In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Levinas—Between Philosophy and Rhetoric:The “Teaching” of Levinas’s Scriptural ReferencesClaire Elise KatzIn an interview titled "On Jewish Philosophy," Emmanuel Levinas illuminates the connection that he sees between philosophical discourse and the role of midrash in interpreting the Hebrew scriptures. His interviewer immediately expresses surprise at Levinas's comments that suggested he saw the traditions of philosophy and biblical theology as in some sense harmonious (quoted in Robbins 2001, 239). Levinas (...) responds by elaborating on this connection he sees. For him, the lived experience of Judaism is above all a sense of belonging to humanity and, in turn, to a supreme order of responsibility (240). Although his intellectual life focused on the sacred texts of Judaism, this life included non-Jewish books, which he believed expressed a similar concern or a similar responsibility—a concern for the meaning of life. This list of such books includes Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, The Miser, and The Misanthrope, in addition to the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.In Levinas's view, these novels are not exercises of philosophyper se; as mentioned above, they express the same concerns that occupy philosophy, but they express these concerns in a different idiom. They do not offer a philosophical argument; instead, they use figurative language and literary narrative to convey their messages. By drawing this distinction between philosophy and literature, Levinas appears to have divided the written word into two categories: philosophy, on the one hand, and literary texts, on the other. Yet readers of his philosophical work cannot help but notice his frequent references to literary sources, including the numerous citations taken from the Jewish holy texts. His use of these citations encourages us to ask how we are to classify these books in general and how to classify, in particular, the Scriptures and the holy texts in Judaism. With regard to the holy texts in Judaism, should we classify them as simply a [End Page 159] literary device? Or, do they constitute a third category that falls somewhere in between philosophy and rhetoric? If the latter, then what is their status relative to these larger categories?Although Levinas insists on separating his two bodies of work—his philosophical writings and his Jewish writings—the distinction between them becomes increasingly blurred with his frequent introduction of citations from the Hebrew texts into his philosophy and by inflecting his Jewish writings with philosophical interpretations.1 In what follows, I examine the unique and significant role of Scriptural references within Levinas's philosophical work. My claim is that the Scriptural references are in fact rhetorical, but not "simply" rhetorical; they do pedagogical work for Levinas that other literary devices cannot accomplish. They engage his readers such that they are invited to grapple with the Scriptures in a manner potentially unfamiliar to them, and this invitation, in turn, has the pedagogical effect of attuning his readers to his texts and to his ethical project—even, one might say, to the other—and inviting them into an experience of transcendence.In the interview mentioned above, Levinas tells his interlocutor that for the Jews the Scriptures do not exist apart from the interpretations that accompany them. These interpretations are found in the collections of midrashim and the Talmud. One need know only a little bit about Hebrew and the construction of the Hebrew texts in order to see why these interpretations are significant. There are three grammatical concerns with the Hebrew language: first, biblical Hebrew does not contain vowels, though it does employ vowel aspirations; second, it is a language based on root letter combinations, and the meaning of these combinations alters, depending on the vowel aspirations that are inserted. For example, "Kiddish," the Hebrew blessing over wine, is based on a combination of Hebrew letters that are transliterated into English as KDSH. The blessing changes if we insert different vowel aspirations: "Kaddish" is the blessing said for those who have died. Third, biblical Hebrew lacks punctuation. Owing to the absence of vowels and punctuation, interpretation difficulties immediately emerge. The rabbinic model of midrash addresses these problems by offering multiple explanations and interpretations.Levinas, however, is not concerned with this aspect of the written language. Rather, he emphasizes... (shrink)

In this paper we philosophically explore the notion of darkness within higher education teaching and learning. Within the present-day discourse of how to make visible and to explicate teaching and learning strategies through alignment procedures and evidence-based intellectual leadership, we argue that dark spots and blind angles grow too. As we struggle to make visible and to evaluate, assess, manage and organise higher education, the darkness of the institution actually expands. We use the term ‘dark’ to (...) comprehend challenges, situations, reactions, aims and goals, which cannot easily be understood and solved by agendas of quality assurance and professionalisation of higher education. We need to understand better why gender issues or ethnic conflicts emerge, and why students take up arms, within an institution which is thought to be inclusive, inviting and open to all kinds of people and cultures. And we need to study the educational potential of days of boredom or isolation, caught up in daily routines of teaching or studying which do not lead anywhere or give way to any productive work. These matters have not been sufficiently researched and conceptualised as meaningful in themselves. We aim here to open a space for insights through the concept of darkness presented in this paper. In order to make educational darkness palpable we draw on the philosophies of darkness found in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and Emmanuel Levinas. Through those philosophies we argue that the growing darkness within higher education is not a symptom we should fear and avoid. Having the ability and courage to face these darker educational aspects of everyday higher education practice will enable students and teachers to find renewed hope in the university as an institution for personal as well as professional imagination and growth. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Levinas: Philosopher, Teacher, Prophet Levinas and the Infinite Demands of Education Notes.

