On the Dedication to "That Single Individual"

Soren Kierkegaard

Translated by Chrarles B. Bellinger

(please see Note 1 before continuing)

My dear, accept this dedication; it is given over, as it were, blindfolded, but therefore undisturbed by any consideration, in sincerity. Who you are, I know not; where you are, I know not; what your name is, I know not. Yet you are my hope, my joy, my pride, and my unknown honor.

It comforts me, that the right occasion is now there for you; which I have honestly intended during my labor and in my labor. For if it were possible that reading what I write became worldly custom, or even to give oneself out as having read it, in the hope of thereby winning something in the world, that then would not be the right occasion, since, on the contrary, misunderstanding would have triumphed, and it would have also deceived me, if I had not striven to prevent such a thing from happening.

This, in part, is a possible change in me, something I even wish for, basically a mood of soul and mind, which does not produce change by being more than change and therefore produces nothing less than change; it is rather an admission, in part a thoroughly and well thought-out view of "life," of "the truth," and of "the way."

There is a view of life which holds that where the crowd is, the truth is also, that it is a need in truth itself, that it must have the crowd on its side.[Note 2] There is another view of life; which holds that wherever the crowd is, there is untruth, so that, for a moment to carry the matter out to its farthest conclusion, even if every individual possessed the truth in private, yet if they came together into a crowd (so that "the crowd" received any decisive, voting, noisy, audible importance), untruth would at once be let in.[Note 3]

For "the crowd" is untruth. Eternally, godly, christianly what Paul says is valid: "only one receives the prize," [I Cor. 9:24] not by way of comparison, for in the comparison "the others" are still present. That is to say, everyone can be that one, with God's help - but only one receives the prize; again, that is to say, everyone should cautiously have dealings with "the others," and essentially only talk with God and with himself - for only one receives the prize; again, that is to say, the human being is in kinship with, or to be a human is to be in kinship with the divinity. The worldly, temporal, busy, socially-friendly person says this: "How unreasonable, that only one should receive the prize, it is far more probable that several combined receive the prize; and if we become many, then it becomes more certain and also easier for each individually." Certainly, it is far more probable; and it is also true in relation to all earthly and sensuous prizes; and it becomes the only truth, if it is allowed to rule, for this point of view abolishes both God and the eternal and "the human being's" kinship with the divinity; it abolishes it or changes it into a fable, and sets the modern (as a matter of fact, the old heathen) in its place, so that to be a human being is like being a specimen which belongs to a race gifted with reason, so that the race, the species, is higher than the individual, or so that there are only specimens, not individuals. But the eternal, which vaults high over the temporal, quiet as the night sky, and God in heaven, who from this exalted state of bliss, without becoming the least bit dizzy, looks out over these innumerable millions and knows each single individual; he, the great examiner, he says: only one receives the prize; that is to say, everyone can receive it, and everyone ought to become this by oneself, but only one receives the prize. Where the crowd is, therefore, or where a decisive importance is attached to the fact that there is a crowd, there no one is working, living, and striving for the highest end, but only for this or that earthly end; since the eternal, the decisive, can only be worked for where there is one; and to become this by oneself, which all can do, is to will to allow God to help you - "the crowd" is untruth.

A crowd - not this or that, one now living or long dead, a crowd of the lowly or of nobles, of rich or poor, etc., but in its very concept [Note 4] - is untruth, since a crowd either renders the single individual wholly unrepentant and irresponsible, or weakens his responsibility by making it a fraction of his decision. Observe, there was not a single soldier who dared lay a hand on Caius Marius; this was the truth. But given three or four women with the consciousness or idea of being a crowd, with a certain hope in the possibility that no one could definitely say who it was or who started it: then they had the courage for it; what untruth! The untruth is first that it is "the crowd," which does either what only the single individual in the crowd does, or in every case what each single individual does. For a crowd is an abstraction, which does not have hands; each single individual, on the other hand, normally has two hands, and when he, as a single individual, lays his two hands on Caius Marius, then it is the two hands of this single individual, not after all his neighbor's, even less - the crowd's, which has no hands. In the next place, the untruth is that the crowd had "the courage" for it, since never at any time was even the most cowardly of all single individuals so cowardly, as the crowd always is. For every single individual who escapes into the crowd, and thus flees in cowardice from being a single individual (who either had the courage to lay his hand on Caius Marius, or the courage to admit that he did not have it), contributes his share of cowardice to "the cowardice," which is: the crowd. Take the highest, think of Christ - and the whole human race, all human beings, which were ever born and ever will be born; the situation is the single individual, as an individual, in solitary surroundings alone with him; as a single individual he walks up to him and spits on him: the human being has never been born and never will be, who would have the courage or the impudence for it; this is the truth. But since they remain in a crowd, they have the courage for it - what frightening untruth.

The crowd is untruth. There is therefore no one who has more contempt for what it is to be a human being than those who make it their profession to lead the crowd. Let someone, some individual human being, certainly, approach such a person, what does he care about him; that is much too small a thing; he proudly sends him away; there must be at least a hundred. And if there are thousands, then he bends before the crowd, he bows and scrapes; what untruth! No, when there is an individual human being, then one should express the truth by respecting what it is to be a human being; and if perhaps, as one cruelly says, it was a poor, needy human being, then especially should one invite him into the best room, and if one has several voices, he should use the kindest and friendliest; that is the truth. When on the other hand it was an assembly of thousands or more, and "the truth" became the object of balloting, then especially one should godfearingly - if one prefers not to repeat in silence the Our Father: deliver us from evil - one should godfearingly express, that a crowd, as the court of last resort, ethically and religiously, is the untruth, whereas it is eternally true, that everyone can be the one. This is the truth.

