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APA
Committee on the
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| Topic: | Teaching Thinking |
| Name: | Dr. Gilbert NMO Morris |
| Institution: | George Mason Universtiy |
| E-mail: | gmorris@spgi.org |
| Date Submitted: | 5/30/01 |
Article
"...We still have judgment here; that we but teach Bloody instruction, which, being taught, return to plague the inventor..." Macbeth s.7, l.1
- A New Way of Thinking -
Scholars, Pupils, Students, we deal with an unusual variety of disciplines here. Our task is to enforce against our long held shibboleths, the most ruthless analysis possible. We aim at inducing more profound understandings of historical consciousness; by which is meant, a state of mind and complexity of thought through which we may assess, not only historical data, but the "secrets of the familiar" circumstances which brought such data into effect. That is to say, we shall not proceed upon a "laundry list" of icons or ideas whilst claiming them as wholly representative of African-Americans or American Culture. Our purpose is to examine why and how such claims came to have importance and to assess their epistemological potency and explanatory powers.
Which is to say: we shall not simply view the record of what has happened; we shall ask “why ?”. We shall not concern ourselves alone with facts; but of how such facts recline in memory and how they project not only a history, but a thinking. In consequence of this, a central feature of the course will be its 'methodology', and what I have come to call a "Quotidian Psychology". Of the methodology I shall say a little more below. Quotidian in Latin, means 'ordinary' or everyday. So quotidian psychology implies an "ordinary psychology of everydayness". We shall take the questions traditionally regarded as pertaining to the historical experiences of African-Americans – so called, and examine contending explanations intending to explain their causes and effects. And we shall ask: "what becomes conscious for the mind after such experiences on an everyday scale ?" That is, we shall, through various types of texts, and representations of experience entre into the frames of reference and expectations of, not only an “African American”, but a putative or "would-be’ American according to the ideas and ideals by which such a personality should be constituted. This will permit us to discuss the vast material in an intimately subtle way; whilst habituating us to a more excellent practice of thinking.
The method which we shall employ for this is called: "Mesodoxical". Have no fear for this word ! "mesos" is Greek, meaning Middle; as in Meso-potamia, which was a country in south west Asia 'between' or in the 'middle' of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. "Doxa" is Greek for praise. But more than that, it "means" also 'truth'; as well as opinion - as in "orthodoxy". Yet, it also 'means' method. So "Mesodoxical" means middle method, or opinion or truth.
You may now ask: 'How do we apply such a method ?' We must set down the preliminary logics that will cut the pathways of our progress through this endeavour. First, we will not take an idea – the idea of African American Studies for instance - into mere juxtaposition against another - to which it is opposed ostensibly. Instead, we shall entre the first idea, examining its claims; its internal inconsistencies, seeing where its assumptions collect or its flaws lie. We shall ask: how did the central theme of the idea under examination become important, and why is it meaningful to those who promote it ? It is only after such an effacing inquiry that we may proceed to an opposing idea – upon which the same vigilance must be upheld.
Second, we must be mindful of a series of withdrawals into gyroscopia – into a fetishization with our own interests. This tendency operates by a deceptive means. Within the dominant culture for instance, there are already narratives of politics pretending to be revelations of truth. Such narratives are as much inherent in the factional politics of race as they are in the competition for social resources. To set oneself against these particulars is to find oneself formulated in a phraseology of opposition by those whose interests may be compromised through these inquiry. For instance, that we should set out here to examine the ramparts of the being of African Americans, as such, lets open two potential reactions: First, Blacks who feel we have compromised the question may reformulate us as political conservatives – bent upon an agenda which includes having forgotten our African American essence. Second, no sooner than these words are spoken, many Whites, or so-called conservative Blacks with opposing interests undertake to rejoice; thinking that our ruthless analysis accrues to an inherent concurrence with their agendas. This is the profile of the ruination of thinking which has befallen us. To argue against a position unleashes the assumption that we are for it political alternative, which we have left unmentioned. This absence of mention fails to discipline adherents who assume their interests are immediate opposites to all that we challenge. However, this method of argument, turns upon an implicit logical groyne which argues that the opposition to a false position is itself false. This stands in distinction to mathematical opposition or so-called scientific laws . There the opposition to a proposition is not defined by the proposition itself, and carries within it, its own coordinates of validity. However, the reaction to the proposition: “reparations are an appropriate form of justice”, for instance depends upon semantical suppositions schooled by a politics which may itself prove internally inconsistent. As such, it behooves us, and readers alike not to take our inquiry as validating the variety of politics opposing African American politics however poorly they survive these analysis.
