίστησι καὶ καταφρονεῖν ποιεῖ τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων. παιδεία δέ, ὡς ἔοικε, καὶ φιλοσοφία, αἳ μάλιστα τοῦτο διαπράττονται, πολλῆς ἐρημίας τε καὶ ἀναχωρήσεως τυγχάνουσι δεόμεναι· καὶ ὥσπερ τοῖς νοσοῦσιν, εἰ μὴ πανταχόθεν ἐστὶ σιωπή τε καὶ ἡσυχία, οὐ δυνατὸν ὕπνου μεταλαβεῖν, οὕτως ἄρα καὶ τοῖς φιλολόγοις· εἰ μὴ πάντες ὑποσιγήσουσιν αὐτοῖς καὶ μήτε ὅραμα μηδὲν ἄλλο ἔσται μήτε ἀκούσματος ἀκούειν μηδενός, οὐκ ἄρα οἵα τε ἔσται ἡ ψυχὴ τοῖς αὑτῆς2 προσέχειν καὶ περὶ ταῦτα γίγνεσθαι.)
    • The environmental dimension of this phrase is becoming clear. The place to where one removes oneself can possess ἡσυχία. If ἡσυχία is a precondition for the type of acceptance I am discussing, might I be able to say that acceptance is tantamount to its precondition, to its environment? Not in the case of an external environment but in terms of a type of comportment?
    • Similar “environmental” quiet found in Euripides’ Alcestis: “What means this stillness before the palace? Why is the house of Admetus wrapped in silence?” (τί ποθ᾿ ἡσυχία πρόσθεν μελάθρων; τί σεσίγηται δόμος Ἀδμήτου)
  • Galen, “The Art of Medicine”: “When the body needs relaxation, rest is healthy but exercise is morbid.” (ὑγιεινὸν μὲν ἡ ἡσυχία, νοσερὸν δὲ τὸ γυμνάσιον)
Plato’s Timaeus contains a discussion of the “inner fire” going away when sleep befalls us. A quiet ensues within the mind and body right before deep sleep.
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4/11/2020 0 Comments

How to attend: from nursing to teaching

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    Will Daddario is a historiographer, philosopher, and teacher. He currently lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

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