PPM57 is read back in my office at Hofstra, and, as I note in my pre-reading commentary, there is a startling coincidence because the meditation begins by introducing Arendt's essay "Crisis in Education" into the mix, and, it so happens, that I've just finished teaching that essay in my undergraduate philosophy of education class. I'm again left wondering if there really are any coincidences!
PPM57 corresponds to pp. 91-92 in Being and Learning.
As I note in my post-reading commentary, I'm not at all surprised with the move to Arendt, and to her essay on education in particular, because the move I've made with the 'truth of concealment' as the necessary 'ground' for learning aka the enactment of freedom (think fertile, fecund, yet hidden, dark, place of roots from which new life appears and is sustained). The ground 'prepares' the way, and also sustains the way of learning. And the circle, or perhaps it's an arc, that is completed with this move is to the one that connects the writing that concluded chapter 3 on Lao Tzu, specifically the writing that borrows from his talk of 'returning to the roots' and the comparison with Heidegger's claim that Eksistence is "rooted in truth as freedom," with the obvious emphasis on the 'roots' of truth being freedom.
I note at the beginning of PPM57 that Arendt does make a distinction between 'learning' and 'education,' which does not capture the ontological sense in which I am using the term 'learning.' I believe the terms should be reversed, especially because she argues so convincingly that the aim of education is to both preserve natality while cultivating a student's capacity to undertake "something new, something unforeseen by us." This is precisely what learning is about: the taking up of "the question concerning the conditions of the possibility and actuality of our freedom," which, as I write in PPM57, "characterizes our response to the call of Learning." If education is the point where we decide if we love our world and our children (as she puts the matter), then learning is the taking up what she calls our moral authority/responsibility to act on the positive decision to love the world and our children.
PPM57 corresponds to pp. 91-92 in Being and Learning.
As I note in my post-reading commentary, I'm not at all surprised with the move to Arendt, and to her essay on education in particular, because the move I've made with the 'truth of concealment' as the necessary 'ground' for learning aka the enactment of freedom (think fertile, fecund, yet hidden, dark, place of roots from which new life appears and is sustained). The ground 'prepares' the way, and also sustains the way of learning. And the circle, or perhaps it's an arc, that is completed with this move is to the one that connects the writing that concluded chapter 3 on Lao Tzu, specifically the writing that borrows from his talk of 'returning to the roots' and the comparison with Heidegger's claim that Eksistence is "rooted in truth as freedom," with the obvious emphasis on the 'roots' of truth being freedom.
I note at the beginning of PPM57 that Arendt does make a distinction between 'learning' and 'education,' which does not capture the ontological sense in which I am using the term 'learning.' I believe the terms should be reversed, especially because she argues so convincingly that the aim of education is to both preserve natality while cultivating a student's capacity to undertake "something new, something unforeseen by us." This is precisely what learning is about: the taking up of "the question concerning the conditions of the possibility and actuality of our freedom," which, as I write in PPM57, "characterizes our response to the call of Learning." If education is the point where we decide if we love our world and our children (as she puts the matter), then learning is the taking up what she calls our moral authority/responsibility to act on the positive decision to love the world and our children.
3.0 - The vid from 10 years ago captures well my office at Hofstra! Looks like it was a sunny day back in 2014. Not so much today in Portland. 20/10 yrs later, cool and overcast.
