Abstract
We are entirely possessed by a world already made (objectified); thus, we become unmindful of the emergent world or the world-in-making. We incessantly measure the finished world and are not concerned with addressing that which lies behind the patterned immobilities, which is duration, or that which endures. When we train ourselves, that is, develop our intuition to see all things under the aspect of duration, a new movement begins that stretches us beyond ourselves. Our existential problematizations and their solutions, which had so far been defined and conditioned by object relations obtaining within the political and the technological spheres, now present themselves differently to us. In our “galvanized perceptions,” a new hope awakens that is independent of the prevailing conditions. It is not something science or technology or politics can bring about. It is an ontological intuition born of contact with duration, which is creative becoming. For education, this is an entirely new canvas on which to map out possibilities. Starting with the development of intuition, a new language must be created that opens out toward vision. Time that was blanked out of view and pushed to the background of consciousness becomes a topic of discussion and is no longer treated as a priori. We learn to “see” and feel time as conditioning everything in the outer world, and from there learn to become aware of the inner rhythm of time that makes us what we are.
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Notes
- 1.
Augustine writes: “What then is time? If no one asks, I know: if I want to explain it to a questioner, I do not know. But at any rate this much I dare affirm I know: that if nothing passed there would be no past time; if nothing were approaching, there would be no future time; if nothing were, there would be no present time.” St. Augustine, Confessions (Transl.) F. J. Sheed (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1943), p. 271.
- 2.
The scriptural warnings against worldly wealth accumulation are also a warning against the things of time. Thus, the Apostle Paul, in his epistles, makes a distinction between Chronos (time of the world) and Kairos (messianic time ).
- 3.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (New York: Routledge, 2002/1945), Preface, p. ix.
- 4.
Ibid., p. x.
- 5.
Ibid., p. xi.
- 6.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible (Transl.) Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), p. 274.
- 7.
But what about aging, don’t we all experience changes upon our bodies with the passage of time? In terms of our analysis above, one can only experience a single state or inhabit a single frame at any point, with no intrinsic connection to any other state or frame. Hence, “aging” requires an external observer’s point of view; the transition from one frame to the next can only be observed from the outside. One cannot experience aging from within. In the final volume of Marcel Proust’s great work À la recherche du temps perdu or Remembrance of Things Past, there’s a famous party scene where the narrator, who’s been living outside of Paris, away from his friends, for a long time, is invited to a party and it’s a chance to catch up with old friends. And he has a terrifying moment where he arrives and he looks around, he sees gentlemen with snowy hair, ladies who are leaning on canes, and he simply doesn’t understand where all his friends are. And suddenly he realizes that actually his friends are all in the room. It’s just they’ve become old. The Buddha understood this principle well when he pedagogically postulated that compounding the frames and producing synthesis (continuity or permanence) are at the root of sorrow (dukha). He seemed to suggest that the compounding could be ended.
- 8.
The poem can be found in the public domain at: https://poets.org/poem/crossing-bar.
- 9.
Tatyana Fedosova, “Reflection of Time in Postmodern Literature,” Athens Journal of Philology, Vol. 2, No. 2, June 2015, pp. 77–87.
- 10.
Ibid.
- 11.
Dwayne Huebner, “Curriculum as Concern for Man’s Temporality,” Theory into Practice, Vol. 26:S1, pp. 324–331, https://doi.org/10.1080/00405848709543294.
- 12.
This is the reason why the hermeneutic method of revisiting again and again the source deliberations and source events is so vital for education.
- 13.
Jimena Canales, The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate That Changed Our Understanding of Time (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), p. 3.
- 14.
Ibid., p. 19.
- 15.
Psychological time must not be confused with ontological time. No one doubts that we experience the lapse of an hour differently depending on our psychological condition and state of being. This is trivial and is not the question at stake. The question is: Is there an inner time that is as real as outer time?
- 16.
Jimena Canales, The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate That Changed Our Understanding of Time (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), p. 346.
- 17.
Albert Einstein, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” in The Principle of Relativity (London: Methuen, 1923).
- 18.
Ibid., the entire text is available in the public domain at: https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/specrel.pdf.
- 19.
Canales, op. cit., p. 340.
- 20.
H. Edward Thompson III, “The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness: Its Importance for Critical and Creative Inquiry,” Interchange, Vol. 28, Nos. 2–3, 1997, pp. 219–230.
- 21.
Canales, op. cit., p. 343.
- 22.
Albert Einstein, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” originally published in German as “Zur Elektrodynamik Bewegter Körper,” Annalen der Physik, Vol. 322, No. 10, 1905, 893n1.
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
Canales, op. cit., p. 351.
- 25.
Ibid., p. 358.
- 26.
In the Sanskritic traditions of early India, there are references to sthula sharira (gross body) and sukshma sharira (subtle body). This distinction becomes especially important in practices of the Tantra School.
- 27.
Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, Vol. 3 (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1988), f201.
- 28.
Meister Eckhart, The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart (Transl.) Maurice O’C. Walshe (New York: Crossroads Publishing Company, 1979), p. 29.
- 29.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (Transl.) Colin Smith (New York: Humanities Press, 1965), pp. xiv–xv.
- 30.
Ibid., The internal quotation is from Husserl, Meditations Cartesiennes (Transl.) Gabrielle Peiffer and Emmanuel Levinas (Paris: Colin, 1931), p. 33.
- 31.
Leon Jacobson, “Translator’s Preface,” in Henri Bergson, Duration and Simultaneity with Reference to Einstein’s Theory (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965), pp. v–vi.
