Education as a deliberate activity and purposive process necessarily involves mediation, in the sense that the educator mediates between the child and the world. This can take different forms: the educator may function as a guide who initiates children into particular practices and domains and their modes of thinking and perceiving; or act as a filter, selecting what of the world the child encounters and how; or meet the child as representative of the adult world. I look at these types (...) of mediation at the hand of the work of John Dewey, Martin Buber, Hannah Arendt, and Richard Peters. The purpose of this paper is to explore the bearing that the mediating role of the educator—as interpreted by these authors—has on the role wonder may play in the educational process. I suggest that initiation highlights the familiarizing function of wonder, and is most readily associated with inquisitive wonder; representation draws attention to the defamiliarizing role of wonder, as well as to its world-affirming role; and selection foregrounds the distinction between momentary and dispositional wonder. (shrink)

In this article, on the basis of analysis of the classical definition of a miracle (from D.Hume to C.S.Lewis and R. Swinburne) and the nonclassical one (J.L. Marion and J.P.Manussakis), the phenomenological and the etymological aspects of a miracle are examined.Taking into consideration the historical development of the concept of a miracle, the author proves the connections between contemplation, miracle and novelty. They are necessary for the constituting of religious experience. Faith itself, in theological sense, is not determinative for religious (...) experience.It has sense only when it is integrated into contemplation. True religious experience is based on the art of contemplation which helps a human being to look with astonishment. The author argues that phenomenological approach to a miracle combined with the etymological analysis is a valuable method for the study of a miracle in the context of the history of philosophy. (shrink)

This thesis examines the impact of a new wonder that emerged through Iranians' travelling and observing educational progressions of advanced countries during the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. In order to analyze the wonder that affected Iran's modern philosophy of education, the study first discusses the predominant themes within Iran's educational philosophy from pre-Islamic times to Qajar's traditional elementary schools. The second part of the study focuses on examining the element of wonder in philosophy and its evolving form in cultures (...) and societies. Subsequently, the new wonder and the early signs of a modern philosophy of education for Iran are examined in the last part of the study. (shrink)

Although Arendt is widely cited as an early proponent of what is sometimes called “forward-looking” or “future-looking” responsibility, scholars have not dwelled at length on Arendt’s claim that th...

In this paper the author explores certain fulfilling personal experiences that he describes as the presencing of space, i.e. the way in which an individual’s spatial involvement may put him or her in contact with reality as a whole. These experiences are investigated from a phenomenological perspective, and the differences between them and other similar experiences, such as that of the sublime or topophilia, are highlighted. A neologism is introduced: topoaletheia to name a distinctive type of spatial experience. This concept (...) may enrich the discussion about our involvement with space in our built environments. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the importance of wonder in human flourishing and is orientated towards the dynamics between the two, but with an emphasis on how the former is important for illuminating the latter. It begins with a preliminary sketch of both wonder and human flourishing and subsequently moves on to highlight three aspects of human flourishing: 1) ‘Individuality’, 2) ‘Relations’ and 3) ‘The political’, and why these play to wonderment.

This paper explores the connection between wonder and meaning, in particular ‘the meaning of life’, a connection that, despite strong intrinsic connections between wonder and the (philosoph...

Recent discussions of “eco-anxiety” have brought attention to feelings of hopelessness and despair associated with climate change and ecological disaster. When we accept the claims made by science about climate change and realize that our near future is full of unprecedented ecological crisis it is difficult to avoid feelings of anxiety about the future of human life on our planet. While these discussions have largely taken place in the context of psychology and psychoanalysis, there is a need to engage in (...) ethical deliberation about both “eco-anxiety” and “eco-trauma.” In this paper, I argue that an environmental virtue of wonder can help to articulate the intersection of environmental ethics and “eco-anxiety” by offering a mean between the excess of anxiety and the deficiency of boredom. I situate this discussion within trauma studies and make connections between the pre-trauma of climate change, wonder, and eco-cinema. More specifically, I argue for a weird environmental ethic that embraces fuzzy boundaries of entangled environments and show that the virtue of wonder allows for flourishing within this context. I use cinema, and specifically Eco-Weird cinema, to argue for a shift in narratives about our present and our future as it relates to climate change. (shrink)

