appropriative engaging • gary e. davis • berkeley


	Area	Spring Points

	validity of appropriative engaging gary e. davis	June 2020

“Every life is made of actions serving background engagements,” I noted, 2017, “scripting one’s life in terms of actions,...actualizing projects in terms of what one does” (though one’s not normally possessed, as I am, with creative license).

Scenic experience (i.e., situationality) may be prevalently relevant to the S/s-oriented life or prevalently relevant for s/p-oriented worldliness; or conversely.

There’s creative potential in S/s-oriented experience (being the resonant differ-ence between window and mirror) that’s complemented by project-ive potential
of s/p-oriented engagement. For instance, learning from self-reflection in exper-ience is complemented by intending to be clear with others.

Nearly always, scenic relevance is proximally a nebulous mix of differentiations (and lack of) such that practicality depends on astuteness about differential rele-vance, e.g., not “finding” Self to be presumed about another’s imputed sense of self in interaction. (Later, I’ll prospect further about isomorphic leaning of [a] S/s differentiality and [b] s/p differentiality irt a notion of life[a] world[b]: lifeworld-liness.)

So, I enjoy understanding action scenically: “Any moment with others may be at least scenic (genuine stage front) for feeling days (authentic backstage) as assem-blage art” (2018).

March 2016: “I choose ‘dramactional’ rather than ‘dramaturgical’ because I’m thinking outside of professional theater.”

January 2019: “The linguistic turn of philosophy still barely understands the writing-in-speech of Derrida—the dramactionality of any performance as oral text (e.g., s/p-differentiality as normal implicature of scenic articulation—self expres-sion implied in all [inter]personal assertion.”

Nevertheless, a keynote of the notion of dramactionality is appellant thinking isomorphically with dramatic form (Jan. 2019): “All action may be understood as performance in a scene (interpersonal interaction), maybe even in a drama (inter-personal relationship). The proximal life lived (actual lifeworldliness) may be troped as a work of authorship, like a production by a theater. And the creative life itself is an authoriality beyond its various theaters, embodying individuated time ‘behind’ its various theaters (the stuff of autobiography and intimate confession).”

Ideally, artistic appeal may be horizonal: “…Artistry of living is a Janus-faced dramatic art of ideally high flourishing channeled through events of appropriation that are flexibly at home, whatever the house….”

Yet, that appeal is paradigmatically artistic teaching, or appreciation that art teaches; and that teaching is best regarded as an art. (I happened to discover
many years ago that a highly validated career interest assessment tool used in
high schools associates teaching with dramatic arts, relative to U.S. Dept. of
Labor skills analysis and classification of jobs).

Philosophy is, at heart, about teaching conceptual sophistication. (Conceptual inquiry as such is interdisciplinary, which I understand relative to a 21st century sense of scientific philology.)

Leadership—educational, business, and political—is at heart enablative (i.e., oriented by desire to enable others); and seeks to mentor.

Abstractly (re: phenomenal appeal), dramactionality values promoting of recep-tive responsiveness <—> responsive receptiveness in interaction, which is impli-citly a validity claim of genuineness that is mutually sustained. Degree of engage-ment can be usefully understood along a continuum, from casual daily life to one’s most important relations—from civility, through solidarity (e.g., professional life), friendship, and family to intimate partnership.

“Letting oneSelf be wholly with letting the other be wholly” (2017) is seldom appropriate (if even possible), yet we might regard that as vital for collaborative creativity or intimate partnership. Letting another be wholly may be ideal in teaching (or counseling). Letting oneSelf be wholly with one’s Work is integral to high creativity.

Always, in genuine interaction, appreciating the perspective of another ensures that the integrity of the other belongs to the other while meaning and significance belong to both of us (relative to our interaction), with all due consideration of the other’s sense of meaning and significance.

Though thinking relative to “playing” a scene may be primarily a term of art, it’s the default position of exemplifying life with flexible perspectivity that stays sensitive to situation.

And play’s been a prevailing trope in hermeneutical philology (Gadamer’s ulti-macy of energeia as “play of light”) and poetic thinking (Heidegger’s “thing” as “mirrorplay” of granting and bearing), as well as with criticism across humanities, of course.

So, validity of interaction has life-oriented leaning and world-oriented leaning (granting that a life is always worlded, and a sense of world is always of a life).
The validity of a life is different than validity of interaction.

A life wants comprehensibility while interaction wants clear sense
A life wants authenticity while interaction wants genuineness.
A life wants reliable values while interaction wants normativity.
A life wants actual fulfillment while interaction wants factual states of affairs.

One could easily claim that interaction wants what a life wants, which is indeed valid—but derivative of being a life. A life wants what interaction wants—but relative to preceding interests (especially “building” a relationship, advancing a project, thinking in a new way).

In any event, one does well to distinguish the reason of one’s life from the rationality of interaction.

next—> proteany again