Crafting Aesthetic Rationality: Vico, Case-Based Learning, and Ethical Judgment in Civic Education

However, whilst one may be critical of this myth for its presumptions, there is no doubting the great achievements of technology when it does unite with science to meet our needs for medical diagnosis and treatment, communication, and the availability of resources. Any discussion of the significance of technology would need to bear in mind these achievements. Technology is a continuation of the pragmatic frame of mind, and the myth is at fault only in its isolation of the pragmatic from the larger concerns of human well-being explored in wonder and an aesthetic rationality guided by moral concern.

This implies a third level of understanding and, therefore, of educational practice, beyond those built upon wonder and the critical appraisal and practice of argument, one which addresses the major problem of integration of different worldviews. This is the return to self-knowledge. It is the self seeking its measure, seeking, that is, its own coherence in its availability to what lies beyond itself. In previous chapters I have outlined what I perceive to be the major features of such a desired outlook or orientation to life: the significance of poetry in its essential being of "a cure of the mind” - formulating opposites of order and disorder to mind so that their expression itself functions as a creative balance suggestive of a human reality; our capacity for grasping exemplary ideas from an immersion in the sensory world; the existence of an ethical coherence suggested both by the fact of our essentially communal nature and the growth of love with its attendant virtues of an ultimate concern; and finally, the requirement of moderation that arises from our transactions with specific realities - another sort of balancing, which attempts to bring all relevant matters to mind in order to achieve a fair judgment in the pursuit of wisdom.

My argument in this book is that what I have called aesthetic rationality is primarily a learning through exposure to examples. It follows that teaching itself must build upon ways in which that kind of learning can develop, initially, making use of examples spontaneously used by the child, then introducing examples, say, an anthology of poetry, or a number of paintings, from which the child can select a favourite: if a child can select a favourite poem, we have the possibility of beginning a continuing dialogue between teacher and learner. Finally, when the child’s interest extends to the whole domain of the example itself, a structured course, which explores the differences and similarities in content and technique, but "makes room" for the child’s own expressions, can be provided.

Those expressions are also encouraged in rhetoric, for learning to argue is also to work through examples: the essay, the oration, historical understanding, and contemporary issues, demand an aesthetic awareness of the intricacies of the whole and the use of metaphor to persuade. What one might call "a case study" approach, in which examples of points of view are skilfully selected and integrated in a persuasive argument, can be adopted in a variety of fields - historical and contemporary - to clarify and support a conclusion of a convincing answer.

This final critique is the task of philosophy. Beyond the learning guided by wonder and beyond the exercise of the aesthetic rationality of judgment lies the task of an explicit consideration of the philosophical points of view that contribute to our understanding of what it means to be human. The major purpose of this book is to argue for a particular perspective that relies to a large extent upon the thought of Vico, for whom education was a central topic. In doing so, we have seen how certain topics assume central importance - the nature of self-knowledge, of imagination, and wisdom as holistic in nature, for example. It would be fitting, therefore, for students to become acquainted with the philosophical arguments that support (or qualify) our understanding of those issues which are judged to be central.

We might ask: what does it mean to talk about a self, its relation to that which is other than the self and to the community in which "it" develops? Or, what can it mean to have a sense of a whole defined by its harmony, and so forth. This is the activity of a mind that can "turn around on its own schemata", to use Bartlett’s (1958) term. It is the domain of Piaget’s formal operational thought, although, in this instance, not of a formal logic, but one of learning examples from those philosophers who have addressed the issues. Once more, the aim of providing examples is to draw the student into the problem, so that the self in its relation to the world becomes defined. We ask the student to make an argument from the examples gained by his or her critical reading.

But, of course, there is no finality to critique, since creativity and critique imply each other. But there remains a distinction between forms of learning which are also self-knowing and forms perceived as extrinsic to that task.

The examples we have discussed relating to the former demand our attention throughout a lifetime. This is the radical difference between discovery through self-knowledge and learning through exposure to facts and established principles. The form of truth of the former is essentially that of a self learning to be itself, but this self-related form is not a requirement for the learning of the Sciences or Technology at school level, although we are very much aware how these disciplines can change the understanding of our place within the world.

