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Education through Aesthetic Imagination

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International Journal of Education and Allied Sciences
Dec. 2022, Volume 14, No. 1, pp. 1-8
ISSN-0975-8380
© IEDS. All rights reserved.

Education through Aesthetic Imagination

Prof. Sudhakar Venukapalli*

“When we use our imagination properly it is our greatest friend; it goes beyond
reason and is the only light that takes us everywhere”
— Swami Vivekananda

I. Introduction endeavor would greatly influence our

The central concern of this paper is
to formulate a framework for an aesthetic
system of education on the foundations
of moral imagination, self-
transformation, and ethical
responsibility. Education is construed
here in terms of redefining desires and
building possibilities of constructing self
and world differently as objects of
aesthetic experience. This paper is a part
of a larger effort to formulate the
philosophy of education on the
foundations of ancient Indian knowledge
systems, Indian aesthetics and
contemporary intellectual developments
in the Western and Indian theory and
practice. It is envisioned that this
current understanding of education and
enable us to create possibilities for
establishing a new world order where
people can live in harmony and
experience the beauty of human values,
equality, social justice, and national
vision.
Aesthetic imagination construed in
this paper is an important mode of
inheriting and innovating Indian
traditional culture and ethos. Aesthetic
imagination is a way of perceiving the
world, a world outlook. It is essentially
a moral, ethical, emotional, aesthetic and
epistemological concert and
performance. This endeavor recognizes
the significance of experiencing the

* Former Professor & Dean, The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India and
Visiting Professor, Central University of Karnataka, Kalaburagi, India
(1)
Education through Aesthetic Imagination
beauty of the self, morality, human values,
national vision embedded in social action,
spiritual pursuit, and intellectual search
for truth. Experiencing the beauty of
living together, equality, social justice
through harmony, dedication, integrity,
democratic action and national vision
in the institutions of learning cultivate
human values and deliver quality
education. Nurturing aesthetic
imagination among students and
teachers would enable us to understand
people’s life histories and struggles.
Further, such quality education develops
their cognitive, social, and cultural
capabilities, especially observation,
imagination, creativity, and outlook on
life and values. Therefore, the big
challenge in education is how do we
sensitize students to experience the
beauty of moral values through
acquisition of moral knowledge and
moral practice.
This paper argues that a strong
foundation of education is possible only
through ceaseless engagement with the
literary traditions and humanities across
cultures. Thematically, this work can be
situated in the critical dialogic space
between different disciplines of
knowledge and intellectual and religious
traditions. It recognizes how colonial and
postcolonial ideas, as well as modernity,
have stifled our ability to think creatively
(2)
and have failed to comprehend the
complexity of Indian knowledge systems
and the dynamism of social realities.
Before I explore new paradigms of
thinking about education, let me explicate
my stand on the dominant official
systems of education that shaped our
perception and consciousness.
II. Problems and Issues
The genesis of science and its
celebration as the only authentic, true
knowledge is historically coterminous
with the emergence and consolidation
of modern industrial society. The story
of rise of science, more so a specific
articulation of it, which can broadly be
characterized as positivistic, is a long
drawn protracted one. The conception
of social science implicit in our academia
is a part of this discursive process. The
intellectual origin of this discourse can
be traced back to the Enlightenment, but
it cannot be reduced entirely to it. The
modern academia its institutional
arrangement, and its disciplinary
demarcations and proliferation is thus
a reflection of the reified complexity of
the modern industrial society. The
concepts and categories, the tools of
analysis construed and built to ensure
the objectivity of the positivist knowledge
systems; theoretically render a particular
view of society and its evolution and in

