Sense-making Pedagogy: Vygotsky’s Perezhivanie , Ricoeur’s Mimesis , and Spinoza’s Conatus

1. Sense-making Pedagogy:Vygotsky’sPerezhivanie,Ricoeur’sMimesis, and Spinoza’sConatus Yuichi NISHIMOTO Kyoto University of Education yuitsu@kyokyo-u.ac.jp

2. Abstract: Contemporary education is attempting to reform itself by promoting standardization approaches (e.g. 21st century generic skills, OECD’s key competencies).This trend forces scholars and practitioners to regard education as a prescription for various problems and challenges. They become to think that education should serve to solve those problems and challenges in the world (e.g. Education2030) and after all they degrade education to a lower position than economic and political positions. They are obsessed with the idea that education is a means for fulfilling something.

3. Sense-making pedagogy explores the counter-tide for an alternative vision of education, where students and instructors engage in open meaning-making processes and self-organizing educational practices. (Kovbasyuk and Blessinger, 2013) This presentation discussesdeepsignificanceof sense-making pedagogy (meaning-centered education) with special reference to perezhivanie, mimesis, and conatus. These three, ifintegrated,trigger the development of personality.

4. Education as Experience:Vygotsky’sPerezhivanieEducation as Narrative:Ricoeur’sMimesisEducation as Empowerment: Spinoza’s Conatus

5. EducationasExperience • JohnDewey (1859-1952) • KitaroNishida (1870-1945) • Lev SemenovichVygotsky (1896-1934) • Viktor Emil Frankl (1905-1997)

6. Experience includes cognitionin the degree in which it is cumulative or amountsto something, or has meaning.JohnDewey(1859-1952)

7. Pure ExperienceKitaroNishida (1870-1945)

8. Kitaro Nishida’sPureExperience • “A self-developing whole, similar to Hegel’s Notion (Begriff)” (Takeuchi, 1982) • “The whole first appears implicitly, and from it the content develops through differentiation; when that development ends, the whole of reality is actualized and completed—one entity has developed and completed itself. We can most clearly see this mode of development in our own consciousness.” (Nishida, 1990)

9. Freedom, responsibility,and spirituality are the three human existentials.ViktorEmilFrankl (1905-1997)

10. Perezhivanie for Frankl WhatdoesSpinozasayinhisEthics?—”Affectus, qui passioest, desinitessepassiosimulatqueeiusclaram et distinctamformamusideam.” Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it. (Experiences in a Concentration Camp)

11. Lev S. Vygotsky (1896-1934) The first person to introduce the notion of perezhivanie into psychology was Vygotsky.

12. ThePervasivenessofPerezhivanie In the last few years, several articles have been devoted to the study of perezhivanie. For example, a leading journal of human sciences, Mind, Culture, and Activity, Vol. 23, 2016featured perezhivanie as a special issue entitled Symposium on Perezhivanie.

13. The Etymology of Perezhivanie (1): Blunden (2016) Perezhivaniecomes from the verb perezhivat.Zhivatmeans “to live” and pere means carrying something over something, letting something pass beneath and overleaping it, something like cutting out a piece of space, time, or feeling. So perezhivatmeans to be able to survive after some disaster, that is, to “over-live” something.

14. The Etymology of Perezhivanie (2):ibid. To illustrate, the force of pere: terpetmeans to endure some pain, so pereterpetmeans to live until a time when no pain is left, to outlive the pain; pereprignutmeans to overcome some obstacle, to jump, or fly over it. In the same way, perezhivatmeans that you have passed as if above something that had made you feel pain; and in the base of each “again living” lies a pain and you know that.

15. The Etymology of Perezhivanie (3):ibid. There, inside of a recollection that we call an “again living,” lives your pain, not letting you forget what has happened, and you keep living through it over and over again, working through it, repeating it until you have passed through it, and have survived. … But it is also important that there can be good, as well as painful perezhivaniya, that perezhivanie is not only surviving a life-changing disaster, but also consolidating on a dramatic leap forward in your life, a daring move you made, a risk that paid off and opened a new phase of your life.

