ART IN RELATIONAL PEDAGOGY

(Contemporary confirmation of otherness in education)

If our self is like an unfinished novel, learning is like ink that dries slowly and is

erased frequently; but even when it is erased, you can trace gentle prints of forgotten

letters, words, and thoughts...

One of the most common insights of psychology, sociology, and anthropology is the idea that

individual and collective identities develop in relation to each other as different, and in this

process, the otherness is always subjected to the attempts of cultivation/domestication. For the

purpose of this article I would like to start with Foucault’s thesis, that European culture

restored its relationship to the problem of otherness according to its belief about the universal

nature of a human’s rationality, and the so called normative sciences produced several modes

of exclusion of all people that were marked as different in their lifestyle, way of thinking, and

acting. According to Focault, the central point of this process was in the acceptance of

Descarte’s faith in the universal rational method that was viewed as a starting point of the

development of modern sciences (Foucault 1973; see also Kroflič 2007). Foucault’s other

strong idea in his famous work Madness & Civilization. A History of Insanity in the Age of

Reason (1973) is the concept that art represents plenty of critical insights into those processes

that enable us to recognize forms of practices of exclusion, but that also make us sensitive to

the ethical problems of those practices. Literature, theatre, visual arts, and later film and

photography, are media that can be successfully used as educational tools in the field of

identity development and moral education. In this article I want to present some new

pedagogical ideas that confirm the readiness of the contemporary theory of education to

rethink its classical relationship to otherness and its domestication as a central goal of

education as socialization, and to show some structural characteristics of the art experience

that confirm its crucial role in post-modern humanistic education.

Rupture in pedagogical tradition concerning relationship to otherness

According to many theorists of education, classical pedagogy defined the basic goal of

education as a transmission of cultural patterns of knowledge and values (Kelly 1989).

Education was defined as the practice of cultural transmission, or as the conformation of the

pupil into the existing body of knowledge and beliefs, so the starting point of any pedagogy

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(or other normative sciences) was a definition of criteria of “normality”, and its decision on

how to treat deviations from this basic criterion. As we can read in Foucault’s research on

madness (Foucault 1973) or discipline and punishment (Foucault 1991), European cultural

tradition developed several modes of exclusion of groups of people that could not accept this

basic cultural criteria1. Of course we can recognize in European cultural tradition some

exceptions to this trend – mostly in the field of art2 and religion3 – but it seems that

humanistic sciences as our most rationalized form of discourse at their inception in the

nineteenth century completely followed this trend of exclusion of all deviances from common

rationality. From these cases we can draw a conclusion that in classical normative sciences

otherness was recognized as a problem, and not as a fact of diversity of every individual, or

even more so – as an advantage of individual identity development and plural democratic and

inclusive communities.

Because art (especially literature and music) was from antiquity and for centuries recognized

as a core of humanistic education (septem artes liberales), its “pedagogical role” was usually

reduced to the media of transmitting existing cultural patterns and ideological standpoints, or

to say this in another way – a utilitarian criteria. Already Plato had demanded a selection of

myths/stories for different bodies of society, when the message of an art object was not

appropriate for the wider public. We can trace the same intention in Christian schools, and the

same criteria was central in the period of growth of interest for the public, where an author’s

fairy-tales were an important pedagogical tool (Charles Perrault and brothers Grimm from the

seventeenth to the eighteenth century). From this historical insight we can accept a second

hypothesis that the acceptance of aesthetics criteria of quality art in the field of their

educational impacts on the development of humanity, demands a substantial change of view

to humanistic educational goals concerning morality and identity development.

The turning point from classical pedagogy to a contemporary one coincides with the turn from

modern to post-modern thought. The most important conceptual turn can be, according to

1 According to Foucault’s analysis of relationship to madness, until the eighteen century, and my further exploration of the same topics in the nineteenth and twentieth century’s, we can recognize three metaphors of exclusion: the leper, the court fool and the noble savage (see Kroflic 2007).2 As examples of positive (or at least ambivalent) descriptions of otherness in the field of literature we can mention Antigone and Medeia in antiquity, Cervantes’s Don Quixote at the beginning of the modern novel tradition, and Dostoevsky's The Idiot at the rupture period between modernity and post-modernity (see ibid.).3 The most famous example of an ambivalent description of otherness in the field of religion is the well balanced attitude toward rational Apollinarian and ecstatic Dyonisian cults in antiquity, and an interesting example of a positive attitude toward otherness is the description of epilepsy as the “sacred disease”, which is particularly deeply rooted in Orthodox Christianity (see ibid.).

