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Peter A Goldsbury wrote:
The words themselves were enough. I think this is where we need to start, even with the discourses of Morihei Ueshiba.
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Respectfully, I disagree. Words at their best are portmanteaus of connotation in culture and history. When they lose that incultured scheme of associations they become the merely utilitarian devices you suggest -- as Latin and Latinate words have become outside of the Catholic Church. The problem is doubly difficult in jumping a large language/culture barrier as between Egnlish and Japanese and their respective schemes of assocations.
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Peter A Goldsbury wrote:
Like Josh Lerner, I think that 'ai' is a kun reading and that the compound is of recent origin, coined by the addition of 'DOU' to the 'ai-KI' already in use.
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I defer to your opinion. I acknowledge with Josh that the "aiKI" term is much older, and it is that more that the addition of the DOU (or O sensei's preferred "aiki no michi") that concerns me The point being, as Josh's intial response interestingly pulled up, the association with Chinese tantric terminology, and the association that raises in the Shingon background, both with O Sensei personally, in his education as well as the historical connections with Japanese writing, and the influence of Shingon mantrayana on kotodama. I find frustraing the attitude of many (present company excluded) in merely throwing up one's hands and simultaneously blaming /ignoring Omoto and its syncretism in looking at these ideas. That is is an excuse for not looking further, not an answer.
Omoto did put together bits from very real streams of thought and a reasonably deep and incultured grasp of those origins will help inform the basis from which O Sensei thought and related his understanding of the essentials of the art. Physically, his art is a wonder of robust subtlety in connection. I give his intellectual effort at least as much credit for subtlety in its connections. But then, I like Whitehead.
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Peter A Goldsbury wrote:
... So I agree with you that we need to study how he used the term: an Augustinian theory of language is of not much use here.
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I agree -- chickens and eggs are pretty much inseparable except in very narrow slices of time. I am interested in the mainline of the evolution as well as the siderails and later influences of "abandoned" or leapfrog ideas, more than discovering which advocate of which system at what time had bragging rights at any given point in the progression.
The point is not what he did with it, per se. Who is interested in dead knowledge? Aikido is a living thing -- it has a history, ancestral connections, and simultaneously a certain freedom as as well as destiny encoded in that background. I explore these things to see what it is, what it can be and has connection to, and what we can consider doing with it that is true to its makeup.
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Peter A Goldsbury wrote:
But it was nonsense: a poetic version of a Sokal hoax. My teacher thought that the nonsense verse had to have a 'deeper' meaning, that could be put into English. Richards' intention was quite clear: to argue that some poetry sounds good but does not make much sense.
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That is a sadly narrow view of the poetic universe. Surely, there is broader middle path between the confines of your teacher and Derrida.
My borogroves remain quite mimsy, thank you ...