Ecological Imagination in Moral Education, East and West

Abstract

Relational philosophies developed in classical American pragmatism and Kyoto School of modern Japanese philosophy suggest aims for greater responsiveness in moral education. To better guide education, we need to know how perception becomes relevant to our deliberations. Our deliberations enlist imagination of a specifically sort when imaginative structures we use to understand ecosystemic relationships shape our mental simulations and rehearsals. Enriched through cross-cultural dialogue, a finely aware imagination can make deliberations of coming generation more trustworthy.Moral education for 21st century must better enable youths to intelligently negotiate complex systems, from economic systems to ecosystems, in private choices and public policies. Educational institutions must do a better job helping youths to see beyond simple relations of consumers to commodities if we are to respond to a global economic milieu in which affluence sanctifies innocence of consumers - an innocence purchased by ignorance of social, environmental, and inter-species hazards posed by our business as usual behaviors. Contemporary moral perception requires supplementation and expansion beyond speck of self-interest around which most daily consumer concerns orbit.In order to clarify and develop aims for moral education that are relevant to global effects of our choices and policies, we need sustained, crosscultural philosophical dialogue that taps intellectual resources for reinvesting our social and natural interconnections while avoiding moralistic or authoritarian instruction that chokes growth. East Asian and American philosophical traditions, despite paucity of environmental virtues in current majority cultures of either, can help us to better perceive relational networks in which our finite lives are embedded. In first section of this paper explore relational thinking in classical American pragmatism and Kyoto School of modern Japanese philosophy to help develop, in second section, a concept of ecological imagination. In final section draw from foregoing to clarify appropriate aims for contemporary moral education if it is to contribute to greater responsiveness.1. Relational Imagination, East and WestAcknowledging upfront that comparative projects can tend toward selfcentered, monological, and appropriative modes of ... historical thinking,1 it will nonetheless be helpful to identify several general affinities between relational thinking of American pragmatism and many East Asian traditions, inasmuch as these affinities suggest aims for ecologically responsible moral education. To keep scope manageable, draw primarily on wisdom distilled from Kyoto School.Kyoto University is where modern Japanese philosophy began with Nishida Kitaro's (1870-1945) work reconstructing tools and concepts of western philosophy, such as idea of pre-conceptual pure experience in James, to contribute an eastern standpoint to western philosophy. Nishida built philosophy department at Kyoto University, secured an appointment for Tanabe Hajime, launched career of Watsuji Tetsuro, and attracted Nishitani Keiji among other students, continuing what became known as Kyoto School (Kyoto-gaku-ha) tradition.The Kyoto School philosophers were among first to bring a distinctively East Asian perspective to enlarging and challenging philosophical tradition that began in ancient Greece.4 They are part of an ongoing global philosophical dialogue that extends - or should extend - well beyond confines of Asian Studies or Japanese Studies. When say 'philosophy,' Nishitani wrote, I first of all mean Western philosophy, since this is most influential one. ... To think [the Buddhist] standpoint by way of philosophy is my basic concern.5A. The American pragmatist tradition joins many East Asian traditions in avoiding fallacies of reification that privilege agents over situations, static forms over processes, substantive over transitive - what James dubbed psychologist's fallacy, Dewey recognized as the philosophical (LW 1 : 27-29), and Whitehead labeled fallacy of misplaced concreteness. …