From Cognition to Being

FROM COGNITION TO BEING Prolegomena for Teachers THE MENTOR SERIES The Mentor Series aims at defining, for our time, the conditions, issues and main characters of the realization of an accomplished human being. The Series invites as authors the philosopher, the professor of humanities, of social sciences and of teacher education, for whom "education is the most important and the most difficult problem that can be proposed to man" (Kant). The objective of the Series is to offer to the research commu- nity, students and well-read public a forum for rethinking the theory and practice involved in teaching, learning and generally fostering human accomplishment. Aline Giroux, General Editor Editorial Committee Eleanor Duckworth, Harvard School of Education Therese Hamel, Universite Laval, Quebec John Portelli, Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax Genevieve Racette, UQAM, Montreal William Tally, McGill University, Montreal Titles in the series: Repenser I'education: reperes et perspectives philosophiques, sous la direction d1 Aline Giroux Rethinking the Future of the University, edited by David Lyle Jeffrey and Dominic Manganiello MENTOR SERIES FROM COGNITION TO BEING Prolegomena for Teachers Henry Davis McHenry, Jr. University of Ottawa Press Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data McHenry, Henry Davis From cognition to being: prolegomena for teachers (Mentor; no. 2) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7766-0455-4 1. Teaching - Philosophy. I. Title. II. Series: Mentor (Ottawa, Ont); no. 2. P40.8.M34 1998 371.102'01 C98-901398-7 University of Ottawa Press gratefully acknowledges the support extended to its publishing programme by the Canada Council, the Department of Canadian Heritage, and the University of Ottawa. UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA UNIVERSITE D'OTTAWA Cover Design: Robert Dolbec "All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher." ISBN 0-7766-0455-4 ISSN 1487-2331 © University of Ottawa Press, 1999 542 King Edward, Ottawa, Ont., Canada KIN 6N5 press@uottawa .ca http: / / www .uopress.uotta wa .ca Printed and bound in Canada To Henry Davis McHenry and Carol Covington Morton McHenry For Henry Dustin McHenry and Laura Covington McHenry This page intentionally left blank TABLE OF CONTENTS with Chapter Summaries ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi PREFACE xiii INTRODUCTION 1 PART I: EPISTEMOLOGY What Is Knowing, and How Do We Know? 17 1 OUR PICTURE OF LANGUAGE 19 I am supposing that our very ways of being with other people, thinking and speaking, hoping and wishing and opining and despairing, are tied up with the presumption of representation: that what we are doing with language is abstracting from reality, from what there is in nature, and describing those fixed items. For the most part, it is rather as if this notion assumes us, takes us up into itself like the atmosphere; it is part of the air that sustains us. There is fresher air. In Saussure's picture of language, we may begin to breathe it. 2 CARTESIAN DOUBT 35 Ln Chapter One it appeared that what we call common sense may be given by a colloquy, a dialogue. And our contemporary colloquial context of ideas about knowledge can be seen to originate with Descartes. If Descartes had read Saussure, what he might have meant by "I am thinking" is "I am speaking." And the purpose of Cartesian doubt would then have been to interrupt the easy and usually harmless assumption that words refer to things, supplanting it with the notion that the world is articulation. viii FROM COGNITION TO BEING 3 LOCKEAN CERTAINTY 61 As we have gathered in re-reading Descartes, to look through an accepted set of ideas is to give ourselves a certain set of visible objects and relations, to commit ourselves to a vocabulary of the seen. As teachers, we should explore what kind of power the window may exert. In fixing the identities of natural and human objects for human subjects to perceive and under- stand—in cementing the foundations of knowledge—Locke had catalyzed not only the split between man and his world, but also a massive retreat from what we might call the responsibility of Adam: that naming which symbolizes our ever original say in the world. 