Silence as the foundation of learning

Educational Theory

Volumn 54, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 211-230

  Caranfa, Angelo ^a  

^a Emeritus Scholar   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 40349086345     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2004.00015.x     Document Type: Article

References (47)

1. Max Picard, The World of Silence, trans. Stanley Godman (Chicago: Regnery, 1952), 69. This book will be cited as WS in the text for all subsequent references.
2. See, for example, Israel Scheffler, Reason and Teaching (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973);
3. Harvey Siegel, Educating Reason (New York: Routledge, 1988);
4. Charles James Barr Macmillan and James W. Garrison, A Logical Theory of Teaching (Boston: Kluwer, 1988);
5. Nicholas C. Burbules, Dialogue in Teaching: Theory and Practice (New York: Teachers College Press, 1993);
6. Hubert J.M. Hermas and Harry J.G. Kempen, The Dialogical Self: Meaning as Movement (San Diego: Academic Press, 1993);
7. J.J. Chambliss, ed., Philosophy of Education: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland, 1996);
8. Edward J. Power, Educational Philosophy: A History from the Ancient World to Modern America (New York: Garland, 1996);
9. Steven M. Cahn, Classic and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Education (New York: McGraw Hill, 1997);
10. Christopher Winch and John Gingell, Key Concepts in the Philosophy of Education (London: Routledge, 1999);
11. and Ronald F. Reed and Tony W. Johnson, eds., Philosophic Documents in Education, 2d ed. (New York: Longman, 2000).
12. My point is illustrated by René Vincente Arcilla's article, "Why Aren't Philosophers and Educators [and Scientists, and Statesmen, and Craftsmen, and Poets, and Feminists, and so on] Speaking to Each Other?" Educational Theory 52, no. 1 (2000): 1-11.
13. But if Professor Arcilla is indeed interested in explaining the "why" relating to our failure to speak to each other, I suggest that he turn away from his emphasis on recovering Cartesian doubt and Dewey's idea of the central role of philosophy. Instead, he should pursue with the same pedagogical skills the notion of ego-centered discourse.
14. It seems tome that what dictates our discourse with each other is the ego-centered belief in the truth of our own discourse or discipline, not the silence and the unknown that remain within it. Like the interlocutors in the Socratic dialogues, we seem to speak not as pilgrims seeking them meaning of ourselves through our discourse or discipline, but as pretenders who think that our discourse or discipline is infallible. Therefore we have nothing to learn from encounters with others. As my former chairperson said tome when I inquired about the possibility of teaching philosophy of education, "What is there to teach in philosophy of education?" It is this ego-centered discourse that tends to fragment, rather than unify, learning within one's own discipline and across the various disciplines. And it is this ego-centered discourse that tends to blind us to the real aims of education, and also deafens us to each other and to our students.Only when we speak and listen from our own ignorance, can a true relationship or "marriage," to use Arcilla'smetaphor, be established or nourished between us so as to carry meaning. These remarks are not meant to dismiss Arcilla's position, as one reviewer suggested. Rather, they are intended to call attention to the universality of the problem, both in our culture and in education, and to the misplaced focus of his analysis.]
15. Peter Kingsley, Ancient Philosophy, Mystery and Magic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 230.
16. See Peter Abbs, The Educational Imperative: A Defense of Socratic and Aesthetic Learning (London: Falmer Press, 1994), chaps. 1 and 2.
17. Plato, "Apology," in The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 1, trans. Benjamin Jowett (New York: Random House, 1937), 418. This work will be cited as PA in the text for all subsequent references.
18. While they also tend to focus fairly exclusively on Socrates' method, Thomas Brickhouse and Nicholas Smith stand out among Socrates scholars in that they do refer to the "silence of his daimonion." See Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith, Socrates on Trial (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 235-257.
19. However, this silence is not the same silence that I explore here. Their interpretation of this Socratic silence is not linked directly to the movement of dialectic toward the Voice or Word of God, or, indeed, toward the Silence of speech. Their account proves the benefits or results of the Socratic method, not its limitations, as they explain in their book Plato's Socrates (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), chap. 1. For a similar interpretation, see Gregory Vlastos, Socratic Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), chap. 1. But for a different interpretation, one similar to the one I advance here, see Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Seabury Press, 1975), 325-341.
20. Gadamer informs us that "the example of Socrates teaches that the important thing is the knowledge that one does not know," and, therefore, by implication, the language that one does not speak. He goes on to say that "the Socratic dialectic, which leads . . . to this knowledge, sets up the propositions of the question. All questioning and desire to know presuppose a knowledge that one does not know; so much so, indeed, that it is a particular lack of knowledge that leads to a particular question." Thus, the limited nature of Socratic dialectic, the benefits of which are continually called into question by propositions or arguments, leads Gadamer to note, "and by this we mean to say that there is no methodical way to the thought [benefits] that is [are] the solution" (329).
