University of Illinois Press

Emotional Education through the Arts

Author(s): David Best
Source: The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 12, No. 2, Special Issue: The International
Society for Education through Art (INSEA) (Apr., 1978), pp. 71-84
Published by: University of Illinois Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3332047
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EmotionalEducationthrough the Arts

DAVID BEST

In this paper I will suggest some consequences for the position and
scope of the arts in education which derive from a consideration of the
logical problem of form and content. Specifically, I am concerned to
raise for consideration some points about an area of education which
seems to me to be of great importance yet which, at all levels, seems to
have been generally either neglected or misunderstood, namely emo-
tional development, and to indicate the uniquely valuable contribution
which can be made by the arts. I do not, of course, wish to suggest that
all works of art are emotionally expressive, but incontrovertibly some,
indeed many, are of this character, and it is with such works that I
am concerned.
Content and Form
First it is necessary to undertake a brief survey of the philosophical de-
bate from which I shall develop my main thesis. Roughly, aesthetic
theories have tended to err towards one of two very plausible extremes.
At one extreme traditional expressionist theories leave a logical gap
between the meaning of, or what is expressed in, a work of art, and the
particular medium and form in which that meaning is expressed. Char-
acteristically, for instance, the meaning of a work of art is assumed to
be the inner, private, and subjective emotional state of the artist who
created it as an expression of that state. But even where the meaning
is taken to be not the particular feeling of the artist concerned, but the
DAVID BEST is a senior research fellow in the department of philosophy at the
University College of Swansea, Wales. He is the author of Expression in Move-
ment and the Arts and has contributed to numerous philosophical and educa-
tional journals, such as the British Journal of Aesthetics, the Journal of Human
Movement Studies, and the Journal of the Committee of Research on Dance.
This is a revised and extended version of an article first published in 1974 in
the British journal Education for Teaching.
0021-8510/78/0400-0071
$1.40/0
? 1978 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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72 DAVIDBEST

logical form of feeling, the same issue of principle is involved. For the
insuperable problem for any such theory is to bring together the mean-
ing and the form, where these are regarded as distinct entities. A theory
which depends upon a contingent relationship, however close, between
form and meaning, or content, cannot account for the meaning of a
work of art for at least two reasons. First, there is a problem about the
ontological status of meaning; what sort of thing it is, and how it can
be known to exist. Second, even ignoring this difficulty, there is the
problem of how it could be known that a particular work of art is an
expressionof a particular meaning.
It was largely a recognition of these logical difficulties which led to
the genesis of the currentlypopular theories at the other extreme, which
I shall characterize generically as formalist, and which lay emphasis
on the physical form in which the work of art is created. Formalists
recognize, correctly, that an expressionistview precludes the possibility
of understanding art, since, even on the simplest analysis, it is frequently
the case that spectators do not have the opportunity to discover what
the artist was feeling as he created his work. Moreover, if we probe
more deeply it becomes apparent that if a gap were allowed between
the emotional content and the physical form then not even the artist
himself could know of which emotion his own work was the expression
since he might make a mistake in identifying it. Hence the formalist
understandably tends to concentrate exclusively on the physical arti-
fact. In effect, he overcomes the problem of the gap between form and
emotional content by the simple expedient of denying that there is any
emotional content. Thus, for example, Stravinsky insists that music,
by its very nature, is incapable of expressing anything, that it is merely
a successionof sounds.
However, it is, to say the least, implausible to deny that the arts can
be emotionally expressive, for many of us would want to insist that
some of our most profound emotional experiences have occurred
through the arts, and that such experiences have illuminated and left
an indelible mark on our attitudes to life in general. Nevertheless, the
formalist undoubtedly has a point, for it is incoherent to equate the
meaning of a work of art with an inaccessible entity, whether an emo-
tional state, or an abstract form of feeling. He is right to point out that
only the physical artifact is available to sense perception, and he is also
right to be skeptical of mistily metaphysical claims about entities which
are not answerable, even in principle, to such perception.
So what has gone awry here? Despite their apparently irreconcilable