4 WITTGENSTEIN'S INQUIRY INTO STRUCTURE 81 We have begun to distinguish between the window of representation, with its associated presuppositions about the structure of reality, and another window, which I have been looking through in moments of communion with my child and at other times. What is there about mis second window of being together that is different from "using language," or just plain "talking about something"? We are working on bringing about an extraordinary result: that during the class hour we look through the window of inventing being with our students even as we look at what we call the structure of reality. PART II: ONTOLOGY What Is Saying, and How Do We Be 103 5 OUR LISTENING WITH LANGUAGE 107 Heidegger suggests that the realm of relation, of being-with, arises in our "naming" a world. In this realm of sharing naming, where an original mutuality sources his gesture and word, a teacher, as artist, cultivates moments of encounter when he can share, invent, and bring forth with his students. And in our dialogue, in the faculty meeting or the teachers' lounge, we are not describing facts about students or school. We are inventing our world, the context for our common experience. 6 LANGUAGING AS SHARING 127 We have now re-invented language as languaging, on our way to re-inventing the wheel of Saying. For one further shift before we attain that place, though, we turn to Martin Buber. If Heidegger is the prophet of languaging, and of Being as being- with, Buber is the prophet of I-You, of relation. He re-invents TABLE OF CONTENTS ix languaging as sharing. As I speak with others, listening for a world, not merely to the world, we assume together the responsibility of Adam. 7 HERMENEUTIC CIRCLING AND THE PRAGMATIC ONTOLOGY OF ENCOUNTER 151 In this chapter we will begin to construct, in the vocabulary of Saying, a set of techniques for conducting schoolwork as being together and inventing. What if teachers and students, every day or week, could see themselves as having brought into being some possibility they had invented in their own speaking, and then realized, brought to completion? Provides extended examples from eleventh-grade English classes, including both a model for discussions of literature and an activity adapted from Outward Bound. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING 179 INDEX 183 This page intentionally left blank ACKNOWLEDGMENTS As the teacher who introduced me to Saussure and Wittgenstein, Austin Quigley stands at one inception of this book. I have longed ever since for more of his guidance. But before I could secure it for my first draft, years ago, he had begun his own family project. I hope the present draft may renew our acquaintance. My first written attempts were shepherded by Vic Gioscia of the AION Foundation. I have borrowed from him not only phrases but attitudes and stages of thought. I trust he prefers the being of a shepherd to the role of gray eminence, but I'm afraid he must bear both burdens. At three stages during the composition, Richard Rorty generously responded to my thinking and writing. I told him once that my project might be at its best the contrary of his. He smiled and said, "Well, we'll see." I hope I may have provoked his continued guidance as well. I encountered the philosophy of Heidegger in courses given by an organization now called Landmark Education Corporation. As I continue to study his philosophy, I find myself returning often to the conversations we generated there. To Tom Estes, Eric Bredo, Patti Driskill, and Susie Neuhauser; to my students in the Upward Bound program and my crewmates at Outward Bound; and to the Philosophy of Education Society, I am grateful for ever renewed chances to practise my commitment and improvise my material. And of course, to my father and mother, my children, and my wife— we who have most intimately patented each other—I owe every blessing. This page intentionally left blank PREFACE In a dream I had recently, I am in a hilly, rocky field with shacks and farm sheds. I have come to teach the children of the local population, who don't even take the trouble to scorn the idea of school. I ask one of the ragged kids running around to stop and do something like tuck in his shirt—he complies, then goes right on running and playing with the others. Then I am in the backyard of the house where I grew up. It has become a muddy, sloppy fenced pen and there are horses running around frantically. I overhear a snatch of conversation on a loud CB radio about one of the current occupants of the house: "...he kilt that feller..." I find several sticks that look like discarded trash; I pick them up to throw onto one of the many trash piles lying around. Second thought: maybe the people use these for something—they seem to be put together with nails or screws, pieces of wood joined crudely for an unfathomable purpose. The crisis in our national educational system is old news—though I would prefer to call it a crisis of schooling, since education is distinct from what schools have been most loudly called upon to deliver. It is not only that schools, ill-equipped to bear the burden of the family's predicament, fail even in conveying to many of their students the basic skills of literate communication and calculation, so that students come out of school before they are enabled to lead responsible lives.

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