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The primary purpose of liberal education presupposes the accomplishment, at least to some degree, of the secondary purpose. The conventional Socratic seminar seems to have this function of creating a space for the mysterious undisclosedness of the good to show itself. It demands a careful letting-things-be, which at times brings those bold enough to venture it and patient enough to endure it into an acute sensitivity to the good not yet revealed in things. The traditional concept of a disciplinary major also contributes to this sensitivity, by bringing the student closer to the crisis or crises at the boundaries of his own elected discipline. Because the approach to this purpose involves discovering limitations, ambiguities, and cross-purposes in the synoptic framework determined by philosophy, it requires that this framework be already articulated as clearly and completely as possible. Unlike the secondary purpose, the primary purpose cannot be executed according to any preconceived plan. Its success cannot be measured. Indeed, it can easily be faked by combining a cynical attitude towards human endeavor with a habitual lip service to pious truisms. It requires patient courage, sober hope, and a good will. We call it "thinking."
Two notable consequences follow from the above thesis:
- For the purposes of liberal education, a curriculum cannot be defined by a selection of texts or even by a selection of disciplines, but by a certain way of dealing with all disciplines. This result imposes a challenging requirement on liberal education that it incorporate not only the traditionally liberal studies, but all dimensions of human relatedness to the good, ranging from agriculture to music. On the other hand, it eliminates the need for much vagueness and embarrassed silence on the question of what qualifies a field of study to be included in a complete liberal education.
- The two purposes of liberal education articulate the means for the accomplishment of its task into two distinct activities, which must always be held apart. The attempt to construct interdisciplinary confrontations when the disciplines themselves are not yet clear can only issue in confusion or cynicism regarding philosophical reasoning. This prematurely poetic form of education amounts to a beautiful invitation to the skeptical ersatz thoughtfulness which enables many a liberal arts major to pass for educated.
I want to respond to each item of this proposal/thesis but before I say anything, I must say that I am struck by the following coincidence: both u and I have not posted for a great while, and now, not only have we broken the silence on the same day, but we have used the same basic image to adorn the post. Did you see my post beforehand or is this a genuine coincidence? Just wondering - but I will respond to the substance of ur post soon...
ReplyDeleteI was wondering the same thing about your post!
ReplyDeleteI suppose my post could plausibly be construed as a response to yours; I would seem to be pointing out what might be overlooked by someone reading your post: that belonging to the "present age" is a function not of being alive during a certain iteration of the earth's orbit around the sun, but of being alive to a certain situation of spirit. I can have "nothing to understand" only in the context of a thoroughgoing negative relationship to nothing, such as Heidegger attributes to scientific thought in "What is Metaphysics?" That is, I must be educated scientifically first, within the first, negating or rather refraining sense of the relation to "beings themselves—and beyond that nothing." Only as a refrain to this relation, as completely concretized as possible, can I encounter "beyond that nothing" in its positive sense. Otherwise I achieve only a spurious post-modernism which fails to have thought modernism through and therefore collapses into a paper-thin mysticism, even worse than the spurious post-religious modernism which Kierkegaard decried in an age too eager to "go further."
I look forward to your reply!
"belonging to the "present age" is a function not of being alive during a certain iteration of the earth's orbit around the sun, but of being alive to a certain situation of spirit. I can have "nothing to understand" only in the context of a thoroughgoing negative relationship to nothing, such as Heidegger attributes to scientific thought in "What is Metaphysics?"
ReplyDeleteThe dichotomy you want to draw sharply between a vorhanden matter of fact like the chronological account of the earth's planetary relation to the sun and what you call a "situation of spirit" is not one I can endorse without being troubled --all the more so because this planetary relation itself becomes observable only by way of that "situation of spirit" that you identify as the one Heidegger decried in "What is Metaphysics". Of course the occasion of that essay was Heidegger's address to an audience of scientists regarding the dire situation of the historically confined life the university, the essence of which had "atrophied." This loss of essence and uprootedness of thought culminate in the inheritance which definitive of the present age according to what is metaphysics, namely the unheeded and blindly inherited vor-verstaendnis of Nothing. But you raise the point: is this a function of chronological time? Or to ask in more relevant terms, is it inevitable that the university, or even a plan for liberal education, take into account this impovershed inheritance? On this point Heidegger, at least, is unequivocal: Absolutely. However what is not unequivocal is the fact that this "thoroughgoing negative relationship to nothing" is indeed negative --even as it is overlooked by the sciences. The possible non-negativity of such a relation therefore is not due merely to man's spiritual positioning, but to Being itself.
