N.
Lygeros
Translated
from French by Patrice Deloche and Nicolas Thouvignon
In antiquity we not only
have many accounts of teachings based on the master-disciple structure but also
on its way of functioning. The fundamental examples come to us from Egypt,
China and Greece. As for India it gives us an actual classification of men in
four categories through Buddha's work: there are those who don't know they
don't know: we must leave them alone; there are those who know they don't know:
we must teach them; there are those who don't know they know: we must enlighten
them; there are those who know they know: we must follow them: they are the
masters. One of the main characteristics of this teaching is freedom.
For the
disciple, following the teaching of a master represents a choice of life. For
the master, the choice of his disciples is a necessity of his work. One wants
to think his life, the other wants to make his thought live. Both are free.
Their contact is not the result of external constraints, which act on them
despite their will. This freedom is essential in their choice because the
latter is irreversible. It constitutes a break between past and future. For
both of them it cannot be considered a mere evolution but instead a real mental
revolution. Because the combination of the chameleon and pygmalion effects
transforms the master-disciple structure. One would be nothing without the
other, while the other wouldn't even exist without that one. The
master-disciple structure has a very ancient rooting in the history of humanity
because we have traces of it within mythology, that intelligence of history,
with the example of Telemachus and Mentor. Indeed that character of the Odyssey
was popularized in France by Fénelon's Télémaque and has taken in literature
the meaning of the guide, of the wise and experienced adviser. Through his knowledge
he helps not his disciple but the human being that has addressed him. For the
mentor, altruism is a natural tendency. And if he has promethean
characteristics it is a necessity. We notice then that the disciple's quest
joins the master's enlightenment. For what is more natural than the search of a
light to see and understand? What is more natural that the sharing of a
knowledge? What would be the status of a thinker in nothingness? The master
acts on his disciple like a strange attractor in the cognitive field. He is not
merely a model whom the disciple wants to look like. He is the work that
creates being. He is not the keeper of supreme truth but he is the only one
able to tell it. And it is in this sense that we look at Socrates' essential
contribution to that complex structure. This naturally leads us to the
consequences of this contribution within society. Because a master does not
teach in the sense that we can give to this word in a mass society. The master
remains singular by the fact that he is a “maître-à-penser”, a master of
thought. His only teaching is the understanding of the world; this world that
is mysteriously understandable. He is an energy in the midst of the mass.
Nevertheless the inexorable process of the massification of society with all
its associated constraints can only despise the master-disciple structure by
preferring the teacher-pupils one. Although that last association, via
constraint, output and social adequation, can only be a degenerated case. The
teacher is nothing else but an agent of a mechanism or cog of the system.
Lacking content, he tries to keep his composure through the setting up of
academic markers which delimit his territory. Lost in the crowd.Source: lygeros.org
