Education and Thinking in Continental Philosophy by Itay Snir

Author:Itay Snir
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030565268
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

To be able to produce questions and problems that make sense, Deleuze argues, we must “rid ourselves of an illusion which belongs to the dogmatic image of thought: problems and questions must no longer be traced from the corresponding propositions which serve, or can serve, as responses” (p. 157). In other words, rather than assuming that a problem makes sense by virtue of its solution, for Deleuze sense lies in the problem itself. A problem that makes sense does not consist in the search for a solution, and does not disappear once one has been found. It has an existence of its own, which is not “the being of the negative”, namely the lack of a solution, but rather “the being of the problematic”, which Deleuze also dubs “(non-)being” or “?-being” (1990, p. 123). The problem is never converted into an item of knowledge, a part of the comprehensive set of common accessible knowledge: “Even if the problem is concealed by its solution, it subsists nonetheless in the Idea which relates it to its conditions and organizes the genesis of the solutions” (1990, p. 54; see also p. 123). That is to say, even when a solution offers itself, sense does not reside in it; at most, it resides in the encounter between the solution and the question in relation to which it appears, becomes interpreted, and receives meaning.

Therefore, the problem cannot be solved by any datum or knowledge item, for it generates more questions that in turn call for new and different solutions all the time. A problem that makes sense does not have a simple solution in common or good sense, as it problematizes both, challenging self-evident beliefs and hierarchies, or doxa. Thinking that begins with such problems proceeds in constant motion that teachers can never stop by providing solutions. It is problematic for them just as it is for their students, for experts no less than for laypersons, and hence for the hegemonic hierarchies designed to reproduce the power relations between these parties.

Deleuzian education for thinking, therefore, involves posing problems that make sense, asking questions to which the teacher does not know the answers. But where do these problems come from, if not from the teacher’s knowledge? How can a teacher formulate questions that make sense without knowing the answers? And what exactly is communicated and learned when such questions and problems are posed?

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