ReplyDeleteFirst, 2.0: "I'm left wondering if there really are coincidences?" As anyone who knows me well can tell you, I am a person who notices coincidences. It's not that I am hunting for or waiting for or anticipating them, which would be one way to think about being prepared for the event of learning. And perhaps I do need to say more about this, and probably will once I finally finish up with Plato's Allegory, where, as I've been writing this past week, the guide (one who frees the cave-dweller) shows up unannounced and because they are entirely a stranger could not have been anticipated. So I don't hunt or anticipate coincidences. Rather, I recognize them, in the way, say, that an ornithologist can quickly identify a species of bird! Of course, there aren't species of coincidences, but there may, in fact be types that are distinct? Or even the distinction between coincidence, serendipity and synchronicity. Synchronicity is a description of meaningful almost life changing coincidences that C.J. Jung coined. I was first introduced to Jung in my second year at Fordham, when Ewert Cousins, the theology prof who had a big impact on me and who is partly responsible for the world philosophy approach I take in this project, asked me to deliver a manuscript for him to the C.J. Jung Center in Manhattan. I recall feeling super cool when I walked up the steps of the brownstone building with the package. I felt that I was part of something, and embraced being a messenger, a courier of important ideas. In some ways, I still feel that way, and consider much of this project to be just that! And here I recall learning from Heidegger that the practice of interpretation/close textual analysis, "hermeneutics," is rooted in Hermes (messenger god). One Corky Pickering, who writes for the Red Bluff Daily News in California offers this description: "Synchronicity is a term first coined by psychologist Carl Jung, explaining events he defined as meaningful coincidences. In other words, synchronicity is a coincidence that has a profound effect on our lives." I cite Pickering because I'm aspiring to write my Routledge book in an almost journalistic style, or one that is meant to communicate and teach. I suppose that's called "didactic" writing! But this description of synchronicity is helpful, because it emphasizes coincidences that are meaningful and profound. Not all coincidences distinguish themselves in that way. But then again, how would we know? I think that is probably where Jung's psychotherapy sessions would go: exploring the possible implications of a coincidence. If, for example, it was a coincidence to run into an old friend who you were just moments before speaking about, and that old friend is reporting on a personal challenge, then one might probe further. I don't know much about Jung to go further on this point, but I do sense that there is more to be explore here, much more, and perhaps I will test that when my class turns to...yes, Plato's Allegory....next week.
3.0b -
ReplyDeleteAgain, I appreciate that the 2.0 commentary is citing the exact pages in "Being and Learning" that correspond to the original PPM. On this day in 2004 I pivoted to Arendt's "Crisis in Education," (hence the aforementioned coincidence, as, apparently, on this day in 2014 I had just finished teaching "Crisis. As I go through this process a third time, I have to admit that I'm feeling slightly ambivalent about the continuity of the questions and interlocutors. I suppose that is what defines a career of scholarship. And perhaps the better description would be closer to home: the GD performing, with enthusiasm on both sides, yet another "Big River" 20+ years after first performing it live!). Arendt's "Crisis" will be a major focus of my Routledge book, and somewhere in the notebook I've been keeping in anticipation of the writing that will get underway in a little over a month, I wrote that the "Crisis" essay will be my Polaris. Above in my 2.0 commentary I write that Arendt's distinction is the reverse of mine: she emphasizes "education" in the way I emphasize "learning." And as I've noted in at least 2 papers on Arendt - one that was published as a chapter in a book on Arendt, "Thinking in Dark Times: Learning to Repair and Renew Our Common World," 'Hannah Arendt on Educational Thinking and Practice in Dark Times (eds. Veck and Gunter. Bloomsbury: 2020) -- Arendt was emphatic with her message to teachers: don't teach students the art of living, teach them to care for the common world. Translation: prepare them to engage with the world, and emphasize that they have the power to make a difference (to initiate, to begin, etc.), and thus don't teach them the Stoic belief that they can only care for themselves because they are powerless to control anything beyond themselves. In the chapter I wrote, I read Arendt against herself, and suggested that we should take an ontological approach to teaching the world, which is to say, teaching it precisely as the Stoics, and before them, Heraclitus, understood it: as an ever changing phenomenon. Arendt's response is that what I am describing is not the "world" in the way she is describing it. World is that which remains (relatively) stable, and what makes it possible for the plurality of humans to come together. The world is one, we are many. And it is only in relation to each singular one of us that it appears different. And that is significant for Arendt. And that is what is not occurring the cave, where the unilocular dominates: all perceive the same things, and perceive them in the same way, or are encouraged by one another to perceive them alike. This is why the one who is freed is perceived by the others as "damaged" when he returns. Why? Because he literally can not see, his eyes not yet (re)adjusted to the darkness, and perhaps 'damaged' beyond repair. For Arendt, the world is what draws us together but also keeps us apart in our singularity. The same world appearing in different ways, so, in a sense, a world that is always appearing as different appears changed or altered in some ways? Not necessarily. We can agree that it is the same...reading, for example...that we are taking up in common. But it doesn't follow that the different and unique interpretations yield a different world, or one that is changed? Or does it? In what sense does it remain "the same"? In the sense that it is not wholly different. Same reading, yes? Yes! But also not the same because the meaning I made from the reading is quite different from your's and your's, etc. The text now appears "different" but not "other". And that is the crux of the matter: difference is not synonymous with alterity. The same can appear as different. But the same can not appear as other.