The Education of the Sentiments

In this chapter I will explore concepts of the sentiments in continental philosophy, as nuanced, creative emotional expressions, and their relation to learning. This study refers to the relevant philosophies of Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques Rancière, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Michel Foucault, Alain Badiou, Frantz Fanon, Isabelle Stengers, Baruch Spinoza and Jacques Lacan. The chapter addresses questions of whether there are differences between the sentiments and the emotions, and whether vocalising the sentiments might be a harmonising or revolutionary action. It considers how the sentiments can be activated in learning processes, how choices may be made about which sentiments to express, and reasons why they might need an education. The argument relates the autobiographical to the global, and explores approaches that tend towards pedagogies of compassion. Different philosophical concepts of mind-body and environment are compared, through existentialist, poststructural and posthumanist philosophies. In migrations among the focal thinkers a concept of travelling sentience emerges, that gathers layers of significance for an education of the sentiments.