Wildly wise in the terrible moment: Kant, Emerson, and improvisatory Bildung in early childhood education

Abstract

This paper aims to show how Emerson provides a reworking of Kantian understandings of moral education in young children’s Bildung. The article begins and ends by thinking of Emersonian self-cultivation as a form of improvisatory or wild Bildung. It explores the role of Bildung and self-cultivation in preschools through a philosophy that accounts for children’s ‘Wild wisdom’ by letting Emerson speak to Kant. The paper argues that Kant’s vision of Bildung essentially involves reason’s turn upon itself and that Emerson, particularly in how he is taken up by Cavell, shows that such a turn is already present in the processes of children inheriting, learning, and improvising with language. This improvisatory outlook on moral education is contrasted with common goals of moral education prescribed in early childhood education where the Swedish Curriculum for the Preschool Lpfö 98 is used as an example.

Keywords:

• Emerson
• Kant
• improvisation
• Bildung
• early childhood education
• curriculum

Notes

1. Eldridge (2014) discusses affinities and dissimilarities between Kant’s and Cavell’s perfectionisms without specifically mentioning Emerson. However, since Cavell’s writings on perfectionism are deeply rooted in Emersonian thinking, it is a trope I find fruitful in discussing Emersonian self-cultivation and Bildung.

2. See Munzel, 1999:XV-XVII and Ch. 1 for a detailed discussion of the translation of Denkungsart.

3. ‘Lpfö 98’ is an acronym for ‘Läroplan förskolan 1998’. The acronym is used in both the Swedish and English version of the title. In this article I refer to the revised curriculum published in 2010. There is a newly revised version, published in 2016, but the sections discussed here remain the same. I will use the acronym ‘Lpfö’ to denote the curriculum.

4. All references to Emerson’s (1979, 1983a, 1983b, 2003) texts will be to The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I will refer to them by the essay title and page number as they appear in The Collected Works.