The "lived" as emergent

I am looking at Maxine Greene's The Dialectic of Freedom (1988). I remember the first time I read it was on the Amtrak platform in Hartford, CT waiting for the train back to Grand Central. I had misread the train schedule and found myself with a couple of hours to kill before boarding. So I opened up Dialectic. I was in grad school, studying with Greene, and thought it a good idea to read some of her works. I picked up an idea or two from the book but for the most part, I couldn't make a connection. I just wasn't "there" yet; "there" being situated for discussion about how freedom and new possibilities are created through consciousness and reflection.
I think I'm approaching "there" now.

In looking at Dialectic, I am finding a clearer sensibility, for myself, about what goes into creating a lived life, a lived world, a lived situation, a lived experience. It is an active, reflective process that is foundational to consciousness. I had come to this understanding the connection of reflection with consciousness in my reading of Merleau-Ponty and Sartre and certainly Dewey, who distinguishes consciousness as “the continuous readjustment of self and the world in experience” (Art as Experience, 1934, p. 270). Greene notes in Dialectic,

There is a difference between those who unquestioningly accede to the given and those who find refuge in that way. In both cases, however, there is an incapacity to look at actualities as if they could be otherwise, as there is an unwillingness to try to transcend determinacy or surpass facticity. Consciousness, it so happens, involves the capacity to pose questions to the world, to reflect on what is presented in experience. It is not to be understood as an interiority. Embodied, thrusting into the lived and perceived, it opens out to the common. Human consciousness, moreover, is always situated; and the situated person, inevitably engaged with others, reaches out and grasps the phenomena surrounding him/her from a particular vantage point and against a particular background consciousness (1988, p. 20).

From this I take "lived" as a qualifier that is only achieved through the act of consciousness. What's more, Greene makes it clear that consciousness is not an internal mechanism, but an outward one. This presents for me an interesting contrast to Stella Adler and "Hamlet was not written about your mother." The lived life, though it necessitates an inward process of reflection, it is only achieved through the active pursuit of engaging with the "common" or the world in which we're situated. Where Adler may have rightfully been concerned about an actor turning inward in their craft making engagement with the audience difficult, the reflected life requires the actor to turn outward, to consider their experiences in contrast to that of others.

This also aligns with the active idea of doing philosophy or doing history. It aligns with learning as an active process, not a situation with the student as vessel to be filled by the accepted, rule-formed world of reliable knowledge. For Greene the lived life is an emergent entity that is always changing as the indiviudal changes. It is not static. And neither is learning. It is never complete. It needs to always be emergent.

How do I summarize?

I have an opportunity in the next week to teach a session of undergrad students enrolled in a historical and philosophical perspectives of education course. It will serve as a demonstration of my teaching abilities for a search committee looking to hire a new faculty member. I will, of course, devote the session to Maxine Greene.

In doing my prep I found myself running in circles. Not twisting in productive spirals, but re-meeting myself every 360 degrees in repetitive loops. Why? WHY?? The "why" is waged in a quandary with "how do I summarize Maxine Greene's philosophy?"

Well, there is the "doing philosophy" which I find to be incredibly helpful, especially for newbies encountering philo-speak for the first time.

There's Maxine's particular take on aesthetics and how it differs from the more pragmatic approach of Dewey.

There's the sheer difficulty of life with its exclusionary impulses that shapes her approach to phenomenology and the ideals of social justice.

There's the "without answers" quality of the arts which provide timeless questions for both students and teachers to ponder.

There's the wonder of a 93-year old, female Jewish intellectual living across East 89th Street from the Guggenheim Museum who has stated that "Consciousness doesn't come automatically; it comes through being alive, awake, curious, and often furious."

And there's the value and richness of the "lived life."

It comes down to doing and being. Not an easy conceit for most college juniors especially within a 45-minute span. But the doing part is incredibly important and accessible. The being aspect can be a prompt or challenge at the conclusion to take a later moment to reflect.

Be present. Engage. Find questions.