a pedagogy of unknowing
TRANSCRIPT
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MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS
A PEDAGOGY OF UNKNOWING: WITNESSING
UNKNOWABILITY IN TEACHING AND LEARNING
ABSTRACT. Using insights from the tradition of via negativa and the work of
Emmanuel Levinas, this paper proposes that unknowability can occupy an impor-tant place in teaching and learning, a place that embraces the unknowable in general,
as well as the unknowable Other, in particular. It is argued that turning toward both
via negativa and Levinas offers us an alternative to conceptualizing the roles of the
ethical and the unknowable in educational praxis. This analysis can open possibilities
to transform how educators think about the goals of education in two important
ways. First, creating spaces for embracing unknowing in educational settings is an
act of ethical responsibility that recovers a sense of the Other and his/her uniqueness.
Second, rethinking the value of unknowing in the classroom may inspire in students
and teachers a sense of vigilance, responsibility and witnessing. Unknowing is an act
of embracing otherness and presents a curious element of redemption; in the lack of
knowledge, the meaning of its absence is found.
KEY WORDS: education, ethics, knowing, learning, Levinas, Other, unknowing,
via negativa
In 1989 in an article that stimulated considerable discussions in
educational circles, Elizabeth Ellsworth questioned whether a fruitful
teacherstudent relationship is possible, given the different life
experiences of teachers and students as well as the power imbalance
between them. In presenting her argument, Ellsworth focused on how
the lives of societal groups differ from one another in a sense, they
are unknowable to each other, as she argued. She particularly
emphasized that her own teaching experience left her wanting to
think through the implications of confronting unknowability. Whatwould it mean to recognize not only that a multiplicity of knowledges
are present in the classroom . . . but that these knowledges are con-
tradictory, partial, and irreducible? (p. 321, added emphasis). Given
that the various societal groups have separate knowledges, inac-
cessible to one another, Ellsworth advocated a practice grounded in
the unknowable (p. 323, added emphasis).
Studies in Philosophy and Education (2005) 24:139160 Springer 2005
DOI 10.1007/s11217-005-1287-3
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Education has always been a game of knowing and unknowing,
learning and ignorance. In addition, teaching students to encounter
the Other has been a worthy educational goal. But what if otherness,
as Ellsworth argues, is not epistemologically available, i.e. the Other
is unknowable? What sense does ethics or knowing about the Other
make then? How can educators and their students consider the pos-
sibility of unknowing and still encounter the Other, respecting his/her
irreducible otherness? It seems that there is an inherent paradoxical
interaction between knowing and unknowing, learning and igno-
rance: At the same time that we are eager to explore and learn things
(including learning about the Other), we have to admit that things
(and the Other) are mysterious and unknowable. Can this paradox
be embraced in teaching and learning, and form a pedagogy of
unknowing, a communication with the unknown, that perhaps offers
us inspiring ways of approaching unknowability?1
Using insights from the tradition of via negativa and the work of
Emmanuel Levinas, this essay proposes that unknowability can
occupy an important place in teaching and learning, a place that
embraces the unknowable in general, as well as the unknowable Other,
in particular. I argue that despite the differences between Levinas and
via negativa neither by themselves adequately explain unknowing
as such; that is, I develop an idea of unknowing that relies on both ofthese traditions. Following a trajectory that begins from tracingunknowing in the tradition ofvia negativa in the late Middle Ages, and
then identifying connections and tensions to Levinass philosophy,
educators can shed light on the ways in which unknowability may be
viewed in education.
On the one hand, via negativa is based on the notion that God is
ineffable and that the best way to God is through silence and
un-knowing (Zembylas and Michaelides, 2004). Thus, we un-know
the normal content of our awareness in order that an awareness of
God may flow in (Jones, 1981). Where we have no rational under-
standing of something, or are unable fully to describe or explain it, wecan nonetheless experience it, and the experience is strikingly real
(Green, 1986). This is a form of knowledge that St. John of the
1 Here, it needs to be clarified that pedagogy is not meant to signify classroom
pedagogical practices; broadly speaking, pedagogy may be defined as the relational
encounter among individuals through which unpredictable possibilities of commu-
nication are created. Pedagogy is the site of intersubjective encounters that entails
transformative possibilities.
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Cross refers to as unknowing.2 This idea was later picked up by the
medieval English contemplative who authored The Cloud of
Unknowing, by Meister Eckhart, and by a few others. For example,
Nicholas of Cusas De Docta Ignorantia speaks of learned igno-
rance in a Socratic sense: learned ignorance is knowing that we are
ignorant.3
On the other hand, Levinas (1969), influenced by such religious
traditions, writes about encountering the face of the Other, the
epiphany of the face, an idea that emphasizes the recognition of the
irreducible difference, fundamental unknowability, and radical exte-
riority of the Other. Responding to the Other, then, is not an issue of
knowledge about the Other (otherness is not epistemologically
available), but implies approaching the Other as an unknowable
alterity.
I will argue that there are interesting connections as well as
important tensions between Levinass ideas and the tradition of via
negativa as far as the notion of unknowability is concerned. In De
Mystica Theologia, Dionysius the Areopagite (1997) spoke of a
divine ignorance (Greek, agnosia) whereby we need to unknow
things so that we can permit Gods ray of darkness to enter in.
