Abstract
I borrow the phrase “redemptive truth” from Rorty (2001), who argues that its adherents (wrongly and naively) “think that there is a natural terminus to inquiry, a way things really are, and that understanding what that way is will tell us what to do with ourselves.” Redemptive truth thus designates a set of beliefs “which would end, once and for all, the process of reflection,” fulfilling the kind of need that religion has traditionally attempted to satisfy. To believe in redemptive truth, Rorty asserts, is to believe in “one true description” of what is “really” going on in the world, and thereby the possibility of a definitive answer to perennial questions about how best to live one’s life—or in the case at hand, how best to educate musically. Music education’s passion for positivistic research is part and parcel of the quest for redemptive truth, but that is a topic for deliberation under another MayDay group ideal. Lest I be misunderstood: I do not share Rorty’s enthusiasm for a literary turn. My position is more Deweyan than Rortyan.
The business of reflection in determining the true good cannot be done once for all … It needs to be done over and over again, in terms of the conditions of concrete situations as they arise.
In a moving world solidification is always dangerous.
—John Dewey
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Bowman, W.D. (2009). No One True Way: Music Education Without Redemptive Truth* . In: Regelski, T., Gates, J. (eds) Music Education for Changing Times. Landscapes: the Arts, Aesthetics, and Education, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2700-9_1
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