Reembracing The Imagination: Returning To Poetic Moral Education

What does imagination means for individuals' moral education? To answer the question we have to clarify what imagination means for human existence.Phenomenological philosophy had described the basic characteristic of imagination as“flying away from the presence”,and the existence of human being is the unity of“presence” and “non-presence”.It is because of the imagination to flying away from the presence that opens the correlation domain of human life,so the human being can truly lives in poetic existence through the way of meaning generation.The character of“flying away from the presence” of human imagination also makes it indispensable for human moral life.The formation of moral judgment,the generation and promotion of moral empathy and the broadening of the moral horizon of possibilities are inseparable from human imagination.Therefore,our moral education which aims at the spiritual growth and the promotion of virtue cannot leave imagination,and students' imagination also needs to be guided by moral education.In fact,moral education of human being is a career related to human imagination.However,in the context of modernity,human imagination and education are separated from each other in school.On the one hand,based on the presupposition of“rational man” and the worship of “presence”in philosophy,moral education is regarded as a process of recognizing the moral rule and moral truth of eternal presence,and the school education has abandoned the human imagination from theoretical planning to practice.In the process of "disenchantment" in modern society,imagination is marginalized as mysterious charm,and the moral education in modern schools is a kind of “education of de-imagination”.On the other hand,because of the lost of guidance of education,children's imagination is controlled by scientism,consumerism and entertainment in the tide of modernity,and became the utility tool of science and technology,or distorted as an accomplice to satisfy their desire.Children's imagination is a kind of “imagination without education”.The coexistence of “education of deimagination”and “imagination without education” in modern education has caused the forgotten of self,the increasingly scarce of meaning of the life,and the disappearance of the "common sense" between individuals,and eventually,people will gradually lose the sense of belonging as the separation of the world they habitat.So imagination and education are necessarily separate from each other? Through the analysis of the culture of “shang-xiang”(advocating image)in ancient China as well as its education,it shown a possibility of education that embracing imagination,and has rich enlightening for modern education.Derived from pictographs and myth symbol system,the spontaneous ancient education manifested as a way of “qu-pi”(taking analogy)and “bi-de”(comparison of virtue)that based on the philosophy of“xiang”(image),and in practice it is manifested as a tradition of teaching of “poem”.The education of “shang-xiang” highlights the poetic educational wisdom which based on ontology,and because of revivification of primal life experience,its poetic language concerns to people's spiritual world and their moral personality.On the basis of “xiang”,the education with its integrational way of thinking can make people to get more close to each other through a good sense of “common sense”,and to broaden moral horizon of possibilities.Both the philosophical research on imagination and the trully existence of human poetic nature,and the wisdom of poetic education presented by the tradition of "Shang Xiang",are point to a kind of poetic education that can embrace imagination.Different from the acquisition of knowledge or intellectual improvement,this kind of education is oriented to the generation of life meaning,presenting a kind of holistic and integrated educational thought,and using "poetic language" as the medium instead of conceptual language.The “poetic wisdom”of human being and the current transformation of education constitutes the poetic basis of human nature and social reality.The theory and practice of moral education returning to life provide a possible practice path for poetic education.