knowledge and knowhow in ceramics

Newsletter #3

(c) N. Cohen
Are we learning to climb Mt. Fuji from top to bottom ?

Skill without knowledge

« All the wisdom in the world will not make us wise ». During my last trip to Japan, I wondered about the reasons that made me reluctant to start a philosophy Ph.D. This question had bothered me for more than a year at that point. This maxim I thought of was my answer : philosophy turned out to be a disappointing way to become wise. To be wise cannot be achieved by the accumulation of knowledge on what is the good life or our society. Spinoza once said that one can bend his will through knowledge but it might not work with me and many others I know.

To be wise, one has to « desire » it… but there is no knowledge that can push us until we actually act wisely. I understood it in quite an odd way recently at the workshop of Sasaki. When I started this new internship, I had already gathered quite a few informations about the techniques required to make a nice tea bowl. But all these techniques are useless as long as I don’t have the required concentration, the will or desire to focus on what is in front of me. To an airhead like me, it is quite difficult.
(c) N.Cohen

Self-consciousness ≠ self-satisfaction. :(

But a few days ago, as I was preparing several tea bowls, I laid my palm differently on the outside of the would-be tea bowl and I started making moves that were more « mechanical » than usual. To my own astonishment, the result was far more even and soft than what I had ever done before.
It took me at least twenty other bowls before I could understood why it worked.
« The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk. » said Hegel once in a word very famous in the Parisian intellectual milieu specialized in German philosophy (Hegel-on-Seine, 40 inhabitants, 30 already in vegetative state). Hegel meant here that knowledge (here a big eyed mice-cub eater) only comes when something is close to its end

My hands had mastered this move way before my brain understood it. And when my brain joined in, that was the end : sefl-consciousness destroyed every move I was doing spontaneously. Less than two days after I started improving and had taken three steps further, I had also moved two steps back.
Wisdom, understood here as a knowledge that can be defined and transmitted, did not make me wise, it made me self-conscious.  Self-consciousness does not provide any active capabilities, it can even deter the good action. « All the wisdom in the world will not make us wise. »


O raku ni dôzô, let’s be simple.

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