CONTEMPLATIVE INSTRUCTION AND THE GIFTS OF BEAUTY,LOVE, AND SILENCE

In this essay Angelo Caranfa maintains that what education should be engaging in is a ceaseless effort of cultivating in the students attention to the things of the spirit—that is, the world of aesthetic apprehension as described by such figures as Plato and Simone Weil. Caranfa attempts to show that in Plato and in Weil, we receive a vision of education that motivates the contemplative life conceived as contact with the Good, Truth, Justice, Love, and Beauty. This is a life of detachment or withdrawing, of looking or attention, of silence, and of contemplation or prayer, which is essentially a way of learning that leads, step by step, or degree by degree, and by repeated exercises, out of the cave to the realm of goodness, truth, justice, love, and beauty. This contemplative method of learning that the writings of Plato and Weil offer us is not only a critique of today's method of problem solving, of statistical analysis, of verbal noise, and lack of attention, but also of those who speak of learning apart from the spirit of beauty.