For the past 15 years, scholars in education have focused on Levinas’s work largely in terms of his understanding of alterity, of the self-Other relation, of ethics as ‘first philosophy’ and the significance these concepts have on rethinking educational theory and practice. What I do in this paper, by way of method, is to start from a slightly different place, from the assertion that there is indeed something ‘new’ to be explored in Levinas’s philosophy – both in terms (...) of ideas to be found within his work, and also in terms of the demands educational ideas and practices place on his work from without. That is, how does the actual, lived specificity of educational encounters occasion a different set of questions than one would otherwise pose if thinking only from within the discipline of philosophy, or from a purely theoretical point of view? In light of this, this paper explores Levinas’s ideas of sensibility, materiality, and embodiment. I see these not simply as supports for his ethical thought, but as the very core of incarnation without which his ethics makes no sense. I propose that these ideas are quintessentially pedagogical aspects of his thought – that is, they are always already rooted in a relational context of change and alteration of the subject. (shrink)

Over the last two decades, the various attempts to “radicalize” Levinas have resulted in two interesting and often separated debates: one the one hand, there is the debate regarding the relationship between Levinas and colonialism and racism, and on the other hand, there is the debate regarding the relationship between Levinas and Judaism. Whether scholars interested in issues of colonialism disregard Levinas's Judaism or use his "subaltern" identity to challenge European hegemony, they do not take seriously the Jewish content (...) of Levinas's thought. In this essay, I challenge the prevailing postcolonial orinetation of the Levinas-colonialism conversation, approaching Levinas's phenomenology from an anticolonial perspective. I will use Frantz Fanon’s dualistic understanding of the colonial world to evaluate the adequacy of Levinas’s phenomenology in describing the ontological structure of the colony and the historical experience of the colonized within it. Levinas’s incomplete understanding of the Holocaust as colonialism contributes to his failure to recognize the dividing line of colonial ontology, the zone of nonbeing, the non-human status of the colonized, and ultimately contributes to the insufficiency of his phenomenology to describe the colony. Because my purpose is not to reject Levinas’s thought in general but to encourage a new approach to his work, in the conclusion I will gesture toward the need for an anticolonial reading of Levinas’s project for Jewish education. (shrink)

Central tenets of Freirean philosophy and pedagogy are explored and applied to the emerging field of older adults’ learning (educational gerontology), a sub-field of adult education. I argue that many of Freire’s concepts and principles have direct applicability to the tasks of adult educators working alongside marginalized older adults. In particular, Freire’s ideas fit comfortably within a critical educational gerontology approach as they challenge prevailing orthodoxies and provide a robust analytical framework from which radical adult educators can (...) class='Hi'>work effectively in promoting social transformation. (shrink)

James Scott Johnston's incisive study draws on a holistic reading of Kant: one that views him as developing and testing a complete system (theoretical, practical, historical and anthropological) with education as a vital component. As such, the book begins with an extensive overview of Kant's chief theoretical work (the Critique of Pure Reason), and from that overview distils crucial discussions (the role of practical reason; the claims of the third antinomy) for his moral theory. An extended discussion of (...) Kant's moral and political theories and the place of pedagogy in it follow, with attention to all of Kant's important moral works as well as his chief religious work, Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason. A discussion of culture and character follows, chiefly through a discussion of Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment and Anthropology from a Pragmatic Standpoint, together with certain lectures and published essays on history and politics. Finally, an extensive discussion of Kant's published works on education, together with only recently published letters and announcements (in English), is provided. This culminates in Johnston's estimation of what a Kantian education, systematically conceived, might look like: an education that is attentive to theoretical, moral, cultural-historical, and pedagogic domains of Kant's thinking. (shrink)

