Philolog

From Robert Solomon's introduction to Existentialism (1974):

As Camus tells us, 'at any streetcorner the absurd can strike a man in the face.' Imagine yourself involved in any one of those petty mechanical tasks which fill so much of your waking hours--washing the car, boiling an egg, changing a typewriter ribbon--when a friend appears with a new movie camera. No warning: 'Do something!' he commands, and the camera is already whirring. A frozen shock of self-consciousness, embarrassment, and confusion. 'Do something!' Well of course one was doing something, but that is now seen as insignificant. And one is doing something just standing there, or perhaps indignantly protesting like a housewife caught in curlers. At such moments one appreciates the immobilization of John Barth's Jacob Horner, that paralyzing self-consciousness in which no action seems meaningful. In desperation one falls back into his everyday task, or he leaps into an absurd posture directed only toward the camera. It is the Kantian transcendental deduction with a 16mm lens: there is the inseparable polarity between self and object; but in this instance the self is out there, in the camera, but it is also the object. A sum (not a cogito) accompanies my every presentation. 'How do I look?' No one knows the existential attitude better than a ham actor.
Enlarge this moment, so that the pressure of self-consciousness is sustained. Norman Mailer, for example, attempted in Maidstone a continuous five-day film of himself and others which did not use a developed script, leaving itself open to the 'contingencies of reality.' His problem was, as ours now becomes, how to present oneself, how to live one's life, always playing to the camera, not just as one plays to an audience but as one plays to a mirror. One enjoys making love, but always with the consciousness of how one appears to be enjoying himself. One thinks or suffers, but always with the consciousness of the 'outer' significance of those thoughts or sufferings. A film of one's life: would it be a comedy? a tragedy? thrilling? boring? heartrending? Would it be, as Kierkegaard suggests, the film of 'a life which put on the stage would have the audience weeping in ecstasy'? Would it be a film you would be willing to see yourself? twice? infinitely? Or would eternal reruns force you to throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse this Nietzschean projectionist? And who would edit this extravagant film of every detail--of yet undetermined significances--of your life? How would the credits be distributed? Each of us finds himself in his own leading role--the hero, the protagonist, the buffoon. John Barth tells us that Hamlet could have been told from Polonius' point of view: 'He didn't think he was a minor character in anything.'
What does one do? 'Be yourself!' An empty script; myself sounds like a mere word that points at 'me' along with the camera. One wants to 'let things happen,' but in self-conscious reflection nothing ever 'just happens.' One seizes a plan (one chooses a self), and all at once demands controls unimaginable in everyday life. Every demand becomes a need, yet every need is also seen as gratuitous.

Posted by James Collins at 1:25 PM | Permalink

The Philosophical Stages project is featured in the January/February 2007 issue of Edutopia, the award-winning, national multimedia publication of the George Lucas Educational Foundation (GLEF) designed to celebrate and profile the stories and people behind innovation in education. GLEF is a nonprofit operating foundation that documents, advocates, and disseminates information about exemplary programs in K-12 education in order to help these practices spread nationwide.

Edutopia identifies the Philosophical Stages project as an exciting landmark in an ideal educational landscape, and explains how and why it is important that Philosophical Stages brings a new P to PBL.

(1) "Acting Up: Higher philosophical thinking through drama" and
(2) "How To: Use Performance-Based Learning in the Classroom"

Continue reading "Acting Up: Higher philosophical thinking through drama" »

Posted by James Collins at 2:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

While on an impromptu peripatesis in the environs of the world's oldest strip-mall (Grandview Heights Shopping Center, est. 1927; Ohio Historical Marker #34-25), David G. Smith and Donald E. Lavigne were pondering the genesis of modern American capitalism. In the course of their wanderings, this Aristotelian duo, almost in spite of the damp|gray uncertainty of the day, was lambasted by postcapitalist modernity's inevitably philosophemic materiality. Our heroes became aware that this would be no ordinary encounter with the Archaeological. The gloom of an overcast day amidst the pastiche of spa pizzerias and peppermint barbershop poles encrusting the stoai of the proud polis of Columbus quickly gave way to the joyous sodality of two old friends reunited over coffee and crosswords. These hapless surveyors, crowned by the pungent effects of Sumatra's roasted and boiled offspring, came upon a sight|site that offered an enigmatic response to the challenge of their bodily engagement. An atemporal causality engendered by the presence of the absent Ron Arps led to an inescapable answer to a question as yet only partially exposed to the efforts of their cognitive excavation. For, as it became clear that the obfuscating brick of an artigianal masonry boutique would join a two meter high window from the outside to the inside (or was it from the inside to the outside?), they began to reflect on the shadowy, self-reflective Forms emanating from the looked-at glass. A chorus of commuters and the ire of the eagle's dew resounded in their ears, shifting their double-consciousness from the surface to the depths of a revelatory spec(tac)ulum. The vicarious stratigraphy of their gaze was inadequately mediated, as is all materiality, by the interpretative agency of the camera's edge:

Posted by Don Lavigne at 1:39 PM | Permalink

Philosophical Stages deals in experimental pedagogy at the intersection of philosophy and drama with both traditional and new media. Yesterday I witnessed James Collins and Corby Kelly (the two creators of the project) present with Antonia Blumberg and Sina Kimiagar (two of the Philosophical Stages 2005 alumni) a brief history of the Philosophical Stages program. This history included three phases for the current 2005-06 academic year. After screening a DVD of last summer's final performance--Antigone Reflected--Blumberg and Kimiagar unveiled their Dialogues on Virtue project in which they and the other alumni tried their hand at putting the ancient art of Socratic method into practice with peers, family, and mentors. The process of this innovative work is recorded on the Philosophical Stages collaborative authoring environment: http://www.philsophicalstages.org.

Collins and Kelly are pushing the envelope of creative and interdisciplinary pedagogy within the digital humanities. This they hope to continue in the next phase which is an experimental undergraduate seminar at Stanford. Acting Socratic, CLASSGEN 10 will be offered in the Spring quarter 2006.

The third phase involves the expansion and improvement of the Philosophical Stages 2006 summer program for high school and early-college students. According to Collins and Kelly this summer's program will include four-times the number of students through outreach efforts, continue to involve participants from last summer as mentors and advanced students, and expand the scope of the wiki and the size of the interdisciplinary collaborative network. The latter already includes dozens of graduate students, faculty, and acting professionals from the Bay area, Stanford, Berkeley, and the University of Texas at Austin.

Philosophical Stages works from the basic premises that (1) philosophy as an art of living aims to examine, evaluate, and transform our most basic assumptions and ways of thinking, our use of everyday words and ideas, our everyday habits and actions; (2) highly performative, experimental, and collaborative learning environments provide the best opportunities for this art which (3) is something we all can do and naturally want to do.

Posted by Christopher Witmore at 12:02 PM | Permalink