Education, Text, and Context

The aim of this work is to problematize Cavell’s perfectionist idea of education and suggest a possible integration through the Deweyan pragmatist approach. For Cavell education concerns a relational horizon regarding a conversation between the individual and the other expressed by the particular relationship between the text and the reader, narrowing the field to a certain type of educational experience, while for Dewey education concerns a more general reflection on life contexts and social practices, focusing on a notion of experience capable of including within it even that of the perfectionist text. Despite its general support in democratic conversation and the public dimension, the Cavellian approach seems to maintain its focus on the conversational-linguistic aspect of human experiences. The aim is therefore to show how the particular attention given to the transformative aspect of reality and to the notion of habit that characterizes the Deweyan pragmatist approach provides a fruitful integration of the perfectionist perspective, remodeling it within a wider and richer framework, capable of taking into account not only the processes of transformation of the self focused on the linguistic field but also the social and natural environment within which the self develops and relates.