The invisible tissue of the world: a common good to be protected Symbolic art and imaginal pedagogy

Abstract

The essay starts with the recognition of the epistemic, educational, and transformative value of symbolic imagination (supported during the last two centuries by Bachelard, Jung, Hillmann, Corbin, Durand, Wunenburger). Symbolic imagination is regarded as a “common good” for all human beings for its is able to re-connect each other and to reconnect our souls with the soul. of the world seen as an organic and lively body. This idea of the organic world is very ancient but it still survives in the field of symbolic art (cinema, poetry, music, paintings and so on) and so through the mediation of symbolic art we can restore a common sensibility able to allow us to live pacefully with each other and with the world itself. Moreover symbolic imagination has the power to mend the lacerations coming from the dualistic thought of the dominant culture and reconnect all its oppositions (between matter and spirit, male and female, individual and collective, visible and invisible). As Henry Corbin has showed in his works the authentic imaginative attitude can lead us in the world of imagination (mundus imaginalis) that is not an unreal fantastic place, but it is a third reality nowadays reserved to the mystics, dreamers, or artists but where we can learn to dwell through a particular kind of education called “imaginal pedagogy” (Mottana, 2004). The last part of this essay will be devoted to introduce educational praxis of Imaginal Pedagogy which tries to awake an imaginative attitude towards things, problems, events, phenomena and people that can be considered a precious source of affective, collective, participative knowledge shared by the whole mankind.