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Revision as of 22:00, 4 August 2011
, 22:00, 4 August 2011→4.2.3. The Problem of Reconstruction: + text
====4.2.3. The Problem of Reconstruction====
====4.2.3. The Problem of Reconstruction====
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<p>Tell me where is fancy bred,<br>
Or in the heart, or in the head?<br>
How begot, how nourished?<br>
…<br>
It is engendered in the eyes,<br>
With gazing fed; and fancy dies<br>
In the cradle where it lies.</p>
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| align="right" | — ''Merchant of Venice'', 3.2.63–69
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The faculty of integration is the capacity to reconstruct the splintered images that are fashioned with regard to an object of interest, to reform them into a coherent picture that captures the essence of the original, and to preserve a sense of vision that continues to inspire the desire to know more. This ability is argued here to be an critically important, but frequently neglected ingredient in the efforts to improve conduct that all the world calls "learning". In the aim to give this task the attention it deserves and to take its demands seriously, one comes up against, not just the prevailing notion that the whole exercise is not worth the candle, but the new difficulty of how to deny this founding notion in a positive way, and thus to devise an alternative that is genuinely worth having.
In this way, one comes to the following question: If common sense, a faculty that is neither necessary nor possible to educate, does not suffice to integrate the senses, then what can be found to do the job, and how are we to train this faculty, as train it we must?
In the process of denying the triviality of integration I come to an especially acute instance of the reconstruction problem. This final dilemma is the dilemma of critical democracy.
This dilemma is evident in both the classical and the modern situation, but it seems to have become more acute with the passage of time and to form an especially troubling issue at the present juncture. It arises from a problematic thesis that is already well expressed in classical sources, but one that was, surprisingly enough, transmitted with only a passing challenge into the axioms of the modern tradition.
If the faculty of integration is not adequately covered by common sense, and if we need this faculty to set wise goals, to make wise choices of the means toward these ends, and overall to direct our conduct toward goals worth having, then how is the power of choice to be acquired by a person capable of learning, and how should the power to choose a common course be distributed throughout a democratic organization?
These questions lead to the dilemma of critical democracy. This is the problem of how to constitute a society on a principle of equality, not just taking the mode of common opinion or the mean point of view, and thus achieving the facile coherence of a superficial solidarity, but to form a truly coherent collective that is competent to deal with reality. The manifestations of this question are most clearly reflected in the public sphere, but analogous issues also arise in the considerations of "dispersed leadership" and "learning organizations".
One way to deal with the problem of reconstruction is simply to ignore it, to blithely wave one's hand, and summarily, if inanely to dismiss it. The sources of this particular response appear to go back at least as far as Aristotle, but …
The formal materials that one needs to resolve this final dilemma, if only in principle, are already present in Aristotle's teaching. One need only apply these principles to the received assumptions about common sense. To say how it is possible, in principle, for a wisdom to arise that does not reduce to common sense, or to say how such a state could exist as a critical democracy without trivializing the difficulty of achieving it, I can utilize a couple of distinctions that Aristotle himself makes: the first between "potentiality" and "actuality", and the second within the category of actuality between "possession" and "exercise".
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<p>Matter is potentiality (''dynamis''), while form is realization or actuality (''entelecheia''), and the word actuality is used in two senses, illustrated by the possession of knowledge (''episteme'') and the exercise of it (''theorein'').</p>
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| align="right" | (Aristotle, 1936, 67).
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Using these distinctions, it is fair to say that just about everyone has the potential for wisdom, or possesses the capacity for this highest level of integration in one's total conduct, but that not everyone will take the trouble to actualize it, or to go through the exercise of developing their full potential. This is a pretty solution, but it only solves the problem in principle. To say how it is possible, in practice, for such a wisdom or such a democracy to come about — this is clearly another matter.
====4.2.4. The Trivializing of Integration====
====4.2.4. The Trivializing of Integration====
