Systematizing Revisited

People believe that teaching younger students requires a "building block" approach. They seem to believe that kids (let's say 17-20) are so scattered and unprepared that anything other than rigid systematizing is going to fail. The metaphor can be that of a brick wall, and each brick needing to be placed in order on a carefully built foundation. Certainly, this metaphor works for some things and I have used it myself.

But for our concerns, is this true of Philosophy and does the metaphor hold?

On one hand you have the bulk of Western Philosophy and Analytics which strives to place each brick in a certain order - a grand system. Kant wanted to build a case for reason as the ultimate tool for belief and that we unarguably have free will. In order to build this case he designed a systematic structure to teach us what he believed to be the case. One of the most important characteristics of the systematic structure is a linear shape. The ideas move forward and they, by design, orbit a central theme (like free will).

Nietzsche provides a contrary example. His presentation is intentionally discursive and full of tangents and metaphors. He approaches truth (cautiously) from angles and he has the expectation for belief that it occurs amidst art and aphorism. An aphorism is a sudden burst of knowledge from a communicated idea.

In academia, whether we teach Kant or Nietzsche, we seem to work under the expectation and the bias that systems are better; that structure is what allows the young brain to be disciplined about learning. For my part, I want to suggest that when we read Nietzsche, or Dostoevsky, or the philosophical novel, we are open to the latter; that we are open to "process" learning as it is markedly different from systematizing.

The human brain, I believe, learns through story, metaphor, and polyphony. It works better when the presentation matches the way our minds work, sideways, at angles, and through stops and starts. The opportunity for sudden explosions of knowledge.

The second question is whether the building block metaphor works for our discussion - critical thinking or Philosophy. And the expectation is that it does. Talk to most academics and they will operate from the belief that organization and systematizing is the key to disciplined learning. An alternative to this, as we have seen, is Nietzsche, or Shaftesbury, who believed in humor and story. Do our brains learn in such a way that the metaphor of the brick wall, a foundation and then individual mortared bricks, works? Is there any evidence that our brains are naturally structured in an expected way, that our minds need things in perfectly ordered ways, and that a linear structure enables memory and learning to flourish? The commonsense answer is no.

I would ask you to visit, if only for a moment, the first page of the first essay of Nietzsche's "Genealogy." This classic page, though oft misunderstood in my experience, is about memory and about commitment to "serious" ways of communicating, learning and believing. It suggests that human learning has a subconscious penchant for selfish participation in a much more scattered and unsystematic world of ideas. This is why he communicated through poetry. What I take from it selfishly is the grandest contribution of the Scottish Commonsense, and that is that humans cannot, in the end, buy into magic, and prefer reality. Though reality is, in some sense, unknown, it is closer to our "hearts" than pure reason - that is when pure reason stretches itself beyond the reaches of our actual lives.

Kundera suggests that metaphors can be dangerous. Why does he write this? Because he believes that the shine and scent of our metaphors attracts us when actually they lie. I think there is no better example of this then the building-block theory of learning. When we are talking about grand, fundamental classes, like Philosophy, it is extremely dangerous to think that kids have any interest in systems, order, stairways to nowhere, and sublimity. They prefer the truth subconsciously and the truth is that the human mind works sideways, and learns out of order, and it grows unexpectedly.