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Lyotard (1988), described as an incredulity of great narratives that also means the birth of the

particularity and otherness of the rational subject as a cultural value. In my opinion this value

orientation can be found “under” almost all categories, for contemporary pedagogy involves

important humanistic concepts like moral approaches and ethical theories, societal values and

concepts of a just community, and of course, aesthetics approaches.

In the field of developmental psychology searching for principles of moral development, we

can find two new trends: from Piaget, Kohlberg, and Selman’s defining of the universal

principles of development of moral standards or social roles, that depends on the development

of a child’s mind, to Vigotsky’s notion on the social dimension of language and thought, that

confirms the importance of the quality of social relations of a child with its parents, other

adults, and also peers and texts (Vigotsky 1978); and from the concept of a child as infantile

and egocentric to a morally competent child, who builds his social competences through

concrete interrelations in social space (Marjanovič-Umek and Zupančič 2001; Kroflič 2003).

The second field that is important for the philosophy of education is that of political theories

and ethics. As a central turning point in this field we have to mention J. Rawls corrections of

the ethical and political concept of justice, that confirms the duty of society to give “each

person an opportunity to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic

liberties compatible with similar schemes of liberties for others” (Rawls 1999, p. 53 and 266),

but in spite of the principle of the equality of all members of the just society, morality pre-

supposes the primacy of the benefits of the weakest individual (The second principle: “Social

and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are /.../ to the greatest benefit of the

least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle…; ibid., p. 266).

Rawls theory of justice provoked several attempts to rethink different factors of moral

development and societal ethics, that all have in common describing the importance of

sensitivity for social context and openness to individual and cultural differences, of moral

subjectivity, and a societal context of justice and solidarity. We have to mention

communitarian critics of the liberal concept of justice that emphasizes the importance of the

concept of common good (MacIntyre 1981) and the notion on the social nature of a human’s

identity development (ibid., see also Bauman 2001 and Kroflič 2006). The other wave of

critics that had an important influence on educational theories is the so called ‘ethics of care’.

Its representatives first stressed the importance of gender and cultural differences on moral

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reasoning and acting (Gilligan 2001), and secondly, they showed the importance of care

relations between a child and others – where the other can also be a value derived from artistic

cultural representations (Noddings 1992). The third wave represents philosophers that were

searching for the criteria of ideal discourse (Habermas) that confirmed the fact of differences

among people who were involved in a common language; ethics demanded that every voice

should be heard (Callan 1998), and the notion of searching for a kind of “ethical pidgin” (not

extensive but a strong enough common language) and a hermeneutic understanding of others

in discourse (Strike 1989).

If described theoretical investigations are searching for patterns of rational agreement in every

conflict situation (or as this trend was described by the Slovenian theorist of education Z.

Medveš, “searching for rational sufferableness of cohabitation”; Medveš 1991), we can find

another theoretical stream on the breaking of the millennia, that grows from a supposition

about radical otherness of the Other that can never be completely recognized, so we have to

find a kind of “pre-ethical responsibility” toward the dignity of every human person.

We have to admit that even in traditional religions we can find a kind of double protection of

morality, in a well known golden ethical rule on one side and a separate principle of dignity of

human beings on the other side (see Declaration Toward a Global Ethics 1993). A similar

double protection of morality can also be traced in two formulations of Kant’s categorical

imperative (Kroflič 2007 a). What is new in some ethical theories on the rupture with

modernity, especially in Levinas’ ethics, is a supposition that respect toward another’s face is

both pre-discursive and pre-ethical. Ethics pre-supposes a theoretical argumentation of

morality, while respectful relationships toward the face of the Other does not; Levinas claims

even more, that only this personal attitude of a moral subject enables ethical consciousness:

“...the reciprocity of this respect is not an indifferent relationship, such as serene

contemplation, and is not the result, but condition of ethics. It is language, that is,

responsibility. Respect attaches the just man to his associates in justice before attaching him

to the man who demands justice.” (Levinas, The I and the totality, 1954; quoted from Levinas

2006, p. 30).

