Exemplifying what it advocates, this book is an innovative attempt to
retrieve the essay form from its degenerate condition in academic
writing. Its purpose is to create pedagogical space in which the inner
struggle of 'lived experience' can articulate itself in the first
person. Working through essays, the modern, 'post-secular' self can
guide, understand, and express its own transformation. This is not
merely a book about writing methods: it has a sharp existential edge.
Beginning by defining key terms such as 'self-transformation', Kwak
sketches the contemporary debates between Jürgen Habermas and Charles
Taylor on the status of religious language in the public domain, and its
relationship to secular language. This allows her to contextualize her
book's central questions: how can philosophical practice reduce the
experiential rift between knowledge and wisdom? How can the essay form
be developed so that it facilitates, as praxis, pedagogical
self-transformation? Kwak develops her answers by working through ideas
of George Lukács and Stanley Cavell, of Hans Blumenberg and Søren
Kiekegaard, whose work is much less familiar in this context than it
deserves to be.
Kwak's work provides templates for new forms of educational writing, new
approaches to teaching educators, and new ways of writing methodology
for educational researchers. Yet the importance of her ideas extends far
beyond teaching academies to classroom teachers, curriculum developers -
and to anyone engaged in the quest to lead a reflective life of one's
own.
Kwak's work provides templates for new forms of educational writing, new
approaches to teaching educators, and new ways of writing methodology
for educational researchers. Yet the importance of her ideas extends far
beyond teaching academies to classroom teachers, curriculum developers -
and to anyone engaged in the quest to lead a reflective life of one's
own.
Kwak's work provides templates for new forms of educational writing, new
approaches to teaching educators, and new ways of writing methodology
for educational researchers. Yet the importance of her ideas extends far
beyond teaching academies to classroom teachers, curriculum developers -
and to anyone engaged in the quest to lead a reflective life of one's
own.
