Dr. V.K. Maheshwari, Ph.D

    

   “Microteaching is defined as a system of controlled practice that makes it possible to concentrate on specified teaching behavior and to practice teaching under controlled conditions.”
- D.W. Allen & A.W. Eve (1968)

The modern age is leading towards the concept that the teachers are not born , but they can be made .The responsibility of producing competent teachers goes to the training institutions .Educational technology has played the key role in this job. Now the teacher’s behavior can be modified. In order to modify teacher’s behavior the technique can be effectively used.

.Getting in front of students is a trying experience for a budding teacher. One may earnestly try to prepare him or herself: read books about teaching methods, attend lectures and take courses on communication skill. Yet, in theory everything seems much simpler than in practice. The complexity of a teaching situation can be overwhelming. To deal effectively with it, teachers must not only have a good knowledge of the subject in hand, but also some communication skills such as ability to observe, supervise, lead a discussion and pose questions. Furthermore, a teacher should be aware of how students perceive him or her. This perception is sometimes quite different from the teacher’s self-image. It is difficult to self assess one’s own abilities and we benefit from colleagues’ feed back to recognize our strength and identify areas for possible improvement.
Evaluation of teaching by students is becoming a common practice, and a constructive feedback could be an effective way to improve one’s rating as a teacher. Even the experienced educators may sometimes reflect about strengths and weaknesses of their teaching style

What is microteaching

Microteaching is a scaled-down, simulated teaching encounter designed for the training of both pre-service or in-service teachers. Its purpose is to provide teachers with the opportunity for the safe practice of an enlarged cluster of teaching skills while learning how to develop simple, single-concept lessons in any teaching subject. Microteaching helps teachers improve both content and methods of teaching and develop specific teaching skills such as questioning, the use of examples and simple artifacts to make lessons more interesting, effective reinforcement techniques, and introducing and closing lessons effectively. Immediate, focused feedback and encouragement, combined with the opportunity to practice the suggested improvements in the same training session, are the foundations of the microteaching protocol.

The history of microteaching goes back to the early and mid 1960′s, when Dwight Allen and his colleagues from the Stanford University developed a training program aimed to improve verbal and nonverbal aspects of teacher’s speech and general performance. The Stanford  model consisted of a three-step (teach, review and reflect, re-teach) approach using actual students as an authentic audience. The model was first applied to teaching science, but later it was introduced to language teaching. A very similar model called Instructional Skills Workshop (ISW) was developed in Canada during the early 1970′s as a training support program for college and institute faculty. Both models were designed to enhance teaching and promote open collegial discussion about teaching performance.

In the last few years, microteaching as a professional development tool is increasingly spreading in the field of teacher education.

Importance of Micro-teaching Program in teacher education program

Microteaching is an excellent way to build up skills and confidence, to experience a range of lecturing/tutoring styles and to learn and practice giving constructive feedback. Microteaching gives instructors an opportunity to safely put themselves “under the microscope” of a small group audience, but also to observe and comment on other people’s performances. As a tool for teacher preparation, microteaching trains teaching behaviors and skills in small group settings aided by video-recordings. In a protected environment of friends and colleagues, teachers can try out a short piece of what they usually do with their students, and receive a well-intended collegial feedback. A microteaching session is a chance to adopt new teaching and learning strategies and, through assuming the student role, to get an insight into students’ needs and expectations. It is a good time to learn from others and enrich one’s own repertoire of teaching methods.
Microteaching is an organized method of practice teaching which involves a small group of preceptors/instructors who observe each other teach, provide feedback and discuss with one another the strengths of their presentations and potential areas for improvement

Microteaching is so called since it is analogous to putting the teacher under a microscope so to say while he is teaching so that all faults in teaching methodology are brought into perspective for the observers to give a constructive feedback. It eliminates some of the complexities of learning to teach in the classroom situation such as the pressure of length of the lecture, the scope and content of the matter to be conveyed, the need to teach for a relatively long duration of time (usually an hour) and the need to face large numbers of students, some of whom are hostile temperamentally.

Microteaching also provides skilled supervision with an opportunity to get a constructive feedback. To go back to the analogy of the swimmer, while classroom teaching is like learning to swim at the deeper end of the pool, microteaching is an opportunity to practice at the shallower and less risky side.

Micro teaching makes the teacher education program ,more purposeful ,goal oriented and helps to decide common objectives for the program. It provides individualized training with more realistic evidence to students. Which enables them to develop competency  in using specific teaching skills in view of their unique needs.

It provides a democratic type of  behavior  among faculty members and student-teachers.

It provides a facility of supervision which is not critical on threatening type, but is of a helpful and suggestive type ,which equip them for transition to school teaching. It is a system of controlled practice that makes it possible to concentrate on specific teaching behavior and to practice teaching under controlled conditions.

This way Micro teaching is a teacher education technique which allows teachers to apply clearly defined teaching skills to carefully prepared lessons in planned series to five to ten minutes encounters with a small group of real students ,often with an opportunity to observe the result on video-tape.

ASSUMPTIONS OF MICRO TEACHING

• Micro teaching can reduce the complexities of education.  It simplifies the study of inter-action between  the teacher and the students
• It can develop teaching skills. It provides an opportunity of integration of theory and practice. Specific skills can  be developed
• It is completely an individualized training programme. It is a successful technique for  individual training . It facilitates continuity in the training of the teachers
• It is real teaching. Micro-teaching technique is useful for both pre-service and in-service teachers
• It can control the practice by feedback. . Self evaluation is possible by tape recorder or video tape
• Feedback can be provided by various means, such as criticism by a teacher, preparing video film of the lesson, etc. There is provision of immediate and effective feedback
• Its objectives can be written more clearly and specifically
•  Its use helps in the research work related to class-room teaching

 

COMPONENTS OF MICRO TEACHING

The involvement of the following component in micro teaching is necessary. In the absence of any component the success of this technique is doubtful.

1. Micro-teaching Situations. It consists of size of the class, length of the content and teaching method etc. There are 5 to 10 students in the class and the teaching period ranges from 5 to 20 minutes. The content is presented in a unit.

2. Teaching skill. The development of teaching-skills of the student’s teachers is provided in the training programme such as lecturing skill, skill of black-board writing, skill of asking questions etc.

3. Student Teacher .The student who. gets the training of a teacher is called student- teacher .During training his various capacities are developed in him, such as capacity of class management, capability of maintaining discipline and capacity of organizing various program of the school etc

.4. Feed-back Devices. Providing feedback is essential to bring changes in the behavior of the students. Feedback can be provided through videotape feed-back questionnaires

5. Micro Teaching Laboratory. Necessary facilities to feedback can be gathers in microteaching laboratory.

PHASES OF MICRO-TEACHING

 Generally the micro-teaching is structured in three phases.

Phase one—Knowledge Acquisition Phase.

It is also known as modeling phase. Student-teacher is kept in conditions where observes model teacher who presents the teaching behavior to be learned. Inclusion of modeling in micro-teaching before actual practice is a pragmatic approach which foster the skill learning by student-teachers, as learning by observation is said to  occur through informative   function of modeling.

Phase two-Skill Acquisition phase

 It is also known as practicing phase. Student-teacher are given opportunity in real classroom situations, but scaled down, to practice the same behavior or skill.

 Phase three-Transfer Phase-

It is also known as feedback phase. Student-teachers are reinforced for those instances of desired behavior they have acquired and have provision for feed-back for developing the desired behavior or skill up to the mark.

OPERATIONS IN MICRO-TEACHING

 1. Analysis of a skill in behavior terms i.e. .objectives of the skill be clear.

2. A demonstration of the skill on video tape or films or in normal classroom teaching.

3. Trainee plans a short lesson in the subject of his interest in which he can use the skill

4. Trainee teaches the lesson to a small group of students (5-10) which is observed directly or video taped or audio taped.

5. Feedback is provided to trainee or discussing and analyzing his performance with the help of supervisor. If the skill has been used effectively, trainee is reinforced and if there is any drawback the skill would have been exercised by giving suggestions to him

6. Feedback or supervisor’s remarks develop insight in the trainee. He replants the lesson to use the skill more efficiently.

7. Revised lesson is retaught  to different but  comparable groups.

8. Feedback is again provided on retaught lesson which is annualized with the help of the supervisor.

STANDARD PROCEDURE OF MICRO-TEACHING

The following steps are recommended for a successful micro-teaching session – eaching among teacher-educators and student teachers

 Step one – Orientation- Theoretical background, merits and demerits of micro- teaching may be arranged.

 Step Two- Discussion of Teaching Skills.-Concept of teaching skills should be cleared. At least, five teaching skills should be selected and explained at length with the help of handbooks developed by competent authorities. One skill at a time may be discussed before practice.

 Step Three- Presentation of Model Lesson – Model lesson of corresponding skills is demonstrated by the trained teacher educator in selected subjects to the student teacher.

 Step Four.-Presentation of Micro lesson plan.-Student-teacher selects one topic or unit for micro-lesson and prepare the lesson plan logically.

 Guidelines for Presentation

• Structure  presentation:  Give an introduction to the topic, mention the key points and summarize the topic at the end of the presentation
• Encourage audience participation: Ask questions and create ways for interaction with the audience
• Translate enthusiasm for the topic: Grab the audience’s attention at the beginning of the topic by opening with quotes/ important statistics/ clinical findings etc., pause and emphasize important points
• Use props: OHPs, PowerPoint or the board can be used to organize your presentation, include illustrations and emphasize the main points
• Practice presentation prior to the workshop: Practice in front of the mirror or a colleague , practice aloud and notice your body language, gestures and facial expressions, rehearse your presentation to fit in the 5 minute slot
• Review the microteaching feedback form: The criteria peers will be using in their feedback will help  to perfect delivery technique. Keep the voice loud and clear, maintain eye contact with the audience, pace an unhurried presentation

  The  Presentation

Participants of the microteaching session prepare a ‘microlesson’ for 5 minutes to be addressed to a ‘micro-class’ comprising of a small group of peers and a facilitator.

To plan a 5 minute lesson of your choice, present it before a small group of peers who will role play the students in your class and then give you feedback on your presentation with the intention of improving your presentation and teaching skills

 And so on… At the end of the session, the student-teacher will have: 

• Reflected on how best he/her can teach
• Perceived he/her  strengths
• Enhanced he/her  understanding of various effective teaching styles c
• Identified areas for improvement
• Improved he/her ability to provide and receive effective feedback

 The components of the microteaching cycle are shown in Figure. The Microteaching cycle starts with planning. In order to reduce the complexities involved in teaching, the student teacher is asked to plan a “microlesson” i.e a short lesson for 5-10 minutes which he will teach in front of a “micro-class” i.e. a group consisting 5–10 students, a supervisor and peers if necessary. There is scope for projection of model teaching skills if required to help the teacher prepare for his session. The student teacher is asked to teach concentrating one or few of the teaching skills enumerated earlier. His teaching is evaluated by the students, peers and the supervisor using checklists to help them. Video recording can be done if facilities permit. At the- end of the 5 or 10 minutes session as planned, the teacher is given a feedback on the deficiencies noticed in his teaching methodology. Feedback can be aided by playing back the video recording. Using the feedback to help himself, the teacher is asked to re-plan his lesson keeping the comments in view and ret each immediately the same lesson to another group. Such repeated cycles of teaching, feedback and re-teaching help the teacher to improve his teaching skills one at a time. Several such sequences can be planned at the departmental level. Colleagues and postgraduate students can act as peer evaluators for this purpose. It is important, however, that the cycle is used purely for helping the teacher and not as a tool for making a value judgment of his teaching capacity by his superiors.

 Step Five.-Micro-teaching setting.-To set up micro-teaching following variables should be taken into considerations.-

A. Time ;36 minutes.

B. Number of students ;8—10.

C .Supervisor s; one or two

D. Teaching technique of feedback by superior  video or audio  or supervisor himself

 Step six-Simulated conditions- Peers should act as pupils. Microteaching is conducted in the training college itself.

 Step Seven- Practice of teaching skills.- At least five skills may be practiced by a student teacher at one time. Any of the five may be selected from the following list of teaching skills.-

•  Probing questions.
• . Stimulus Variation.
• .Reinforcement.
•  .Silence and nonverbal cues.
• . Illustrating with examples.
•  Encouraging students participation.
• . Explaining.
• . Effective use of black-board.
• Set induction.
• . Closure.

 Step eight-Observation of teaching skill-is done by peers and supervisors

For the purpose of providing feedback to the student -teacher ,the felicitator can use the following criteria  (in the form of observation schedule )

Duration of presentation  -It should be Approx. 10 minutes  .The Start time…….Finish time……..and the  .Total duration………..minutes be noted down

Comprehensibility – The felicitator  should observe  whether  -

• The presentation was be given in comprehensible language
• The presentation is sufficiently comprehensible.
  Comprehensibility should be improved

Visualization – – The felicitator  should see  whether  the presentation was  accompanied by selected elements of visualization ,or the following forms of visualization have been used:

• slides
• handouts for the participants
• pin board
• flipchart
• white/black board

He/she should see whether the visual elements assist the understanding, the visual elements needs improvement.

Density of information – The felicitator  should see whether    the density of information should be high. However, it must not overtax the learner The density of information seems to demand too much of the learner. He/she should see whether the

Characteristics of a good quality presentation. The felicitator  should  tick Yes or No when assessing)Whether  the presentation comprehensible?

 The felicitator  should  tick Yes or No when assessing)Whether Is the presentation stimulating-

• visualization is clear and well-structured
•  includes graphic elements and optical stimuli-
•  easily legible writing
•  colors help to focus on the important aspects
•  comprehensible visualization
•  affectionate layout
•  eye contact-
• speaker varies his position
• participants are encouraged to contribute-
• use of humor to create a relaxed atmosphere
• presented with commitment-
• friendly/respectful behavior

Step nine – Immediate feedback is given to student –teachers.Tallies and ratings by peer groups and supervisors may be used  for interpretation and feed-back about the performance of student-teacher.

 The feedback

Under the guidance of the professional supervisor, the presenter is first asked to present a self feed back of his mini lesson. With this new information taken into account, the supervisory team member who volunteered to be the speaker summarizes the comments generated during the analysis session. This part of the session is intended to provide positive reinforcement and constructive criticism. The presenter is encouraged to interact freely with the team so that all comments are clarified to his/her satisfaction.

The way in which feedback is given and received contributes to the learning process. Feedback should be honest and direct, constructive, focusing on the ways the presenter can improve, and containing personal observations.
The following is a series of suggestions on how to give and receive feedback in a microteaching workshop.

Providing feedback

When you are giving feedback, try to develop the skill to give an effective feedback:

 Be respectful, give a specific but detailed comment, start on a positive note, do not be judgmental, maintain collegiality, listen and speak in turn, so that everyone can hear all the comments, complete the Microteaching Feedback Form

Be descriptive and specific, rather than evaluative. For example: you would avoid starting the sentences with “you”, it is better to start with “I”, so you can say: “I understood the model, after you showed us the diagram”.

Begin and end with strengths of the presentation. If you start off with negative criticism, the person receiving the feedback might not even hear the positive part, which will come later.

 Be specific rather than general. For example: rather than saying “You weren’t clear in your explanations”, tell the presenter where he/she was vague, and describe why you had trouble understanding him/her. Similarly, instead of saying: “I thought you did an excellent job!”, list the specific things that he/she did well.

Describe something the person can act upon. Making a comment on the vocal quality of someone whose voice is naturally high-pitched is only likely to discourage him/her. However, if the person’s voice had a squeaky quality because he/she was nervous, you might say: “You might want to breath more deeply, to relax yourself, and that will help to lower the pitch of your voice as well”.

Choose one or two things the person can concentrate on. If the people are overwhelmed with too many suggestions, they are likely to become frustrated. When giving feedback, call attention to those areas that need the most improvement.

Avoid conclusions about motives or feelings. For example: rather than saying: “You don’t seem very enthusiastic about the lesson”, you can say “Varying your rate and volume of speaking would give you a more animated style”.

 Receiving feedback

 When receiving feedback, try to  listen to feedback given during the session: Listen to and acknowledge the positive feedback that so as to focus on the strengths and work on the weaknesses

Be open to what you are hearing. Being told that you need to improve yourself is not always easy, but as we have pointed out, it is an important part of the learning process. Although, you might feel hurt in response to criticism, try not to let those feelings dissuade you from using the feedback to your best advantage

Not to respond to each point, rather listen quietly, hearing what other’s experiences were during their review, asking only for clarification. The only time to interfere with what is being said is if you need to state that you are overloaded with too much feedback.

 Ask for specific examples if you need to. If the critique you are receiving is vague or unfocused, ask the person to give you several specific examples of the point he/she is trying to make

 Take notes, if possible. If you can, take notes as you are hearing the other people’s comment. Than you will have a record to refer to, and you might discover that the comments that seemed to be the harshest were actually the most useful.

Judge the feedback by the person, who is giving it. You do not have to agree with every comment. Ask other people if they agree with the person’s critique

Step ten.-Discussion and Analysis

While the presenter goes to another room to view the videotape, the supervisory team discusses and analyses the presentation. Patterns of teaching with evidence to support them are presented. The discussion should focus on the identification of recurrent behaviors of the presenter in the act of teaching. A few patterns are chosen for further discussions with the presenter. Only those patterns are selected which seem possible to alter and those which through emphasis or omission would greatly improve the teacher’s presentation. Objectives of the lesson plan are also examined to determine if they were met. It is understood that flexible teaching sometimes includes the modification and omission of objectives. Suggestions for improvement and alternative methods for presenting the lesson are formulated. Finally, a member of the supervisory team volunteers to be the speaker in giving the collected group feedback.-Complete cycle of a micro-lesson by a trainee will take about 35 minutes to be completed.

 Precautions in micro-teaching application

• Clarity of objectives is a must.
• Micro-lesson plan should be prepared for one skill only at a time.
• Delivering model lessons is essential.
• Before teaching the student-teacher must prepare his micro-lesson plan.
• Substantial suggestions should also accompany criticism in order to improve the teaching skill of the student-teachers.

Advantages of micro-teaching

 Microteaching has several advantages. It focuses on sharpening and developing specific teaching skills and eliminating errors. It enables understanding of behaviours important in classroom teaching. It increases the confidence of the learner teacher. It is a vehicle of continuous training applicable at all stages not only to teachers at the beginning of their career but also for more senior teachers. It enables projection of model instructional skills. It provides expert supervision and a constructive feedback and above all if provides for repeated practice without adverse consequences to the teacher or his students.

A microteaching session is much more comfortable than real classroom situations, because it eliminates pressure resulting from the length of the lecture, the scope and content of the matter to be conveyed, and the need to face large numbers of students, some of whom may be inattentive or even hostile. Another advantage of microteaching is that it provides skilled supervisors who can give support, lead the session in a proper direction and share some insights from the pedagogic sciences.

The techniques of micro teaching is a new experiment in the field of education. It has the following advantages

• It promotes analysis of behavior of the teacher It is an effective way of instilling confidence in the teacher in planning and implementation of the lesson plan
• It helps create a conducive ambience in the classroom .It can be used in the college. The pupil teacher needs not to go to any school for the training of teaching skills.
• It focuses on honing teaching skills through participation and observation The number of students as well as duration of teaching is less.
• It empowers teachers with diverse teaching methods The content is divided into smaller units which makes the teaching easier.

• The problem of indiscipline can also be controlled. The other class- mates of pupil teacher can also supervise the task of teaching.
• There is a provision of immediate feedback.
• Only one teaching skill is considered at a time. There is a facility of re-planning, re-teaching and re-evaluation.
• There are occasions of comparing two or more teaching behaviors of the pupil teachers.

 Limitations of Micro-Teaching

 Lack of adequate and in-depth awareness of the purpose of microteaching has led to criticisms that microteaching produces homogenized standard robots with set smiles and procedures. It is said to be (wrongly) a form of play acting in unnatural surroundings and it is feared that the acquired skills may not be internalized. However, these criticisms lack substance. A lot depends on the motivation of the teacher to improve himself and the ability of the observer to give a good feedback. Repeated experiments abroad have shown that over a period of time microteaching produces remarkable improvement in teaching skills.

 The arrangement of micro teaching laboratory is very expensive in small training colleges. Video, tape recorder and other devices are required in making the lesson effective. It is not possible for all training colleges to make such arrangements.

This technique is not complete in itself. It is useful only if it is used along with other techniques, such as inter action analysis method and stimulated teaching method.The teachers also need the training of this method.

REFERENCES/
1. ALLEN, D.W. et.al. Micro-teaching – A Description. Stanford University Press, 1969.
2. ALLEN, D.W , RYAN, K.A. Micro-teaching Reading Mass.: Addison Wesley, 1969.
3. GREWAL, J.S., R. P. SINGH. “A Comparative Study of the Effects of Standard MT With Varied Set of Skills Upon General Teaching Competence and Attitudes of Pre-service Secondary School Teachers.” In R.C. DAS, et.al. Differential Effectiveness of MT Components, New Delhi, NCERT, 1979.
4. PASSI, B.K., Becoming Better Teachers. Baroda : Centre for Advanced Study in Education, M. S. University of Baroda, 1976.
5. SINGH, L. C. et.al. Micro-teaching – Theory and Practice, Agra : Psychological Corporation, 1987..
8. VAIDYA, N. Micro-teaching : An Experiment in Teacher Training. The Polytechnic Teacher, Technical Teacher, Technical Training Institute, Chandigarh, 1970.

Acknowledgement-

Mrs. Rakhi Maheshwari and Miss Nisha Rani Vishnoi for being the scribe of this article.

Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A(Socio, Phil) B.Se. M. Ed, Ph.D

Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

Perennial means “everlasting,” like a perennial flower that comes up year after year. Espousing the notion that some ideas have lasted over centuries and are as relevant today as when they were first conceived

Perennialism philosophy of education is a very conservative and inflexible philosophy of education. Students are taught to reason through structured lessons and drills. Even the national standards that are coming into place emphasize the ideas of Perennialism. As now days we are stressing reading, writing and arithmetic in education but the decline of the music and art. Teaching the students for job and the knowledge is what we need today so Perennialism philosophy of education is what helps in educators is to equip them with “universal knowledge

Perennialists philosophers, despite a variety of minute distinctions, generally feel that they are advocates of the True Philosophy and with it the True Philosophy of Education. They are often unwilling to concede the possible validity of different interpretations of the same data. Adler, in his article aptly titled, “In Defense of The Philosophy of Education,” has this to say about the possible validity of any other system of philosophical inquiry:

Education is a preparation for life, not an imitation of life; or as the progressive insist it is not “life itself.” Education should be basically the same for all men.The term Perennialism is used when referring to this point of view in education, while in the more general philosophical area it is referred to as Neo-Thomism or Neo-Scholasticism. Perennialism is the preferred educational term because of the insistence of philosophers associated with the position that there are certain everlasting values to which we must return and which much be brought to the attention of all youth in the schools.

HISTORICAL RETROSPECT OF PERENNIALISM

1.  Pre-Christian Origins: Aristotle

Perennialism is not rooted in any particular time or place. Perennialism is open to the notion that universal spiritual forms Aristotle contributed to the basis realist position with his conception of form and matter. Form, it will be recalled was viewed as being at the apex of the pyramid or hierarchy while matter was at its base. Matter existed as pure potentiality. It acquired meaning only as from was imposed on it. It was form that was seen as the principle of actuality. All things were composed of form and matter. Man, for example, had a physical being composed of matter and mind composed of form. From was equated with pure rationality while mater was equated with pure    materiality.

2. Christianity: The First Thousand Years

One of the great voices during this first thousand years of Christendom was the voice of St. Augustine. Since the works of Aristotle were lost for the first thousand year of Christianity, the great influence on the early medieval thinkers was Plato. Plato, indirectly, and Augustine, directly, set much of the pattern of Christian theology until the time of St. Thomas Aquinas. For Augustine, reason was subservient to religious dogma and the material and practical aspect of life were to play only a minor role as compared with the spiritual aspects. First came faith and then came reason.

3. The Thirteenth Century: St. Thomas Aquinas

St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic  took the work as Aristotle and after accepting his form and matter thesis, added to it the concept of existence. He reconciled the Christian principles of his faith with the realism of Aristotle by insisting that beyond essence (the combination of form and matter) lay existence. Aristotle, according to St. Thomas, was right in what he said, but had failed to raise the question of the existence of essence. Thus, for Aquinas, essence becomes the principle of potentiality while existence becomes the principle of actuality

Pure Existence or Pure Actuality is, of course, God. We can know Pure Existence only through revelation although we can know about it through reason. In this manner Aquinas postulated a realistic world in which man must make his way while preparing for life in the here after. While reason is able to deal with the world of nature, revelation deals with the world beyond nature. For St. Thomas, the natural world was open to all the tools of the scientist. This natural world was clearly distinguished from the world of theology where faith and revelation hold sway. The two worlds of St. Thomas Aquinas, the world of faith and the world of reason were set apart; as long as there was no interaction between the two, all was well.