On this area of theoretical investigations, we can already find some pedagogical solutions.

First, I would like to mention the new concept of responsibility as the ultimate goal of moral

education that primarily does not mean a person’s attitude toward the social norm or ethical

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principle, but “...sensitive and respectful response to an existential call of associate, a personal

commitment to respectful being and acting, and care for our life mission and consistent

identity.” (Kroflič 2007 a, p. 61) This turning point in comprehension of responsibility

demands a radical change of the method of moral education. Instead of subordinating a child

to a set of social rules, we are first supporting social conditions for growth of the most

authentic social relations (like love and friendship; see Haji and Cuypers 2005), and secondly,

helping children to develop a relational response-ability and normative agency for pro-social

activities, and later a sense of respect toward concrete persons (their faces) or activities (work,

artistic expressions etc.), and the last step of moral education is to become aware of ethical

principles and humanistic demands, concerning especially human rights and ecological

values, and to learn how to use them as a basis for democratic negotiation in cases of

interpersonal conflicts (Kroflič 2007 a). It is worth mentioning that similar conclusions can be

found in H. Gardner’s new book Five minds for the future (2007), where in the field of

morality he describes the need for the development of two separate minds – respectful and

ethical – as one of the most important tasks for future education.

A second interesting pedagogical investigation is G. Biesta’s investigation of the basic

principles of education for living in an inclusive society. He describes his ethical credo in

further words: “Difference requires a different attitude toward plurality and otherness, one in

which the idea of responsibility is more appropriate than the idea of knowledge, one in which

ethics is more important than epistemology.” (Biesta 2006, p. 103); and concludes: “...to see

the question of humanity of the human being as a radically open question, as something that

has to be ‘achieved’ again and again, can help us to stay alert, particularly in the face of

attempts to restrict what it means to be human and to lead the human life... Democracy itself

is, after all, a commitment to a world of plurality and difference, a commitment to a world

where freedom can appear.” (Ibid., p. 151)

Behind described notions on a respectful attitude in an inclusive environment, where art could

form an important part of humanistic education, we can find the influence of the Russian

thinker M. Bakhtin in relation to the development of social constructivism and relational

pedagogy (see Bingham and Sidorkin 2004). This interesting connection will open a fruitful

opportunity to defend a thesis about the importance of the aesthetical experience for human

development in post-modernity.

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According to A. Sidorkin (2002), despite the fact that Bakhtin never mentioned a word about

postmodernism, he succeeded in developing epistemological and ontological backgrounds of

the basic idea of post-modernity – the idea of otherness – that can be directly used as a

theoretical background in contemporary pedagogy. The core of Bakhtin’s philosophy is the

idea of polyphonic truth that is not just derived from the fact of existent different discourses

(like in Lyotard’s vision), but it means that a diversity of voices exists in every individual

consciousness, in every singular discourse, in every conception of truth, and also in every

fruitful dialog among people. From this theoretical stand, he concludes: “The different is not

an obstacle, but a condition of understanding, because /.../ to understand something means to

embrace two or more incongruous views on the subject.” (Ibid., p. 92) Bakhtin developed his

theory of polyphony in his famous study on the Dostoevsky novel Brothers Karamasov

(1967), where he first criticizes the mono-logical concept of the modern philosophy and

novel, and then builds a thesis on writing a polyphonic novel by creating protagonists that

start to live a kind of autonomous life in the frame of a story, and from their different voices

the writer (and later readers) can construct much more appropriate existential truths than in

the “modern concept of the mono-logical message”.

If we transfer this idea to the field of pedagogy, we get some interesting insights. First is the

importance of an engaged dialogue as the most basic form of education: “...education is only

possible as dialogue, where different voices intensely interact, change, but never merge. A

teacher /.../ task is neither to reduce diversity, nor to stand still watching diversity grow.

