ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that rather than educating, art educes—and therefore elicits—what people assume to be learning by an act of withdrawal. Art’s withdrawal should not be confused with a retreat or abdication from reality. The insistence on the word “outwith” as distinct from “outside” or “without” will be explained in terms of the specificity by which theartthat makes things is distinguished from thethingsthat art makes. Art is just an event of such an encounter and not the essence of one’s being, even in the case of the artist himself. A work of art is distinct from the person who made it. The visual artist has long given up the role of a didactic master, a magister who paints churches in order to teach the precepts of the Church. Human cognition also relies on its own powers of judgement, where other human faculties inform the decisions that people make experientially.