The crowd is untruth. Therefore was Christ crucified, because he, even though he addressed himself to all, would not have to do with the crowd, because he would not in any way let a crowd help him, because he in this respect absolutely pushed away, would not found a party, or allow balloting, but would be what he was, the truth, which relates itself to the single individual. And therefore everyone who in truth will serve the truth, is eo ipso in some way or other a martyr; if it were possible that a human being in his mother's womb could make a decision to will to serve "the truth" in truth, so he also is eo ipso a martyr, however his martyrdom comes about, even while in his mother's womb. For to win a crowd is not so great a trick; one only needs some talent, a certain dose of untruth and a little acquaintance with the human passions. But no witness for the truth - alas, and every human being, you and I, should be one - dares have dealings with a crowd. The witness for the truth - who naturally will have nothing to do with politics, and to the utmost of his ability is careful not to be confused with a politician - the godfearing work of the witness to the truth is to have dealings with all, if possible, but always individually, to talk with each privately, on the streets and lanes - to split up the crowd, or to talk to it, not to form a crowd, but so that one or another individual might go home from the assembly and become a single individual. "A crowd," on the other hand, when it is treated as the court of last resort in relation to "the truth," its judgment as the judgment, is detested by the witness to the truth, more than a virtuous young woman detests the dance hall. And they who address the "crowd" as the court of last resort, he considers to be instruments of untruth. For to repeat: that which in politics and similar domains has its validity, sometimes wholly, sometimes in part, becomes untruth, when it is transferred to the intellectual, spiritual, and religious domains. And at the risk of a possibly exaggerated caution, I add just this: by "truth" I always understand "eternal truth." But politics and the like has nothing to do with "eternal truth." A politics, which in the real sense of "eternal truth" made a serious effort to bring "eternal truth" into real life, would in the same second show itself to be in the highest degree the most "impolitic" thing imaginable.

The crowd is untruth. And I could weep, in every case I can learn to long for the eternal, whenever I think about our age's misery, even compared with the ancient world's greatest misery, in that the daily press and anonymity make our age even more insane with help from "the public," which is really an abstraction, which makes a claim to be the court of last resort in relation to "the truth"; for assemblies which make this claim surely do not take place. That an anonymous person, with help from the press, day in and day out can speak however he pleases (even with respect to the intellectual, the ethical, the religious), things which he perhaps did not in the least have the courage to say personally in a particular situation; every time he opens up his gullet - one cannot call it a mouth - he can all at once address himself to thousands upon thousands; he can get ten thousand times ten thousand to repeat after him - and no one has to answer for it; in ancient times the relatively unrepentant crowd was the almighty, but now there is the absolutely unrepentant thing: No One, an anonymous person: the Author, an anonymous person: the Public, sometimes even anonymous subscribers, therefore: No One. No One! God in heaven, such states even call themselves Christian states. One cannot say that, again with the help of the press, "the truth" can overcome the lie and the error. O, you who say this, ask yourself: Do you dare to claim that human beings, in a crowd, are just as quick to reach for truth, which is not always palatable, as for untruth, which is always deliciously prepared, when in addition this must be combined with an admission that one has let oneself be deceived! Or do you dare to claim that "the truth" is just as quick to let itself be understood as is untruth, which requires no previous knowledge, no schooling, no discipline, no abstinence, no self-denial, no honest self-concern, no patient labor! No, "the truth," which detests this untruth, the only goal of which is to desire its increase, is not so quick on its feet. Firstly, it cannot work through the fantastical, which is the untruth; its communicator is only a single individual. And its communication relates itself once again to the single individual; for in this view of life the single individual is precisely the truth. The truth can neither be communicated nor be received without being as it were before the eyes of God, nor without God's help, nor without God being involved as the middle term, since he is the truth. It can therefore only be communicated by and received by "the single individual," which, for that matter, every single human being who lives could be: this is the determination of the truth in contrast to the abstract, the fantastical, impersonal, "the crowd" - "the public," which excludes God as the middle term (for the personal God cannot be the middle term in an impersonal relation), and also thereby the truth, for God is the truth and its middle term.

And to honor every individual human being, unconditionally every human being, that is the truth and fear of God and love of "the neighbor"; but ethico-religiously viewed, to recognize "the crowd" as the court of last resort in relation to "the truth," that is to deny God and cannot possibly be to love "the neighbor." And "the neighbor" is the absolutely true expression for human equality; if everyone in truth loved the neighbor as himself, then would perfect human equality be unconditionally attained; every one who in truth loves the neighbor, expresses unconditional human equality; every one who is really aware (even if he admits, like I, that his effort is weak and imperfect) that the task is to love the neighbor, he is also aware of what human equality is. But never have I read in the Holy Scriptures this command: You shall love the crowd; even less: You shall, ethico-religiously, recognize in the crowd the court of last resort in relation to "the truth." It is clear that to love the neighbor is self-denial, that to love the crowd or to act as if one loved it, to make it the court of last resort for "the truth," that is the way to truly gain power, the way to all sorts of temporal and worldly advantage - yet it is untruth; for the crowd is untruth.

