Reason in exile

Reason in Exile. Essays on Catalan Philosophers It is a book committed to transmission. Specifically, to the transmission of the wealth of Catalan philosophy. The author is Manuel Durán (1925-2020). He began his exile in France in 1939, but when the Germans entered Paris, his family managed to book a ticket to the Nyassa heading to Mexico. After gaining a notable reputation as a poet, literary critic and philosopher, he obtained a professorship at Yale University. He was also founder of the North American Catalan Society and co-director of the Catalan Review and wrote more than 40 books.

In the pages of Reason in Exile (1994) we find the voices of Jaume Serra Húnter, Joaquim Xirau, Ramon Xirau, Josep Ferrater Mora, Luis Recasens Siches, Joan Roura Parella, Eduard Nicol and Manuel Durán himself. It is an irregular book, in which passages of high rhetorical exaltation abound, such as the one that assures that the Catalan philosophers in exile "more than any other group, built a bridge between Europe and the new world." But it deserves our gratitude for the effort to keep a flame alive:almost cursors vital lampada translating.

"We are attracted by contact with young people, by the possibility of indirectly, almost mysteriously, influencing the future of our people and our cultures, and of paying the debt we owe to those who were our teachers. And at the same time, those who studied with us, at least some of them, will follow in our footsteps. This continuity, this chain, is not broken."

Is it really eternal?

Durán answers this question indirectly in an article entitled "Dewey and the crisis of education in the United States," published in American Notebooks (No. 5, September-October 1959).

He begins by acknowledging "the awareness of a crisis, of a lack of fit between what the educational process has set out to do and what it has actually achieved and is achieving." In the United States this awareness was especially acute when Americans discovered that the Russians had placed a satellite, Sputnik, over their leaders (1957). They felt both threatened militarily and left behind scientifically, which was a serious double threat to democracy itself. The question they asked themselves was: "Are we providing young people with an education that meets the needs of the times?"

Since education was largely in the hands of Dewey's followers, who formed the progressive education movement, it was necessary to rethink the validity of his pedagogical postulates. Durán does not doubt his good intentions but considers Dewey to be a man of the 19th century. His pedagogy is a response to the needs of industrial society.

According to Durán, the revolution led by Dewey "has been radical in some cases, less so in others, but it has always gone in the direction of loosening discipline, allowing the child more initiative, relating as far as possible the knowledge to be acquired and the child's daily experience [...]. No other country has gone to these extremes; Dewey assumed that students, absorbed in problems that truly interested them, would discipline themselves, would spontaneously impose on themselves an effort of attention and respect for the issues being dealt with, much more morally and practically beneficial than discipline imposed from above [...]. Dewey's followers confess that discipline has become the number one problem, and that they cannot solve it precisely because doing so by authoritarian imposition would destroy a fundamental basis of their pedagogical system."

"Traditional schooling," Durán concludes, "disregarded children and their problems; the new pedagogy disregards culture [...]. Discipline imposed from above is sometimes indispensable to maintain creative effort," and also to avoid burdening students with excessive responsibilities. "Should we do what we want again today?" a girl asked her teacher one day.

Paradoxically, John Dewey, the pedagogue of North American industrial society, is the beacon that current innovative pedagogy has erected to guide itself in post-industrial society, which is the society where there is an overabundance of information and a shortage of criteria.