Area	philosophy21

	teaching: enabling, tutorial, and therapeutic gary e. davis	January 2019 / December 2021

Learning experiences involve more than learner enjoyment of learner-oriented teaching: class presentation, practical instruction, and practice. But teaching is not any of that, though commonly regarded as only that (especially relative to large class sizes). From exemplifying love of creative intelligence through exemplary metaconceptual inquiry to teaching for conceptual sophistication (e.g., Strange Tools), doing philosophy is a practice. The doctor of philosophy is more than a master of its literature. Doing philosophy is more than lecturing on intellectual history (though I know of several intellectual historians who act otherwise). Representation of philosophical views is not exemplifying philosophical practice. “Thinking is not re-presentation,” Heidegger insisted. Making and disputing arguments is not Socratic maieutic. Unwitting, ordinary lifeworld conceptuality commonly implies an archetropality whose pretense is—or tends to become—idealization of high systemicity or ontologicist formality. Ontologism is (or tends toward) metaphysicalist “ontology.” Authentic ontology is derived from Ontogenic (culturally evo-devo) thinking. OntogenyO itself is evolving [verb] high conceptuality. The ‘onto-‘ is really conceptual evolvability, a high centripetality of conceptual appeal whose gravity is highly generative and ultimately Open. I avoid confusion by not using ‘ontology’ non-critically. Want of ontologism is a common result of encultured sensibility that philosophical practice is singularly suited to address. Philosophical teaching is, to useful degree, philological enlightening (and therapeutic). Yet, methodic formalisms are profoundly important for systemic work, of course. But an appropriateness of formalism is not intrinsic to the formalism. A good formalism serves appropriate employment. A good conceptuality of appropriativity is (not to be vain) 3(2) pragmatic, whose basis is a highly conceptual event of appropriation (highly conceptual inclusive fitness with demic efficacy) that my Project altogether is to prospect (beyond the January 2019 discussion, in terms of appropriating work of others for conceptual inquiry). Evolving high conceptuality implies a generative gravity which is ultimately Open (so, too, The Project). Usefulness of prospecting is ensured by partnering with others deeply well (from bioscience through metascience, etc. to social policy) for the sake of progressive practice. Inasmuch as conceptual analysis orients itself toward the appeal of foundationism (rigorous formality), that would be relative to the nature of conceptuality itself, which is meta-psychological or meta-mental-scientific, i.e., a highly conceptual (interdomainal) inclusive fitness that is efficaciously original for cultivating humanity and progressive practice. Common lifeworld conceptuality (or folk ontology) is inevitable, but is a developmental baseline for furthering conceptual individuation importantly. Rhetoric of ontologism may be edifying for advancing conceptual individuation (e.g., disclosing implicit appeals that are to be outgrown). To understand “the” history of “Being” as being of Our evolving is enlightening for understanding evolving conceptuality—as well as for developing and sustaining lifelong meaningfulness that may become important for others. Developmental stage models are useful for understanding conceptual individu-ation, but it’s beyond my present intentions here to delve into isomorphisms among developmental psychology, evolutionary anthropology, and philosophical history. Yet, that would (I hope) clarify a sense of stage continuum flexibility in conceptual teaching. There’s nothing mystical or obscurantist about that: Several important researchers have been working to bridge the above domains for many years. From Plato through Oxbridge tutorial, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Ordinary Language Philosophy to Derrida and manifold flexibility of philological theory, philosophy has always, in principle, fused enlightenment with a therapeutic calling. Phenomenological analysis without longing for Transcendental Logic (a critical motivation of Being and Time: to think beyond such metaphysicalism) serves emancipatory interest. (Indeed, “the truth will set you free” for actualizing potentials.) But what if psychoanalysis is “indicated” (as a clinician might put it)? Depth-psychological issues are not, in principle, literary (i.e., not primarily topics for textualist criticism, which the tradition of Northrop Frye’s archetypal approach to Literature and Hayden White’s prospecting of a “History of Consciousness” suggest). Analytical dynamic psychotherapy can be very fruitfully mapped into emancipatory teaching (beyond psychoanalytical literary criticism). So, what is the venue whereby psychodynamic analytical efficacy is possible, but by a rare kind of discursive reading? (Derrida was exemplary.) That is: texts worth intensive dwelling that aim to exemplify analytical intimacy. (Derrida was married to a psychoanalyst—entwined in mirrorplaying of interSelfality. “The Thing about us, muse, is our integral hermeneuticality for each other and to ourselves.”) So, a text may be deeply like an inkblot moment (Rorschach): a mirrorwindowing mystery, implying a poetic conception which is ours, though only you appreciate that from enowning.

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Be fair. © 2019, gary e. davis