21. Plato, "Crito," in The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 1, trans. Jowett, 438.
22. This theme is developed by Joseph Beatty in "Good Listening," Educational Theory 49, no. 3 (1999): 290. He asserts, "My account of good listening - while suggesting that it should be skillful, and thus, involve some attention to technique and progressive mastery - claims that it is a virtue.This virtue is embodied in detachment." Such an understanding of listening, however, is not only ambiguous, but gives no central role to silence. My understanding is that the silent internalization of, not detachment from, our discourse with the other makes possible our mutual openness to each other. No detachment can open one to the other, unless and until we learn to remain silent. It is by silence that we learn to listen to what we say to each other. Silence nourishes or cultivates listening, not the other way around, just as wonder cultivates dialectic or philosophical inquiry, not the opposite
23. Plato, "Theaetetus," in The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 2, trans. Jowett, 178. This work will be cited as PT in the text for all subsequent references.
24. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 340.
25. Plato, "Symposium," in The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 1, trans. Jowett, 329. This work will be cited as PS in the text for all subsequent references.
26. It is against Socrates' fullness of life that we should consider Aristophanes' story of the two halves of our nature wandering about the world in search of the other half that would render us whole again, as in the beginning of time before the gods cut us in two: "So ancient is the desire of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, making one of the two, and healing the state of man.Human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called love" (PS, 318-319). This means that in our discourse with the other, it is the totality and wholeness of the human existence that must be disclosed - that is, our verbal and silent nature, as well as our rational and sensory nature.
27. Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid and Paul Rorem (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), 82.
28. For a similar view, see Augustine, The Confessions of St. Augustine, trans. Rex Warner (New York: New American Library, 1963), 200-202;
29. and The City of God, trans. Marus Dods (New York: The Modern Library, 1950), 448-449.
30. Jacques Maritain, A Preface to Metaphysics: Seven Lectures on Being (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1948), 5.
31. For an excellent assessment of Picard's work, see Bernard P. Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980).
32. Søren Kierkegaard, "Concluding Unscientific Postscript," in A Kierkegaard Anthology, ed. Robert W. Bretall (New York: The Modern Library, 1959);
33. Kierkegaard, "The Present Age," in A Kierkegaard Anthology, ed. Bretall; and Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Ralph Manheim (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959).
34. For more on Heidegger's approach, see Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Manheim. For more on Picard's approach, see Paul Claudel, The Eye Listens, trans. Elsie Pell (New York: Philosophical Library, 1950);
35. Paul Claudel, Cinq grandes odes: La cantata à trois voix [Five Great Odes: The Cantata in Three Voices] (Paris: Gallimard, 1957);
36. Angelo Caranfa, Claudel: Beauty and Grace (Lewisburg, Pennsylvania: Bucknell University Press, 1989);
37. and Angelo Caranfa, "Claudel on Sound, Silence, and Ecstasy," Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 83, no. 2 (2000): 453-476.
38. Angelo Caranfa, "Silence and Spiritual Experience in Augustine, Dionysius and Claudel," Literature and Theology 18 (forthcoming).
39. We must be careful not to understand Picard's concept of "the whole of knowledge" to mean that both teachers and students should know the whole of any subject matter. As Picard uses the term, "whole" means that we should not lose sight of the connections that a particular subject has with other subjects and with silence, which reconciles all sorts of knowledge into a harmonious unity: "For example, knowledge in the world of Herodotus is very various and variegated, but all the same there is a peace over all the mass of knowledge - the peace which comes from the calm gaze of the gods" (WS, 75).
40. A somewhat similar epistemology can also be found in the following works: Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind, trans. Mabelle Louise Cunningham Andison (New York: Philosophical Library, 1946);
41. Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (New York: Harper and Row, 1964);
42. and Rudolph Arnheim, Visual Thinking (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969).
43. Picard's criticism of the sciences is not about the process of knowing; rather, it is about the idea that the methods of science tend to make the relationship between the self and the object impersonal and autonomous. Modern scientific methods not only tend to separate the self and the object, but also to give explanations a life of their own. "It was [not] like that in the beginning of modern science, in the days of Galileo, Kepler, Swammerdam" (WS, 76). Picard ultimately extends this criticism of the methods of modern science to the teaching of all fields of knowledge.
44. On this point, see Page Smith, Killing the Spirit: Higher Education in America (New York: Viking, 1990).
45. The visual arts also can be used. I have addressed this issue in the following articles: Angelo Caranfa, "On the Pedagogy of Accountability and of Solitude," The Educational Forum 67, no. 4 (2003): 308-316;
46. "Philosophical Silence and Spiritual Awe," Journal of Aesthetic Education 37, no. 2 (2003): 99-113;
47. and "The Aesthetic Harmony of How Life Should Be Lived: Van Gogh, Socrates, and Nietzsche," Journal of Aesthetic Education 35, no. 1 (2001): 1-13.