30 Days of September: Day 6

Comments

1. Niels Hermannsson says

   06/09/2017 at 18:41

   This is a great picture. It shows movement and the effects of movements of matter in various stages of fluidity. For remember the layers of rock on display were once floating lava and in Ancient Greek elemental theory belong to the category of water. Water also features as the soft but relentless power which shapes the surface, itself moved by the heavenly bodies of sun and moon. The picture also displays periodicity, as day is breaking. The stages of fluidity link with this cyclical change between day and night, in the sense that on a larger time scale than that of the day or the year, lava flows to the surface, hardens into immobile layers, only to be broken up later and re-stacked by its own hot and moving kin arising from the deep. But how well does such reading of the picture tally with the caption? If the first word “before” is meant to refer to the temporal aspect, it indicates that the critical attitude will develop from being an attitude, to being a theory, then a method and lastly a body of knowledge. Is this a process ending in petrified stage of authoritative knowledge? And if so is it wrong? Do we expect critical thinking to lead only to the changing of with whom authority resides? I submit that knowledge is not a thing like a piece of rock. Rather it will always contain an important element of attitude, the attitude of self-examination and avoidance from assuming epistemic authority beyond the reach of the argument that one offers as the best one. And it is an attitude of constantly asking, not only the authorities but also oneself about the limits of this argument, how it could be made better and how it might be delivered to and reenacted by the next generation, for as an attitude it cannot be delivered as a thing or a tool for ensuring power over the minds and acts of others. The living argument is rather like nutrition offered to growing autonomous individuals. This is the picture in Plato’s approach to education, as far as I can see. It is challenging authorities, but not necessarily for being wrong, rather for potentially being stagnated and in any case needing to keep the self-reflection alive and or to step aside in order to allow a new generation to re-enliven it and carry to it on.