[Xmca-l] Re: The tradition of BILDUNG

[Glassman, Michael]

Hi Andy,

Dewey actually discusses this when he actually names the concept in Knowing and the Known.  He had been using the idea for more than half a century, tracing it all the way back to his Research Arc paper in a footnote.  No one can ever say John Dewey used words willy nilly.
 
He wonders I think why we use transaction for exchange because just from a basic dictionary level that's not what the word means.  The prefix trans usually means to go across or go through - trans-Siberian, transnational (just looked it up again) so what sense does it make to use it in the way we colloquially use it - our English lexicon is barren enough that we can just throw away interesting, descriptive words so easily.

So Dewey takes transaction back to its (at least to him) more correct meaning - across actions.  That is when you are understanding an action you should understand it across a field of related actions taking into account different possibilities of interactions within the transactional field.  He has this really interesting example of an action that takes place in a pool hall (which I am a little fuzzy on right now) in which the person is shooting a cue ball based on different interactions that occurred before he even entered the pool hall.

Michael
________________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] on behalf of Andy Blunden [ablunden@mira.net]
Sent: Saturday, June 14, 2014 9:30 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The tradition of BILDUNG

People use words as they will, but it always seemed to me that
*transaction* evokes an *external* relation between two subjects in
which something is *exchanged*, whereas *interaction* evokes some
modification of the nature of each subject itself rather than the
addition or subtraction of some contingency.

Andy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/


mike cole wrote:
> Thanks Larry--- Very interesting connections for sure. When you start to
> parse dialogue as "through the word" it makes a clear connection with words
> as mediators, and the emphasis on trans-action instead of inter-action also
> seems central in this regard.
> mike
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 13, 2014 at 12:32 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> Dewey wrote a passage in "Democracy and Education" which stated:
>> "If we are willing to conceive education as the process of *forming*
>> fundamental dispositions, intellectual and emotional, toward nature and
>> fellow-men, philosophy may even be defined AS THE GENERAL THEORY OF
>> EDUCATION" [emphasis in original] (p.338)
>>
>> James Garrison, in the article "Identifying Traces of Hegelian BILDUNG in
>> Dewey's Philosophical System" has this to say concerning the above quote by
>> Dewey:
>>
>> "It is however, easy to interpret this statement if we think of philosophy
>> and education as BILDUNG. Dispositions are habits or attitudes that are
>> formed [BILD] primarily by participating in the norms, beliefs, and values
>> of institutionalized social practices" [page 3]
>>
>> Dewey wrote passionately about *education THROUGH life* in contrast to the
>> value of *education FOR life*
>> The Greek term *dia* in *dialogue* means *through*. Therefore, dialogue is
>> expression THROUGH logos [word].
>>
>> The terms *bild* [form] within *bildung* and the term *dia* [through]
>> within dialogue are intimately related concepts that express a *tradition*
>> [and a genre] which links Hegel's and Vygotsky's and Dewey's projects in a
>> bildung tradition which shares a*resemblance* or *affinity* within the
>> bildung tradition with roots in neo-humanist understandings.
>>
>> Kozulin, I believe is writing within this spirit of *bildung* as
>> incarnating *spirit* THROUGH [dia] life.
>> If we this summer read  chapters four [Tool and Symbol in Human
>> Development] and five  [Thought and Language] of Kozulin's  book.
>>
>> Returning to James Garrison, He wrote,
>>
>> "We could describe this whole process of endless learning and growth as
>> dialectic, a hermeneutic circle, or, my preference, a trans-action. We
>> could also call what I have been describing is a philosophy of BILDUNG. My
>> paper briefly examines some aspects of the architectonic of Dewey's
>> philosophy as constituents of a philosophy of BILDUNG" [page 2]
>>
>> The article can be found at this address:
>>
>>  http://www.philosophy.uncc.edu/mleldrid/SAAP/USC/program.html
>>
>> Larry Purss
>>
>>
>
>