Thinking about thinking - that is how the study of philosophy was introduced to me over the phone on an interview when I was applying for an MA in the discipline by Sundar Sarukai, then the head of the department at the erstwhile Manipal Center for Philosophy and Humanities. I don’t really think such a depiction does justice to what this study is however. To begin with, as your eyes follow these letters, you will realize that you don’t require to be reading this at all to think. But, perhaps the question remains - can you think without language itself? What medium would that be? Is it even possible? I think it is important to address, what I recognize to be the phenomenological detour which Professor Sarukai subscribes to at this stage itself. Yes, we do feel pain, experience pleasure, our senses are subject to near infinite stimuli, and yet - the question remains, as to whether this is thought. Would not recognition for example, at the very least be necessary to sustain the level of formalization which allows us to name a sensation, such as pleasure, or pain? At an absolutely animal level you could say that the difference between these sensations may be experienced without any nomenclature, and this is true. A dog for example knows that he or she likes food, knows that a stone thrown at one’s body will hurt, and yet since we have to delimit the extent of where we our willing to extend our compassion, I will restrict myself to only human experience.
For whatever it is worth, philosophers today, and by this term I do not refer exclusively to the canon, are willing to question our very place in the natural kingdom, and there is indeed a concern regarding the changes which we have brought upon nature in our time on this planet. Yet, for all its limitations, its infantile presumptions, the futility of its longings, and its cherishing of impossible nostalgias, human thought has been, and is the realm which philosophers have chosen to study. Now, this is not to suggest that you would happen to know who you are reading, or listening to, in fact, it is highly unlikely. As with any tradition, its history rests on past teachers who are no more, but in the works they leave behind. To my personal curiosity and some displeasure, the lack of presence has been an inquiry which seems to have preoccupied some of the more rigidly textual traditions within the disciple. There is a sense in which this may be a problem, particularly once the question of the presence of meaning is raised; and bear in mind the juridical slant of this line of thinking is not a ruse. A will for example, does indeed have to be read, heard and interpreted, in the absence of the person concerned. As is the case with any testimony or account demanded at a hearing.
The court is that ancient theatre where the truth of the matter has been looked into and debated and these questions, as in the past, continue to arise there. There is a pleasure in the formality of the proceedings, the systematicity in the presentation of accounts and the rigor of a cross-examination, yet, as Alain Badiou seems already to have pointed out, does not all this end in a verdict? True, the trouble is thought doesn’t end there.
And so it is, that in this round about way, I return to and apparently justify the original scene of these philosophical proceedings; society, families, customs, art, rituals, religion, and of course questions.
All of Plato’s work - in more ways than is readily admitted is an extended love letter to his teacher, who was put to death by the Athenian state for corrupting the youth and for straying away from the worship of the Pantheon. Truly un-Athenian reasons if there ever were some. I may even go as far as to say un-Greek reasons. There is a rhetorical element to this, and one may even identify in it a polemic. I posit, implicitly, disdainfully even, what may appear as a higher ground, a place from where I besmirch what may be thought of, with considerable regret, as an orthodoxy of some kind. Yet, if we are to accept the testimony of Plato and many others - thus rest the facts of the case. Socrates was sentenced to death. And it is here, that I think it is important to raise in a new light a function which verdicts attest to - a claim to the truth. This is, after all, the line drawn by philosophy separating itself from the sophist. There is a history in these terms, a drama even. Allow me to replace these with some common place ones, liar, hypocrite, untruthful , etc.
In the shelter of this clearing, which I have laid before you as an introduction, allow me to return to my original consideration regarding the possibility of thought, or rather a quest as it were, to seize a means of thought which is not linguistic. And the answer, which arrives no sooner than the formulation of the question, is the arts - music, painting and performance - those great violators of form, or should I say innovations in form? For this latter tendency does indeed seem to be how each of these arts is considered from within the cloisters of their own shelters and practices. I believe, that inventiveness in these crafts is indeed spurred by an examination and comparison of the advantages that distinct forms, an acoustic guitar performance and beatboxing may for example have. These reveal themselves in the kind of experience which they seek to transmit, strictly immanent to the composition presented, and perhaps, to those who follow them, breaks and discontinuities in style.
Yet, what would this mean to someone who does not know what an acoustic guitar or beatboxing were? And, think about the difficulty here of conveying such experiences to someone without words, an absurd proposition, if even possible. This however is also the best argument for the immediacy of presence which as an example, the beatboxer or guitarist in flesh and blood can illustrate.