Similarly, Levinas suggests that we need to approach the Other with
ignorance so that we can learn from the Other and permit him/her toenter in (Todd, 2003). These similarities add another interesting layer
to our earlier paradox: we attend to (Simon, 2003) the Other
precisely by recognizing that the Other is unknowable. On the other
hand, there are also serious tensions between Levinas and via negativa
such as the individual, contemplative nature of the mystics that goes
against the grain of Levinass view of the relation to the Other as an
eminently social one. Nevertheless, these tensions enrich our attempts
to become witnesses of unknowability in teaching and teaching,
because they provide a more nuanced perspective on unknowing.
2
St. John of the Cross lived in Spain (15421591) and is considered one of themost important mystical philosophers in (Catholic) Christian history. He was the
founder (with St. Teresa) of Discalced (shoeless) Carmelites, a strict form of
monastic life. He left behind remarkable works of Christian mysticism such as:
Ascent of Mount Carmel, Dark Night of the Soul, and the Spiritual Canticle of the
Soul.3 Nicholas of Cusa was German (14011464), served the Roman Catholic Church
as a papal advocate, canon lawyer and a cardinal, and wrote many philosophical and
spiritual works. His two best-known works are De Docta Ignorantia (On Learned
Ignorance) and De Visione Dei (On the Vision of God).
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Thus, it seems to me of some value to embark on this journey from
via negativa to Levinass work and explore the art of unknowing
(Turner, 1998) in educational philosophy.
UNKNOWING AND THE TRADITION OF VIA NEGATIVA
The teaching belonging to the so-called Via Negativa (as understood
in the Latin tradition) and apophatic thought (as understood in the
Greek tradition) refers to the mystical theology developed by mystical
philosophers, such as Origen, Gregory of Nyssa and DionysiusAreopagite, and added to this tradition are the interpretations and
innovations made by later scholastic teachers such as Hugh and
Richard of St. Victor, the representatives of Augustinian, cataphaticmysticism. The via negativa or apophatic thought emphasizes
knowledge of God through unknowing. Entering into this unknowing
(or a-gnosia) might be called a kind of gnosis that is, in unknowing,
one realizes or acquires spiritual understanding through ignorance. In
contrast to willful ignorance, though, which involves a self-conscious
refusing to understand, unknowing describes a realization of inade-
quacy to anything approaching full and comprehensive understand-
ing. According to the tradition of via negativa, knowing that one does
not know is essential to understanding God.4
Via negativa takes its origin from Dionysius the Areopagite (a fifth
century A.D. monk, now known as Pseudo-Dionysius), whose trea-
tises on via negativa remain a cornerstone of Christian mysticism to
this day. Dionysius argued that human intellect is incapable of for-
mulating any but inadequate propositions concerning God. The best
way of approaching God, according to Dionysius, is through silence
and ignorance (Dionysius, 1997). In the work of Dionysius, un-
knowing has a positive role in the mystical process. To approach
God, one must become disenchanted with knowledge, i.e. one has to
denounce approaching everything in epistemological terms.
In the 15th century, Nicholas of Cusa (1954) further developed thetradition of via negativa in his De Docta Ignorantia (that may be
translated either as On Learned Ignorance or On Learned Un-
knowing). He emphasized the wisdom of recognizing the fallibility
of human intelligence to comprehend the totality and infinity of God.
In other words, he argued that the finite human mind cannot know
4 In practice, unknowing corresponds to the believers experiences such as desert,
fasting, and silence.
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infinite truth (i.e. God), because God is beyond all knowledge we can
construct. Thus, since we cannot know God in any direct way, we
have to approach him through ignorance by considering what he is
not, always admitting that God can never be known through learning.
Like Dionysius and Nicholas, St. John of the Cross (2001) in the
16th century points us to a similar direction, based on apophatic
unknowing and the otherness of God. According to St. John of
the Cross, silence and unknowing are fitting responses to mystical
experience. As he states in an interesting commentary on The
spiritual canticle:
In contemplation God teaches the soul very quietly and secretly, without its knowing
how, without the sound of words, and without the help of any bodily or spiritual
faculty, in silence and quietude, in darkness to all sensory and natural things. Some
spiritual persons call this contemplation knowing by unknowing. For this knowledge
is not produced by the intellect that the philosophers call the agent intellect, which
works on the forms, phantasies, and apprehensions of the corporal faculties; rather it
is produced in the possible or passive intellect. This possible intellect, without the
reception of these forms, and so on, receives passively only substantial knowledge,
which is divested of images and given without any work or active function of the
intellect. (stanza 39)
St. John of the Cross argues that there is a type of passive
knowledge or receptive understanding which is different from oureveryday consciousness, but which gives us a very real knowledge
or awareness of God. It is received, and, therefore, it is a type of
knowledge which cannot be measured by our limited intellectual
faculties, but which is the ground for approaching God: i.e. un-
knowing. Unknowing is a state of understanding all but thinking
about no specific item of knowledge (Green, 1986); it is not confinedto reason, imagination or the senses, but it embraces everything. To
know nothing, as St. John says, is to empty oneself of all particular
ideas and images about the otherness of God. Thus unknowing has
the potential to transcend the dichotomies and dualistic structures of
rationalistic thought (Green, 1986). Perhaps by this St. John means
that unknowing contains everything in a state of latency or poten-tiality, but nothing in actuality or in a state of manifestation (Green,
1986, p. 32). St. John (2001) insists that unknowing is a powerful way
of approaching God and one does not achieve this in an intellectual
manner but it must be experienced:
I entered into unknowing,
and there I remained unknowing
transcending all knowledge.
