Old Pedagogies for Wise Education: A Janussian Reflection on Universities (original) (raw)
Related papers
The University of Wisdom – Exploring the role of wisdom for secondary and tertiary education
2014
We live in an age of measurement and accountability. Emphasis is given to supposedly easily assessable skills, such as reading, writing and maths. In such an environment some humanistic aspects of education seem to get lost in the wider scheme of politics, policies and assessments. Among these are concepts such as Bildung, spirituality and wisdom. This article will explore the notion of wisdom in relation to other terms of educational relevance, such as Bildung, knowledge, character, spirituality and practical wisdom. Further, Eastern and Western philosophical approaches to the concept of wisdom will be taken into account in an attempt to comprehensively explore its meaning and dimensions. In this context, philosophers like Lauxmann (2004), Schwartz & Sharpe (2010), de Mello (1992), Maxwell (2012), Lau (2009), Tucker (2003), Laozi (n.d./1993) and others will be drawn on. The role of wisdom in and for education will be discussed in light of a review of possible aims and ends in educa...
The Pursuit of Wisdom and the Future of Education
In this paper I outline a contemporary theory of wisdom through examining: modern research on learning, knowledge and thinking; the study of multiple modes of human understanding; the search for enlightenment; the expansion of consciousness; contemporary science and epistemology; and psychological investigations into the holistic nature of wisdom. I conclude with some thoughts on the teaching of wisdom and how the “life of wisdom” may represent a new level in the mental evolution of humanity, capturing and further refining the essence of the idea of the “New Enlightenment. My main argument is that the pursuit and practice of wisdom should be the main focus of education. Wisdom should be the central character trait we practice and model as educators, and the central virtue we attempt to instill and develop in our students.
Wisdom's Limit: Truth, Failure, and the Contemporary University
An ancient tradition has it that wisdom is founded, not in the accumulation of what is known, but rather in awareness of ignorance, of what is not known, of the proper limits to knowledge. Such a conception of wisdom sets wisdom in sharp contrast to the contemporary obsession with information and 'evidence' as the supposed basis for judgment and decision, and on discrete 'competencies' as the basis for educational attainment. This paper explores the connection between wisdom and limit, and what this connection might imply, not only for the character of university teaching and research, but also for the manner in which universities structure and administer themselves. A broader set of social and political implications are also touched upon.
Wisdom as an Aim of Higher Education
Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media Dordrecht. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".
Arguing for Wisdom in the University: An Intellectual Autobiography
Philosophia, vol. 40, no. 4, pp. 663-704, 2012
For forty years I have argued that we urgently need to bring about a revolution in academia so that the basic task becomes to seek and promote wisdom. How did I come to argue for such a preposterously gigantic intellectual revolution? It goes back to my childhood. From an early age, I desired passionately to understand the physical universe. Then, around adolescence, my passion became to understand the heart and soul of people via the novel. But I never discovered how to tell stories in order to tell the truth. So, having failed to become a physicist, and failed to become a novelist, I studied philosophy at Manchester University and then, in six weeks of inspiration, discovered that the riddle of the universe is the riddle of our desires. Philosophy should be about how to live, and should not just do conceptual analysis. I struggled to reconcile the two worlds of my childhood ambitions, the physical universe and the human world. I decided they could be reconciled with one another if one regarded the two accounts of them, physics and common sense, as myths, and not as literal truths. But then I discovered Karl Popper: truth is too important to be discarded. I revised my ideas: physics seeks to depict truly only an aspect of all that there is; in addition, there is the aspect of the experiential features of the world as we experience it. I was immensely impressed with Popper’s view that science makes progress, not by verification, but by ferocious attempted falsification of theories. I was impressed, too, with his generalization of this view to form critical rationalism. Then it dawned on me: Popper’s view of science is untenable because it misrepresents the basic aim of science. This is not truth as such; rather it is explanatory truth – truth presupposed to be unified or physically comprehensible. We need, I realized, a new conception of science, called by me aim-oriented empiricism, which acknowledges the real, problematic aims of science, and seeks to improve them. Then, treading along a path parallel to Popper’s, I realized that aim-oriented empiricism can be generalized to form a new conception of rationality, aim-oriented rationality, with implications for all that we do. This led on to a new conception of academic inquiry. From the Enlightenment we have inherited the view that academia, in order to help promote human welfare, must first acquire knowledge. But this is profoundly and damagingly irrational. If academia really does seek to help promote human welfare, then its primary tasks must be to articulate problems of living, and propose and critically assess possible solutions – possible actions, policies, political programmes, philosophies of life. The pursuit of knowledge is secondary. Academia needs to promote cooperatively rational problem solving in the social world, and needs to help humanity improve individual and institutional aims by exploiting aim-oriented rationality, arrived at by generalizing the real progress-achieving methods of science. We might, as a result, get into life some of the progressive success that is such a marked feature of science. Thus began my campaign to promote awareness of the urgent need for a new kind of academic inquiry rationally devoted to helping humanity create a wiser world.
