Theorising education from within pedagogical tact: a matter of singularity, attunement, and rules-as-not-rules

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article, we try to understand the phenomenon of pedagogical tact as a particular form of power to judge. For this, we rehearse Immanuel Kant’s idea of Urteilskraft as it first appears in the Critique of Pure Reason, where it is also rendered in educational terms. However, the power to apply rules works without any rule governing its operations. Similarly, Hannah Arendt, in her work on judging, points to the groundlessness of judging – or to its self-grounding. We follow these insights when rehearsing Johann F. Herbart account of pedagogical tact, in order to arrive at the question of how to theorise education from within the phenomenon of pedagogical tact. We take a clue from Herbart’s idea of range of thought (Gesichtkreis), a horizon within one can build one’s own understanding of education, one’s own sensibility towards each and every singular educational situation that imposes various demands on educators.