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This knowledge in unknowing
is so overwhelming
that wise men disputing
can never overthrow it,
for their knowledge does not reach
to the understanding of not
understanding,
transcending all knowledge.
(Stanzas concerning an ecstasy experienced in high contemplation)
St. Johns poem describes a very real type of powerful experience
which provides a new and deepened way of becoming aware of God.Later in the essay, I will point to some striking similarities between St.
Johns discussion of passive reception of God and Levinass
analysis of passive reception of the Other. Also, St. John maintains
that God is essentially incomprehensible, and we can never attain full
knowledge of him; similarly, I will show how Levinas argues that the
Other is incomprehensible and we can never attain full knowledge of
him/her. Both emphasize a simple apophatic idea that God (or the
Other, in Levinass case) cannot be known intellectually or episte-
mologically. Levinas clearly pushes this idea further in the next
section it will become clear how.
Finally, I will make a brief reference to one of the best known
works of European mysticism The Cloud of Unknowing (1978) written some time in the second half of the fourteenth century, by an
unknown author who is thought to have been the spiritual director of
a monastery. The book reiterates some basic ideas in via negativa (e.g.
makes references to Dionysius) and is a series of spiritual exercises
which rest upon the belief that God is incomprehensible. Since God is
essentially unknowable to human beings, according to the author ofThe Cloud, any activity of the intelligence is a hindrance in
approaching God. As it is argued, there will always remain a cloud
of unknowing between us and the origins and foundations of our
existence we want to know; therefore, the best thing we can get in our
process of knowing is unknowing. In other words, the soul has toembrace unknowability and move towards God in a cloud of
unknowing.
With their writings, Dionysius, Nicholas of Cusa, St. John of the
Cross, and others in the tradition of the via negativa point the way
towards a profound understanding of the ineffable, i.e. God, in andthrough unknowing (Zembylas and Michaelides, 2004). In via
negativa, speech is never an affirmative naming as what is named is
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always Other, is always more elusive than apparent. Thus, as
Zembylas and Michaelides argue, via negativa identifies the break-
down of speech before the unknowable. Far from being a dogma of
despair or an anti-epistemological doctrine, via negativa asserts that
the believer can experience God even through the painful awareness
of his absence (Lawrence, 1999). The dark night of the soul, as
John of the Cross (2001) called this experience, is a time of radical
stripping away of everything which the seeker values more than God
and a reordering of the seekers being (Lawrence, 1999, p. 98). The
role of unlearning and ignorance, and the need to go beyond them are
significant in the believers effort to an understanding. Unknowing
serves a positive role in that it becomes a position of gaining access to
God, by escaping the seduction of approaching God in an episte-
mological way. One can thus know this only through an
unknowing of understanding God that is, emptying the mind of all
normal content.
VIA NEGATIVAS UNKNOWING IN DIALOGUE WITH
LEVINASS WORK
The notion of unknowability in via negativa echoes in Levinass work
when he argues about the unknown Other, and the modest, humble
and ethical manner of approaching the Other who is otherwise than
being.5 It is well known, of course, that Levinas has been greatly
influenced by Judeo-Christian tradition in general and the tradition
of via negativa, in particular (e.g. see de Vries, 1999; Srajek, 2000;
Kosky, 2002), thus it is not difficult to find parallels between the via
negativa and Levinass work.6 My focus here will be to identify some
parallels as well as some important diversions between via negativa
and Levinass work concerning the notion of unknowing. This dis-
cussion will offer significant insights in grounding the discussion
5 For Levinas, the Other is in the first place the other human being who calls for
our ethical responsibility, yet the Other is also the Most High. Translators of
Levinas contemplate the distinction between Autrui and autre, although Lev-
inas is never entirely consistent. In this essay, I use one or the other (Other/other),
often without distinguishing them; the distinctions are made carefully when it mat-
ters.6 For example, Levinas himself acknowledged that Judaism has greatly influenced
his philosophical texts, particularly his reading of the ethical (not mystical) encounter
between self and the Other.
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about the place of unknowing in educational philosophy which comes
in the last part of this essay.
One way of beginning to identify some parallels between via neg-
ativas notion of unknowing and Levinass attempts to emphasize the
meaning of the unknowable Other is to think of God (the holy
other, as Derrida says; see also Summerell, 1998) as the inexpressible
and the unknowable. God is the holy other because he keeps silent
and remains unknowable, just as the Other is unknowable (Levinas,
1985). If God and the Other were somehow knowable to us, they
would not be others; we would have been homogeneous with them.
Both Levinass philosophy and via negativa attempt to assert what
cannot be asserted, what is impossible to know. In via negativa, God
cannot be expressed in any meaningful sense, because human
intellect is finite; this ineffability is also a Levinasian understanding of
the Other as an unknowable alterity (Levinas, 1985).
