In terms of time, this is a shorter presentation. I more or less jump right into the reading of PPM62 (Being and Learning, pp. 97-98), read it and make on the slightest bit of commentary. This is because what is offered in PPM62 is a rather straightforward rehearsal of ideas that have already been introduced vis-a-vis the 'truth of concealment,' specifically, the identification of 'schooling' with what Arendt calls 'conservative education.' Indeed, the majority of PPM62 offers a reading of the cave through Arendt's essay "Crisis in Education," which has already been introduced to the conversation. So I'll excerpt a highlight from PPM62: In contrast to learning, which "only gets underway when the prisoner is unchained and turned around....Learning unfolds through the turnings...Schooling is thus a necessary preparatory event in the life of the learner, an event that fulfills its duty when and if the revolutionary work of Learning is the outcome. That is, the work Arendt describes as 'the task of renewing a common world.'...The truth of concealment organizes schooling around domestic security. Schooling shelters and in sheltering protects the child from the world and the world from the child. The must be shielded, one from the other, because the child as child is incapable of understanding the responsibility that comes with the capacity to make, to initiate, to create with freedom...With the truth of concealment we identify, then, the essence of schooling as the preservation of natality, the capacity to initiate, create the preparation of Learning, the conservation of freedom. 'Conservatism, in the sense of conservation, is the essence of the educational activity, whose task is always to cherish and protect something -- the child against the world, the world against the child, the new against the old, the old against the new'.(Arendt)"
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 - It seems like April 15th is day that offers me fewer opportunities to dwell, as I feel as rushed this morning as I apparently was on this day 10 years ago. This week is the Portland schools spring break, so with the airfares almost doubled, I will be making my once-a-semester drive down to NJ. But first this commentary.
ReplyDeleteIf I'm being generous I would describe PPM62 as a dialectical reversal of an earlier description of the truth of concealment. What remains consistent is the description's assignment of concealment to preparation, and thus to Arendt's category of conservative education as preserving natality. And perhaps there is also some consistency with the claim that in preparing the student for repairing and renewing the world demands concealment of the world is really like, which is to say, protecting or shielding the student from the harsher and crueler aspects of the world, of the "real world." However this doesn't square with Arendt's directive that we not teach the art of living, but, rather, teach the world as it is. I'm still puzzled over that directive. I've written a bunch of essay, papers, drafts, etc., not to mention taught "Crisis in Education" a number of times, and my response has been to take up Arendt's directive as suggesting a kind of "conservatory of thinking," education as occurring in a place that is safely removed from the world, from both the private and public realms. The conservatory of thinking is a place where the critico-creative is developed. But I based this upon a description of the world that stands in contrast to Arendt, and perhaps to my own position regarding the significant object, the world of art. I'll have to take a closer look at the chapter I wrote where I offer a Stoic's response to Arendt's directive, but my position takes the Stoic ontology of flux and applies that to Arendt's world, which is neither Being, nor Logos, nor anything beyond the work of human hands. What we make, our world(s), issubject to the same flux, in part because our world(s) exist within the Flux, the Way. The stuff (material) is always already present. We take it up and work it out. This is the making of art, the work of art. But without our care for it, without repair and restoration, the world(s) we make will "suffer run," as Arendt puts it. What's more, the need for renewal, forh the world in general, as the place that brings us together (the common) and also keeps us apart, in plurality. A conservatory of thinking, like any educational place that is organized as a conservatory, is a place of poeisis, a place where art is practiced. And it is a preparatory place, a learning place where students learn the arts, and make art without the burden of having to offer it into the world. Their work is protected and shielded from the world, from the judgment of others. This is an important aspect of conservative education as conserving or preserving. This is how natality, the power to initiate, is both cultivated and protected. And this is really what the truth of concealment is about: protection, preservation, conservation. Concealment: hiding something or preventing it from being known. What is being hidden in the conservatory of education and what is being prevented from being known is the student's originality, which must be protected from judgment and critique.