The dissertation focuses on the work of Emmanuel Levinas. In claiming "ethics is first philosophy," Levinas helps overcome the perceived indifference to ethical concerns among post-modern thinkers. However, it is often overlooked that this claim is as much about philosophy as it is about the importance of ethics. The dissertation explains why Levinas' philosophy turns to ethics and what philosophy is capable of once it has adopted this ethical figure. ;The first section is devoted to Levinas' Totality and Infinity. (...) There, Levinas argues that ethics reorients philosophy by accomplishing the metaphysical desire for beings as such, what Levinas calls the absolutely other. A reading of Jacques Derrida's essay "Violence and Metaphysics" shows that Totality and Infinity is profoundly determined by a theological conceptuality and correlatively by forgetting the ontological difference. This suggests that the primacy of ethics depends on an anterior instance, thus rendering Levinas' first philosophy secondary. ;The second section of the dissertation positions Levinas' ethical philosophy within the tradition of phenomenological philosophy and its quest for a subject who is first or ultimate. Whereas Husserl practiced the reduction to the point where it reached consciousness, Levinas practices it to a point beyond that: responsibility. Ethics intervenes as a supplement to Husserl's phenomenology: ethics is added to phenomenology in order to explain its possibility at the same time as it replaces phenomenology with ethical descriptions. This section concludes by contesting the privilege that Levinas accords to ethics in the phenomenology of the subject. It does so by showing that Heidegger's Dasein analytic offers phenomenological philosophy a similar subject. ;The third section argues that in responsibility, phenomena appear which do not appear when the subject is consciousness. These include religious phenomena. The phenomenology of responsibility can thus be the basis for a philosophy of religion. Like the modern philosophy of religion figured in Hegel and Nietzsche, it articulates the rationality or significance of religious phenomena without recourse to the dogmatic authority of faith or historical tradition. However, a philosophy of religion issued from Levinas surpasses the origin of this tradition in the death of God and end of metaphysics. (shrink)

This chapter describes the main themes of Dewey's approach. It examines some central philosophical topics from the impressive richness of Dewey's works and the comprehensive body of his writings, which fill thirty-seven volumes in the critical edition of the Collected Works. The chapter provides comments to a brief discussion of each topic, highlighting its importance as an element within Dewey's overall philosophical approach. The topics include “experience” as a philosophical core concept, theory of art, logic and theory of knowledge, (...) anthropology and social psychology, ethics and moral philosophy, social philosophy and political theory, theory of education and school, and theory of religion. (shrink)

Social Education implies a constant exposition to human experiences of vulnerability and suffering. In this paper, Levinas’s philosophy of alterity and, specifically, the notion of hospitality constitutes our ethical lens to explore educational encounters in non-formal contexts within the Spanish Social Sector. The study is developed from a hermeneutic phenomenological approach into the depth of lived experiences of eight social educators who currently work with different populations groups. The testimonies, explored through semi-structured interviews, are presented in a (...) conversational, dialogic, poetic format. First, Levinas’ philosophy is presented as our ethical position, focusing on subjectivity as hospitality. Secondly, methodological aspects regarding hermeneutics are addressed. Finally, the testimonies of social educators are presented in an evocative way, exploring uncertainty and three different tensions regarding human relations in their practices: physical spaces, affection, and embodiment. (shrink)

Lévinas’s harsh criticisms of the sacred have irked not just his critics but even some who sympathize with his work. Taken at face value, some of Lévinas’s comments concerning the sacred appear prejudicial towards non-monotheistic religions. But a closer reading of his analysis of the sacred shows that his preoccupation with the sacred has to do with a questionable “temptation” or disposition found in every human being. Drawing on the insights of the Bible, Shakespeare, and Lévy-Bruhl, Lévinas shows how (...) this temptation involves a primitive wish to escape one’s responsibilities as a human being. For Lévinas, the phenomenon of the sacred promotes the illusion of a direct and immediate experience of the absolute or the Infinite. Genuine transcendence, for Lévinas, is possible only within the ethical drama of self and Other. The apex of human life involves not the eclipsing of the self—the fundamental motivation behind the sacred—but a heightening of the self’s radical uniqueness that only moral engagement makes possible. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work (...) is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The article attempts to clarify the appeal to the Benedictine ideal that Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) makes in The Aims of Education and Other Essays as a way to renew the life of the spirit in education. In particular, the essay will consider St. Benedict's three central themes of Whitehead's philosophy: freedom and discipline, the teacher as artist and the art of life, and universities as workshops or homes of creative energy. The aim is to bring about a (...) harmony of thought and action, the mind to the feelings of the heart, to subordinate scientific or critical pedagogy to aesthetic‐spiritual instruction. This deserves our attention because today's educational theories and practices emphasize the technical, the critical, and the social sides to the neglect of the aesthetic‐spiritual side. On both its practical and theoretical side, the educational theory of Whitehead falls within the Benedictine tradition of ora (meditative reading) and labora (work). (shrink)