But he who acknowledges this view, which is seldom presented (for it often happens, that a man believes that the crowd is in untruth, but when it, the crowd, merely accepts his opinion en masse, then everything is all right), he admits to himself that he is the weak and powerless one; how would a single individual be able to stand against the many, who have the power! And he could not then want to get the crowd on his side to carry through the view that the crowd, ethico-religiously, as the court of last resort, is untruth; that would be to mock himself. But although this view was from the first an admission of weakness and powerlessness, and since it seems therefore so uninviting, and is therefore heard so seldom: yet it has the good feature, that it is fair, that it offends no one, not a single one, that it does not distinguish between persons, not a single one. A crowd is indeed made up of single individuals; it must therefore be in everyone's power to become what he is, a single individual; no one is prevented from being a single individual, no one, unless he prevents himself by becoming many. To become a crowd, to gather a crowd around oneself, is on the contrary to distinguish life from life; even the most well-meaning one who talks about that, can easily offend a single individual. But it is the crowd which has power, influence, reputation, and domination - this is the distinction of life from life, which tyrannically overlooks the single individual as the weak and powerless one, in a temporal-worldly way overlooks the eternal truth: the single individual.

Note The reader will recall, that this (the beginning of which is marked by the atmosphere of its moment, when I voluntarily exposed myself to the brutality of literary vulgarity) was originally written in 1846, although later revised and considerably enlarged. Existence, almighty as it is, has since that time shed light on the proposition that the crowd, seen ethico-religiously as the court of last resort, is untruth. Truly, I am well served by this; I am even helped by it to better understand myself, since I will now be understood in a completely different way than I was at the time, when my weak, lonely voice was heard as a ridiculous exaggeration, whereas it can now scarcely be heard at all on account of existence's loud voice, which says the same thing.

Notes

[Note 1] This, which is now considerably revised and enlarged, was written and intended to accompany the dedication to "that single individual," which is found in "Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits." Copenhagen, Spring 1847.

[Note 2] Perhaps, however, it is right to note once and for all, that which follows of itself and which I have never denied, that in relation to all temporal, earthly, worldly ends the crowd can have its validity, even its validity as a decisive court of last resort. But I am not speaking about such things, which I pay so little attention to. I speak of the ethical, the ethical-religious, of "the truth," and seen ethico-religiously the crowd is untruth, when it is taken as a valid court of last resort for what "the truth" is.

[Note 3] Perhaps, however, it is right to note, although it seems to me to be almost superfluous, that it naturally could not occur to me to object to something, for example that there is preaching, or that "the truth" is proclaimed, even though it was to an assembly of a hundred thousand. No, but even if it were an assembly of just ten - and if there should be balloting, that is, if the assembly were the court of last resort, if the crowd were the decisive factor, then there is untruth.

[Note 4] The reader will therefore recall, that here by "crowd," "the crowd" is understood as a purely formal conceptual definition, not what one otherwise understands by "the crowd," when it supposedly is also a qualification, when human selfishness irreligiously divides human beings into "the crowd" and the nobles, and so forth. God in heaven, how would the religious arrive at such in-human equality! No, "crowd" is the number, the numerical; a number of noblemen, millionaires, high dignitaries, etc. - as soon as the numerical is at work, the "crowd" is "the crowd."

Practical Wisdom in Environmental Education

David Havlick ; Marion Hourdequin
Affiliations:Department of Geography, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Department of Philosophy, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA

Abstract

To create an ecologically literate, motivated, and engaged citizenry, environmental education must help students develop practical wisdom. We discuss three elements of teaching central to this task: first, greater emphasis on contextualized knowledge, grounded in particular places and cases; second, multi-modal learning that engages students as whole persons both cognitively and affectively; and third, stronger connections between knowing and doing, or between knowledge and responsibility. We illustrate these elements through our experience teaching field-based environmental studies courses, but also emphasize ways in which practical environmental education can be effectively incorporated into campus-based classes.

Introduction

In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle addressed the question of what constitutes a good life for human beings. Aristotle's answer was that a good life is a virtuous life. He offered a detailed account of the virtues of character, which are social virtues that allow individuals to live well in relation to other members of the community. Aristotle 's thorough discussion of these virtues, along with his account of friendship, suggests that the knowledge human beings require to flourish is deeply practical. Only in the closing sections does Aristotle call this view into question, elevating a life of philosophical contemplation and theoretical wisdom above all else, noting that contemplation comes closest to mirroring the activity of the gods.

The tension between practical and theoretical wisdom in the Nicomachean Ethics has been the source of endless academic controversy. Yet, regardless of what Aristotle intended, he at least acknowledged that insofar as we are human, we need practical wisdom: 'for our nature is not self-sufficient for the purpose of contemplation, but our body also must be healthy and have food and other attention'.(1) We first need to know how to sustain ourselves as individuals and in communities before we can be free to pursue lives of pure theoretical contemplation.

The division between the theoretical and the practical may not be as sharp as Aristotle suggested, but regardless of how one draws the distinction, practical wisdom has never been more important than it is today. We need to learn how to live well in a world plagued by environmental problems at scales ranging from local to global. We need to learn how it is possible for human beings and the ecosystems upon which we depend to flourish in an increasingly crowded world. This will require practical wisdom of the most thoughtful and sophisticated kind; not necessarily the kind of wisdom that today's higher education effectively provides.

