Read alongside the Dead Zone wrhu.org that I recorded last Thursday (March 27th cf PPM43) PPM46 get underway, appropriately, by Estimated Prophet (yet another one of my handles) and concludes with Sunshine Daydream, which, at this point in the slow and steady reading of Plato's "Allegory" couldn't have been a more synchronous tune!
Indeed, PPM46 (Being and Learning chapter 4 pp. 76-78) continues with the slow reading of the Allegory, and here we encounter for the first time most significant of terms that has yet to be articulate but has, nonetheless, been in play since the very beginning of the project: paideia (turning around). Recall, the question that initiated this writing project, this year long experiment in poetic phenomenology, was the question, borrowed from Plato: How can we be turned around to the contemplation of Being?, a question that has evolved into: How can we be turned around to an effacement with Being's presencing? I can not overstate the importance of the term paideia, which is why I describe it as "the essence of education as releasement or liberation into freedom."
One of the highlights in PPM46 is the moment in the Allegory when the 'mysterious liberator' enters the scene to get the paideia underway. For it is a series of turnings that happens from beginning to end in this story. I've always been intrigued by the unknown identity of this key persona, and the fact that they remain what Foucault calls a 'masked philosopher' (for certainly they are indeed a philosopher, or one who knows the way out of the cave). Who are they? Or, more importantly, Where do they come from? I'd like to imagine this persona represents the Sage figure that I discuss in chapter 3 of Being and Learning, but I don't give this figure that title. Rather, I speculate "the one who is releasing the prisoner is someone who has, as they say, committed 'class suicide,' or abandoned their position as a central cast member in the theater of oppression.
The identity, or rather, the point of origin for this mysterious figure remains a mystery. However, I do insist on describing the paideia as coming about through the evocative saying/speaking of this mysterious figure. And thus, I remain consistent the turning around to Being's presencing, the effacement and originary moment of Learning, is initiated by one who turns around through a particular kind of speech, or whose speech has a particular kind of power or force to move/turn. Hence, I write: "Here, we should emphasize that the give and take between the liberator and liberated should not be considered arbitrary, nor the fortunate outcome of chance. The offering of liberation, the gift of teachability, is made by one who can make this offering. We can only truly offer what we actually have to give, as in this important moment in the Allegory suggests. Further, we can only truly accept what we are ready to receive....And this indicates why Learning is a beginning that gets underway because the teacher and apprentice are always already prepared to offer and receive teachability. The gift is available, the cup ready to be passed. The give and take awaits only the spontaneous act of offering, of turning away from one's habitual habitat and towards the other."
Indeed, PPM46 (Being and Learning chapter 4 pp. 76-78) continues with the slow reading of the Allegory, and here we encounter for the first time most significant of terms that has yet to be articulate but has, nonetheless, been in play since the very beginning of the project: paideia (turning around). Recall, the question that initiated this writing project, this year long experiment in poetic phenomenology, was the question, borrowed from Plato: How can we be turned around to the contemplation of Being?, a question that has evolved into: How can we be turned around to an effacement with Being's presencing? I can not overstate the importance of the term paideia, which is why I describe it as "the essence of education as releasement or liberation into freedom."
One of the highlights in PPM46 is the moment in the Allegory when the 'mysterious liberator' enters the scene to get the paideia underway. For it is a series of turnings that happens from beginning to end in this story. I've always been intrigued by the unknown identity of this key persona, and the fact that they remain what Foucault calls a 'masked philosopher' (for certainly they are indeed a philosopher, or one who knows the way out of the cave). Who are they? Or, more importantly, Where do they come from? I'd like to imagine this persona represents the Sage figure that I discuss in chapter 3 of Being and Learning, but I don't give this figure that title. Rather, I speculate "the one who is releasing the prisoner is someone who has, as they say, committed 'class suicide,' or abandoned their position as a central cast member in the theater of oppression.
