“Cultivation
of the open ground via learning is another way of describing the making of
learning as the making of culture. Poiein is making, forming, and building
of the community (koinonia). Now, as a mimetic re-presentation of the
organic totality, the formation of the
learning community is human working out of gathering (legein) of Logos via
human dia-logos.” OPM
235(36), October 7th
“…the
meditative thinking that arises from abiding in media res gathers one into primordial koinonia…” OPM 240(41),
October 12th
“From his
mountain cave Zarathustra descends ‘overflowing with wisdom’, ready to gather a
community (koinonia), ready to enter
into a fellowship.” OPM 239(40), October 11th
“The
discovery of koinonia seems to
represent an important turning point for me this semester. And the lecture itself, with its emphasis on
the ‘educational’ question…definitely a turning point with respect to
identifying myself as a philosopher of education. So there it is! Koinonia,
the learning community, the studio of learning.” OPM
241(42), October 13th
“..the
question taken up in the course of study on the learning community is “What is
the distinct koinonia of [X] learning
community?” OPM
241(42), October 13th
These fragments from my commentaries related to koinonia begin the writing/thinking today. Indeed, before I revisit the meditation from
this day ten years ago, I want to make note today (a day after announcing the focus of my forthcoming
sabbatical) of what I had not even considered when I came to recognize, through
Heraclitus, the gathering of thinking, or what is common (koinon) to all: the
communal/gathering spirit (koinonia)
of the learning community. Again, I
‘discovered’ κοινωνία
(koinonia) by chance a few weeks ago
in the 11th hour of my lecture prep when doing some etymological
research on Heraclitus' Κοινόν
(common) from fragment 91. The etymological
work lead me to a concordance resource, where I ‘discovered’ that κοινωνία
appears throughout the Bible, specifically in the Gospels and Acts, describing
the gathering of the community of the faithful, and the presencing of the Holy
Spirit in all living beings. I thought
this was interesting, and had planned during my lecture to present this post-Heraclitean history of koinonia. I did mention it in passing during the
lecture, and also in my section discussions, but didn’t do much more with that
post-history. All that to
say that today, after announcing my sabbatical focus, I did a quick
search of koinonia just to see what
titles would come up in the marketplace of books. I was surprised and even
startled to see that almost all of the titles were coming from the religious
studies crowd, and were written for the general audience. Did I miss or mis-understand something? Does koinonia
only have meaning within the bible studies discourse? Perhaps.
But that makes my use of it counter-cultural in ways that I had not
imagined. However, when I turned from
the marketplace to the library catalog I discovered a title by Cornelius
Castoriadis, Figures of the Thinkable,
which includes a chapter on koinonia, and also on poiesis, polis, psyche, and
logos! Needless, to say, I downloaded the available
pdf of the book, and requested a copy via interlibrary loan. Castoriadis is himself a ‘figure of thinking’
for me, and a mysterious and dare I say exotic one. He was the first of the fashionable names
being thrown around at the New School when I attended my first grad course with
Agnes Heller in the summer of 1988, weeks after I had completed my philosophy
degree at Fordham. I can’t recall if we
read anything by Castoriadis, but I do recall one student who spoke often of him,
and with such great interest that I felt compelled to take him up. I did, but without connecting, as I had, at
the time, nothing in common with Castoriadis.
But, today, I discovered the common (koinon)
I have with him.
* * *
In yesterday’s commentary I wrote of the mimetic event happening in the learning community: “We re-member one an-other…this is
the work of the learning community, and this is why it is a mimetic undertaking: we copy the
original investiture, we imitate the sparing, by conserving (the person) the
new in each and everyone of us. We
receive the presencing of the present, the offering of the advent.” [Mimesis
is fundamental to my understanding of learning as poiein (making), and much commentary has been written that includes
mimesis. Gathering all the fragments may or may not
reveal some coherence of meaning. That
remains to be seen when this project is completed in precisely four
months.] The highlighted ‘re-membering’
denotes ‘formation’ as well as ‘gathering together’ of each in their
singularity, and the whole as a community of learning. Each part as a being and all together as a
whole are re-membered. Memory as receptive gathering is a way to
think the interplay of human logos as legein.
This play happens as dialogue (dia
logos).
Thinking in terms of Auseinandersetzung (confrontation, engagement,
discussion), the re-membering that gathers dialogue is understood to involve
‘risk taking’: “learners are those who abide within the poetic dwelling and
risk the hospitality that welcomes the encounter with its root…Being’s investiture.”(10/14/04 BL 239) The ‘risk’ is not so much in the welcoming of
the other, which is, anyway, much too passive a way to describe what is
happening here with the mimetic
gathering into being. Rather, the risk
is felt and experienced in the disclosure, the unconcealment, the coming into
being. This is the event of learning as
abiding in the flux: “no one is capable of remaining as they once
were…Perspectives altered, paradigms shifted, the revolutionary force of the
novel, natality, overwhelms and inundates.”(10/14/04 BL
239) The temporality of the learning
event reveals the mimetic work as a constant unveiling of the community and those
who compose it. No one remains <the
same> as they once were <had been>.