The epiphany of radical Otherness emphasizes the Others
inassimilable exteriority (Levinas, 1969, 1987a). Like via negativa,
Levinass philosophy turns on its desire for the totally Other.7 Of
course in via negativa, the totally Other, that which is sublime beyond
representation, is God. In this sense, it may be said that Levinas
embraces a kind of via negativa towards the ethics of otherness; i.e.
knowing the Other is impossible. The relation with the Otherbecomes an experience of the impossible, of the impossibility of
knowing him/her (Levinas, 1987b). The unknowability of the Other is
not presented as absence but is correlative to an experience of the
impossible (p. 40); the unknowability of the Other signifies that the
very relationship with him/her is a relationship with mystery
(ibid.). Levinas questions the primacy philosophy has given to
knowing, with its propensity to grasp the otherness in epistemological
terms; understanding the Other as known, argues Levinas, the
Others alterity vanishes as it becomes part of the same. Both via
negativa (especially St. John) and Levinas emphasize the importance
of the passive reception of God and the Other. This means that theself is passively open to the Other and does not aim to assimilating
him/her to the same. In general, Levinas and via negativa share the
7 As one of the reviewers comments, this is true for the Levinas of Totality and
Infinity; however, by the time of Otherwise Than Being, Levinas drops the idea of
desire and tries to paint the relation to the Other in terms other than desire. This is
important, because it constitutes a difference between Levinas and the via negativa.
Later in the essay, I discuss the meaning and significance of desire in this context.
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conviction that any conceptualization of God or otherness is
automatically inadequate.8
Despite these similarities between via negativa and Levinass phi-
losophy concerning unknowing, there are, of course, some notable
differences. First of all, via negativa posits a godly-Being who resides
in a space prior to the purely existential mode of being; in other
words, it is clearly caught up in the ontological. However, Levinas
attempts to perceive a God (and the Other) who has not become
spoiled by being. Thus, Levinas (1985) rejects claims (e.g. in
Heideggers philosophy) that ethics is subsequent to Being; instead, as
Levinas claims, ethics (ought) precedes ontology (is): ethics is
not a moment of being; it is otherwise and better than being, the very
possibility of the beyond (1989, p. 179). Levinas also argues that the
ontology of the Being does not concern itself with the freedom of the
self as something that is questioned. In other words, the Being is
locked in ontological terms and thus it is not possible to show that its
actions are unjust or evil. Freedom is not ethically questioned and
therefore one has no understanding of ethics other than in terms of
ontological possibilities and limitations. Levinas makes clear that
ethical responsibility to the Other is not a matter of free will, because
one has infinite responsibility to the Other (Child et al., 1995). The
impossibility of knowing the Other is precisely the condition of ethics;the encounter which occurs between self and Other gives birth to an
infinite ethical responsibility (Levinas, 1985). In other words, while
the question in via negativa is about whether finite human (episte-
mological) categories are adequate to know (grasp, comprehend)
God, the question for Levinas is to find something that comes before
(or is deeper than) ontology, namely, the ethical, as a relation to the
other.9
Second, via negativa takes on a certain view that directs its gaze
toward that which is above, i.e. it is always looking toward the
transcendental. Via negativa is mystical, namely, it tries to preserve
the sacredness of faith to God and aims at the mystical union between
a human being and the Supreme Being. In this sense, the via negativa
is an attempt to bring the two close together, in a non-cognitive
union. Levinas, by contrast, is no friend of mysticism; indeed, he is
8 See Levinass (1989) discussion on how we are incapable of knowing God (pp.
166189); also, consider de Vries (1999) for comments on Levinass views of God.9 I wish to acknowledge the invaluable contribution of the reviewers who sug-
gested several ways to make clearer the distinction between Levinas and via negativa.
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adamantly and steadfastly anti-mystical.10 His concern is ethics and
favors the otherness of the Other; this concern can be thought as a
(profound) alternative to mysticism in two ways. First, Levinass idea
of the relation to the Other is not about a union, but always about a
gap between the one and the other (even when Levinas uses the trope
proximity to describe it); and second, although he does deal with a
relation to God in some of his essays even there God is absent, one
who withdraws, is present as a trace, an enigma, present in absence. 11
Concerning the notion of responsibility for the Other, Levinas
(1981) argues that all the usual negativities of via negativa are
transmuted into positive statements, which, nonetheless, preserve the
trace of infinity (see also, Levinas, 1969, 1985). For Levinas there is
a call and an ethical responsibility that properly belong to every
human being (Biesta, 2003): the call to be a witness for the infinite in
the Saying of responsibility (Simon, 2003). Saying opens me to the
Other and his/her unknowable alterity; the witnessing is thus a wit-
nessing to what the Other accomplishes in me (i.e. the Other creates
me as a responsible person).
To witness, according to an ordinary understanding of the word,
means to say or write of what one saw with ones own eyes or heard
with ones own ears. Saying, according to Levinas (1969), is the re-
sponse of the I to the Other; the I speaks but the Said fails(language fails) by refusing to mean to Others what it means to me.