Students obviously do not discover their diverse identities on their own... An Asian student,

for instance, cannot figure out what it means to be an Asian in America without her or his

White, Black, and Hispanic teachers. The point is not to know about someone else’s culture,

but to help construct an individual understanding of it... If she or he does not discuss that

identity at school, the identity does not exist at school. When teachers only listen and not talk

back on the issues of identity /.../, they deny the student an important part of their identity.

Diversity makes sense when it involves engagement.” (Sidorkin 2002, pp. 96-97)

The second important idea considers the role of otherness in educational dialog. As C. Chalier

develops Levinas’ thesis on the Other as absolute difference, she warns us that Kantian moral

subjects are likely to commit the error of seeing the other as their alter ego, therefore “… the

other deserves my respect because of his or her rationality, his or her capability of being an

autonomous person like myself,” and not because of “the otherness of the other” (Chalier

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2002, p. 68). S. Todd finally claims that the Other is “infinitely unknowable”, but anyway

susceptibility to absolute difference defines how we relate to each other; even more so,

learning from the unknowable Other tells us who we really are (Todd 2003, p. 3 and 34). Or,

as a Slovenian psychiatrist, and himself a person with special needs, has poetically expressed

the same idea: “… there is no true otherness, because practically everybody is different in one

way or another… Handicap and death are two conditions that disillusion dictators and keep

the philosophers and ideologists of all kinds busy. Yes, they bring the elites of humankind

down to earth, to at least one conclusion: that we are all in the same boat, and therefore equal

– irreversibly equal in our differences. (Felc 1995, p. 95-96). From this theoretical frame we

can make a pedagogical conclusion, that “...the best way to become aware of our otherness is,

as Levinas would put it: Meeting the face of the Other as different, in the real world or in the

expressive images of art!” (Kroflič 2007, in print).

This kind of theoretical stance toward education and the otherness has already found a place

in the pedagogical paradigm, called relational pedagogy. From the manifesto of protagonists

of relational pedagogy we can see a definite turn from the Enlightenment anthropological

tradition in understanding self and otherness that also opens opportunities for a new

understanding of art as pedagogical tool:

“- A relation is more real than the things it brings together. Human beings and non-

human things (like art objects of performances; note by R. K.) acquire reality only in

relation to other beings and things.

- The self is a knot in the web of multiple intersecting relations; pull relations out of

the web, and find no self. We do not have relations; relations have us.

- Authority and knowledge are not something one has, but relations, which require

others to enact.

- Human relations exist in and through shared practices.

- Relations are complex; they may not be described in single utterances. To describe a

relation is to produce a multi-voiced text.

- Relations are primary; actions are secondary. Human words and actions have no

authentic meaning; they acquire meaning only in a context of specific relations.

- Teaching is building educational relations. Aims of teaching and outcomes of

learning can both be defined as specific forms of relations to oneself, people around

the students, and the larger world.

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- Educational relation is different from any other; its nature is transitional. Educational

relation exists to include the student in a wider web of relations beyond the limits of

the educational relation.

- Relations are not necessarily good; human relationality is not an ethical value.

Domination is as relational as love.” (Bingham and Sidorkin 2004, pp. 6-7)

If knowledge about life and even about our self exists only in complex relations and practices

that require others to enact; if relations can be described only through different voices in a real

situation or multi-voiced text, we can conclude, that relational pedagogy confirms the

importance of artistic experience as one of the most authentic forms of embodied knowledge.

Confirmation of art education beyond the ideological message

In the last chapter I tried to present new ideas on understanding responsibility as a sensitive

and respectful response to an existential call of associate, a personal commitment to respectful

being and acting, and care for our life mission and consistent identity, that motivated

searching for the most authentic social relations as ideal for educational influences. I

confirmed Hayi and Cuypers statement about love and friendship as the most important forms

of authentic pro-social relations. In this chapter I will present some contemporary ideas about

art as one of most authentic expressions of humanity that has important educational value, not

only because of its ideological message, but also because of its inner structure.

