a pedagogy of unknowing

7/29/2019 A Pedagogy of Unknowing

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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

M. ZEMBYLAS152


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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.



16/22

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

M. ZEMBYLAS154


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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.



18/22

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.

M. ZEMBYLAS156


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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



20/22

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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