Well burrowed, old mole!

I tell you this long story, friend Theaetetus, because I suspect, as indeed you seem to think yourself, that you are in labour-great with some conception. Come then to me, who am a midwife’s son and myself a midwife, and do your best to answer the questions which I will ask you. And if I abstract and expose your first-born, because I discover upon inspection that the conception which you have formed is a vain shadow, do not quarrel with me on that account, as the manner of women is when their first children are taken from them. For I have actually known some who were ready to bite me when I deprived them of a darling folly; they did not perceive that I acted from good will, not knowing that no god is the enemy of man-that was not within the range of their ideas; neither am I their enemy in all this, but it would be wrong for me to admit falsehood, or to stifle the truth.

—Socrates in Plato’s Theaetetus

           When we think about philosophical education, I shall argue, we also need to think about thinking. Thinking is the power whose exercise causes philosophy to exist, and thus must be taken into consideration when we ask about philosophical pedagogy.  Philosophers think, but thinking also takes place in life more generally: a novel or a painting, a film, a meeting, a relationship, a task or a night at a club all involve the exercise of thought: these also are stimulants to thought. Though thinking happens whether we teach it or not, pedagogical interventions can have an effect.  This intervention from philosophy is necessary because thinking is shaped by a general pedagogy of social exposure which involves powerful targeted interventions from other institutions.  Depending on which school of philosophy one affiliates oneself with, one will offer a formulation of this pedagogical exigency in different terms, but it will always be necessitated by these institutional pressures. It is the job of philosophical education to be a midwife to thought: to watch over and attend to the dangers that threaten the precarious moments of its birth.

1. What experiences are formative for the human person?

           There are two certainties in life: we think and we die. This brings about a tension which is important for people: thinking is infinite and inexhaustible, we, on the other hand, are finite. When we think, we participate in something whose full dimensions we can never fathom as individuals.  It can be imagined along the lines of what has been called infinite semiosis.  Augusto Ponzio explains infinite semiosis as the “unending chain of deferrals from one interpretant to another.” (Ponzio 2) Thus, it would be impossible for me, as for any other individual, to follow out the infinite chain of semiotic deferrals: I would die before coming to the end. This excess of semiosis over the individual leads him or her to refer to the community for the meaning of the series, but all that he or she can find there are “namings” based on arbitrary arrests of the process. Though infinite semiosis is a good clarifying analogy for the infinite process of thought, thinking is not semiosis—it is not just the action of signs and meaning.

        Every ‘semiotic process’ is a sort of tracing of an exercise of thought. This tracing is the best that people can do because pure thought is inexpressible. This tracing is accomplished through the imposition of what one might call a ‘logic’ or a ‘semiotic.’ When I say that a semiotic process traces an exercise of thought, this is not to be confused with a philosophy, if by philosophy we mean an explicit metaphysical system.  From this perspective, ‘philosophy’ is what happens when thinking stops–when there is an arrest and solidification of thought (Kuhn’s normal science is the result of a slowing down of thought). Thinking is formative for the human person, if that human person is so fortunate as to exercise thought and recognize its powers. Though it is tempting to claim that thought is the essence of the human person, or of philosophy, thought cannot be the essence of anything because thought itself is constitutively impure. If it should appear, it would always bring a necessary entourage of incompatible powers. Books are an exercise of thought, a situational/evential unity in a sense similar to Austin’s in his HTDTWW.

              Each exercise of thought reveals new abilities, in this sense, we can affirm that each act strengthens the power of thought.  In addition, through the constitutive impurity of thought, we can infer that the scope and power of the human body is generally augmented by each ‘exercise of thought.’ It is in this sense that thinking is formative for a human person.  It seems to follow that thought, as it grows more powerful, causes changes in relationships and emotions, broader changes in the style of a person’s life, and their social life more generally. Thought is impure, it always appears in relation to these ‘outside’ factors: whether it is dominated by them or dominates them is a historical question, a matter of chance.

1.1 Can those be taught? 

             Thinking is the social practice that individuates us. Much is made of the role of education in socialization, but not as much ink is spent on the role of education in the process of individuation. Thinking stands at the interface of the individual and the social, each act of thinking is uniformly perfect and singular. Thinking is never entirely conscious for the individual because it is social, it is never entirely conscious from a historical perspective because it is singular. Thinking is at the interface of the individual and the social, it is a power, it occurs whether it is explicitly instructed or not.  However, we can also say that thinking must be ‘taught’ if we regard social exposure as a pedagogy. Insofar as institutionalized instruction of various kinds participates in a general pedagogy of social exposure, it can exert force over thought, and participate in or appropriate it. This can also be said of books, political events, walks taken in mountains or cities, conversations and so on: without these different forces, thinking would not occur—thinking needs these external elements of its essence. Philosophical problems are examples of concentrated long term thinking, they reveal much about the true power of thought and can be a great stimulant to thought in its development. Philosophy is not unique in this distinction, but it consciously advances a noology, and compares images of thought. Philosophy has also developed models of the role that the structure of our thinking plays in constituting our experience of reality, it can teach us to recognize the needs of the understanding as they attempt to impose themselves on our experiences of reality.