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 EDUCATION
EMOTIONAL ARTS
THROUGH 73

positions the fons et origo of the dispute can be traced to a shared

underlying and unquestioned presupposition.
Expressionist: The meaning of art consists in the expression of emo-
tions, emotions are subjective and nonrational, therefore artistic mean-
ing is subjective and nonrational.
Formalist: To suggest that the meaning of art consists in the expres-
sion of emotions is effectively to deny the possibility of meaning to
works of art, since emotions are subjective and nonrational. For, on
that hypothesis, the meaning of art would depend on entities which
are not available to sense perception, which is to say that the notion of
meaning in this sphere is incoherent. Since art does have meaning, it
cannot be emotionally expressive.
The shared premise is that if something expresses emotions its mean-
ing is subjective and nonrational, and depends upon the location of
some metaphysical entity which is not available to normal sense per-
ception. A corollary is that the emotional meaning would have to be
contingently connected to the physical form in which it is expressed.
But in fact to be intimate enough for meaning nothing short of a logi-
cal connection will suffice. It has to be the case that the particular form
of the work of art is the only criterion for the emotion it is expressing.
And by that I mean that the emotional meaning can be identified in
that way and no other, so that it would be incoherent to suggest that
one should try to refer to the feeling expressed in the work apart from
that particular expression of it. In short, the feeling expressed by a
work of art is an interpretation of that physical artifact, so that, to put
it crudely, to call a piece of music sad is not to make an unintelligible
inference to a feeling lying behind it, or somehow incorporated into
it by the emotional state of the composer. Such a characterization of
the music is an interpretation of it, and as such it is available to sense
perception. So the shared presuppositionof the traditional expressionist
and the formalist is shown to be fallacious. Emotions can be expressed
in art and they are answerable to observable criteria. Such emotions are
uniquely identifiable by the physical forms of expression in which they
occur. This is precisely why the notion of transfer makes no sense, since
one cannot coherently conceive of the feelings of, for example, Bach's
St. Matthew Passion expressed in painting, sculpture, literature, or
even in another piece of music. The form of expression under a certain
description is the only criterion for what is expressed, or, to put the
same point another way, the meaning of the work is logically tied to
the particular form in which it is created.

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74 DAVID BEST

These considerations imply not only that the emotion expressed in

each work of art is particular to that physical manifestation, but also
that each art form expresses emotions which are particular to it. So in
exploring and learning new physical forms of expression we are learn-
ing new forms of feeling, and thereby gaining and refining the capacity
for experiencing new feelings. By presenting to students the possibility
of expressing emotions in, for example, the medium of sound peculiar
to music, the teacher is encouraging them to develop emotions which
could be known in no other way. Thus learning to perform and appre-
ciate music can be a discovery of both formal and emotional qualities.
Only through an understanding of this particular medium can one
progressively acquire the possibility of expressing those emotions. The
opportunity to experience such feelings depends upon the acquisition
of a certain grasp of the expressive possibilities which are uniquely the
province of the art of music. Thus it can be appreciated how each of
the arts can make a unique contribution to emotional development. As
one increasingly comes to understand an art form, one learns to discern
more and more complex interpretations, and therefore to experience
more and more complex feelings in response to them.

Learningto ExperienceEmotions
Now I want to suggest that the foregoing considerationsraise profound
consequences for the value of the arts, and for those who are concerned
with the teaching of the arts in our institutions of education. For, if
my necessarily condensed argument above is correct, then it reveals at
least three important points:
1. Feelings expressed in art have to be brought out of the meta-
physical mist in which they are inevitably shrouded by mistakenly con-
struing the relationship between form and content as contingent. Such
feelings, to be intelligible at all, must be answerable to observable as-
pects of the works of art themselves.
2. Nevertheless, this is certainly not to deny that emotional expres-
sion is a centrally important characteristicof the arts.
3. Feelings expressed in art are logically related to the physical arti-
facts in which they are expressed. The criterion for such a feeling is the
work under a certain description, and thus it is answerable to reasons
which bring the perceivable aspects of the work under a particular
pattern of comprehension.1
There are many issues which arise from these points, but I want to
concentrate on what is perhaps the most important, at least for my