However, the Saying reveals that the I is exposed to the alterity of
the Other. The Saying is not addressed to something that demands a
response; it is a response that escapes the determination of the rela-
tion with the Other. In Saying, one is vulnerable to the unknowable
Other ones ethical responsibility to the Other is exposed. The
10 For example, the anti-mystical aspect in Levinass writing can be seen in the
following excerpt: The relationship with the other is not an idyllic and harmonious
relationship of communion, or a sympathy through which we put ourselves in the
others place; we recognize the other as resembling us, but exterior to us; the rela-
tionship with the other is a relationship with a Mystery (1969, p. 75). Levinass ideaof relation to the other is precisely not an idyllic and harmonious relationship of
communion, i.e., mystical union. The other is recognized as exterior to us; and it
is this exteriority that Levinas designates as Mystery. Levinass use of mystery has
no resemblance to the idea of mysticism. I am deeply grateful to one of the anon-
ymous reviewers who pointed this out.11 For example, see the essay God and philosophy in Levinas (1989).As a result,
the relation to God is through the (human) other, where the trace to God is con-
cretely in the otherness of the (human) other. So there never is a union and there
never is direct relation to God.
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Saying stages an experience of witnessing andenacts a witnessing; the
response and responsibility to the Other is thus one kind of wit-
nessing. As Levinas (1969) writes, I speak to witness; to announce
my responsibility for others to others (p. 48).
Finally, although both via negativa and Levinas discuss how our
knowledge of the subject escapes determination and total description,
this does not mean that they share the same understanding. While the
mystic of via negativa aims at becoming aware of the unknowable
mystery, which exists beyond reality, Levinas uses the discourse of
unknowing as the reflection of the only existing reality, revealed in
ones relation to the Other (see Levinas, 1989). In Levinass ethics,
there are no absolute rules prescribing the responsibility toward the
Other, which means that no one ever knows if he or she responds in a
just manner (Chinnery, 2003). Levinasian ethics, as a relationship, is
a matter of sensibility, not the application of objective and universal
rules. There is no certainty, no rest for Levinas whether one ever
fulfills his/her debt to the Other, while for the via negativa theologian
there exists beyond reason the ultimate harmony in union with God.
All in all, there are interesting parallels as well as important ten-
sions between via negativa and Levinass work. The question is: Is
there anything significant to learn from both via negativa and Levinas
in our efforts, as educators, to theorize unknowing and its place ineducation in a critical manner? This is the question to which I will
attempt to respond in the last part of this essay. I believe it is inter-
esting to draw on the via negativa as a way to understand un-
knowing in the teacherstudent relationship and put this in dialectic
contrast with the more Levinasian way of understanding unknow-
ing. Exploring this may provide a useful lens for teachers and stu-
dents who are struggling with unknowability and otherness and who
are not satisfied with contemporary answers defined in highly
instrumental terms.
AN EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY OF UNKNOWING
As I have discussed earlier, Levinass work and via negativas phi-
losophy concerning unknowing are joined in the idea that commu-
nication is bound in the impossibility of ever knowing the Other.
This idea, I claim, provides a very different starting point from which
educators may view the teacherstudent relation as well as the role
of unknowing in education. First, the discussion of the infinite
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to know problematizes the goals of education. Facts can be
known, but Others cannot (Abunuwara, 1998, p. 147). One could
argue that the focus of education should not be on knowing the
Other (since this is impossible, anyway), but on a radical openness in
communication and an attention to the (unknowable) particularity of
the Other (Todd, 2003). True communication is only possible in terms
of absolute otherness, in giving oneself to the Other (Levinas, 1987a).
Both via negativa and Levinas challenge the epistemological rela-
tionship (Biesta, 2001, 2003) between humans and the world on the
basis of a fundamental ignorance. This ignorance is neither naivete
nor skepticism (Biesta, 1998); but while for via negativa this is an
ignorance that is learned (as in Nicholas of Cusa, for example), for
Levinas it is part of an awakening to the elemental relationship to the
Other. This tension between the via negativa and Levinas further
illuminates the ethical and political implications of unknowing in
education: i.e. that there has to be a commitment to the impossibility
of knowing. As Biesta (1998) argues, impossibility does not denote
what is not possible, but that which does not appear to be possible,
and thus the recognition of the impossibility of knowing releases the
possibility of transgression.
Second, an important implication of embracing unknowing is
that educators, as well as learners, especially in a fluid and contin-ually changing society, need to give up their position as knowers
and engage in ethical relations that welcome and attend to the
experiences of the Other (Simon, 2003) and do not reduce him/her to
sameness. The contribution of the via negativa here is that it
emphasizes approaching the Other through emptying all precon-
ceived beliefs and ideas about the otherness of the other, i.e. the
Other has to be experienced. Levinas pushes this further and engages
the challenge of what practices might embody a sensibility through
which the encounter with the Other is ethically attended (Simon,
2003). While via negativa empties us from past conceptualizations to
reveal our nakedness, Levinas sees this nakedness as the obli-gation of vulnerability to the Others gaze and is a relation that
recognizes the singularity of the Other. These two possibilities first,
giving up our positions as knowers and second, engaging in ethical
relations with others (e.g. teachers engage in ethical relations with
their students) are opened, if educators acknowledge the vital role
of unknowing in the education process. The rest of this essay takes
on analyzing these two possibilities and their implications in
teaching and learning.