This first book-length collection on Levinas and education gathers new texts written especially for this volume by an international group of scholars well known for their work in philosophy, educational theory, and on Levinas. It provides an introduction to some of Levinas's major themes of ethics, justice, hope, hospitality, forgiveness and more, as its contributing authors address some fundamental educational issues such as: what it means to be a teacher; what it means to learn from a teacher; (...) the role of language in the curriculum; literature, ethics, and education; moral education and human relations in schools; ethics of responsibility and philosophical-pedagogical discourse; educational hospitality and interculturalism; unconditional responsibility and education; educating for participatory democratic citizenship; the pedagogy of peace; logic, rationality, and ethics; connecting teaching to spirituality. Levinas always insisted that his aim was not to provide "a program," and accordingly, it is not the intent of the authors to look in Levinas's texts for a set of guidelines, rules, or precepts to be applied to education. Rather, this study invites educators, and researchers in philosophy and philosophy of education, to a thoughtful and critical reading of Levinas, and to engage with his unique style of analysis and questioning as they uncover with these authors the necessity and the possibility of thinking education anew in terms of ethics, justice, responsibility, hope and faith. (shrink)

This article explores the influence of Émile Durkheim on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas in order both to open up the political significance of Levinas’s thought and to develop more expansive meanings of moral and political community within education. Education was a central preoccupation for both thinkers: Durkheim saw secular education as the site for promoting the values of organic solidarity, while Levinas was throughout his professional life engaged in debates on Jewish education and conceptualized (...) ethical subjectivity as a condition of being taught. Durkheim has been accused of dissolving the moral into the social, and his view of education as a means of imparting a sense of civic republican values is sometimes seen as conservative, while Levinas’s argument for an ‘unfounded foundation’ for morality is sometimes seen as paralyzing the impetus for concrete political action. Against these interpretations, I argue that their approaches present provocative challenges for conceptualizing the nature of the social, offering theoretical resources to deepen understanding of education as the site of an everyday ethics and a prophetic politics opening onto more compelling ideals for education than those dominant within standard educational discourses. (shrink)

Otherness was at the center of the Levinese project, and in his ethics theory. In doing so, Levinas moved his project away from ontology, epistemology, and reason, to a point where the others are confronted in all its "nudes," to the point where it is recognizable that it cannot be reduced. In this article, I will examine the concepts of responsibility and the connection of the other person's humanism from his major books.

