PPM24 continues the return to Socrates. This part of the meditations would later be demarcated as the second chapter of 'Being and Learning,' which is on Socrates. In PPM24 I discuss an important moment in Plato's Symposium, when Socrates recounts the teaching he received from Diotima, which he calls the "philosophy of Love." Importantly, in summarizing this teaching he was offered he uses the logic of giving, which has been the focus of the past two meditations, when he says, "This gentlemen was the doctrine of Diotima. I was convinced, and in that conviction I try to bring others to the same creed, and to convince them that, if we are to make this gift our own, Love will help our mortal nature more than all the world." What happens here is that the mutual exchange happening in the relationship of Being and learning is now understood to be grounded in love. Is this only a human construct? Can we describe the offering made by Being's presencing/excess as an expression of love? It seems this is precisely what Socrates is doing, and what's fascinating is that from one day to the next we have encountered a Socrates who is motivated by perplexity and doubt brought on by a message from the gods, and then a Socrates who is totally convicted after having received a teaching from Diotima, a fellow mortal, who, it seems, he did not question. Such is the way of learning when it is moved by love.
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.
(20/10 yrs later) - in this 3.0 commentary I'm struck by the "humanism" of my original meditation. On the one hand, I am perhaps even more committed today to the power of love, generally speaking, as the binding/bolding force that gathers learning, especially dialogic learning that cultivates a learning community. And despite the apparent claim by Nietzsche that Socrates "failed" because he lacked love, I'm inclined to hear the voice of Socrates that Plato conveys in his "Symposium," which is also the one Arendt hears when she claims Socrates "tried to make friends of the Athenians." In this case, his "failure" was not a failure to bring forth the principle of Philia (love of friends), which he did, but to see this principle become the organizing one amongst the Athenians. But despite that, I'm less inclined to project onto Being a human principle, despite my inclination to make the move that has been a central core tenet of many of the world's religions: God is Love. That is not to say that "Being" as I am using this category is synonym for "God." At time during the original meditations, and then in the final publication of 'Being and Learning,' I hint at the figurative or metaphoric analogy of the learning from Being's presencing as not unlike the feeling (sense) of a deep spiritual experience, i.e., a mystical experience. When those moments arrive I will make a point of addressing them!
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