Exploring the Art of Thinking
Dec 08, 2024 | by Claudio Salusso
When I ask 8th graders, “what do you do when you think?” I often receive impassive looks, confusion, or simply a list of activities done by thinking, i.e. calculating, planning, organizing, solving, processing, and so on. Ask yourself the same question, “What do I do when I think?” Before answering, allow me to share what Heidegger said: “thinking does not bring knowledge as do sciences; thinking does not produce usable practical wisdom; thinking does not solve the riddles of the universe; thinking does not endow us directly with the power to act.”
The great achiever is the Will.
The Will transforms desire into intention; is concerned with projects, not objects or ideas. And, ironically -thankfully- the Will cannot be willed. I can will myself to think, to taste, to hear, to see, to sit down, but cannot will my Will. A Will that is not ‘free’ is a contradiction in terms. An oxymoron.
Consider the three basic mental activities—thinking, willing, and judging. To will is to handle things which are not yet. To judge is to handle things which are no more. And to think? To de-sense the sense-world; to have present before my mind what is physically absent. In other words, thinking is to withdraw from the sensory world, to interrupt any doing, any ordinary activity, to stop-and-think. When thinking, I am not where I actually am. Which begs the question “where am I when I think?”
Often I remind myself to beware of asking students to think, because what I am actually asking them is contra-natura since children are, above all, a sense organ! They relate to the world through their feelings, and whatever they learn must enter through that mysterious, magical gate of the feeling life. Beware of the Jabberwock my son / the jaws that bite / the claws the catch! Yes, Lewis Carroll, yes, beware.
After asking students that question, I give each of them a fallen leaf, and ask to sense it fully -weight, color, smell, sound, shape, taste- then, after I take it away, they are invited to describe, in writing, for 10 minutes, the leaf. A mantle of silence falls upon us all. The air is heavy, and no one fidgets while making present in their mind what is physically absent. They are not where they actually are. Pure magic. If you were to enter the room at that moment, you would be struck by the echoes of the silent dialogue between the “I” and the self!
“So, what did you do when thinking?” I ask. “We were silent, we didn’t move, we ignored our surroundings, we were absent,” they reply. Now they are aware, now they know. So, we mustn’t be impatient and demand our youth to think. There is a right time for it, and it doesn’t come until well into high school. Until then, let us remember that the Main Gate is Feeling, then a brief moment to be absent from the senses for Thinking, and lastly, give them a wide berth to transform the desires into intention.
Señor - Quaesto mihi factus sum