The Disciplines from the Greeks to Post-Modernity

University of Rhode Island DigitalCommons@URI Open Access Master's Theses 1996 The Curriculum of Consciousness: The Disciplines from the Greeks to Post-Modernity Daniel Novak University of Rhode Island Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/theses Recommended Citation Novak, Daniel, "The Curriculum of Consciousness: The Disciplines from the Greeks to Post-Modernity" (1996). Open Access Master's Theses. Paper 1536. https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/theses/1536 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@URI. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@URI. For more information, please contact [email protected]. {J/6,5 CL/11 llll13 THE CURRICULUM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: l 11t__ THE DISCIPLINES FROM THE GREEKS TO POST-MODERNITY BY DANIEL NOV AK A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN ADULT EDUCATION UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 1996 ABSTRACT "The Curriculumof Consciousness"can be seen as one way of demonstrating how the progression of consciousness creates history, how humankind 'comes to' or awakes to its own nature. It is the story of how consciousness determines history and, coordinately, how history determines consciousness. The focus of this historical-philosophicalstudy is how the 'disciplines'-the arts, sciences and cultural pursuits in the widest sense (ranging from religion to commerce, technology, medicine and politics) - have been configured according to distinct priorities in the different eras of Western Civilizationunder the aegis of certain particular enterprises, i.e. philosophy among the Greeks, theology in the Middle Ages, science and technology in the Modern World and the philosophies and yogas of consciousness and awareness in the late Twentieth Century. The dominant perception of an era creates that era and its 'world', includingits dominant disciplineor chief conduit to success and worthwhiledness. The disciplinesof knowledge are traced through three major historical modes of inquiry, or 'organons', that have directed research and have provided rationales and frameworks for methodology and practice in the West. These three Canons of Inquiry are shown in the matrix of their worldviews. Special attention is given to the roots, pioneers and significanceof the Third Organon, the 'perennialphilosophy'. 11 The above involves tracing the nature and evolution of the curricular constellations of 'higher' education and, in particular , versions of the 'liberal arts' , the premier preparation for leadership in various societies . Accordingly , the regimens and propaedeutics are sketched for the ideal personage of each era: the warrior. king, noble. philosopher , saint, gentleman, scientist, entrepreneur , revolutionary , professional specialist, whole person/ planet steward. In doing this culture history and synoptic analysis we wish to lay the foundation for 1) developing one model of awareness based education , with applications , 2) developing a philosophy/phenomenology of collective enterprise and curricular inquiry, and 3) showing the reciprocal connection between the 'inner curriculum' and global-planetary awareness. m To Gail, without whom, not lV TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: HISTORY AND CONSCIOUSNESS I THE ORGANON OF THE GREEKS AND THE CHRISTIAN ACCOMMODATION 6 II NOVUM ORGANUM: THE RISE OF MODERN SCIENCE AND THE INDUSTRIAL STATE 33 Transition : John Dewey 68 III TERTIUM ORGANUM: THE CURRICULUM OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE GLOBAL AGE 77 Five Roots of the Counter-Culture, New Age and the Perennial Philosophy 88 1. Romantic-Existentialist Reactions to Science 88 2. Developments in Twentieth Century Physics 93 3. Utopian Educators and the Advent of World Teachers: The New Humanities 96 4. Marxist Revolutionary Thought and German Critical Sociology 137 5. The Eastern Turn 144 IV SUMMARY AND CODA 169 V INTRODUCTION Humans have always engaged in a variety of pursuits in response to the call of their nature , the demands of circumstance and the needs of society: from hunting, fishing and farming, to engineering and medicine, to piloting ships and people, to plotting each other's demise, and to exploring the reasons , if any, for sheerly existing. Famous Nineteenth Century Swiss historian of the Renaissance Jacob Burchardt [1] noted three 'forces' motivationally and causally interacting in any civilization: Religion, Culture , and the State. American Marxian literary critic Kenneth Burke has noted seven "offices" or typical functions at work in any society whatsoever: governing , serving (providing for materially), defending, teaching , entertaining , curing and pontificating (ministering in terms of a 'beyond') [2]. How