#5 Wonder-based Research and Learning to Stand in the Open | Finn Thorbjørn Hansen
Edited Podcast Transcript:
ResponsAbility
Dialogues on Practical Knowledge and Bildung in Professional Studies
By Michael Noah Weiss and Guro Hansen Helskog
#5 Wonder-based Research and Learning to Stand in the Open | Finn Thorbjørn Hansen
00:00:03 Michael N. W.
Welcome to this episode of The Responsibility Podcast with Guro Hansen Helskog as co-host.
00:00:11 Guro H. H.
And Michael Noah Weiss as the the host.
00:00:14 Michael N. W.
Today, we have the pleasure to welcome Finn Thorbjørn Hansen as our guest. Finn, you are a professor in applied philosophy at Alborg University in Denmark. You are also the founder of the Danish Society for Philosophical Practice, you have a PhD in philosophy of education, and you did extensive research on the phenomenology of wonder, also with regards to professional studies and professional practices.
00:00:48 Guro H. H.
Let us just begin by digging a bit into your title. You are a professor of applied philosophy. What is applied philosophy, as you understand it?
00:01:00 Finn T. H.
Well, that is a good question, because normally when you talk about something applied, you already have a theory that you apply on practice. This is exactly not the way I understand philosophy as an applied tradition or applied science. It is the way to not go in: You have a theory, you have an ontology, and then you use it on practice. This is not the way. It is the other way around: You start out with a lived experience, that is more the phenomenological part. From this and from the bottom up, you then see what kind of philosophies are already encapsulated in the practice - in the lived experience- and of a type of philosophizing and wondering within the lived experience. Then you might find concepts or theories and so on. So, it is a kind of bottom-up applied philosophy, and I would say also in the tradition of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, it is also a kind of existential way of understanding applied philosophy.
00:02:08 Michael N. W.
You mentioned the term bottom-up philosophy, and I think that this brings us to the next question and to your PhD project, which was quite an extensive work consisting of several hundred pages. In English the title can be translated with The philosophical life, and the subtitle “A Bildung ideal for existential pedagogy”, or “for a pedagogy of existence”. What is existential pedagogy? Can you describe that term a bit more in detail?
00:02:42 Finn T. H.
Well, then we might start with the word or the concept existential. What do I mean by that? Once I was a visiting professor in Canada, and when I talked about the existential dimension of counseling or education, they thought “Oh yeah, we know what that is”. They thought I meant existentialism or what Sartre and the existentialists are talking about. And that is not what I mean by existential, because when Sartre is talking about the existential dimension, he talks about meaning as something which we human beings create and project onto the world. But when Kierkegaard and Gabriel Marcel or late Heidegger talk about the existential dimension, it has to do with a kind of meaning receiving dimension. So, you have to be a part of life. You have to participate. You have to be in a relation with life in order to receive a meaningfulness which is much grander than that which your concepts and your will can control. So, actually the existential dimension is something that we cannot control, something that we are part of.
The best way to describe the concept of the ‘existential’ is to go right back to the source. Where does it appear? It appeared in one of the books by Kierkegaard called “Concluding scientific remarks” from 1846. Here he talks about the existential as a kind of Eros. So, it is when you are in a kind of dialectical movement between on the one hand the finitude, the world as we can grasp it and control it, and on the other hand the infinite, that in the world which we cannot conceptualize and control. Human existence is this kind of in between in the time and the eternity, the final and the infinite. So, it is an opening up for a transcendence in life, but it is not about giving words or name to the nameless. So, you see, you keep the door open for the mystery in life, you could say, by being existential.
00:05:20 Michael N. W.
How do you relate that to pedagogy? Because the question was what is existential pedagogy?
00:05:27 Finn T. H.
Yeah, and that is a real problem, because when you put existential in the way I understand it close to the word pedagogic, it is a contradiction, because when we are pedagogical we want to do something with the kids or with other people. You know, we have a plan. So, isn't it a paradox? Yes, it is. So let's not call it pedagogic, but maybe ways of practicing that can nurture a situation where you are as a human being together with other human beings, and maybe even not just human beings, but also animals and plants, you know. So how can you nurture a situation, cultivate an environment in the classroom? How can you get into a more open, wandering way of being in the world so you can listen and be receptible and responsive towards the most transcendent experiences in life, in human life as well as the more-than-human lives.
