Strategies of imitation

Abstract

In the tradition of Enlightenment which we are successors of, education is constructed to quantitative knowledge, primarily to naming and attribution of things, and then to managing them. Handling terms, facts, definitions, provides one with authority and control over things. This knowledge is the result of training, not education, and as such it is no more than taking control over, even manipulating with, things. The purpose of education is not a question of progress: it leads in reverse direction, towards its original meaning of mimesis. It is in imitating, in the manner of mimesis, that we find that qualitative knowledge which determines permanently every artistic, philosophical, pedagogical and educational work.