Open AccessEducating to the collateral. For a pedagogy of the event
Author(s) -
Emanuele Isidori
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
metis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2240-9580
DOI - 10.30557/mt00177
Subject(s) - beauty , meaning (existential) , face (sociological concept) , value (mathematics) , collateral , aesthetics , event (particle physics) , life value , epistemology , sociology , psychology , philosophy , law , social science , political science , physics , quantum mechanics , machine learning , computer science
The starting point of the article will be an analysis of the adjective “collateral” (from the late Latin collateralis, understood not only as “something that is beside” but also as “what accompanies us”, “is related to”, “is connected to” and “has a common origin” – meanings that we also find in the Greek terms plaghios and synghenes –) conducted through a deconstructive approach. In times of deep crisis such as that caused by a planetary pandemic, the article highlights how to enjoy the fullness of life is necessary an aesthetic education conceived inseparably from the emotional and moral ones. Also, the article will show how the fruition of authentic beauty in human beings is intimately connected with death, time and eros. The latter represent conceptual categories intimately connected and “collateral” (because they have a common origin and always appear “side by side”), and in them lies the possibility of an authentic enjoyment of existence and its beauty. It is death that gives value to life, and it is always death that is at the very origin of the creation of all human values. The possibility of giving value and enjoying the whole meaning of life lies in the acceptance of the inevitability of time passing and the end of existence. However, it is not a matter of a simple Nietzschean amor fati, of the ability to develop resilient mental and psychological structures in the face of adversity and pain of life or to embrace the stereotyped pedagogies of death or resilience. This means to conceive a new pedagogical paradigm that overcomes the concept of “negative” as something deniable and depressing and prospect a new education to life. This education is always receptive and not passive in the face of a negative, painful, or adverse event. In the tyche prospected by the event, this education is capable of finding the “eidos” of an ethical, aesthetic, and moral education understood as openness to life and the endless possibility of the fruition of its beauty in everyday life. The essay will conclude with the definition of the pedagogical principles of what can be called the “collateral education” that can be found in the “pedagogy of the event” and its hermeneutic and deconstructive methodology applicable in different educational contexts.