Allow me a diversion to more directly return to the problem. I remember growing up and speaking to my father about what he teaches - and he said that he teaches the study of language. One of the first topics we took up was this one, how is what we converse different from a dog barking or a cat meowing. I was introduced to the idea of displacement. Bees for example, through a dance, can communicate to the rest of the hive as to where to find honey. In some rudimentary way it is imaginable to think of dolphins and bats using echo location to do much the same thing. But can I tell you how something smells for example using mere sound? Or can I express the difference between heat and cold without a gesture at least of some kind? In this rudimentary sense let us tentatively posit that a word names a phenomena (experience of some kind) which, if envisioned as a line, crosses the two points of displacement and description. Yet, perhaps even more significantly it represents something. Why is this significant? For two reasons, at the cost of repetition it brings back the question of presence and adds here a clause regarding how this or that presence is represented, how do we know it is there, how do we know what is it? I hope you see here the use that communication serves in this conjuncture. In an entirely different sense, it highlights or rather puts in inverted commas, what this something may be. We all know for example, that a unicorn is a horse with a horn on its head. We have seen representations of this in cartoons and cinema, we may have spoken about them as children and might have even drawn a couple. This in no way suggests that a unicorn is really existing, and yet - a unicorn has one horn on its head.
I think it is important to consider the implications of this. On one hand we have the staff that holds our faith in each other, language which reveals itself to rest on representation, which it enables and exercises. On the other hand, this is the very mechanism via which a lie, even if not in fact, at least in possibility, comes into existence. In other words, we can only lie in language.
Perhaps not a new thought. And, to be honest - Decartes does indeed seem to be more fundamental (and in this sense more radical, as in grasping the root of the matter) when he places before us examples of our senses being deceived with optical illusions and mirages, a ventriloquist today can even earn a living doing this. Then there is of course the subject of dreams, those cherished moments of sublimated revelations or nightmares which hover above the ground of what is.
This is indeed an issue, who can we trust, what do we trust and is it even a matter of faith even? For even when I am deceived, when I see water reflected on the road on a hot summer day - it yet appears before me, just as a unicorn’s single horn is transfixed in the imaginary of every child. Lacan, if he ever was petulant, would point out isn’t there a reality to this? I think that somehow this does bring us back to our initial subject of displacement, yet in a mode which is no longer spatial like the dance of the bees.
I remember dreams that I had for instance. A few nights ago, I dreamt that I was snug and warm in my blanket with my puppy. A memory of something that did not happen, the non reality of the event aside, it yet persists, if only as a memory. Certain psychoanalytic philosophers, Zizek included, have made quite a point with this in ways far grander than I may be able to posit here. In any case, in my act of sharing this dream with you - I fulfill what may only be described as an impossible task, strictly speaking. I transmit the happening of something that never happened. Is this a lie? Maybe Descartes, in a meditation yet to come may answer this question, and perhaps an analytic philosopher will raise another about the existential import of a lie. Inquiries for other times and places, yet my point being - this is what is possible in language. I hope you can see now, why I sought to posit another medium for thought.
You may also notice the juridical terrain of these observations, at least initially. There is, in any hearing, a demand for the presentation of evidence, for the difference between fabulation and fact is only determined in the presence of this. Yet, the juridical court is a specialized organ designated towards the settlement of disputes, and perhaps also sanctify a marriage, though in this latter case it serves almost exclusively the function of a formalization and nothing more. It is rarely if ever the place for a courtship between the lovers, or an exploratory practice. I have never been to a hearing yet, from what one gathers about such proceedings from the outside this is how it appears.
Whatever the beginnings may have been, and irrespective of the degree of formalization the fact remains that such proceedings are paid for by clients, represented by lawyers and presided over by a judge appointed and commissioned by the state. Given the professional nature of these positions and the usually comfortable compensations, they can afford to focus, or rather they are paid to decipher the dispute at hand, much in the same way an ethnographer commissioned by an institution may seek to chart the lives of a village, or a literary critic may draw parallels between geographically distinct narratives.
In a sense, from the outside, from where all the nitty gritty of the contents of the findings and hypothesis are invisible, they appear as jobs. There is a bland and tasteless truth to this, and yet it is a fact. One which seems to have caught the imagination of a few groups of radicalized students whom I knew briefly while at Ambedkar University Delhi.
Let me here break, for I have to, and tell you that I truly abhor the autobiography as a form, and the biography even more so and hence I am not inclined to tell you about the particulars of my interactions with them. There are however a few points where I do concur with their position, and it is here, if you remember my promise at the beginning of this, that I will return to what I earlier referred to as the original scene. The classroom is a truly formalized place, or to use the terminology of contemporary ethnographers, a place which is codified. I do not refer merely to the presence of static hierarchies. And there is a way in which this site, with the proliferation of distance education in a post-civid world, has been abolished. Yet, for an alien to such a place, an explorer of a new planet or perhaps just a time traveller, let me lay out its essentials as they once existed. A curriculum is drafted by a body almost entirely external to this site. A school board for instance, the UGC at the college level ( I am here referring to the situation in India). The teacher, who is hired by the institution of the school, is paid a wage to explain to the students, and to instruct them in the procedures of reasoning, and the techniques prescribed in the disciplines which are approved in the curriculum. A proficiency in these procedures is rewarded in the student in the form of grades allotted by the teacher, who in turn answers for the class to the principle or vice principal, etc.
