Over the years, I have made many inspired allusions here on The Rhetorical WHY to a concept called the in-between (IB), often by describing the overlap imagery of the IB space as “the place where ‘one’ ends and ‘another’ begins.” For me, IB is the crux of education, the capstone, because it describes the simultaneous multiple perspective of our interaction.
The in-between concept is key to the separate works of storied philosophical educators, Ted Aoki and Gert Biesta. Aoki explores IB from the Heideggarian clearing (Lichtung), a space reserved between us for disclosure and understanding, and Biesta from the pragmatism of Dewey. Each emphasises shared experiences and communication between teachers and students, and both locate inter-relational curricular dynamics in the figurative “in-between” space that arises as Person ‘A’ and Person ‘B’ (+ ‘C’, ‘D’, ‘E’…) relate to – and, typically, take up interest in – each other.
As I conceptualise IB in my doctoral work, the relatedness we find in between is holistic, as much an emotional or empathetic consideration of one person for another as it is some intellectual coming-together. This holism comprises as much or as little of whatever is shared by the people involved. However, IB is even more still than this ‘place’ of joint interaction; it is an energetic interface where we find the back-and-forth dynamism of ‘process’ in process – a kind of underway-ness that our cultural eyes seem trained to not see. For being figurative, IB is yet very real.
A brief foray into philosophy can help illustrate how or why Aoki, or Biesta, or you or me or anyone might decide to take up interest in the IB concept, beginning with a study by Charles Taylor of Heidegger:
“The human agent is here an emanation of cosmic spirit.… [T]he idea of expression itself can nudge us toward a third way of locating the clearing. It gives us a notion of the clearing which is essentially Dasein-related… [b]ut it doesn’t place the clearing simply inside us as a representation; it puts it instead in a new space constituted by expression. And in some versions it can acknowledge that the constituting of this space is not simply our doing.”
(Taylor, 2005, p. 445, added emphasis)
Taylor’s broader focus here is language. He describes what he believes Heidegger felt was the nature or aim of a cosmic spirit – although whether that’s either or both nature or aim is harder to discern. In any case, he describes a composite recognition of reality, negotiated between beings (Seiendes), that is not “placed ‘within’ minds, but… out between the interlocutors” (p. 445, added emphasis). As one person expresses, another perceives, and between them occurs an understanding – that is, from continuous perceived expressions arises continual or on-going understanding.
Imagine, for instance, while dressing for Halloween, how you might react not only to your own reflection in a mirror but also to your friend’s reflection as they stand next to you: at once, you are able to take in both of your reactions. Expressions thus perceived are Heidegger’s clearing / light (Lichtung), and “its locus is the speech community” (p. 446), within which I also include non-verbal communication, such as facial expression or body language. We might imagine all our joint interactions, in person or separated, as some living demonstration of this imagery. For each at once, by both in turn, something comes simultaneously to light for each as well as for both. That simultaneity is important yet, as I would argue, more frequently missed, if not ignored.
What Taylor calls an emanating cosmic spirit seems to be some kind of tacit consensus or settlement between two (or more) peoples’ expressions that, when combined, connote some additional ‘something’, something diachronic,[1] like when scientists weigh evidence with theory in order to draw conclusions. All these continuous perceived expressions amalgamate,[2] as we might describe the gradual renovation of a building or the refitting of a ship, right down to the labour contributed by each worker: upon a pre-existing frame we each contribute to building – or rebuilding – something different, something new, something else.
The more people involved, the more potentially complex becomes the consensus that arises from all these amalgamating contributions. Such tacit consensus occurs time-upon-time between us: here and now between you and me as (currently) displaced interlocutors as well as between each of us with [ whomever ] across space and time. Within all our combinations, we are indeed “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality… .” As such, the more people involved – and preferably the more sincere our exchanges – the better. And, to paraphrase Heidegger (with added emphasis), let our consensus set a more stable foundation of shared clarity or enlightenment; let us reach a shared understanding. Otherwise, in rather more chaotic spirit, we may concede to misunderstand and bicker endlessly over fake news and alternative facts.
