138 Chapter 3 in a cognitive manner but is instead the consequence of bodily perception based on practical experience. The body knows with ‘preconscious knowledge’ that enables judgement, analysis and conscious knowledge. Man’s being in the world produces this knowledge, without the possibility of drawing a clear line between mind and body: ‘So we can no longer separate the body as physiological mechanism from the “habit-body” that has built up over time’ (Smith, 2013, p. 44). This led Smith (2013) to new educational questions such as ‘How do we teach the body?’ and ‘How is the body trained to perceive the world?’ (p. 73). While praktognosia relates to the phenomena that surround man, habitus is concerned with the dynamics between man’s interiority and men, the group, the community he is part of. This interaction generates a ‘system of structured, structuring dispositions’, a ‘communal, collective disposition that gets inscribed in me’ (Smith, 2013, p. 81). This immediately brings to mind Augustine’s law of the heart. Not only does bodily interaction with nature and phenomena form an unconscious disposition that influences acquaintance but also cultural interaction with people. A person is part of a group that defines what is fashionable and what is not. Bourdieu (1977) interpreted this aspect of human reality with the term habitus, which in the work of Aristotle stood for a certain disposition, a latent capacity from which earlier or later on something can develop. Smith (2013) tied it to his ‘embodied intentionality’ and discussed Bourdieu’s habitus in a chapter he titled ‘The Social Body’. The image of man that Smith (2013) focused on is of much greater complexity than the affirmation that man is an animal rationale (Aristotle) or a thinking being. There is a complex, inseparable bond between the human body and the human spirit. In addition, the whole of the human being is inseparably connected to the context in which he or she lives and to the group he or she is, willingly or unwillingly, part of. All of these influences on the human being shape certain desires. In particular, this point influenced Smith (2013) to derive many thoughts from Augustine. When human desires are only horizontally aimed, they degenerate into (sinful) lusts. By the presence of the Holy Spirit in the world, however, human desires can also be aimed at God. The Holy Spirit utilises, therefore, Biblical teaching that, in a holistic manner, is communicated via knowledge and through practices. In relation to the church and Christian education, Smith’s (2013) conclusion, based on Merleau-Ponty and Bourdieu, was as follows: Having fallen prey to the intellectualism of Modernity, both Christian worship and Christian pedagogy have underestimated the importance of this body/ story nexus—this inextricable link between imagination, narrative, and
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