OPM 130 Day three at Pine Cone Cabin, Tremont, Mt.
Desert Island/Acadia. Today was bit of milestone for my son, Jaime, who is
4.5 years old. He hiked a relatively
challenging trail, Jordan Cliffs, in Acadia.
It was inspiring to see him with so much confidence and even a sense of
pride in his accomplishment.
OPM
130 is a departure from the overly repetitive writing, and a turn happens with
the move to Aristotle and ‘wonder.’ OPM
130: “Wonder remains at the heart of learning.
It is not a phenomenon that is
‘overcome’ in the pursuit of knowledge and the love of wisdom..Wonder
identifies the pathos of
learning…Thus wonder conveys the destiny of learning, the destination unfolding
upoin the path of silence.”
The chapter that is organized from
this material is called ‘Aristotle’s Critique,’ and the ‘criticism’ is
introduced with his distinction between art and experience: “For men of experience
that that the thing is so, but don not know why, while the others [artists]
know the ‘why’ and the cause.”(Meta,
980) It follows then that “artists can
teach, and men of mere experience cannot.” (Meta,
981) With this distinction Aristotle lays
the foundation for a tradition in western philosophy that diminishes the value
of experiential knowledge. And here we
see another example of the discourse I discussed in my reflection of OPM 129,
the one that distinguishes between the cyclical unchanging Natural world, and
the freedom of human consciousness. The
‘men of experience’ are those who, like Nature, are immersed in the
process. The ‘artist’ is the one who
remains ‘above’ and from this distance is able to perceive the causes behind
the processes: “therefore we think art more truly knowledge than experience is;
for artists can teach, and men of mere experience cannot.”(Meta, 981)
All of these citations set the terms
for important contrast between Aristotle (who is the ‘artist’ par excellence)
and Socrates who is famous for having said ‘my wisdom is certainly a most human
kind, for all I know is that I know nothing at all.’ Of course, what Aristotle it calling ‘artist’
is what we would today call ‘scientist.’
And what I would call the maker of art is one who has, indeed, mastered
a technique and developed a unique style with that technique. But the making of art is much closer to
experience, and the artist is the one who is immersed in their relation with
the material they are working with. The
artist is not one who is seeking to give reasons, nor explain causes. Rather, they find themselves ‘at work’ when
they are in the flow of art making, and in this sense, the making of art is an
example of meditative thinking.
3.0 (Sunday, Portland, ME) - Last day of Kat's visit. She's the first and oldest of the three kids. Turned 30 on May 21st! Last night we were out having dinner when her younger brother, the above-mentioned Jaime, now very much the 14 year old, took off and stretched out those hiking legs he earned some ten years ago up in Acadia! The Portland Metro provided an assist. Be careful if and when you get your young children on the hiking trails at an early age! ;-)
ReplyDeleteI had recalled Aristotle's distinction differently, and remembered it as influenced by Plato's critique of artists, the one he offers in "The Ion," where Socrates reveals the rhapsode Ion to be an outstanding performer who knows nothing about why he can perform so effectively. In fact, my description of "captivation" is very much borrowed from Plato's description of the artist who is caught up in inspiration. But for Aristotle the "artist" is the the master of a technē. The one who has technē understands the "causes" of how things come into being. And can share that knowledge with others. Aristotle's "artist" is a "technician" or what we would today call a master craftsman. In this sense the teacher is an artist, and can show others how to learn, or how to study, and in the case of teacher-education, can show others how to teach, which is the same as "making" learners. The state of wonder is the origin or the starting point for learning. It's the source of the inspiration that gets learning underway. But that spark is not unlike the one produced by the flint stone. Metaphorically, the spark can be placed within the spirit of the learner or outside. It's obvious and common to place inspiration within the learner. To say it is outside is to imply that there is some kind of dialectic at work. It also implies that inspiration is not the captivation that Plato describes. Aristotle's artist maintains some distance from the source of the inspiration. Because they are a master craftsman they are guided by the knowledge of technique. Inspiration sparks the idea for the creation of a new work. But the crafting that brings about that work is the same technique. The same process is followed. This is an entirely Aristotelian description. Knowledge is the understanding of how things work, how a particular form comes into being. Each and every being has a telos, or end point, and the artist as technician understands the process of reaching that end point. Aristotle offers us the rare example the teacher for who process and product have equal value.