The identity, or rather, the point of origin for this mysterious figure remains a mystery. However, I do insist on describing the paideia as coming about through the evocative saying/speaking of this mysterious figure. And thus, I remain consistent the turning around to Being's presencing, the effacement and originary moment of Learning, is initiated by one who turns around through a particular kind of speech, or whose speech has a particular kind of power or force to move/turn. Hence, I write: "Here, we should emphasize that the give and take between the liberator and liberated should not be considered arbitrary, nor the fortunate outcome of chance. The offering of liberation, the gift of teachability, is made by one who can make this offering. We can only truly offer what we actually have to give, as in this important moment in the Allegory suggests. Further, we can only truly accept what we are ready to receive....And this indicates why Learning is a beginning that gets underway because the teacher and apprentice are always already prepared to offer and receive teachability. The gift is available, the cup ready to be passed. The give and take awaits only the spontaneous act of offering, of turning away from one's habitual habitat and towards the other."
3.0 - 20/10 years later it's the music of Thievery Corporation. "Well I look at it myself as the beginning really of an exploration, that's the reason we're exploring, you don't know what you're going to run into on an exploration: what the sky looks like, what the stars look like..." Synchronicity, coincidence. Soundtrack for the Allegory! "As in all things, you must make your way in life." Indeed! The other day in class, the one prior to the blues session, we really wrestled with the question concerning the artist as teacher. You may your art, but can you teach this art? If I recall it correctly, Aristotle said that it is only the artist that can teach. But maybe I'm remembering this wrong, and, no matter, because it comes up later in the writing in what would appear as a chapter on Aristotle. Plato, of course, took the position, which he reveals in his dialogue "Ion," that being an artist, specifically a performing artist, doesn't necessarily qualify you to teach, and, on the contrary, may prevent you from teaching. Why? Because, according to Plato, the artist is so inspired by the muse, so take away in the production of the work of art, that they are unable to understand exactly why they do what they do. In other words, they are unable to demonstrate the technique of their craft. They just do it, without knowing why. But if we consider the 'knowledge' v 'thinking' distinction couldn't we say that the artist is deeply emerged in thinking (understood as dwelling, as the phenomenological and existential immersion in the 'thing itself' whatever that may be: the making of the work, especially when that is a performative work of art). Being able to communicate to others 'how' it's done, this apparently is teaching. Fine. But this project is entirely about the evocative calling students into the 'doing' of thinking, into the relationship of Being and Learning. And as Plato's Allegory tells us, at first (and perhaps each and every time we get underway), the movement into thinking is difficult, disorienting, especially because it stands in contrast with the 'normal' ways of doing education. And this is the crux of the education we receive from philosophy: it draws us in, and at first we are perplexed, and then, perhaps we get somewhat 'comfortable' with the process of examination, of asking and exploring complex questions that Arendt describes as the most pressing existentially urgent, but, nevertheless, without any definitive answers. We may experience a glimmer, a flicker, a sense that we are on the right track, or that the path we are on is yielding something meaningful, important, significant. But when we have completed the exploration we realize that is was the exploration itself, that the walk on the alpine path (to play with Heidegger's walk on a country path) was the lesson in thinking. Thinking is not something we learn about from a distance. Thinking offers us the quintessential experiential learning. And it can happen in many ways, one of those being in the encounter with art, the aesthetic experience. Plato's Allegory, for me, is all about this experience!
ReplyDeleteIn response to the last paragraph of the 2.0 commentary that says, "The identity, or rather, the point of origin for this mysterious figure remains a mystery. However, I do insist on describing the paideia as coming about through the evocative saying/speaking of this mysterious figure." Here is my first opportunity to document the thesis I was working out in the fall 2023 semester: the identification of the mysterious guide as Apollo, Socrates patron saint (as it were), the one for whom the Temple of Delphi was dedicated, and thus the one who communicated through the Delphi Pythia that "Socrates is wisest." The one who, as the god of music, sent the muse to instruct Socrates, "make music, and work at it!" The one who alone would draw the freed cave-dweller to the Sun as the source of all things. It's a plausible hypothesis for a question that for long time has puzzled me!