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Abstract
Nature and time have long been key concepts of educational thought. Educational thinkers from both the East and the West have tried to imitate and follow nature (conceived as tien or physis). They have also considered time in relation to human formation and growth. This article attempts to connect these two key concepts of education through the medium of the seasons. The seasons bridge both time and nature. Our experience of nature is temporal and manifests itself in the transition of the seasons. On the other hand, our experience of time is conditioned by the seasons. Seasons are a concrete manifestation of time and nature. It seems that philosophy has not paid enough attention to this. In this article, Japanese arts (such as the Katsura Imperial Villa and waka poetry) are used as the examples of how the arts can help to form our sensibility toward the seasons, which has ethical and educational implications. The article also asks questions about contemporary environmental discussions that, in the aspiration to be global and universal, often overlook concrete experience of the seasons conditioned by local climate.
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Morimichi Kato
Morimichi Kato is an emeritus professor of Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan and a former professor of Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan. For the past 10 years his research activity is centered on the comparative study of the Western and the Far Eastern philosophy of education. Kato was a former editor-in-chief of Studies in the Philosophy of Education, The Philosophy of Education Society of Japan and a former editor in chief of the E-Journal of Philosophy of Education (International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan). E-mail: [email protected]