Prophetic epideictic rhetoric: poetic education beyond good and evil

Educational Theory

Volumn 53, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 221-241

  Garrison, Jim ^a  

^a VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE AND STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34547666233     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2003.00221.x     Document Type: Article

References (45)

1. Robert Browning, The Poetic and Dramatic Works of Robert Browning, Riverside ed., vol. 3 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 18871, 477.
2. See James Garrison, "Philosophy as the General Theory of Critical Education," The Paideia Project: Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, vol. 3, ed. David Steiner, (Boston: Philosophy Documentation Center, 19991, 51-61.
3. John Dewey, Qualitative Thought (19301, in John Dewey: The Later Works, vol. 5, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984],252.
4. John Dewey, Art as Experience (19341, in John Dewey: The Later Works, vol. 10, ed. Boydston [Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987), 33.
5. This book will be cited as AE in the text for all subsequent references. For more on the idea of science as an art, see Jim Garrison, "Integrating Arts/Humanities and Science/Engineering," Philosophy of Education 2001: Proceedings of theFifty-Seventh AnnualMeetingof thePhilosophy of Education Society, ed. Suzanne Rice (Urbana, Illinois: Philosophy of Education Society, 2002), 36-40.
6. In Art as Experience, Dewey makes a crucial distinction between the artistic and the aesthetic. While the artistic "refers primarily to the act of production" and includes the production of the objects of inquiry as well as warranted assertions in the artistic process of forming judgment, the aesthetic relates to "perception and enjoyment," 53.
7. See Jim Garrison, "John Dewey's Theory of Practical Reasoning," Educational Philosophy and Theory 31, no. 3 11999): 291-312.
8. Aristotle, Rhetoric, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York Random House, 19721, sect. 1366a. Please note that all references to Aristotle are by section number; passages may vary according to translation chosen.
9. Aristotle, Rhetoric, sect. 1368a.
10. Aristotle, Nicornachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1985), sect. 1109b. This book will he cited as NE in the text for all subsequent references.
11. Dana Harrington, "Hume's Concept of Taste in the Context of Epideictic Rhetoric and Eighteenth- Century Ethics," in Scottish Rhetoric and Its Influences, ed. Lynee Lewis Gaillet (Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 19981, 21.
12. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding [ 1690; reprint Oxford, England Clarendon Press, 19751, 549.
13. See, for example, Ralph Sleeper, The Necessity of Pragmatism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 7 and 92;
14. Robert B. Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 119and321;
15. andStevenRockefeller, John Dewey:Religious Faith and Deniocratic Humanism (New York Columbia University Press, 19911,362.
16. See John Dewey, Ethics (1932), in John Dewey: The Later Works, vol. 7, ed. Boydston [Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985], 171.
17. This book will be cited as E in the text for all subsequent references. While Dewey coauthored this work with James Hayden Tufts, he exclusively wrote the section cited here. The 1932 Ethics is a reworking of their 1908 volume, and the primary change in the later work is that Dewey deemphasized personal self-actualization and placed greater emphasis on duty and virtue.
18. John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct (1922, in John Dewey: The Middle Works, vol. 14, ed. Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1Y83), 43. This book will be cited as HN in the text for all subsequent references.
19. We cannot understand any one of these three domains without understanding its organic connections with the other two. There is only room in my paper to provide the barest outline of Dewey's theory of praise and blame. There is no space to discuss his theory of virtue, except to say it is quite different from conventional virtue ethics.
20. For instance, much of what passes for critical thin lung in the modern West unreflectively assumes that only the "doubting game" is valuable; it entirely ignores the critical value of playing the "believing game." See Anne M. Phelan and James W. Garrison, "Toward a Gender-Sensitive Ideal of Critical Thinking: A Feminist Poetic," in Re-Thinking Reason: New Perspectives in Critical Thinking, ed. Keny S. Walters [Albany: SUNY Press, 1994), 81-97.
21. For Dewey objectivity implies inter subjective agreement about objects and events in the world. Participants in shared social practice co-construct meaning when they come to agreement about action in the world. We should not confuse it with scientistic objectivism.
22. William J. Bennett, The Book of Virtues [New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993)
23. For more on Dewey's view of experimental method, see "An Added Note as to the 'Practical,"' in John Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic (1916), reprinted in John Dewey: The Middle Works, vol. 10, ed. Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980), 366-369.
24. For Dewey, experimental method "makes necessary the conception that the object of knowledge is not something with which thinking set out, but something with which it ends: something which the processcs of inquiry and testing, that constitute thin lung themselves produce .... Their respective objects are not known till made in the course of the process of experimental thinking" (368-369).
25. Dewey provides his full theory of value inquiry in his Theory of Valuation; the reader who seeks more of the cognitive content in Dewey's discussion of value and moral judgment should refer to John Dewey, Theory of Valuation (19391, in John Dewey: The Later Works, vol. 13, ed. Boydston [Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 19881, 191-251.
26. Dewey, Qualitative Thought, 249.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid, 252.
29. I cannot address the issue here, but clearly, if multicultural education seeks to do more than merely reinforce a nation's conventional morality, it must engage in epideictic rhetoric beyond the bounds of culturally customary standards of praise and blame.
30. Much of this discussion is based on Jim Garrison, Dewey and Eros: Wisdom and Desire in the Art of Teaching (New York: Teachers College Press, 1997).
31. Mark Johnson, Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 19931, xiv, 164 [emphasis in original).
32. Ibid., 163, 165.
33. Ibid., 166.
34. Cornel West calls for a "new kind of cultural criticism" that he terms "prophetic pragmatism"; he hopes that this critical approach can promote a "culture of creative democracy by means of critical intelligence and social action." See Cornel West, The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Gmealogy of Pragmatism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 212. Connecting West's notion of prophetic pragmatism with the kind of prophecy discussed in the rest of this article is a project reserved for another paper.
35. For more on tricksters and their type, see James C. Conroy and Robert A. Davis, "Transgression, Transformation and Enlightenment: The Trickster as Poet and Teacher, "' Educational Philosophy and Theory34, no. 3 (2002): 255-272.
36. See also Timothy McDonough, "The Fool's Pedagogy: Jesting for Liminal Learning," and the reply by David Blacker, "The Importance of Being Foolish," Philosophy of Education 2001, ed. Rice, 107-1 19.
37. Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes this World: Mischief, Myth, and Art (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998). This book will be cited as TMW in the text for all subsequent references.
38. Hyde notes, "All the standard tricksters are male" [TMW, 335). Perhaps this is so, but it seems to me that women can engage in the activities of the trickster at least as readily as men, even if there is no mythological cultural stereotype that captures their activity.
39. A female trickster might address this cultural code quite differently. In many ways, a trickster is authorized to act publicly by the very powers that create codes. That tricksters operate publicly makes their actions easier to detect. Unauthorized tricksters, such as female tricksters, might have to work in the private realms entirely beyond the gaze of public morality, or public record.
40. Actually, I think Krishna often does reveal hidden truths and higher laws as well as plentitude and complexity.
41. John Dewey, Philosophy and Democracy, in John Dewey: The Middle Works, vol. 11, ed. Boydston [Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982],43.
42. Charles S. Peirce, "Pragmatism" (19071,i n The Essential Peirce, vol. 2 (Bloornington: IndianaUniversity Press, 1998), 401.
43. John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy (19201, in John Dewey: The Middle Works, vol. 12, ed. Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982), 169-1 70.
44. John Dewey, Experience and Nature (1925), in John Dewey: The Later Works, vol. 1, ed. Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 19811, 128.
45. Dewey, Experience and Nature, 169.