So to come back to your distinction and to clarify what I mean, there is a relation of this inheritance of Nothing to history and time, although history, understood as Seynsgeschichte, is precisely a movement that grants the possibility of a planetary relation of the earth to the sun, so the latter belongs to the former and is not indicated by it.On the other hand, this history is not the result of human caprice or of education, scientific of otherwise. It belongs rather to a condition which precedes man and enables world --namely the sending of Seyn itself.
ReplyDeleteIt is for this reason that if I "have nothing to understand" I am yet still not unequivocally --in this case "negatively" --related to nothing. My post wanted to point out that ambiguity, one which is in various shapes and forms always the fulcrum or hinge on which Heidegger's thought swings, whether it regards Alltaeglichkeit or Gestell or das Geviert. So I guess what I am saying is that just as much as the relation to the nothing is necessary and historical, so too is it also ambiguous, i.e. possible. We can no more be unrelated to nothing than we can be exempt from taking Being for granted in one degree or another of seinsvergessenheit.
ReplyDeleteI rather admire your thesis. Allow me two questions and a comment.
ReplyDeleteQuestion 1: Do you expect much consensus among educators on this thesis? I don't expect that you do, but I have to ask.
The disagreement would be directed mainly at two points, first, the mysteriousness of the good, and second, the inclusion of all disciplines. Educators, it seems to me, largely disbelieve that there is any mystery when they speak theoretically about education. There is only what we don't know "yet"--a modern supposition, I know, not a postmodern one, and one not at all universally shared by those who speak about their historical practice in education. All the same, you may find dissenters from that sector.
By the same token, many of the same dissenters will theorize that as mystery is not needed, specialization is, and so they will abuse your thesis for its very liberality in the inclusion of all disciplines. Also, prudence will be supposed itself to be mysterious, unless it is, as you say, measurable.
Comment: The way of dealing with the disciplines would likely lead to something like what we have now--not a definite selection of texts but a somewhat definite selection with outlying texts. This selection would be something arrived at by liberal arts educators, not a point of departure, but it would be there.
Question 2: You keenly express the state into which students may slouch without the formal structure of education. How do you intend to achieve both purposes of the task of educating free men? The two distinct activities that must be held apart may be held apart temporally or logically. Temporal separation seems easier, and in a way more logical, and yet something inclines me to say that the activities must be concurrent.
Rolf,
Deleteregarding "comment:" I should hope that this approach would lead to more than a selection of texts. I believe that a curriculum should be primarily a code of method rather than a set of readings. A strong acquaintance with a canon of texts will be very useful to educators following this code, but it must be tapped flexibly.
Regarding Question 2, I believe that during a student's maturation it is the function of formal education to establish the elements, while an intimate understanding of the psychic condition of a student (such as an attentive parent might have) is the only warrant for any activity respecting mystery. As the student reaches regions of self which put him out of the comprehension of his family (and it is to be hoped that his formal education will accomplish this excess at some point), he will have need of such formally constructed encounters with the limits of human wisdom as the Socratic seminar.
As for Question 1, I only hope that consensus (not universal but local) regarding the purpose and means of education come to be regarded as a value, even a requirement of effective education.
I ought add that, in spite of all my fussing about the clarification of the your comment, Amos, I too, like Rolf, admire your thesis. I appreciate at least what I understand of its intention. Rolf was more concerned about the possible troubles of, let us say, its practical implementation. For me though, it present a problem in the realm of thought. The problem is this: what fundamental understanding --or if you wish "philosophy" --is this exposition of the aims of liberal education really emerging from? It blatantly invokes the "ideas of the Good" --but why? Why is the Good an Idea? I have also indicated in an earlier KTL post's comments why I do not think the idea of the good grounds science or the "freedom of science" although I cannot say with certainty what you mean by this phrase (I would consider it in terms of offnung and lichtung as the freedom that enables the hermeneutical interpretation at the basis of all possible science. Let us say the freedom of the "as such" for short.) Now I would say this is the Platonic element at work in your thesis.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, superficially at least, your emphasis on the "perfect operation of prudence" seems almost like an Aristotelian safety net laid out underneath the uncompromising heights of Platonic eidetics (as can, for my purposes, be sufficiently recalled by the all too well known slogan "knowledge is virtue").
Finally I see some version of Heideggerian Seinlassen invoked, which I do not regard as 'compatible' with either of the other two basic understandings (Platonic eidetics and phronetical phenomenon as Aristotle's ethics expounds them). A good reason I would offer for my suggestion of this incompatibility goes back to the question of a freedom that is not condition by an idea or ideas of the good.
Having said that as straightforwardly as possible, I just want to reassure that my intention in making these remarks is to gain a better understanding of what your thesis means and what grounds it.
Pseudonoma,
DeleteI had a great reply written to this comment, but my son erased it while I was wiping poop of my daughter's feet. I'll get back to this later!