00:06:36 Guro H. H.
Just a follow up on that, why isn't that also pedagogical - to nurture this kind of situation and environment? You can do it so many ways, and you are inescapably in a position of power and responsibility when you enter into a classroom or you are in a relation to patients, or whatever. As for instance a teacher, you cannot escape that asymmetry, at least not for more than a moment at a time.
00:07:08 Finn T. H.
I would say you do. Hopefully, if you're a really good teacher as was Socrates. Again, I understand teaching through Kierkegaard and the way he understands Socrates. So, what did Kierkegaard say about Socrates? Well, he was a teacher. He was a pedagogue. Yes, but in a very, very, very special sense, because when Socrates met a person who said for instance that “I know what justice is”, Socrates was teasing him with all his gadfly questions, his critical, ironic, and dialectical questions. And there he was pedagogical. He had a project going on with this person because the only thing that Socrates knows, is that he really does not know. But this person in front of him, he thinks he knows. Socrates knows that we human being, if we are wise, do not know what the mystery of life is, so he teases this person in a cheerful way. He had a pedagogical project going on with him in the beginning. But after that, after he has been teasing him so much that the person is not sure anymore and says “well, you are confusing me. I'm getting really perplexed about this. I'm puzzled.” Then Socrates wakes up in a new way, you could say. Then he says “oh yeah, and I am perplexed too. Let us go out in the openness together.” And this is the place where what I call the Community of Wonder begins. And that is the place where both Socrates and his interlocutor are vulnerable and not knowing. We do not know what the mystery of life or the mystery of love and so on is. So, I hope really that there are moments in the teachers` lives and in situations at school where he or she experiences that a student asks a question or just says something that makes them both wonder and enter into a community of wonder. And then we touch upon this existential dimension. But you might also ask, then, isn't there a difference between the existential dimension and the spiritual dimension? I would say, yeah, there is. And then we can maybe go on, if you want, in that direction.
00:09:18 Guro H. H.
Yes, we will get back to that, but just to stay a little bit with the title your PhD, because it says so much; What is really the philosophical life as an ideal of Bildung (or in Norwegian and Danish danning or dannelse, and in English maybe edification)? It is obviously connected to this standing in the open, as you just described it?
00:09:42 Finn T. H.
Well, the idea of the philosophical life is in fact a notion or a concept which I have borrowed from the French philosopher Pierre Hadot who in 1995 wrote an excellent book which is called “Philosophy as a Way of Life”, with the subtitle “Spiritual exercises from Socrates to Foucault”. So, I really dwell in this kind of thinking, and in my PhD, I also start with asking “what kind of Bildung ideals do we have now in late modernity?” And I point to, of course, Michel Foucault and his more aesthetic ideal of Bildung, the idea that you must create yourself. And then you also have Richard Rorty`s ideal of theIronist.
In contrast to these two ideals of Bildung, the aesthetic and the ironist, I suggest, with Kierkegaard, what I call the Humorist. It is not just about self-creation. It is, what I said before, also a way of creating and dwelling where you are in dialogue with life, and you are not just inventing meaning and value, but you're also receiving it, so it is another way of being in a more, I would even say metaphysical relation with life, but not by giving theories and names to this kind of metaphysical experience.
The notion of the humorist is a core concept in my dissertation, because this is the place where I think we can understand what we mean by a philosophical life. The notion of the humorist comes from Søren Kierkegaard. In his way of describing different existential stages in life, he talks about the aesthetic life and the ethical life and the religious life, and between the aesthetical life and the ethical life you have the ironist. And then between the ethical and the religious, you have the Humorist. Socrates for Kierkegaard was a humorist, you know, so I'm trying to elaborate further on how a ’‘post-postmodern position in education can be thought from a humoristic Heideggerian perspective, and here I am informed or inspired by Pierre Hadot and other thinkers like Wittgenstein too.