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 ARTS
THROUGH
EDUCATION
EMOTIONAL 75

purposes. I want to suggest some lines of thought concerned with the

significance of the conceptual in the arts in relation to the development
of personality. For, roughly, it is how people perceive a phenomenon
which determines what it is, and therefore determines their emotional
reaction to it. The first half of the issue was put succinctly by Kant:
"Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are
blind."2
What he means by this is that the notion of concepts which are not
concepts of something or other is as incoherent as the notion of sense
impressionswhich are not subsumed under some concept or other. The
hypothesis of a pure unconceptualized sense impression is unintelligible,
since there would be no way even of referring to it. Consequently, to
put it somewhat crudely, what we see is determined by how we see it.
Moreover, it is equally unintelligible to suppose that there may be phe-
nomena which exist beyond the reach, even in principle, of the normal
human senses- beyond what has been felicitously called "the veil of
perception." For if anything should exist outside the scope of human
perception, then obviously it can be of no possible interest to us since
we can never know anything about it, which is the same as saying that
it does not exist. So that we can now go even further and say that what
there is, the universe itself, is determined by how we see it.
Bronowski has said of a portrait: "We are aware that the picture
does not so much fix the face as explore it; that the artist is tracing the
detail almost as if by touch; and that each line that is added strengthens
the picture but never makes it final. We accept that as the method of
the artist. But what physics has now done is to show that that is the
only method to knowledge."8
He goes on to point out that new ideas in physics amount to a dif-
ferent view of reality; that the world is not a fixed, solid array of ob-
jects, since it cannot be separated from our perception of it.
Now clearly there is also a connection between how we see something
and our emotional response to it. My response, if I see a twig, or a piece
of rope, as a twig or a piece of rope, is likely to be very different from
my response if I see it as an adder, especially if I have a vivid antipathy
to snakes. Yet it is clear that such a feeling would be impossible for
someone who knew nothing whatsoever about snakes. Only if we can
see something as a snake is it possible to be afraid of it as a snake. That
particular emotion depends on a particular conceptual ability, namely
that of recognizing, even though, in this case, erroneously, the instan-
tiation of the criteria for something's being a snake. Thus some degree

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76 DAVIDBEST

of conceptual ability is a precondition of experiencing such an emotion.

The point becomes even clearer if we consider the case of language.
A natural, indeed in some cases the only, way of expressing some feel-
ings is in words, yet language, the medium of expression, has to be
learned. This is to say that without some mastery of linguistic technique
such feelings could not be experienced. For example, fear of continued
economic inflation can be felt only by someone with some grasp of the
complex ramifications of an economic system which is built into our
language and whole way of life. Yet such a fear could be as vivid as
any we might be inclined to regard as more "natural"- it could, for
instance, in extreme cases be vivid enough to lead to suicide.
There are many feelings which can be experienced only by those with
certain abilities. Any feeling involving the distant past, for example
remorse, or involving the future, for example fear of or hope for what
may happen at the next parliamentaryelection, is limited to a language-
user. It would make no sense to suggest that a dog could experience
such feelings since he cannot intelligibly be supposed to have mastered
the concepts which alone make them possible. Similarly, a precondition
of experiencing the subtle and finely differentiated feelings which are
the province of art is that one should have acquired the imaginative
ability to handle the appropriate concepts. Understanding art is not
simply a matter of "natural" unlearned feelings as is so often believed
by those who accept without question the supposed antithesis between
emotion and reason. Whole areas of feeling will remain unknown to
those who have not learned to appreciate the arts. Such feelings are
available only to those who have not only the inherent aptitude, but
also the educated imagination for the fine conceptual discriminations
required for a profound and sensitive involvement with an art form.
The Arts in Society
It is of the first importance to my case to recognize the fact that artistic
meaning cannot coherently be considered in isolation from the whole
way of life of the society in which it arises and to which it contributes.
It is reported that during the occupation of France a German officer,
indicating Guernica, asked Picasso, "Did you do that?" to which Pi-
casso replied, "No, you did." Exclusive concentration either on the work
of art itself or on the feelings of the artist, even if this were possible,
would be meaningless. The meaning of a work may be unique, in that
it cannot be expressed in any other way, but that is not to say that it
does not draw from and illuminate moral, social, and emotional issues
which lie outside art. On the contrary, such issues are considered from