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Unknowing as Engaging in Ethical Relations with Students
Readings (1996) views teaching and learning as sites of obligation,
loci of ethical practices and not means of transmission of knowledge
(p. 155), and the condition of pedagogical practice as an infinite
attention to the other (p. 160). To encounter the unknowable
mystery of the Other means to be for the Other and attend to him/her
(Todd, 2003). It is precisely the ethical responsibility of educators to
respond to their students by stimulating and inspiring students
reflections in new directions; directions that will enable them to de-
velop their capacities in discovering the meaning of ethics within arapidly changing cultural environment.
In particular, Levinass critique does not deny the reality of rules,
laws, institutions, policies, and so on; what he is arguing is that the
ontology of all these does not exhaust their meaning, because
ontology does not respond to the face of the Other (Child et al.,
1995). The problem with via negativa on this issue is that it can only
think of the individual as a particular instance of something more
general; this is precisely why it always remains within ontology. On
the other hand, the contribution of via negativa should not be
undermined, because the exposure to the infinity that emanates from
the very nakedness of approaching the Other adds to highlighting the
significance of responding to the Other. Levinass position extends
this idea and takes it to a whole new level of opening oneself to
another and enacting ones non-indifference (Simon, 2003, p. 51).
This requires, according to Simon, a particular embodied atten-
tiveness within which one becomes self-present to, and responsive
toward an existence beyond oneself such as reading, watching and/
or listening to the Other (2003, p. 51). Similarly, Readings (1996)
proposes an understanding of pedagogy permeated by such an ethical
approach that emphasizes responsiveness to otherness, through lis-
tening to thought, i.e. hearing that which cannot be said (p. 165).
A pedagogy of listening and attentiveness is a pedagogy that em-
braces otherness and unknowing; put differently, it is a pedagogy ofunknowing.
A pedagogy of unknowing is responsive to the Other and creates
opportunities that do not consider the learner as knowable and
fixed. Instead, educators can invite learners to read, watch and listen
to others testimonies. For example, a teacher could challenge stu-
dents to attend to the testimony of an individual who has suffered in
life. This will provide opportunities for the learner to relate to the
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Other (as well as to ones self) in new ways and will provoke new
forms of presencing for/with the Other. The point is not to know
the Other; the ultimate goal is to witness the unknowable Other. Via
negativa has taught us first that there is a positive, constructive role in
unknowing. This is precisely the role that is enacted in a pedagogy of
unknowing. Pedagogies also need to be flexible enough to take into
consideration the Levinasian challenge of constructing sensibility in
educational encounters (Simon, 2003). It is important to clarify here
that the whole point that Levinas makes is that unknowing cannot be
recuperated by any appeal to empathy or identification with an-
others life. The significance of a pedagogy of unknowing is that it
provokes educators to reevaluate what constitutes education and
educational goals in order to inspire learners to develop and enact
relations with one another.
Witnessing the unknowable Other means engaging in seeing,
feeling, and acting differently (Boler, 1999; Boler and Zembylas,
2003). What is the significance of this? Via negativa suggests that
approaching the Other marks a break with knowledge and requires
the disclosure and abandonment of ones ego in order to unite with
the Other. While Levinas does not suggest any unification with the
Other, he does emphasize the importance of vulnerability and a
loosening of ones ego within which one is still obligated to respond, tobe accountable to the demands of the witness, that s/he be take seri-
ously, that his or her speaking matters (Simon, 2003, p. 53, authors
emphasis). Being a witness, according to both via negativa and
Levinas, implies above all that one is vigilant to the Other.
Witnessing acknowledges the contingency of ones subjectivities
and nurtures unknowability without ending up creating either an
anti-epistemological or an essentialist culture in the classroom. A
pedagogy of unknowing calls for action that is a result of learning to
become a witness and not simply a spectator. Witnessing is
different from spectating in that witnessing assumes an engagement
in seeing the Other differently (Boler, 1999). This does not assure anychange in our relations with others; however, it represents an
important step toward that direction. Therefore, it matters a great
deal how educators invite students to engage in witnessing unknow-
ing. Witnessing unknowing in teaching and learning is also different
from plain critical inquiry in that the latter often promotes educa-
tional individualism while the former emphasizes the political and
ethical aspects of relationality. One becomes a witness, to use Simons
(2003) words, when one finds himself/herself touched, summoned
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to be accountable to a saying that exposes and begin to de-phrase the
very taken for granted terms through which the stories of others settle
into . . . [ones] experience (p. 54, added emphasis).
One way, therefore, that a pedagogy of unknowing may connect
with teaching and learning is through viewing schools and classrooms
as loci of ethical practices (to use Readings words) that subvert the
placement of the Other within habitual categories. Teaching, then,
would not be focused on acquiring knowledge about ethics, or about
the Other, but would instead have to consider its practices themselves
as relations to otherness and thus as always potentially ethical that
is, participating in a network of relations that lend themselves to
moments of non-violence. In this sense, the way in which we engage
the Other becomes a central question of ethics and for education
(Todd, 2003, p. 9, authors emphasis). Enacting unknowing in edu-
cation will require educators to acknowledge the priority of the
ethical relation in the classroom. On the other hand, framing ethical
relations as simply an issue of knowledge about the Other will per-
petuate the problematic assumption that we are able to somehow
know the Other. In an educational context that embraces un-
knowing, the ethical relation is given priority over the possession of
knowledge.