If we claim that art experience is a kind of embodiment of knowledge about myself and the

Other, then we have to find something in its inner structure that confirms its value beyond a

utilitarian criterion. In the RAND study Gifts of the Muse (Reframing the Debate About the

Benefits of the Arts (McCarthy and others 2004, p. 40)) we find a further explanation:

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Figure 1: Art as a Communicative Process

As B. Reimer claims, “...people who bring meaningful forms into existence are generally

called artists and anyone so engaged is, at the time of engagement, being an artist.” (Reimer

1998, p. 161). In the field of philosophy of education this simply means that anyone who is

engaged in the experience of art – to be a creator, or co-creator (musician playing a piece of

music that was written by another artist) of artistic expression, or just a person enjoying the

piece of art – exists in the field of aesthetic experience.

There are several reasons and concepts that confirm this communicative understanding of art.

Insight into the thesis, that a piece of art is a kind of bridge between the mind of the artist and

the public, is crucial for understanding the inner value of art experience. The artistic process is

one of the most complex, mysterious, and only partly conscious human activities, that

includes intuition and expression (see top oval on figure 1). Intuition can be described as a

highly developed capacity for vivid experiencing of the world, including one’s inner, private

world. It is a cultivated sensitivity for observing life, a capacity for receiving its impressions

(McCarthy and others 2004, p. 40), that enables the artist to present this impression and vision

of pieces of subjective reality to the public (that is not capable of such deep observing and

contemplating of life). And artistic expression is, in the opinion of the Irish novelist J. Cary,

“a kind of translation, not from one language into another, but one state of existence into

another, from the receptive into creative, from the purely sensuous impression into the purely

reflective and critical act”, or as the same thought was expressed by C. Taylor in his

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monumental work Sources of the self, artistic expression is “a bit of ‘frozen’ potential

communication” (quoted from ibid., p. 41).

The process of appreciation (see bottom oval on figure 1) is parallel to the artistic process,

because individual experience is an inner one, intensely personal and private, and the

interpretative experience is the attempt to express to others what that direct experience was

like. Unlike most human communication, art communicates through direct experience, and

the core of our response to the piece of art is a kind of intense feeling that is enriched by

critical reflection. This means that aesthetic experience is not limited to passive spectatorship,

but it stimulates curiosity, questioning, and the search for explanation (ibid., pp. 41-42).

The key question of aesthetics, whether the art is a representation of reality or an expression

of a subjective view, emotions, and visions, remains, in the opinion of the authors of the

RAND study, still open: they declare art as “objectivation of subjective life” or “an outward

showing of inward nature” (ibid., p. 43). This means that art can fill the gap left by scientific

and technological discourse of Western European culture: “Rather than describing the world

in impersonal, abstract, or mathematical terms, it presents a created reality based on personal

perspective (often surprising and original) that includes the whole uncensored human being

with all its feelings, imaginings, and yearnings.” (Ibid., pp. 42-43).

One of the most important characteristics of artistic expression for the development of

humanity is artistic imagination. It is the concept that is clearly separated from pure fantasy,

and contains selective and evaluative functions (Rethorst 1997, p. 4; Nussbaum 1990, pp. 77–

78; Murdoch 2006, p. 70). We can say even more so, that it is a cognitive capacity, which

enables us to reach a coherent image of the world with the use of empathy (Greene 1995, p.

3). According to M. Greene, artistic imagination is the means to reach the world of the Other

in a way that we become accustomed to “as if” worlds, that were created by writers, painters,

sculptors, movie directors, choreographers, and composers, and enabled us to gain new

perspectives on life (ibid., p. 4) - so important for the post-modern conception of humanity

and ethical consciousness. It motivates us to become accustomed to the artistic created person

or event, empathic with its destiny, to restrict our ego fantasies about ourselves as centers of

the universe, to reflect life events we would never experience, and to create visions about

possible worlds that abolish selfishness and injustice. So it is not a coincidence that in the last

few decades we can find more and more proof that “human moral understanding is

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fundamentally imaginative [and that] metaphor is one of the principal mechanisms of

imaginative cognition.” (Johnson, M. Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science

for Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1993. p. 33; quoted from Rethorst 1997, p.

3).

