It’s
somewhat trivial, but, nevertheless, I have to note the coincidence between the
where I am in enumeration of the commentaries (OPM 266/267) and the pagination
of that same material as it was published in Being and Learning (pp. 266-267).
Just a coincidence, which I noticed the other day, and I wanted to make
a note of it. There’s nothing
philosophical to be derived from the coincidence. Just the fact of the coincidence.
What
isn’t coincidental is that the meditation from this day is one that offers an
intense expression of the learning community as a totalizing situation. The past month’s thinking/writing under the
influence of Heraclitus and the koinon
initially lead me to emphasize the learning community as the gathering of the
many (ta panta). But the discovery of koinonia was a major turning, so much that two days ago when I was
writing my commentary I described it as taking me all the way back to the
originary question of the turn – the education turning on of thinking.
With the discovery of koinonia, however,
this return to the originary question has felt like a conversion in the sense
of the Latin conversion, convers to
be ‘turned around’. That is, with koinonia I have been turned around to
the originary educational question of turning on thinking and have re-turned to the learning community with an
entirely new understanding of the force of this gathering as a spiritual power
that is uniquely capable of effacing us ourselves and, together with others,
overcoming ourselves (both in the sense of experience a vertical transcendence
above ourselves -- what DuBois allows us to call the Wagnerian
altitude and Nietzsche six thousand feet about the self -- and the horizontal
transcendence toward the past and future, and the other. With the horizontal transcendence we re-turn
and reconnect with history, but also leap into an unknown future with faith,
hope in the possibility of justice and freedom).
The
conversion to the originary question of education re-turns me to the learning
community as a totalizing experience.
Totalizing in the sense that when Heraclitus says “Thinking is common to
all,” the ho koinos (the common) is what gathers everything. There is nothing outside what is gathered by Logos, which is to say nothing exists
outside of this gathering [this is not the moment to take up the question of
the xenos in Plato’s Sophist
who overturns ‘father Parmenides’
logic by compelling us to think the
existence of nothing]. Here the concern
is the totalizing force of Logos as
what gathers, and what is thought when the originary question of education is
taken up. A concern because of the
intersubjectivity it presumes is one that demolishes the liberal democratic
modality of subjectivity. A concern
because the fellowship of koinonia
demands a diminishment of this subject into “the co-construction of a common
world.”(BL 266) Subjectivity is replaced by
inter-subjectivity, individuality by friendship. Citing Arendt, again, on Socrates I
emphasize why the koinos is the world
built by dialogue, a dialogue that is inconclusive, open-ended, and, because it
is the work of poiesis it makes a
work of art that is mearningful in-and-for-itself. Arendt: “It is obvious that this kind of
dialogue, which doesn’t need a conclusion in order to be meaningful, is most
appropriate for and most frequently shared by friends. Friendship to a large extent, indeed,
consists of this kind of talking about something that friends have in
common. By talking about what is between
them, it becomes ever more common to them.”(cited 11/8/04 BL 266)
That
citation of Arendt coupled with Heraclitus brings us to the learning community
as the totalizing experience of friendship, where we become, as Paul puts it,
slaves to one another. The
uncompromising bonds of friendship is a bondage of love. What is between is what is common, and
dialogue makes it ever more common. And
what is common is learning because the art work that is made is a performance,
which may or may not be recorded (documented for posterity) because it is first
and foremost “an event, a cultural happening. Learning is the performance
that happens in the dialogic event.”(11/8/04 BL 267)
Totalization,
totality and totalizing are all forms of koinos
(the common) in the sense of koinonia
(community qua fellowship). Dialogic
learning as a “performance is a totality
of voices, a ‘chorus.’ This totality…is
the re-collection of the originary dispensation [the rhythm of the heart] the
re-membering of the many into a one…”(11/8/04 BL 267) Friendship is
total, a complete releasement of the self into the other by way of agape (self-less love). “…then do we hear the hidden harmony that
appears with freedom…”(11/8/04 BL
267)
From 2.25.15 "Sentence and Fragments of Being and Learning" blog: Originary thinking in terms of identifying learning as originating is announced in the fragment: "more poetry, less prose...", which is a play on Lyotard's “Poiein, c’est faire,” poiein means to make. The move to techne was initated on OPM 270(271), November 12th (2004 & 2014) Meditation, Being and Learning, pp. 270-271, and then was worked out further when I recalled the necessary coupling of techne with praxis, which is to say the need to qualify praxis with techne. And today I am interested in a further qualification of word that does not once appear in Being and Learning, nor in 2.0: Phronesis.