have the major human enterprises - and consequently their implementing or enabling disciplines - been orchestrated in Western civilization? What have been the guiding ideas that have defined their curricular development? What practices and discoveries have shaped 'higher' education in the West? How were the ensemble of societal activities seen in the Greek city-states , one of the founts of Western Civilization? How were the arts, sciences and disciplines assembled in Greece? In the Medieval Era? In the Modern World? In the Twentieth Century? How did the Greeks divide up their world? How did they codify their understanding? What view of the world did they express? How did their educational system, the transmission of the ideals of their culture, come about? What tensions were there in their educational practices as they attempted that transmission? What have been the enduring legacies of those tensions? The Greeks were the first to originate traditions and institutions that we consider characteristically Western. Our parliaments had their origin in the political deliberations in the Athenian agora . Our notion that a certain harmony of form constitutes beauty is a Greek notion. The very idea of 'science', of knowledge gained through sustained inquiry, was born in Greece . And, of course, friendship with fundamental ideas, the cultivation of affection for and the gravitation toward wisdom, the philia/sophos , as a collective pursuit , was born there. [3] We must start with the Greeks. There is the image of the Greeks as the innocent, halcyon, rational adolescents playing at the eastern end of the Mediterranean projected by the early classicists and Hellenophiles. But there is another image of Greece, first propounded by Nietzsche [4] - the darker Dionysiac side, the side of their character drenched in blood-lust, Viking-like conquests , internecine rivalry, orgiastic 'mysteries' and rituals, a febrile imagination filled with child-eating rituals, divine jealousies and horrible retributions . And, as in most cultures, ostracisms and executions of prophets , pioneers and the heterodox . Aristotle toward the end of his career had to hastily leave Athens so that the city 'would not sin twice against philosophy' (a reference to the execution of Socrates for 'impiety'). 2 We can't tell the full story of the Greeks here. [5] Nietzsche's brilliant insights into oo.wa culture evolves and rationalizes and justifies itself to itself, how it 'interprets' its own history and motives, [6] initiated major anthropological and philosophical reconsiderations of Greek culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.[7] One of Nietzsche's most insistent questions was how - given the background of a lying, self-serving and bellicose nature - the strange ideal of 'pure knowledge' arose. How was the culturalphenomenon ofrationality possible? Not only did the early 'viking' Greeks raid other civilizations (Minoan Crete) , fight with other city-empires (Troy) , stand in curious awe of others (Egypt), struggle for survival against other empires (Persia), but they struggled with their own internally discordant impulses. That precious and precarious balance known as 'rationality' was the result. There are many anthropologists ofreligion and mythologists (not in the Edith Hamilton sense of mythology as children's stories of the deeds of fabled gods and heroes, but in the Jungian sense of tracers of archetypes or motifs of consciousness), notably Mircea Eliade and Joseph Campbell, who tell the story of the phylogenic progression of consciousness (found in the matrix of groups), just as contemporary developmental psychologists - like Howard Gardner, Lawrence Kohlberg and William Perry- chart the 'maturation' of ontogenic (individual) consciousness.[8] Others use a daring mix of Freudian and behaviorist perspectives to map the cultural transition from the projected onto-the-'other' unconsciousness to the conflictual form of self-consciousness [9]. Still others , working this vein of 'vertical' psychology and cultural history, locate the origin of an enterprise like philosophy in a perennial impulse in human nature , the desire to just understand , and emphasize the ahistoricalgenesis of characteristically human pursuits. [10] In the last view, commerce, art, engineering, science, religion and politics are all 'perennial plants' of human nature, sprouting in all times and places. 3 The 'story of consciousness ' or the 'Consciousness-Story' is appropos because how we put the disciplines together depends heavily on what the significant levels of development are seen as. If the disciplines are avenues of development, what are the goals of a society that determine 'peak' development? Does a society always consciousl y determine them? If

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