Is it possible to distinguish, as sociologist Arthur Frank proposes, an ‘ideal of wonder’ within which ill persons could recover some of their former sense of life and flourishing, even within the constraints of ill-health? Beyond this, are there more general benefits in terms of health and well-being that could accrue from cultivating an openness to wonder? In this paper I will first outline and defend a notion of wonder that gives philosophical support to Frank’s proposal, noting why thinking about (...) medical treatment may readily provoke a sense of wonder. Second I will however limit the normative force of such an ‘ideal of wonder’ noting its demands and some of the challenges facing it. The paper goes on, third, to conjecture wider benefits within and beyond the clinical encounter arising from being mindful of the wonder of embodied human agency. Fourth the paper will consider alignments between the foregoing analysis and some theoretical commitments in recent work in health geography. Finally I will briefly reconsider the notion of the body-as-territory, and the role of the imagination in bringing it under wonder’s gaze. (shrink)

That wonder is educationally important will strike many people as obvious. And in a way it is obvious, because being capable of experiencing wonder implies an openness to experience and seems naturally allied to intrinsic educational motivation, an eagerness to inquire, a desire to understand, and also to a willingness to suspend judgement and bracket existing—potentially limiting—ways of thinking, seeing, and categorising. Yet wonder is not a single thing, and it is important to distinguish at least two kinds of wonder: (...) active wonder, which entails a drive to explore, to find out, to explain; and deep or contemplative wonder, which is not inherently inquisitive like active wonder and, as a response to mystery, may leave us lost for words. Claims for wonder's importance to education and science often do not distinguish between the two, but whereas for active wonder that importance seems obvious, this is much less so for deep wonder, which by its very nature rather seems to be anti-educational. Yet in this paper I explore exactly the educational importance of deep wonder. This importance is found to lie, not just in its motivational effects—real though they are—but in making us attend to the world for its own sake, and making us aware of the limits of our understanding. (shrink)

The Zhuangist ideal of wandering is characterized by the navigation of the plurality of daos in response to changing circumstances. In practice, this is achieved through a series of flows in skilled activities that have goals built into them, which are prescribed by objective constraints of the circumstances in relation to the agent’s own desires. Since flow cannot go on without interruption, detached reflection is called for when challenges interrupt an episode of flow. The emotion essential to moments of detachment (...) is wonder—a cognitive emotion that prompts creative engagement with the novel, peculiar, and strange. (shrink)

In terms of intervening in embodied experience, medical treatment is wonder-full in its ambition and its metaphysical presumption; yet, wonder’s role in clinical medicine has received little philosophical attention. In this paper, I propose, to doctors and others in routine clinical life, the value of an openness to wonder and to the sense of wonder. Key to this is the identity of the central ethical challenges facing most clinicians, which is not the high-tech drama of the popular conceptions of medical (...) ethics but, rather, the routine of patients’ undramatic but unremitting demands for the clinician’s time and respectful attention. Wonder (conceived as an intense and transfiguring attentiveness) is a ubiquitous ethical source, an alternative to the more familiar respect for rational autonomy, a source of renewal galvanizing diagnostic imagination, and a timely recalling of the embodied agency of both patient and clinician. (shrink)

What is wonder? What would it mean to live our lives in wonder or with wonder? Is it possible for wonder to play an integral role in our aesthetic, ethical, and pedagogical experiences? Philosophy is said to begin with wonder. For Plato, wonder is the arche that grounds all philosophical inquiry. I propose to begin my ethical and aesthetic investigation of wonder with Plato, but, unlike Plato who places the imagination’s capacity to be astonished at the bottom of a hierarchy (...) that quests for knowledge and understanding, I will argue that an ethics and aesthetics based on wonder would allow for the imagination to play an active role in all our encounters. First, I look at different philosophical treatments of wonder and then consider the role wonder plays as a virtue. Next I examine the wondrous in relation to aesthetic and ethical experiences, exploring art exhibits and a play, and conclude by drawing upon the many sides of wonder and considering its role in education. In my wanderings on wonder, I seek to value wonder as an integral part of ourselves, in all our imaginings, understandings, growth, and knowledge acquisition. (shrink)