"Truth is Learning." So ends PPM52. This aphorism, which appears on p. 85 of Being and Learning, has to be read into or alongside or within the context of the aphorism that appears in chapter 3, p. 63: "The essence of Learning is Freedom." Learning and Truth are thus interchangeable, and as I try to say in my post-reading commentary, 'truth' here is best understood as 'reality,' or 'facticity' because I am writing in the wake of the excerpt from the Republic, where Plato insists that each and everyone of us "possesses the power of learning the truth and the organ to see it with." There is thus a reality of our capacity to learn, and this learning is our enactment of freedom. Freedom is actual, but must be actualized; it is offered to us but we must take up the offering. What remains 'unknown,' or in the realm of the speculative is the art of turning us around to perceive the offering, and to receive the offering, and to take up the offering of freedom. This is why Plato says in the same excerpt "Hence there may well be an art who aim would be to effect this very thing, the conversion of the soul..." For me, this is where the opening happens for the experiment that produces the writing I am commemorating this year: 'there may well be an art...' Indeed, and if there is, what would it be? Or because it is an art, what are the ways in which we can practice it? And what are the materials we would use for such an art? The techniques? And all that we could make? The actuality of our capacity to learn are empowered by the possibility of the art of teaching. So too the actuality of the offering of possibility. And here is where we understand how Learning is Truth, and The essence of Learning is Freedom. Learning is the reality of our capacity to receive and perceive our freedom. Thus freedom is the essence of learning. And this is old school metaphysics a la Aristotle: freedom is the essence, the form of learning, what makes it to be. Without freedom, no learning.
The highlight of PPM52: "Learning, as a purposeful wandering, is thus a kind of 'language,' a form of communication not unlike the distinct dialect of a region of neighborhood. We often hear folks speak with an accent (a particular flavor), or to use familiar words in unfamiliar ways, and we immediately recognize the presence of a dialect. Evocative speech is something akin to the dialect of Learning, which suggests it is a form we could acquire and use as 'one' way of comporting ourselves. But this point begs to be unpacked, because it seems all too easy for one to feign the 'accent.' Or is it?"
The highlight of PPM52: "Learning, as a purposeful wandering, is thus a kind of 'language,' a form of communication not unlike the distinct dialect of a region of neighborhood. We often hear folks speak with an accent (a particular flavor), or to use familiar words in unfamiliar ways, and we immediately recognize the presence of a dialect. Evocative speech is something akin to the dialect of Learning, which suggests it is a form we could acquire and use as 'one' way of comporting ourselves. But this point begs to be unpacked, because it seems all too easy for one to feign the 'accent.' Or is it?"
3.0 - At JFK, evening of April 4th, and an early spring storm has knocked out power back home. SO in order to stay on track I'm writing my commentary in advance.
ReplyDeleteFirst, revisiting he aphorism "Truth is Learning." So ends PPM52. As I wrote in 2.0 above: "This aphorism, which appears on p. 85 of Being and Learning, has to be read into or alongside or within the context of the aphorism that appears in chapter 3, p. 63: "The essence of Learning is Freedom." " Today, 20/10 years later I would qualify this and emphasize the dynamic of learning, which is a practice (dialectical process), and as such Freedom is the existential 'thing' made, the modality enacted by poetic praxis. In this sense "truth" is a quality of poetic praxis that we might call "authenticity" or "real," and in doing so we remain within the boundaries of Plato's Allegory, which is the text that PPM52 is engaging. The thrust of the Allegory is to denote the psuedo (false or fake) in contrast to what is real or authentic. The shadows on the cave wall are shapes produced by representations of "things" in the world. The Allegory is parable that is teaching by analogy, and the analogic is itself what we need to think about - the legitimacy of mimesis. But the real and authentic is intended to interrupt the chain of resemblances. Freedom is the realization of singularity, or what Arendt calls the emergence of natality in the world. If we can begin because we are beginners, our capacity to begin, to initiate emerges when we enact freedom. This could happen with making, with the making of art. And here is why Plato's identification of teaching as the "art of turning" paideia as periagogē resonates, because it indicates teaching as the art of enabling the realization of singularity. Here we can hear Socrates describing his dialogic practice as the art of maieutics (midwifery -- Socrates' mother was a midwife). Arendt emphasizes Socrates "delivering truth into the world" or helping others give birth to their opinions, which is the doxoi moi, the world as it is appearing to me. Here the emphasis is not on the 'truth' as veritas or correctness, but as authenticity, as the effort to be honest, or to receive the world as it is without filtering it through our own expectations about and desires for the way things "should be." If Truth is Learning, then learning is that modality of honesty, of keeping it real, perhaps what Anzaldua is describing when she describes receiving all that is there without judgment or fear. I suspect Nietzsche was after this when he describes the Free Spirits, but also when he described the need to use the hammer, which I have always understood as both the hammer that can build, that is needed to sculpt, and the hammer that strikes the strings in the piano. Perhaps the last is important for contrasting the authentic sound of the acoustic piano with the simulated sound produced by an electric keyboard or even a computer. The art of turning uses the hammer to strike the student, and in this sense teaching is the art of making music!