M. Nussbaum in her influential work Cultivating humanity (1997) brings to our attention

/identifies three important dimensions of the artistic imagination: narrative imagination,

deliberative imagination, and compassionate imagination. In its central chapter “Narrative

imagination” she claims, that cultivating humanity through / by art was what form Socrates,

stoics and Seneca held as the central part of basic education. In one picturesque passage she

writes: “Habits of empathy and community conduce to a certain type of citizenship and a

certain form of community: one that cultivates a sympathetic responsiveness to another's

needs, and understands the way circumstances shape those needs, while respecting

separateness and privacy. This is so because of the way in which literary imagining both

inspires intense concern with the fate of characters and defines those characters as containing

a rich inner life, not all of which is open to view; in the process, the reader learns to have

respect for the hidden contents of that inner world, seeing its importance in defining a creature

as fully human.” (Nussbaum 1997, p. 90). This description of penetrating into the soul of a

literal hero liberates the reader’s stereotypical perception (what literal critic L. Trilling

describes with the term ‘deliberative imagination’; ibid.) and enables empathy and

compassion: “Compassion involves the recognition that another person, in some ways similar

to oneself, has suffered some significant pain or misfortune in a way for which that person is

not, or not fully, to blame.” (Ibid., pp. 90-91). Compassion includes one more important

dimension that is the sense of my own vulnerability, which tells me that I could experience a

similar destiny to the literal hero in my future, which causes my readiness to generously help:

“That might have been me, and that is how I should want to be treated.” (ibid., p. 91). This

last dimension of imagination M. Nussbaum describes as compassionate imagination, and its

value is connected with our readiness to have an empathic recognition of the social position of

different, marginalized, invisible persons in a global world of differences (ibid., pp. 87, 109-

112).

Another key concept of art expression that indicates its importance for the development of

humanity is narration. After the fall of rationalistic conviction that ethical dilemmas can be

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reduced to abstract events, which are separate from the individual destiny of subjects and

from the contingent nature of social circumstances, philosophy and psychology stress the

importance of the “...reconstruction of ethical dilemma in its contextual particularity, that

enables understanding of causes and consequences.” (Gilligan 1982, p. 100) M. Greene

annotates the importance of telling the story in a narrative way, as a new way of

understanding and truth (Bruner, J. (1986). Actual Minds, Possible Worlds; quoted from

Greene 1995, p. 186) to the impact of hermeneutics and the recognition of the importance of

“heteroglossia” - Bakhtin’s concept of the existence of different views and voices that can

only describe human reality in polyphony. She also stresses the importance “...of the

connection between narrative and growth of identity, of the importance of shaping our own

stories and, at the same time, opening ourselves to other stories in all their variety and their

different degrees of articulateness.” (Ibid.) Especially stories with “open narrative fable” will

act to enable “aesthetic transgression on institutionalized moral chains” and can motivate

critical reflection and inductive learning4 (Winston 2005, pp. 317–319, 321–322).

A short, but very convincing argument about the importance of metaphor can be found in the

famous study Sovereignty of Good, written by I. Murdoch, where she claims that we can catch

sight of good only in an indirect way through metaphor, so admiring the beauty in art or

nature is the most accessible way for a spiritual experience and a proper way to a good life,

because it masters our selfishness with an aim to see the truth (Murdoch 2006, str. 76). Her

argument about the importance of metaphor arises from the analysis of the role of

metaphorical thinking in Platonic philosophy, and especially his famous metaphor of the cave,

where he presents the idea about the incapacity to picture and describe Good in a direct way

(ibid., p. 82). So where analytical language fails to describe truth, art can - with the help of

imagination, narration, and metaphor- create “embodied meaning”, which replaces invisible

secrets of life into visible spheres, and so enables transformative experiences and personal

fulfillment (see Koopman 2005).

Art as fulfillment in the post-modern world

4 The inductive approach can be described as a methodical orientation that starts moral and identity development from the analysis of concrete conflict situations (which asks for an emphatic relation toward narrative and metaphor of a concrete situation) and not from the notion on the importance of (deductive labeling) social rule/norm, that was the starting point of social learning in the classical culture-transmission model of education.

