tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11850554.post8622960943746883770..comments2023-09-25T10:35:26.454-04:00Comments on Inscapes: "Feeling Unabstracted"Beth Impsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15560137034653905618noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11850554.post-65993463658672997282007-08-03T14:18:00.000-04:002007-08-03T14:18:00.000-04:00One could also say, as Cormac McCarthy does in *Al...One could also say, as Cormac McCarthy does in *All the Pretty Horses*, "No creature can learn that which his heart has no shape to hold." In other words, learning is a process of identity and what you know depends on who you are. One sees this at work in the existential question that Plato uses to open the Gorgias: ask Gorgias “who he is”, and also in the dialogue between Socrates and Callicles, where the question is no longer rhetoric, but how one should live.<BR/>-RSt. Kevin & the Blackbirdhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02855128373769706263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11850554.post-59016637158069555362007-07-21T12:43:00.000-04:002007-07-21T12:43:00.000-04:00I admit to sharing these sentiments from time to t...I admit to sharing these sentiments from time to time. For myself, I battle it by being demanding of the students that care, and letting the others fail themselves. I use all my powers and magic of charisma to make the ideas seem irresistible to all and sundry. And some learners just shrug their shoulders and walk away, others don't show up at all, or are not prepared as you say. Not pretty, I know. I don't want to sound crass, however, I am put in mind of something Dorothy Parker once said, when asked to make a sentence out of the word "horticulture": You can take a whore to culture, but you can't make her think. Antidotes to shallowness of character take time, life experience and intimations of deprival. My job as a teacher of philosophy is to mediate that sense of deprival effectively so that learners begin to wonder what they've been missing. <BR/>-RSt. Kevin & the Blackbirdhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02855128373769706263noreply@blogger.com