Paying attention to the Other and prioritizing the ethical relationmean attending with an apophatic blindness (Emery, 1999) that is
not aiming at controlling or capturing the student/Other but
affirms his/her unknowable alterity. Vigilance is what Levinas (1987b)
suggests as an ethical response: looking where there is nothing to see
(since the Other is unknowable) but where one is unable not to look:
one approaches the other perhaps in contingency, but henceforth
one is not free to move away from him (1989, p. 117). He also says:
Ethical responsibility is . . . a wakefulness precisely because it is a
perpetual duty of vigilance and effort that can never slumber
(Levinas and Kearney, 1986, p. 30). Vigilance is a form of humility
which implies that one is being open to an unsettlement. Such a modeof engagement, i.e. humility, is also advocated by mystical theolo-
gians in via negativa; however, the centrality of humility in via
negativa is associated with the loss of self in order to unite with the
Other. The loss of self is not necessarily a bad thing, if one artic-
ulates the self in an affirmative manner (Rosenau, 1992), as a form of
working subjectivity.
In the pedagogical relationship, vigilance implies being attentive to
how teachers and students hear and respond to one another.
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Discussing Levinass notion of vigilance, Oliver writes that vigilance
is necessary to recognize the unrecognizable in the process of wit-
nessing itself. To demand vigilance is to demand infinite analysis
through ongoing performance, elaboration, and interpretation
(2000, p. 46). In other words, educators should consider how their
vigilance could be directed in establishing the quality of relationship
with their students through an ongoing process that does not assume
students as fixed and known beings.
Finally, while emanating from different perspectives, both via
negativa and Levinas engage the issue of what silence might embody
as a sensibility toward the Other. Via negativa considers the con-
templative implications of mystical silence in uniting with the Other,
while Levinas (1985) observes that often things cannot be spoken or
known in epistemological terms except in full silence. Here it is
important to clarify that it is not enough to be silent in the face of the
Other; one also commits oneself through speech as response. Wit-
nessing is eminently involved in language; in addition, silence is not
always an ethical response one has only to think of the Holocaust to
see that silence can be problematic. On the other hand, it should not
be undermined that silence may also act as a means of relating to the
transcendence of the Other (Zembylas and Michaelides, 2004). This
kind of silence can be an ethical event, contrary to the said that oftenis unable to express the inexpressible and instead diminishes the
meaning of an event. It is possible that in silence the Other is
neither absorbed nor dismissed. Silence, then, can serve as a legiti-
mate educational and ethical response to the radical alterity of the
Other (Zembylas and Michaelides, 2004).
Unknowing as Giving up Our Positions as Knowers
As mentioned earlier, in educational settings unknowing has always
been marginalized and rationality and knowing have been given
priority. However, via negativa and Levinas teach us that no appeal
to rationality can overcome the depth of unknowing required in order
to begin approaching the Other. Otherness is maintained as an ever-
deepening mystery (just like silence and unknowability) that contin-
ues to revitalize the very meaning of every encounter we have with the
Other.
Todd emphasizes that to teach responsibly and responsively
one must do so with ignorance and humility (2003, p. 15). The
teacher has to be able to appreciate the unknowableness of oneself
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and his/her students. Humility before the unknowable otherness will
invite unknowing and the infinite into the classroom. Any attempt to
categorize the Other in order to comprehend him/her is to totalize
the Other. As Levinas writes: To receive from the Other . . . means
exactly: to have the idea of infinity. But this also means: to be taught
. . . The relation with the Other . . . brings me more than I contain
(1969, p. 51). The roles, then, between the teacher and the student are
reversed; their traditional relations need to be radically re-thought, if
they are to be conceived primarily as ethical relations. Unknowing is
primary to becoming, to transformation; teachers and students,
according to via negativa, need to approach unknowing in a positive
way and entrench themselves in the impossibility of knowing the
Other. In this seemingly paradoxical way, educators may begin to
approach the Other differently, and to invoke the value of giving up
their positions as knowers especially after the failure of the highly
instrumental orientation of education to inspire teachers and students
alike.
This instrumental orientation has strived for certainty based on
firm foundations; thus, ethical issues (such as the relations between
teachersstudents, students-curriculum etc.) have been treated as
epistemological problems solved through management principles.
Terms such as efficiency, standards, and quality control pre-cisely reflect the absence of unknowing and humility; an absence that
is invoked as easily, and yet as falsely, as knowledge connotes pres-
ence. That unknowing is a response is neither anti-pedagogical nor
anti-intellectual; on the contrary, it marks a readiness to listen and
pay attention, an invitation to hear others and oneself, and a positive
valuing of the Other.
The Western obsession with knowing without listening to the
Other rejects the possibilities opened by unknowing. The funda-
mental concern of Western philosophy, Levinas suggests, is to make
the Other an object of knowledge, something to be understood. In
this way, strangeness is reduced to sameness and alterity becomescontrollable (since it is assumed to be knowable). Levinas preserves
alterity, because this kind of experience opens us to the voice of the
Other. Inspired by both via negativa and Levinass work, educators
may view how unknowing acts primarily as a means of relating to the
Other. The praxis of unknowing means the taking of responsibility
for the conduct of communication. Such a practice requires radical
generosity and sensibility.