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If I started this article with the concept of M. Foucault about art as a critical tool for

deconstruction of historical ideas and practices, and continue with this concept, that in the

pedagogical field art was usually used as a tool for transmitting existing cultural patterns and

ideological messages, I would like to conclude this investigation with the idea that art can be

seen as a practice of transformative experiences and personal fulfillment, because it has a

power to describe the basic secrets of life and allows us to begin a dialog with the otherness of

fellow-persons, and also with the otherness in the core of our personality.

Let's show some of the most famous arguments for this theory. I would like to start with

Wittgenstein’s theory about closeness and the transcendental nature of the languages of ethics,

of religious experiences, and of art, that rests on the recognition of the different language of

art, that can reach some extensions of truth better than the analytical language of science (Ule

in Varga-Kibed 1998). Confirmation of Wittgenstein’s theory about the closeness of the

languages of ethics and art can be found in J. White’s analysis of art experience, where he

claims, that “...since part of what we understand by aesthetic engagement is imaginatively

dwelling in feelings and desires, the experience of art cannot be divorced from ethical

contemplation. We do not choose to read poems as aesthetic objects in order to reflect on the

ethical life, where the latter is a further goal to which the former is a means; but in choosing

so to read them we may well have such ethical ends in mind, accruing as part of our intrinsic

experience of the work.” (White 1998, p. 193)

When we follow the thesis about art experience as one of the most authentic forms of human

activities of personal fulfillment, we should not forget H. G. Gadamer’s thesis about ‘fulfilled

time’, exemplified by the feast or celebration, where the feast is a paradigm for the arts: “Just

like the feast the work of art presents an episode of fulfilled time. Fulfillment is effected by

the organic unity of work. Every detail is united with the whole... As an internally structured

unity, the art work has its own fulfilled time.” (Koopman 2005, p. 91). Fulfillment is also

central to the J. Dewey concept of art as experience, which means ‘to have an experience in

strong sense’, to experience wholeness and self-sufficiency because art acts to clarify and

intensify events of every day experiences (ibid., pp. 91-92). So Gadamer and Dewey have

offered us two different perspectives on the idea of fulfillment in the arts, the first one with

the concept of fulfilled time, and the second one with the concept of completed experience.

These two perspectives are supplementing, because “...the value of the arts resides in our

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complete involvement from moment to moment when receiving, creating or performing an art

work.” (Ibid., p. 91).

The idea of art fulfillment coincides with Maslow’s concept of peak experience and

Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow. Flow comes from the feeling of total fulfillment in an

artistic process that causes a peak experience of pleasure and happiness, which is brilliantly

described by the testimony of the poet M. Strand: “Well, you’re right in the work, you lose

your sense of time, you’re completely enraptured, you’re completely caught up in what you’re

doing, and you’re sort of swayed by the possibilities you see in this work. If that becomes too

powerful, then you get up, because the excitement is too great. You can’t continue to work or

continue to see the end of the work because you’re jumping ahead of yourself all the time.

The idea is to be so ... so saturated with it that there’s no future or past, it’s just an extended

present in which you’re ... making meaning.” (McCarthy and others 2004, p. 46) It is

appropriate to notice that especially Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow is scientifically

confirmed by a huge number of interviews with creative people from different fields of work,

and is in the last decade, used as one of the key concepts of intrinsic motivation for learning

(see Riggs 2006), criteria of good work (The GoodWork Project 2006) and especially the

personal identity and mission of a good teacher (Korthagen and Vasalos 2005).

If we turn our analysis again to the characteristics of life in the post-modern era and the role

of art for a fulfilled life in this liquid (Z. Bauman) and risky time (U. Beck), I would like to

conclude this approach with the two most frequently emphasized positive roles of art.

The first one is the fact that the world we live in is composed of an uncountable number of

simultaneously existing perspectives and viewpoints (Greene 1995, p. 183), so our personal

growth to become different has to include searching for our personal voice and playing

participatory and well articulated roles in the communities (ibid., p. 132). Or as the same

thought was expressed by M. Nussbaum in her book Love’s Knowledge: Essays on

Philosophy and Literature: “...art provides an extension of life not only horizontally, bringing

the reader into contact with events of locations or persons or problems he or she has not

otherwise met, but also, so to speak, vertically, giving the reader experience that is deeper,

sharper, and more precise than much of what takes place in life.” (Quoted from McCarthy and

others 2004, p. 47).

