Read in the bright sunlight of this Easter Sunday afternoon, in the backyard of casa Duarte 29 Sunset Drive, PPM67 is the transitional meditation, the one that take me from the end of chapter 4 in Being and Learning into chapter 5 which will take up Heraclitus. The move to Heraclitus is, in a sense, a return to the exploration of the Sage that was taken up in chapter 3 with Lao Tzu. So there is an interesting rhythm to the writing, where I start with Plato, then take up the Sage and work out some of the fundamental poetic form of the writing, then take up Socrates, then Lao Tzu, then Plato's allegory, and now on to Heraclitus. At this point, after only two months of the ten year commemoration, I'm perceiving an interesting pattern. Now, in terms of the content of PPM67, there are two important moments. The first is prompted by a citation of Heidegger that calls our attention to the binding force that establishes the essential relationality between Being and Learning. Heidegger writes: "Here someone who has been unshackled is at the same time conveyed outside of the cave 'into the open.' There above the ground all things are manifest. The looks that show what things are now no longer appear merely in the man-made and confusing glow of the fire within the cave. The things show themselves stand there in the binding force and validity of their own visible form. The open into which the freed prisoner has now been placed does not mean the unboundedness of some wide-open space; rather, the open sets boundaries to things and is the binding characteristic of the brightness radiating from the sunlight, which we also see." Heidegger reminds us of the priority of the order of things. Learning gets underway because we are drawn out of ourselves, when we are focused on the appearance of beings, but, first and foremost, by the disclosure of Being's presencing, which we perceive as the offering of human freedom. The second important point in PPM67 follows from this insofar as it recalls that this perception of Being's offering always follows from a showing, a pointing, made by a Sage, a 'teacher' who conveys to us the possibility that is our freedom. In sum, the essential relationality of Being and Learning is made manifest through an essential human relationship, between one who conveys to us the possibility of freedom. This showing by the Sage will be the focus on my jam on Heraclitus.
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 - PPM67, the emphasis on the Sage (the philosophical educator) pointing and showing. Pointing as we emphasized in the second part of the course this semester, can be a showing or revealing through writing. This overlaps well with the structure of the dialectic, not so much the movement from one in a linear way, but the movement to and fro, back and forth, between reading and writing, speaking and listening. The Evocative saying/questioning of the Sage point to the significant object, what illuminates on its own. Here the solitude of the work of art (Blanchot), which stands out on its own. This is what we study and respond to, individually and together. Heidegger distinguishes between the human-made and non-human made, the transition from parts 2 and 3 of the Allegory: things "now no longer appear merely in the man-made and confusing glow of the fire within the cave. The things show themselves stand there in the binding force and validity of their own visible form." Heidegger is expressing here the wider expanse of Husserl's "return to the things themselves." But so far as I understand it, there is no reason to prioritize the "natural" thing over the "human made" thing, and if we are compelled to do so, I would reverse the order, following Arendt and prioritizing the world, and our responsibility to repair and renew it. The phenomenological attitude of receptivity applies to any thing. Engaging the capacity to recognize the significant object, or creating the conditions for the possibility of doing so, are essential to philosophical teaching. And I want to say the significant object, the thing imbued with meaning, must be the result of poeisis.
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