love and “the reversal”
In Religion and Nothingness,1 Nishitani Keiji quotes the poet Basho:
From the pine tree, learn of the pine tree. And from the bamboo, of the bamboo.
The philosopher then elaborates:
Basho does not simply mean that we should “observe the pine tree carefully.” Still less does he mean for us to “study the pine tree scientifically.” He means for us to enter into the mode of being where the pine tree is the pine tree itself, and the bamboo is the bamboo itself, and from there to look at the pine tree and the bamboo. He calls on us to betake ourselves to the dimension where things become manifest in their suchness, to attune ourselves to the selfness of the pine tree and the selfness of the bamboo. The Japanese world for “learn” (narau) carries the sense of “taking after” something, of making an effort to stand essentially in the same mode of being as the thing one wishes to learn about. It is on the field of sunyata that this becomes possible.
I have thought of love in this way. Ordinarily, we are counterposing phenomena and beings we encounter against our idea(l)s of them. But these phenomena and beings were—in the beginning and in their essence—the source of these concepts to begin with. How else did we learn about the essence of paperclips but from encounters with paperclips?
So we should get the idea(l)s of things from the things themselves rather then abstracting them from the concrete encounters we have with them, then forgetting about this encounter and the subsequent abstraction, and finally wielding our concepts, likely dried up and schematized, as standards by which we judge the very things that were their origin. If we stipulate “hatred” to refer to this intentional stance of tacit judgement, then “love” must be the inversion of this.To contemplate a paperclip itself as an embodiment of its own ideal and essence is to encounter its reality, and that’s love. To behold a person as an embodiment of her own ideal and essence is to encounter her reality, and to love her. This is the esoteric “reversal,” or peripeteia, which Aristotle describes as “the change to the opposite of what happened before” and which Jesus vamps on in the Sermon on the Mount: ordinarily we are trying to change things; here we allow ourselves to be changed by them— ordinarily we are trying to move things; here we allow ourselves to be moved by them.
There is a mover which, not being moved, moves, being eternal and reality and actuality. The desirable and the intelligible move without being moved. The primaries of these are the same ... It moves as loved.2
Keiji, 1961, p.128
Aristotle, Metaphysics Λ.7, 1072a26–27, b3–4
Thank you for introducing me to *peripeteia*. I am reminded of the agreement of Heraclitus and Parmenides - two philosophers generally considered diametrically opposed to each other;
" 'Listening not to me but to the logos it is wise to agree that all is one,' Heraclitus says; and he complains that all men do not know this nor agree: 'They do not understand how in differing from itself it agrees with itself: a backward-turning stringing like that of the bow and the lyre.' " (Catherine Osborne 'Presocratic Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction', OUP).
Also, from Parmenides;
"... it is easy to understand how the path that he follows turns backwards on itself (Parmenides, fr. 6). As previously mentioned, it is the awareness of humans that is divided, not the cosmos. The healing aimed at by Parmenides, and the intended effect of Heraclitus’ fragments, is to communicate an experience of unity in which it not only heals the listener of divided awareness, but initiates contact with divine reality." (Amie Murray, Aug 16, 2021, 'Reconciling Heraclitus and Parmenides': https://medium.com/@murrayamie/reconciling-heraclitus-and-parmenides-f7b1bad304d )
Beautiful! Sergey Averintsev said, "Interpretation is a form of narcissism. When we interpret the other, we reduce them to our method of interpretation. Understanding is the fruit of love because love grasps without interpretation.