Third, under this discipline, we set out not to defend propositions. As such, we would offer nothing to defend, let us say: Affirmative Action. Instead we ask: What has brought us to an estate, that this notion has arrived at such an importance ? And what is to be gained in this importance for whom ? We do not therefore argue for an idea, but rather against ideas already in proposition in our subject area. This means that we are free to challenge all the formulas of the being of African Americans – ridding it of its plaintivity - driving its self-preserving notions into an essential dubiety, by virtue of revealed discrepancies into an integrity of thinking.
It is only at this point that we can engage in comparative analysis, our method being grounded in the notion, indeed the fact of human limitation; by the understanding of which no idea is a perfect antidote for the chaotic complexity of human circumstances. Put another way, in proceeding by these means we operate by increment, evaluating both our evidence and our method of analysis at every juncture; recognizing the power of evidence in rendering our methods obsolete; especially where we find our African American selves to be purveyors of the injustices we speak against. It is in this critical attitude toward our own intentions as we undertake analysis, and the suspicion of our limitations potentially contaminated by our own indiscernible, indecipherable prejudice through which we entre the condition of what is called "thinking"; or if you please: "mesodoxical thinking".
In this refinement of the critical mind, we must maintain not only a ripe and ripening suspicion of our own motives, but must also invigilate between such intimate motives and our practical objective. That is, both the mood and method of this logical procedure is to empathize with alternative points of view; not necessarily accepting them. I believe part of the reason we are today unsuccessful at this is not that we have not walked in the shoes of others, but because we are not properly placed in our own shoes ! We have not been honest enough to be adherents of ideas, nor mature enough to force the unforeseen consequences of our own thinking onto our understanding without fear of losing political ground. An analysis beginning with introspection, aiming to discover our own limitations or proceeding under the rubric that there are limits unknown to us, within our views, exhibits not only rare intelligence, but sensitivities more likely to discover not only the truth about truths, but the truth about what is false in what is true.
It is a first rule of learning therefore, that we must unlearn an obsession with our own perspective; so that we hold our views critically, always open; not necessarily to persuasion, but to discussion, explanation; in a word: conversation.
Of central importance will be an intimate understanding of my role and your roles. Not who, but what is a teacher ? I propose that he/she is not an evangelist. That is, he/she is not meant to put forth views which you – unthinkingly - greedily accept without critical assessment. Such an attitude will invite a failing grade to the work it produces ! My purpose must be maintained against all supplications, and must be not to solve the riddle of learning for you, but to discover to you the fact of the riddle. Roger Scruton wrote once in The Times of London: The Philosopher/Teacher...awakens a spirit of inquiry...helping [pupils] to discovers truths [which] they bring forth under his influence...answering life's riddles. That is, the teacher assists in the bringing forth of what is necessary to understand not only our immediate condition, but of others too, and for both, the past and future.
It is your role to arrive willing, not to accept all I say, but certainly able to reinforce a response, well-reasoned in scholarship or inspired argumentation - reflecting wide reading and deep reflection. Arrive in this spirit, and we shall be able to create ties which have so far failed to bind us intellectually, historically, morally and socially; the first of which is this understanding.
To end, I would have you think in the terms which motivated this method, the oldest philosophical fragment in Western philosophy by Anaximander : And at the point at which things have their origin, there too they must also pass away according to necessity; for they must pay recompense and penalty for their injustice, according to the ordinance of time.