In 1976 the United Nations identified as the goal of environmental education in its Belgrade Charter:

to develop a world population that is aware of, and concerned about, the environment and its associated problems, and which has the knowledge, skills and commitment to work toward solutions of current problems and the prevention of new ones.(2)

Nearly three decades later, only limited progress has been made towards achieving this goal world wide.

Even if applied more modestly to the college curriculum and its graduates in the USA, the UN's goal remains distant. Despite efforts to integrate environmental education into K-12 programs and college curricula, the overarching objective of creating an ecologically literate, motivated and engaged corps of graduates remains elusive.

Effective environmental education at the college level requires a move towards the practical. In order to facilitate this shift, we discuss three elements that can contribute to integrated learning: first, greater emphasis on contextualized knowledge, grounded in particular places and cases; second, multi-modal learning that engages students as whole persons both cognitively and affectively; third, stronger connections between knowing and doing or between knowledge and responsibility. We illustrate these elements primarily through our experience teaching field-based environmental studies courses, however, we also emphasize that these features can be incorporated into traditional classes on campus.

Practical wisdom requires contextualized knowledge. By contextualized knowledge we mean that concepts and skills learned in the classroom should not remain at such a high level of abstraction that they cannot be utilized in everyday thinking about what to believe and what to do; rather, they should link up with life outside the university walls. Students need to develop analytic and critical thinking skills not just to solve logic problems, but to grapple with the complexities of real world issues, for which deductive reasoning may not suffice. For philosophers this means coming down to earth, spending more time discussing cases that involve real world possibilities and less time relying on fanciful 'possible world' examples. For geographers this means helping students understand how the physical and cultural features of places influence social and environmental processes right here and now, not just on the other side of the world or in the future and the past.

Knowledge can be made practical through a variety of means. In our experience, one effective way to contextualize knowledge is to get students out of the classroom. Rather than read about the interconnections between elevation and temperature, logging and stream siltation or suburban sprawl and habitat fragmentation, students can experience these relationships for themselves in the field. Theoretical knowledge can be reinforced and made practical by experiences that allow students to explore and confirm what they read or hear in lectures. After covering the basics of the hydrologic cycle and energy flow, for example, in a recent course we brought students to the local sanitary landfill for a tour. As we stood around a settling pond filled with leachate, or 'landfill tea', our guide described the water's destiny. Once the settling pond fills, the water is pumped to the county water treatment facility, then on to nearby Jordan Lake, which supplies drinking water for several nearby communities. Several of the students who lived in these towns were astonished to learn that the waters oozing from this garbage heap flow after three short steps from their own household taps. Such experiences increase awareness and promote critical thinking, encouraging students to examine and assess for themselves the ways in which the environment and human activities are intertwined and to discuss with their peers the implications of these connections.

Moving farther from the college campus, a growing number of field-based academic programs provide intensive opportunities for students to explore environmental issues experientially. These courses, such as those we have taught for the Missoula, Montana-based Wild Rockies Field Institute, offer educational opportunities unavailable in typical classroom settings and may prove crucial in achieving the goals of environmental education. Field experiences immerse students in the natural and human histories of particular places, where students can learn inductively, starting with place-based experiential data and moving toward generalizations based on this experience. The localization and particularity of field experiences reverse the typical process of classroom learning in philosophy and the sciences, where students often learn general principles first, followed by specific examples that illustrate these generalizations. Inductive knowledge building, in contrast, does not presuppose the existence of general principles that apply to all cases. Instead, students' interactions with land managers, visits with ranchers, environmental activists and Native Americans and active work on ecological restoration projects reveal the complexity of environmental issues and challenge students to deal with this complexity, building analytical and deliberative skills needed for effective participation in environmental decisions.

Another feature of field experiences is that they engage students in diverse ways: physically, intellectually and emotionally. They encourage multiple modes of learning, which, in addition to accommodating a diversity of learning styles, help develop knowledge that is multidimensional and vivid, richer than the usual words from a text. While classroom instructors must often work hard to foster learning through multiple pathways, in the field this variety is built into the course. In our campus-based classes we find it consistently challenging to cover a large amount of material in a single semester. Perhaps nowhere is this challenge felt more strongly than in teaching world regional geography, a survey course that takes students around the world in roughly half the proverbial 80 days. By combining lecture notes, PowerPoint presentations, slides, informal discussion, small group exercises, role play, 'geography bowl' activities and brief student presentations the format can be varied, but the overall trend is one of knowledge flowing from the instructor to a relatively passive assembly of students.

In the field, although we typically spend at least as much time in advance designing the syllabus and structuring the lesson plans for a course, there are inevitably encounters that spawn spontaneous 'teachable moments' during which the group of students and instructor(s) collectively are challenged to process information and critically assess these experiences. During the hiking portion of the day we commonly stop to point out particular plants or plant associations, note the shifting forest types as we ascend or descend, discuss management policies that apply as we pass through jurisdictional boundaries (or clearcuts, rangeland, etc.) or simply scout an area for a suitable camp site. Questions often arise as students explore areas close to camp: Why is this stream so cold, what made these ruts in the trail or why aren't there any trees growing here? Although in the courses we have taught there is time set aside for structured classes (discussion, lecture or field activities), learning does not end when class is over. Field experiences soften the boundaries between 'class' and 'life', distributing the flow of information over the course of the day, with frequent opportunities to reinforce and expand on ideas through direct encounters and observation.

