La experiencia del sublime cognitivoestética, aprendizaje y educación

Resumen

The main objective of this thesis is twofold. On the one hand, we seek to highlight, through the notion of the "cognitive sublime", the knowledge potential of the aesthetic experience of the sublime as a driver of the creation of meaning and, thus, of learning. On the other hand, it is argued that the centrality of the cognitive sublime in children's aesthetic experience calls for harnessing its potential for learning through the design of concrete pedagogical strategies and environments. In order to fulfil this objective, the essay began by examining the aesthetic category of the sublime as one that contains contradictory emotions, pain and bewilderment in the face of the great and the incomprehensible, and pleasure in overcoming its negative moment, through the impulse of the imagination. The first part ends by demonstrating how the philosophical approach (of both classical and contemporary philosophers) is congruent with that elaborated in other areas such as neuroaesthetics and constructivist psychology. All these approaches depicte the experience of the sublime as one that allows us to establish a new relationship with the world through the reaction of amazement in the face of an immeasurable reality. This amazement catalyzes the cognitive process and encourages us not to be overwhelmed by the immensity, but to move the imagination towards the search for meaning. This can generate learning. Secondly, the decisive role of emotions in the aesthetic experience and, specifically, in the experience of the sublime is highlighted. In order to refine their contribution to the drive to make sense of things and to learn, the nature and role of the emotions contained in the experience of the sublime needs to be clarified. Hence, an enactivist theory of emotions is defended. We argue that emotions have a dual nature, both bodily and mental, establishing a connection between emotional experience and the construction of meaning. This affords to establish a link between the emotional experience of amazement in the cognitive sublime with that of learning. Furthermore, it is crucial to emphasize that the realm of aesthetic experience extends beyond art and nature. The expansion that recent aesthetic reflection has made into everyday life is revealing and facilitates our argument by demonstrating that aesthetic experience, including the sublime, with respect to all kinds of objects that, without being art or nature, move one to wonder, and it occurs equally in everyday contexts, such as education. We consider the presence of the cognitive sublime in the aesthetic experience originated while using possible pedagogical tools such as children's stories, games and their more modern form, video games. These fictions activate the process of wonder-imagination-learning-understanding, typical of the cognitive sublime, which allows the child to overcome the possible blockage before the object of the sublime, leading him to understand reality. Therefore, we argue for their capability to convey the role of the imagination in the emotional reaction of astonishment that drives learning. For this reason, they can serve as important educational tools which, moreover, can form part of innovative strategies in school of the type we will address at the end of the thesis. The last part analyzes the pedagogical systems of J. Dewey, M. Montessori and L. Malaguzzi. It is argued that they include the use of the experience of the cognitive sublime. In fact, we try to show that these systems, which seek education especially through methods that make the child the protagonist by getting to know the environment, interacting with it, link certain aesthetic experiences of wonder to the impulse to learn.