16. Perezhivanie for Vygotsky(1) “anemotionalexperience[perezhivanie]isalwaysrelatedtosomethingwhichisfoundoutsidetheperson—andontheotherhand,whatisrepresentedishowI,myself,amexperiencingthis,i.e.,allthepersonalcharacteristicsandalltheenvironmentalcharacteristicsarerepresentedinanemotionalexperience[perezhivanie].” (The ProblemoftheEnvironment)

17. Perezhivanie for Vygotsky(2) “In anemotionalexperience[perezhivanie] we are always dealing with an indivisible unity of personal characteristics and situational characteristics, which are represented in an emotional experience [perezhivanie].” (The ProblemoftheEnvironment)

18. Perezhivanie for NISHIMOTO (1)meaning (znachenie, Bedeutung) Sense (smysl, Sinn) Perezhivanie

19. Perezhivanie for NISHIMOTO (2) Meaning Sense 1 Sense 2 Sense 3

20. Perezhivanie for NISHIMOTO (3) Vygotsky’s terminology, вращивание(vraschivanie) is embodied in the process of perezhivanie as a refracting prism.The outer, external meaning is transformedintotheinner,personalizedsenseand the sense in turn ingrows and eventually makes the microcosm of consciousness.

21. Summary of Perezhivanie >Perezhivanie is a process which integrates the relation of person and environment. >Manhastolivethroughsomething.Perezhivanieisthis“livingthroughsomething”. >Through perezhivanie, meaning is transformed into personalized sense. >In concrete settings of education, the significance of perezhivanie cannot be too emphasized.

22. EducationasNarrative Paul Ricoeur (1913 - 2005)

23. Mimesis for Ricoeur Plato and Aristotle differed on mimesis. But Ricoeur drastically developed the concept: “mimesis does not mean the duplication of reality; mimesis is not a copy; mimesis is poiesis, that is construction, creation.” (Robbins, 2003)

24. Ricoeur’s Hermeneutic Circle of Narrative and Life

25. The process of perezhivanie is dynamic and even aesthetic from the point of view of mimesis. M. M. Bakhtin emphasized the responsibility to integrate science, art, and life. Perezhivanie and mimesis inspire Spinoza’s conatus (стремление)—power or effort toward self-preservation.

26. EducationasEmpowerment Benedictus De Spinoza (1632 - 1677)

27. Spinoza’s ContatusPrinciple(1) • “Each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being.” (Ethics) • a Latin word; striving or endeavor • the actual essence of anything, nothing different from the thing itself, a good many of the dynamic features of the world

28. Spinoza’s ContatusPrinciple (2) “The conatus principle entails that all finite modes strive to increase their power to exist and in doing so to secure a greater part of the overall power of substance.… Thestrivingtopersevereinbeingisthereforea striving to become more self-determined, more self-explained and more real.” (Dahlbeck, 2017)

29. Spinoza’s ContatusPrinciple (3) “In the mind, an individual’s conatus manifests itself as will—not an abstract faculty of willing, but the particular affirmations or negations that make up much of our thinking life. … Conatus is the motivational force that lies at the root of all a person’s endeavors.” (Nadler, 2006)

30. Vygotsky’s some comments on conatus “… in the fact that both Hobbes and Spinoza designated self-preservation as instinct or growth of the ‘I’ …” (The Teaching about Emotions) “We do not know which existing but dormant forces in our organisms it will draw upon to form the new man. … As Spinoza said, ‘That of which the body is capable has not yet been determined.’” (The Psychology of Art)

31. Lastly but not Least: Perezhivanie, mimesis, and conatus, ifintegrated,trigger the development of personality.

32. The special feature of my genius is that it comes from the mind. Precisely from the mind. As a personaity, I am much bigger than my talent.Salvador Dali (1904-1989)

33. Спасибо !Thank you !ありがとう！