Emotions, Social Transformation and Eduction

This book addresses the education of emotions in the context of a transforming South African society. It reconfigures the conceptual landscape in terms of rationality, social transformation, and education. It contests the intellectual and instrumental prejudice in the currently dominant ways of thinking about education, reclaiming a sense of how to think of education in terms of cultivating humanity as a key to the profound transformation of South African society. The text argues that emotions should be relocated in our conception of transformation and education. The book is divided into three sections. Part 1 consists of an account of a particular cognitive theory of the emotions, as developed by Martha Nussbaum in Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (2001). In Part 2, this theory is applied to examining the complexities of social transformation in South Africa at a more profound, personal level. In the final section, the concept of 'education for transformation' is discussed.