00:12:33 Michael N. W.
Guro already picked up the notion of standing in the open, which is also the title of another book of yours, and I would like to see whether there is a connection between standing in the open and higher education. And in that respect, I came over your article on the phenomenology of wonder in higher education. There you write what would happen if we in the curriculum of higher education, took seriously that we should teach our students to stand in the open. It is really acknowledging that the future is unknown. What kind of learning is appropriate for this? And you wrote this article already in 2010 and between then and now we had a pandemic. Now we have also artificial intelligence coming over us where we don't know what this will bring to us. So, my question is actually again: What kind of learning is appropriate for this situation?
00:13:36 Finn T. H.
I have written a later article on the same subject from 2019, which is called “Learning to innovate in higher education through deep wonder”. I agree that we are in a new situation, and I would say that we have four different big challenges.
The first one is of course the global climate crisis. So, you could also ask: Why then do you think that this kind of wonder-based education can help us to become more sustainable, or to create a new kind of sustainability that can be of help for the nature? And this is exactly the new position I have been putting up for two years now, where I am head of a research team who are working around the subject of Existential Sustainability, and also what we call Existential Health as something different than mental health and physical health. So, the first challenge is this global climate change.
The second one is the global health challenges of late modern industrial society. We have stress, depression, burn out and so on. Why is that, and how can we prevent this kind of spirit less life, you could say? I think that again, the sense of wonder could also have a significance for developing a new kind of Eco-Bildung for Eco-Existential Health. What kind of education can prevent this kind of unhealthy non-existential living?
And then you have the AI as the third challenge. Who are we as humans If everything can be made in the form of an algorithm? So, the sense of wonder to really create in the higher education, the ability to stand in the open and to really be in wonder about the most essential things that we care for in life, is so important if we are to not just go with the language of algorithm. We need to learn how to speak the language of wonder or from wonder, you may say. I think that is also a struggle, a fight, a battle we need to create, because I think that the scientism that follows algorithm and maybe also AI is very, very dangerous. It is deeply inhuman. It is a kind of dehumanization.
The fourth challenge is democracy. How can we in all this still have democratic society? How can we nurture the ability to have dialogues in a more wondrous and open way? So again, the sense of wonder is important. So those are four areas where I think that wonder-based education can be a cultivating force.
00:17:36 Michael N. W.
Having asked you about wonder and the relevance and dimension of wonder in higher education, the next question is about wonder based or wonder driven research. You have many research projects which focused on the phenomenology of wonder.
The first part question is - what is wonder-based or wonder driven research? The next part of the question is: Could you please give some concrete examples of approaches that you would use for that type of research, like dialogical action research, reflective practice research and so on. What would be your suggestion?
00:18:03 Finn T. H.
Then we have to start with the question: What do I really mean by wonder phenomenologically speaking? Wonder is not the same as curiosity or as examination of things. We need to make a distinction between scientific wonder on the one hand, and philosophical wonder, on the other hand, and between philosophical wonder on the one hand, and aesthetical artistic wonder, on the other hand, and between philosophical wonder on the one hand, and religious wonder on the other hand.
The phenomenology of wonder is really a huge subject, and there are many, many books about it, and many, many researchers are working on it. So, if I should give kind of a characteristic of what I mean by philosophical wonder, which is what I am working with or trying to create space for I would say that I have around 8 or 10 characteristic for what this kind of philosophical wonder is.
The first one is that you cannot will wonder. If you should say what the opposite of wonder is, then I would say the human intentional will. So, as long as you will something, want to do something, have a plan and so on, you are not disposed to come into wonder. So, it is a kind of non willing attitude that you have to be in, or you can say “wonder is wild”, as the eco-philosopher Patrick Curry does. You cannot control it. It is wild, it is coming and going as it wants to. That's the first thing.