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This ‘deep, sharp, and precise’ self-understanding and self-fulfillment is, as we saw before,

connected with a strong connection with the otherness around me that warns me about

otherness in the core of my personality. To defeat fear of otherness so common to human

beings, we need activities that have strong motivational character and emotional engagement

in our too objectified world. Or, as the same thought was expressed by two giants of art in the

nineteen and twentieth century: the spirit of abstraction stifles the fire at which the heart

should have warmed itself (Schiller), so a book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen

inside us (Kafka). (Quoted from Hepburn 1998, p. 176).

Role of aesthetics in the European multiple choice identity project

In a project, the European Multiple Choice Identity (see http://www.europemci.com/), we

try to concretize several thesis of relational pedagogy concerning the turn in understanding

and emotionally accepting otherness as a core of contemporary identity development. Let me

present only some of the most important theoretical ideas of this approach.

A kind of theoretical motto of our project can be recognized from a further quotation:

»When we speak about promoting identity building processes and especially the moral

development that is incorporated in it we cannot but enter the realm of indoctrination.

Even theorists of liberal education like A. Guttman admit that it is impossible to

educate in the field of moral development without a minimum of enforcement of

common goals and moral standards. But what we are doing in a different way as most

common projects until now is that we don’t begin with necessary strict moral

standards that everybody must accept, but with a sense opening for every individual

position in the interconnected world of differences. We promote opportunities for pro-

social behaviour, for growing reflection of conflicts, and possibilities for common

living on the basis of active tolerance, where empowerment of the individual position

of everyone and commitment to pro-social behaviour are the mill stones of our

identity. We should stay inside the framework of human rights and enforce weaker

‘should obligations’ to respect human rights to become stronger ‘must moral

imperatives’.” (Kroflič and Kratsborn 2006, p. 156)

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Classical tension between transmitting cultural patterns on one side, and promoting personal

responsibility on the other, is avoided with the inductive approach. For this purpose we have

chosen five thematic blocks and a didactical approach with seven steps of activities per each

thematic block. So the content of our activities is focused around five values: identity (feeling

for Europe), family and friends, good work and free time, mobility, and the otherness, where

our basic idea is to get a deeper view over my personal identity through reflection on

authentic places of communication (family and friends), common activities, and traveling into

the closeness with other as different.

This didactical model, designed by the leader of the project, W. Kratsborn (2004), contains

seven steps that cover all personal dimensions and a lot of practical tasks:

‘The route to a multiple intelligent citizen’

Skills and information Subjective concept Practice and reality

STEP 1

‘The sense opened citizen’

STEP 2 -choose a subject

‘The knowledge-based citizen’ -starting-point and orientation STEP 3

-use a multiple intelligence ‘The active citizen

-gather knowledge with language,

sound (music) or image -a test, an activity

or a report

-an outdoor-activity

-an overview

STEP 4

‘The communicative citizen’

-communication and feedback with others

STEP 5 -preflect on practice

‘The productive citizen’

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-prepare practice

-construct the route STEP 6

‘The cooperative citizen’

-realize practice

STEP 7

‘The reflective citizen’

-reflect and integrate

-competences

Another important ideal of this project is the idea of multi-level learning where especially

aesthetical approaches play an important role. We use music, texts, drama, visual arts and new

technologies as tools to open sensibility for personal and societal dilemmas, to get knowledge

about chosen content through many sources and languages (especially from the field of art),

to express inner feelings and new experiences, to share this expression with others in a

productive way, and finally to strengthen reflection about core values, concerning my

engagement with the other as different.

And what are the aims of the project? W. Kratsborn once said that we do not intend to reduce

differences between nations joining the EU; even more than that, during the testing phase of

the project these differences are becoming bigger, or at least more visible. But we can also

notice that children and youngsters are reducing their stereotypical understanding of others,

reducing fears concerning mobility and diversity, and strengthening the feeling about

difference as a value.

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