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In allowing kosmos to appear, the craftsman's work involves both an ordering and a revelation, or an unveiling, of order. Order is not simply brought about by the craftsman. It is what his making makes visible. A dance or a musical performance is both a technical making and a theoretical spectacle. The order that is revealed is not simply produced by the musician's playing or the dancer's dancing. Order and ordering are reciprocal, which we can see if we remind ourselves that the craftsman's activity—the ordering—is itself ordered. The bodily movements of the weaver at the loom, or the musician at the instrument, can be as beautiful to see as the music is to hear, or the cloth is to look at and touch. They are—they have to be—as ordered, as carefully arranged, or intricately patterned (as harmonious) as the finished product. They are not ordered by the craftsman or artist, but by the work. They too are an epiphany of kosmos. If we take seriously the dual sense of kosmos as both order and ordering, and of ergon as both process and product, we do better to say, not just that music is a revelation of kosmos, but that the making of music is kosmos "presencing."29 This is why it takes practice, both in the sense of regular engagement or participation—doing it over and over, as the shuttle moves over the loom—and in the sense of preparation—the repeated performance, or rehearsal, through which certain capacities or skills are developed or actualized. If the craftsman's activity is not a mere means, neither is the preparation it requires. Rather than aiming at a separate result, or product, it only draws one more deeply into that for which one is preparing oneself. One becomes a musician by, as Aristotle would say, performing musical actions—by playing repeatedly. The goal of this practice is to make oneself musical, so that one not only produces notes but plays musically.30 What Aristotle said about philosophical contemplation could also be said about the making of music—that it is a form of human work that connects us, both as spectators and as practicing participants, with God's work.31 If the end of techne is the realization of kosmos, then the practice for and of such work is practice for and of a kind of seeing that is at once contemplative and productive (to play musically, one must hear musically). The requirement that its performance be regular and repetitive is not a matter of efficiency. It is the regularity of ritual. Techne involves the formation not only of an object or artifact but of the participant or performer. Just as the patterns that the weaver weaves emerge along with the surface of the cloth, there is an emergence of order in the craftsman, as motions are repeated, become habitual, or come together harmoniously (like the threads of the woven cloth). The formation that brings order to light in the craftsman is not merely physical. It can be seen as having the same divine source as the patterns that the weaver brings to light in the cloth, or the harmonies the musician brings to light in the playing. Just as techne involves more than mere productive labor, theoria involves more than mere cognition or detached observation. Both involve what I have called a "realization"—a making visible that allows for active participation in the emergence of kosmos. Both are rooted in the seeing (with wondering eyes) of an order that transcends human making. The making that joins craft and contemplation is the "presencing" of the divine. It is in this sense that the work of craft and of contemplation is meaningful in itself. It is in this sense, too, that theoria is (or was) fundamentally liturgical. Leitourgia meant "public service" or "work" in the sense, not of production, but of presencing. Leitourgia is public ergon. Its public nature consists in its being a spectacle in which both performers and spectators, artists and audience, participate. Its work is not a means to an end, or a separate product, but the performance itself. Liturgy is (or was) a making visible that provides for a realization of the divine. The seemingly paradoxical notion of being invisibly present in one's work so that something else can become visible has its source in this original understanding of liturgical work. By making something that is a wonder to behold the musician's work lets kosmos appear and thus furnishes the occasion for a kind of seeing that connects us, in a vital way, with God's work. |
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