Phronesis and Redux

This entry is part of a series, Redux»

Aristotle defines phronesis in the following manner:

We may grasp the nature of prudence [phronesis] if we consider what sort of people we call prudent. Well, it is thought to be the mark of a prudent man to be able to deliberate rightly about what is good and advantageous . . . But nobody deliberates about things that are invariable . . . So . . . prudence cannot be science [episteme] or art [techne]; not science because what can be done is a variable (it may be done in different ways, or not done at all), and not art because action and production are generically different. For production aims at an end other than itself; but this is impossible in the case of action, because the end is merely doing well. What remains, then, is that it is a true state, reasoned, and capable of action with regard to things that are good or bad for man . . . We consider that this quality belongs to those who understand the management of households or states.

Phronesis is the other side of the beautiful conveyed in aesthetics (which means the beautiful and the good); it is that which is prudent, which makes art a living framework for living, “equipment for living” as Kenneth Burke phrased it. The word brought down into early Roman virtue is prudentia (prudence); someone recently called me their “prudent” friend, a charge I have never before received and am likely never to receive again.

Prudence, as Aristotle defines it, is neither the arts nor sciences, but the ability to conduct one’s self, and the business of the state wisely. In a sense, it is praxis as art is poesis and science (theoria). Aristotle separates these into categories, but the question that perhaps belongs most to phronesis is: how do we put into practice theoria and poesis? What is the responsible and living, active principle of either in our lives? When someone poopoos the arts as so much silliness or disparages science that does not have immediate practical application, are they acting out of phronesis, true praxis, or are they merely insisting on an absolute succession to praxis with theoria being too esoteric, and poesis being too inconsequential for consideration?

This is an important question for the Redux movement I belong to: redux, by using the broken and thrown away, by seeing beauty and ugliness as part of the same category of the grotesque as Averroes (A follower of Aristotle) did, risks pleasing neither those in science, the arts, or the polis, since what Redux wishes to introduce is a fourth category, or rather an appendage to the preceding three: theoria, praxis, poesis, and the posibility, the perhaps of deviation, digression, brokeness, incongruity, what might be called the comic misstep that becomes a dance. Redux is interested in the possibility that remains when things do not go as expected, as planned or as one wills. We are interested in anomaly, in what scientists insist is mere white noise, and what artists would consider mistakes. We are interested in seeing the universe as a series of pratfalls into grace, and so are loathe to believe in the following:

- Standards: not because we think art is subjective, but because we believe mistakes, sub-standards, and deviations may contain amazing power and value.

- Materials: we have two ways of thwarting such seemingly airtight aphorisms as “the medium is the message.” One is the “perspective by incongruity” as Kenneth Burke framed it (and which we “misuse” in so far as we extend it to matters of the spirit, and live in such seeming oxymoronic realms as “holy impiety” and “obedience as systemic deconstruction”). The second is the “Bethlehem principle”, which states that nothing ever grows from where it is expected, but happens in a “Bethlehem” that is inevitable “after the fact.” A preceding “after the fact” engages all aesthetics–the mistake that becomes the standard. For this reason, we consider all materials to be usable, possible, and appropriate, and seek to disengage from the consumer nexus of semiotic congruity and categorical tagging.

- Purity: Purity is impossible save in God or some concept which would approach God insofar as it is ultimate ground and source of all being. Redux advocates an ongoing and humble practice of impurity–what William’s called “by defective means.” We do not trust the pure, though we also do not trust the idea that there can be no absolutes. We believe there is an absolute which, the moment it is touched, approached, named, or pointed toward breaks into a million pieces and is “bedraggled.” We seek the bedraggled, we seek the Bethlehem. We seek the comedy of failures and success as being both equally beside the point. And so we are loathe to embrace Standards, materials, or purity in any conventional sense, believing the embrace of these leads to the very opposite of their intents: not virtue, but the arbitrary power and imposition of standards, materials, and purity in such a way as to create evil which we see as intentional thwarting of the good via envy, territorial desire, and the maintaining of power and privilege as “sacre” (ground set apart).

We call the appendage to theoria, praxis and poesis: Eucharist. Redux believes in eucharist. Eucharistic reality is that which can embrace the broken, the impure, the impious, the mistake, and also beauty virtue, rightness, within the framework of “living bread.” We believe that theoria, praxis, and poesis are worthless without eucharist, that they are indeed, all three truly activated only when they have received eucharistic energy–living bread. The dynamic of spirit, the receiving of spirit as that arbitrary power which goes where it wll, which plumbs even the depths of ultimate groundings without ever being “Subject” but, rather co-equal to those groundings is the agent, transfer, and mode of action in eucharist. Redux then seeks out and celebrates this dynamic in eucharist. We see eucharist as the tendon, and sinew of theoria, praxis and poesis, and we make provision for defective means– something which theoria, praxis, and poesis can never, in and of themselves, make provision for. This is the theoria, if you will, of redux.

As for its praxis, all that which is motley, a sincere bringing together of often incongruent dynamics: poetry readings that are aspects of high vaudeville, art exhibits that use any material at hand, most often that which has been thrown away, what might be called garbage art–graffiti as very much a vital eucharistic mode of artistic action as the “gesture,” the scribble, the sheer dynamic of improvised structures. Art as ritual, as ceremony, as an invocation of presence, and not the presence of the gate keepers, but of those who would open the gates: a free for all, but not without terminus, for Redux believes that true obedience to “No standards at all” will invariably lead to true value–that beyond standards, that beneath-which-not which is organic to human apprehension of the beautiful and the good.

We will define eucharistia as all that is truly bread in the dynamic of theoria, praxis and poesis, and yet is not subject to the “perfection” of these categories, but which lives in the free dynamic and interplay– and in the Bethlehem we can not apprehend save through prophetic vision– that which is right and inevitable only “after the fact.” This Bethlehem principle does not challenge or disparage Jerusalem, but merely knows that Eucharistia can not, by its very nature, favor Jerusalem–the agreed upon ideal–for then it would be subject to the law of standards, and Eucharistia is subject to no law. For this reason, as readily as it takes a broken piece of wood and draws upon it, it is just as likely to turn and write a sonnet. Eucharistia is that force which seeks to complete what is lacking in theoria, praxis and poesis at any one moment in space/time: sometimes, order and sometimes disorder. It is purposeful to the extent that it is a living bread, an aesthetic that privileges the energy of exuberance over all other energies, and so, to the degree that hiptserism is about cool and detached appreciation, Redux is antithetical to the elan of hipsterism (while not necessarily rejecting it outright). Redux sees beauty and ugliness as being joined as energetic principles of eucharistia–the dynamic of living bread.

In Eucharistia, not the immoral or amoral, but the pre-moral that leads to the beautiful and the good.

In Eucharistia, not the imperfect, or the perfect, but the dynamic between them

In Eucharistia, not action or motion, but percipient action and love of force and energy within the realm of perhaps.

In Eucharistia, not peace without violence, but a merge point that claims the ferocity of peace, and the calm at the center of flux.

In Eucharistia: the broken brought home to its magisterial rites within the living bread: love of the poor, love of vital energy, love of the being born into agon (birth pain), love of struggle, ongoing appraisal and protest against one’s own comfort zones, the daily, hourly practice of being ready for the spirit to annihilate one into being. Reinstituting of inspiration and afflatus over the factory model of excellence based on “Standards.” Whim as a form of virtue, constancy as grace.

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