| My dissertation traces a three-part model of formative education as derived from the thought of Soren Kierkegaard (1813--1855). Its methods articulate Kierkegaard's response to the romantic theory of selfhood, which he charged with failing to reconcile the self with the world and the other. While he inherits the romantic valuing of imagination, Kierkegaard's authorship emphasizes the return from possibility to actuality in the self's becoming. Formative education avoids the romantic's isolated self by emphasizing receptivity over self-sufficiency, self-disclosure over artistic retreat, and activity over reverie.;With "formative education" I translate Kierkegaard's term Dannelse, which refers to a pedagogical methodology that continually forms while it builds. No one part of the model stands in isolation, but rather draws from the others as they are overlain. As such, the self is continually revised and rebuilt with the very tools a person gains in her formation. This is significant, since, although Kierkegaard's ideal self synthesizes opposed elements in its existence (such as its finite and infinite aspects), it never does do so by reaching a final, harmonious state. Rather, even in its ideal form, the self is always underway as a troubled unity. It expresses itself most perfectly when the very tension of becoming can be glimpsed in how it holds together opposed elements. A person's primary task, therefore, is to express the eternal in her everyday, banal existence with others.;The model includes aesthetic, moral, and spiritual education. Aesthetic education has serious play as its method. Under the guidance of a "storyteller," it nurtures imagination, feeling, reflection, and sensory attentiveness. While encouraging self-activity in the learner, it also facilitates mobility across these capacities as she engages with stories. The breakdown of certain boundaries between life realms is thus necessitated (e.g., school and playground) to enable the learner to enter upon human narrativity without adopting habits of atomization.;Moral education aims at developing personality, with emphasis upon earnestness. Its method is praxis, and the learner is encouraged by the teacher's example to embody her learning through existential choice and action. While universal moral laws come into consideration, they are relevant only insofar as the learner internalizes and expresses them, as her chief learning is precisely the how of appropriation. The teacher therefore employs tactics for going "incognito," including ironic deception, deflecting attention from herself to the learner, so as to develop the learner's moral autonomy.;Spiritual education entails imaginative exercises in learning from anxiety. Kierkegaard was attuned to profound suffering in life, but he also saw the potential for learning in joy through suffering. As becoming a self is not purely a matter of willpower, one also learns from vulnerability and sickness. Spiritual education thus teaches humility and openness to the other. Recognition of one's deeper self comes as a gift through disclosure.;While spiritual education is, in a sense, the culmination of formative education, it begins already in childhood, where one taps into the child's anxious relation to the unknown and her negative ability to remain within the indeterminate. Conversely, aesthetic and moral education prepare her to internalize the lessons of possibility through self-activity and self-reliance, such that they are transformative in actuality. Consequently, formative education, aiming at artful living, is a pedagogy for life. |