practice projects the authenticity of the
historical experience of the West both
for the model building and emulation
in the context of the non-European
societies.
Colonization and foreign invasions
have damaged India’s indigenous
economic, socio-cultural, and intellectual
foundations and inducted false
consciousness among the colonized,
making them believe that individual and
social development is possible only
through European models and ideas of
development and progress. Institutions
of learning in our country are by and
large modelled upon the Western system
of education. Swami Vivekananda says,
It is one of the evils of your Western
civilization that you are after
intellectual education alone, and take
no care of the heart. It only makes men
ten times more selfish, and that will
be your destruction. (C.W.1412)
The haulage of the so-called
Enlightenment models of rationality,
objectivity and the ideas of individualism
largely designed and shaped the learning
cultures and institutional practices. The
well entrenched and long-established
Cartesian and positivist mode of thought
that has encompassed the academia
imprisoned their actors in rigid official
structures and disciplinary knowledges.
(3)
Prof. Sudhakar Venukapalli
This is clearly evident in the existing
institutional practices and beliefs of the
academics. The educational reforms
initiated in postcolonial India, instead
of dismantling the conventional
structures, have in turn strengthened the
European models of education and
development.
The above-mentioned W estern
induced knowledge systems transposed
and institutionalized in India have failed
to explain the nature and complexity of
indigenous cultures and social realities.
Such abortive knowledge systems
conceive disciplines as closed spaces
despite the orchestration of
‘interdisciplinarism’, limiting if not
precluding the possibility of interaction
across them. As a result of this inbuilt
resistance to openness, each discipline
seeks to identify its object of enquiry
aspectually within the boundary it has
drawn for itself artificially, thereby
missing the dynamic multi-
dimensionality of the reality. As a result,
the entire educational system as well as
the disciplines of knowledge is in crisis.
The above-said crisis in the disciplines
of thought and the system of education,
that was rightly recognized by the
contemporary discursive developments
and intellectual diversions, has to be seen
as an integral part of the civilizational
Education through Aesthetic Imagination
crisis of the Enlightenment paradigm.
The anti-positivist and anti-essentialist
theoretical developments initiated
critiquing the paradigms and models that
have originated and developed in the
Western intellectual history since the
period of Enlightenment (Age of
Reason). The Enlightenment rationalist
thought and models of nature, man,
society, education and development
which initially promised to be optimistic
departures from the medieval theological
past, have in the process seem to have
exhausted their emancipatory potential,
the reason precisely for which they have
become intellectually questionable.
The western ideological domination
by drawing an artificial division between
mind and work (object and subject)
presented education in terms of pure
cognitive functions. M.K. Gandhi (1939)
says,
“Our education has got to be
revolutionized. The brain must be
educated through hand. Those who do
not train their hands go through
education lacking music in their life…
they are not thought to make the right
choice... education which does not teach
us discriminate between good and bad,
to assimilate the one and eschew the
other is a misnomer.”
(4)
The abstract individualism that
underlies colonial educational discourses
separates the body from the mind and
awareness from sensory experience. Most
importantly these western models of
education easily adapted, absorbed and
coopted the fundamental principles of
neoliberal market values and the
standards of globalization. Over-
rationalization, compartmentalization,
specialization, are a few operating
principles of the exiting official view of
scientific knowledge and
communication. Academia is entrenched
in such institutionalized disciplinary
models of thought and mainstream
culture. Expanding global economic-
market forces, growing technological
interconnections, virtual worlds, and
digital social networking have further
strengthened institutional structures over
the past two decades and imprisoned
students and teachers in one-dimensional
discursive practices, isolating them from
their own self and others.
The global market private interests
encroached into imagination and
redefined beauty and aesthetics as per
the market standards. Consequently,
everything associated with schooling
and education is becoming into a skill,
technique, digital and non-human. What
is important to note here is how the

dominant market forces, reducing
education as a tool and commodity for
profit, have misused the incredible
inventions and beautiful wonders of
technology? In this context, Swami
Vivekananda’s words are appropriate.
He says:
The education that you are getting now
has some good points, but it has a
tremendous disadvantage which is so
great that the good things are all
weighed down. In the first place, it is
not a man-making education, it is
merely and entirely a negative
education. A negative education, or
any training that is based on negation,
is worse than death.
We want that education by which
character is formed, strength of mind
increased, the intellect is expanded,
and by which one can stand on one’s
own feet.
This paper, which takes inspiration
from Swami Vivekananda, attempts to
look for meaningful alternatives that
understand education as a means of
creating men and lives, of fostering
human growth, and most importantly,
of fostering human development for all
people in a just society. It is in this context
one needs to understand the significance
of imagination and imaginative practice.
(5)
Prof. Sudhakar Venukapalli
III. Possibilities and Responsibility
Educational processes must inspire
students to think and imagine a beautiful
society, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (The
World is One Family) where people of
all kinds live in harmony and peace.
Rabindranath Tagore, in his foreword
to Prof. S. Radhakrishnan’s book entitled,
The Philosophy of the Upanisads, says,
“The self of mine that limits my truth
within myself confines me to a narrow
idea of my own personality. When
through some great experience I
transcend this boundary, I find joy. The
negative fact of the vanishing of the
fences of self has nothing in itself that
is delightful. But my joy proves that the
disappearance of self brings me into
touch with a great positive truth whose
nature is infinitude. My love makes me
understand that I gain a great truth when
I realise myself in others, and therefore
I am glad. This has been thus expressed
in the Isopanisad:
Yas tu sarvani bhutani atmany
evanupasyati
Sarvabhutesu catmanam tato na
vijugupsate.
(He who sees all creatures in himself,
and himself in all creatures, no longer
remains concealed)
Education through Aesthetic Imagination
His Truth is revealed in him when
it comprehends Truth in others. And we
know that in such a case we are ready
for the utmost self-sacrifice through
abundance of love”.
Educational system should drive
students and teachers towards
envisioning the possibilities of creating
just society based on the above message
of Rabindranath Tagore. But such
processes are not simple and easy. One
needs to seriously engage students in
reflective thinking and moral imagining.
The question here is how do we cultivate
aesthetic sensibility and empower
students to create such possible worlds.
I strongly believe that one can overcome
the crisis in education by creatively
engaging with the ancient knowledge
systems, Sanskrit intellectual traditions
and everyday socio-political experiences,
especially grassroots movements.
Education is not a pedagogy designed
to transmit knowledge, abilities, and
skills. One needs to construe education as
formation, shaping and driving students
towards an ethos, character, culture, and
nation. It is an active process of thinking,
sensing, listening, talking, arguing etc.
Literature and traditional stories can aid
people in maintaining a feeling of one
another as human beings while our
technical interconnectivity paradoxically
(6)
contribute to our physical and emotional
isolation. Emotional response to the other
brings aesthetic experience to one’s own
self. Underlying the role of emotions in
aesthetic imagination Priyadarshi
Patnaik (2016) says,
“Emotions are significant in the context
of aesthetic experience (emphasis
added) in many distinctive ways.
One, most aesthetic objects evoke
emotions in us—wonder, awe,
admiration, and so on. A purely
intellectual response to aesthetic objects
is problematic. Two, aesthetic
response—which cannot exist without
some sense of admiration and wonder
for another object—is sympathetic. It
bridges the gap between the self and
the other, and not through mere
cognition. Three, unlike ordinary
emotions where we tend to avoid
unpleasant emotions and welcome
pleasant ones, aesthetic works
encompass themes that elicit all kinds
of emotions, and yet we welcome and
enjoy them. This establishes the
significance of emotions in aesthetics.”
Literary imagination is an emotional
aesthetic experience. It opens doors to
experience others and creates
opportunities for personal
transformation. By training the
imagination through careful study of