Philosophies
In this article I discuss the problem of how we can change our world into a wiser world that is driven by a culture of wisdom inquiry (CWI), i.e., a world that frees humanity from a looming totalitarian catastrophe. How best can we interrogate the traditional wisdom of culture (TWC) that is responsible for the academic institutions of learning, among other kinds of institutions, dogmatically and solely aiming at the acquisition of knowledge and technological prowess (technologisches koennen), instead of the promotion of wisdom and human well-being? What kind of strategic transformations of institutional design, policy and goals within diverse institutions, particularly academic institutions of learning, regionally and globally, are imperative? This paper argues from the principle of universal interconnectedness across nature/universe and the fundamental asymmetry of human well-being interests and nature’s well-being interests. From this, the development of a culture of wisdom inquir...
Creating a Better World: Towards the University of Wisdom
2011
We urgently need to bring about a revolution in universities so that problems of living are put at the heart of the academic enterprise, and a basic aim becomes to help humanity make progress towards as good a world as feasible. From the past we have inherited a kind of academic inquiry that seeks to help promote human welfare by, in the first instance, acquiring knowledge and technological know-how. First, knowledge is to be acquired; then it can be applied to help solve social problems. Inquiry of this type is still dominant in universities today. But, judged from the all-important standpoint of promoting human welfare, this kind of inquiry-which I shall call knowledge-inquiry-is grossly and damagingly irrational. Three of the four most elementary rules of rational problemsolving are violated in a wholesale, structural way. This long-standing, massive, institutionalised irrationality in our universities, widely overlooked, is in part responsible for the development of our current global problems, and our current inability to tackle these problems intelligently, effectively and humanely. Modern science and technological research have, of course, produced immense benefits. They have made the modern world possible. But science and technological know-how make possible modern industry and agriculture, modern hygiene and medicine, which in turn lead to population growth, destruction of natural habitats and rapid extinction of species, pollution of earth, sea and air, the lethal character of modern war and terrorism, vast differences in wealth and power around the globe-and, above all, global warming. In a perfectly respectable sense of "cause", modern science and technology are, indeed, the cause of these things. 1
Cultivating Practical Wisdom as Education
This article argues, from a critical realist perspective, that it would be beneficial to extend thinking on how personal and social education could become more central to students' learning. We explore how constructive-informed arrangements which emphasize cognitive skills and affective qualities could be realized through experiential approaches to learning. Our theorizing is informed by neo-Aristotelian thinking on the importance of identifying mutually acceptable value commitments which can cultivate practical wisdom as well as generally benefit society. Thereafter, we outline how the recent writings of Tiberius could inform thinking on how, epistemologically and ethically, a first person perspective on learning and personal growth could connect with normative decision making on how to make good life choices. We conclude by briefly highlighting the methodological potential of using outdoor learning environments to help students make informed and wise judgements which show evidence of discernment, deliberation and effective decision making.
Emergence of Wisdom Research in Higher Education during 1988–2022
International Journal of Management, Knowledge and Learning
Purpose: This paper focuses on exploring the emerging trends and themes of wisdom research in higher education during the 1988-2022 period.Study design/methodology/approach: Wisdom publications (n=523) found in the Web of Science database were quantitatively analysed. For mapping the emerging research themes and trends we applied Bibliometric Analysis (i.e., citation, co-citation, bibliographic coupling, co-word, and co-authorship analyses). VOSviewer software was used for analysis and visualization.Findings: Findings indicated an exponential growth in wisdom publications that could provide opportunities for educational researchers for many years ahead. The main emerging themes were: pedagogy, teaching, students, intelligence, character, ethics, wisdom, local wisdom, phronesis, practical wisdom, spirituality, empathy, inequality, mindfulness, sustainability, and human capital.Originality/value: This study uses science mapping technique of Bibliometric Analysis that is still a very n...