Humanistic Critique of Education. Группа авторов
only signs but also signs about signs, as general words can be used to sum up a set of particular words, or as the written word “table” can be a sign for the spoken word, which in turn is a sign for the thing itself, or as we can talk about talk, a glory that attains its somewhat unwieldy flowering in a critic’s critical critique of the criticism of criticism.
Empirically and experimentally, at least, that would be our basis of distinction, until or unless further insight discloses the need for different dividing lines. And in view of the respects in which colonies of ants and bees are like burlesques of human social orders, presenting a set of motions that are crudely analogous to the actions and passions of a political community, we think it significant that these species seem to be the ones closest to being capable of human language. Presumably, such complex technology-like regimentation is possible only to a species capable of signalling fairly precise information or instruction.
Though all action involves motion, we may next make a distinction between practical and symbolic action (each of which requires a mediatory ground of motion). Practical action would be ethical (the doing of good), political (the wielding and obeying of authority), economic (the construction and operation of utilities, or powers). To say as much, however, is to realize that the practical realm is strongly infused by the symbolic element (since ideas of goodness, right, and expediency so obviously play a part in these practical acts). Yet in extreme cases at least, there is conceivable a clear distinction between practical and symbolic activity. It is a practical act to get in out of the rain, and a symbolic act to write a poem about getting in out of the rain; it is a practical act to eat, and a symbolic act to speak of eating.
On the symbolic side of our alignment, we would make a further distinction, between the “artificial” and the “neurotic.” A poem would be an “artificial” symbolic act; and so likewise with a philosophy or scientific theory. While pure theory would be on the symbolic side of our chart, the various applied sciences would fall on the practical side, though books about them would be but symbolic artifice. Historiography would thus be an aspect of artificial symbolic action, for however real the man Napoleon may have been, his place in a history or a biography is that of one symbol among others. He is a word.
Rhetoric would likewise be artificial symbolic action. Aristotle calls it a “counterpart of dialectic,” thus putting it in the realm of sheer words. But its use for ethical, political, and economic purposes also brings it close to the practical side. For example, Longinus’s On the Sublime deals largely with examples from oratory that was originally designed for a practical end but, long after the practical occasion had passed, was “appreciated” by him purely a: poetry, because of its beauty or “imagination” as a robust symbolic exercising to be enjoyed and admired by readers in and for itself.
The other aspect of the purely symbolic, the “neurotic,” might be subdivided into a distinction between those pathological conditions wherein the sufferer is still within bounds of communication and pathological conditions beyond communication. The latter kind (as with complete schizophrenia) might seem almost like a return to sheer motion, as though the sufferer had become but a vegetable; yet indications are that purely symbolic activity may here have attained a “simplicity” and “perfection” of inner consistency not possible to a symbol-system under normal conditions. Within communication would be the various partial “mental” disorders, high among which would also be the realm of “psychogenic illnesses,” wherein the motions of the body have been radically disturbed by the passions that go with disorders of linguistic action. The artificial symbolic action of a poem becomes symbolic action of the neurotic sort in so far as the poem reflects the poet’s attempts by purely symbolic means (by “beauties of the imagination”) to solve problems that require practical solutions (ethical, political, economic).
But as soon as one stops to think how readily the artifice of a poem’s symbolic action takes on neurotic ingredients, one may congratulate one’s self that one’s own favorite poets do not thus succumb; or one may congratulate one’s self that one is not a poet but a “practical man of action.” A linguistic approach to the study of human relations, on the other hand, would suggest rather the possibility that we are “poets all.” Maybe, then, with a typically symbol-using creature, no solution of his difficulties but a perfectly symbolic one could content him, no matter how practical or normal he may think of himself as being.
The educational process as here conceived is guided by this ironic likelihood: That man can be content with nothing less than perfection, and that a typically symbol-using species will conceive of perfection in a way that is essentially symbolic, somewhat as “angels” are sheer “message.” Our study of poetic ritual, for instance, would be guided by this notion. And some of Santayana’s ingenious conceits, concerning the aspirations of the spirit to so transcend material conditions that the mind dissolves into the realm of pure being, would be interpreted by us linguistically as the ultimate human hankering for a condition so thoroughly in keeping with man’s differentia that his generic animality would be transformed into a perfect symbol-system. A visible burlesque of such transcendence is seen in the Cyberneticists’ dream of reducing all mental operations to their counterparts in the order of pure motion. And we all know of journalistic critics who read books so fast and write on them so quickly, their minds are hardly more than a telephone exchange where messages automatically converge and are automatically rerouted.
But here again, we come to the point at which, having stated our absolute position, we can settle for much less, as regards the processes of our study. We need but look for the respects wherein the sociolinguistic dimension is observable in all our actions, whereat these actions become symbolic of the principles infusing both a given social order and social order generally. This sociolinguistic nexus is headed in the principle of negativity, the astounding linguistic genius of no, which merges so perfectly with the conscientious thou-shalt-not’s of property.
Thus, in accordance with this view, whereas we would divide the curriculum in ways that allow for the traditional autonomy of the various disciplines, we would so conduct our investigations that we might glimpse, brooding over the lot, a lore of the universal pageantry in which all men necessarily and somewhat somnambulistically take part, by reason of their symbol-using natures.4
School and Society: Social Philosophy
Imagine an educational ladder of this sort:
On the lowest rung would be the training of students in accordance with immediate local purposes, a mode of “indoctrination” designed to assert a narrowly partisan point of view in subjects of a “controversial” nature, and to deflect attention from any social philosophy at all in subjects of a “free” nature, such as “pure” literature.
The kind of education on the next higher rung would be just as narrowly partisan in its aims but more prudent in its ways of working toward such aims. It would be wider in its range so that the student would also know something of other views, because such knowledge would better equip him to combat them. Looking upon all enemies, or even opponents, as instruments of the devil, it would nonetheless seek to give the devil his dues, not because we owe the devil anything, but because we owe it to ourselves to know his powers.
Next above the second rung would be a more “humanitarian” view of alien ways. Holding that people generally have great moral virtues, it would, like the ethnologist, anthropologist, or sociologist, seek to describe and “appreciate” other groups, in all their varied habits, strengths, and shortcomings, not for partisan purposes, but purely in accordance with ideals of “truth” or “scientific accuracy.” Although its findings would have been made in an impartial spirit, they could also be applied to narrower ends. In this respect, the third rung would be but the highest region of the second rung. Otherwise. it would be on a new level, having passed a “critical point.”
A fourth rung would be involved in a much more complicated set of maneuvers. Here, the kind of material assembled in investigations on the third rung would be treated as voices in a dialogue. One would try to decide how many positions one thinks are important enough to be represented by “voices,” and then one would do all in one’s pourer to let each voice state its position as ably as possible. No voice deemed relevant to the particular issue or controversy would be subjected to the quietus, and none would be inadequately