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 EDUCATION
EMOTIONAL THROUGH
ARTS 77

the particular point of view of the art form, under its highly specific
concept. Indeed, even to talk in this way of life-issues and art is mis-
leading, since artistic meaning is continuous with and ultimately in-
separable from the social tradition in which it is embedded. It may be
illuminating in this respect to consider the analogy of a tribe which
worships the sun as a god. The sun has, for them, a central significance
in a whole interlocking network of religious and moral codes, social
practices, artistic tradition, and language. To a western scientist, for
whom it is nothing but a mass of burning gas, "the sun" cannot be re-
garded as having the same meaning. Indeed there is an important sense
in which a tribesman and the scientist, both looking at the sun, cannot
be said to be seeing the same thing since the description under which
they see it is so different.
Similar considerations apply to meaning in the arts, in that the rea-
sons we give for appreciation and interpretation of a work of art are
derived from the cultural and social traditions of the community of
which they form a part. Emotion concepts in art, for example, are
understandable as such by virtue of their relation to emotion concepts
in life outside art, and thus no sharp line can be drawn round the area
which is relevant to understanding the arts. To take an obvious exam-
ple, the nature of art and aesthetic appreciation in a community with
strong religious convictions is likely to be very different from those in
a community without them. Art grows out of and in turn illuminates
and influences the life of society. Complex art forms reflect and further
extend the complexities of moder civilization.
What we see in the world is determined by the language we speak,
by the concepts and theories which are given with it. Similarly our
artistic judgments are determined by social and cultural background
and artistic traditions. It is not open to us to select from the various
ways of looking at and responding emotionally to art, since one is in-
evitably considering them from an artistic point of view. No sense can
be given to the notion of a logically unlimited choice, of detaching one-
self entirely from artistic preconceptions in order to make an appraisal
of the respective merits of artistic traditions. Yet this does not imply
that we are immutably confined to the cultural outlook in which we
were brought up. It is rather that the artistic tradition which we have
already acquired sets limits to how fast and how far we can change, and
when the changes have been made, the limits, though wider than they
were, will be those of the modified attitude. A good illustration of the
point is the analogy of a mariner who wants to rebuild his ship in mid-

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78 DAVIDBEST

ocean. He can carry out alterations only by depending upon the sup-
port of the main structure, so he cannot make radical changes. He
cannot scrap the old one and start all over again. Similarly, one can
develop, broaden, even progressively bring about extensive changes in
one's attitude to the arts, but the limits are set by a dependence upon
one's underlying attitude while one is modifying it in this way. Just as
the mariner cannot get off his ship to rebuild it, so it is impossible to
adopt an ideally objective, value-independent point of view from which
to appraise the relative merits of artistic traditions. The notion is in-
coherent, since appraisal presupposes reference to artistic values.
Someone whose musical background is exclusively classical may find
it difficult or impossible to appreciate Schoenberg. And if the style is
sufficiently different, for example John Cage, or some forms of oriental
music, he may be unable to accept it as music, as opposed to a formless
succession of sounds. Consider, too, the difficulty of comprehension
experienced by those who are used to a more representative approach
when they meet moder "conceptual" painting, with its refusal to give
an impression of depth, and its revealing of several perspectives in the
same figure. Painters of this genre are concerned to show more about
the subject than can be taken in simply by a visual perception, so they
may eschew chiaroscuro and substitute color for it. Yet without per-
spective and chiaroscuro the person who knows only this style has lost
the familiar landmarks by which he can understand painting. So that
even an early work of Picasso like Les Demoiselles d'Avignon may be
difficult to accept. It is possible to come to appreciate the music of a
different culture sufficiently to recognize that it is music and not just
a jumble of sounds only if there is some overlap between it and what
comes within the sphere of one's musical understanding. This toe hold
allows for the progressiveachievement of a more complete comprehen-
sion of a very different artistic tradition. So the possibility of a develop-
ing appreciation of the arts is not logically unlimited. It is not simply
a matter of preference, of simply choosing any interpretation of a work
of art.
Another way of putting this point is to say that not any reason can
be understood as supporting an artistic judgment. The artist gives a
perceptive portrayal of the world as it is, which can only be how he
sees it. Through the medium of his art he sheds light on details of as-
pects of our lives the significance of which had escaped our notice. And
the critic suggests the way in which art should be seen. The innovators,
whether artists or critics, are extending the boundaries of the concept

