Education and the Ontological Question: Addressing a Missing Dimension

242 Pages·2019·1.42 MB·English

by  Kaustuv Roy

Kaustuv Roy
Education and the Ontological Question
Addressing a Missing Dimension
Kaustuv Roy
Azim Premji University, Bangalore, Karnataka, India
ISBN 978-3-030-11177-9 e-ISBN 978-3-030-11178-6
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11178-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018967496
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019
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To my teacher
Professor David F. Labaree, Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education, Emeritus,
Stanford University.
Preface
Growing up on the outskirts of an ocean-side town, the impossibly hot sands
under a tropical sun had for us many a lesson. The curved line of the sea-shore
met up with the sky at an unbearable distance which presented its own
melancholy. Landward there were shimmering mirages; seaward, the white
phosphorous smelt of mildly rotting fish. Together these surgically opened up an
existential suffering that had no expression in the things that we were taught at
school. On the shore, the things that we were taught had no meaning against the
searing sands; and the furious white-topped waves spurned any attempt to
decipher their in-bound solitude. That missing dimension of meaningful
connection left an uncomprehending but indelible mark on the soul. Later, a
question shaped itself—was the gap inevitable? Must the focus on epistemic
acquisition be allowed to suppress ontological sense making? Could the missing
dimension be brought into living contact with prescribed studentship? Can
formal education be made to face its essential isolation from all that is? Some of
these issues well up from within the character of the book, searching for a fresh
plane of interrogation.
“Observe ( katamathete ) the lilies of the field…”; the word katamathete , as
scholars have noted, appears but once in the entire New Testament—in
Matthew’s account of the Sermon on the Mount. Messianic words are not
chosen, rather they burst out from within the energy of Revelation; the truth
clothes itself in the manner of its need. In that single instance of the command to
observe, the work of the Causeless reveals itself in a singular intensification. The
word now glows with inner illumination and resolve. This intensification courses
and recourses itself into the sinews and inner channels of the being bringing
forth varied expression. A book such as the present one is a humble instance of
anamnesis toward intensification, an attempt at reversal of forgetfulness of
being, an impress of the pressure of sub specie aeternitatis that is coded in each
being. In short it is an ode to being. To observe here therefore means to drop all
preconceptions and look at the untended (field) lily with new eyes. Immersed in
the act of deep observation, the observer mellows and eventually thaws to permit
the lily to be, purposeless, intentless, defenseless. The command to observe
therefore ends up reconfiguring the observer who now is in a different relation to
the natural object that presents itself to consciousness . For pedagogical
purposes, however, this observation does not conclude in simply staring at the
lily. Observation (pedagogically) must at the same time look into the language
that enshrouds the lily, the poeisis that creatively constructs the lily in
consciousness , and the phenomenological act that brings insight into essence .
The “lily,” in an expanded and metaphorical sense, is the elemental world, and
observation may be thought of as the educational endeavor. The present book is
an attempt at ontological hermeneutics that sets up an adequate resonance
between the above, hoping thereby to help us go beyond the melancholy in
which education is caught today, stuck in a one-sided discourse.
Kaustuv Roy
Bangalore, India
…καταμάθετε τὰ κρίνα τοῦ ἀγροῦ
Matthew 6:28
Acknowledgments
I begin by acknowledging the works of Dwayne Huebner, Ted Aoki, and Max
Van Manen whose path breaking educational efforts make possible such a work
as the present book. There are also numerous unnamed others on whose
shoulders the book leans for its insights and to whom the writer is indebted.
Thanks are due to Azim Premji University for providing appropriate conditions
for research and writing. I also thank Chitra L. for her work as editorial assistant
and comments.
Contents
1 Introduction: Education and Ontological Amnesia
2 Being in Antiquity
3 Being in the Present Age
4 Being in Practice
5 Language of Being
6 Creative Being
7 Epilogue
Index
© The Author(s) 2019
Kaustuv Roy, Education and the Ontological Question
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11178-6_1
1. Introduction: Education and Ontological
Amnesia
Kaustuv Roy1
(1) Azim Premji University, Bangalore, Karnataka, India

Kaustuv Roy Email: [email protected]
“And the truth shall make you free.”1 Free to consider , to act, to think , to
perceive rightly, to be beyond the reach of—all that and more are implied in the
words of the Apostle. In that single sentence are two of the most precious words
of the human species, if not the most treasured words, linked in a conditional
proposition. Similar words are to be found in various revelation texts around the
world. But we must be cautious here, for the word “truth” is a difficult word
when reiterated in this world, caught up in much history, and for which terrible
sacrifices have been made; so is the word “freedom.” What then is this “truth”
that is said to be the causa principalis of freedom, yet another uncertain
signifier? We can perhaps state with some confidence what it is not. It is
certainly not some mental idea or logical conclusion; it is not a description or
representation; nor is it instilled in ritual or liturgy. All of these might confer
power, but they bring us nowhere near being “free.” Rather the word “truth”
here has the ring of a singularity, of something unique and unprecedented that
will bring about a new existential condition. Neither freedom nor truth can be
imagined; they have to be felt or realized deep within the sarco-pneumatic
composite—the so-called organism. The upsurge of the intelligible activated by
the Word-made-Flesh, as implied in the apostolic lines above, has this patent
imprint of embodied truth. It is primal ontology. But there is also another
element that hovers over that statement, making it tremble with the weight of the
Unknown, for which I do not have a better word than Love. The string of
signifiers maintains its truth through Love. How so? Locating the “you” within