4. Contemporary Thinkers : Maritain and Adler

a. Jacques Maritain is usually considered the most prominent contemporary spokesman of the Perennialists position.. As an educator he has written and taught both in his own country and in the United States. Maritain’s position is typical of the Neo-Thomists, with a strong reliance on reason and faith. His writings often deal with education and he has been particularly concerned with reconciling the democratic conception of education and the Perennialists point of view.

b. Mortimer Adler Although a non-Catholic, Adler has been welcomed into the perennialist camp with open arms because of his strong support of the philosophical position they espouse. Adler goes on to out that the education of man is not complete without religious education, and that there is a whole realm of knowledge with which this deals which is not attainable through rational means

FORMS OF PERENNIALISM

The Perennialist will generally fall into one of two camps, secular and theistic. The differences between these two camps are small but significant.

Secular perennialism

As promoted primarily by Robert Hutchins and Mortimer Adler,. Secular perennialists espouse the idea that education should focus on the historical development of a continually developing common western base of human knowledge and art, the timeless value of classic thought on central human issues by landmark thinkers, and revolutionary ideas critical to historical western paradigm shifts or changes in world view. A program of studies which is highly general, nonspecialized, and nonvocational is advocated. They firmly believe that exposure of all citizens to the development of thought by those most responsible for the evolution of the Western tradition is integral to the survival of the freedoms, human rights and responsibilities inherent to a true Democracy.

Secular perennialists agree with progressivists that memorization of vast amounts of factual information and a focus on second-hand information in textbooks and lectures does not develop rational thought. They advocate learning through the development of meaningful conceptual thinking and judgement by means of a directed reading list of the profound, aesthetic, and meaningful great books of the Western canon. These books, secular perennialists argue, are written by the world’s finest thinkers, and cumulatively comprise the “Great Conversation” of mankind with regard to the central human questions. Their basic argument for the use of original works (abridged translations being acceptable as well) is that these are the products of “genius”.

Religious perennialism /Theistic perennialism.

Perennialism was originally religious in nature, developed first by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century in his work De Magistro (The Teacher).theistic Perennialist believes in a world of Reason, Being, and God (metaphysics) and in truth as Reason and Intuition. Furthermore, ethics is the Rational Act and aesthetics is a matter of Creative Intuition. From this very general philosophical position, the secular Perennialist would tend to view the Learner as a rational and spiritual being, the Teacher as a mental disciplinarian and spiritual leader, the Curriculum as the subject matter of the intellect and spirit (mathematics, languages, logic, Great Books, Dogma, etc.), the Teaching Method as training the intellect, and the Social Policy as transmitting the great ideas, both secular and religious,

PHILOSOPHICAL  RATIONALE

This is a very conservative and inflexible philosophy of education. It is based on the view that reality comes from fundamental fixed truths-especially related to God. It believes that people find truth through reasoning and revelation and that goodness is found in rational thinking

Ontological or Metaphysicsical Position

The perennialist believes that all things are composed of from and matter which make up their essences. But in order for things to Be in the world they must have Existence. Essence is the principle of potentiality while Existence is the principal actuality. For the perennialist, Existence is of a higher order than essence. It stands in the Aristotelian ontology. At the top of the hierarchy is Pure Existence or Being. The essence of Being is Existence. For the ecclesiastical perennialist this Being is equated with God. God cannot be know except through faith and revelation Father William McGucken has summed up the Catholic Church’s position nicely when he writes :God is pure actuality

The ontology of the perennialists is a two-sided coin. On the side is the natural world, open to reason. While on other is the supernatural realm open only through intuition, revelation, and fait. Science deals with the first side of the coin, but the spiritual side of the coin is beyond its reach.

The perennialist ontology is teleological, holding that man and of universe are moving toward a prescribed end. This end is realization of the principle of actuality or Absolute Being. The perennialist teleology can be known through faith, dogma, intuition, and revelation. The lay perennialist would find all of the foregoing acceptable. He would not reject the Aristotelian concept of realty. He would agree that the universe has a logic, and he would even accept the concept of Pure Being, as long as it was not given a special religious status or theological stature. The lay perennialist sees not need for equating Being with God, and thus making it something to be feared and worshiped.

Epistemological Position ( Knowledge)

Perennialists see the analytic statement as a self-evident truth that may be know apart from all empirical experience. It is, fro them, a first principal. And according to the perennialists, man is capable of intuiting first principal or having them revealed to him through revelation.

These self-evident truths open, for the perennialist, a whole realm of truth that cannot be reached by science. For the lay perennialist truth can be know through reason and intuition. For the ecclesiastical perennialist there is, added to these two ways of knowing, the certitude of revelation which is given to man. While intuiting is an activity of man, man is simply the recipient of revelation given from a source external to man. Catholic educators rely heavily on the materials of revelation .

To summarize, knowledge is independent of man. Truth can be know by man through reason, but there are certain other truths-… which transcend the “natural” order of the universe – which can only be known through intuition and / or revelation.

Two warnings about the perennialist epistemology might be pointed out. To begin with, first principles should not be confused with clever sayings, with slogans, or with proverbs. While such statements as “a fool and his money are soon parted,” may be commonly true, first principles are always and universally true. An example of such a first principles might be, “Either man has free will or he does not have free will.” Secondly, there is little justification for the argument that the perennialists use of reason is only to support belief. Revelation is simply an independent way of arriving at some truths. The ecclesiastical lperennialist would argue that faith is not proof of reason, nor is reason proof of faith. They are simply two routes which, on occasion, lead one to the same truth. For example, the existence of God is accepted on faith despite the five logical proofs of the existence of God given by St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theological.

Axiological Position

What is Truth

The perennialist believes that to know the truth about something is to know its essence. As he been indicated in the foregoing, in order to know the entire truth about reality we must rely on intuition, faith or revelation. Faith and reason are two different and separate realms.

Since the perennialist ontology is teleological, the hard core of reality is logical, permanent, and unchanging. Truth, therefore, is also logical, permanent, and unchanging. Man tends toward knowledge. His mind is basically curious; thus, he needs little special prodding to start him on his epistemological expedition. The perennialist believes that there are certain things that are self-evident and that the structure of knowledge rests upon those self-evident truths that we know.

A self-evident truth is always an analytic statement or one that contains its predicate in its predicate in its subject. This type of statement is opposed to synthetic statements which depend upon our experience. Analytic statements are logically true. Such statements, however, as the scientific empiricists are quick to point out, although necessarily true by definition, or convention, do not yield knowledge of the experiential universe. This is not imply that they cannot have meaning; it is simply to indicate that they cannot give us new knowledge.

1. What is Good (Ethics)

Just as man tends towards knowledge, so he tends towards the moral life. And, just as knowledge is attained through reason, so the moral life is the life consonant wit reason. The good act is the act controlled by man’s rationality. But man does not always act in terms of his rationality; hi is sometimes controlled by his will, which bay err, or his desires. The good man is one whose will is habituated to and subservient to the intellect. The ecclesiastical perennialists hold that where sin exists (the will acting in opposition to the intellect), forgiveness may be attained if the sinner can show his intentions were good. By the same token, if a man dose not know his is wrong, he cannot be held responsible for his acts.

2. What is Beautiful (Aesthetics)

Just as man tends towards knowledge and morality, he tends towards beauty. We know something is beautiful when we respond to it immediately and with pleasure. Man tends to be creative; he desires to give to his material the meaning that is potential in it. Art, therefore, is immediately self-evident. The artist intuits meaning rather than approaching it logically, although he may appreciate a work of art through the pleasure it gives the intellect.

Perennialism in Education

The most conservative, traditional, or inflexible of the five philosophies is perennialism, a philosophy drawing heavily from classical definitions of education. Perennialists believe that education, like human nature, is a constant. Because the distinguishing characteristic of humans is the ability to reason, education should focus on developing rationality. Education, for the perennialist, is a preparation for life, and students should be taught the world’s permanencies through structured study.

Educational Aims

Because human beings are essentially the same, education should be essentially the same for everyone. The function of a citizen may vary from society to society, but the function of man, as a man, is the same in every age and in every society since it results from his nature as a man. “The aim of an educational system … is to improve man as man

For Perennialists, the aim of education is to ensure that students acquire understandings about the great ideas of Western civilization. These ideas have the potential for solving problems in any era. The focus is to teach ideas that are everlasting, to seek enduring truths which are constant, not changing, as the natural and human worlds at their most essential level, do not change. A Perennialist views nature, human nature, and the underlying principles of existence as constant. The principles of knowledge are enduring. Truth never changes

Education should be for the “long-haul,” not for the immediate, contemporary fad. It is not the job of the school to meddle in contemporary problems, social reform, and political action. It is the job of the school to provide an education on the basis of which education, students later after graduation can rationally initiate the efforts for social reform, change, and political action.

At least the ultimate aims of educations – are held to be the same for all men in all times and places. But, just what are these aims? They are the development of the intellectual and spiritual capabilities of the individual to their highest level. The lay perennialist is, of course, primarily concerned with developing the intellect. The school need not concern itself wit the social graces or the physical well-being of the student except insofasr as they are necessary for the intellectual training of the child.

The School -

The ecclesiastical perennialists see the school as concerned wit the secular in education and particularly the training of the intellect. But in addition to this they see a second aim carefully interwoven through the fabric of education. They view education as a moral and religious undertaking. The ecclesiastical perennialists believe that the school cannot separate itself from the study of those things that have come to man through faith and revelation. Thus, the Roman Catholic Church in America has continued to maintain a separate school system so that it might permeates its “secular” teachings with its moral and religious convictions. If we were to sum up the whole educational aim of the ecclesiastical perennialists in one sentence it would be, “Catholic,” and it is at this that the Catholic parochial schools from kindergarten through graduate school aim.

They believe that there is a common core of knowledge that needs to be transmitted to students in a systematic, disciplined way. The emphasis in this conservative perspective is on intellectual and moral standards that schools should teach. The core of the curriculum is essential knowledge and skills and academic rigor.  Schooling should be practical, preparing students to become valuable members of society. It should focus on facts-the objective reality out there–and “the basics,” training students to read, write, speak, and compute clearly and logically. Schools should not try to set or influence policies

The Student -

The student is seen as a rational being with tendencies toward Truth and knowledge. But the learner also has a spiritual side. It is the responsibility of the school to help him develop both. The rational power of the learner tend to be viewed from a position of faculty psychology. Thus, the faculty of reason is trained through the formal discipline of those subjects with the most logical organization. This would include subjects such as mathematic and logic. The faculty of memory is trained by having students memorize. Any foreign language which requires extensive memorization both of forms and content would seem to be desirable. The faculty of will is trained by having the students engage in tasks which are unpleasant enough to require a high degree of perseverance to complete. By engaging in these three types of exercise the student develops to the fullest his basic faculties : reason, memory, and will. The lay perennialists, represented by men such as Adler, have long emphasized the detailed study of the classics in light of their view of the student.

Discipline -

Because man’s highest characteristic — the one differentiating him from the lower life forms — is his reason, he must use it to direct his life and control his instincts. Men are free, not determined. They are responsible for their actions. We cannot excuse a child’s actions because of his environment or personal problems. Because men are rational, they must live rationally. Hence, children must be held to the standards of reason, and this is one function of education

Students should be taught hard work, respect for authority, and discipline. Teachers are to help students keep their non-productive instincts in check, such as aggression or mindlessness. Discipline in the classroom is essential to learning. A noisy classroom is not a desirable place for learning to take place. Order is vital.  Students cannot always think of the future. Consequently, teachers and parents must help students overcome their desire for immediate ends and direct them to future objectives. Self-discipline is fine, but most of the times it is insufficient. Adults therefore must give direction.  The classroom is teacher-centered. The teacher as a professional is far more likely to know what her students will need to know in the future than do they. She/he is responsible for the education and intellectual growth of his/her students. Education requires the mastery of content, of subject matter.

Education requires mental discipline. Study is hard work. Concentration and effort is required. Students must therefore being cultured in the process.

The Teacher – Perennialists disapprove of teachers requiring students to absorb massive amounts of disconnected information. They recommend that schools spend more time teaching about concepts and explaining they are meaningful to students.

The teacher, to the perennialist, is a mental disciplinarian with highly developed logical skills, capable of teaching logical thinking and the use of reason to his students. The teacher must have the ability to work with the natural tendencies of the students toward reason. He must serve as a benevolent taskmaster, exercising the minds of the students in order to help them develop their rational faculties.

Thus, besides having been trained in logic, the teacher must have the proper spiritual orientation. Nor is this all. Since the teacher is to train the students in reason, memory and will power, he must certainly have these three qualities if he is to help the student on the road to knowledge and the development of his faculties.

Education requires hard work and effort. If the student is interested in the subject, well and good, but if not, s/he still must be required to do the tasks. After all, the student does not know what s/he will need in the future. Motivation is fine, and if the teacher can provide it, well and good, but if not, the student must work at the task regardless

Perennialists believe that reading is to be supplemented with mutual investigations (between the teacher and the student) and minimally-directed discussions through the Socratic method in order to develop a historically oriented understanding of concepts. They argue that accurate, independent reasoning distinguishes the developed or educated mind and they thus stress the development of this faculty. A skilled teacher would keep discussions on topic and correct errors in reasoning, but it would be the class, not the teacher, who would reach the conclusions. While not directing or leading the class to a conclusion, the teacher may work to accurately formulate problems within the scope of the texts being studied, Perennialism, typically considered to be teacher-centere. However, since the teachers associated with perennialism are in a sense the authors of the Western masterpieces themselves, these teachers may be open to student criticism through the associated Socratic method, which, if carried out as true dialogue, is a balance between students, including the teacher promoting the discussion

Importance of books in education

Perennialists believe that the focus of education should be the ideas that have lasted over centuries. They believe the ideas are as relevant and meaningful today as when they were written. They recommend that students learn from reading and analyzing the works by history’s finest thinkers and writers

A number of perennialists, notably Robert Maynard Hutchins, Mortimer Adler,, have supported the idea of a university level curriculum based on the great books. These are the books that are considered great because they have withstood the test of time, it is argued that if they have survived for any length of time, it is because They are applicable through time, and are therefore “truer” than books which have had only as short-term appeal. This is totally in line with the traditional purposes of the university. One of which , as seen by McGucken is , “an interpreter and guardian of values,” and the conservation of knowledge. Maritain too feels that the best way to educate is through the reading of great books

Hutchins remarks that Great books are great teachers; they are showing us every day what ordinary people are capable of. These books come out of ignorant, inquiring humanity. They are usually the first announcements for success in learning. Most of them were written for, and addressed to, ordinary people.”

It is important to note that the Great Conversation is not static, which is the impression that one might obtain from some descriptions of perennialism, a confusion with religious perennialism, or even the term perennialism itself. The Great Conversation and the set of related great books changes as the representative thought of man changes or progresses, and is therefore representative of an evolution of thought, but is not based upon the whim or fancy of the latest cultural fads.

In the course of history… new books have been written that have won their place in the list. Books once thought entitled to belong to it have been superseded; and this process of change will continue as long as men can think and write. It is the task of every generation to reassess the tradition in which it lives, to discard what it cannot use, and to bring into context with the distant and intermediate past the most recent contributions to the Great Conversation. …the West needs to recapture and reemphasize and bring to bear upon its present problems the wisdom that lies in the works of its greatest thinkers and in the discussion that they have carried on.

Perennialism was a solution proposed in response to what was considered by many to be a failing educational system.   In this regard John Dewey and Hutchins were in agreement. Hutchins’s book The Higher Learning in America deplored the “plight of higher learning” that had turned away from cultivation of the intellect and toward anti-intellectual practicality due in part, to a lust for money. In a highly negative review of the book, Dewey wrote a series of articles in The Social Frontier which began by applauding Hutchins’ attack on “the aimlessness of our present educational scheme.

While the standard argument for utilizing a modern text supports distillation of information into a form relevant to modern society, perennialists argue that many of the historical debates and the development of ideas presented by the great books are relevant to any society, at any time, and thus that the suitability of the great books for instructional use is unaffected by their age.

Perennialists freely acknowledge that any particular selection of great books will disagree on many topics; however, they see this as an advantage, rather than a detriment. They believe that the student must learn to recognize such disagreements, which often reflect current debates. The student becomes responsible for thinking about the disagreements and reaching a reasoned, defensible conclusion. This is a major goal of the Socratic discussions. They do not advocate teaching a settled scholarly interpretation of the books, which would cheat the student of the opportunity to learn rational criticism and to know his own mind.

Curriculum –

As with the essentialists, perennialists are educationally conservative in the requirement of a curriculum focused upon fundamental subject areas, but stress that the overall aim should be exposure to history’s finest thinkers as models for discovery. The student should be taught such basic subjects as English, languages, history, mathematics, natural science, philosophy, and fine arts. Adler states: “The three R’s, which always signified the formal disciplines, are the essence of liberal or general education.”

The perennialist curriculum is universal and is based on their view that all human beings possess the same essential nature. Perennialists think it is important that individuals think deeply, analytically, flexibly, and imaginatively. They emphasize that students should not be taught information that may soon be outdated or found to be incorrect

Perennialist believe that the most important topics develop a person. Since details of fact change constantly, these cannot be the most important. Therefore, one should teach principles, not facts. Since people are human, one should teach first about humans, not machines or techniques. Since people are people first, and workers second if at all, one should teach liberal topics first, not vocational topics.

A Perennialist asks, “What are the essential things a student must know?” Within a Perennialist curriculum, activities are tied to the past and not to what is “essential” right now. The Perennialist values the past but he or she likes the back to basics movement inasmuch as the basics are the learnings of the great minds of the past.

For the perennialists there are two broad categories of subject matter : those of the intellect and those of the spirit. The lay perennialist emphasize the first of the these while being somewhat ambivalent about the latter. For the ecclesiastical perennialist there  is no conflict; the two are carefully integrated into a cohesive body.

A great proponent of Perennialism is Mortimer Adler, Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. He wrote the Paidea Proposal. His basic tenant is that an individual learns best by studying the classics. The Paideia program seeks to establish a course of study that is general, not specialized; liberal, not vocational; humanistic, not technical. Only in this way can it fulfill the meaning of the words “paideia” and “humanities,” which signify the general learning that should be in the possession of every human being.

For many perennialist the emphasis is on a humanistic education. Maritain, for example, emphasizes the importance of a liberal education for all, no matter what their vocation may be. Among many of the perennialists there is a tendency to emphasize science, mathematics literature, geography, and history. In the later years of schooling the emphasis switches to grammar, rhetoric, as well as mathematics.

Perennialists seek to help students discover those ideas most insightful and timeless in understanding the human condition. The study of philosophy is thus a crucial part of the Perennialist curriculum.

Recognizing that enormous strides have been made in our knowledge about the physical universe, Perennialists teach about the processes by which scientific truths have been discovered. Perennialists emphasize, though, that students should not be taught information that may soon be obsolete or found to be incorrect because of future scientific and technological findings.

Perennialists generalize about what the perennialist would valued in the early education of children. Obviously at the elementary school level the emphasis would be on basis skills (i.e. reading, writing, and arithmetic) as well as the subject matter of reason and the intellect. The latter is any subject matter which has a high degree of structure such as foreign languages. Not only does language develop the ability to reason, it requires memorization and will power.

In addition, Perennialists recommend that students learn directly from reading and analyzing the Great Books. These are the creative works by history’s finest thinkers and writers, which Perennialists believe are as profound, beautiful, and meaningful today as when they were written.  Perennialists lament the change in universities over the centuries from places where students (and teachers) pursued truth for its own sake to mere glorified training grounds for the students’ careers.

The child should be taught certain basic subjects that will acquaint him/her with the world’s permanencies: English, languages, history, mathematics, natural sciences, the fine arts, and philosophy. The child should learn reading and writing, how to speak and how to listen. He is a social being and lives in a community of men. Thus he must use his reason — his powers of rationality – to communicate with other men. The three Rs are important.

Humans are rational beings, and their minds need to be developed. Thus, cultivation of the intellect is the highest priority in a worthwhile education. The demanding curriculum focuses on attaining cultural literacy, stressing students’ growth in enduring disciplines. The loftiest accomplishments of humankind are emphasized– the great works of literature and art, the laws or principles of science.

Perennialists hold that subject matter should be the center of the curriculum. They feel that greater educational opportunities have lowered standards in the schools. They are particularly critical of the progressives who have placed emphasis on the interests of the child and teaching through activity and freedom. Education should introduce the pupil to the universal concerns of mankind thorough the study of the great works of literature, philosophy, history, and science. Such works represent man’s finest insights into his own nature.  The insights presented in these works are eternal. They do not change; they are never dated. In this way, s/he learns truths that are more important than any s/he could find by dipping into this or that in the contemporary scene, or by pursing his own interests.

Method of Teaching .

A particular strategy with modern perennialists is to teach scientific reasoning, not facts. They may illustrate the reasoning with original accounts of famous experiments. This gives the students a human side to the science, and shows the reasoning in action. Most importantly, it shows the uncertainty and false steps of  traditional real science

Because the nature of man is constant — because men as men are everywhere the same — education should be basically the same for all men. This means that children are rational beings, not plastic personalities to be molded to the teacher’s whim. Problem-solving is thus a waste of time on the part of pupils

They use tried and true teaching methods and techniques that are believed to be most beneficial to disciplining students’ minds The method of teaching for the perennialist is rooted in mental discipline and in the training of the intellect through the discipline inherent in the subject matter. Since the child has a natural tendency to learn, the basis of the perennialist method is cooperation with the natural tendency of the student toward reason. The perennialist methodology relies heavily upon the use of lectures to englishten the student while he follows his natural curiosity under the moral authority of the teacher. Other techniques considered important by the perennialists are memorization of materials, and for the ecclesiastical perennialists, recitation of the Catechism.

Why spend hours to discover a fact or a principle when it can be taught to pupils in a few minutes? Drill, repetition and memorization are vital in the leaning process. Teaching should not be slanted to the “least common denominator.” Rather, slow learners must spend more time to learn the same content as do the brilliant students. The quality of education must not be diluted. Promotion chronologically by age promotes a false standard of equality

Perennialists criticize the vast amount of discrete factual information that educators traditionally have required students to absorb. Perennialists urge schools to spend more time teaching about concepts and explaining how these concepts are meaningful to students. Particularly at the high school and university levels, Perennialists decry undue reliance on textbooks and lectures to communicate ideas. Perennialists suggest that a greater emphasis be placed on teacher-guided seminars, where students and teachers engage in Socratic dialogues, or mutual inquiry sessions, to develop an enhanced understanding of history’s most timeless concepts

Education should adjust man to the truth which is eternal, while the contemporary world is not. “Education implies teaching. Teaching implies knowledge. Knowledge is truth. The truth everywhere is the same. Hence, education should be everywhere the same.” Perennialists believe that one should teach the things that one deems to be of everlasting importance to all people everywhere.

Critical appraisal  of Perennialism

The perennialists, despite their many claims to the contrary, are advocates of a regressive social philosophy. They would have us solve our twentieth century problems by turning back the clock to a system of belief prevalent in the thirteenth century. They would have us turn the clock back to a time when the source of authority was external to man an when man stood in the very center of the universe;  to a time when, the perennialists would have us believe, man was at a moral and spiritual peak from which he has since declined. The moral, intellectural, and spiritual reaction that the perennialists advocate is seen as coming, of necessity, from the church and the university. The lower schools have little to do with social change, since the school must transcend society and deal wit the teaching of first principles, the permanent base of Eternal Truth which is true in all times and in all places.

Perhaps the most openly peresonalistic philosophy we have discussed, perennialism is subject to a variety of criticisms. Certainly there has been a great deal of criticism which can only be categorized as rooted in religious bigotry and which is violently anti – Catholic in nature. On the other hand, there are many criticisms which are valid whether on is discussing lay or ecclesiastical perennialism.

1. Absolute Truth

Whenever the question of immutable Truth is raised it is a proper response to ask, “Whose immutable Truth?” The perennialists rely on intuition, revelation and dogma of the Church and at time all three of these have been found wanting. If they were absolute and accurate guides to knowledge and Truth then surely the advocates of other position would long since have been convinced of the futility and error of their positions, and would have been become either lay or ecclesiastical perennialists.

It is not that who have rejected the perennialist position are stupid, this would be the easy answer. Even the most convinced perenniailst would not label an Einstein, an Oppenheimer, a Freud, a James, or a Dewey ignorant because they questioned the validity of the revelations or intuitions of the perenniaists.