It might be objected that field courses, especially those set in remote locations, do not provide students with 'practical' knowledge at all. Who needs to know why certain trees grow on dry sites but not near moisture or what makes mountain streams so chilly? Today's students need to know how to design web sites, manage computer networks and write an effective cover letter, not learn the natural history of some faraway place to which they may never return. While it is true that the particular details of plant taxonomy may be neither necessary nor sufficient to promote environmental literacy, learning to know a particular place well is an important first step towards reintegrating humans into the environment and showing how human activities, from computer network management to logging to the national energy policy, actually affect the world. By interacting with the animals, plants and people of particular places, students develop the skills and insight they need to understand other places and people, including those close to home. In fact, these lessons from the field often help students to think ecologically, encouraging them to make connections that extend beyond disciplinary boundaries or single actions and to consider how various parts contribute to the whole. As we illustrated with the brief excursion to the landfill, even a short field trip can add important practical knowledge to our experiences. When these students add their garbage to the campus bins they can now reflect on how such refuse circulates back to their hometown water supply.

This brings us to our last point: the importance of connecting knowledge and responsibility. Multimodal learning and contextualized knowledge both support this third educational goal. By connecting knowledge to real world issues and by engaging students more fully and deeply in the learning process, these first two elements help connect knowing and doing. Field-based learning also fosters responsibility in other ways. Especially in backcountry courses, students and instructors form not only a learning community, but a community in all aspects of life, if for a short time. Cooking and cleaning responsibilities are shared and students learn that the safety of the group depends on the intelligent behavior of each of its members.

Although critiques such as Cronon's influential 1995 essay, 'The trouble with wilderness', point to a distancing effect where the idea of wilderness lulls society into ignoring the real challenges that exist where we live, in fact we find that wilderness-based education can link students profoundly to the importance of taking responsibility for their actions.(3) On a field course in southeast Alaska a student once ignored our instructions not to bring food into his tent and his half-eaten candy bar nearly got him expelled from the course. When we later saw a large bear working the shoreline for barnacles and mussels the course rules suddenly made sense. In this way, prescriptions for behavior in the field often come with clearer consequences than those in the classroom, whether these are focused on environmental topics, such as recycling, or practical ones, such as camping safely in bear country. Ideally, by experiencing themselves as agents whose actions matter - to their own safety, to the well-being of the group and to resident animals and plants - students gain a heightened sense of the import of their everyday decisions that can carry over to other settings.

Particularly when trying to convey complex or abstract concepts about environmental processes, ethics or management, the move outdoors to direct experience seems to awaken in many students an ability to find more direct meaning and to see themselves as part of the world they are learning about, rather than as just passive observers of it. By removing students and their instruction entirely from field or forest as we now have in most college coursework, environmental education itself becomes abstracted. In the climate-controlled environment of the average university classroom students understandably may find it difficult to link a particular lecture on energy consumption to the means of producing power and to connect greenhouse gas emissions to rising seas and increased flooding. In this setting it is not only conceptually difficult to make these connections, but it contradicts one's personal experience. The air-conditioned room feels soothing, not like a contributing element to global climate change.

In the field such topics may be more actively approached. On a Field Institute semester course on the Colorado Plateau of Utah and Arizona, for example, in the span of two days students were able to visit a Hopi initiative to provide photovoltaic arrays to isolated communities, camp on the banks of the (now) clear, cold waters of the Colorado River downstream from the Glen Canyon Dam, be guided through the dam from top to bottom to see (and smell and hear) how it produces hydroelectricity and finish off with a tour of the Navajo Power Plant, with, in passing, a glimpse of the Black Mesa coal mining site that feeds it.

The lessons learned from these experiences ultimately remain up to each individual, but as a program such field-based education can ensure that students will at least understand how some of our major energy sources are produced, and with what consequences. The intimacy of such encounters - peering into the fiery dynamo of the coal furnace or descending through the damp corridors of the dam - also presses students to both feel and think. Learning in this way has a visceral quality that tends to pierce through collegiate apathy. Of course, there is no guarantee that students will form the 'right' outlook on the basis of such experiences. However, as teachers we aim to raise questions and motivate critical thought, rather than implant a particular point of view. The vividness of field trips that illustrate the intricacies of real world environmental issues can spur students to engage with one another in earnest conversations about how power should be produced and consumed, the generation and fate of our trash and our relationship to the environment more generally.

Such visits help provide what Aldo Leopold called 'an intense consciousness of land', which he considered essential for individuals to develop a land ethic. As he wrote in his 1949 critique of the educational and economic system that prevailed then and now:

Your true modern is separated from the land by many middlemen, and by innumerable physical gadgets. He has no vital relation to it; to him it is the space between cities on which crops grow. Turn him loose for a day on the land and if the spot does not happen to be a golf links or a 'scenic' area, he is bored stiff.(4)

Leopold's lesson can apply to both 'natural' and human dominated landscapes: field-based explorations can transform a mass of shoreline 'seaweed' into a rich montage of algal diversity or show how a coal-fired power plant heats dorm rooms in Chapel Hill, links to mining in the southern Appalachians and affects air quality in central North Carolina.