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 EMOTIONAL
EDUCATION ARTS
THROUGH 79

of art within which our judgments are at present confined. Again one
is struck by the similarity of grasping the significance of reasons pro-
posed for a new scientific theory, for this makes equally exacting de-
mands on the imaginative powers, the ability to be open-minded.
The Arts and Social Issues
Consider particular examples of the impossibility of understanding art
outside its social setting--examples which will also allow us to see
something of the way in which art can engender a heightened, more
perceptive appreciation of social issues. Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago can
be seen simply as a rather sentimental, romantic love affair (indeed,
in my view, this is precisely what the film version has done to it). But
to understand adequately the depth, range, and subtlety of what is in-
volved in it, one needs to see this relationship in that whole setting.
One needs to appreciate Zhivago's idealism, his disgust at the immoral-
ity of Tsarist Russia - the Russia of Rasputin. One needs to under-
stand his optimism for the socialist system, and his subequent horrified
disillusionment at its brutal excesses, and the depersonalization against
which his relationship with Lara stands in sharp relief. Without this
one could not understand Zhivago, and therefore one could not under-
stand the unique quality of his relationship with Lara. One sees the
effects of the social and political turmoil as they are revealed in a par-
ticular human situation. Reading and discussing this novel can give
increasing depth and sensitivity to one's awareness of emotional pos-
sibilities, and that will increasingly allow for the possibility of feeling
in a more refined way.
Mike Leigh's film Bleak Moments reveals the distorting limitations
set to human relationships by crippling shyness and emotional repres-
sion. It does this not by creating some dramatic consequence but, far
more convincingly and effectively, by showing what such emotional
deprivation amounts to in the banal events of the everyday life of the
ordinary people concerned. Other examples which spring to mind are
Samuel Beckett's Not I, in which a disembodied voice cries out vainly
for an identity; the despairing and confused aspirations expressed in
Ballet Rambert's Blindsight; Anne Sexton's poem Old, with its poig-
nant sketch of the details of old age, set against a nostalgic yearning
for the vivid independence of lost youth; the dark social and psycho-
logical forebodings of Kafka's The Castle and The Trial; many of the
paintings of Francis Bacon, which confront us savagely with the short-
ness and fragility of life; Athol Fugard's plays Sizwe Bansi Is Dead

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80 DAVIDBEST

and The Island starkly revealing the effects on ordinary people of

race laws and racial attitudes in South Africa. Each of these works
of art can deepen and refine our understanding of an emotional re-
sponse to some of the enormouslyvaried aspects of the human situation
in a way which no other form could achieve. In order to appreciate the
full significance of this point, try to imagine that we have no conven-
tions of art, and yet we are trying to make an equally forceful and ef-
fective impact about these aspects of the human situation. Is it not
impossible to conceive how such an impact could be achieved in the
absence of art? Does not any alternative, such as a tract or speech
drawing attention to deleterious social conditions, seem ponderously
impotent and banal in comparison?
I want strongly to suggest that there are important consequences
here for the arts in education, in that they can, uniquely, illuminate
and help students to feel for certain moral, social, and emotional issues
to which they would otherwise remain blind. For without an apprecia-
tion of the subtleties of particularizedfeeling expressed in the arts, one's
perception and emotional response would be restricted, in those areas
of life with which those arts are dealing, to a relatively bland, promis-
cuous level. The more one comes to understand an art form, the more
one develops the capacity for fine discriminationsof interpretation and
therefore for finely discriminated emotional feelings. Like the grasp of
other concepts, it is a matter of degree - the degree of mastery of abil-
ity to operate with the relevant criteria. These criteria are derived from
the social and cultural life of society, so that in this too the arts are
analogous to language. It is a profound mistake to think of verbal lan-
guage as a supervenient activity, for it is continuous with, and a de-
velopment from non-verbal forms of behaviour. A society without lan-
guage would be an impoverished society, intellectually and emotionally.
Similarly, appreciation of the arts is a matter of both conceptual and
emotional abilities which can confer added dimensions to life-situations
in the society which gives the arts their meaning.

