In my last essay about teaching in an age of ideology, I proposed that one needs to illuminate to students about how to live according to the true, the beautiful, and the good. Now what exactly constitutes these goods has elicited an array of different responses from some of the most prominent thinkers as teachers in this past century. In this essay I would like to look briefly at one of them – Eric Voegelin – as accounted by John von Heyking in
Turning the soul to the good, the true and the beautiful ("periagoge") and noetic instead of ideological thinking are indeed worthwhile priorities in humanistic education, for developing a settled disposition of questioning inquiry rather than the memorization of doctrines -- no matter how admirable -- will develop flexibility and open mindedness in students that will better help them to adjust to changing circumstances in life. But does that preclude students and professors from reaching any definitive conclusions about the good, true and the beautiful in the classroom?
Teaching in an Age of Ideology: Eric Voegelin
Turning the soul to the good, the true and the beautiful ("periagoge") and noetic instead of ideological thinking are indeed worthwhile priorities in humanistic education, for developing a settled disposition of questioning inquiry rather than the memorization of doctrines -- no matter how admirable -- will develop flexibility and open mindedness in students that will better help them to adjust to changing circumstances in life. But does that preclude students and professors from reaching any definitive conclusions about the good, true and the beautiful in the classroom?