We find that in the classroom students find it hard to imagine how environmental policy issues, ethics or specific practices translate to the world beyond the campus. In a course one of us recently taught on environmental ethics, students drew a blank when asked for examples of how global climate change might outpace the environment's ability to adapt. Finally, when pressed, one student constructed an abstract analogy: 'If the whole world was brown and suddenly it turned purple, the brown things would be poorly adapted to the new environment'. While that may be true, the students lacked the ability to vividly imagine how climate change might affect Colorado's aspens and Montana's whitebark pines, agriculture in Bangladesh, residents of the Maldives or native villages in northern Alaska. Had they read in more detail about these things, they might have gained a clearer picture, but even then it might have been hard for them to envision how changes in climate and landscape would affect the communities, human and non-human, of particular places.

As early as 1949 Aldo Leopold lodged this complaint against environmental education:

'[it] defines no right or wrong, assigns no obligation, calls for no sacrifice, implies no change in the current philosophy of values'.⁵

Environmental education that is abstract and decontextualized, that engages students solely through books and lectures and that does little to link knowledge to responsibility will undoubtedly continue to fall prey to this critique. We have tried to show how field-based environmental education can promote practical wisdom, by engaging students more directly and actively in learning and by showing how environmental issues are matters of real consequence to all living things.

Our intent here is not to diminish the importance of classroom learning or the instruction that takes place on college campuses, but rather to encourage a more integrative approach to post-secondary environmental education that includes both traditional forms of learning and the more open experiences afforded by field-based programs. These, in turn, may include a mix of experiences to give students a sense of the range of environments from which we can learn and whose workings we need to understand. The 'field' includes not just forests, deserts, prairies and mountain peaks, but the campus quad, the university power plant, local streams, landfills, factories, water treatment facilities and even the halls of Congress. The strongest learning will take place when students can recognize concepts as they appear in a variety of field-based situations, while also linking in the other direction from specific practices to concepts and methods mastered on campus. Ideally, the two kinds of instruction can be mutually supportive.

Even the most ambitious field-based academic programs should, and typically do, work to integrate, not replace, learning conducted inside the classroom. Programs such as Prescott College's 4 year undergraduate degree use a block-quarter calendar that allows students to participate in 4 week blocks of field courses followed by 10 week quarters usually more devoted to classroom instruction.⁶ The University of Montana's Wilderness and Civilization Program brings a group of 25 students together for a 1 year experience that begins and concludes with 10-day backpacking and canoeing expeditions, but still sends the cohort through two semesters of coursework on campus to study wilderness management, the economics of wild land preservation, environmental ethics and other subjects.⁷ This inside-outside combination not only gives students a chance to see the practical dimensions of environmental problems, but the change in venue can also provide opportunities to reflect on and synthesize learning, allowing students to return to campus (or careers) with renewed focus and inspiration.

As we have noted, the lessons gained by these field-based courses should be refreshed wherever possible in classroom coursework, just as the field courses emphasize many concepts and methods that need to come from classroom instruction. How can this be accomplished? Ultimately, we view this not so much as a matter of learning and retaining facts as it is the development of skills in critical thinking and deliberative discussion. Both inside and outside the classroom we ought to be training students to engage the world in which we all live, to inquire of ourselves and those we encounter and to be able to enter into constructive dialogue. This rests upon an ability, as Barry Lopez has suggested, to propose questions and conversations rather than impose ideas and rules.⁸ It requires that we integrate our actions with our ideas and recognize that both of these come with consequences. And, wherever possible, it should come with an educational approach that prompts students to learn in the classroom, but also learn to leave the classroom behind. For it is out there, beyond the buildings and quads of the college campus, that the vast majority of our students will need to find their way in life. We owe it to them, and ourselves, to get out there with them as part of our collective preparation. Those of us who are academics will not be hurt by the reminder that the pursuit of theoretical wisdom is deeply dependent on our having the practical wisdom to design economies and communities that can sustain us in relation to the ecosystems of which we are a part.

Environmental education that teaches practical wisdom empowers students not only to understand and appreciate the workings of the world as observers, but encourages them to learn how to live well in the world. This is not a matter of figuring out the 'right' stances to take on environmental issues, then going on with one's life. Living well is a process that requires openness, curiosity, creativity and a willingness to work with others. What contextualized, multimodal and practical education can teach is that environmental problems cannot be 'solved' and settled like equations in mathematics. Our relationship to the environment, like our relationship to other human beings, is dynamic and ongoing. Thus, in addition to a theoretical understanding of nutrient cycles, biodiversity indices and environmental engineering, we need practical skills of attention, reflection and responsiveness that are best learned through engagement with the world outside the classroom.

Published in: Ethics, Place & Environment, Volume 8, Issue 3 October 2005 , pages 385 - 392

Notes

¹ Aristotle, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, translated by W. D. Ross, revised by J. L. Ackrill and J. O. Urmson (New York, Oxford University Press, 1980), Book X, ch. 8, sec. 4.

² 'The Belgrade Charter: a global framework for environmental education', Connect: UNESCO-UNEP Environmental Education Newsletter, 1(1) (1976), pp. 1-2.

³ William Cronon, 'The trouble with wilderness; or, getting back to the wrong nature', in William Cronon (ed.), Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature (New York, W. W. Norton & Co., 1995), pp. 69-90.

⁴ Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 223-224 (Original work, Oxford University Press, 1949).

⁵ Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, pp. 207-208.

⁶ Prescott College website. Retrieved June 15, 2004, from http://www.prescott.edu/academics/rdp/how.html.

