“When the Heart-Mind Is Lost…” Remarks on the Metaphysics of Educational Theory

Abstract

Roland Reichenbach is referring to the Confucian notion of heart-mind and uses it to make remarks on the metaphysics of educational theory. Metaphysical thinking is concerned with questions and hypotheses about (i) the nature of the mind and the world, (ii) the foundations of ethics and aesthetics, and/or (iii) the proper course of moral self-cultivation. When it is questioned whether intercultural discourse on philosophy of education pays off, one can assume that on the basis of respect and care for ideas at least mutual inspiration is possible. In English, the term “Neo-Confucianism” has only been used since the twentieth century. According to John Makeham, it is an “umbrella term” for a philosophical discourse associated with individual thinkers who have been classified as belonging to different schools or sub-traditions since the Song dynasties, particularly “Learning of the Way” (道學), “Studies of Moral Principles” (理學), and “Learning of the Mind and of the Heart” (心學; cf. Makeham J, Introduction. In: Dao companion to Neo-Confucian philosophy. Dordrecht and others: Springer, pp. ix–xliii, p. xiii, 2010). If the concept of the heart/mind is of interest in the following, this derives from the background insight that there is no homogenous “school of heart/mind” and that there does not need to be one. “Heart/mind” or “mind-and-heart” is the English translation for xin (心). The “heart/mind” is a metaphor, no more, no less. Therefore, it will often be argued vehemently by the apologists of a central idea that the case in hand should “merely” be a metaphor. Still, it is evident from a metaphorical viewpoint (e.g. Lakoff G, Johnson M, Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1980; Blumenberg H, Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M. (Original 1960), 1999) that the central cultural and scientific concepts cannot be more than metaphors. The chapter values the heuristic power of the Confucian idea and the metaphor of the heart/mind for today’s understanding of educational theory and practice.