My contention, though, is that aesthetic rationality supplies the essential, personal and ethical framework, by which new scientific discoveries and technological innovations should be assessed. Science and Technology produce wonders of insight and innovation that change our lives for the better, but in the hands of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, they spread confusion and dismay. Without this assessment, an unrestrained Technology and an impersonal Science are always in danger of replacing the insight of the artist and the wisdom of the sage with a vision of the future signified only by perpetual novelty in a world that is no longer our own, because we have made it for our selves alone.

The understanding that is personal and interpersonal is the foundation of a humanist perspective on education. It authorises expression, collaboration, self-reference, argument that seeks harmony but which can tolerate difference, and critical reflection - all the skills which form a considered response to the human situation. Its purpose is the development of these skills. Clearly then, it must enter the curriculum as a learning through the practice of these skills. But such a programme is stifled if subjected to a qualifying grade, since students and teachers then ask: what do we have to do to achieve the grade? The system must surely adopt qualitative forms of assessment which do justice to the development of these skills, in which practice and assessment are closely related in a continuous process. Creating a work of art or an argument is a continuous process of ingenuity and critical appraisal.

This suggests that any valid assessment of a student’s work would itself be a continuous process, one in which the teacher’s task would be that of discussing the evolving examples of a student’s work. Assessment should, therefore, be a continuing process of a qualitative nature that reflects the progress of the student alongside the help provided by the teacher. It should not be dominated by the final grade which reflects only the endpoint of a process of discovery.

But, in the end, perhaps we should not overplay the distinction between knowing as the learning of objective facts and discovery as an expressive understanding - the distinction between Science and Art - because this divide obscures their shared purpose of creating a second nature: for Science that nature is specified as an exploration of the physical world, for the Arts, it is the poetry of being human. Have we not seen that the two may share an implicate order that is more akin to metaphor than to logic? What unites the two is the power and pleasure of ideas. A young child begins to take an interest in the natural world, which becomes an enthusiasm for the idea of being a botanist; another finds such pleasure in reading that she progresses “naturally” from Enid Blyton to Kafka. Each enters a living world of ideas. Each finds an identity, a moving part within that second nature, a belonging that affords a stability of purpose in the flow of being that is so beautifully and precisely expressed by that quotation from Rilke:

And if the earthly no longer knows your name,
Whisper to the silent earth: I’m flowing.
To the flashing water say: I am.

There exists in these lines a statement of what might be called the metaphorical physics of the mind: the assertion of movement against the stable earth, an assertion of stability against the flow of life, both united in “your name”. This name marks the dynamics of self and world which we have witnessed throughout these essays as a response to the uncertainty of our being within the circumstances which are ever-changing. The order of this art is not a synthesis; its conclusion is not to be found in the syllogisms of Aristotle. It is a metaphorical order of "is” and "is not”. You, your self, are the identity in which movement and stability unite in your orientation to the world and your understanding of yourself. There is no denial in this. It is Walt Whitman’s celebration of the paradox of contradiction - “I am large, I contain contradictions” - a celebration only the poetic stance can make of an achieved identity with the world.

Ideas are open, future-directed, exploratory and, yet, at the same time, provide that core of an identity which remains steady. In this sense, there is always something of an ideal about them. Think, for example, of Plato’s universal ideas of Love, Goodness, and Beauty: what they are is inextricably linked to what we may discover them to be; once discovered, they exist in memory and radiate from it, but always require realisation through our faith in them and our readiness to work through them. It is this faithfulness to its ideas that maintains the identity of the self in its devotion. Does this stray too far from the ordinary realities of the classroom? It does precisely the opposite. Once we understand the capacity of the idea to transform the ordinary into a vocation, all life becomes available to us in its richness and diversity.