The second thing is that it is relational. When you really are in wonder, you sense that you are in contact or in resonance with something that speaks to you, that you have to be open to, that you have to be responsive to. And it is not like the sublime in art, which is characterized by an instance to the Sublime and by a fear and pleasure. Fear because it is overwhelming and horrifying and yet you are at a safe epistemological difference to it, so you also feel pleasure in looking at this overwhelming experience. In deep contemplative wonder (in Greek: Thaumazein) you are in a kind of ontological homecoming, feeling strangely at home in the world but as experiencing it intensively as for the first time and as being in good hands’. Deep contemplative wonder create a befriending atmosphere. y It's kind of I thou relation you are in when you are in a deep contemplative wonder.
I noticed that your podcast is called Response-Ability. That is a lovely name. So, the ability to respond, you could say, is connected to deep contemplative wonder, but then ‘ability’ has to be understood in a very special way. It is the kind of negative capacity or negative ability, it is the ability to not know or not will. It is the ability to stand in openness and not running towards knowledge but be able to hesitate – to wait until something is coming. Then you might respond, but then you also have to learn to listen. You have to listen from silence in order to get into a contemplative wonder. In this kind of wonder, you are in a saturated silence. You are captured by silence. But it is saturated because something in this silent wants to speak, and you have to be silent in order to hear it, and then to reply, maybe to respond. Maybe. But first you have to be quiet. Thus, there's a very important dimension of silence in wonder. And then not-knowing. And then you also have, and this is where the pedagogic comes in, the question What kind of practices do we have to do in order to make room for such wonder? I like that in the dialectics between effort (meaning-making) and grace (meaning-receiving) there is something we can do, and then there is something that we just cannot do, but only hope for, and that is the grace of unexpected meaning-receiving. There is also a moment of effort and grace in the phenomenology and practices around wonder-based dialogues and reflective practice research. .And this has to do not so much about knowledge, but about wisdom. It's wisdom that we are searching. It is not the epistemological kind of wonder where we are puzzled by concepts. It's the ontological and contemplative wonder where we are captured by something that speak to us on a more existential and maybe even spiritual level.
So wonder is a kind of 6th sense. It's a kind of sense that gives us an opening of ears or eyes for what we cannot see with the five senses, it is a kind of ‘metaphysical sense’.
This metaphysical sense of wonder, I think, moving on to wonder based research, is of course not the kind of normal scientific positivistic way of thinking about research. I would even say that natural science and social science are not attuned to this kind of deep contemplative wonder. Sometimes the so-called humanistic sciences can be attuned, other times they are not. Although they are calling themselves humanistic sciences, some human scientists are still very influenced by the scientific-epistemological and methodological tone and not the poetic philosophical tones, which are so important for one that consent to wonder and humanistic research. And here I really am drawing a lot on the German philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer, who is in his book “Truth and Method”, on the very first 2 pages, is saying that if you do normal epistemological science, analyzing, and so on, and you also do empirical research in the so-called methodological driven way, you are doing good research, true, but this kind of natural science and social science is not helping us to open up for the kind of truth which cannot be grasped by this kind of scientific works. So, what kind of truth is that? Well, this form of truth has to do with a more metaphysical or existential or ontological way of living, which is what the existential phenomenology and existential hermeneutics are all about, connected to people like Heidegger, Gadamer, Hannah Arendt, Merleau-Pontyand Marion.
So, what kind of research seems to match with this form of contemplative wonder- based thinking? This form of research also relates to practice. Much so, and we can ask: How does wonder based thinking interact with reflective practice research? And again, as you know, practice research can be understood in so many different ways. I am therefore only focusing on the kind of practice research, which is researching on the question: How can we in practice find those wonder moments and find those existential dimensions? How can we prepare ourselves to be open enough to hear that? So, I also describe wonder-based practice research as phenomenological and Socratic action research, or ‘apophatic epistemology’, or ‘the Dao of reflective practice research’. I do think this can be related to what you and others like professor Anders Lindseth calls 'reflective practice research’. I think there's very many interesting and important dimensions in this reflective practice research approach. And I think that this kind of wonder-based approach can be a way of supplementing it or even qualifying it.
00:26:44 Guro H. H.
And here, in one of your later articles, you introduce the notion philosophical literacy. And to do this kind of research and also this kind of practices, it seems that you really need to develop a philosophical literacy. Can you say something about that?
