After spending most of the day completing a paper that represents for me my own movement out of the cave (check out the video for the details), I read PPM64, which represents the penultimate pages of what is chapter 4 in Being and Learning (pp. 100-101). I take up and focus on what I call the originary turning, the first moment when the cave-dweller's chains are broken and he is forced to stand up. And I say that this moment is the most profound of all the moments of paideia, hence it is originary. It's most profound because it is the one that we can suppose has the most intense impact in terms of confusion, perplexity, that is, as a source of question, thinking and thus learning. And while we could say that the most 'important' moment happens when the cave-dweller has made it out of the cave and perceives the Sun (aka symbol of Plato's 'Good' or Being), I would say that moment, while philosophically most revealing is at the same time, from the point of view of learning in the way I am describing it, the least inspiring. How so? Because at that moment the 'truth' is revealed and there is noting further to be learned. Indeed, he is compelled to return to the cave to share his epiphany with his comrades. So, for me, what's most interesting is the paideia that is happening in the cave, the series of turns that happening 'in the dark.' The rugged ascent. That's the path of learning, and I'd like to suggest that if I were going to re-write the allegory, I would emphasize that what is revealed to the cave-dweller when he perceives and contemplates the Sun is Being's offering of freedom, what I have been calling the pure potentiality of human freedom that is actualized in the enactment of freedom I call learning. What is revealed is the realization that 'Si, se puede' (yes, it can be done), and, moreover, Yes, it should be done! This would be the reason to descend back into the cave: to gather up ones friends for purposeful wandering, for the formation of the learning community.
In my post-reading commentary, which is quite lengthy, I talk about the coincidence of reading these meditations that have been focused on Plato's allegory and my own 'emancipation' from western philosophy, from my teachers (all ancient greeks and modern germans!) who have prepared me by concealing me from my own authentic existential situation as an 'Americano' or one living under the sign of 'ladino' (not latino). So there is an interesting kind of Being and learning happening with the commemoration of this project, as I go through what one might describe as Being and (re)learning. The 'chain breaking' started in Albuquerque continued in NYC and culminated at UPENN at Troy Richardson's Indigenous education conference.
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 - I haven't been watching all of the videos, and only the ones I made when I was in the WRHU studio recording the DZ. But I'm tempted to watch the one from this day 10 years ago, because it sounds like it captures where I was with the project. And the commentary above reminds me how unfortunate it is that I've lost touch with Troy, who more or less faded away into his own project, and is notoriously difficult if not impossible to connect with via email.
ReplyDeleteBut in the way that my connection/collaboration with Troy is historical, so too the position I took above in my 2.0 commentary. The last few 3.0 commentaries have helped me to identify how that culminating moment in the Allegory, when the freed cave-dweller encounters the Sun, can be understood as the epiphanic encounter with the significant object. That encounter, otherwise identified as an aesthetic experience, mediates the event of learning, or better, initiates it. And it is the periagogē that turns the student around towards learning. That encounter positions the modality of learner. One becomes a learner in that moment. Whether or not it is always "epiphanic" is another matter. The Attic roots of the word, epiphainein ‘reveal,' lowers the bar from the historical evolution of the term as a transformative revelation, specifically the denotation that defines epiphany as "manifestation of a divine or supernatural being." Again, as I mentioend in a 3.0 commentary the other day, the original project was definitely leaning mystically in the direction that would end up in an embrace of that heavier spiritual denotation. But these days I'm more inclined to return to what the original meaning of epiphany seems to have denoted, namely, "a moment of sudden revelation or insight." Here the emphasis is on "a moment" and "sudden." And while it might not rise to the level of mystical transcendence, the epiphanic moment is awfully complicated to describe, or, rather, awfully challenging to account for with the "regular" educational situation, i.e, the seminar room. But, actually, after writing that last sentence I realize that, in fact, the epiphanic event isn't at all complicated to describe, because it happens all the time. And perhaps that's the point: epiphanies (a sudden moment of insight, awareness, understanding, or even confusion, yes, perplexity that produces the revelatory question) happen all the time, and need to be documented and described phenomenologically. Put otherwise, the dialectic of a philosophical education can account for the epiphanic moment as the negation of the "normal" conversational exchanges and discussions. And, to connect back with the 2.0 commentary (above) the epiphanic moment is the dialectical negation of "the paideia that is happening in the cave, the series of turns that [are] happening 'in the dark.'" If the "dark" is the "normal" (uncritical diplomatic flow of conversation/discussion), then the epiphanic is the "shining" moment within that darkness.