OPM 73 is the last of the mediations that are mysteriously absent from Being and Learning. The second half of OPM73 is the first paragraph of chapter 5 on Heraclitus, and it is here that I pick up on the sentiment I expressed in my commentary yesterday, namely, the mood of cynicism regarding the question concerning those who don't 'hear' the call to learning and thinking. I set this up with a powerful two line quotation from Heidegger, which speaks to the two beginnings of originary thinking: "in the first beginning: deep wonder. In another beginning: deep foreboding." In light of that I write: "If we have paid close attention to the conclusion of the allegory we have felt the deep foreboding, the tragedy of the two (apparently) mutually exclusive modalities of dialogue and monologue, the openness and silence of poetic dialogue, the imposition and stasis of the juridical voice. If we describe them as relating tragically, then we appear ready to let them remain incommensurable. By allowing them to remain tragically related we then take our bearing in relation to this relation. The way of learning is thus always already related to and not yet reconciled with tis other, the way of imposition, the distorted outcome of schooling, the retardation of the transformation. This bearing of the learner is always located near the shadow of its negation, this other which would, to paraphrase the story, 'surely destroy it if it could get its hands on it.'" As I say in my post-reading commentary, the mood I take in relation to those with 'deaf ears' is not actually one of cynicism, but perhaps one of critical realism, and even a phenomenological attitude insofar as one must simply let be the predominant cultural norms of 'practicalism' and 'materialism.' To let be these norms is not to 'accept' them, but, rather to invest ones energy in cultivating deep and lasting communities of learning, congregations of thinking, philosophical friendships. This is what I identify as the Socratic legacy, insofar as his optimism never failed him, even in his last days in prison and right up to the moment of his execution. He was surrounded by friends, and it was to his friend that he spoke his final words. "Don't forget," he told him, "to make an offering" to the god of healing on my behalf. That is, please, Crito, continue to do this work that we have done together.
February 13, 2014 was the 10th anniversary of the original experiment that produced 363 phenomenological mediations, published as 'Being and Learning' (Brill: 2012). Each day between Feb 2014-15, I returned to the original meditations, and my commentary is documented here. And then, again, on February 15, 2024, on the 20th anniversary of the first days of the original experiment, I revisit and comment on a daily basis, once again.
3.0 - On this day 20/10 years later I'm tempted to make an offering to the god of healing, the spirit who was invoked this week in my class by a student without irony, and in light of our study of bell hooks. I saw without irony because she naively didn't associate the need for healing with our own broken seminar. Neither class much traction, and, to use some of the language of this project, we have not formed a learning community, and, as a result we haven't really moved down any pathways of exploration. There have been moments when the community appears to be forming, but, like the much described event, I still anticipate and hope it will happen but have doubts that it will. Too many remain silent in the class, and too many arrive unprepared. And for those who appear ready, they are adverse to taking even the slightest risk of venturing an interpretation. I have completely failed to evoke thinking in the class, despite my earnest attempts to do so. With only 3 sessions remaining, I just want to be done without any dramatic fallouts! To say the least, I feel intensely the foreboding describing in the OPM on this day. And I relate quite well to the weary cave-dweller who is compelled to return after a glimpse of the truly authentic. Above I write of Socrates indefatigable optimism. Was this inspired? Was he graced by the gods? Pushed along by the muse, the dream figure who appeared and commanded him to "make music, and work at it!"? The whole Platonic logic would suggest that he was indeed graced and inspired from without, that it wasn't a matter of the will. Perhaps this is what is preventing the gathering of a learning community? I am not inspired from without. But where does that inspiration arrive from? I have attempted to convey to my students that the power of inspiration arrives from the readings, from the text itself, and I stand by this. But I have also emphasized this week in the 3.0 writing that the significant object of study remains significant regardless of whether or not students receive the call. It calls out, but not all are ready to receive the call. And this brings me back to the question that initiated the original project of Being and Learning, namely, How does one turn a student around? In some ways I have failed to answer that question, or, rather, offered hundreds of pages of poetic phenomenological descriptions of the dialogic process that unfolds if and when the periagogē has happened. Perhaps I am getting myself mired in the current situation, a prisoner of the present moment. The question returns in full force, and I have 3 more sessions to explore it before I will make it a point of emphasis when I turn away from teaching at Hofstra and turned my attention towards the writing of my book. It may be a blessing and in fact a kind of inspiration, this failure to evoke and thereby to gather a learning community. I'll turn my attention to the writing of the book with an fresh and intense appreciation for the difficulty of turning students around toward thinking, or rather, of selecting and pointing towards significant objects that will captivate them.
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