Artful Education and the Downward Journey
Facing Finitude and Death
Artful Education and the Downward Journey
Facing Finitude and Death
Description
This book considers whether and how various philosophies, practices and artworks might help people face, and give new faces to, finitude. Formal education typically emphasizes the journey upward, with ascending and healthy aspects of life like growth and flourishing being common educational aims. However, life also involves downward journeys of illness, decay and death. Written by contributors based in the UK and beyond, it explores the educational potential in a range of spiritual and social practices as well as from cinema and literature that engage with downward journeys. The chapters cover written works by E.M. Forster, Hume, Nietzsche, and Robert Louis Stevenson; films such as Des Hommes et des Dieux and Arrival, Living and My Life Without Me; and social practices and rituals including football. The authors argue that some artworks frame or narrate descent in ways that can educate audiences and reveal the folly in beating wings only upward. Downward journeys show falling or failing and fear of the suffocating dark unknown; but they may also provide glimmers of light, hope and amusement. Education full of art and artistry can prepare us to rise and fall, and rise and fall again, not simply to solve or heal, but to be present to what finitude teaches.
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Table of Contents
Introduction: Faith, Hope and Courage, Anne Pirrie (University of the West of Scotland, UK) and Ramsey Affifi (University of Edinburgh, UK), with James MacAllister (University of Edinburgh, UK)
1. What Can Death Teach about Love? Downward Journeys to Nowhere Special, James MacAllister (University of Edinburgh, UK)
2. Learning between Limit and Potential: Cinematic Motions in the Meaning of Life and Death, Alexis Gibbs (University of Winchester, UK)
3. Lessons from the Dead: Photography and Negative Education, Ian Munday (University of Galway, Ireland)
4. 'Ending Badly from the Beginning': Facing Finitude with Robert Louis Stevenson, Shari Sabeti (University of Edinburgh, UK)
5. Ecological Literacy in Leo Tolstoy's Master and Man and E. M. Forster's The Machine Stops, Sarah MacAllister (University of Bristol, UK)
6. The Return of Beauty on a Dying Planet, Ramsey Affifi (University of Edinburgh, UK) and Juliette Bertoldo (Maynooth University, Ireland)
7. How to Become Mortal, David Lewin (Strathclyde University, UK)
8. 'A Lot of Humour Comes Out of Desperation': Film's Artful Cultivation of Tragic Aesthetic Vision, Katja Frimberger (Strathclyde University, UK)
9. The Difficulty of Mortality and the (Im)Possibility of Education, Anne Pirrie (University of the West of Scotland, UK) and Elizabeth O'Brien (Maynooth University, Ireland)
10. The Focus on the Full-Time Whistle: Football, Death and Care in Life, Ian Normile, Gale MacLeod, and James MacAllister (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Conclusion: Listening into the Silence, Ramsey Affifi (University of Edinburgh, UK) and Anne Pirrie (University of the West of Scotland, UK), with James MacAllister (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Epilogue, Harriet Harris (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Index
Product details
| Published | 03 Sep 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 256 |
| ISBN | 9781350470347 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Illustrations | 10 bw illus |
| Series | Philosophies of Education in Art, Cinema, and Literature |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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