2. What is the proper method and goal of a philosophical education?

            We can say that the goal of philosophy is thinking, if by goal we mean a qualitative transformation that something strives toward which gives life to it. In this sense, the goal of sport and war is victory—playing and fighting are aimed toward a future event of becoming victorious.  When the game ends or the battle subsides, the successful fighters or players become victors. When philosophical education ends, we hope that students will become thinkers. Philosophy and thinking are related yet opposed: because we are finite and we develop our symbolic systems as part of our political life, the infinite potentialities of thinking are named using philosophical concepts which are finite. If philosophy participates in thinking in the sense that it is a partial crystallization of an exercise of thought, philosophical education must address this history of thinking.  This is nothing very new, the history of philosophy has been a sort of longitudinal study of thinking through its exercise.  Philosophical education should prepare a person to study thought in this sense; however, ‘philosophical’ education would not be the whole story, as thought is necessarily impure in its exercise, a comprehensive method would also need to prepare a person to address this impurity in the exercise of thought. A proper philosophical education would be as Socrates was to thought: it would be a midwife. It would not be a healer, restoring normalcy to thought, but would aide thought in coming to birth.

           The distinction between thinking and philosophy is especially important when we discuss pedagogical method.  Thinking without the influence of some sort of ‘cultivation’ or ‘pedagogy’ is impossible due to the existence of an inescapable general exposure, and in this general exposure, philosophy has many formidable competitors for the attention of the public.  Advertising, medicine, ritualized time keeping and holidays, in addition to myriad other discourses and practices begin to influence the child from its first breath, and the earlier philosophical education intervenes the greater its chances to establish itself, and hence the greater its opportunity to achieve its goal.  Philosophy, as embodied in the writings of Schopenhauer or Spinoza, would be unintelligible to a four year old; however, thinking itself is something familiar for that child, it is a game that he or she is constantly playing.  If the proper goal of philosophical education is to cultivate thinking, this education should start as early as possible. It should likewise be adjusted to fit and challenge the developmental needs and potentialities of this wide range of students.

        If we assume that it is politically possible to establish philosophical education across this age range, how do we deal with the varied powers and abilities of our students? Developmentally, there are significant differences between a graduate student and a kindergartner that must be factored into a theory of philosophical education.  In my thought on this matter, I have come up with a pair of gradient scales that illustrate the progression from K-PhD for our purposes.  These should not be taken as dogmatic, but instead they should be read as a useful shorthand. They are called ‘gradient scales’ because there is significant overlap: the consumed media can be varied at each level, as can the produced media. However, the chart does serve as a shorthand for the limits that developmental progression places on philosophical education.  The top gradient describes the age of the students, the second describes the appropriate media for student consumption in the classroom, and the bottom describes the appropriate media for production.

          As we can see, the production of art should always be an important component of philosophical education.  It is the activity that links philosophical education across age and developmental levels.  This chart basically shows two progressions: first, the student progresses from smaller to longer textual productions, and second, he or she begins to engage with full, unmediated, primary texts. These progressions follow the expansion of thought and of the power of assembling stimulated thought in order to present it. Art is a powerful tool in the development of the latter capacity: it allows people to engage with and share thought that it is difficult for them to put into language.

3. Should such an education shape our political and social life? Or does it serve
other ends?

      The introduction of comprehensive philosophical education in the sense I have described above, can come to be an event, in Alain Badiou’s sense of that word, only if there are “militants” who recognize the event as event (citation Ethics) as there were for Socrates at Athens.  Otherwise, this happening will remain an unnamed non-event, and be assimilated into the order of things, or the “situation” as Badiou calls it.  Whether it finds its militants or not, philosophy as a social institution needs to distinguish itself from some social institutions that are related to thought, and it needs to align itself with others. Thinking and philosophy have different social agendas: while philosophy seeks alliances and enmities, thinking is an orphan, or to borrow a turn of phrase from Aristotle, ‘[it] is like the “Tribeless, lawless, hearthless one,’ whom Homer denounces (Politics, 7).”  Philosophy is a social institution, thinking is a power.  A ‘Socratic’ education that nurtured new thinking as it emerged by exposing it to thinking shaped by the history of philosophy would be a stimulant to thought. However, this same history can also be used to humiliate and depress thought, as Deleuze puts it:

The history of philosophy always been the agent of power in philosophy, and even in thought It has played the represser’s role: how can you think without having read Descartes, Kant and Heideggerand so-and-so’s book about them? A formidable school of intimidation which manufactures specialists in thought—but which makes those who stay outside conform all the more to this specialism which they despise. An image of thought called philosophy has been formed historically and it effectively stops people from thinking…thought borrows its properly philosophical image from the state… (Dialogues, 12)

In other words, this change in philosophical education will inevitably have political and social consequences, whose value cannot be determined a priori.  It is just as ‘natural’ for philosophy to kill thought as it is for philosophy to nurture it: which of these roles philosophy plays depends on how philosophy is appropriated, not necessarily on its history or its essence. We can have Socrates thinking fearlessly and encouraging the same in others, or the Pythagoreans murdering a man for discovering an unsolvable mathematical puzzle.

       If we concretize this problem a bit, and look at it in the context of contemporary education and political life in the United States, we can make an estimation of several courses that this process could take, given the ascendency of different forces in its implementation.  In the broadest sense, we will have forces contending for maintenance of the status quo and forces contending for its alteration or abolition. These forces will have different models of thought, which outline what it is, and what it can and should do.  These models would become explicit in the various approaches to philosophical education that would be implemented should these forces gain power.  Their models would focus on different aspects of thought, and background others: this direction of attention can be called a politics of thought. This politics of thought would me most visible in assessment targets and assessment methods.

       This direction would have two aspects: internal emphasis of components of philosophy to privileged positions, and external emphasis on the models and concepts in other fields. These two usually work in tandem, with certain disciplines having greater or lesser affinity with different elements of philosophy: mathematics and logic, art and aesthetics, and so on. Badiou has also offered us a schema for analyzing this situation in his concept of the suture.  He would have us believe that philosophy should not rely too much on any one external discourse, or ‘truth process’ as he calls it; philosophy should keep its distance from the particular arts and sciences even as it engages with them.  If it does draw too close to any particular discourse, it enters into a ‘suture’ which is philosophical disaster, and leads to totalitarian delusions of grandeur and errors.  For example…(phil as art, as science, as politics etc etc) Thus, we could assert that the militant of thought would have allegiance to thought as separate from the other disciplines, including philosophy and its components, and would need to implement a philosophical education that placed philosophy alongside the other fields without assimilating it to them.  This would be in contrast to the other forces which would instrumentalize thought through an assimilation mediated by philosophy in the “represser’s role.” This can involve any of the sutures that Badiou discusses, and has been put forward in greatest relief by two movements, scholasticism and positivism; in the one philosophy was the handmaiden of feudalism and theology, in the other of capitalism and natural science.

      Overall, philosophical education must encourage the fearless exercise of thought.  The history of philosophy offers many examples of this, as do the histories of the arts, the sciences, and the other disciplines and fields of activity.  Thought has too often been plagued by taboos, as many of which have been imposed as removed by philosophers.  If philosophical education is to be significant in human life it needs to help liberate people from their fear of thought, as Kant put it so many years ago:

 Having first infatuated their domesticated animals, and carefully prevented the docile creatures from daring to take a single step without the leading-strings to which they are tied, they next show them the danger which threatens them if they try to walk unaided. Now this danger is not in fact so very great, for they would certainly learn to walk eventually after a few falls. But an example of this kind is intimidating, and usually frightens them off from further attempts. (What is Enlightenment)

Philosophical education should provide all the support it can in these initial shaky moments of thinking.  This brings forward the most difficult problem of philosophical education, namely the problem brought to our attention by Heidegger, when he said that the goal of teaching was to ‘let  learn’ (What is Thinking).  Our greatest challenge can perhaps be met by a commitment to thinking over and above all other fields, even philosophy itself, in philosophical education: if we choose to think of philosophical education this way, we will maintain our vigilance against the sutures that Badiou brings to our attention, as well as this historical straight-jacketing criticized by Deleuze.  By focusing on thinking, something non-finite, something constantly changing and growing, we can also engage in the sort of pedagogy that does not have allegiance to any particular field, but lets thinking emerge free from taboos and become more powerful in an autonomous way.  If this sort of education begins early enough in a person’s life, and continues, it will become a significant part of their way of life.  If autonomous, fearless thinking was made generally available, the forms of political and social relations that depend on ‘voluntary servitude’ in Boetie’s sense would be more frequently challenged and overthrown. The fear of thinking is the fear of committing to the demands of lucidity.