⁷ Wilderness and Civilization Program website. Retrieved June 15, 2004, from http://www.forestry.umt.edu/research/MFCES/programs/wi/wildciv.htm.

⁸ Barry Lopez, The Rediscovery of North America (New York, Vintage, 1992), p. 18. (Original work, University of Kentucky Press, 1990).

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Emotion

Austin E. Grigg
University of Richmond

An emotion can be described as a person's acute or relatively short-lived reaction that is revealed in his or her behavior as well as felt in his or her conscious experience. An emotion is generally accompanied by widespread changes in physiological functioning—increased pulse and breathing rates, for example. An emotion is usually initiated as a reaction to factors outside the individual—circumstances in his environment.

With many emotions, there appear to be two particular behavioral reactions. First, there occur well-integrated reflex patterns like those observed in smiling, crying, rage, or the startle reflex. Second, there are motivational manifestations—persistent purposive actions, such as efforts to escape an unpleasant or frightening situation, or deliberate violent behavior in response to anger. The motivational function of emotions is generally accepted by psychologists, but there is less agreement that each emotion must necessarily involve integrated reflex patterns.

Problems in Defining Emotion

From antiquity, writers have described emotions and their effects on behavior. The word "emotion" comes from the Latin emovere, which means to stir up, agitate, or excite. The language of every literate culture includes hundreds of words that describe feelings or emotions. It is easy to identify intense reactions of fear, anger, grief, or joy as emotions. There is general agreement that joy differs from sorrow and that disgust is unlike pleasure.

Nevertheless, students of behavior have faced problems in attempting to formulate a precise definition of emotion. It would seem that the person who experiences some emotion could be used as the source for an accurate description and definition of the state. However, two people experiencing joy, for example, may provide strikingly different descriptions of feeling joyful. Also, an outside observer might protest that joy was not really aroused, and that the individual was not really very happy. Thus individuals who claim to experience the same emotion may describe dissimilar feelings, and an outside observer may insist that neither is describing what the observer has in mind for the particular emotional feeling.

Late in the 19th century, scientists believed that they could solve the dilemma by studying the physiological reactions that occur during emotional experiences. Subsequent research, however, indicated that even this approach does not provide a precise definition. It has been found that different emotions show highly similar physiological reactions. In many instances the physiologist can tell that an emotional reaction is occurring but cannot determine exactly which emotion the individual is experiencing.

Another theory of emotion was proposed in the 19th century by Charles Darwin. His investigation of evolution led him to believe that humanity's behavior contains residuals of responses that had been necessary in lower forms of animals and in earlier times for humans but are no longer as essential for survival. In 1872 he compared certain emotional expressions in man to the role of such reactions in animals. He pointed out that baring the teeth was typical in animals when preparing to fight, and he saw a relationship between this and humans' tendency to bare their teeth when extremely angry. Darwin concluded that there is something very primitive about emotion. His theory has not been generally useful to psychologists.

The James-Lange Theory

The most influential theory of emotions was proposed in 1884 by William James, who was an American psychologist and philosopher. A Danish physiologist, Carl Lange, without prior knowledge of James's writings, published the same concept in 1887. The proposition came to be known as the James-Lange theory. Prior to the formulation of this theory, it had been assumed that emotions were aroused by ideas that the provoking situation aroused in the individual's mind. To use a simple example: person sees bear; person feels afraid; person runs away. James and Lange reversed the sequence: person sees bear; person runs away; person feels afraid. According to this view, the physiological reactions are an immediate reflex response to the provoking stimulus. The emotion appears only when the individual senses that bodily changes are occurring. Emotion, according to this theory, is the awareness of physiological reactions—for example, in the glands and other organs in the abdomen—that are aroused at once when the provoking situation affects the observer. Accordingly, individuals do not cry because they feel sad; they are sad because they have begun to cry. Whereas it had been assumed that physiological reactions followed some sort of judgment or appreciation of the provoking situation as safe or dangerous, good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, the James-Lange theory asserted that the physiological reactions either preceded or were at the very least simultaneous with the awareness of an emotional experience.

The Cannon-Bard Theory

Another theory of emotions, known as the Cannon-Bard theory, was first recognized by the American physiologist Walter B. Cannon in 1927 and was elaborated by another American physiologist, Philip Bard, in 1934. This theory stresses the role in emotions of the hypothalamus and other structures in the brain. Cannon's experiments with animals showed that removal of the hypothalamus eliminated the familiar patterns of emotional response. Experiments with animals also demonstrated that emotional behavior is not changed radically when the nerve links between the brain and various organs are severed, a finding that contradicts the James-Lange theory. Moreover, it was found that rather sharp differences in organic changes from emotion to emotion, as predicted by the James-Lange theory, do not seem to occur. Cannon also found that it is possible by means of drugs to produce striking organic changes but that the changes do not seem to produce emotions. Cannon felt that the abdominal organs are rather insensitive and that messages from there are so diffuse that it would be difficult to explain how specific feelings could result from such indistinct signals. The Cannon-Bard theory holds that both emotional experience and physiological changes are set off simultaneously through activation of the hypothalamus.

The Perceptual-Motivational Theory

Two American psychologists, Magda Arnold in 1960 and R. W. Leeper in 1965, arrived at a similar view of emotion, known as the perceptual-motivational theory. In her theory, Arnold stressed the judgment that the individual makes of the provoking situation. She asserted that the individual appraises the provoking situation immediately as potentially pleasant or unpleasant and that the emotion follows promptly from this judgment. This theory holds that emotion is a form of motivation, a drive to experience circumstances that are judged to be pleasant and to avoid situations that are judged to be unpleasant. Whereas the James-Lange theory holds that the body reacts reflexedly on encountering the provoking situation, the Arnold view is that the body responds to the individual's appraisal of the provoking situation.