00:27:02 Finn T. H.
Especially when you work as an action researcher, and when you are a philosopher, there you are doing a sort of ‘philosophical action research’. But if I just as a philosopher only stay behind my desk and my books and do my research from there, that is not actually philosophical action research. Thu, I really have to get out of the room and into the world to meet people at hospitals or design schools or wherever I do my philosophical action research. The most important part of action search is that you are not researching on people, but you are researching with people.
So, if I have to be true to that spirit of action research I need to work with them, you know, in that sense that we are collaborating and co-creating. So, my point will be that when nurses in hospitals or designers in design schools are doing their practical thing, you know, creating designs or being in a caring moment with the patient, they know intuitively what the right thing to do is, at least normally and hopefully. So, if I want to do research on those beautiful moments of nursing or beautiful, wondrous moments of art and design, then how can I bring the practitioners into a mood where they are wondering. So, the basic idea here is how can I create an atmosphere that make the practitioner get into a contemplative wonder from within their own lived experience of being a designer or a nurse? So, this is where I start creating what I call a Wonder Lab or a Community of Wonder.
This is a kind of pedagogical attempt to create an atmosphere, or it is a practice of trying to create something that is a way of helping both me as a researcher, an my co-inquiries see and hear what you cannot directly see or hear, but which has something to do with the sense of wonder. So, I try to charge the field of practice field with the sense of wonder, and then I listen to what they discover. That is a part of my research.
00:29:36 Guro H. H.
You already mentioned it and I said we would get back to it: In your later works, you distinguish between the existential, the spiritual and the apophatic. Can you now say a little bit more about those distinctions? You have already said quite a bit about the existential, so maybe now you can also give us a brief introduction to the spiritual and the apophatic in relation to what you've just talked to us about?
00:29:57 Finn T. H.
Well, do we meet the spiritual and the apophatic in practice? Yes. But when we are in an existential relation with the phenomenon or with another person, we are in a kind of I-Thou relation, yet the focus is on the I-side of the relationship. So, the focus is on what is the I in the I-Thou relation, in contrast to the I in the I-It relation. This is the existential dimension. Whereas when I am in my ego in an I-It relation, then I am very much in the “grasp by my will”, and my “want to control and have knowledge”, and so on.
The spiritual dimension however is when you focus on the Thou in the I-Thou relation. You cannot do that, I think, without first being in the existential dimension. The existential dimension is a passage to the spiritual dimension. First you have to get rid of the cognitive pragmatic way of thinking, the I, in the I-It-relation. You have thereafter to become open, you have to be what you call response-able. You have to have an existential ability to be hearing the Thou And when you are able to hear it, then you are in resonance with the spiritual dimension.
So how do we describe the spiritual dimension? It is here that I find a lot of inspiration from the so-called ‘apophatic tradition’, which is also called negative theology or negative ontology. Kierkegaard is an apathetic thinker, and late Heidegger is, and new Daoist Eco-phenomenologists just to mention a few positions that are inspired by apophatic thinking. From this position and approach we can learn, I think, to opened up for a new way of being in resonance with life, which also might be very keen to how we feel when we are in touch or ‘in tune’ with nature. Then we are, what Hartmut Rosa describes as being in an ‘existential resonance’ with nature, with life. So how can we get into this Being dimension? This is where the Daoist thinking and practice comes in as a way of listening to what life is telling me rather than what I want out of life. I think that you can have a not-knowing but listening approach to the spiritual dimension. Yet, if you then try to describe this dimension in words and in writings and research, I think you go too far, because you cannot give name to the Nameless. So writing about it is a paradox as Kierkegaard also noted, and yet through wondrous reflections and moments of silence, irony, humor, paradox-thinking, negative dialectics and indirect communication through art and rituals, you may indirectly point to it.
00:32:43 Michael N. W.
Just a final question before we have to go in for landing: You have mentioned the term Wonderlab, and in your work you have also developed what you call a Wonder Compass. Can you say a bit more about that? How are you taking in the great thinkers in in terms of getting in dialogue with theory on the one hand, on the other hand, also what does a Thauma-centered worldview imply, and how are you conducting a Wonderlab, very simply asked?