2. Reliance on Intermediaries

Aside from the question of whether or not we can trust immutable truth, the perennialist philosophy relies on an intermediary of some sort to explain the supernatural. Thus, the perennialists are dependent upon authority. The authority, whether lay or ecclesiastical, is not open to question. Catholics rely for their authority no the dogma of the church and the body or revelation which the church has sanctioned. But the very fact that the church has argued and fought over what constitutes “correct” dogma raises doubts as to the validity of its absolute authority. One can only remember how close Galileo came to flames of ta heretic’s death for supporting a position which subsequently became the accepted norm in the civilized world. The lay perennialist, on the other hand, is somewhat less susceptible to the hierarchical authority of the Church. Nonetheless, he too finds his sources of authority in the great thinkers of the past and their statements as to the body of knowledge and Truth.

3. Knowledge as an End in Itself

Finally, many educators would argue that knowledge as an end in itself is not a sufficient rationale for education. As we shall see in the next section, pragmatists would take immediate exception to statement such as Maritain’s that “Knowledge is a value in itself and an end in itself; and truth consists in the conformity of the mind with reality.”

4. Focus on Past

In an increasingly technological society the perennialist philosophy is quite openly regressive. It is a longing not just for the status quo, but rather a desire to return to the good old days. The whole social theory of the perennialist has tended to ignore progress and has, for the most part, focused on a social order which has not existed since the middle ages.

In a simpler society there may be no danger is such a regressive social policy, but in an age of automation, over-production, over-abundance for some and starvation for others, in an age of atomic and hydrogen over-kill, and an age of red buttons that could destroy all human life leaving this planet nothing more than a charred ember in the universe, we cannot risk looking only into the past to find solution to problems of the present and the future

References

Adler, Mortimer, In Defense of the Philosophy of Education,” Philosophies of Education. National Society for the Study of Education, Forty-First yearbook, Part I. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942.

Brameld, Theodore, Philosophies of Education in Cultural Perspective. New York: Dryden Press, 1956.

Butler, J.Donald, Four Philosophies and Their Practice in Education and Religion. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1957.

Cotter, A.C. ABC of Scholastic Philosophy. Weston, Massachusetts: Weston College Press, 1949

McGucken, William, “The Philosophy of Catholic Education,” Philosophies of Education. National Society for the Study of Education, Forty-first yearbook, Part I Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1942.

Maritain, Jacques,” Thomist views on Education,” Modern Philosophies of Education. National Society for the Study of Education, Fifty-Fourth yearbook, Part I. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955.

Morries, Van Cleve, Philosophy and the American School. Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press, 1961.

 

An idealist is one who on, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it is also more nourishing.

Mencken H. L.

On Ideals and Idealism

Idealism as a philosophy had its greatest impact during the nineteenth century.  Its influence in today’s world is less important than it has been in the past. Idealism is the conclusion that the universe is expression of intelligence and will, that the enduring substance of the world is the nature of the mind, that the material is explained by the mental. Idealism as a philosophy stands in contrast with all those systems of thought that center in nature (naturalism) or in man (humanism).” According to idealism “to be” means to be experienced by a person. Idealism holds that the order of the world is due to the manifestation in space and time of an eternal and spiritual reality.

 Definition of Idealism 

Idealism is a philosophical approach that has as its central tenet that ideas are the only true reality, the only thing worth knowing. In a search for truth, beauty, and justice that is enduring and everlasting, the focus is on conscious reasoning in the mind. 

The main tenant of idealism is that ideas and knowledge are the truest reality.  Many things in the world change, but ideas and knowledge are enduring.  Idealism was often referred to as “idea-ism”. Idealists believe that ideas can change lives.  The most important part of a person is the mind. It is to be nourished and developed.

Idealism is any philosophy which argues that the only things knowable are consciousness or the contents of consciousness – not anything in the outside world, if such a place actually exists. Indeed, idealism often takes the form of arguing that the only real things are mental entities, not physical things

Etymologically Its origin is: from Greek idea “form, shape” from weid- also the origin of the “his” in his-tor “wise, learned” underlying English “history.” In Latin this root became videre “to see” and related words. It is the same root in Sanskrit veda “knowledge as in the Rig-Veda. The stem entered Germanic as witan “know,” seen in Modern German wissen “to know” and in English “wisdom” and “twit,” a shortened form of Middle English atwite derived from æt “at” +witen “reproach.”

 In short Idealism is a philosophical position which adheres to the view that nothing exists except as it is and idea in the mind of man, the mind of God, or in a super – or supra-natural realm. The idealist believes that the universe has an intelligence and a will; that all material things are explainable in terms of a mind standing behind them.

 Historical Retrospect of Idealism

 Pre-Christian Origins: Plato

 The beginnings of the idealist philosophical position are generally attributed to Plato, but may be traced back to the thought of his teacher, Socrates. Plato, father of Idealism, espoused this view about 400 years BC, in his famous book, The Republic. Plato believed that there are two worlds. The first is the spiritual or mental world (World of Ideas ), which is eternal, permanent, orderly, regular, and universal. There is also the world of appearance, the world experienced through sight, touch, smell, taste, and sound, that is changing, imperfect, and disorderly. This division is often referred to as the duality of mind and body.  

 In his writings Plato is most concerned with separating the permanent from the temporary, the real from that which is merely illusory. To this end, Plato separates the day to day reality of things seen and felt from the eternal reality which can only be known through the thought processes. Those things that we see and feel and experiences are simply temporary, they are merely reflections as Plato points out in his allegory of the cave.

 a. There is a cave in which men are chained facing a wall. On a ledge, behind those who are chained, another group of men walk carrying things. Behind the men on the ledge is a fire which casts their shadows on the wall for the chained men to see.

 b. Plato’s analogy indicates that he world we know, the world of our senses, is like the shadows. It is unreal but we believe it to be the true reality because of habit and because it is the only reality with which we are familiar. The Real World, the World of Ideas, is of a different order, just as the men on the ledge are of a different order than their shadows.

 c. Plato distinguished between the use of reason and the use of the senses. His position was that in order to know something of the Real World (the realm of pure Ideas) we need to withdraw from the use of our senses and rely on a purely intellectual approach. Plato, then, was the first philosophy to lay the logical groundwork necessary to support a theory of immaterial reality.

 Plato argued that only concepts are real since they do not change over time as do the objects they represent. Nothing exists until the idea of it exists, hence some supreme power must have conceived of the universe before it came into existence. Real objects are the concepts in one’s mind, which must be delivered by the teacher, a kind of mental midwife (see “maieutics” in the Archives). This was the original, philosophical meaning of “idealism,” seldom used any more outside the philosophy classroom

 Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century: Berkeley and Hegel

 From this movement came the development of the modern idealistic views of Descartes, Berkley, Kant, Hegel and Royce.

 Rene Descartes -Modern idealism in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is largely defined by a group of philosophers who were writing at the time. In his Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes arrived at his Cartesian first principle Cogito, ergo sum, “I think, therefore I am.”  Descartes decided that he could throw all things into doubt except that he was thinking and doubting. This supports the concept of idealism because it emphasizes the centrality or importance of the mind.  Descartes, divided his world into two areas. For Descartes the two areas were the cogito and the Deity Descartes was a true doubter.  He attacked his thought processes by challenging the existence of every idea including his own existence.  The one truth that he proved was that in doubting everything he arrived at the consensus that even if one doubted every issue – the truth that couldn’t be denied was that one was thinking. 

 George Berkeley -Berkeley is commonly considered the father of modern idealism. He argues that what we experience does exist in a real physical sense, but only because it exists in the mind. A thing is the sum of our ideas of it. Common sense would indicate the absurdity of this position. If we held to the idea that a thing did not exist unless we were thinking of it we would too easily fall into a position philosophers call solipsism. Solipsism says that nothing has an existence beyond the individual’s mind and what appears to have an existence is simply in the mind of the beholder.

 Berkeley carefully avoided the pitfalls of this variant of idealism and with it the problem of things winking in and out of existence. Instead, he suggested that ideas exist n the mind of God as well as in our more finite minds, thus allowing for the continuity of existence by making the universe the product of God’s thoughts. The great value in this form of idealism is that it allows for stability, complexity, and sophistication. Man may only be able to think or conceive of a limited number of dimensions; God can think of them all.

 Immanuel Kant -In writing his Critique of Pure Reason, and Critique of Practical Reason, Kant tried to make sense of rationalism and empiricism within the idealist philosophy. In his system, individuals could have a valid knowledge of human experience that was established by the scientific laws of nature.. He believed in the importance of treating each person as an end and not as a means. He thought that education should include training in discipline, culture, discretion, and moral training.  Teaching children to think and an emphasis on duty toward self and others were also vital points in his philosophies. The desire to grow in ones understanding of being is supported through knowledge.  His views were influenced by his strong religious beliefs.  He held the existence of God to be the Idea and without belief in God then things would not exist.  Kant supported the idea of human thought as his idealism.  He held to the belief that real knowledge could be found though teaching a child to think both morally and ethically. 

 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel -Three of Hegel’s most famous books are Phenomenology of Mind, Logic, and Philosophy of Right. In these readings, Hegel emphasizes three major aspects: logic, nature, and spirit. Hegel maintained that if his logical system were applied accurately, one would arrive at the Absolute Idea, which is similar to Plato’s unchanging ideas. Nature was considered to be the opposite of the Absolute idea. Idea and nature together form the Absolute Spirit which is manifested by history, art, religion, and philosophy. Hegel’s idealism is in the search for final Absolute Spirit. Examining any one thing required examining or referring to another thing.  Hegel’s thinking is not as prominent as it once was because his system led to the glorification of the state at the expense of individuals. Hegel thought that to be truly educated an individual must pass through various stages of the cultural evolution of mankind.  Additionally he reasoned that it was possible for some individuals to know everything essential in the history of humanity

 Josiah Royce. -Royce’s Ideas were best desired as plans of actions.  It was his belief that the strongest things for a person to develop is loyalty and to be of a high moral character.  He supported the idea that education should be more than just a literal qualifying of information, that the moral lessons held high merit for creating a good society

Royce conceived of ideas as purposes or plans of action. He considered purposes as incomplete without an external world, and the external world as meaningless unless it was the fulfillment of these purposes. Royce believed in the importance of developing a sense of morals. This thought influences education that involves teaching about our purpose in life and how we become active participants in these purposes.

 The post-Kantian German idealism of J. G. Fichte and Friedrich von Schelling, which culminated in the absolute or objective idealism of G. W. F. Hegel, began with a denial of the unknowable thing-in-itself, thereby enabling these philosophers to treat all reality as the creation of mind or spirit. Forms of post-Kantian idealism were developed in Germany by Arthur Schopenhauer and Hermann Lotze and in England by Samuel Coleridge; forms of post-Hegelian idealism were developed in England and France by T. H. Green, Victor Cousin, and C. B. Renouvier. More recent idealists include F. H. Bradley, Bernard Bosanquet, Josiah Royce, Benedetto Croce, and the neo-Kantians such as Ernst Cassirer and Hermann Cohen

 Forms of Idealism

Idealism comes in several forms:

Subjective Idealism, only ideas can be known or have any reality (also known as solipsism).

Critical or transcendental idealism in which the phenomenal world, constituted by the human understanding, stands opposed to a world of things-in-themselves developed by Kant, this theory argues that all knowledge originates in perceived phenomena which have been organized by categories.

Absolute Idealism, all objects are identical with some idea and the ideal knowledge is itself the system of ideas. It is also known as Objective Idealism, and is the sort of idealism promoted by Hegel. Unlike the other forms of idealism, this is monistic – there is only one mind in which reality is created.

Platonic Idealism, there exists a perfect realm of Form and Ideas and our world merely contains shadows of that realm.

Objective Idealists, such as Plato, think that ideas are essences, which have an independent existence.

Religious idealism, Augustine approached the idea that learning comes from within and that a person is responsible for his learning. 

 Philosophical Rationale of Idealism

 Idealism is a philosophical approach that has as its central tenet that ideas are the only true reality, the only thing worth knowing. In a search for truth, beauty, and justice that is enduring and everlasting, the focus is on conscious reasoning in the mind.

 The Universe (Ontology or Metaphysics)

 To the idealist, the nature of the universe is mind; it is an idea. The real nature of the position is idea-ism. For the idealist the universe has two aspects. The first is the sensory aspect, that part of life open to empirical or sensory exploration and verification. This is a sham world; a world of illusion. This second aspect, the Real World, lies beyond the sensory world and can only be reached through the intellect. This is the World of Ideas.

 The idealist traditionally turns away from nature in his speculation an bases his philosophical beliefs on the assertion that there are certain timeless truths about the universe. These truths provide us with certainty, and it is always easier to begin to think clearly and logically from a solid base of certainty. We can know that the world operates in a reasonable way (although we may; never be able to quite fathom just what that “reasonable way” may be). For Hegel, for example, the order of the universe – history – is God thinking. More recent idealists have focused on the self as a spiritual phenomenon.

 Idealism as a philosophy presents an ontological framework compatible with religion. Wherever order is externally imposed, wherever there is an Ideal, it is a simple step to bring in God an intermediary or intermediary class between God or the Ideal and man. The intermediary class (whether prophet, teacher, or priest) is composed of those better able to understand or communicate with the Ideal. These intermediaries, in some societies, soon become a privileged class.

 Plato also believed that the soul is fully formed prior to birth and is perfect and at one with the Universal Being. The birth process checks this perfection, so education requires bringing latent ideas (fully formed concepts) to consciousness In Idealism, all of reality is reducible to one fundamental substance: spirit. Matter is not real; it is rather a notion, an abstraction of the mind. It is only the mind that is real. Therefore, all material things that seem to be real are reducible to mind or spirit. On the universal level, finite minds live in a purposeful world produced by an infinite mind. It is as though the entire universe is made up of an infinite mind or spirit; which is, in effect, everything, and we are small bits and pieces of that mind. Because man is a part of this purposeful universe, he is an intelligent and purposeful being

 Knowledge and Truth (Epistemology)

 As to knowledge, idealism holds that knowledge is man thinking the thoughts and purposes of this eternal and spiritual reality as they are embodied in our world of fact.

 The idealist attempts to find in the universe general principles which can be given the status of universal truths. In order to do this, it is necessary for the idealist to turn inward; to see, as it were, the ocean in a drop of water and the universe  in a grain of sand. Most idealists will accept that notion that man’s being and absolute mind are qualitatively the same, but while we have all the attributes of the Absolute we are like the drop of water and the sea. Just as the drop of water is not the whole ocean, man does reflect, albeit dimly, the Absolute, we can look inward to see the true nature of reality. Idealists believe that all knowledge is independent of sense experience. The act of knowing takes place within the mind. The mind is active and contains innate capacities for organizing and synthesizing the data derived through sensations. Man can know intuitively; that is to say, he can apprehend immediately some truth without utilizing any of his senses. Man can also know truth through the acts of reason by which an individual examines the logical consistency of his ideas. Some Idealists believe that all knowledge is a matter of recall. Plato was one who held this notion. He based this conclusion upon the assumption that the spirit of man is eternal. Whatever he knows is already contained within his spirit. Existence depends upon mind. Every stimulus received by the mind is derived ultimately from God. God is the Infinite Spirit.

 Idealists assume, that Truth does exist. Since Truth does exist and is not merely a creation of the individual or society but exists independent of man or of man’s knowledge of it, it can be found. And when, it is found, it will absolute and binding.

 For the idealist the search for truth is a major emphasis.  Although for each the Idea of “truth” may have varied; the goal seems to be constant Idealists search to challenge students to think and to learn from their schools of thought.    

 Values (Axiology)

What is Good (Ethics) – As to ethics, idealism holds that the goodness of man’s individual and social life is the conformity of the human will with the moral administration of the universe. Idealists generally root all values either in a personal God or in a personal spiritual force of nature. They all agree that values are eternal. Theistic Idealists assert that eternal values exist in God. Good and evil, beauty and ugliness are known to the extent that the idea of good and the idea of beauty are consistent with the absolute good and the absolute beauty found in God. Pantheistic Idealists identify God with nature. Values are absolute and unchanging because they are a part of the determined order of nature

 In ethics it implies a view of life in which the predominant forces are spiritual and the aim is perfection For the idealist the good life in living in harmony with the universe. If the Absolute is viewed as the final and most ethical of all things and persons, or as God, who is by definition perfect and it thus perfect in morals the idealist’s epitome of ethical conduct and morality will lie in the imitation of Absolute Self. Man is mot moral when his behavior is in accord wit the Ideal and Universal Moral Law which we can and do recognize. Even if we do not recognize it as individuals, there are in not societies those whose special function it is, either as teachers or as ministers, to instruct, clarify, and inform us as to what behavior is in accord wit the Universal Moral Law. We must do right simply because it is right* It is indeed a lofty ideal of morality that suggests we do right simply to be more perfectly in tune wit the universe.

 Concept of beauty (Aesthetics) – Idealist sees as beautiful the approximation of the Ideal. That which in finite terms attempts to express the Absolute is categorized as aesthetically pleasing. This would appear to leave little ground for creativity since there must be an absolute standard against which all art can be measured. Again, we have the teachers and the ministers defining that which as special intermediaries they recognize as closest to the nature of the Absolute. Thus are art critics  born.

 In art idealism is the tendency to represent things as aesthetic sensibility would have them rather than as they are When we enjoy a work of art, say the idealists, it is because, on the one hand, we see it as a true representation of the Ideal; and on the other hand, it serves to bring us closer to contract wit the Ideal.

 Music is considered by some idealists as the highest from of aesthetic creation since it does not represent any thing in the phenomenal or existent world, but instead cuts across it to the heart of the Absolute. The artist should, according to his school for thought, attempt to idealize e world to us, that is , to present its inner meaning rather than to portray it as it appears to the senses, to capture its inner essence, its oneness with the Ideal.

 The Logic

 The idealist take a rationalistic approach to the knotty problems of knowledge and truth and relies heavily on deductive logic (the process of reasoning from the general to the more specific) Although some idealist thinkers have carefully denied reliance on empirical or sense data, such data usually serve as the basis for the premises of deductive logic.

 The Society

 Plato described a utopian society in which “education to body and soul all the beauty and perfection of which they are capable” as an ideal.

Plato believed in the importance of state involvement in education and in moving individuals from concrete to abstract thinking. He believed that individual differences exist and that outstanding people should be rewarded for their knowledge. With this thinking came the view that girls and boys should have equal opportunities for education.  In Plato’s society there were three social classes of education; workers, military personnel, and rulers. He believed that the ruler or king would be a good person with much wisdom because it was only ignorance that led to evil.

 The idealist relies for much of his social view on the accumulate wisdom of the past. Particularly that wisdom which is either symbolic of , or representative of, the Ideal. In genera, therefore, the idealist stresses an intellectual pattern for conservation of the cultural heritage. This is a conservative position, typical of any system based on the belief that reality has a coercive order of its own and that we must wait to progress until we have this order made clear to us.

 Idealism in Education

 The Idealist believes in a world of Mind (metaphysics) and in truth as Idea (epistemology). Furthermore, ethics is the imitation of the Absolute Self and aesthetics is the reflection of the Ideal. From this very general philosophical position, the Idealist would tend to view the Learner as a microscopic mind, the Teacher as a paradigmatic self, the Curriculum as the subject matter of symbol and idea (emphasizing literature, history, etc.), the Teaching Method as absorbing Ideas, and the Social Policy of the school as conserving the heritage of  civilization

 The educational approach of this philosophy is of a holistic nature.  In which self-realization and character development is strongly supported.  The idealist feels that with the growth of a fine moral character as well as personal reflection, wisdom is gained.  The holistic approach is supported instead of a specialized concentration on a specific targeted area.  By combining experiences gained through critical thinking and dealing with broader topics, the idealist creates an environment in which a learner can rationalize information across curriculum

 Aims of  Education

 The purpose of education is to contribute to the development of the mind and self of the learner. The education-imparting institute should emphasize intellectual activities, moral judgments, aesthetic judgments, self-realization, individual freedom, individual responsibility, and self-control in order to achieve this development. 

 In an idealistic education system emphasis should be placed on developing the mind, personal discipline, and character development. A person should be literate and of good moral character

 The aim of education is to brings the child as close to Absolute Truth as possible. All of the aims of the idealist as educator find their ground in the conception of Ultimate Reality and the students’ relation to this Reality.

 More specifically, the school can take a leading role in defining and refining our knowledge of Truth an the Absolute. The school ha a responsibility to find and to train future leaders. As will be seen, much of the curriculum for the idealist is based on the study of earlier leaders.

 In idealism, the aim of education is to discover and develop each individual’s abilities and full moral excellence in order to better serve society The school, as one of the social institutions concerned with the Absolute must make judgments as to what is right and what is wrong; thus, one of the aim of education would be to develop morality.

 Another aim of education is the maintenance and transmission of the established values of the past. Once we have established that something is good, or true, or beautiful, it is a responsibility of the school to pass it one to succeeding generations.

 The Concept of Student

 There is much in idealism of the “personality cult.” As Horne has pointed out, “No civilization or culture of a people surpasses that of its greatest leader.”

 The learner is a spiritual being in the process of becoming. His is a finite personality which, with prober molding and guidance, might more like the Ideal or the Absolute. Man is, in a sense, a small representation of the Absolute Self. The student must bring himself closer to the Absolute through imitation of the exemplar (the teacher) and through study of those subjects (the humanities) which best represent or symbolize the true ideas of which the human race has knowledge.

 The learner, if the is an idealist himself, or if the idealist philosophy can be inculcated into his being, tries to do the very best he can, striving constantly toward perfection. Horne has described the “Idealistic Pupil” as follows:

 The Idealistic pupil is characterized by that admirable trait, the will to perfection. Whatever he does as well as he can. He is ambitious to deserve honors in scholarship. He wants to grow in knowledge and wisdom, to appreciate the aesthetic things in life to deserve approbation, and to be a worthy person…. He strives for perfection because the ideal person is perfect.

 The Concept of Teacher

 Idealists have high expectations of the teacher. The teacher must be excellent, in order to serve as an example for the student, both intellectually and morally. No other single element in the school system is more important than the teacher. The teacher must excel in knowledge and in human insight into the needs and capacities of the learners; and must demonstrate moral excellence in personal conduct and convictions. The teacher must also exercise great creative skill in providing opportunities for the learners’ minds to discover, analyze, unify, synthesize and create applications of knowledge to life and behavior. 

 The idealist holds the role of the teacher to be that of an important position.  The teacher serves as a model for the student by teaching through example and guidance the lifelong habits of patience, tolerance and perseverance towards a goal.  It is the teacher’s responsibility to encourage the students and to provide them with materials to encourage them to work to achieve higher goals

Just as personality is a major factor in the idealist view of the student, it plays a major part in the idealist view of the teacher. The teacher is seen as having perhaps the most important single role in the educative process. The teacher serves as a living ideal or model for the student and represents, to some degree, what the student can become.

 The idealist teacher “tries to be the right sort of person himself and to develop the right sort of personality in his pupils. The teacher should be close to the Absolute and should be, in a very real sense, a co-worker with the Absolute in developing the pupil’s capacities and guiding him closer to knowledge of the Ideal. The teacher should be close to the Absolute in developing the pupil’s capacities and guiding closer to knowledge of the Ideal. The teacher should set an example that the student will follow. This is, of course , compatible with the notion that the real world (the world of the senses) is a copy of the Absolute. Thus, the closer we are to come to the Absolute, the more we must model our behavior upon those persons that we know are paradigm cases.

 Since idealists believe in character development, they also believe that the teacher should be a role model for students to emulate.  Teaching is considered a moral calling.  The teacher’s role is to be a skillful questioner who encourages students to think and ask more questions in an environment that is suitable for learning

 The curriculum

 The important factor in education at any level for idealists is teaching children to think.  Teachers should help students to explore texts for ideas about the purposes of life, family the nature of peer pressures, and the problems of growing up.  Idealists believe that ideas can change lives and that classical literature can be used and explored to help solve problems in today’s world.  Creativity will be encouraged when students immerse themselves in the creative thinking of others and when they are encouraged to reflect

 The idealist curriculum which places a considerable emphasis on the study of history and the reading of biographies. Both of these are evidently reflections of the Hegelian influence on American education. Certainly it is assumed by the idealists that through the study of the past, we can find appropriate truths around which to model our present behavior.

 Along with history and biography, the idealist curriculum emphasizes the study of the humanities. Underlying the selection of materials is the concern for selection of subject matter that deals wit ideal man and ideal society. Thus, we find the idealists strong in their belief that the “proper study of mankind is man” and interpreting this to mean the history of the human race.