No fully satisfactory explanation or theory of emotion has been formulated. From the psychological view, it has been difficult to establish theories of emotional responsiveness because different people may react in widely different ways to the supposedly same emotion. From the physiological view, a persistent problem has been that most of the bodily mechanisms that have been described as occurring in emotion have been known also to occur in the absence of emotion.

Action of the Nervous System

During intense emotion, the whole organism appears to be involved, but many of the most significant reactions may be traced to the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic system contains nerve groups that are located outside the brain and function with some independence of the brain and central nervous system. This somewhat self-regulated (autonomous) system is divided intotwo parts. The sympathetic system is most active during emotional states. The craniosacral division, known as the parasympathetic system, controls functions that go on during quiet states—digestion, for example. Typically, the sympathetic system works in opposition to the parasympathetic. Thus if one system accelerates the activity of some body organ, the other system inhibits the functioning of the organ.

In emotions the sympathetic system accelerates the heartbeat, whereas the parasympathetic checks the rate of heartbeat. Secretions of the adrenal gland are accelerated by the sympathetic system. Many physiological changes observed during certain emotions are responses to the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system: speeding of the heartbeat, increase in rate of respiration, increased perspiration, increased supply of epinephrine (adrenalin) in the bloodstream, concentration of the blood supply in the skeletal muscles, and increase in the amount of blood sugar released from the liver.

Emotions and Behavior

When an individual remains under prolonged emotional tension, physiological changes may accumulate. This condition may produce disturbances in behavior, mostly because the prolonged activation of the autonomic nervous system brings about deviations from normal physiological functioning. In 1938 the American psychiatrist Flanders Dunbar presented a strong case for the role of emotion in producing physical illness, reporting evidence that the response of the physiology of the body to prolonged emotional tension may produce psychosomatic symptoms. Such symptoms are not initiated by microbes or by other traditional causes of physical diseases but are seen as the consequences of emotional tensions. Hence, they are called psychosomatic illnesses, or illnesses of psychogenic origin.

This concept of the causal role of emotions in producing physical symptoms began to receive prominence late in the 19th century when the French neuropsychiatrist Jean Charcot reported his studies of the emotional factors in hysteria. Sigmund Freud also described the emotional basis of physical symptoms in hysteria and in other forms of neurosis. In the United States, Adolf Meyer, the Johns Hopkins neuropsychiatrist, developed during the first three decades of the 20th century what he called the theory of psychobiological parallelism. He stressed the role of emotional factors in both physical and mental health. Cannon reported his famous experiments on the physiological effects of acute emotion in 1938. During World War II, military psychiatrists reported numerous instances of profound changes in bodily function as well as in mental stability that appear to have been precipitated by intense and prolonged emotional states.

Attempts to Classify Emotions

Many schemes have been proposed for classifying emotions, but these are of little more than academic interest. Most authorities divide emotions into those that are pleasant (such as joy and love) and those that are unpleasant (fear and grief). An American psychologist, M. A. Wenger, held that most subjective descriptions of emotions can be classified along certain dimensions, or axes: undifferentiated excitement, axis of fear (for example, terror, anxiety, apprehension), axis of pain, of anger, of disappointment, of sexual excitement, and of relief.

Another American psychologist, Robert Plutchik, developed a scale of intensity of emotion based on the judgments of a large number of students who were asked to rate how strongly they had experienced various feelings. In a table of emotions based on judgments about intensity, he listed ecstasy, rage, and terror as the most intense, and annoyance and dislike as moderate in intensity.

Development of Emotional Expression

A great deal of attention has been given to the development of emotional expression in infants and throughout childhood. There is general agreement that shortly after birth the only distinguishable emotion is a kind of generalized agitation or excitement. Kathrine M. B. Bridges has shown that as the infant becomes older, an increasing number of emotions become apparent. She found, for example, that a 3-month-old infant can express delight and distress; a 6-month-old baby can express anger, disgust, and fear; and a 1-year-old can express elation and affection.

Despite variations in home background and experiences, the capacity for specific emotional reactions appears at about the same age in all children. This suggests that the capacity to display emotions develops by a process of biological maturation and that there is a reliable, biologically determined sequence of development of emotional responsiveness. A 6-month-old infant cannot express jealousy, for example, but toddlers of 15 months are often reported to display such feelings. Although the capacity to express emotions occurs through maturation, the objects or circumstances that are capable of arousing the particular emotion in a specific individual depend upon the learning experiences of the child.

Encyclopedia Americana, 2009

Also See Morality and Emotions in this blog.

Further Reading

Buck, Ross, The Communication of Emotion (Guilford Press 1984).

Evans, Phil, Motivation and Emotion (Routledge 1989).

Gainotti, G., and C. Caltagirone, eds., Emotions and the Dual Brain (Springer-Verlag 1989).

Harris, P., Children and Emotions: The Development of Psychological Understanding (Basil Blackwell 1989).

Lyons, W., Emotion (Cambridge 1980).

Rorty, Amelie O., ed., Explaining Emotions (Univ. of Calif. Press 1980).