Art Education, Its Philosophy and Psychology is a collection of essays by Thomas Munro, a pioneering figure in the field of art education. Munro's work laid the foundation for a new model of art education that emphasized creativity and self-expression. This book is an essential resource for art educators, students of art education, and anyone interested in the history and theory of art education. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally (...) important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Art, Artists and Pedagogy. Philosophy and the Arts in Education ed. by Christopher Naughton, Gert Biesta, David R. ColeAnnette ZiegenmeyerChristopher Naughton, Gert Biesta, and David R. Cole, eds., Art, Artists and Pedagogy. Philosophy and the Arts in Education (New York: Routledge, 2018)The question about the role and purpose of the arts in education in the twenty-first century is an important issue being currently discussed in (...) various publications.1 Despite many valuable approaches about how to reflect on the challenges arts and education face today, no adequate and sustainable solution seems to have been worked out yet.In their book Art, Artists and Pedagogy, Christopher Naughton, Gert Biesta and David R. Cole (editors) and other co-authors explore new ways to rethink arts education in the twenty-first century via two main philosophies in education. The first one is based on Gert Biesta’s work, The Rediscovery of Teaching, that focuses on the relation of the arts to the world and on what kind of society we may wish to envisage by using concepts such as “grown-up-ness” and “middle ground.”2 The second one is based on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, who provide a theoretical framework to look more deeply into the influence of state and global capital when taking decisions on how art education should develop in the future. Within their different positions, both philosophies also complement each other by sharing some relevant aspects concerning, for example, the value of arts in society. [End Page 104]Besides the editors who are leading academics in the arts, philosophy, and education, most of the co-authors are established professors and senior lecturers from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the USA. Considering the fact that the book is intended for educators who teach the arts at different age-levels in schools and universities or for artists working in the community, it is surprising that there are not more voices of contemporary artists and teachers integrated in the publication to capture the philosophical discourse being perceived from their viewpoints. This could add an interesting counterpoint to the philosophical approaches and thus widen the perspective on the subject.The book comprises fifteen chapters which can be read either individually or sequentially. In the introductory chapter, Biesta reflects on the potential of the arts in an era of growing economization of education. Representing the exploration and transformation of our desires, the arts can thus become a positive force for the ways in which we seek to exist in the world in grown-up modes. As a consequence, Biesta suggests an “approach of resistance in how we engage with others and how we come to terms with our own desires and those of the others.”3 He sees the work of the teacher as “interruptive” in that it raises the question about which desires appear to be helpful towards existing in a grown-up way in the world.4Many articles in the book use aspects of Biesta’s philosophy as a (methodological) starting point and lens to further develop their approach. To begin with, Mary Ann Hunter reflects on Biesta’s concept of “interruption” by examining how school partnerships with artists can be valued as a necessary interruption.5 According to Hunter, the way artists act “unteacherly” presents a chance to interrupt the regulatory practices of schooling and to thus ameliorate some of the negative impacts of assessment-focused teaching. Julianne Moss and Anne-Marie Morrissey also refer to Biesta, but concentrate on issues of identity and subjectivity by showing how the teacher comes to terms with herself, her desires, and those of the students (by mitigating her own knowledge and skills with those of her class). Robyn Ewing and John Saunders focus on the concept of grown- up-ness. With reference to a drama project with children from a primary school in the context of an Australian teacher professional learning program, Ewing and Saunders show that the process of co-creating drama work with children provides an open space within teaching where “transformative learning” can be experienced. Nico de Vos focuses on another interesting aspect by bringing in the philosophical idea of bodily connectedness in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Alexandra Kertz-Welzel’s “Two Souls, Alas, Reside within My Breast”: Reflections on German and American Music Education Regarding the Internationalization of Music EducationPhilosophy of Music Education Review, 21, no.1 (Spring 2013): 52–65Leonard TanAs a Singaporean who, like Kertz-Welzel, spent four years residing in the United States, I read the article with great interest. Born to traditional Chinese parents, I was raised steeped in Confucian values, (...) savored Chinese operas, and spoke Mandarin as a child. When I went to school in postcolonial Singapore, however, the medium of instruction was primarily English. I read Enid Blyton in primary school, Shakespeare in secondary school, and Chaucer in Junior College. My university studies in music were Western-centric. All seemed fine until my doctoral studies in the United States when I was inspired by my music education professor to revisit my cultural roots and to read Chinese philosophy. It was [End Page 113] no easy task reading the original texts—they were written on bamboo slips more than two thousand years ago in classical Chinese, and I needed tuition from my mother. Nevertheless, as I worked my way slowly but surely through each character, one thing became unmistakably clear: although I had read more Western than Asian philosophy, many ideas in the ancient Chinese texts resonate with the innermost recesses of my being and are unmistakably a part of who I am as a Chinese Singaporean, albeit one schooled in Western ways.Two souls, alas, have been residing within my breast! Like Kertz-Welzel, I had to find a way to reconcile my two scholarly identities. How may one negotiate the seeming chasm between the Chinese and Western philosophical worlds? In this paper, I sketch some insights gleaned from my journey into the world of comparative philosophy, specifically, classical Chinese philosophy and American pragmatism. In particular, I address two obstacles to the internationalization of music education identified by Kertz-Welzel, namely, the tendency for researchers to know only one scholarly tradition well, and the use of English as an international language. I then proffer Dewey’s metaphor of “friendship” as a way of charting a new “silk road”—one that blends Eastern and Western ideas—for the philosophy of music education.As noted by Kertz-Welzel, many researchers only know one scholarly tradition well. Dangers lurk when scholars have limited knowledge of foreign philosophical enterprises. To begin with, one may fall into the trap of stereotypical preconceptions. For example, I have been asked if it were methodologically sound to juxtapose Chinese philosophical aphorisms with the closely argued texts of the American pragmatists. The basis of this critique is understandable: think Confucius and aphoristic phrases that teach humans how to lead moral lives immediately spring to mind; think Dewey and one is reminded of the depth and breadth of his philosophical arguments. Chinese philosophical texts, however, are by no means mere aphorisms. While the Analects of Confucius may, prima facie, appear as if it were a random collection of brief sayings, many passages relate to one another and cohere as a philosophy. The rich commentarial tradition that spans over two thousand years further augment the range of insights embedded in the Analects. Post Confucius, Xunzi, the philosopher best known for his argument that human nature is evil and ought to be cultivated through ritual (li 禮) and music (yue 乐), articulated his philosophy through thirty-two books that rival Dewey in richness and complexity.1 For two souls to reside within one breast, one has to remain vigilant against potential stereotypes.The tendency to know only one scholarly tradition well may also inadvertently cause one to judge a foreign philosophical tradition using the standards of the familiar one. When encountering Confucius for the first time, scholars schooled in European philosophy may, as Hegel did, criticize him for being a [End Page 114] shallow moralizer obsessed with rituals (li 禮) rather than a speculative philosopher concerned with theoretical matters.2 Such a judgment is misguided as it ignores the fact that the Chinese philosophical tradition was founded on a set of metaphysical assumptions that differed from its Greek counterpart. Seeing the cosmos in discrete, quantitative, and unchanging terms, the ancient... (shrink)