 Books are the source of this subject matter, the subject matter of ideas. To understand society and life we must study history. To understand man we must study literature and the humanities. The idealist wants to see the entire and absolute pattern of life and, in order to do this, history and the humanities are the most important subjects. The curriculum is based upon the idea or assumption of the spiritual nature of man. This idea in turn leads to an idea of the nature of the larger units of family, community, state, earth; the universe, and infinity. In preserving the subject matter content, which is essential for the development of the individual mind, the curriculum must include those subjects essential for the realization of mental and moral development. These subjects provide one with culture, and they should be mandated for all pupils. Moreover, the subject matter should be kept constant for all. 

 The idealist tradition of subject matter is basically literary and places its primary emphasis on the subject matter of books, especially hose literary pieces considered the masterworks of information about ideas. Because of the idealist’s reliance on the world of the mind, their curriculum calls for little contact with the experiential universe. The idealist educator has little place in his curriculum for field trips and empirical or sensory data.

 Instructional Methodology

 Plato’s idealism suggested moving from opinion to true knowledge in the form of critical discussions, or the dialectic.  All thinking begins with a thesis. The dialectic looks at all points of view. At the end of the discussion, the ideas or opinions will begin to synthesize as they work closer to truth. Knowledge is a process of discovery that can be attained through skillful questioning.Idealist education involves depth of learning, a holistic approach that involves teaching the whole rather than its parts. The best method of learning for Plato was the dialectic, a process where ideas are put into battle against each other, with the most significant idea winning the battle.  Knowledge was not important just for the material needs that it met.  Idealists would feel that much of the great literature of the past would be useful in the solving many of today’s problems. The idealist is not concerned with turning out students with technical skills so much as having students with a broad view and understanding of the world in which they live. Idealism emphasizes the role of the teacher, a skillful questioner, who should be a model for the person we want children to become. While the lecture method is still important in an idealist’s education system, it is considered more of a way to convey information and to help students comprehend ideas.  Self realization and self education are very important in idealism.  While teachers cannot always be present when learning occurs, they must attempt to stimulate students so that learning occurs even when they are not present.  Project based learning is on example of a self directed learning activity where learning can occur without a teacher’s presence

 As the curricular emphasis is subject matter of mind: literature, history, philosophy, and religion. Teaching methods focus on handling ideas through lecture, discussion, and Socratic dialogue (a method of teaching that uses questioning to help students discover and clarify knowledge). Introspection, intuition, insight, and whole-part logic are used to bring to consciousness the forms or concepts which are latent in the mind. Character is developed through imitating examples and heroes

 The classroom structure and atmosphere should provide the learners with opportunities to think, and to apply the criteria of moral evaluation to concrete within the context of the subjects. The teaching methods must encourage the acquisition of facts, as well as skill in reflecting on these facts. It is not sufficient to teach pupils how to think. It is very important that what pupils think about be factual; otherwise, they will simply compound their ignorance. Teaching methods should encourage learners to enlarge their horizons; stimulate reflective thinking; encourage personal moral choices; provide skills in logical thinking; provide opportunities to apply knowledge to moral and social problems; stimulate interest in the subject content; and encourage learners to accept the values of human civilization.

 The methods preferred by the idealists are the logical outgrowth of their acceptance of the doctrine of the primacy of ideas. If experience, as he have seen, is an inferior of the primacy of ideas. If experience, as we have seen, is an inferior reflection of Reality, the only purpose experience has for the idealist is to distort the Truth. Since the Truth can be reached through the abstract activities of the mind, it is in these that method must lie.

 Methodology, for the idealists then, consist for the most part of lectures, discussion, and imitation. Learning is an exercise in stretching the mind to its fullest so that it can absorb and handle ideas. Imitation should be of some exemplary person or persons who by their behavior give evidence that they are close to the nature of reality.

 All three methods employed by the idealists are open to criticism. All rely on ideas that are already know and allow little or no opportunity for the student to explore new ideas and new areas of interest. Because of this there is a tendency to reinforce the cultural lag between education and the society.

 Concept of Discipline

As for the discipline, majority of Idealists finds sheer discipline which is separated from the constructive teaching process as undesirable. According to him, discipline should be considered as an end product instead of an input and at the same time is a part of the teaching process and should b& in the personality of the teacher. One should achieve discipline through freedom not  behavior should have internal control rather than external control. For them authority begins by being external, but should end in becoming internal through habit formation and self-control.

 Thus in brief it can be said that in idealism, the aim of education is to discover and develop each individual’s abilities and full moral excellence in order to better serve society. The curricular emphasis is subject matter of mind: literature, history, philosophy, and religion. Teaching methods focus on handling ideas through lecture, discussion, and Socratic dialogue (a method of teaching that uses questioning to help students discover and clarify knowledge). Introspection, intuition, insight, and whole-part logic are used to bring to consciousness the forms or concepts which are latent in the mind. Character is developed through imitating examples and heroes

 Critical Appraisal of Idealism  

Idealism has been influential in education for a considerable amount of time. It is considered a conservative philosophy because of its emphasis in preserving cultural traditions. The strengths of idealism include encouraging thinking and cognition, promoting cultural learning, and providing for character development of students. Teachers are considered valuable parts of the educational process who should strive to provide a comprehensive, systematic, and holistic approach to learning that stresses self realization.

 Critics of the idealist philosophy of education have been vocal and consistent, and there is, indeed, no lack of arguments opposing the position both philosophically and educationally. Here are the most common criticisms of this philosophical school.

 Linked with traditional religion. ;The weakening of religion has led to the weakening of idealism as a philosophy.  Through Plato’s ruler kings, and Augustine’s emphasis on the monastic life, it has been said that idealism leads to intellectual elitism. In the past, education was considered important for the upper classes of society, marking education as a luxury.   Vocational and technical studies were considered good enough for the general public.

 Idealistic education was considered bookish and lacking relevance.; It is argued that the character development aspect of the philosophy involved conformity and subservience on the part of the learner. This type of character development was considered to stifle creativity and self direction, making students gullible and ready to accept ideas without serious examination.

 Lack of emphasis on the importance of science and technical education; James Madison’s quote that knowledge is power, which sits front and center on my class webpage, seems to agree with this premise.  Because I believe strongly in project based education as a way to have students discover and learn new information, I also began to view the idealism in my thinking. However, as much as I value these things and continue to believe in the importance of continually gaining knowledge, the fact that I view science and technology as a valued part of all education, sets me apart from the philosophy. While the idealist considered science and technical studies good enough for the general public, I consider them an integral part of any education. However I do believe in the importance of teaching children to think, for not doing so results in children with book learning and no common sense.

 Sets Unobtainable Goals ;For the educator who is concerned with having the child reach out and grasp the Ideal there are two significant problems. First, if perfection is unreachable there is very little desire on the part of most to become perfect. For the idealist student the goals are often too far away. Second, the idealists have set up a final goal: to know the Ideal and become part of it. This implies a finite tend and as such means that we have a final end in view. It argues strongly against those who take the point of view that man is infinitely perfectible.

 Ignores the Physical Self ;The body cannot be ignored. If we try to ignore the body it soon intrudes itself upon us. We do, whether we like the idea or not, react to and fake into our mind an deal with, on the intellectual level, such question as whether or not we are hot, cold, hungry, tired, happy, or sad. We will often give our greatest thought to changing or modifying our physical realm, particularly where we are trying to avoid discomfort. In the classroom the teacher who would forget that the student has a body as well as a mind will soon be faced with discipline problem as youthful spirits react to bodily demands. Thus, to try to separate mental activity from the physical and to try to place Ideas in a realm unrelated to the existent world becomes nothing more than an exercise in futility.

  Deemphasizes Experience ; Many ideas cannot have meaning apart from experience. The ideas of heat and cold are not simply logical constructs, but ways of describing certain sensations found only in experience. This is not meant to imply that all things must be rooted in experience. If this were true, we would have great difficulty in dealing with the study of sub-atomic particles, and the whole field of mathematics might well be called into question. But, most ideas do find their roots in experience, and to deny the validity of this experience is to make the universe sterile.

 Leads to Totalitarianism ;Some of the critiques of idealism is that is discourages the progress of science and our modern discovery.  It also serves as somewhat of an elitist view in that although the classics have merit for use in the classroom, they are not necessarily the choice for all students.  To only concentrate on the classic writings is to waste a vast amount of wonderful knowledge that has been gained through contemporary writings and art.    Further more; creating a society in which students are taught to be docile and accept without challenging those areas held to be absolute could essentially be creating an environment in which students are subservient and quick to confirm

 The whole doctrine of idealism may lead to a rigid and often totalitarian social order. It may become the very antithesis of Democracy since it argues that the best equipped for leadership are those who are closest to the Ideal. Plato, in the Republic, sets up a perfect society in which the leaders are the Philosopher-Kings; of the Ideal. Gentile, in twentieth century Italy, provides another example of the dangers of what can happen when the social theory inherent in the idealistic philosophy is put into practice in the ruling of nations.

  Emphasizes Humanities Science today has challenged idealism ;Science is based on hypothesis and tentativeness, but idealism promotes a finished and absolute universe waiting to be discovered The idealist philosopher demands that all must conform to the laws which are the immutable working of the Ideal. There is, in idealism, the assumption of a universal morality which will lead to the perfect moral and ethical order. Since much, if not all, of this has an optimistic, humanities oriented outlook, it may lead to a rejection of the whole concept of a technological society which is mechanistic and “scientifically” oriented.

 Overlooks possibility of Error ;Perhaps the greatest failing of any philosophical system is that it fails to take into account the possibility that it may be in error. This is especially true of idealism since its truth is immutable and unchanging. Even were the Ideal to change, as long as the notion of the Ideal is accepted as such then idealism has built into it its own verification.

One final comment seems called for before moving on to the next philosophical –educational system. Idealism, like many other systems, is dependent at any given time for its definition of truth upon certain spokesmen who would seen to be better able to know the Ideal. This can often lead to conflict as to the Truth of one world system as opposed to another. The whimsical sight of two idealist scholars standing off and yelling at each other, “My Truth is right, your truth is wrong,” is tempered somewhat by the picture of two hydrogen bomb holding despots standing off and yelling the same thing at each other.

References

•  ANDERSON, R. N., et al. 1968. Foundation Disciplines and the Study of Education. Toronto: Macmillan.
• ARCHAMBAULT, REGINALD D., ed. 1965. Philosophical Analysis and Education. New York: Humanities Press.
• FRANKENA, WILLIAM K., ed. 1965. Philosophy of Education. New York: Macmillan.
• JARRET, JAMES L., ed. 1969. Philosophy for the Study of Education. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
• LUCAS, CHRISTOPHER J. 1969. What Is Philosophy of Education? New York: Macmillan.
• MORRIS, VAN CLEVE. 1969. Modern Movements in Educational Philosophy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
• O’CONNOR, DANIEL JOHN. 1957. Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. London: Routledge.
• PARK, JOE. 1968. Selected Readings in the Philosophy of Education, 3rd edition. New York: Macmillan.
• SCHEFFLER, ISRAEL, ed. 1966. Philosophy and Education, 2nd edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon

 Acknowledgement

 Mrs. Sudha Rani Maheshwari for being scribe for this article.

Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A(Socio, Phil) B.Se. M. Ed, Ph.D

Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

 

You see by his what I meant when I called pragmatism a mediator and reconciler……. She has in fact no prejudices whatever, no obstructive dogmas, no rigid canons of what shall count as proof. She is completely genial. She will entertain any hypothesis, she will consider any evidence. It follows that in the religious field she is at a great advantage over both positivistic empiricism, with its anti-theological bias, and over religious rationalism, with its exclusive interest in the remote, the noble, the simple, and the abstract in the way of conception.— William James

Pragmatism in education came into prominence to fulfill an obvious need in the educational thought of America. With education becoming available to all men rather than to a select few, the country was searching for a way of viewing the educational process other than through the framework provided by the older “elitist” philosophies of education.

As an outgrowth of the changes brought about by the Civil War, Pragmatism sees thought as intrinsically connected with action. The value of an idea is measured by the consequences produced when it is translated into action. Pragmatism is based on traditional ways of thinking and finding ways to incorporate new ideas to achieve a desired result. This philosophy keeps people looking for effective methods for completing specific tasks. Because the world is constantly changing, people continue to change things of the past.. This is an American philosophy with roots from the British, Europeans, and ancient Greeks

Meaning of Pragmatism

According to Robert R. Rusk, the Oxford Dictionary first referred to the term ‘pragmatic’ in 1643 and the term ‘pragmatism’ in 1663. According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary the term ‘pragmatic’ means dealing with matters according to their practical significance or immediate importance. The term ‘pragmatism’, according to the same source, means “Doctrine that evaluates any assertion solely by its practical consequences and its bearing on human interests. The term pragmatism has been derived from the Greek term pragma which means use.  Thus, pragmatism is an ism according to which uses the criteria of reality.

Historical Retrospect of Pragmatism

One of the most important schools of philosophy of education is pragmatism. It is also as old as idealism, naturalism and realism since it is more an attitude, than a philosophy. In the fifth century B.C. Heraclitus said, “One can not step twice into the same river.” Thus, Reality is a flux, things are ever changing. Modern pragmatists agree with the Greek sophists. According to Protagoras, “Man is the measure of all things.” This maxim is the basis of modern humanism. Another famous sophist Gorgias used to say, “Nothing exists and if thing exists we can never know it.” This agnosticism has led to relativism in pragmatic epistemology.

The Nineteenth Century: Chauncey Wright, Charles Sanders Peirce, and William James.

Chauncey Wright is perhaps the least know of the nineteenth century contributors to the pragmatic movement. William James wrote of him that, ……he was not merely the great mind of a village – if Cambridge will pardon the expression – but either in London or Berlin he would, with equal ease, have taken the place of master which he held with us.

Charles Sanders Peirce, Although considered the founder of the American school of pragmatism, Peirce’s major contribution to the intellectual stream of pragmatism was his criterion of truth or meaning. simply says that a sentence’s meaning is the sum total of all of the sensory experience which might be conceptualized.

William James arrived on the scene at a critical time in America thought. As Americans reacted to the increasing technological and scientific changes in this country they turned philosophically to “science”. As Morton White has pointed out, “He came upon the scene when philosophy was being bullied by a tough and militant scientism, but he only organized alternative seemed to be the absolute idealism of the neo-Hegelians [sic] which he could not stomach. “

2. The Twentieth Century: John Dewey’s Instrumentalism

There are several philosophers that were advocates of pragmatism.;

Francis Bacon had a significant influence on pragmatism. He suggested an inductive approach, which became the basis for the scientific method.

John Locke was a philosopher that believed that the mind at birth is blank. He disagreed with Plato in that a person learns from experiences.

Auguste Comte, who was not a pragmatist, influenced pragmatism to use science when problem solving. His dream was to use science to help reform society.

Charles Darwin, was considered the most important and influential with regards to pragmatism. He was attacked because of his religious theories. He believed that nature operates without an intended end or result. Organisms will live and then die out when changes in nature occur.

Charles Sanders Peirce was an American pragmatist that never received the recognition he deserved. He believed that ideas were nothing until they have been tested in actual experiences.

William James, made pragmatism a wider public view. He believed that an idea must be tried before it can be considered good.

John Dewey. The final philosopher, which is considered to be the greatest asset to pragmatism,  has been described as the greatest as American philosophy, Dewey move from the idealist’s camp to the beginnings of a pragmatic philosophy which he was to characterize with the name of instrumentalism .In later years there were many “disciples” of John Dewey who in trying to elaborate some of his ideas went to extremes that appalled their mentor Dewey was a frequent critic of what came to be known in American educational circles as “progressivism” or the “progressive movement”.

PHILOSOPHICAL RATIONALE OF PRAGMATISM

Philosophy was not, for Pragmatism, a game played with intellectual abstractions and theoretical constructs; rather it was part of the ongoing life of individuals and the society. Philosophy was, as far as he was concerned, a part of culture and the way we philosophized, as well as the things abut which we philosophized, was determined in large part by this culture.

Metaphysical position of pragmatism

Naturalism reduces everything to life or matter, Idealism to mind or self.

Pragmatics sees no necessity of limiting herself to one or two fundamental principles of explanation, she is  quite content to admit several principles of explanation and accordingly pluralistic. In brief Pragmatism is a mid way in between the extreme form of naturalism and absolute idealism. That is why many philosophers even do not consider it as a philosophy , they treat it as a process or method or attitude.

There are two major points which must be made about the ontological bases of pragmatism. First, the traditional distinction between mind and matter as two separate and independent substances is rejected by the pragmatists, and second, the pragmatists use, as their ontological base line, the concept of experience.

This is really a sophisticated from of naturalism. The concept of natural law, for example, for the pragmatist is descriptive rather than prescriptive. It is the outgrowth or a long series of observations and is rooted in experience. In short, she widens the field of search for God. Rationalism sticks to logic and the empyrean. Empiricism sticks to the external senses. Pragmatism is willing to take anything, to follow either logic or the senses and to count the humblest and most personal experiences if they have practical consequences. She will take a God who lives in the very dirt of private fact – if that should seem a likely place to find him.

For the pragmatist, most questioning about the nature of the metaphysical universe is simply idle speculation since we have no basis for any doctrine of absolute reality beyond our own observations. If, as pragmatists, we wish to know the nature of reality we should, rather than building ontological sandcastles, immerse ourselves in the thick of life, experiencing as much of it as we can. For the pragmatist, any absolute reality is simply our experiential world.

The pragmatic ontology differ in two major respect form that of the realist. The realist says is a world which we can know because of our experience while the pragmatist says that all we can know is our experience. Second, the pragmatic ontology differs from that of the realist in its insistence that “law” is descriptive rather than prescriptive, that “law” do not place demands upon nature and are not intrinsic to nature but are, rather, devices to explain continuities that man has experienced.

Finally, and most important, the pragmatist does not view reality as an abstract “thing”. Rather, it is a process of transaction which involves both doing and undergoing, the two characteristics of experience. For experience is a two way street: first is the doing and second is the process of deriving meaning from the act and its results. Experience demands both dimensions, for the second cannot exist without the first. And the first has no meaning without the second. Without exploration of the meaning and consequences of activity, man would indeed be on what the late radio comedian Fred Allen referred to as a “treadmill to oblivion.”

Epistemological position of pragmatism

Knowledge and Truth

Pragmatism is basically an epistemological undertaking keynoted by its theory of truth and meaning. This theory state that truth can be known only through its practical consequences and is thus and individual or a social matter rather than an absolute..

Knowledge is rooted in experience, but experience may be immediate or mediated. Immediate experience is simply “undergoing.” Mediated experience is the interaction of man and his mind with his environment. It requires the use of intelligence. It is intelligence which determines direction. As John Dewey pointed out:

It seemed almost axiomatic that for true knowledge we must have recourse to concepts coming from a reason above experience. But the introduction of the experimental method signified precisely that such operations, carried on under conditions of control, are just the ways in which fruitful ideas about nature are obtained and tested.

Truth in the pragmatic epistemology can be viewed as the production of desired consequences through the five-step process described above. But this does not give truth any special existential status, it simply means that in a particular case something is true. Truth may, therefore, exist in varying degrees. Truth is contingent on, or relative to, set or circumstances. Knowing is an open-ended, on going, human activity. As such it is constantly subject to error.

There are three major points of significance to the pragmatic epistemology. First, it is an open-ended, activity, open, to the public and in fact, dependent upon the public test rather than some private metaphysical test. Second, it is subject to error and is continuously being revised in terms of new conditions and new consequences. And, third, it places the ultimate responsibility for truth and knowledge directly upon the shoulders of man. This is a tremendous responsibility and there are many who would rather shirk this responsibility and retreat to the security of a more authoritarian system.

Pragmatism only test of probable truth is what works best in the way of leading us, what fits every part of life best and combine with the collectivity of experience’s demands, nothing being omitted

Axiological position of pragmatism

Pragmatism is essentially a humanistic philosophy, maintaining that man creates his own values in the course of activity that reality is still in the making and awaits its part of completion from the future, that to an unascertainable extent our truths are manmade products.;  Ross, James, S.,

Concept of Good (Ethics)

[Pragmatism's] only test of probable truth is what works best in the way of leading us, what fits every part of life best and combines with the collectivity of experience’s demands, nothing being omitted. : William James

Ethical values are a product of the transactional functioning of man and society. The good is that which resolves indeterminate situations in the best way possible. Thus, the use of the intellect in the solving of problems is considered good by the pragmatists while total avoidance of human problems or unthinking reliance on some “higher” authority would be considered bad. Values emerge from the process of reflective deliberation and the accepted only after reflective deliberation. In each generation must create new values and new solutions to deal with new problems. The values of the crossbow, the pragmatists would say, are no longer necessarily applicable or relevant to the day of the hydrogen bomb.

The question still remains, though, how are we to know what is the best solution to a problem? Dewey finds growth the basis of all ethics. That which contributes to growth is good. That which would stunt, deflect, or retard it is bad. But, since man is not completely independent unto himself, what may appear good in the private sense must also be explored in the public sense. We must ask two questions then about an act or decision. First, what are the individual consequences? And second, what are the public consequences? We must also consider whether these consequences will contribute to or retard, growth.

The major concern, then, of pragmatic ethical theory is the public test, the test that is open to the public and which can be reiterated or verified by others. This is not to suggest that our morality need be determined by others, but as Dewey and Tufts pointed out, there is a distinct relationship.

Morals are personal because they spring from personal insight, judgment, and choice. Such facts as these, however, are wholly consistent with the fact that what men think and believe is affected by common factors, and that the thought and choice of one individual spread to others. They do not militate against the fact that men have to at together, and that their conjoint action is embodied institutions and laws……The material of personal reflection and of choice comes to each of us from the customs, traditions, institutions, policies, and plans of these large collective wholes.

Ultimately, for the pragmatists, morality demands the use of the experimental method. If we do not, the pragmatists argue, have a morality which emerges out of the observance of and reflection on a variety of situations we accept the alternative course which is commitment to a dogmatic morality.

Concept of Beauty (Aesthetics)

The pragmatist’s standards of art and beauty differ from those of the other philosophies we have discussed in that they do not exist in some separate realm. What is beautiful is simply what we find beautiful in our own experience, what has the power to move us and to make us feel deeply. Art is a form in which an artist describes his own personal experience to the viewer. But the description need not be detailed or an exact reproduction of what the artist has seen.

In every work of art, however, these meanings are actually embodied in a material which thereby becomes the medium for their expression. This fact constitutes the peculiarity of all experience that is definitely esthetic. Its imaginative quality dominates, because meanings and values that are wider and deeper than the particular here and now in which they are anchored are realized by way of an object that is physically efficacious in relation to other objects. A more current way of saying this would be, “the medium is the message.”

The test of a work of art is whether or not it can stir the viewer and communicate to him the experience with all (or at least many) of the complex feelings and ramifications the artist is attempting to convey. Thus, the public test of a work of art is whether or not the artist has communicated his experience to us and whether others share the sense of pleasure and esthetic satisfaction we receive from a work of art.

Concept of social structure

For the pragmatist, society is a process in which individuals participate. Society is the source from which people derive all that makes them individual while at the same time society is a product of the complex series of interactions among the individuals whose lives and activities impinge upon each other.

Man derives his values from the society and since these values help determine much of what his life will be, society and its relationship to the individual may be one of the most important concerns for contemporary pragmatists. Society is a basic concept in contemporary pragmatism since all actions must be considered in the light of their social designed to pass along the cultural heritage from one generation to the next, must be concerned with society and with its students as members of society.

Pragmatism sees the school as vitally concerned with and interested in social change since it needs to prepare the adults of the future to deal with the planning necessarily involved in the process called society.

With the move from the rural agrarian social structure which existed before the turn of the century, and with the increase in urbanization, transportation, communication and industrialization, over the last 50 years, the need for social planning has increased at an unbelievable rate. With the growth of new problems such the uses of atomic energy, pollution, conservation of natural resources, other space, drugs, increasing crime rates, education of disadvantaged children, others too numerous to list , the school has become the seed-bed for society. Never before argue the pragmatists, has there been such a need for social concern and social planning. Simply let society run rampant down an unplanned path. To do this is court destruction not just for society. But for the world.

Since the pragmatic position strongly advocates wholehearted involvement in society by all citizens, and because it views group decision in the light of consequence as important, and because it places responsibility on the individual as a member of society, it has been called the philosophy of Democracy.

Concept of Religion

To possess all the world of knowledge and lose one’s own self is as awful a fate in education as in religion.

-John Dewey, The Child and the Curriculum

James entered the arena in which a battle between religion and science was being waged. Or, in more philosophical terms, he entered the conflict between what he aptly characterized as the “tender-minded” and the “tough-minded”. On the side of the “tender-minded” were found the religious, idealistic, optimistic, and rationalistic; while on the side of the “tough-minded” were found the irreligious, materialistic, pessimistic, and empirical.

