PPM56 (pp. 89-91 of Being and Learning) continues the musing on the 'truth of concealment' as the preparation for emancipation, for receiving the call to Learning, for the disclosure of human freedom (possibility) aka the offering made by Being's presencing. In my post-reading commentary I underline that 'truth' here denotes 'reality and necessity' and then go on to talk of the reality and necessity of the fecund ground from which emerges the flower. (It's finally spring here in Maine, and we have the crocus flowers blooming!) The cave is preparatory in the sense that it represents the truth of concealment, the reality and necessity of the fertile ground that we are rooted in and from whence we arrive when we make our sojourn of freedom and undertake learning and do/make something with the freedom that is offered to us. The reality and necessity of our relationships with others, not to mention our domestic caves, prepare/renew us for our movements into the open region. In turn, a highlight from PPM56 is: "The home now appears as the truth of concealment manifesting in the habitation from which the 'un-conscious' subject will be drawn....when this subject is subjected to the alterity of the autre he is addressed by what 'is not/not yet,' and is taunted and in this moment his judgment is abandoned, for his ground has been shaken, and he has been deprived of foundation. This confrontation is recognized as Destruktion...Here in the first part of the story [Plato's allegory], the abyss is represented by the strict limits of the cave (unilocular) and the strict limits of the view of those held in bondage (uni-ocular). the abode where the evocative tidings are addressed and received is the abyss from which the apprentices will appear. Learning is the processural unfolding of the twofold play of concealment and unconcealment..."
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'm glad the 2.0 commentary locates the original meditation as published in "Being and Learning." As noted above, PPM56 continues the engagement with the question of "preparedness" or the conditions that make possible the encounter with the new and strange. Emphasis on the strange is important, because the process of education (paideia) that Plato depicts is a series of confounding and perplexing encounters. And so periagogē (being turned around) is a process of being turned away from "certainty" but not in the epistemological sense, although it could be that. I believe it more interesting to read the turning as being turned away from habit, from the taken for granted, from the routine. There's also this description in the Allegory about the praise they cave dwellers heap upon one another when they can identify and name the shadows. The cave is their world. But the cave is symbolic of the routines and habits we experience as individuals and collectively. It reveals our desires for shelter, comfort, predictability, and company. The paideia Plato depicts is a disruption of those desires, but not of desire itself. Desire is central for Plato, and always a concern for him: what should we desire? which desires are noble? etc. And desire is also at the center of the question that motivated this project: how does the teacher turn the student around? Turn around from...apathy, indifference, boredom, etc. The Allegory provocatively avoids this question. The freed cave-dweller is unshackled and forced to get up. They are forced to turn around again and again, and forced to make the difficult ascent out of the cave, and then forced to return. Does this mean that the force of habit is so powerful that it must be met with a counter-force? What activates a desire? An appeal? The evocative saying? Not really. The evocative saying presents with force, is a force. It calls and even commands a response. Desire can also emerge in an instant.
ReplyDeleteRe-reading PPM56, what jumps out to me is the description of the play of concealment/unconcealment. The cave, I suggest, preserves the essence of concealment. The darkness, but also the state of ignorance, are conditions of concealment. But this attaches a negative connotation to the concealment, which neither Heidegger nor Arendt attach. For Arendt the sphere of the hidden, the "private," is the necessary condition of something vital. And what is held hidden has traditionally been that which is of the highest value, e.g., the soul as held and hidden within the body. For Heidegger, concealment is always together with unconcealment, an almost dialectical dynamic. The future is "hidden" from us. And "future" is both a temporal designation and an ontological measure of excess, of what remains still to be said. The anticipated response remains concealed. So it's a bit misleading, or rather, not a description I would write today, to describe the "unilocular" as preserving the essence concealment. A more nuanced description would say, rather, that this is but one form of concealment, but not necessarily one that leads to learning. But for Plato this is the condition where we spend most of our lives. This condition is everyday life, the private sphere indeed! The challenge appears when the logic of private sphere finds its way into the public realm. Education, formally speaking, is located in-between the private and public, and for this reason is positioned to be the location that by design disrupts the preference for the private because it is a disruption of the private.