ReplyDeletePhronesis (φρὀνησισ), is Attic Greek word for a type of wisdom -- thus, falling within the set of categories that are held together by thinking, which I identifying with poetic [the most general way of using the term that identifies learning as crafting, creative making, production as opposed to consumption of knowledge]. Other words: praxis, techne, sophia, nous, episteme, mousike. This is the initial way that I would organize a fundamental set of philosophical terms.
It was on Monday, when preparing for my Attic Greek class, that I ‘read’ for the first time in the ‘original’ Heraclitus fragment “Thinking is common to all,” and discovered (or encountered) for the first time that the word he uses in that fragment is phronesis (φρὀνησισ). Thus the need to further qualify praxis, which is to say, to work out further learning as originating, as poetic, and thus to work ‘more poetry, less prose’ [Poiein, c’est faire] by returning to Aristotle on phronesis (φρὀνησισ), which is precisely what I intend to do next week with my Intro to Philo Ed class.
So in terms of 2.0, the place to begin further work on poiein as techne and praxis are the commentaries that take up Heraclitus’ fragment: “Thinking is common to all.” And that work was initiated with OPM 266(267), November 8th (2004 & 2014) Meditation, Being and Learning, pp. 266-267
3.0 (Friday, Portland, ME) I enjoy encountering, unexpected commentary, like the one above. This one brings back mixed feelings of my two semesters of Attic Greek. I learned enough to be able to decipher words, but didn't advance much further, once again foiled by my kryptonite: grammatical tenses!
ReplyDelete*Coincidences are something I'm fascinated with. At some point I'd like to think/write more deeply on coincidence and synchronicity.
*Although it may not be a coincidence, the Arendt quotation cited on this day 20 years ago appears in "LEARN." That quotation, Arendt: “It is obvious that this kind of dialogue..." may be the one that has been used most consistently. The lecture where it appears was published in my alma mater's journal in the Spring of 1990. My advisor, Richard Bernstein, also had a piece in that issue, one that I had typed up as his research assistant. Here is it how it appears in "LEARN: "The coexistence of the principles of hospitality and equality provide the force that gathers the learners together into an experience of commonality. Each student arrives to the seminar room, and they are unique, each on their own journey of study. They are each different from one another, but also different from the teacher who, in that role, is distinct with respect to the responsibility they have in conducting the discussion. The teacher as the one who is responsible to conduct (guide) the discussion is the host, the one who embodies the hospitality (xenia) and expresses the amor fati that inspires the discussion. They arrive and share what has called out to them from the reading, and in this sharing what has arrived continues arriving into the presence of others who will have an experience of “friendship (camaraderie without preliminaries) vehiculated by the requirement of being there.”(UC, 32) Being there, present with others, they experience the particularity, partiality, and the collective plurality of the common text they have studied apart from one another. It is enough that they have arrived and shared what has appeared to them as significant. Being there listening openly and without judgment, and speaking without attempting to persuade. Being there thinking together with others, the discussion is autotelic (complete in itself). The discussion is an event, sui generis, and “ends” inconclusively, without a result, and “without project.” Learning for learning’s sake. This is the autotelic character of philosophical discussion. Arendt declares “it is obvious that this kind of dialogue, which doesn’t need a conclusion in order to be meaningful..."