The sword with which James hoped to slay the dragons of “tough-mindedness” and “tender-mindedness” was the system of pragmatism. For James, pragmatism became more than a method It became his central philosophical principle. As White has so aptly said of James, “He wanted facts but he also wanted a religion.” And it was through pragmatism that he hoped to achieve both. James was brilliant, concise, and perhaps most important, an independent thinking is highly original. He has been described as “original, exciting, and cosmopolitan.

Perhaps the most controversial aspects of James’ philosophy relate to his application of the pragmatic principle to religion. James, said, “The pragmatic method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable.” His potion, simply state, was that ideas were of value to the degree that they were useful and functional and were not in conflict will other truths that could be empirically substantiated. Using this as his intellectual touchstone, James was able to support much of religion, including the hypothesis of God. The last several paragraphs of James’ essay, “What Pragmatism Means,” are the best available statement of the view of pragmatism as the great mediator between empiricism and rationalism; the “tough-minded” and the “tender-minded.”

Pragmatism in Education

What we want and need is education pure and simple, and we shall make surer and faster progress when we devote ourselves to finding out just what education is and what conditions have to be satisfied in order that education may be a reality and not a name or a slogan. Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world...

-John Dewey, Experience and Education

Pragmatism philosophy and its educational implications are inextricably interwoven. As Dewey pointed out, he regarded philosophy as a general theory of education and or this reason placed a great deal of emphasis on epistemological and axiological considerations. . Pragmatism philosophy emphasizes the social function of intelligence- that ideas are instruments of living rather than ends in themselves. Education is seen as basically a social process rooted in problem-solving and the exploration of the meaning of experience. focus of research is to make an impact on the child’s life with regards to their individuality. Throughout the history of this philosophy, Pragmatism conducted experiments that fostered thoughts and ideas. Each experiment reflected individual growth.

Educational Aims of pragmatism

The aim of education The aim of education according to pragmatism is dynamic in nature . According to pragmatists the main focus of education is not social heritage of the past, but the good life in the present and in the future. The standard of social good is constantly changing, so it should be tested and verified through changing experience. Life does not stand still and there is a constant need for improvement.

To have an aim is to act with meaning.-John Dewey, Democracy and Education

Pragmatists believe that the aims are always determined by individual not by any organization or any structure.  Perhaps the best statement of what might be called the pragmatist’s educational aims can be found in the writing of John Dewey. The aim for education is to teach children to be comfortable in their learning environment to an extent that children are living their life. Dewey believed in this type of environment that is not considered a preparation for life, but life. He believed that educators should know the things that motivate and interest children and plan accordingly. Dewey believed that aims should grow out of existing conditions, be tentative, and have an end view.

In Democracy and education, he wrote that education is “that reconstruction or reorganization of experience which adds to the meaning of experience, and which increases ability to direct the course of subsequent experience.” The aim that might be derived from the foregoing definition of education would include the helping of the child to develop in such a way as to contribute to his continued growth.

While Dewey disliked the use of the term aims in its usual sense because it implied an end and Dewey saw on final and permanent end to education, he did set down three characteristics of good educational aims. These were:

1. An educational aim must be founded upon the intrinsic activates and needs (including original instinct and acquired habits) of the given individual to be educated …… it is one thing to use adult accomplishments as a context in which to place and survey the doings of childhood and youth; it is quite another to set them up as a fixed aim without regard to the concrete activates of those educated.

2. An aim must be capable of translation into a method of cooperation with the activities of those undergoing instruction. It must suggest the kind of environment needed to liberated and to organize their capacities…. Until the democratic criterion of the intrinsic significance of every growing experience is recognized, we shall be intellectually confused by the demands for adaptation to external aims.

3. Educators have to be on their guard against ends that are alleged to be general and ultimate. Every activity, however specific is , of course, general in its ramified connection of possible future achievements, the less his present activity is tied down to a small number of alternatives. If one knew enough, one could star almost anywhere and sustain his activities continuously and fruitfully.

Thus, it would seem safe to say that for Dewey and the pragmatists the one “aim” in education is to provide the conditions that make growth possible.

The concept of Student

Children are to be treated as rational creatures.-John Locke

The student is an experiencing organism capable of using intelligence to resolve its problems. He learns as he experiences; as he dose and as he undergoes. As a thinking organism his experiences, and his reflections upon those experiences become a part of him determining his likes, dislikes, and the future direction of his learning. The pragmatist views the student as a whole organism constantly interacting with the environment. The school is both a part of this environment and a special manmade environment designed to provide the best possible educative experience to the learner. For this reason the student is especially involved in interaction with the school.

The whole organism which is the child consists of the biological child, the psychological child, and the social child. The experiencing organism that is the learner brings to school with him all the meanings, values, and experiences that constitute his personality : his self.

The concept of Teacher

Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.

-Parker J. Palmer, The Courage to Teach

The role of the teacher is important in successfully educating children. The

teacher must capture the child’s interest and build on the natural motivation that exists. Teachers need to remember to vary their teaching methods to accommodate each individual learning style. Not all children learn at the same pace or are at the  same point; therefore, the teacher must vary his/her style. Dewey believed that knowledge should be organized and relate to current experiences.

The teacher, for the pragmatist, is a member of the learning group who serves in the capacity of helper, guide, and arranger of experiences. He is as involved in the educative process as are this students.

Thus, the pragmatic teacher does not abdicate responsibility. If anything’s just the opposite is true. The teacher is responsible for wiring with the students and helping them develop their own projects. He advises and directs projects and activates that arise out of the felt needs of the students rather than those of the teacher. He must arrange the conditions by, as Dewey indicates, simplifying, purifying, ordering and balancing the environment is such a way as to provide the experiences that will contribute the most to the growth of this students.

Curriculum Framework

Can anything deserve the name of a good education which does not include literature and science too?  If there were no more to be said than that scientific education teaches us to think, and literary education to express our thoughts, do we not require both?

-John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address at Saint Andrews

It would only be a slight exaggeration to say that the universe is the subject matter for the pragmatist. Any educative experience is the subject matter of the pragmatist’s curriculum’ any experience contributing to growth. The subject mater exists ready to be explored, but the real concern must always be for the interaction of the pupil with the subject matter of his current needs, capacities, and concerns.

Emphasis is on practical  and utilitarian subjects.  Based on the principle of  utility, integration and  child’s natural interests and experience

Pragmatists believe in a broad and diversified curriculum. They endorse a more general education as opposed to narrow specialization. Pragmatic curriculum is composed of both process and content. When we consider what a child learns as fixed and ready made, attention is directed too much upon outcome and too

little upon process. Pragmatists focus some attention on process, because ends should not be divorced from means. So they assert that the means. used to accomplish something dictate what the actual ends and outcomes really are.

Teachers and students have a tendency to view subject matter in different ways. For the teacher it is organized into bodies of knowledge which generally show a progression from the simple to the more complex, but for the student this is not the case. As a child stands before a complex structure, he sees only what is, at the moment, important to him.

The child cannot, in his earlier years in school, distinguish subject matter as teacher so often understand it from his own interests and needs. Thus, the closer the two can be aligned, the more successful will the teaching and learning situation become. In the early yeas, according to many pragmatists, the curriculum should not be hindered by subject matter lines but rather should be divided into units which grow out of the questions and the experiences of the learners. The curriculum is learner- centered. In changes and shifts as the needs of the learners vary.

The traditional arrangement of subject matter are seen as an arbitrary and wasteful system to which all learners have been forced to conform. The pragmatist rejects this system in order to center the subject matter around the problems and needs of the learner.

Pragmatists are of the opinion that the curriculum at the school should reflect the society. They have rejected the traditional approach to subject matter curriculum which is associated with formal schooling, where knowledge is separated from child’s own interests, needs and experiences and fragmented or compartmentalized. They emphasize the needs and interests of the children.

Dewey opines that all learning should be particular and contextual to a given time, place and circumstances. For example, history is traditionally taught to the student without considering its relevance to the everyday experience. So what is the use of studying history? Whatever may be the subject matter it should liberate and enrich personal life by furnishing context, background and outlook

Dewey in his book “Democracy and Education” recommended three levels of curricular organization: (1) making and doing; (2) history and geography; and (3) organized sciences.

At the first curricular level, making and doing, should engage students in activities and projects based on their experiences. In the second level curriculum ,History and Geography, which Dewey regards as two great educational resources, help in enlarging the scope and significance of the child’s temporal and spatial experience from the immediate home and school environments to that of the larger community and the world. Dewey’s third stage of curriculum is that of the organized subjects, the various sciences, consisting of bodies of tested knowledge

Instructional Methodology

To discuss the methods of teaching employed by the pragmatist is to open up a veritable Pandora’s box. The widest variety of techniques have been justified in the mane of pragmatic philosophy, ranging from the almost complete laissez-faire to the relatively structured. Probably the most common method employed by those most in line with the Thinking of the pragmatists is the project method. Classroom discussion in a free and open atmosphere is encouraged, as well as individual problem solving research. All of this may well involve a tremendous amount of reading, studying, and traditional subject matter mastery.

The methods of educating are unique to each individual. This philosophy believes that not all children learn the same way, so it is important to vary educational methods. This philosophy supports large print text, small desk, and things that move easily. The classroom would be a functional atmosphere with the interest of the children at hand. Problem solving, themes, experiments are all parts of the pragmatic philosophy. The curriculum for the pragmatic philosophy supports a connection between knowledge and experience. It is important for children to connect the two so learning can become meaningful. According to Dewey, children must be interested in the subject matter to gain meaning. Subjects that are difficult and cause children to struggle should be organized and designed to build motivation about the topics. Children should enjoy learning and leave with a sense of accomplishment.

The problems around which education is centered must be the real problems of the students, not problems from txst books, or even problems thought up by the teachers which have a neat solution that can be revealed at the end of the exercise. True learning in no way resembles the magician’s trick of pulling rabbits or pigeons out of top hats. Pragmatic method is rooted in the psychological needs of the students rather than in the logical order of the subject matter. Thus, method is nothing more than the helping of the students to use intelligence and the scientific method in the solution of problems that are meaningful to the child.

The process involved in the mediation of experience and which is required to first transform the experience to knowledge an second to aid in the determination of new direction has been variously called the experimental method, the five-step though process, and the scientific method. What it amounts to are the following five steps. First is the vague uneasiness that lets us know we have a problem that has upset our equilibrium.

Second is the refinement of the problem. This is the detailing of the problem, the bringing it into the light to take a look at it and the focusing out of irrelevant and extraneous matters.

Third is the forming of hypotheses or tentative solutions to the problem.

Fourth is the considering of the consequence of various activities, and the mental testing of alternative solutions. This is one of the most important steps since it is here that the fifth step  in the process will be decided upon.

The fifth step is the actual testing our solution under so – called field conditions. This is where the result of our intelligence are applied. In many cases it will not matter if we have made a mistake. It will simply mean “back to the drawing board,” and it is for this reason that many people underrate the importance of the fourth step in this process. But not all applications of a solution leave the alternatives of the fourth step open. It is quite possible that by taking a particular course of action we make it impossible to later return to an alternatives of action. Consider, in an age where nuclear war with all its fearful concomitants is in the hands of a very few, the consequences of raining down hydrogen bombs on a country. Could we ever return to take another alternative route to peace? The though, were it not so frightening, would be ludicrous. It is for this reason that the fourth step in the process places as great a moral burden on man’s shoulders as does the fifth.

In the actual process of teaching there are a number of things that need to be kept in mind. First, we must start where the learner is. As William Heard Kilpatrick has pointed out,

Kilpatrick goes on to suggest that the teacher discuss with the students the interests of the class and the types of things they would like to study. Interest is not enough. It is necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for selecting an area of concern. It should also offer a challenge and significant educational value. It is important that the subject selected by the students be one to which they are committed as wholeheartedly as possible. For if the topic has their commitment, then the value of self direction may be implemented. the teacher will from start to finish encourage in the pupils as high a degree of self-directed responsible acting on thinking as it is possible to get. To feel one’s self acting responsibly and so helping to create what is being done, and to do this in a way to deserve respect from others, is one of the very keenest of satisfactions. Thus, the method is primarily one of guidance

Finally, Kilpatrick gives some practical suggestions which deal with methodology. As the man whose entire academic career at Teachers College, Columbia University, was dedicated to putting into educational practice the theories arrived at by John Dewey, they may be said to represent the best thinking on the subject of education method done by a pragmatist.

The teacher will as well as possible help the learners at each stage of the effort: (i) to initiate the activity (to form or choose the purpose); (ii) to plan how to carry the activity forward, (iii) to execute to plan: (iv) to evaluate progress during the activity and the result at the end. While all this is going forward the teacher will also (v) encourage the learners to think up and note suggestions or new leads for other and further work; (vi) help them to formulate these suggestions both for clarification of thinking and for later recall and possible use (perhaps writing them in a book or on the board for future reference); (vii) help pupils criticize their thinking en route or at the close, as may seen wise; and finally (viii) look back over the whole process to pick up and fix important kinds of learning as well as draw lessons for the future from both successes and failures.

Pragmatism and Discipline

Pragmatism does not believe in external discipline enforced by the superior authority of the teacher. It supplements discipline with greater freedom of activity. They feel that discipline which is based on the principles of child’s activities and need is beneficial. They want that the interest of the child should be aroused, sustained and satisfied

Pragmatism does not believe in the traditional maxim “work while you work and play while you play”. Rather it advocates a discipline that can be maintained through play as work. According to the pragmatists, it is the mental attitude which converts a work into play and play into work

The pragmatists believe that the learner’s freedom is not anarchy or allowing the child to do anything without considering the consequences. Rather they believe in the purposeful co-operative activities carried on in a free and happy environment. c control comes from the cooperative context of shared activity In pragmatism there is no place for rewards and punishments as every activity is to be pursued in a social setting .

Critical appraisal of Pragmatism

The pragmatic philosophy of education has probably been subjected to more criticism, both valid and invalid, than any other education philosophy. This is, in part, because of its liberal orientation. Social, economic, political and educational conservatives have found it a useful target for the pointed finger and the cry of “anathema.” To some extent the criticisms have been justified, but for the most part the pragmatists have simply stood as a convenient scapegoat for the demagogues. Even today, in many parts of the nation, conservative candidates for political office are expected to swear their eternal opposition to “progressive education” and the prime devil of the movement, John Dewey. In None Dare Call It Treason by John Stormer, a book which  became a major campaign document for conservatives during the political wars of 1964, John Dewey is characterized as “Denying God, he held to the Marxist concept that man is without a soul or free will.” His educational experiments in Chicago are dismissed in the following tow sentences. “They were dismal failures.” “Children learned nothing.” As for Dewey’s philosophy orientation toward education, Stormer describes is as follows.

Taken to a logical conclusion. Dewey’s theory would have the child who finds himself in the company of thieves become a thief also. The tendency to justify immoral or unethical conduct by rationalizing that “everybody dose it” is rooted in Dewey’s teaching.

The author goes on to say, Strict acceptance of Dewey’s theories would eliminate teaching world geography unless the child can take a trip around the world. History would be eliminated from the curriculum, because it is past and will not be relived by the student.

While it would be impossible to refute all of the fallacious criticisms to which John Dewey and his philosophical statements have been subjected, it is perhaps worth noting that John Stormer’s book, between February and July of 1964, went through eleven printings with a total of 1,400,000 copies coming off the presses. The author was, as that time, chairman of the Missouri Federation of Yong Republicans and as member of the Republican State Committee of Missouri. Thus, because of the author’s political position, the strategic time of publication, and the subject matter, the book received widespread publicity and was widely read. Unfortunately many Americans received their basic introduction to John Dewey and his philosophy in its pages. How accurate it may be can perhaps be determined through use of the following quote form John Dewey’s most popular book on education, democracy and Education, which sets forth his view on the subject of history and geography.

……..geography and history supply subject matter which gives background and outlook, intellectual perspective, to what might other wise be narrow personal actins or mere forms of technical skill. With every increase of ability to place our own doings in their time and space connections, our doings gain is significant content. We realize that we citizens of no mean city in discovering the scene in space of which we are denizens, and the continuous manifestation of endeavor in time of which hw ear heir and continues. Thus our ordinary daily experiences cease to be things of the moment and gain enduring substance.

Aside from the criticisms of those who seek to make political or social capital from Dewey and his educational theories, there are a number of critics and a variety of criticisms which need to be heard with regard to the pragmatic position in both philosophy and education.

1. Weak Ontology

It has been argued that the whole structure of the pragmatic position is relatively unstable due to its lack of a sound ontological base. The contention that eh pragmatist do not concern themselves with the clarification of their ontological assumptions is valid. Because of their general orientation, the pragmatic movement has emphasized concerns of an epistemological nature.

2. Anti-Intellectualism

Another criticism often leveled at he pragmatic movement is that it is essentially anti-intellectual. While this is perhaps an perhaps an overstatement, it is true that the main area of concern for pragmatists is the marketplace of daily life. Thus, those philosophies oriented toward a rather rationalistic a priori type of though will find the pragmatists empirical and anti-intellectual.

3. Theory of Truth

On of the seemingly weakest points in the pragmatist’s chain of though, and the one that has probably subjected the pragmatists to more valid and invalid criticism than any other theory of truth. If truth is seen as constantly being changed and tested, rather than as a stable body of knowledge, the whole stability of the universe is previous experience, which has been oriented toward finding and cataloging such truths, will go for naught. All other major philosophical systems are concerned with the nature of truth, and historically the vast majority have found a core of stable, unchanging, absolute values on which they could rely. The very fact that pragmatism challenges the existence of this core makes it, for many, a dangerous and radical philosophy.

4. School as Instrument of Social Change

For schoolmen the idea that there are no absolute and unchanging truths offers another dangerous challenge that many feel unable or unwilling to accept. Traditionally the school has been viewed as society’s instrument for the preservation and continuation of our cultural heritage. While the pragmatists would not argue with this, they would carry it a step further. The school and the whole process of education should be an instrument of social change and social improvement. Not only should students be taught  (and even here the pragmatists would probably prefer to say “not only should students be helped to learn….”) factual materials, they should deal with social problems. More conservative schoolmen will argue that this is not the function of the school and that if the school and the classroom become instrument of inquiry and of social change, we are moving away from stability and toward anarchy.

5. Theoretical Rather the Practical

Perhaps the greatest criticism that can be leveled at the pragmatic philosophers in the field of education is that while they have madder great inroads in educational theory, and some inroads in educational practice in the elementary schools, they are, from most educators, a group of thinkers largely ignored beyond the payment of ritual lip-service. This should be especially painful to those who would support a philosophy that measures much in terms of the practical consequences of a course of action. In fact, pragmatism in education is for the most part nothing but a straw man set up by the critics so they may knock it down. While preached loudly in the classroom of institutions of teacher education, it is not practiced in these very same classrooms or very many others around the country.

6. Cult of Personality

Pragmatism has had a wide appeal to the mind of educators despite its general failure to emerge into practice. Because of this, and because of the many years of teaching by such pragmatists as John Dewey, Boyd Bode, William Heard Kilpatrick, and others, a whole cult grew up calling themselves progressive educators. For inspiration they largely turned toward Teachers College, Columbia University; but while turning in the direction of this fount of educational wisdom, they too often took as the gospel of progressive education third, fourth and fifth-hand accounts of what the intellectual leaders of the movement said and meant. This cult of personality and hero worship, coupled wit the failure or inability of many progressive educators to either read or understand the thinking of the educational theorist, too often led to a warmed over form of laissez-fair freedom in the classroom. The progressive education movement was, in fact, guilty of what must have been for the leaders of the pragmatic movement the greatest of all sins, reliance on authority as absolute. Because of this, and because of the burden of clichés the progressive movement has had to bear, it has had little opportunity to try its wings in the arena of public education.

Pragmatism as a philosophy of education has not totally been used correctly.

Many schools have used certain parts of the philosophy, but not many use it consciously. Most people were interested in using the practical parts than focusing on the philosophy. Pragmatism as an educational belief does not have everyone agreeing. Some believe that it is too vague and others believe it is too watered down.

After analyzing pragmatism, we feel that this philosophy best describes our teaching style. This philosophy was easier to understand and make connections. Pragmatism reminds teachers to individualize their instruction to meet the needs of each learner. One must remember to keep old traditions, but incorporate new idea.

REFERENCES-

1. 1. Adams, “The Educational Theory” Macmillan &Co.
2. Broudy, Harry S., Building a Philosophy of Education. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1961.
3. Butler, J.Donald, Four Philosophies and Their Practice in Education and Religion. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1957.
4. Cunningham, J.K., “Problems of Philosophy, p-05.
5. Frank Thilly, “A History of philosophy”, Central Publishing House, Allahabad.
6. John Dewey, “Reconstruction in Philosophy,” p-38. London, University of London Press Ltd. 1921.
7. John Locke, “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1960, Introduction.
8. Piece, “Chance, love and Logic (M.R. Cohen, Editor). Harcourt, Brace and Co.
9. Rusk, R.R., “Philosophical Basis of Education” p-68, footnote, London, University of London Press, 1956..
10. The Concise Oxford Dictionary, Sixth Edition, III. Impression, 1976, p-868.

 

Acknowledgement

Dr. Suraksha Bansal  Ph.D  and Dr.Saroj Agarwal   Ph.D for being scribe in this article.

 

                                 All real living is meeting. (Buber 1958: 24-25) 

 

Martin Buber Austrian/Jewish Philosopher 1878-1965 Jewish theologian and philosopher, born in Vienna. He studied philosophy at Vienna, Berlin, and Zürich, then became attracted to Hasidism, founding and editing a monthly journal Der Jude (1916–24). He taught comparative religion at Frankfurt (1923–33), and directed a Jewish adult education programmed until 1938, when he fled to Palestine to escape the Nazis. He became professor of social philosophy at Jerusalem, where he wrote on social and ethical problems. He is best known for his religious philosophy, expounded most famously in Ich und Du (1923, I and Thou), contrasting personal relationships of mutuality and reciprocity with utilitarian or objective relationships.

 Buber’s theoretical focus can be split into two stages

Mysticism (1897-1923) – where his interest lay in people’s ability to transcend  profane conceptions of reality.

Dialogue (1923- 1938) – that reflects Buber’s move away from the supremacy of the ecstatic moment to the unity of being and a focus on relationship and the dialogical nature of existence (perhaps most strongly linked to his book I and Thou).

Martin Buber’s I and Thou (Ich und Du, 1923) presents a philosophy of personal dialogue, in that it describes how personal dialogue can define the nature of reality. Buber’s major theme is that human existence may be defined by the way in which we engage in dialogue with each other, with the world, and with God.

Buber’s best known work I and Thou, , presents us with two fundamental orientations – relation and irrelation. We can either take our place, , alongside whatever confronts us and address it as ‘you’; or we ‘can hold ourselves apart from it and view it as an object, an “it”‘. So it is we engage in I-You (Thou) and I-It relationships

I-You involves a sense of being part of a whole. The “I” is not experienced or sensed as singular or separate; it is the “I” of being.

The primary word I-Thou can be spoken only with the whole being. Concentration and fusion into the whole being can never take place through my agency, not can it ever take place without me. I become through my relation to the Thou; and as I become the I, I say Thou

The meeting involved isn’t just between two people or between someone and the world. Buber believed that ‘every particular Thou is a glimpse through to the eternal Thou‘ In other words, each and every I-You relationship opens up a window to the ultimate Thou

The I-Thou relation is a direct interpersonal relation which is not mediated by any intervening system of ideas. No objects of thought intervene between I and Thou.¹ I-Thou is a direct relation of subject-to-subject, which is not mediated by any other relation. Thus, I-Thou is not a means to some object or goal, but is an ultimate relation involving the whole being of each subject.

Buber,  holds that human beings may adopt two attitudes toward the world: I-Thou or I-It. I-Thou is a relation of subject-to-subject, while I-It is a relation of subject-to-object. In the I-Thou relationship, human beings are aware of each other as having a unity of being. In the I-Thou relationship, human beings do not perceive each other as consisting of specific, isolated qualities, but engage in a dialogue involving each other’s whole being. In the I-It relationship, on the other hand, human beings perceive each other as consisting of specific, isolated qualities, and view themselves as part of a world which consists of things. I-Thou is a relationship of mutuality and reciprocity, while I-It is a relationship of separateness and detachment.

Buber elaborates that human beings may try to convert the subject-to-subject relation to a subject-to-object relation, or vice versa. However, the being of a subject is a unity which cannot be analyzed as an object. When a subject is analyzed as an object, the subject is no longer a subject, but becomes an object. When a subject is analyzed as an object, the subject is no longer a Thou, but becomes an It. The being which is analyzed as an object is the It in an I-It relation.

