Nature's Miracle

I am really getting into this biography on Kierkegaard by Clare Carlisle, but some parts hit me so hard that my eyes fill up with tears, so I have to pause frequently.    I discovered that she published yet another biography in 2023 about this "George Eliot," not to be confused with T.S. Eliot, author of The Wasteland ...   This other biography by her has the fascinating title, The Marriage Question
George Eliot's Double Life


out of time at library:   https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374600464/themarriagequestion


There is also her philosophical work, Spinoza's Religion : A New Reading of the Ethics

I want to look into George Eliot

maieutic

 relating to or resembling the Socratic method of eliciting new ideas from another


maieutic in Context

"I am grateful to him for his maieutic inquiry about my own views, which had not crystallized." - From an article by William F. Buckley, Jr., in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 27, 1973

"The international peacebuilding practitioner can adopt elements of a maieutic or Socratic approach to pedagogy, in which dialogue is at the core of a mutual learning process and there is no assumption that the person speaking is necessarily wiser than those who are being engaged." - From an article by Nathan C. Funk in International Journal, Spring 2012

I found the following filled me with a sense of URGENCY.


"Maieutic" comes from "maieutikos," the Greek word for "of midwifery."

 In one of Plato's "Dialogues," Socrates applies "maieutikos" to his method of bringing forth new ideas by reasoning and dialogue; he thought the technique analogous to those a midwife uses in delivering a baby (Socrates’ mother was a midwife).

A teacher who uses maieutic methods can be thought of as an intellectual midwife who assists students in bringing forth ideas and conceptions previously latent in their minds.

Surrounding the themes of this thread, I stumbled upon a link to one of my "Matawan Notebooks," July 2007 --- Radical Phenomenological Psychoanalysis of Lived Experience

It starts with part of the following quote:

If you eliminate suffering from this world you eliminate life. There's no evolution. Those species that don't suffer don't survive. Sometimes the insane and the contrarians and the ones who are the closest to suicide are the most valuable people society has. They may be the precursors of social change. They've taken the burdens of the culture onto themselves and in their struggle to solve their own problems they're solving problems for the culture as well