Rendering the tone

Abstract

"What determines the place of community, and more specifically, the place of a philosophical community? If philosophy is a site of response and engagement, perhaps the most important task is to think the very event of its presentation, of what takes place where thought is said to be shared. It is exceptionally difficult today to isolate a particular form of speech that we name ‘philosophical’. More so than ever, philosophy finds itself with an uncertain address. Yet if a philosophical community exists, it may exist by virtue of an experience of the address. Such a community may pose the following questions — from where do we speak, about what, to whom, and in what manner, and what is it that takes place between ‘us’? These questions are not simply the themes of a thesis on community. If community is avowed, and indeed, invented wherever such questions are posed, what is avowed is the exigency to speak the possibilities of address and invention themselves, and so doing, touch upon the various forms that community may take. Community becomes a unique place of encounter by means of its language. A philosophical articulation of community assumes an ethical and political charge — to think and open the space of a thoughtful and critical speech. Neither the other nor I may define community, nor less the forms of its communication: what defines the sense of a community, we may say, is a generosity and an affirmation for the sharing of voices. It is here that the question and experience of tone becomes significant."