Two months! PPM60 (Being and Learning pp.94-96) marks the completion of the second month of this ten year commemoration. Continuing with the 're-thinking' of Plato's allegory, PPM60 moves from the mapping of the cave as the possible dwelling of the sophist, to a return to Heidegger's comment that the allegory represents a disclosure of the essence of education (paideia) and an at the same time "opens our eyes to a transformation in the essence of truth." There is, of course, a brilliant nuance to Heidegger's assertion, especially for those of us who are driven to take up education as an transformative encounter with the truth, or as a transformation in the essence of truth, which could and perhaps should be read as the disclosure of truth via learning, or the transformative power of truth as what is properly 'educational.' And all of this must be read, I want to argue, as the way to understand the relationship between philosophy and education, where 'education' is the transformative turning (paideia) happening via philosophy, or philosophy as transformative turning. I call this transformative turning "Learning," and understand this to be the 'essence' of education.
In my post-reading commentary I discuss how education is a part of Learning, and truth a part of Being ('parts' of the whole, perhaps in the way we talk of fractions). If 'truth' is a part of Being, then it must be understood as the reality of what appears to us, what is disclosed, the reality of the facticity of our experience. An other part of truth is the reality of what is absent. What is 'not yet' present but exists is not simply a future, or a present future, but the existence of what is absent, and not just that which has withdrawn or remains undisclosed or resists disclosure. I describe/imagine the person who exists at the time of my recording this video, and who will watch all or part of the video, but remains absent at the time of its recording. They are not yet present or real in relation to the video, but remain in existence. Their presence will affirm and confirm the work, the effort and the intentionality of this project when they reserve time to encounter the video. They dwell at this moment in the truth of concealment, and until they encounter the video, the work remains in potency, or not fully disclosed.
3.0 - Call it the wisdom of age, which, I gather, causes one to be slightly more prudent, but as I revisit the original meditations and the 2.0 commentary I find myself less inclined to go big with my description of Learning. I most certainly want to continue to describe learning as a singular "event." This is important for qualifying what is distinctly philosophical about Learning. Learning is the event of the philosophical education. What makes an education philosophical is in part the singularity of the experience, an event that happens via captivation. To be held captive by freedom, to be held out before possibility, in a moment, to endure the singular power of the work, the work of art, the text, the performance, to be captivated and moved by the evocative, the calling of the significant object. But it is precisely the rare singularity of the event of Learning that leaves open the transformative effect of Learning. One could easily surmise there is some kind of transformation, some change after the fact. And this Plato suggests with the "damaging" of his freed cave-dweller. Yet today 10/20 years later I'm less inclined to emphasize the transformation, or the outcome, which seems to be too closely linked by the dominant logic in education that is measuring all educational acts in terms of their outcomes. Focus on the event of Learning means just that, focus on the process (paideia) and the principal moment in that process, the turning (periagogē). This is where the dialectic of a philosophical education is occurring, in the midst of that moment, the dynamic interaction between beings and learning, the being (significant object) and learner (captivated subject). And it is enough to focus on this encounter. In turn, when PPM60 and the 2.0 commentary take up Heidegger's description of the Plato's allegory as revealing the transformation in the essence of truth, that "transformation" can be understood in any number of ways, and does not necessarily apply to the transformation of the one subjected to the event of Learning, insofar as the transformation is an outcome. We can also phenomenologically describe from a distance the event as revealing a transformation of the essence truth from a result (knowledge, certainty, etc.) to a process. Truth itself is transformed for us, and becomes the revelation of an authentic encounter, an encounter with the real meaning, with what is genuine and lasting. And in this sense we have not moved to far from Plato and his theory of the Ideas and Forms. And thus what we take away from Plato and emphasize is the rare encounter that occurs and lasts only a moment. Plato's "Sun" (the source of all things) is a metaphor for what is significant, but in a sustained sense. And one aspect of it's being "sustained" is its materiality. It is some thing that we can return to again and again with the hope and perhaps faith that it will capture us again. The non-guarantee that we will be captivated is an important characteristic of the transformed essence of truth. Unlike the equation that can be solved, the encounter with the meaningful object is never guaranteed. The event of Learning remains cloaked in mystery.
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