 Babur explains that the subject-to-subject relation affirms each subject as having a unity of being. When a subject chooses, or is chosen by, the I-Thou relation, this act involves the subject’s whole being. Thus, the I-Thou relation is an act of choosing, or being chosen, to become the subject of a subject-to-subject relation. The subject becomes a subject through the I-Thou relation, and the act of choosing this relation affirms the subject’s whole being.

Buber argues that, although the I-Thou relation is an ideal relation, the I-It relation is an inescapable relation by which the world is viewed as consisting of knowable objects or things. The I-It relation is the means by which the world is analyzed and described. However, the I-It relation may become an I-Thou relation, and in the I-Thou relation we can interact with the world in its whole being.

In the I-Thou relation, the I is unified with the Thou, but in the I-It relation, the I is detached or separated from the It. In the I-Thou relation, the being of the I belongs both to I and to Thou. In the I-It relation, the being of the I belongs to I, but not to It.

I-Thou is a relation in which I and Thou have a shared reality. Buber contends that the I which has no Thou has a reality which is less complete than that of the I in the I-and-Thou. The more that I-and-Thou share their reality, the more complete is their reality.

Accordingly , God is the eternal Thou. God is the Thou who sustains the I-Thou relation eternally. In the I-Thou relation between the individual and God, there is a unity of being in which the individual can always find God. In the I-Thou relation, there is no barrier of other relations which separate the individual from God, and thus the individual can speak directly to God.

Buber also explains that the I-Thou relation may have either potential being or actual being. When the I-It relation becomes an I-Thou relation, the potential being of the I-Thou relation becomes the actual being of the I-Thou relation. However, the I-Thou relation between the individual and God does not become, or evolve from, an I-It relation, because God, as the eternal Thou, is eternally present as actual Being.

 Martin Buber contends that the I-Thou relation between the individual and God is a universal relation which is the foundation for all other relations. If the individual has a real I-Thou relation with God, then the individual must have a real I-Thou relation with the world. If the individual has a real I-Thou relation with God, then the individual’s actions in the world must be guided by that I-Thou relation. Thus, the philosophy of personal dialogue may be an instructive method of ethical inquiry and of defining the nature of personal responsibility.

The eternal Thou is not an object of experience, and is not an object of thought. The eternal Thou is not something which can be investigated or examined. The eternal Thou is not a knowable object. However, the eternal Thou can be known as the absolute Person who gives unity to all being.

I-It involves distancing. Differences are accentuated, the uniqueness of “I” emphasized. Here the “I” is separated from the self it encounters. Buber believed that there had been a movement from relation to separation, that there was a growing crisis of being or existence in ‘modern’ society. He believed that the relationship between individuals and their selves (see selfhood), between people, and people and creation was increasingly that of I-It. As a result it was becoming more and more difficult to encounter God. 

.Buber’s writings about what he discovered by living life in relation to others have profoundly influenced all of us who are interested in interpersonal communication.

Martin Buber whole thinking is concerned with the relationship, with the intimacy between” I” and “THOU”. Martin Buber is one of the most profound thinkers of our age. But remember, profundity is not all; whatever the depth it is only the other end of the superficial , the shallow. Real depth comes when one is neither shallow nor deep , when both shallowness and deepness disappear. Martin Buber has come upon something very profound, he says that life’s truth lies in the interrelationship between “I” and “thou “.

An atheist, a materialist , believes that only matter is; there is nothing than matter; there is nothing other than matter. His world does not consist of “I” and “thou”, it consists  of “I “There is no place for . “thou”  .because for “thou” is necessary that another person possess a soul. So an atheist’s world is confined to the relationship between  “I” and ‘ it’ . “That is why it is such a complex world, where on the one hand it he calls himself “I” and as such invests himself with a soul, he deprive others of this I-ness and reduces them into things “its “ .A MATERIALIST REDUCES EVERY MAN AND EVERYTHING INTO MATTER. If I believe there is no soul then for me you are nothing more than matter.How then can I call you “ thou “? Because only an alive man , alive with a soul, can be addressed as  “ thou “.

Therefore Martin Buber says a theist’s world is comprised of “ I “ and “”thou “ not “I “ and “It “.It is a theist’s world only when my “I “ addresses the world as “thou “.but even a theist is ,in his depth, nothing more than an atheist, because he divides the world into “ I “ and “thou “.Thus it looks as Buber,s world is the world of a dualistic theist. But it is not true , because dualistic theism has no meaning. In a sense, an atheist is non-dualist because he says that only matter is, So is a spiritualist who says that only one is, and it is spirit. And I think it is easier to attain to oneness , nondualism from the hypothesis that there is only one ; it is very difficult to come to monism from the hypothesis that there are two-“I “ and “ thou “.

In this sense, a dualist like Buber may find himself in a more difficult  situation than an atheist. Materialist is a non-dualist, a monist, and if someday he comes to know that there is  no matter, that only soul is then he will have no difficulty in being transformed. EVEN AS AN ATHIEST  HE  ACCEPTS THE ONENESS  OF EXISTENCE ; He does not accept the dualistic interpretation. But a dualist’s problem is more difficult. He believes that existence is dual ; it is matter and soul together. And such it would be extremely difficult for him to attain to non-dualism, to the oneness of all existence.

Buber is a dualist. He holds that the world is comprised of “I “ and “thou “.His dualism is human, because he cancels “ it “ and give it the status of “thou”  with a soul. But it remains a dualistic approach nonetheless. There can  only a relationship between “I “ and “thou “;there can not be  unity ,a oneness between them. However deep and intimate the relationship, there is always some distance between “I “ and “thou “,even if the relationship is really intimate-the very fact of relatedness devides the two ,they are not one but two.

Love, as a relation between I and Thou, is a subject-to-subject relation. Buber claims that love is not a relation of subject-to-object. In the I-Thou relation, subjects do not perceive each other as objects, but perceive each other’s unity of being. Love is an I-Thou relation in which subjects share this unity of being. Love is also a relation in which I and Thou share a sense of caring, respect, commitment, and responsibility

Remember a relationship is a double-edged sword which cuts both ways; it unites and divides at the same time. If you and I are related, it means we divided as well.. The point of meeting is also the point of parting. A bridge joins the two banks of a river and divides them too. In fact, whatever joins two persons or things is bound to divide them; it is inescapable, there is no way to avoid it. Two persons can relate with each other, but they cannot be one; relationship is not unity.

Even in a love relationship, the division between the lovers remains. And as long as there is a division, a separateness, love cannot be fulfilled. That is whyall lovers are dissatisfied, discontented. There are two kinds of discontent in love. You are discontented if you do not find your lover and you are discontented even if you find one.

When you find someone you love and who loves you, you realize that in spite of the meeting, ,a distance remains and nothing can be done to mitigate the pain of this separateness. So very often a person who does not find his love is not as miserable as one who finds it.One who does not find can still hope to find, but the one who has found is robbed of all hope—his discontent and despair are much deeper. Infact, no meeting can be real , because two make a meeting, and as long as there are two entities, unity or oneness is impossible.

Martin Buber speaks of a deep relationship between “ I “ and “ thou “ and it is very humanistic. And in a world which is becoming increasingly materialistic in every way, this concept seems  very religious., but it seems that Buber is just attempting a compromise; If “ I “ and” thou “ can not unite they can at least  maintain some relationship .Religion stands for the non-dual ,indivisible and integrated oneness of existence .

References-

Cohen, A. (1983) The Educational Philosophy of Martin Buber, Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson Press.

Freedman, M. (1983) Martin Buber’s Life and Work, Vols. I, II and III, New York: E. P. Dutton.

Lacourt, P. (1970) God is Silence, translation J. Kay, London.

Schaeder, G. (1973) The Hebrew Humanism of Martin Buber, Wayne State University Press, Transl. N. J. Jacobs.

Schmidt, G. G. (1996) Martin Buber’s Formative Years. From German culture to Jewish renewal, 1897 – 1909, University of Alabama Press. 184 pages.

Tillich, P. (1967) ‘Martin Buber’, in J. Bowden and J. Pichmond (eds.), A Reader in Contemporary Theology, London: SCM Press.

Vermes, P. (1980) Buber on God and the Perfect Man, Atlanta: Scholars Press.

Ward, C. (1991) Influences. Voices of creative dissent, Bideford: Green Books.  

 Aknowledgement

To Mrs. Sudha Rani Maheshwari, for being the scribe of this article.



Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A(Socio, Phil) B.Se. M. Ed, Ph.D

Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

 

Out of the blue, she found herself wondering if Kierkegaard had mentioned giant bunny hallucinations in his analysis of existential anxiety and life’s absurdity

 

Atheistic existentialism…states that if God does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept and that this being is man, or, as Heidegger says, human reality. What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means that, first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself.

– Existentialism and Humanism(Jean-Paul Sartre / 1905-1980 / Existentialism and Humanism /1945)

Sartre, Kierkegaard and other existentialists believe that existence precedes essence.  Perhaps never before had such a concept been put forth.  Down the ages the contrary belief has been held.  Almost every thought system, every philosophy believes that essence precedes existence.  So it is good to understand it in depth.

It was Plato who said that the surrounding world is a world of essences – ideas, values, ideals, thought etc. and the purpose of life is to discover these essences. Essences are already there and they precede existence. Even existence is an embodiment of an essence – the self, which is a part of an universal essence – the self.

All  schools of philosophy that were born  before Sartre and other existentialists believes that the seed precedes the tree. And it seems logical  and  natural . But Sartre says  tree  precedes the seed. By and large, every  thought-system says that essence precedes existence;  without essence or soul , existence is not possible. But Sartre   asserts that existence comes first and essence later .HE BELIEVES THAT IN THE ABSENCE OF EXISTENCE ESSENCE CAN NOT BE MANIFESTED.

Existentialism is a revolt against any kind of determinism and an affirmation of the free nature of man. They affirm that existence is prior to essence that man is fundamentally free to create his essences. As Sartre himself explains his concept to us, “what is meant here by saying that, ‘existence precedes  essence ? “It means that, first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and only afterwards defines himself. It mean, as the existentialist sees him is indefinable; it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterwards will be something and he himself will have made what he will be…”

Jean Paul Sartre’s classic formulation of existentialism–that “existence precedes essence”–means that there exists no universal, inborn human nature. We are born and exist, and then we ourselves freely determine our essence. Some philosophers commonly associated with the existentialist tradition never fully adopted the “existence precedes essence” principle.

Sartre maintains that man can never comprehend the true meaning of his own existence unless he presupposes there is no God. For when we being with the premise that there is God, then we must conclude that man possesses an essence which precedes personal existence

Thus Sartre rejects classical atheism which suppresses the idea of God but retains the notion that men possess a common, rational mature or essence. This position, Sartre believes, is inconsistent with atheism because it retains all the significant elements of theism and refuses to accept the individual responsibility for self-creation which all true atheism implies.

The very question of the nature of man is a meaningless one for the existentialist. In both of the sections above it was emphasized that man has no “nature” as such but rather that he must create his own essence. Man is nothing more than what he makes or himself. Perhaps, then, it might be more accurate to speak of certain characteristics, state, or conditions which man creates for himself or into which he is thrown

In fact, all philosophical quarrels are childish. Even the biggest philosophical battles have been fought over a problem which can be summed up in a child’s question: “Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?” It is really around this small question that all the great battles between philosophers have taken place. Those who raise this question are stupid, and those answering it are  even more stupid.

But those who know will say the chicken and egg are not two. What is an egg but a chicken in the making? And what is a chicken but an egg fulfilled, come to its fullness? Egg and chicken hide each other in themselves. The question of who precedes who is the meaningful is egg and chicken are two separate things. The truth is that they are the same. Or we can say that they are the two ways of looking at the same thing. Or they are two different phases, tow states of manifestation of the same thing. Similarly, seed and tree and not separate. Neither are light and dark. Nor are  birth and death. They are two of looking at the same thing. Maybe, because we don’t know how to see a thing rightly, we see it in fragments.

We can now say that at some unseen level of their existence the egg and the chicken happen simultaneously, but it is not visible with our necked eyes.

It is something in our way of looking at things that the egg is seen first and the chicken afterwards. If we have the eyes to look the things in their totality it is not difficult to see them simultaneously. But the way we are, we will say it is something impossible; it defies our reason and logic.

Through the example of quanta physics,  an insight can be develop through scientific logic.

Within the field of physics, energy and matter, natural forces are studied and observed. During the early 1900s, this field began to look at the subatomic particles that make up the physical world. Up until this time, energy was considered to be made up of waves that followed a flow

This theory takes into account the interrelationships that exist between waves and particles–or energy and matter.

Further exploration into the quantum realm reveals the same concepts are at work when solid materials are examined. The electrons contained within a material’s atomic structure were once considered particle-type entities that maintained their form as they circled an atom’s nucleus. A closer examination revealed the electron to be moving in and out of a wave-particle state as it circled the nucleus. These waves and particles appear according to a certain frequency and wavelength that vary according to the type of element being studied . When observed at this level, particles and waves are found to be interchangeable forms that transition on a continual basis

There is a great difference between a particle and a wave. It they called the electron a particle, it could not be a wave. If they called it a wave, it can not be a particle. Quanta means that which is both a particle and a wave simultaneously. This  quanta is a mysterious phenomenon; it is both a particle and a wave, an egg and chicken together..

Actually existence and essence are two ways of looking at the same thing. Because of our limited perception, we divide the same thing into fragments. In fact, essence is existence and existence is essence. They are not two separate phenomenons. So it is wrong to say that essence has existence or that God has existence, because then it means God and existence are separate. No, if we understand it rightly we should say ; God is existence,

It is utterly wrong to say that God exists. We say a flower exists because tomorrow this flower cease to exist. But will God ever cease to exist? If so then he is not God. One who will never cease to exist cannot be said to have existence We can say that we exist , because we will certainly cease to exist  somewhere in future .But it is an error of language to say that God exists, because he is ever and ever and ever. It is utterly wrong to say God exists; the right way to say it is: God is existence.

But language always put us in difficulty; it is in the very nature of language, In fact , even the phrase ; God is existence; is erroneous, because the word ; is ; between God and existence creates a schism and confusion. It on one side is God and on the other is existence and the two are related by the word; is; This word really divide God into two – he and existence – which is again wrong. So even the word ;is; has to go . We had better say God means is-ness, God, means being, God means existence. The word ‘is ‘is also a repetition; it is repetition to say God is. ; Is; means God ; is-ness is God or God is  is-ness. That which is, is God. But language has its own limitations; it is created for the dualistic world.

Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth….Through words and concepts we shall never reach beyond the wall off relations, to some sort of fabulous primal ground of things, -Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of The Greeks .p.83

This is the reason that one who knows wants to keep away from the trap of words and remains completely silent. The moment he says something, he at once separates himself from what he says; what he says becomes an object. But, in fact, he who says and what he says are one. Under the circumstances, there is no better way than to keep quiet.

I do not understand! I understand nothing! I cannot understand nor do I want to understand! I want to believe! To Believe! – The Devil and the Good Lord, act 1, Gallimard (1951).

References

Ayer, A. J. (1990). The Meaning of Life and Other Essays. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh .(1985) Krishna,The Man and His Philosophy ,Rajneesh Foundation International. Oregon.  U.S.A

Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of Meaning. Cambridge, Massachusetts & London: Harvard University Press.

Cooper, D. E. (1999). Existentialism: A reconstruction. (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.

Gilliat, P. (1996). Spiritual education and public policy 1944-1994. In R. Best (Ed.), Education, spirituality and the whole child (pp. 161-172). London: Cassell.

Heidegger, M. (1996). Being and Time (Joan Stambaugh, Trans.). Albany: State University of New York Press.

Acknowledgement

To Mr. Vineet Maheshwari for being a scribe of this article.

 

Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A(Socio, Phil) B.Se. M. Ed, Ph.D

Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

The term Morality covers the vast arena of human conduct that examines our interaction with other human beings. Morality touches every aspect of our life, every moment of our life.

Moral or ethical behavior is generally taken to mean behavior that conforms to some code of conduct which is held to be authoritative in matters of right and wrong. The set of principles that define what is right and wrong being called ‘morality’ or ‘ethics’

The topic of morality makes many people uncomfortable.  Many people believe morality is a private issue and that no one has a right to make a judgment about someone else’s moral decision.

What is morality? Most people pay only cursory attention to the somewhat intimidating philosophical concept called Morality. They erroneously presume that a precise examination of morality is the domain of philosophers.

Most people acquire a somewhat vague sense of morality, a sense of how we should or should not behave, from their parents, their social group, their political environment or their religious affiliation. They believe that they have a sufficiently clear understanding of morality to meet their needs and they do not try to analyze a subject that is seemingly fraught with contradictions.

Personal morality defines and distinguishes among right and wrong intentions, motivations or actions, as these have been learned, engendered, or otherwise developed within each individual

 

Morality for some is a set of rules.  For others, morality is based upon a set of principles.  Some accept morality as the teachings of parents or society.  Others believe every individual is capable of determining morality.  Some believe that what is relevant to the discussion of morals is that you can believe what you want until it affects someone else.  Others believe that morality includes private ideas that may affect only the individual holding the idea

Most persons have acquired the basic tenets of their morality from others and have accepted them as true and valid, without further questioning.

A clear understanding of morality is of extreme importance to all of our interactions with our environment and thus, to our attainment of happiness.

The more precisely our thought processes and our emotions are aligned with our environment, the more advanced will be our ability to avoid painful conflicts with reality and the more enhanced will be our ability to achieve happiness. We will not find much happiness if we do not understand the basic nature of man and the ebb and flow of human interactions as governed by human morality. If we do not fully understand what morality is and how morality affects human beings, we will encounter many conflicts in life

Human beings are constantly interacting with two principal spheres of their environment. The inanimate world, such as trees, houses, cars, is distinctly separate from the domain of human interactions. Morality does not concern itself with our inanimate environment.

Neither does morality refer to the interaction between man and other animals. Human beings have no social contracts with other animals. Other animals, aside from fellow human beings, exist solely at our pleasure. .

Morality concerns itself exclusively with interactions among human beings. The human concept of morality has been the subject of controversy and has provided fuel for many heated philosophical discourses during the entire range of human history. Morality provides the rules by which people love each other, fight with each other and interact with each other in every conceivable way. Many people have killed each other, fighting over the alleged superiority of their respective morality, without a clear understanding of what they were fighting for. What is morality? In order to address this question, we must develop a clear insigt into the concept of morality.

We frequently obfuscate the term morality by the clever use of words. Morality becomes somewhat more transparent if we replace the emotion-laden word morality with the emotionally neutral synonym.

In this context, it becomes clear that our discussion of Morality revolves around the manner in which persons conduct themselves in relation to other people. Morality pertains to concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, good and bad, moral and immoral. Our morality tells us how to act under specific circumstances.

In an attempt to consider all relevant issues associated with the all-pervasive impact of morality on human affairs, it is essential to view this subject from several different perspectives. The basic issue that divides all discussions of morality revolves around the question, is morality an evolutionary human concept? Is Morality a relative and subjective concept, or is morality imposed on humans as an absolute, universal and objective imperative

PERSPECTIVES OF MORALITY

A.  Philosophical perspective of morality

Disagreements between atheists and theists in the realm of morality occur across the three major divisions of moral philosophy: descriptive ethics, normative ethics, and metaethics. Each is important and must be approached in differently,  Atheists and theists may find broad agreement in the other categories, but there is far less agreement or common ground here. This mirrors the debate between atheists and theists over the proper grounding for beliefs generally and the conflict between faith and reason.

Descriptive Ethics:

Descriptive ethics involves describing how people behave and/or the moral standards they claim to follow. Descriptive ethics incorporates research from anthropology, psychology, sociology and history to understand beliefs about moral norms. Atheists who compare what religious theists say about moral behavior or the basis for morality against how they actually behave need to understand how to properly describe both their ethical beliefs and their actions. To defend their own moral philosophy, atheists need to know how to accurately explain the nature of their moral standards as well as the moral choices they make.

Normative Ethics:

Normative ethics involves creating or evaluating moral standards, so is an attempt to figure out what people should do or whether current moral behavior is reasonable. Traditionally, most moral philosophy has involved normative ethics — few philosophers haven’t tried their hand at explaining what they think people should do and why. Religious, theistic normative ethics often rely on the commands of an alleged god; for atheists, normative ethics can have a variety of sources. Debates between the two thus frequently revolve around what the best basis for morality is as much as what the proper moral behavior should be.

An important feature of morality is that it serves as a guide for people’s actions. Because of this, it is necessary to point out that moral judgments are made about those actions which involve choice. It is only when people have possible alternatives to their actions that we conclude those actions are either morally good or morally bad. This has important implications in debates between atheists and theists because if the existence of a god is incompatible with the existence of free will, then none of us have any real choice in what we do and, therefore, cannot be held morally accountable for our actions.

Essentially, it seems likely that morality can be placed into two major categories.  The major difference in these two types of morality is their origin.  From either an inductive origin or a deductive origin different modes of morality are formed.  Thus philosophically  the purpose of morality  appear to have  three answers :

1.             To lead people to behave in accordance with the wishes of a divine authority.

2.             To lead people to behave in a way that benefits society at large rather than their own narrow self interest.

3.             To lead people to control their desires and aversions in the belief that this will result in a more satisfying, rewarding and contented way of life.

B. THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE OF MORALITY

“Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

George Washington (1732-1799) First President of the USA.

Religion clearly plays an important part in many people’s moral decisions, and for those with a religious faith moral behavior is often seen as being necessary, both as an act of obedience to God’s wishes and as a requirement for spiritual development

Before developing insight into the religious perspective of morality, it will be illuminating to comprehend the basic moral concepts in different religions.

Buddhism: Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful. (Udana-Varga 5:18)

The Buddhist view is that moral behavior flows naturally from mastering one’s ego and desires and cultivating loving kindness (metta) and compassion (karuna).

Judaism: What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow man. That is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary. (Talmud, Shabbat 31a)

Hinduism: This is the sum of duty: Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you. (Mahabharata 5:1517)

Ethics, which concerns itself with the study of conduct, is derived, in Hinduism, from certain spiritual concepts; it forms the steel-frame foundation of the spiritual life. Though right conduct is generally considered to belong to legalistic ethics, it has a spiritual value as well. . Hindu ethics prescribes the disciplines for a spiritual life, which are to be observed consciously or unconsciously as long as man lives.

Hindu ethics is mainly subjective or personal, its purpose being to eliminate such mental impurities as greed and egoism, for the ultimate attainment of the highest good.. Objective ethics, which deals with social welfare, has also been considered by Hindu thinkers. It is based upon the Hindu conception of Dharma, or duty, related to a man’s position in society and his stage in life. Objective ethics, according to the Hindu view, is a means to an end, its purpose being to help the members of society to rid themselves of self-centredness, cruelty, greed, and other vices, and thus to create an environment helpful to the pursuit of the highest good, which transcends society. Hinduism further speaks of certain universal ethical principles which apply to all human beings irrespective of their position in society or stage in life.

Among the social virtues are included ‘hospitality, courtesy, and duties to wife, children, and grandchildren.’ In one of the Upanishads, a king, in answer to a question by a Rishi regarding the state of affairs in his country, says: “In my kingdom there is no thief, no miser, no drunkard, no man without an altar in his home, no ignorant person, no adulterer, much less an adulteress.”

Confucianism: Surely it is the maxim of loving kindness: Do not unto others what you would not have them do to you. (Analects 15:23)

Zoroastrianism: That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not god for itself.

The principle of morality concerns only the man, and is formulated as follows:

1.  During the Gumezishn, when dualism and the dynamic upheaval is the order of the day, only the man is given the freedom to choose between the good and evil.

2. Moreover, the Wise Lord cannot succeed in his cosmic duel with the Angra Mainyu unless he is helped by the mortals (Mard).

3. If man is righteous through good deeds, words, and thoughts, then the Wise Lord will vanquish the Angra Mainyu.

4.  However, if man is wicked, then the Angra mainyu will succeed.

5.  There is, therefore, no predestination. The man is the master of his own destiny (Luther), and the only instrument to ensure the ultimate victory of good over evil. This will destroy, once and for all, the pandemonium and, therefore, everything evil; it will bring about the end of time; the dynamic world would become once more an everlasting static one.

6.  This glorious moment is called by the prophet ” Frashe-Kerei” (making wonderful).

Christianity: The Christian faith actually uses two complimentary rules: The ineffective Biblical Golden Rule which proclaims: “All things whatsoever ye would that man should do to you, do ye even so to them; for this is the law and the prophets” (Matt 7:12). However, most of the Ten Commandments are framed in negatives, as all moral codes must be in order to be effective.