Educational theorists working within the tradition of Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas’s thought, posit teaching to be a site of implied ethics, that is, a realm in which non-violent or less violent relations to the other are possible. Derrida links ethics to the realm of friendship, enabling one to understand teaching as a site of the ethics of friendship. I clarify how friendship, as a re-metaphorization of differance, opens us up to a conception of teaching that provides a counterpoint (...) to the current discourse of ‘effective’ teaching. I draw out the implications of the Derridean conception of friendship for the educator in his or her philosophical orientation towards teaching and attempt to show that friendship points the educator towards an orientation that enables a ‘fine tuning’ and opening up of one’s sense of obligation and responsibility to one’s students in ways that cannot be circumscribed to current or institutionally sanctioned ways of understanding the activity of teaching, especially as it is often envisioned in American public education. (shrink)

Looking at responsibility within a Lévinasian sense, human beings are firstly seen not in the philosophically traditional sense, of being egocentric, but rather seen as ethical subjects based on “the other” (Lévinas & Hand, 1989). The purpose of this paper is to examine the notion of responsibility as Lévinas conceptualized in the idea that human beings are responsible for not only themselves but for others. Lévinas within “Ethics as First Philosophy” (Lévinas & Hand, 1989) states that before all (...) other forms of being in the world there must be responsibility to the Other (Lévinas & Hand, 1989). Lévinas defines this to mean that before freedom of the subject, and their subjectivity, before self-consciousness, before the consciousness of consciousness, before being, and before relativity there is “responsibility for the Other pre-exists any self-consciousness” (Lévinas & Hand, 1989, p.75). Perhaps, Lévinas is saying that a human beings obligation comes before all of what follows from our being in this world, our obligation to the Other beginning with the “face to face” (Lévinas & Hand, 1989, p.75), interaction, which is our first and foremost responsibility, the responsibility to the Other. And to be ethical beings who begin with responsibility we rely on the fundamental relationship of others. This notion of responsibility appears when we encounter, in the face-to-face interaction, the unknowable other. However, does this responsibility extend to more than two individuals and to those outside our immediate proximity? For example, Lévinas states that it is the “face to face” notion of seeing one in distress, yet what if it is a group of people, and what if they are not in close proximity but on the other side of the world? What if they are on the other side of a screen that can also be artificial intelligence in our modern era. Are we still responsible? And if we are responsible, how does Lévinas’s concept of responsibility fit into that situation or is it limited? I want to examine responsibility in terms of proximity through a Lévinasian ethical lens and plurality, defined as more than two individuals, by questioning responsibility in terms of relationality, and vulnerability. I will be looking mainly at five authors Emmanuel Lévinas, Ernst Van Alphen, Judith Butler, Kevin Quashi, and Lisa Guenther, to answer the question of whether Lévinas’s definition of responsibility includes proximity, and plurality. (shrink)