selected literary works encourages the
development of an educational system.
Thus, it is our job to actively engage in
the humanities and literature in the
classroom to train the imagination and
maintain our own cultural legacy as well
as to better comprehend and respect the
enormous range of human cultures.
The fundamental premise of this
thought process is that by remaining
unwaveringly committed to an ethical,
aesthetic engagement with literature and
the outside world, one might progress
toward s realizing the democratic
possibilities of the scientific, social,
cultural, and historical imagination. Most
importantly, we need to comprehend the
significance of the pedagogy of
responsibility and the power of educators
to create morally engaged,
compassionate, and inventive students.
Therefore, the goal of educational
programmes should be to instill in
students the values of educated citizens
who create an art of living by creatively
reimagining new possibilities for
democratic community and empathic
understanding. Therefore, it is
imperative to investigate the creative
encounters of students from various
academic fields with classic and
contemporary Indian literature, as well
(7)
Prof. Sudhakar Venukapalli
as their perceptions of the beauty of the
multidisciplinary fusion of ideas.
The epistemological violence
committed through Euro-centrism,
colonialism and globalization can be
countered only through an education that
promotes aesthetic sensibility and moral
imagination. The liberal attempts to
universalize certain notions like
knowledge, development, progress,
equality, learning, reasoning, culture etc.,
are the political moves of privileging
certain set of ideological practices as
natural and necessary. Taking this idea
further, we need to initiate a dialogue
on the responsibilities of the academy,
students and teachers in representing
day-to-day life activities and responding
to social needs and demands. In order
to develop students’ imaginations and
encourage them to imagine and create
beautiful ideas for a new world of justice
and equality, it is necessary to examine
the Eurocentric and colonial discursive
accounts and disciplinary practices in
the institutions of learning; engage
students in reading ancient Indian texts
(Mahabharata, Bhagavad-Gita,
Ramayana, Natyashashra etc.) and
modern literary works (like
Rabindranath Tagore’s novels) and
enable them to draw their own ideas
from their interpretations; design
 Education through Aesthetic Imagination
‘training imagination’ and create
opportunities for developing aesthetic
sensibility and imaginative experience;
examine students’ interpretations of texts
and their aesthetic imagination after
reading ancient Indian texts; and
workout broad contours of an
educational theory of imagination and
imaginative pedagogical practice.
References
1. The Complete Works of Swami
Vivekananda, 9 vols (Calcutta: Advaita
Ashrama, 1-8) 1989 ; 9 , 1997), 9 .500.
2. His Eastern and Western Disciples,
(Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1995), 47.
(8)
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3. Gandhi, M. K. (1940). An autobiography or
the story of my experiments with truth.
(English translation from Gujerati).
Ahmedabad, India: Mahadev Desai Navajivan
Publishing House.
4. Gandhi, M. K. (1939 & 1946, October 3).
Harijan. In Selected Works of Mahatma
Gandhi: The Voice of Truth: Basic Education
(Vol. V, Part II, Sect. XI). Ahmedabad:
Navajivan Publishing House.
5. Patnaik, Priyadarshini (2016), “Rasa aesthetics
Goes Global: relevance and Legitimacy”, in
Indian Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art,
Edited by Arindam Chakrabarti, Bloomsbury:
London.
6. Radhakrishnana, S. (1924), The Philosophy
of the Upanishads, Macmillan: London.