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The Much-at-Once

Online ISBN:
9780823272501
Print ISBN:
9780823268337
Publisher:
Fordham University Press
Book

The Much-at-Once

Bruce W. Wilshire
Bruce W. Wilshire
Rutgers University
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Published online:
22 September 2016
Published in print:
1 February 2016
Online ISBN:
9780823272501
Print ISBN:
9780823268337
Publisher:
Fordham University Press

Abstract

This reflective journey ventures an open exploration of ecstatically experienced embodiment. It seeks to rediscover the fullness of life in the world by relocating us in a more complete activation of the body’s potentials. Wilshire builds on William James’s concept of the much-at-once to name the superabundance of the world that surrounds, nourishes, holds, stimulates, and feeds us from all directions through the medium of our experiencing bodies. Extensive reflections on music serve to exemplify this. The author employs the dynamism and multiplicity of the fugue as a metaphor for how we weave together otherwise cacophonous strains and strands of our experience to form the texture of our world and ourselves. He argues that our deepest need is to feel ecstatically real, as vital and expressive organs in an organic whole. When we drop out of contact with the much-at-once, we lose touch with the stimuli and pulses of life—“the sting of the real,” in James’s phrase—and as a consequence moods like boredom and hopelessness leave us empty of possibility and full of dread. Sacred energies emanating from the much-at-once bind us ecstatically into the vast world in which we are engulfed, infusing us with its regenerative powers, forming our very core, eliciting our interest and commanding our devotion. Appealing to the body’s powers of hearing and feeling over the limiting and distancing aspects of sight and vision, the book engages a rich array of composers, writers, and thinkers ranging from Beethoven and Mahler to Emerson and James.

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