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Embracing unknowing in pedagogy offers hope in our efforts to
become more sensible (Levinas, 1981). I am aware of the danger, of
course, of proposing a call for a pedagogy of unknowing. Is not
having enough knowledge and skills the ultimate goal of most edu-
cational systems? (Zembylas and Michaelides, 2004) However, the
impossibility of knowing, as seen through the work of Levinas and
the tradition ofvia negativa, creates a responsibility to the presence of
the Other. Enacting unknowing in teaching and learning initiates
relatedness, attentiveness, and generosity. Claiming a place for
unknowing in educational settings offers hope in opening up to the
Other. This kind of teaching and learning can happen only when
knowledge is not the ultimate goal of education.
The otherness of the student is a permanent reminder to the tea-
cher of his/her inadequacy to grasp the student. The fact that the
Other cannot be known, however, should not be perceived as a threat
to teachers power, but as a possibility that saves the situation from a
deadly repetition (Abunuwara, 1998). Configuring education as a
relation with unknowing and infinity requires a daring acceptance of
the unknowable possibilities of our existence (Abunuwara, 1998,
p. 149). In a sense, the student/Other always surpasses the teachers
ability to grasp him/her; this is not an issue of power any more, but a
matter of desire (Levinas, 1969) or knowing by unknowing (St. Johnof the Cross, 2001).12
In particular, Levinas (1969) maintains that the face of the Other is
a call for which there is never a guarantee that the Other is reached.
For example, the teacher has something that the student needs, but
the student/Other is what the teacher desires (Abunuwara, 1998). To
put this differently: knowing otherness escapes the learner (as well as
the teacher), thus the learner (or the teacher) desires that Otherness.
It is a desire for an end that never comes, but which energizes ones
desire and keeps it moving and searching. This is precisely what
allows Levinas to associate desire with infinity. The way that desire is,
its way of being, is infinite desire. Levinas reminds us that the rela-tionship to the infinite is not a knowledge but a desire; we always feel
an absence, or, as St. John said, a darkness, that we never find
12 In this essay, desire is understood as that which produces and seduces imagi-
nations when one attends to the Other, instead of being associated with repression
and coercion (Deleuze and Guattari, 1983, 1987). Feminist work, in particular, has
interrogated desire and how women might re-claim pedagogical or other desire
(McWilliam, 1996, 1997). Based on Levinass perspective, desire is not defined simply
as absence or lack, but a relational (productive) encounter with the Other.
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the perfect match between our desires and their fulfillment. For
Levinas, there is never a feeling of complete satisfaction, harmony,
perfect unity (like that which via negativa mystics claim one can
achieve); there is never a feeling of totality. Rather, there is always
a feeling of infinity of desires that are infinite, questions that
always open out endlessly. This experience is a first indicator of an
otherness toward which we are always turned. This desire for oth-
erness can revitalize education and its goals, because it enables
teaching and learning practices that unsettle ones commitments to
knowing.
Finally, the loss of closure because of infinity is the responsi-
bility to which the infinite calls educators. The Other as call and
appeal invokes through the glory of the infinite an endless responsi-
bility. This is where a different kind of teaching emerges: Teaching
otherwise, as Safstrom (2003) writes, is an endlessly open exposure,
an unfolding of sincerity in welcoming the other in which no slipping
away is possible; teaching otherwise is an art when it keeps awake
being as a verb (p. 29). As Levinas (1989) says: Perhaps the atti-
tudes of seeking, desiring and questioning do not represent the
emptiness of need but the explosion of the more within the less
(p. 208). Attitudes of seeking, desiring and questioning, rather than
repose, provide the best learning environment for approaching theOther and embracing unknowing in education. To give priority to
desire and infinity in education means to value a learning with,
about, from others that cannot be specified in advanced (Simon,
2003, p. 58). The possibility of learning comes from the relation with
the student/Other; a relation that cultivates attitudes of seeking,
desiring and questioning, all of which embrace the unknowable.
CONCLUSION
In this essay, I argued that understanding the way in which concepts
and ideas from via negativa have been woven throughout Levinass
writings can help us see the role of powerful concepts such as un-
knowing in contemporary educational theory, and to decide whether
turning toward such concepts offers us an alternative to conceptu-
alizing the role of the ethical and the unknowable in educational
praxis. The current educational system in the West is rooted in an
obsession for knowledge and that is partly why the value of
unknowing has not yet been realized. However, I discussed here some
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conditions for understanding unknowing as an act of being attentive
to the Other, rather than as an instrumental or technical act identified
through knowing.
This analysis can open possibilities to transform how educators
think about the goals of education in two important ways. First,
creating spaces for embracing unknowing in educational settings is an
act of ethical practice that recovers a sense of witnessing the Other
and his/her uniqueness. Second, rethinking the value of unknowing in
the classroom may bring in students and teachers a sense of vigilance,
humility and responsibility. Unknowing is an act of embracing oth-
erness and presents a curious element of redemption; in the lack of
knowledge, the meaning of its absence is found.
The absence of knowing the student/Other becomes a gift; a gift
which is the mark that the Other and the relational are irreducible
to any contract.13 The gift of it is not so much knowing of the
Other as it is vigilance; it is an acknowledgement of the impossi-
bility of avoiding an ethical relation with students. This gift has
the potential of interrupting the current system by acknowledging
that it is the uniqueness of the Other that educators must preserve
and not kill it by betraying it to the general. The gift of un-
knowing belongs to educators and students; nobody can take it
away.
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