Affectivity, cognition and education: essay about the demarcation of borders between concepts and the difficulty of being human

Abstract

The goal of this article is to discuss the concepts of affectivity and cogni­tion, and their implications to education. The main idea is that, what really differentiates mankind from the other forms of life is not the simple use of rationality, but rather originates from the necessity of learning to be, that is, man’s difficulty of being. A hypothesis by philosopher Schopenhauer presents the notions of time and space as being a result of human sensibility and perceptions about the movement and the relationship among elements in the world, respectively. As such, it is inferred that, affects are originated from these established relations; that is, how things or beings affect or are affected in their different manifestations. The thesis of this essay defends the possibility of reason being the affective root between the existential feelings and reality. Therefore, there would be no supremacy of the cognitive aspects granted by rationality in regards to affective aspects, inasmuch as they are the same phenomenon: the knowledge, which is built on interpretations of reality – interpretations based on affects felt and acknowledged by an individual. Such premise could contribute to education by integrating af­fectivity and cognition, as opposed to the common exacerbated privilege of rational education. Such integration can be accomplished by the integration of Art, Philosophy and Psychology, which in a way supports the Waldorf  Pedagogy, by Rudolf Steiner.

Keywords: affectivity; cognition; reason; integral education; Waldorf pedagogy.