This paper explores the educational significance of the critiques of knowledge as a representation of reality characteristic of post-positivist and -structuralist epistemologies. In his philosophy of knowledge Rudolf Steiner was ahead of this critique in that he also opposed the view of knowledge as a kind of mirror image or reproduction of reality. In the preface to his doctoral dissertation (1980; first published 1892), he describes the task of knowledge as to create a realm that together with the sense world results in the full reality. According to this view, reality arises out of the confluence of knowledge and sense experience. It seems of particular interest to relate Steiner’s view to Humboldt’s idea of worthwhile knowledge as that which mediates the self with the world. In his theory of Bildung, Humboldt (2000) says the role of knowledge is to link the self with the world in a most unrestrained interplay, and that this is the only yardstick by which human knowledge can be judged.

For Steiner, knowledge must interact with sense experience to constitute reality. For Humboldt, knowledge must help put the self into interplay with the world, the more unrestrained the better. Together these two points of view suggest that genuine knowledge – and therefore genuine learning – is such that it makes sense of experience (makes it real) and allow self and world to interact in a meaningful way. Education that results in such knowledge could be seen as what Robert Spaemann calls “education to reality” (Erziehung zur Wirklichkeit) (Spaemann, 1987/88).

Against this backdrop, the question arises what forms of teaching and learning can support the fruitful interplay of knowledge and experience, self and world, resulting in an “education to reality”. This question is particularly relevant to the fact that students often experience school knowledge as too abstract and irrelevant to their daily life. To answer this question, Steiner’s notion of living versus dead concepts and the importance of artistic activity as well as aesthetic experience is taken up and related to Rumpf’s (2010) critique of the learning concept dominating present educational practice, based on performativity and accountability. The prevalence of this learning concept is actually in line with the learning theories characterising much of today’s educational discourse, since these theories also emphasise the role of the subject as active and creative. The passive, “suffering” aspects of learning are generally neglected. However, aesthetic experiences have precisely this quality of being “received” and undergone. Sometimes they are also paradigmatic illustrations of the confluence of knowledge and experience.

Another aspect of this problematique is how normalising discursive practices within educational and other social institutions keeps experience and knowledge separate by suppressing the former if it threatens the discursive hegemony. So-called discursive closure is a way of maintaining discursive hegemony and can be achieved in many ways, for instance by the subjectification of experience (Deetz, 1992) – something that often happens to aesthetic experience.

Deetz, S. A. (1992). Democracy in an age of corporate colonization. Developments in communication and the politics of everyday life. Albany: SUNY Press. Humboldt, W. v. (2000). Theory of Bildung. In I. Westbury, S. Hopmann & K. Riquarts (Eds.), Teaching as a Reflective Practice: the German Didaktik Tradition. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum. Rumpf, H. (2010). Was hätte Einstein gedacht, wenn er nicht Geige gespielt hätte? Gegen die Verkürzungen des etablierten Lernbegriffs. Weinheim & München: Juventa Verlag. Spaemann, R. (1987/88). Erziehung zur Wirklichkeit. Scheidewege, 17, 136-146. Steiner, R. (1980). Wahrheit und Wissenschaft. Vorspiel einer «Philosophie der Freiheit». Dornach: Rudolf Steiner Verlag.