00:33:25 Finn T. H.
I sense that we are landing now, so I will begin with the Thauma-centric worldview. The concept Thaumazein is the Greek concept for deep philosophical and contemplative wonder. So, it is a wonder-centered worldview, and Thauma in contrast to an anthropocentric worldview.
So, what we do right now in our research is to think about how can we develop an Eco-Bildung, an eco-philosophy or an eco-phenomenology from this kind of Thauma-centric ontology and worldview?
As to the Wonder-Lab: During many years I have facilitated Wonder Labs in many different contexts. Just right now I am doing one in a Danish hospital with cancer patients. It is a philosophical action research project where we want to focus on the relationship between culture and healing, and how we can use art and philosophy, you know, culture as medicine, as a way of strengthening not the mental or physical, but the existential health dimension. So, what do I do with cancer patients? What do I do with the people who participate in a Wonder Lab? First, we start with a lived experience. One of the eco-philosophers that I am fond of, Steven Harding, says that if you want to get into a relation with nature or in a deeper connection with nature, there are three steps.
First, you need what we call a deep impression. You got to have a real experience of being in contact with something or have an encounter with someone or something that ‘speaks’ to you on a sensuous and existential level, like listening to an old tree or an art piece. Then from there you need to go into a deep questioning and not just a reflection or scientific inquiry, but a deep contemplative wonder. And then the third level is deep commitment. If you are touched by something, if you are grasped by wonder, then you existentially and ethically want to do something – to act in life and do something, to take responsibility.
So, this is what I am trying to do. First, we have the phenomenological moment where the participants experience a lived experience or where they take their departure from a lived experience. Then we go to the hermeneutic level trying to understand what are the values or assumptions underlying the experience. What is taken for granted in this lived experience? And when we have found the basic values, we look for what may be the most important value in this lived experience. Then we take this value and go to Socrates, because Socrates is helping us to de-freeze our understanding and the assumptions around this value which we are focusing on now and in the group. They do that, and it might seem very theoretical when I am speaking about it, but I have developed a model, a dialogue model called the Wonder Compass which is really simple and very easy to follow so that patients and relatives can do it, and they do it. We have good evaluations on it, so when we get to the third Socratic level, then they are in a more playful mode. They test each others’ assumptions in a playful, cheerful way.
And then at the at the 4th level, you can say, they experience the Community of Wonder, and what it means to stand in the openness. And this is a very meaning giving moment. The session ends with the question of what kind of phronesis or what kind of practical wisdom we learn from this. How do you live this value in your own life?
00:37:38 Guro H. H.
Well, having read lots of your work from around 2000 on, there seems to be a very deep commitment in your work. It seems that you have had like a mission, and in some of your later work “Wonder, Silence and Human Flourishing” (2023) you are talking about humanization, or rather maybe re-humanization. For instance, you just mentioned the expression de-freezing of perspectives. Is this really so that you have had a mission all these years?
00:38:17 Finn T. H.
Yeah, maybe. But if you are asking if there has been a kind of development in this, I would say I started out by being only focusing on adult education and how this existential dimension could be more in focus. And after that I have been more and more engaged in how professional people like nurses, designers and so on can get in resonance with this kind of existential dimension. I also now talk about the difference between human centered- or person centered healthcare on the one hand, and Thauma-centered healthcare on the other hand, because how can we also learn from life as such. So, now at the end, or not the end, hopefully not, but where I am now, I am not only focusing on professional life, but also on how this kind of wonder and existential way of being can be connected to eco-terminology and to nature, which I think is very important.
00:39:27 Michael N. W.
I think that was a good final remark, Finn. We are looking forward to your further work. Thank you very much for participating. It was an inspiring and also thought provoking conversation. Guro and I would also like to thank our listeners for joining in, and we hope to welcome you in one of our other episodes. Again, and with that, we can only say thank you and goodbye.
00:39:53 Finn T. H.
Thank you.