The title of this book refers to a philosophy "for” education. The "for”, rather than the customary "of”, suggests that its value is to be assessed, not only for its contribution to philosophical thought, but through its successful application to practice. If teachers are not stimulated to curriculum development, the book may be judged to have failed in its major purpose. The philosophy of Vico stimulated the framework for the point of view of the book in three important respects: his emphasis on the world "made by man" suggests the need to search the actualities of cultural development in order to place ideas within their empirical context; his contention that the primary language of humanity is poetic and communal draws our attention to a distinct form of worldmaking centred upon our need for identity; and his insight that a world lived solely within the framework of objective and pragmatic rationality without the guidance of the poetic imagination results inevitably in fragmentation and divisiveness.

The educator’s aims are clearly evident in Vico’s work especially in his focus upon rhetoric as the art of persuasion in civic life, in which the speaker may draw upon evidence and the pragmatic alongside imaginative connections through metaphor to convince an audience of the proper conclusion. Two major questions arise. Is there a distinct form of aesthetic rationality complete with its own characteristics which enlarges our sense of what an education should entail? If so, how can we build this form into the practice of the curriculum? I have concentrated in this book almost entirely upon the first question whilst merely making a few suggestions for the latter which implies a joint enterprise of interested, practicing professionals.

In our review of the relevant literature we have identified a number of characteristics which together contribute to the idea of an aesthetic rationality. The first is the necessity for self-engagement. I mean by this not simply an interest in a subject-area but an experience which provokes a personal and potentially life-changing response on the part of the student. We might learn, for example a law of Physics or that Keats died in his mid-twenties, but reading Keats can change your life in a way not matched by knowing a law in Physics. This is the sense of the way poetry as the first language formed the response of early humankind to the encroaching world through the answer of a communal response - shouting back at thunder, instituting ritual, and developing myths. It transforms in the course of human development into an inner need to change oneself when the aesthetic confronts you with a need: to say, "I must change my life!”. In this instance, Vico’s "making" the world becomes the way of balancing the pressures from without and the pressures from within. But it is more than a balancing act.

This kind of making the world is, paradoxically, a way of receiving the world. It is a transcendence that heightens imminence, an inward journey to an expanded sensitivity to the outside world. But the outside no longer appears as a foreign territory. A whole is formed that is radically different from one experienced as an accumulation of parts. A single experience may lead to a sense of an encompassing whole, whose aspects are united inwardly, "truly fondly”, Musil writes. It’s as though each "part”, whilst retaining its identity, implicates all the others in a transcendent unity of experience.

This is the achievement of great art. But you are unable to name that experience because it is both intensely individual and extensively whole. Nor in creative work do we normally begin with a perception of a well-defined whole. But it must be guided by a sense of an achievable whole that can be worked towards in the manner of a composer making decisions about the sequencing of notes or a landscape gardener the placing of plants. This aesthetic ordering is present also in the argument of rhetoric which comes into play when logical reasoning and an appeal to evidence are supplemented by techniques such as metaphor and anecdote, which help drive an argument to persuade an audience. But we know that "the devil can quote Scripture for his purpose”, whereas the purpose of rhetoric in education is to support an argument that convinces for the benefit it bestows. Perhaps, then, the major gain made by an aesthetic contribution to education is an enhanced sense of a benevolent order to one’s life.

The characteristics identified in the two previous paragraphs define a meaning of aesthetic rationality that is central to a humanist education. This meaning cannot be imposed upon learners, for it relies upon a process of self-discovery and affirmation. The major question which then arises for our educational system is: can we create a central space devoted to assembly and enlightenment, the agora of Ancient Greece, in which this journey of the self within its community can flourish? The teaching that knows "the correct answer” in advance has to be supplemented by that which stimulates and incorporates itself into the learning process of its students. With this question, the baton passes from Philosophy to educational practice.

References: Bartlett, F. C. (1958). Thinking: An experimental and social study. Allen and Unwin.
Husserl, E. (1902). Logische Untersuchungen (Vols. 1 & 2). Niemeyer.
Murdoch, I. (i960). Under the net. Penguin Books.

Rilke, R. M. (1946). Letter to Witold von Hulewicz. In Selected Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). MacMillan.
Vico, G. (1990). On the study methods of our time. Cornell University Press.
Vico, G. (1993). On humanistic education. Cornell University Press.