Rather than a will to power or a will to control, the emanating cosmic spirit aims for something more patient: a shared understanding, an on-going will to live and let live. I call it a will, which suggests vitality, but maybe it is a motive or a desire, some reason-for-being – that starts to seem more teleological, whether inherent or imbued. And I do not mean some platitude, “the will to live and let live,” like a bumper sticker. I mean literally goodwill, and here now is that hazy distinction between nature and aim: a mutually respectful sharing of existence[3] that is…
- humble in expression
- appreciative in community
- inclusive of all whom we accept as well as tolerate, like as well as dislike
… and by which all our interaction and negotiating sets to thriving. As goodwill, this spirit’s thriving welcomes more than any one’s selection of some but is inclusive of all – the preferred, the desirable, the undesirable, the unfamiliar, the outcast, and all the rest as well. And where not everybody’s will is prepared to be so generous, perhaps instead seeking some need to force or to control, well hey… here’s at least one educational objective for anyone humble enough to embrace it.
And how humble are we? As compared to how certain we are about the expressions we offer to others, how generous are we willing to be? And how aware are we of our simultaneity, those expressions that others continuously receive from us while we continuously receive from them? And, in between all these, how anchored are we to the stable foundation upon which we claim the consensus of shared understanding between us, here and now as well as across space and time?
As it happens, all this concurs with Gadamer’s (2004) impression of Dasein as analogous to the Holy Spirit of the Biblical Trinity. This is not to suggest that Dasein is Biblical per se but that Dasein somehow transcends us; as a topic, then, spiritualism seems able to accommodate it. So, to continue (though not yet finish) the Biblical point, a triune impression of Dasein also squares Taylor’s assessment of Nietzsche, Leibniz, Sartre, and others whose work, he says, eventually “leads to our conceiving reality itself as emanating from will” (Taylor, 2005, p. 444). I am no expert on these particular philosophers, but theirs seems generally a branch of thinking that is, from a Biblical understanding, bound for idolatry “in the service of a triumphant will to will” (Taylor, 2005, p. 448). Theirs would supplant with human will the will of God, which created all by His utterances to “Let things be so-and-so.” In such a philosophy…
“… we come to see language as our instrument, and [Heidegger’s] clearing as something which happens in us [i.e. inherently selfish within us, not in the clearing negotiated between interlocutors].… At the end of this road is the reduction of everything to standing reserve in the service of a triumphant will to will. In the attempt to impose our light, we cover the sources of the clearing [i.e. other people and their expressions] in darkness. We close ourselves off to them [and]… the total mobilization of everything as standing reserve threatens the human essence.”
(Taylor, 2005, p. 448)
Existing between us, Taylor’s “human essence” corresponds to the goodwill mentioned above and refers to Heidegger’s “cosmic spirit” that opens this post.
In short, some wilful effort by one person to create and declare “so-and-so” frustrates the shared cosmic spirit of all the rest, by which we might otherwise negotiate a common consensus of… the way things are? … the way we perceive them to be? … the way we contribute to each other’s perceptions and understandings? Regardless, for any one person to declare “reality” is for that person to play God, which undermines all the rest,[4] even while another person might be attempting the very same thing: a battle of wills.
Conversely, if we think of reality as already created and underway, as something of which we are a part, not from which we are apart, then the warning is as dire as the promise is a marvel: communication, and language specifically – verbal, non-verbal, whichever kind – is no mere instrument to our being but the essence of our being, you and me and everyone, at once together: being here and now.
Click here for Part II. Logos
[1] For something diachronic, imagine a film montage: the director edits particular shots into a sequence, e.g. first, the shot of a car approaching a railway crossing; second, the shot of a steaming locomotive barrelling down the track. The two shots might actually have been filmed days, or even years, apart. But presented in sequence to an audience watching the film, they suggest the danger of a collision, especially since film audiences are accustomed to such devastating drama.
[2] In my dissertation, I imagine the accretion of rocks and gases that formed the planets around the Sun as a metaphor for the gradual historical assemblage of teachers who comprise the continuity of the on-going profession. From accretion to assemblage to amalgamation, I develop the imagery toward something of deepening significance or value.
[3] Note here the mutuality of people whose overlapping lives construct the complexity of a “real world” for which education is purported to prepare us, only now I highlight the feature of this mutuality that transcends time: we all live together, just not all at once.
[4] … the assumption here being that all people and their decisions and dignity are equal in stature, value, and worth. History, of course, would have us believe otherwise, which I think is Taylor’s point as well as the reason Gadamer might invoke a Biblical perspective, i.e. our inherited sinful nature – more on that in the next post.
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