This scaffolding, by itself if you notice, has no necessity for the presence of students in the site of the exposition, not since the mass proliferation of screens which can stream video, and arguably even earlier, with just the invention of writing I would argue. Displacement if you remember, is what allows us to point to events which may not be unfolding before us and yet describe them for others. The question then comes forth, why are the students required to be in such a space? Historically, there may have been many reasons for this. A commingling of children from diverse backgrounds being perhaps a form of community building, a practice that many families for instance may subscribe to. It is, or rather can be, a place of interaction among these differences; a primordial soup as it were where the tendencies of life can be observed in their encounters and becomings. I am not a historian however and believe it is foolish to allow history to determine what we do today.
To present to you a picture of what such a situation may serve today allow me an analogy. The opportunity to face each other, a practice intimately human ( and yet also animal) is perhaps nowhere as available, however mediated it may be than as possible on Facebook today. A social media site with profiles which have walls to themselves, much like a little digital representation of your home, from where you can reach out to others, form groups, ask questions and post media. It presently houses 2.7 billion active monthly users, and yes, make no mistake, it is a business. So how do they make their ends meet? The company’s driving profit maker is primarily it's advertising which constitutes almost all of its income. Attached below is a breakdown of the amounts of money which Facebook has made over the years from its users as well as how much it makes from each user periodically. You can imagine a demand for advertising space on such a platform given its volume.
The analogy which I had in mind was to think of the classroom in these terms, except that third parties do not buy advertising space in such arenas, and in this sense my analogy fails. However, the question regarding why the presence of the students in the classroom is required in the first place still remains. Some may posit the ease of clarification of doubts which a pupil may have when in the presence of a teacher, or the possibility of discussions, all admittedly valuable in themselves, yet is this why they are there in the first place?
Let me posit this situation a little differently. A student is, among whatever else, a product of an institution, and in this sense, it is in the interests of an institution to see students do well. Many programs for instance advertise the packages and placements which their alumni have acquired. These stories of success often fuel new batches of applicants to apply to the same programs. Apart from this, a student is also a paying customer of a product (in most cases). The number of students who receive their education on a full scholarship is an infinitesimal fraction of the total number of students in any institution. And, as a paying consumer, they have rights regarding the kind and condition of service which they receive. This may be slightly more complicated particularly given the fact that early education in almost all cases is paid for by parents or family who merely send the child to the care of the institution. However, in principle these positions do hold.
Within the schema that appears before us, the task of the teacher begins to resemble an administrator, as long as they are not the ones who are actively developing the curriculum, a possibility only at the collegiate and university level, and perhaps in rare cases in schools among senior faculty. The specificity of the role in question is exemplified in its nomenclature - a professor i.e., one who professes. An examination of the etymology of this word would yield the finding that it refers to one who claims to have a feeling or quality, or one who claims allegiance to a religion or set of beliefs. In its modern institutional setting it is evident how this is simply not the case. A person hired as a professor, is apart from all of their professions an evaluator of a group of students, and the subject which he evaluates the students on is usually determined by institutional factors beyond the formal ambit of a class.
Furthermore, the matter which whatever discipline followed uses in its instruction is itself a compilation of generations of scholars writing and critiquing the work of each other, often across institutions. Institutions, which in many cases come into being far after the scholar him or herself is no more, whose only trace exists perhaps in letters and figures, propositions, arguments and references. This matter, is certainly not the property of an institution. The question then arises, what bestows a professor with the authority to adjudicate on even the interpretation of such an exegesis? A sanction by an institution certainly, a university for instance, yet also fundamentally an audience, one which is designated to the position by that very institution. This is where the question of presence again comes into the picture. Authority is, as it were, performed, when a gathering is provided to a professor, this being the guarantee provided by the institution. There is a measure of faith in this. An institution, drawing from the situations in existence may posit that such a number of pupils will come, with no guarantee of their arrival. It will even designate a person, enshrined by the above mentioned title to administer previously approved of teachings. The wage for these teachers, in such a position will come from the very fee that these students pay, or the expectation of that fee, and in cases where the institution is subsidized by the state, the expenses are deducted from the taxes charged by the state from every citizen. Surely, in such circumstances there is a claim that a pupil may have on the administration and the content of whatever teachings administered institutionally.
In its most ideal settings, the classroom is a place to hear this voice, to listen to this claim, to receive these suggestions, which perhaps may not have come for n number of reasons. And yes, to carry forth the task of inquiry which, in its essence, is the bedrock of any civilizational progress.
This may seem a grandiose claim. Yet is it? If you need to buy a tap in your bathroom for example, you would have to go to a shop, in person or virtually, select a product, and pay for it. In this procedure, you would have to inform the shopkeeper of your decision, possibly haggle over the price, and may be provided a bill of the transaction. These very transactions, which, added together, are subtracted from by the state to fund public institutions, schools and universities included.
So there is a way in which my analogy is not entirely flawed, and perhaps this is reflective of my own transition from literature to (a failed attempt at) philosophy, to ultimately sociology. For I do not believe it is possible for the classroom itself to exist, without taking into consideration what some in economic faculties would term externalities. This, I believe is a truly philosophical question.
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