Education
Plan
📍Casino for Social Medicine (Sonnenalle 100, 12045 Berlin)📆 Wed. 16.07.2025
⏰ 18:30 - 20:30
Some reflections after the session
“Considering how our first session developed, and based on certain similar remarks on thought’s rhythm that we find in Plato and Nietzsche, I’d just like to mention here yet another factor that one may need to ponder very carefully for education (understood in this case as learning by thinking, and then in a philosophical sense) not to turn into a frustrating, if imperceptible, dead end; and that one may need to ponder permanently if learning\thinking is to be seen as an ongoing activity or exercise: its SPEED. If it is TOO FAST, one will likely abort any chance to formulate any self-objections. If it is TOO SLOW, one will likely lose sight of its premises and/or potential next moves.” (Carlos Segovia - via E-Mail)
Two quick lexical afterthoughts:
- Intuition. Latin word. Intuitio. “On which to look.” Greek subtext instead: νοῦς (nous). “Vision.” Plato opposes it to ἀνάγκη (ananke). “Force, constraint.” (Carlos Segovia - via private message)
- School. Someone has contraposed it to knowledge qua hereditary transmission, to its demerit. Actually, from the Greek σχολή (scholē), the free space-time (or time-space) where to freely inquire and learn…” (Carlos Segovia - via private message)
A re-cap:
When considering the relationship between a bowl of ice and a scoop of ice cream, we might be tempted to question the relationship between our concept of education and its relationship to reality, to a truth—out there, waiting to be uncovered. Truth, as the expression of the connection between reality and what we think, what we do, and how we interact: is this education? As we sat, as we thought, scribbled, shared, converged and diverged, it became clear that this relationship, between a reality, a truth, and an education is not direct. There appear to be mediating values that connect and intertwine how we think about the world, how we transfer these thoughts to others. In other words, education, what it is and what it should be, is defined in large part by these mediating values.Interestingly, critical engagement with the structure of the café’s methodology (2. Examples and non-examples) brought these values into the open. Does reality correspond with our ethics perspectives? Should the concept of education be constrained to the processes of knowledge/belief/opinion sharing that are morally good? When someone learns, teaches, or is taught content that is morally wrong, can that be considered a successful case of education? What kinds of relationships between people should hold, in order for there to be a successful case of education, regardless of the content? Can education be inherited? Is it generational? Peer-to-peer? Self-knowledge? Does it occur in academic institutions? In families? Among friends?
In section 2., we discussed good examples, bad examples, good non-examples, and bad non-examples. Examples and non-examples proliferated; lines, points of connection and disconnection emerged, and a conceptual slippage from a descriptive, idealized practice (comparing examples to an ideal case of ‘education’) to a normative, moral practice (judging the non-examples based on their conformity to moral commitments) occurred.
Among the components of education discussed, there arose those values which describe how someone who is open to education might relate to the world. Curiosity, humility, perplexity, trustworthiness… a general theme of openness began to sprout; an openness that characterized thoughts on intuition that arose during the conversation. How do openness and disruption relate, and how do both relate to education, especially if awareness of some information is often not enough for a successful moment of education, or educational moment? Here, a productive divergence arose, encapsulated in the question: how many genuine, impactful, deep- and far-reaching educational moments are engineered-in-advance? How does contingency, flux, coincidence bring forth impactful life-affirming moments of educational value? It may just be that openness is in fact crucial for education, if it is true that contingency, flux, and coincidence characterize the moments of great educational impact in our lives, our communities, and our worlds.
In light of this, education as a human practice, not only as a structure and/or particular content, became an important consideration. As a human practice, education can be thought of as a skill, an ability, a habit that requires training, development, and consistency—and that also can be lost. What aspects of this practice steady us as we explore the world, from musical events, to apprenticeships, performances, and spiritual experiences?
It was said that education is the gaining of equipment, and it was suggested that this equipment differs at different times in our lives. When we are young, we develop the skills to survive, we gather equipment for survival. As we continue to grow, we develop capacities for different kinds of equipment, we find different equipment more or less valuable, and we are faced with different opportunities and challenges that require us to expand our collection of equipment in order to prevail, to solve, or to enjoy. Following the analogy, then, education is the practice of knowing what kinds of equipment are worthwhile, knowing what kinds of equipment we may need, knowing which style of equipment we like, and cultivating the skills to acquire equipment as well as the an appropriate attitude—perhaps of openness—to the equipment in the world as well as to our own relationship to our equipment and the world.
At the limit, we find concepts of confusion, repetition, dogmatism and fundamentalism, indoctrinations, and also of rupture. We challenge ourselves to ask, what is educational in each of these limit concepts? What is educational in the very act of considering these concepts to be educational, or contain an educational aspect? Where do each of us draw the boundaries, and why—knowing all the time that others will inevitably draw the boundaries in countless alternative designs? There is beauty in the collapse of our models of the world, and there is a choice that is ours to make, which is also beautiful, of how we wish to rebuild.
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