Islam: No one is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself. (Sunnah) This moral code is also a version of the positive Golden Rule. It is very ineffective and ambiguous. Muslims, being normal human beings, follow it very selectively. This code relies on the unrealistic assumption that your brother has precisely the same needs and wants as you do.

Religious persons try to find the answer to moral right or wrong, evil and goodness, in the bible or other religious texts. Where do these scriptures come from? In reviewing the origins of many different religions, it appears that scholars attribute religious texts to mysterious or mystical writers in the distant past. The element of time has shrouded all such scriptures in extreme mystery or factual haziness.

There is never any clear, objective, historical chain that might clarify and establish the authenticity of the authorship of religious texts. These writings have been copied innumerable times and have become less and less focused with each copying process. As a result, religious writings have become so ambiguous and nebulous that it is often necessary to substantially re-interpret or re-phrase their meaning.

The translation of these texts from archaic languages provides ample room for misconstructions or misinterpretations. Such translations and interpretations will vary with each translator and interpreter, depending on their personal beliefs, opinions, preconceived notions and their comprehension of the original language.

As the result of this multi-faceted, compounded obfuscation, there are many conflicting interpretations dealing with the concept of good and evil in the Bible, the Koran, the Torah or any of the multitudes of other scriptures.

All of these texts proclaim to be the only definitive arbiter of morality. Each religious authority implies that a person acts moral if he follows its prescriptions or its dogma. Christians have no moral problem eating pork; Muslims and Jews have strict moral prohibitions against eating pork.

How can we determine which of the many contradictory revelations described in different religious writings are correct so that we may all act in a moral manner? Since all of these scriptures contradict each other, how can we know which one is really the true one and which ones are false?

Is the Torah correct or is the New Testament more truthful? How can we reconcile the Bible with the Koran? Do all of the one billion Muslims follow an erroneous doctrine or does the Koran more truthfully reflect the nature of true morality than the Bible?

Religious person face the difficult task of selecting a suitable morality because their search is made more complicated by the large number of religious sects, cults, churches and denominations from which he can choose. He faces constant contradictions because each of these belief systems claims to be the only true and authoritative source of morality. These contradictory claims appear to be absurd because they can obviously not all be correct

One of the universal contradictions in the theological approach to morality involves a dilemma posed by all religions. What is the relationship of good and evil to a benevolent and omnipotent god?

Regardless of the ambivalent and unreliable nature of religious texts setting forth the moral teachings of a particular religion, the ultimate source for the moral code imbedded in a religion always rests in a god or gods. A god is the central, authoritative and controlling power that is the backbone of all religions. By definition, all religions must have an omnipotent god, a supreme being and creator of the universe. This god must be specific to a particular religion. Different religions cannot have the same god.

Thus, all religions derive their morality from the authority of the god they worship, usually through an intermediary in the nature of a messenger or affiliate, such as Jesus or Mohammed or Joseph Smith.

A system of morality that relies on the existence of gods or godlike beings is irrational because no god or godlike beings have ever manifested themselves in an objective manner to human beings. There is no evidence whatsoever that a god exists or has ever existed, anywhere, at any time. In fact, all objective evidence available to man precludes and contradicts the existence of a god or gods.

Thus, an attempt to seek morality as a derivative of non-existing gods is difficult to justify. In all religions, faith and fairytales replace and supersede factual evidence. The faith-based acceptance of a theological doctrine of morality reflects merely illusions or delusions: Faith is necessary only for the acceptance as true of a statement that objective evidence has already proven false. Faith is only necessary if religious dogma is in direct conflict with Objective Reality.

No matter which one of the many religious text we might adapt as the basis for our own morality, we are making such choice based on our individual preferences and convictions. We are choosing our own morality from a variety of religious moralities. Again, we choose our own morality. We are not considering if we should follow an absolute, universal, objective religious morality, but we are considering which one of many relative, subjective morality systems we should select from a smorgasbord of religious morality systems.

Thus, by making a personal choice from many contradictory religious morality systems, we end up with a personal, relative morality, rather than an absolute, objective, universal morality.

C.  THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE OF MORALITY

All living organisms, including bacteria, fish and human beings have developed from inanimate matter through the process of evolution. Evolution, and life itself, is due to the ability of a complex chemical compound to sense a threat to its continued existence and to react upon such impulse with an attempt to negate any incipient threat. We know this instinctive, automatic interaction with the environment as the survival instinct.

This instinct must be present in all living things and is the basic emotion from which all other emotions evolved. Over eons of time, man has enhanced the survival instinct imbedded in his genes, by developing complex emotions, such as love, hatred, hunger, despair, fear, joy and many other powerful feelings. The nerve centers dealing with these ancient emotions are physically located in the deepest layers of the human brain, particularly in our brain stem, our so-called reptilian brain.

Deeply imbedded instincts and emotions govern all animal behavior, including human behavior. However, during the past two million years of hominoid development, man has developed a new mental faculty that sets him aside from other animals. This ability superimposes rational, logical thought processes on our primitive emotions.

Our rational mind applies a thin veneer of logical thought processes over the raw emotions that govern our interaction with our environment. Emotions control the preponderance of basic human needs and behavior patterns. Emotions determine when we are hungry, when we feel sexually aroused, when we are afraid, when we feel a sense of well-being.

The evolution of our newly developed rational mind greatly facilitated interaction among human beings. Our instincts and our emotions still initiate the human sex drive but our rational mind imposes beneficial restrictions as to the circumstances under which the sex drive can be satisfied.

Unlike dogs, humans do not meet their emotional sex drive by copulating at street corners. Instead, humans go through a rational mating process that enhances the survival of the offspring that often results from sexual activity. Thus, rationality greatly enhances the survival and perpetuation of rational, intellectual beings.

Our rational mind has similarly enhanced many other human interactions, such as our ability to influence or to manipulate other human beings: We have learned how to cause other people to do what we would like them to do. All of human existence is a constant process of manipulating or influencing other persons with different degrees of subtlety. The degree of subtleness usually depends on the respective intelligence of the manipulator and the manipulated person.

The arena of morality is one of the primary spheres where human beings utilize their rational mind to manipulate other human beings. We may refer to another person as evil in order to prod him to mend his ways and to modify his behavior to our liking. We may also refer to another person as evil if we wish to prevent other persons from emulating him or associating with him.

We frequently obfuscate the term morality by the clever use of words. Morality becomes somewhat more transparent if we replace the emotion-laden word morality with the emotionally neutral synonym

D. A BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE OF MORALITY

Some evolutionary psychologists have argued that human morality originated from evolutionary processes. An innate tendency to develop a sense of right and wrong helps an individual to survive and reproduce in a species with complex social interactions. Selected behaviors, seen in abstraction as moral codes, are seen to be common to all human cultures, and reflect, in their development, similarities to natural selection and these aspects of morality can be seen in as the basis of some religious doctrine. From this, some also argue that there may be a simple Darwinian explanation for the existence of religion: that, regardless of the truth of religious beliefs, religion tends to encourage behavior beneficial to the species, as a code of morality tends to encourage communality, and communality tends to assist survival.

Morality is the product of the evolutionary development of man and society. Morality is always relative and never absolute. Within the framework of our society, we chose our own, personal code of moral conduct

Our self-proclaimed moral authorities do not consider animals capable of or subject to morality. The Law of Evolution clearly establishes that man is only another animal, although man has evolved a more highly developed brain structure than other animals.

Why do we talk about morality when we talk about Homo sapiens but why do we not refer to morality when we talk about other species of animals? If we consider it immoral for human beings to torture other animals, why do we not condemn a cat for playing with a mouse before eating it or discarding it?

Why do we morally approve of the fact that man kills and eats other animals, but we condemn the mistreatment of animals as immoral or unlawful? If there were a choice, it is obvious that an animal would rather subsist in a cage than be killed and eaten. As human beings, would we not prefer to be enslaved or mistreated than to be killed? Slaves do not commit suicide, even under the most horrible conditions. Therefore, slavery or torture is universally preferable to death.

Clearly, our various preordained teachings about morality make a nebulous moral distinction between the animal called man and other animals. We are saying, morality only applies to selected animals instead of having morality apply to all forms of life.

If there are extraterrestrial life forms or beings, are they subject to human morality or can they make the same distinction that we make between man and other animals. Would an extraterrestrial thus be morally justified in eating us or in killing humans for sport? An affirmative answer seems to be the logical consequence of our view of morality as we apply it to humans and other animals.

These situations demonstrate that, from a biological perspective, morality is a relative, synthetic concept, solely for the convenience of man, rather than a universal and absolute dictum.

E. A SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE OF MORALITY

Morality does not apply to individual human beings when they are alone. A shipwrecked survivor on an island need not concern himself with morality because it does not apply to him in his isolation. This illustration emphasizes the fact that gods or extraterrestrials did not imbed the concept of morality in individual human beings but that morality is applicable to an individual only when he interacts with other persons.

Morality is a societal phenomenon and, since man creates societies, all morality is a concept created by man. It follows, that morality is relative to our environment and does not apply to all persons at all times. Morality can only be relative and subjective; instead of objective, universal and absolute.

A wide variety of morality-systems exists among men, depending on where they live. Eskimos, Europeans, Atheists, Americans, Devil Worshippers, Iranians, Chinese. Brazilians, Indians. All of these societies have voluntarily adopted unique and different morality systems, and all of these systems contradict each other in many aspects.

The specific conduct that one group may consider immoral or forbidden, may be tolerated, praised or even venerated in another societal group.

Morality is nothing but a code of conduct arrived at by mutually consenting persons who consider such code of conduct, such morality, to be in their own best self-interest.

All successful societies have based their specific code of conduct, their morality, on the innate human drive to always act in what each individual considers to be in his own best self-interest.

F. THE LEGAL PERSPECTIVE OF MORALITY

Ronald D Dworkin once said that “Moral principles is the foundation of law”

Not all codes of conduct are moral. There are etiquettes, regulations, laws and religious observances, all of which seek to order our lives, but breaches of which might not be thought morally wrong. Wearing pyjamas to a business meeting might be a breach of etiquette, accidentally overstaying on a parking meter may be unlawful, but neither of these acts would normally be thought to be immoral

It is important to differentiate between morality and related terms such as ethics and legality. We may apply the term ethics synonymously with morality but this word may also refer to laws or to quasi-laws, such as the ethics of a particular profession. Some varieties of ethics may convey merely an informative context, such as the lack of ethics of a politician. Other designations of ethics have the force of laws. The ethics of the legal profession, if flaunted, can result in disbarment.

The term ethics can be ambiguous and it is best to avoid it in the context of moral issues. We should also avoid any potential confusion of morality with actual laws, either common laws or codified laws.

Morality and laws are definitely not synonymous: A specific act may be moral, valued and lawful in one country, while the identical act may be punishable by death in another country. This disparity in moral values is evident in many conflicts arising from divergent religions. Salman Rushdie discovered this truth when he published the “Satanic Verses”.

A society of persons, in the sociological context, is the conglomeration of individual human beings who have come together for their mutual protection, welfare or communality of interests. All such individuals search for individual happiness in their own way, as is the nature of all individuals.

One person may wish to pursue a tranquil lifestyle; another person may be intent on accumulating wealth. In order to function smoothly, society must apply common denominators, common values that large numbers of people share, in order to achieve order, safety and predictability for all of its members. The emotional and physical well being of a society and its members depends on a common code of conduct, a common morality among all of its members.

It is not necessary for all members of a society to subscribe to the identical morality. However, it is important for all individuals to be aware of any differences in conduct that may exist among various groups. This consensus enables individuals to cope with, not only other individual members of their own society, but also with groups of non-conforming persons beyond their own society.

In the interest of the internal cohesion of a society, it is imperative that all individuals and groups within the society adhere to fundamental rules of moral conduct, which we will call the Three Natural Laws of Morality. We call these laws natural, not because they are immutable Laws of Nature, but to indicate that these laws have evolved from the innate nature of man.

The most fundamental law of the Three Natural Laws of Morality is the dictum: All persons within a society must refrain from killing or injure other members of the society, except in self-defense. This law is so simple and self-explanatory that all societies throughout human history have adopted it and vigorously enforce it.  These laws are concerned with the right of all members of society to be free from enslavement and to hold property.

Since there is an infinite number of potential human activities and desires, we cannot establish a Code of Conduct, a morality system, by making a list of human activities that society permits or tolerates. Conversely, a list of human-caused events that no person likes to experience is very short.

Therefore, an effective moral code must define only those activities that are not permissible, that society prohibits under threat of punishment. Furthermore, it is imperative that any societal system of morality stipulates unequivocally that any act, which is not expressly prohibited, is permitted: Anything that is not prohibited is permitted. This statement is a crucial ingredient of any effectual legal system.

The human survival instinct is the primary and most powerful human emotion. The promulgation of prohibited acts must take cognizance of those events that no person wants to be subject to, such as to be killed. These basic prohibitions are the backbone of the laws of any society and may be verbal or they may be embodied in a formal, written code of laws. Disregard of these basic moral laws will invoke drastic punishment and anyone breaking these laws must take into account the potential consequence of breaking them.

The fundamental prohibitions, without which no society can function, cover those events that no human being wants to happen to him:

It is prohibited to kill or injure another human being, except in self-defense *

It is prohibited to enslave another human being by physically restraining him

It is prohibited to use the property of another person without his express consent*

*Note: Self Defense includes the protection of members of the immediate Survival Circle:

Preemptive Strikes are never permitted: They destroy the fabric of society.

Property: Things subject to the legal and physical control of a person

All activities that are not expressly prohibited are permitted.

MORAL CONUNDRUMS

It may be enlightening to apply some of the above aspects of morality to actual life situations. All of the depicted events confirm the relative nature of all morality:

A terrorist for one country is a heroic freedom fighter for another country. The American Government referred to Osama Bin Laden as an evil terrorist. Simultaneously, hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world acclaimed him as a hero. Women even named their children after Osama Bin Laden. Is Bin Laden a sainted hero, or is he an evil terrorist?

American guerillas under Francis Marion were famous for killing many British soldiers from ambush. They were freedom fighters. Iraqi insurgents killed many American conquerors from ambush, why were they terrorists?

A study of the relative nature of morality poses interesting questions. Penetrating questions regarding morality make many people uncomfortable or angry because they often interfere with their personal view of morality or history. It is often painful to come to terms with the relative nature of the human concept we call morality.

We fare best if we avoid the use of morally judgmental words like good or evil. Precision in language suggests the use of descriptive words without moral connotations, such as unproductive, counterproductive, inefficient, efficient, lawless, dangerous and murderous. The list of words depends on our vocabulary.

In a war, is it an evil act to kill civilians intentionally? Who is more evil, George Bush or Sadam Hussein? Who of the two killed more women and children? It is questionable if Bush or Hussein killed more civilians. Are they both evil? Are the Americans who supported the Gulf War, evil? They made it possible for Bush to kill civilians. An analysis of the morality of historical events can be very enlightening with regard to the hidden motivations of the perpetrators, the participants and the alleged victims.

Stalin killed 30 million of his fellow Russian civilians in the 1930’s. Hitler killed five or six million Jews. Churchill, Roosevelt and Truman intentionally burned alive about 2 million German and Japanese women and children as part of their terror-bombing campaigns. What is the definition of a mass-murderer? Is it always the victor, who writes the history of a war and who defines war crimes? Are some of these mass-murderers more evil than others are or, are all mass-murderers evil?

All morality and all moral codes can only be relative and subjective. Human beings devise moral judgments, such as good and evil, right and wrong, either with the objective of furthering law and order within societies, or with the objective of manipulating other human beings.

Manipulations, under the pretext of morality, may represent an attempt to reap personal gain by altering the self-perception or self-esteem of another person. Manipulations of moral issues may also be attempts to gain from the distortion of reality, as other persons perceive it.

Although morality is relative, human societies have established codes of conduct, codes of morality, to meet their particular needs for manipulations. Because of such manipulations, members of a particular society may loose the ability to recognize the relative nature of the morality system imbedded in their society.

Instead, all members of that particular society will consider the moral dictums of their society as applicable to all of humanity and the universe and they will then proceed to impose their standards on other human beings.

This moral stance has been very common throughout human history. We can readily discern this distortion of values at the beginning of the third millennium, as societies with a predominant Judeo/Christian orientation try to impose their morality on Islamic societies.

All societies impose moral standards on its members. Societies cannot exist without a cohesive code of conduct, without a system of morality. In past centuries, the religious hierarchy governing a society commonly promulgated the rules and dogmas of what they consider moral conduct.

In order to validate their own moral system, members of a particular society frequently insist that their moral standards apply not only to their society, but also to all human beings. These persons conveniently overlook the fact that their universal moral standard would need to have its origin in innate human characteristics, imbedded in human genes. There would have to be a gene for morality. Of course, there is no such gene

Alternately, mysterious or mystical beings or exterior forces might have imbedded such moral qualities in human beings. There is no objective evidence whatsoever of such genetically imposed morality or the imposition of moral standards by mystical beings, such as gods. Nobody has ever provided any evidence of such mystical beings. Babies are not born with a moral code imbedded in them. Morality is always relative to our society.

Freedom is the opportunity to do what we please, subject only to the restrictions that we voluntarily impose on ourselves. We accept such moral restriction in order to enhance those objectives that we consider being in our own best self-interest. If all other members of our society adhere to the same set of moral rules, we mutually benefit from this enhancement to our security.

Most people consider slavery one of the great evils of humanity. Were Thomas Jefferson and George Washington evil? They both sold and maintained hundreds of slaves on their estates throughout their lifetimes, while simultaneously proclaiming the equality of all men. Were they evil hypocrites? If we oppose the evil of slavery, why do we build marble monuments to men who enslaved other men for their personal gain?

In setting up rules of conduct we must have a means of determining precisely what conduct is mutually beneficial and therefore permissible, and what conduct is not beneficial and therefore prohibited.

Adherence to a Code of Conduct, a Codified Morality, requires that we give up some freedom of action in return for the enhancement of our security and thus, our survival. Without this framework of morality, governing the conduct among members of a particular society, there cannot be an orderly conduct of human affairs. Any society lacking compulsory rules governing the conduct, the morals, of its members will quickly collapse into chaos.

Three billion years of evolution have imbued all life on earth with one basic motivation: All living organisms, including all human beings, always act in what they consider to be in their best self-interest. This unalterable motivation is the source for all other emotions of all living organisms. This motive is also the precursor of the Negative Golden Rule, which first appears in the writings of the nascent periods of major religions and civilizations.

The Biblical Golden Rule states: “Do unto others what you want done to yourself” The Negative Golden Rule states: “Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself”. This nugget of wisdom goes back thousands of years. It appears in old Judaic teachings as well as in the ancient Tibetan Buddhist aphorism: “Let all hear this moral maxim and having heard it, keep it well: Whatever is not pleasing to yourself, do not that into others”.

The actual Golden Rule, as embedded in the New Testament of the Bible, is adverse to human emotional and evolutionary motivation. Unfortunately, St. Matthew was not familiar with human nature when he said in (7-12) “Therefor all things whatsoever ye would that men do to you, do ye even so to them. For this is the law and the prophets”.

The same psychological principles that apply to the moral code of a society, also apply to individual members of a society who merely wish to enhance their coexistence with other members of their family or society. All human beings have an infinite number of wants, needs and desires. It is impossible to know and understand all of the wants and likes of another person.

Therefore, it is impossible and presumptive for a person to decide what may be desirable for another person, merely as a projection of his own desires. A projection of our own likes would rely on the unrealistic assumption that others have the same needs and desires as we do. We know from everyday observations that other people do not have the same likes as we do and, since we can merely surmise what others may like, we will almost certainly create dismay more often than happiness.

If we are determined to make somebody happy by providing gifts, why not give such gifts to ourselves and make ourselves happy? Nobody else in the whole world knows better than we do, precisely, what it is that we enjoy. If every person does what brings him happiness, instead of engaging in the speculative attempt to make other persons happy, it follows logically that all people will be happy.

The whole world would be brimming with happy persons, if only people would stop trying to make other people happy. It is much easier and much more rewarding to focus all of our efforts and resources on making ourselves happy.

It is sometimes difficult to gain insights into our own needs and to make ourselves happy by acting upon our needs. Most people find it easier and more convenient to try to find happiness in their futile attempt to make other people happy, regardless of the true preferences of those other people.

The moral stance of most religions further aggravates this situation. Religious organizations benefit from encouraging the indiscriminate giving of gifts. Religions proclaim, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). Churches are frequently the beneficiaries of guilt-ridden adherents. These persons try to find happiness not only in their current life. By giving to their church, they try to open the door to a happier life after their death. They believe that their Church holds the key to this door.

Moral codes differ over time and between places, and there are many cases of things being considered moral by one society and immoral by another. In the Roman Empire and medieval Japan suicide was often considered an honourable act if carried out in response to personal failure or to protect the interests of one’s family, but many of the world’s religions condemn it as immoral.

Due to the relative nature of all morality, the list of moral conundrums and enigmas is endless

This wide divergence of moral codes has led to a view that all morality is relative, that there is no universal (‘normative’) ideal standard which can be used to judge what is better or worse. The morally good is whatever a culture or group decides it is.

Bertrand Russell rightly comments :

“We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side; one which we preach but do not practice, and another which we practice but seldom preach.”

Refrences :

• Dr Oric Basirov :    old Iranian Religion & Zoroastrian Reforms
• Definition of Morality http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-definitionMorality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality
• Relativity and Concept of Morality http://www.u.arizona.edu/~gillm/Relativity.pdf
• Steve A. Smith, Satisfaction of Interest and the concept of Morality
• Immanuel Kant,Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, Published by the Echo Library
• S R Sharma,Morality In Indian Education, Cosmo Publications Div.of
• Smilansky, Saul,10 Moral Paradoxes, Blackwell Publishers (Published: 5/2007)
• Robinson, The Golden Legend Of India, Rupa & Company
• Colors of Truth : Religion, Self and Emotions : Perspectives of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Islam, Sikhism and Contemporary Psychology, Sonali Bhatt ,  Vedamsbooks
• Hinduism in the Context of Manusmriti, Vedas, and Bhagavad Gita, R. Ramachandran, Vitasta , Vedam Books

·         Morality: Absolute or Relative? A multifaceted approach to Morality Walter E. Requadt
www.rationality.net/morality.htm

Acknowledgements

Dr Suraksha Bansal, Ph.D for being the scribe of this article.

 

Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A(Socio, Phil) B.Se. M. Ed, Ph.D

Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

 

Naturalism is a concept that firmly believes that ultimate reality lies in the nature of the matter. Matter is considered to be supreme and mind is the functioning of the brain that is made up of matter. The whole universe is governed by laws of nature and they are changeable. It’s through our sense that we are able to get the real knowledge. The senses works like real gateways of knowledge and exploration is the method that helps in studying nature

Running through most of the l literature today one finds a dominant thread.  The central theme of this thread is expressed in such terms as “continuous progress,” “the perfectibility of mankind,” and “perpetual betterment through scientific advances.” The underlying philosophy of this outlook is signified by the term “naturalism .As a philosophy of life (perhaps the oldest one) it maintains that nature is the only reality worthy of the serious consideration of man, and that man himself is the apex of this reality.

 

Basic Concept of Naturalism  The meaning of the name naturalism is strongly implied in the word itself. It is the view point which regards the world of nature as the all in all of reality . Naturalism, commonly known as materialism, is a philosophical paradigm whereby everything can be explained in terms of natural causes. Physical matter is the only reality — everything can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena. Naturalism, by definition, excludes any Supernatural Agent or activity. Thus, naturalism is atheism. Naturalism’s exclusion of God necessitates moral relativism. Naturalism is an artistic movement advocating realistic description: in art or literature, a movement or school advocating factual or realistic description of life, including its less pleasant aspects. In literature,

Naturalism has strong belief in religious truth from nature: a belief that all religious truth is derived from nature and natural causes, and not from revelation.

The  doctrine rejecting spiritual explanations of world: a system of thought that rejects all spiritual and supernatural explanations of the world and holds that science is the sole basis of what can be known

Ancient period

Naturalism appears to have originated in early Greek philosophy. The earliest pre -socratic philosophers, such as Thales, Anaxagoras or most especially Democritus, were labeled by their peers and successors “the physikoi” physikos, meaning “natural philosopher,” borrowing on the word physis, meaning “nature”) because they sought to explain everything by reference to natural causes alone, often distinctly excluding any role for gods, spirits or magic in the creation or operation of the world..

As for as the history of philosophy is concerned, naturalism is the oldest philosophy. The earliest figures with whom our histories of philosophy commonly begin were naturalists.