- 32.
Ibid.
- 33.
Ibid., pp. ix–x.
- 34.
Herbert Dingle, “Introduction,” in Henri Bergson, Duration and Simultaneity with Reference to Einstein’s Theory (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965), p. xv.
- 35.
Ibid., p. xvi.
- 36.
Ibid., p. xviii.
- 37.
H. Wildon Carr, Philosophy of Change: A Study of the Fundamental Principle of the Philosophy of Bergson (London: Macmillan, 1914), p. 28.
- 38.
Ibid.
- 39.
Ibid.
- 40.
Ibid., pp. 29–30.
- 41.
Ibid., pp. 30–31.
- 42.
Ibid., pp. 86–87.
- 43.
Professor Carr has clarified: “What then is a perception? What is it that my mind receives or has when there comes to consciousness the direct knowledge of something external which I call my perception of an object? A perception is not something added to reality, nor is it something of the mind projected upon the object, nor is it something of the object projected toward the mind, it is a selection from reality. It is selection which gives to the perception its distinctness and individuality. The means of selection is my body, which is organised to exclude the influences radiated on it from the infinite universe, except only in so far as they concern my actions.” Ibid., p. 92.
- 44.
“Einstein’s and Bergson’s contributions appeared to their contemporaries forcefully at odds, representing two competing strands of modern times. Vitalism was contrasted against mechanization, creation against ratiocination, and personality against uniformity. During these years, Bergson’s philosophy was often placed next to the first in these pairs of terms; Einstein’s work frequently appeared alongside the second. Bergson was associated with metaphysics, antirationalism, and vitalism, the idea that life permeates everything. Einstein with their opposites: with physics, rationality, and the idea that the universe (and our knowledge of it) could stand just as well without us. Each man represented one side of salient, irreconcilable dichotomies that characterized modernity. This period consolidated a world largely split into science and the rest. What is unique about the appearance of these divisions and subsequent incarnations is that after the Einstein and Bergson encounter, science frequently appeared firmly on one side of the dichotomy. Other areas of culture appeared on the other side—including philosophy, politics, and art.” In Canales, op. cit., p. 7.
- 45.
Ibid.
- 46.
“Phenomenology is remarkable for its introductions not only of itself but also of the world to which it returns us. Here we need a beginning which will catch or fetch out a sense of Merleau-Ponty’s conception of the relation between language and the world and simultaneously convey this preoccupation as an expression of the crisis in philosophy in the same manner that Husserl considered that concern to be an authentic introduction to phenomenology. Such a beginning seems necessary because I see in Merleau-Ponty’s work, from beginning to end, a critique of the two principal techniques of reason, namely, the analytic method of experimental science and the structuralist method of the human sciences through which the tradition of rationalism dominates the world by removing the responsible subject of human history. The success of Western science and its industrial organization is, as Weber and Marx showed, the result of an asceticism at the roots of the positivist mode of rationality. The methodological and technical success of Western science rests, as Husserl observes, upon a residual concept of reason which excludes any treatment of the problems of reason. But these observations form part of the self-criticism of the ideal of phenomenology as a rigorous science begun by Husserl himself and, as I believe, adopted as the working principle of Merleau-Ponty’s own phenomenology.” “Translator’s Introduction,” in Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Prose of the World (Transl.) John O’Neill (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973), pp. xxvi–xxvii.
- 47.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible (Transl.) Alphonso Lingis (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968), p. 105.
- 48.
Ibid.
- 49.
Ibid., p. 103.
- 50.
Ibid.
- 51.
Ibid., pp. 166–167.
References
Albert Einstein, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” originally published in German as “Zur Elektrodynamik Bewegter Körper.” Annalen der Physik, Vol. 322, No. 10, 1905. Retrieved from http://hermes.ffn.ub.es/luisnavarro/nuevo_maletin/Einstein_1905_relativity.pdf.
Dwayne Huebner, “Curriculum as Concern for Man’s Temporality.” Theory into Practice, Vol. 26:S1, pp. 324–331. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405848709543294.
E. Husserl, Meditations Cartesiennes (Transl.) Gabrielle Peiffer and Emmanuel Levinas (Paris: Colin, 1931).
H. Edward Thompson III, “The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness: Its Importance for Critical and Creative Inquiry.” Interchange, Vol. 28, Nos. 2–3, 1997, pp. 219–230.
H. Wildon Carr, Philosophy of Change: A Study of the Fundamental Principle of the Philosophy of Bergson (London: Macmillan, 1914).
Jimena Canales, The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate That Changed Our Understanding of Time (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015).
Leon Jacobson, “Translator’s Preface.” In Henri Bergson, Duration and Simultaneity with Reference to Einstein’s Theory (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965).
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (Transl.) Colin Smith (New York: Humanities Press, 1965).
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible (Transl.) Alphonso Lingis (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968).
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Prose of the World (Transl.) John O’Neill (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973).
Meister Eckhart, The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart (Transl.) Maurice O’C. Walshe (New York: Crossroads Publishing Company, 1979).
Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, Vol. 3 (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1988).
St. Augustine, Confessions (Transl.) F. J. Sheed (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1943).
Tatyana Fedosova, “Reflection of Time in Postmodern Literature.” Athens Journal of Philology, Vol. 2, No. 2, June 2015, pp. 77–87. https://doi.org/10.30958/ajp.2-2-1.
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Roy, K. (2019). The Aroma of Time: An Introduction. In: Teachers and Teaching . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24670-9_1
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