Deep and Narrow, or Wide and Shallow?

There is also a warning implicit in these considerations that there may
be some danger in the modern trend towards eclecticism in the arts, if
this should be taken too far. However interesting and broadening it
may be to try to understand a variety of art forms, or the art forms
of widely different cultures, such an enterprise might also incur the
inability to appreciate any art in depth. Since artistic appreciation re-

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 EDUCATION
EMOTIONAL THROUGH
ARTS 81

quires the mastery of a technique, it is unlikely that a level of compe-

tence can be attained sufficient to allow for a profound and sensitive
feeling for the nuances of artistic meaning if one tries to understand too
many art forms or art forms from too diverse a range of cultures. The
story is told that a visitor, on hearing that Picasso had completed a
painting in half an hour, expressed surprise that it had taken so short
a time. Picasso's reply was that it had taken sixty-four years. He was
referring, of course, to far more than the attainment of draughtsman-
ship.
Similarly, it would be difficult to achieve such command of a variety
of languages that one could express and understand in each the subtle-
ties of meaning of which each is capable. It is a common experience
for people whose ways of thinking are set by their native language to
live for many years in a foreign country without ever achieving a suffi-
cient mastery to appreciate the linguistic subtleties of their adopted
country, and therefore the subtleties of feeling expressible in its lan-
guage.
This suggested warning should not be misconstrued. It is no more a
prescriptionfor conservatismin the arts than the analogy with language
is a proscription against learning foreign languages. One may gain
enlightenment even from a relatively superficial acquaintance with the
arts of a very different cultural tradition, partly because art is to some
extent an expression of unconscious feelings, some of which may be
universally comprehensible in some degree. Nevertheless, though it
may be interesting and enriching, beyond a certain point eclecticism
may carry with it the penalty of failure to achieve any real depth of
aesthetic understanding, and consequently a limited capacity for those
shades of feeling the full range of which can be acquired only by some-
one with a comprehensivegrasp of an art form. To determine the point
at which the loss may outweigh the gain will be a delicate and prag-
matic matter.
The Arts and Personality Development
It may be interesting and, I suggest, significant at this point to consider
the relevance to my thesis of an aspect of the thorny philosophical prob-
lem of the relationship between the contingent and the a priori, with
respect to personality development, and consequently to personal rela-
tionships. Without all the events which have happened to one in life,
and one's particular way of reacting to or overcoming them, one simply
would not be the person one is. The interesting question arises: Is this

