The Rationality of Feeling

In this final volume in the "Falmer press Library on Aesthetic Education", a revolutionary framework for the arts in education is offered by David Best. A need exists to expand the current conception of rationality to include the arts. In this book, the author demonstrates that whilst the arts are centrally concerned with feeling, they are as fully open to objective reasoning as any other discipline, such as the sciences, but the dichotomy between scientism and subjectivism is all pervading in a curriculum which marginalizes the teaching of the arts. This book emphasizes the necessity for the arts teacher to nurture the personal development of his/her student by expanding artistic understanding and creativity. It aims to give a broader understanding of the effective teaching of the arts by providing powerful reasons for seeing the arts as agents of learning, understanding and development and it should be of much interest to educationalists, arts teachers, and society as a whole including politicians and policy makers. It is aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate courses in education, the arts and philosophy, researchers in the philosophy of education, policy makers and arts teachers.