Thales The father of western philosophy ( 640 B.C.- 550 B.C.)  was a mathematician, astronomer, and businessman.

For Thales, . “The principle of all things is water; all comes from water, and to water all returns, the principle of things is water, or moisture, which should not be considered exclusively in a materialistic and empirical sense. Indeed it is considered that which has neither beginning nor end – an active, living, divine force. It seems that Thales was induced to proffer water as the first principle by the observation that all living things are sustained by moisture and perish without it.

Anaximander ( 611 B.C.- 547 B.C.)  was probably a disciple of Thales  According to him” The principle of all things is infinite atmosphere, which has a perpetual vitality of its own, produces all things, and governs all things.:”

For Anaximander, the first principle of all things is the “indeterminate” – apeiron. There are no historical data to enlighten us as to what Anaximander may have meant by the “indeterminate”; perhaps it was the Chaos or Space of which physicists speak today .All things originate from the Unlimited, because movement causes within that mysterious element certain quakes or shocks which in turn bring about a separation of the qualities contained in the Unlimited.

The first animals were fish, which sprang from the original humidity of the earth. Fish came to shore, lost their scales, assumed another form and thus gave origin to the various species of animals. Man thus traces his origin from the animals. Because of this, Anaximander has come to be considered the first evolutionist

Anaximenes (end of the sixth century B.C., -524 B.C). He was probably a disciple of Anaximander and he composed a treatise of unknown title.According to Anaximenes the first principle from which everything is generated is air. Air, through the two opposite processes of condensation and rarefaction, which are due to heat and cold, has generated fire, wind, clouds, water, heaven and earth.He reduces the multiplicity of nature to a single principle, animated and divine, which would be the reason for all empirical becoming.

But the ancient roots of naturalism have much fuller body in four other men who have been called atomists, only two of whom were contemporaries. Leucippus and Democritus,. Epicurus (341-270 b.c.), more than a century later, whose carrier was largely subsequent to Aristotle’s was devoted to the ideas of Democritus. And Lucretius (96-55 b.c.), though not even a Greek and born almost two and one half centuries after Epicurus, was a great admirer of Epicurus. All four are called atomists because they conceived of reality as fundamentally a matter of atoms moving in space.

Leucippus and Democritus explained the Nature by  two simple things: empty space and atoms. This empty space they considered to be the same as nothing, nonexistence, or nonbeing. About the substance filling empty space, giving us all the things making up the world, they reasoned that it must be constituted by small indivisible units piled one upon another. These hypothetical units they called atoms. Theoretically, at least, division of parts into smaller parts can go on indefinitely. There may  be some infinitesimal unit which is elemental and cannot be divided further. This, because of its imputed indivisibility, they called an atom.

Little was said about empty space, nor could there be; it was a void in which atoms could move. The atoms, however, were considered to be of an infinite variety of sizes, shapes, and weights. Everything in Nature as we now behold it is the result of atoms moving through space. When the atoms come together in clusters, things come into being; when they move apart, objects dissolve and fall into nonexistence. Even mind and soul are made up of atoms, evolving and dissolving in the same manner. But mind and soul are made of fine, smooth atoms which are perfectly round, similar to the atoms of which fire was supposedly composed. Mind and soul, like fire, have great mobility; and their atoms therefore must be very active.

The motion of atoms in space be described as random, in the sense that there is movement in all kinds of different directions. Such random movement resulted in atoms colliding with one another, thence forming clusters and accumulating the mass to constitute such objects as rocks, trees, and planets.

From this elemental ground, Nature as we now know it has evolved Worlds whirled together as the atoms formed large masses in vast swirling motions. Vegetation grew, animals developed, and man arose, his speech and institutions resulting with the same kind of necessity as produced minerals and vegetation. .

Epicurus does go definitely beyond Democritus in considering the knowledge problem .he was at least aware that if objects are made of atoms, and the mind and soul are also made of atoms, some explanation must be found, harmonizing with the atom-space description of reality, making somewhat clear how the impression of an object gets into the mind of the man who beholds it. His solution was that objects give off a kind of film of atoms which is transmitted to the mind through the sense, anther yields a king of photographic replica of the object. This replica is not a copy pure and simple, for it is constituted by atoms given off by the object itself. It is a valid image of the object, in which the very qualities of the object are  retained, having been transmitted to the mind by the particles given off by the object.

Thomas Hobbes Like the ancient naturalists, Hobbes conceived Nature as an affair of bodies moving in space.. A body he defined as a thing which exists in and of itself and has no dependence what so ever upon our though about it. Bodies exist outside of us and do not depend on any relation to us. By space Hobbes meant a place outside of the mind which can be filled by an object There yet remains one other item in Hobbes’ description of Nature, namely, motion; and motion he defined as :the privation of one place and the acquisition of another.” It is that way of behaving seen in Nature by which a body can first occupy one spot, then another, and still another, and so on. Motion is as fundamental as rest; it is not caused by something other than motion; it is its own cause. If a body is in motion, some body which is at rest will have to impeded its movement in order for it to come to rest. Contrariwise, when a body is at rest it does not get into motion unless it is pushed by another body endeavoring to get into its place.

Combining these definitions, we have Nature described by Hobbes as an aggregate of things existing outside of our minds, and therefore evidencing the reality of a space beyond us, but also an aggregate of things moving from one place to another in that space which is beyond us.

Jean Jacques Rousseau in his A Discourse on Inequality, an account of the historical development of the human race, distinguished between “natural man” (man as formed by nature) and “social man” (man as shaped by society). He argued that good education should develop the nature of man. Yet Rousseau found that mankind has not one nature but several: man originally lived in a “pure state of nature” but was altered by changes beyond control and took on a different nature; this nature, in turn, was changed as man became social. The creation of the arts and sciences caused man to become “less pure,” more artificial, and egoistic, and man’s egoistic nature prevents him from regaining the simplicity of original human nature. Rousseau is pessimistic, almost fatalistic, about changing the nature of modern man.

According to Francis Bacon, man would be able to explain all the processes in nature if he could acquire full insight into the hidden structure and the secret workings of matter. Bacon’s conception of structures in nature, functioning according to its own working method, concentrates on the question of how natural order is produced, namely by the interplay of matter and motion. In De Principiis atque Originibus, his materialistic stance with regard to his conception of natural law becomes evident. The Summary Law of Nature is a virtus (matter-cum-motion) or power in accordance with matter theory, or “the force implanted by God in these first particles, form the multiplication thereof of all the variety of things proceeds and is made up” . Similarly, in De Sapientia Veterum he attributes to this force an “appetite or instinct of primal matter; or to speak more plainly, the natural motion of the atom; which is indeed the original and unique force that constitutes and fashions all things out of matter” . Suffice it to say here that Bacon, who did not reject mathematics in science, was influenced by the early mathematical version of chemistry developed in the 16^th century, so that the term “instinct” must be seen as a keyword for his theory of nature Bacon’s theory of active or even vivid force in matter accounts for what he calls Cupid in De Principiis atque Originibus . Bacon’s ideas concerning the quid facti of reality presuppose the distinction “between understanding how things are made up and of what they consist, …. and by what force and in what manner they come together, and how they are transformed” . This is the point in his work where it becomes obvious that he tries to develop an explanatory pattern in which his theory of matter, and thus his atomism, are related to his cosmology, magic, and alchemy.

Middle ages to modernity

With the rise and dominance of Christianity and the decline of secular philosophy in the West naturalism became heretical and eventually illegal, thus making it difficult to document the history of naturalism in the Middle Ages. When the Renaissance reintroduced numerous lost treatises by Greek and Roman natural philosophers, many of the ideas and concepts of naturalism were picked up again, contributing to a new Scientific Revolution that would greatly advance the study and understanding of nature Then a few intellectuals publicly renewed the case for  naturalism, like Baron d’Holbach in the 18th century.

In this period,  naturalism finally acquired a distinct name, materialism, which became the only category of metaphysical naturalism widely defended until the 20th century, when advances in physics as well as philosophy made the original premise of materialism untenable

Today, noteworthy proponents are too numerous to count, but prominent defenders of naturalism as a complete worldview include Mario Bunge ,Richard Carrier ,  Daniel Dennett , and David Mill.

Certain extreme varieties of politicized naturalism have arisen in the West, most notably Marxism in the 19th century and Objectivism  in the 20th century.

FORMS OF NATURALISM

Naturalism in the broad sense has been maintained in diverse forms by Aristotle, the Cynics, the Stoics, Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, Thomas Hobbes, Auguste Comte, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, William James, John Dewey, and Alfred North Whitehead, philosophers who differ widely on specific questions. Some, like Comte and Nietzsche, were professed atheists, while others accepted a god in pantheistic terms. Aristotle, James, and Dewey all attempted to explain phenomena in terms of biological processes of perception; Spinoza and the idealists tended to emphasize metaphysics; later thinkers of all schools have placed emphasis on unifying the scientific viewpoint with an all-encompassing reality. This amalgamation of science and an overall explanation of the universe in naturalistic terms is the source of much of contemporary philosophic thought

THEORITICAL RATIONALE OF NATURALISM

METAPHYSICAL POSITION

Concept of God

Many naturalists do not use the term God , but surprisingly there are Naturalists who talk about God ,and although they do not advance classical arguments for His existence they go on to give some definition of His nature.

According toWiesman, the renowned Naturalist God is within Nature .He is not all nature nor more than  nature .He is that particular structure of nature in nature which is sufficiently limited to be described as making possible the realization of value and as the foundation of all values

God is that process within Nature which is a kind of open door to all who would grow in richness of life and at the same time God is the stable ground in Nature which sustains and constitute the values by which life is enriched ,Because of this, God, the structure of value itself, is the greatest of all values, the most worthy in human experience to which man must adjust if he is to grow in the possession and enjoyment of value.

The Concept of Self

Tow important aspects of the query about man are whether he has a soul and whether he is good or bad. For Naturalists they are not much interested in the soul of man and his moral conditions. According to Naturalism, man is a child of nature; yet, nevertheless, he is a most significant child .For in the evolutionary processes that have been at work in the universe so far, man is on the very crest of the wave. He has capacities and has achieved heights common to no other child of Nature True enough, he has selfhood of a sort; but there is such a remarkable gamut of refinement in the achievements in selfhood of different men that it is difficult to say what it is that men possess in common as a self, or, traditionally as a soul .The self seems to be an organization of experiencing .Such a description is quite far from those which state that man is made in the image of God. The human self is seen by naturalism as an offshoot of Nature, and not as springing from beyond Nature.

Concept of Universe

The family of naturalists becomes exceedingly large, especially in modern times, when one the label of naturalism to denote ay parson who denies (implicitly or explicitly) the existence of anything above nature, or those who disregard the supernatural. Thus Rousseau, who was a deist, fits into this category , even though he believed that God had created the world. Spencer, the agnostic, falls into the same class since he believed that even if the supernatural realm existed man could know nothing about it

EPISTEMOLOGICAL POSITION

Naturalists highlight the value of scientific knowledge the scientific knowledge acquiring through specific observation, accumulation and generalization. They also lay emphasis on the empirical and experimental knowledge. Naturalists also lay stress on sensory training as senses are the gateways to learning

The naturalist rejected the role that intellect or reason play in the knowing process and put forth the claim that the only valid from of knowing process and put forth the claim that he only valid form of knowledge is that derived from experience. For the early naturalists, “experience” chiefly meant that mode of acquiring knowledge based on direct contact of the organism with the physical world thought the senses. The more sophisticated naturalists included the refined modes of knowing used by the empirical sciences. Both, however, imply a denial of reason as a source of knowledge. In practice, both types of experience are evident in naturalistic theory.

Naturalism does not necessarily claim that phenomena or hypotheses commonly labeled as supernatural do not exist or are wrong, but insists that all phenomena and hypotheses can be studied by the same methods and therefore anything considered supernatural is either nonexistent or not inherently different from natural phenomena or hypotheses

THE LOGIC OF NATURLISM

There are two general observations to be made concerning the logic of naturalism which will help to describe the setting for its more specific discussion. The first is that, most generally considered, formal deductive logic such as was mentioned briefly in the introduction has a minor place in the methods of logic approved by naturalism.

The second observation is that is great variation in the methods of logic employed by naturalists. The logic of the earlier and more naïve naturalism is the simple material logic of induction. In modern naturalism, greater place is given to deductive logic because of the confidence placed in the independence of relations by realists.

This narrows the task of the present discussion to a consideration of simple induction as the logic of naturalism. Of course, the kind of naturalism referred to is more especially the earlier naturalism such as inspired the first steps in the development of scientific method. In its most elementary form, induction is the accumulation of accurate and detailed information by direct relation with Nature. Whereas the formal logic of education deals wit the forms by which propositions’ are dependably tied together; induction is the collection of the material on which propositions must be based if theory are to be true propositions. Syllogisms may do well in relating propositions correctly; but their value depends almost entirely upon the material truth of their propositions. Does the major premise describe a fact about a class of individuals in Nature. And does the minor premise assert what is fact concerning one individual in that class? One the answer to these questions the whole value of the syllogism rests. How could men ever have come to the conclusion. “All men are mortal” without having observed a great number of people and having recognized that their lives were all terminated by death? And to do this is to follow inductive method.

Simple induction involve careful observation of Nature, accurate description of what is observed, and caution in formulating generalizations. The way in which to get acquainted with Nature as it actually is, is to go directly to Nature and see what is there. This means painstaking observation in which there is a rigorous piety ruing out everything but smile recognition of facts. In order to accumulate facts for later use in large messes, or in groups or classes, or for use by other than those making the direct observations, it is necessary to record what is observed, and to do it carefully and accurately, representing the facts only as they are. True enough one of the chief values of observing and collecting facts is the discovery of generalizations about Nature; but in this stage of induction there must be much caution. It is so easy for wishful thinking or preconceived ideas to influence the handling of the facts. Francis Bacon, the father of inductive method, even advised caution about hypotheses; he regarded them as “anticipations of Nature”. Here too, in forming conclusions, as well as in observing the facts and recording them, there must be rigorous natural piety. There must be careful and patient accumulation of the facts until the conclusion almost seems to suggest itself as the only generalization to which the facts could possibly point.

AXIOLOGICAL POSITION

Naturalism believes that “A refined moral life is just as much a work of Nature as much a work of Nature as is a coarse and vulgar immortality. You are wrong in implying, first of all, that a natural life is an immoral life. And furthermore; your religious experience that a power from beyond yourself is sustaining you in doing good is a natural phenomenon. Nature is versatile. This experience is no doubt a valid one. You are being sustained in living a good life. For it is in harmony with Nature, when it is inclusively, to do well and avoid evil”

To naturalists, values arise from the human beings’ interaction with the environment .Instincts. Drives and impulses need to be expressed rather than repressed. According to them, there is no absolute good or evil in the world. Values of life are created by the human needs

It was against this essential unity of all values with the supernatural that the naturalists revolted. For them, all real values are rooted in nature. There is no need to call upon the supernatural realm to “sanctify” values since nature possesses its own inherent values, is its own good!

The first principle has to do with the general character of values. It is that Nature is the kind of order that just simply possesses values. According to naturalism, the values which people commonly enjoy, as well as others yet to be possessed, are resident in Nature; they do not transcend Nature. Stated from a frame of reference other than the natural versus the supernatural source of values, this principle also means that Nature has a qualitative aspect as well as an existence aspect; and when we experience the qualitative elements in Nature, we are experiencing its values. Nature is not just a machine in the sense that it merely functions, and also in the sense that man, being a part of Nature, therefore functions within it as a cog in a machine. Nature is more than a machine in that there are overtones of enjoyment and suffering which go along with this functioning; and these overtones are qualitative, they are values which are enjoyed or endured, as the case may be, concomitantly as the functioning goes on.

The second principle has to do with the way in which the most desirable values are to be realized, according to naturalism. This principle is that the way in which an individual can get the most value out of life is to harmonize his life as closely as possible with Nature. This principle was foremost, it will be recalled, in the thinking of Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius. All of these men shared In common the desire to find a life which was as free as possible from pain and suffering. And accordingly they tried to harmonize their lives as closely as possible with the rhythms of Nature, because in this harmony they felt was their greatest peace.

Ethical Value – Ethics of naturalism is hedonistic, as long as this characterization is accompanied by the caution that in the conscious though at least of many naturalists the highest good is the most highly refined and abiding pleasure.

Pleasure is easily discerned as the highest good in the thought of the ancient naturalists. It is not hard to feel what they must have felt when they desired quietude and freedom from struggle, pain and fear as the predominant inner possessions continuing uninterrupted through as many of their experiences as possible. Most of us share their desire for this same peasce and happiness, although we may not make it such a supreme value hat we will sacrifice all other possible values for it. The important thing to note about this highest moral good, first of all, is a thing to be enjoyed; it is some thing, more on the feeling side of experience, which the person who possesses it undergoes and enjoys as contentment or satisfaction. To a person so framing his conception of moral values, the pleasure ethics of naturalism may seem weak and selfish, because private enjoyment, even though it may be in no way contrary to convention, is placed prior to all other considerations.

While the highest good for naturalists is pleasure, it is important to make clear, in the second place, that many naturalists think of pleasure in the most refined and inoffensive forms when they speak of its as their highest good. George Santayana has written pointedly on this subject in a chapter entitled, “Moral Adequacy of Naturalism.” In answer to the common assumption that naturalism necessarily means coarseness in morality, he says: “Why is naturalism supposed to be favorable to the lower sides of human nature? Are not the higher sides just as natural ?……. I think that pure reason in the naturalist may attain, without subterfuge, all the spiritual insights which supernaturalism goes so far out of the way to inspire.”

This may raise questions about the evil which is the counterpart of this highest good. How is it conceived by naturalism? Since it is something to be avoided, if not escaped, as we manage our daily life and action, evil would seem to be a quality or kind of experience which is inflicted upon us. Much less is it a quality of events in which we ourselves participate or of which we are causes. Evil is a fact of Nature. There just is evil in the cosmos, in the same way that there simply is good in it. The ways by which we may seek the good, this quiescent freedom  from anguish, are considerably more restricted than the ways of living by which  evil overtakes us. Otherwise it would not be necessary to give the attention we do to the quest for the good life. There are all kinds of ways in which accidents can happen; but there is virtually only one way, certainly not more than a few ways, of being careful to avoid the accidents of life and possess the unbroken life of peace. And this is rarely possible.

The moral accidents of Nature have commonly been given the name physical evil. They are many and well known: earthquake, famine, hurricane, disease, pestilence, etc. Clearly, these are evils of Nature; man  has nothing to do with producing them, although he may tolerate conditions which if corrected, would lessen some of their effects. There are also evils, more clearly moral, which men inflict on one another. War with its inflicted death and destruction is a notable example.

What need to be noted generally about these various evils, as conceived by naturalism, is that they are qualities and events of the natural order and not the work of some evil force beyond Nature. Evil, though unwanted, is a natural phenomenon.

To summarize, we may say then that for naturalism pleasure is the highest good and therefore the basis of marl judgments; but this pleasure is very subtle and highly refined for many naturalists. To the extent that a person is consciously naturalistic in his ethics, he will make his day-by-day moral choices so as to claim for himself the fullest measure of abiding pleasure and satisfaction. The evil which it is hoped will be avoided in this way is purely a product of Nature. It is largely inflicted evil, toward which the attitude of individual man is rightly passive avoidance. Although men in the mass certainly inflict large-scale social evils on other men, it is not necessarily so that individual man unwittingly becomes a cause of evil to his neighbor and to himself.

Aesthetic Value – The principles enunciated above regarding the ethical values of naturalism hold also for aesthetic values. They, too, are rooted in nature and do not depend on any source outside nature for their validation. Nature itself provides the criterion for beauty there is no need to call upon universal principles such as unity and proportion to judge beauty. A landscape is beautiful simply because it is nature. A painting is beautiful because it reflects nature, not because it elevates man above nature.

For naturalists, as could be surmised, aesthetic experience and the values it yields are both purely natural in character and do not involve any spiritual or supernatural factors. First of all, according to naturalism, the subject who is engaged by aesthetic experience is a child of Nature. While it takes a high degree of development to yield the kind of complex nervous system which can communicate with words and other symbols, and retain meanings long enough to interrelate them in such a way as to yield aesthetic enjoyment of an object, yet that is what Nature has yielded in man. “A pattern of responses of high complexity of co-ordination is possible.” Vivas says, “because in the process of evolutionary development a nervous system, highly centralized, came into being.” Man, the subject who has aesthetic experiences, is a sentient organism developed by Nature, which is capable of centering his meanings in such a way as to experience aesthetic values. These values, therefore, do not transcend Nature; they are events in the experience of this highly developed organism which is the result alone of evolutionary processes at work in Nature.

There is also a minor sense in which aesthetic values are natural. This is that they are not superior values which only a few select people are capable of enjoying. They are values which touch areas where we all live; they are natural because they are “native in the ordinary experience of all men.”

Religious value- The religious life for naturalism is the kind of life which is so lived in the breach between present actual fact and future possible value as to replace circumstances which destroy value with circumstances which destroy value with circumstances which possess and conserve value. It is not possible, therefore, to enumerate or more specifically characterize some values and designate them as the religious values of naturalism. The chief religious value of naturalism is that aspect of Nature which makes it possible to realize values and which sustains values which are worth-while. Since all other possible values stem from this element in Nature, it is the most wrathful object that there is a greatest value above all others. The most significant life that can be lived is the life which is committed to the achieving of values in one’s own life and in the world. So that the prime imperative of a naturalistic religion is that its adherents ally themselves with the value-realizing force in Nature and help to bring into existence values which are not actual in the present.

Social Value –  Society is therefore considered less organic in naturalism than in pragmatism, as well as in idealism. It is an aspect or portion of Nature, not so much an organism that has rhythms and patterns which, while not contrary to or above Nature, are yet its won rhythms and patterns. Individual man is therefore considered as Nature’s offspring, not a child of society or a segment of society whose very being depends upon the social organism. Although dependent upon Nature, he stands on his own feet, more or less, as far as his relations to society are concerned. There are what might be called certain necessities which make it expedient for him to relate himself somewhat effectively socially; but these are not necessities arising from the operation of society as an organism, so much as they are accidents or exigencies to be avoided by working out some kind of social organization to correct them.

Rousseau’s naturalism rooted man in Nature rather than society. So much did he regard man as a child of Nature, as over against society, that he proposed in his Emile to keep Emile away from society until adolescences. In  his Social Contract he reveals how the problem of social organization is complicated by the importance of the freedom of man. Individual man, he contended, is not a man unless he is free; if he is in bondage, he is less than a man. Yet unbridled freedom is neither in harmony with his own welfare not the welfare of society. Evidently some social organization is needed, but one which preserves for man his freedom. This is a rather big order, but one which can be filled rather satisfactorily by democracy. For in democracy, although individual man sacrifices his own individual freedom by participation in the decisions which determine what the will of the state is to be.

It would seem that for naturalism social values are synthetic values which result from agreements in which individual men bind themselves together. They are secondary goods, not so much preferred as individual goods, which result indirectly as a consequence of the desire to avoid the grater evils which accompany anarchy. They are not organic values which are determined in part by the very nature of society and which would never be possessed by individual men separately, even if they did not need to be saved from conflict and chaos by some kind of social organization

EVALUATION OF NATURALISM

However, evaluations of naturalism from  other than the supernaturalism point of view are possible. The notion that man is innately good appears too optimistic in the light of events of the past century. One might argue that man has become less human as he becomes more advanced in his evolutionary development. The cruel wars, injustice toward minorities, and many of the ills of modern man hardly suggest such optimism.

From various points of view naturalistic epistemology is too limited. To reduce knowing to experience precludes many possibilities of knowing about ethical and aesthetic values and the realm of the metaphysical.

By designating experience as the sole source of knowledge naturalism limits itself to one methodology and to a narrow curriculum divested of much of the knowledge acquired by past generations as well as of the many artistic production of the human race.

References-

1. Bridgman PW, “On Scientific Method,” Reflections of a Physicist, 1955

2. Thilly Frank, “A History of Philosophy”, Central Publishing House, Allahabad. India.

3. Broundy, Harry S., Building a Philosophy of Education. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1961..

4. Butler, J. Donald, Four Philosophies and Their……… Education and Religion. New York : Harper & Row.

5.Herbart, J.F., The Science of Education. Boston : D.C.Heath & Company, 1902.

6.Locke, John Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1902. The basic statement of Locke’s epistemological position.

7.Wild, John, “Education and human Society : A Realistic View,” Modern Philosophies and Education. National Society for the study of Education, Fifty-fourth Yearbook, Part I. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1955.

 

Acknowledgement

Dr. Suraksha Bansal for being the scribe of this article.