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82 DAVID BEST

a logical point or a contingent one? It is certainly contingently the case

that these events occurred, but to what extent is it contingently the case
that I react as I do? Sometimes we should be inclined to say that it is
a contingent matter, that I just happened to react in this way rather
than that. But of some of my reactions wouldn't one want to say that
they were, in a sense, stronger than mere contingency, inextricably
bound up with what I am? And, a fortiori, is it not true that I could
not be what I am now if my personality had not been formed in the
particular way it has, as a result of all those experiences and my reac-
tions to them? Francis Bacon makes the point strikingly in his painting
An Accidental Being. One wonders whether philosophers who have
been schooled in the broadly empiricist tradition have been too cavalier
in their dismissalof rationalistssuch as Leibniz.
One of the most commonly encountered manifestations of the essen-
tialist fallacy occurs in everyday talk of human personality. We tend to
speak of discovering the real me, the essential person, what I really am.
The same sort of misleading tendency is sometimes implied in talk
of "self-actualisation"and "self-realization"- as if there were a real,
essential self to be discovered if only we search hard enough. Such
a tendency is particularly prevalent where someone manifests widely
disparate, perhaps conflicting, dispositions and attitudes. In such a case
we tend to feel that there must be some underlying unity buried beneath
the scattered confusion on the surface. But to dig more deeply may well
be to look in the wrong direction, for what is loosely dispersed on the
surface is the truth about the person. As Wittgenstein said: "In order
to find the real artichoke we divested it of its leaves."4
Of course I do not wish to deny inherent personal potentialities
that some people have greater latent, unrealized capacities in certain
fields than other people. Yet, in my view, there is a much more impor-
tant sense in which it is less misleading to regard one's self, one's per-
sonality, as being in a constant state of creation. This is an important
insight of existentialism- the notion of the human being alone in the
world faced with an indefinite range of choices which will determine
what he is. Such a notion has the added psychological benefit of empha-
sizing the active possibility, indeed inevitability, of responsibility for
what one is, and it is more constructive in that it allows for change
where one is dissatisfied with one's self. Again, there are limits to the
possibility of change. There is not a logically unlimited choice, but
nevertheless it is possible progressivelyto achieve quite radical modifi-
cations in one's own personality.

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 EDUCATION
EMOTIONAL ARTS
THROUGH 83

Incidentally, although it is apparently oblique to my main thesis, I

should like, in passing, to question the common assumption that there
necessarily ought to be an underlying theme in, for example, a series
of lectures or seminars within a certain subject area, that to say it lacks
some sort of unifying structure amounts to a pejorative criticism of it.
This often seems to be another manifestation of the craving for unity.
Yet the achievement of such unity may be more a matter of aesthetic
or architectural satisfaction than of educational validity. However con-
venient and psychologically comfortable it may be to have our experi-
ences neatly packaged, those experiences will very often have to be
squeezed out of shape in order to fit the packaging. For the truth is
that our experiences in life are perplexingly heterogeneous, and serious
involvement with the arts, especially with moder art, will help stu-
dents to appreciate something of this huge variety and wide disparate-
ness in what it is for a mature, modern human being to face the world
and to find his way through it. Criticizing the ordered artificiality of
traditional novels, Virginia Woolf asks us to examine an ordinary mind
on an ordinary day:
The mind receivesa myriadimpressions.... Life is not a series of gig
lampssymmetricallyarranged;life is a luminoushalo, a semi-transparent
envelope surroundingus from the beginning of consciousnessto the
end.... Let us recordthe atomsas they fall upon the mind in the order
in which they fall, let us trace the pattern however disconnectedand
incoherentin appearance,which each sight or incident scoresupon the
consciousness.Let us not take it for grantedthat life exists more fully
in what is commonlythoughtbig than in what is commonlythought
small.5
Progressivelyan educated appreciation of the arts can help to remove
the oversimple, misleading conceptual props of childhood and early
youth. In their place it can begin to encourage in the developing adult
the courage, honesty, spirit of adventurous enquiry, emotional sensitiv-
ity, and conceptual tools to explore to the maximum the baffling, ex-
citing, painful, and rewarding veracity of the complexity of the human
condition. His developing responses will determine, at least to a large
extent, what he is. I want to suggest that when we recognize that emo-
tions are not just a matter of "natural," instinctive responses, but that
feelings can be indefinitely refined and learned, it places a great re-
sponsibilityon each of us as human beings, and even more on those of
us who are educators. And the arts have a unique part to play in this
important aspect of personalitydevelopment.

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84 DAVIDBEST

Notes
1. I have argued the case more fully in David Best, Expression and Move-
ment in the Arts (London: Henry Kimpton, 1974).
2. I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N. Kemp Smith (London:
Macmillan, 1929).
3. J. Bronowski, The Ascent of Man (London: British Broadcasting Corp.,
1973).
4. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M.
Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1953).
5. W. James, ed., Virginia Woolf: Selections from Her Essays (London:
Chatto and Windus, 1966).

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