The advent of the adventure is precarious. The coming forth of being involves risk. Why?
Is it the chaos felt in the uncertainty? “The un-bounded take the risk
and venture into the unknown.” (10/14/04 BL
239)
In what
sense ‘unknown’? To think this ‘unknown’
is to think the temporality of learning, which is to think the happening
unconcealment as always granted by the place opened by the withdrawal of
Being. The unknown is revealed in the
mystery of the withdrawal, the gap opened up between things, and a gap that
appears in the cracks within the erstwhile solid whole of identity. ‘We’ become many in the course of
learning. Thus, the risk of learning
happens with the un-binding of the self, which has been discussed since the
beginning of these meditation. But
here, for the first time, there is an abiding in that place (time and space)
in-between ‘self’ and ‘self’. There is
a radical experience happening here with the releasement into the absent, as we are “drawn
into the withdrawal of Being’s essential sway…seized by the draft…of freedom…this
ek-static event.” (10/14/04 BL 239)
3.0 (Monday, Portland, ME) - Awesome day. Completed 5 pages of typed edits, which, from a quantitative measure appears paltry. But from a qualitative/existential perspective was a fun grind. Writing a book like "LEARN" is challenging. It's dense and there are a minimum of poetic flourishes of the sort that populate the OPMs and the 2.0. I'll share a fragment that shows continuity with the above. But, first, the citation of two fragments from above that resonate with "LEARN": 1) We receive the presencing of the present, the offering of the advent, 2) Thus, the risk of learning happens with the un-binding of the self, which has been discussed since the beginning of these meditation. But here, for the first time, there is an abiding in that place (time and space) in-between ‘self’ and ‘self’. There is a radical experience happening here with the releasement into the absent, as we are “drawn into the withdrawal of Being’s essential sway…seized by the draft…of freedom…this ek-static event.” (10/14/04 BL 239)
ReplyDeleteThe force of the principle of insufficiency has moved the student from the onset of her philosophical study. The initial periagôgé can be described as the teacher’s conveying of the principle, the invitation to a kind of learning that is inspired by incompleteness, an invitation to take up the open-endedness of philosophical thinking. But if this principle has been present from the onset, what is distinct about the transitional moment that brings about an awareness that something is missing, and, further, compels the decision to join with others? Blanchot suggests the following: “The awareness of the insufficiency arises from the fact that it puts itself in question, which question needs the other or another to be enacted.” (UC, 5) He then cites Bataille: “What I am thinking I have not thought all alone.”(UC, 6)
ReplyDelete3.0c [another fragment from "LEARN" part 3 discussion]: The provecho is the collection of highlights from the text, those fragments that together form what Nietzsche calls the revered objects. The sharing of the provecho does not elicit a contest, debate, nor a war of words. Nothing is being asserted, there is no thesis, proposition or argument. Rather, the highlighted fragment is akin to the proverbial opinion that each and every student is “entitled” to express. Only, the stakes are even lower than that because the highlights are not quite the student’s own. Rather, they are whatever has appeared as essential to them. The “something” that appeared as essential is always the partiality of the phenomenological reception. This reception, as Arendt reminds us, is “what dokei moi, that is, what appears to me.”(PP, 80) Importantly for Arendt what dokei moi, what appears to me as essential because it captivates me and grabs my attention as significant, is a particular aspect of the world, which is to say, a specific and concrete part of that which is always already shared by everyone. The world is what is koinon or common to all. With repair and renewal the world endures. The world, which is the product of human hands, is what draws us together and at the same time distinguishes us. We are differentiated by our positionality, and the plurality that persists is grounded in the diverse and singular ways the world opens up and reveals significance to us. Within the educational situation the focus is placed upon the work of art, the text, which Arendt describes as the most pure and clear way that “the sheer durability of the world of things appear…It is as though worldly stability had become transparent in the work of art…something immortal achieved by human hands, has become tangibly present, to shine and to be seen, to sound and be heard, to speak and to be read.”(HC, 168) The Socratic teacher, who is letting learning happen, has the responsibility to not only listen as the students present their dokei moi, but also to lead the response by asking questions that will remind the student that the highlight that “appears-to-me” is a part of the world that is always already shared. The discussion that unfolds is thus not a mere sharing of highlights but a building of community whose foundation is the common world.
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