This essay is concerned with an initial mapping out of a model of intersubjectivity that, viewed within the context of education, breaks with the hegemonic dialogics of current pedagogies. Intent on rethinking the (so-called)problem of solipsism for phenomenology in terms of a pedagogy that situates itself within solitude and the alterity of self and other, Maurice Blanchot and Emmanuel Levinas will here speak as the voices of this other mode of teaching. Beginning with the problematization of intersubjectivity (...) in romantic aesthetics and hermeneutics, I introduce the concept of irony as a crucial element in the conceptualization of this other pedagogical model, one that requires, initially, a discussion of Husserl''s response to the charge of solipsism in the 5th Cartesian Meditation. As a starting point I introduce his symmetrical notion of bodily pairing into a consideration of rhetoric, understood here as an integral part of teaching, thus forging links with phenomenology via the work of Merleau-Ponty. The above provides a context for an extended discussion of pedagogy as it appears in the work of Blanchot and Levinas. Although similar in many respects, on closer inspection it will emerge that important differences are evident in the dissymmetrical and asymmetrical models suggested by the two thinkers respectively. These differences, I will argue, begin to open up a critical perspective on Levinas'' height model of teaching in the name of the more radical configuration of phenomenology and rhetoric to be found in Blanchot. (shrink)

This essay initiates a fundamental discussion about education’s nature and character, and raises the questions: Is education reliant on other disciplines as, for example, psychology, sociology and philosophy? Or may education be thought of independently, without being reliant on other disciplines? These questions are discussed in the light of Theodor Litt’s educational reading of Hegel’s understanding of dialectics, as it appears in the book Phenomenology of Spirit, in order to support that education has a relational and (...) dialectic nature. In the second part, we connect the concept of ‘Hegelian dialectic structure’ with scientific theory. More specifically, we introduce a theoretically oriented concept, based on semantic theory construction; namely, ‘relational parameter bundles’. This concept clarifies the difference between education and other ‘scientific,’ often more empirically based disciplines, such as psychology, on which education, or rather, educational researchers, traditionally rely. Through our theoretical approach we aim to uncover fundamental differences within different disciplines’ scientific thinking, and their use of theories and models, which then manifest themselves in the discipline’s scientific assessments and practical actions. An uncritical integration of other disciplines in education may destroy the ‘true’ nature of education, and thus pose a danger to education’s character, problem areas and ways of conducting research. That does not mean that education shall be isolated from other disciplines, it is rather a question of when perspectives from other disciplines should be included in educational matters. Not before the educational questions are raised and worked through will it be appropriate to obtain knowledge from other disciplines, if, that is, it is deemed necessary based on educational judgment. (shrink)

Because the image we have of the human person determines educational practice, Stein’s philosophy of education consists in anthropology. Her main work in education theory falls into two parts, philosophical and theological, as both disciplines influence our image of the human person. The Structure of the Human Person, the first and philosophical part of this foundational project, constitutes Stein’s mature philosophy of the human person – a subject that had occupied her all her life. This article examines (...) the philosophical anthropology of this work, its historical background and its place within Stein’s entire work. (shrink)

It becomes more obvious each year that the appeals of the party and government to strengthen the ties between philosophy and modern science are not being adequately implemented by the chairs of logic in the universities. In a number of institutions, a situation has persisted for a long time in which only a few professors and instructors deal with the subject area of dialectical and mathematical logic at a high professional level. Most of the teaching staff continue to conduct their (...) work essentially within the confines and at the level of the old, arbitrarily designated "traditional" formal logic, primarily in the form in which it took shape in the middle of the last century. It is clear that this does not accord with the demands of the party and of our philosophical and scientific public to raise the theoretical level of all instructional and research work in higher educational institutions. The erroneous orientation toward the old formal logic was, in particular, one of the reasons why the fundamental problems of dialectical logic have to this day not found unambiguous solutions. This is also one of the reasons why the science of logic has suffered some loss of authority among a portion of the country's students. It is not uncommon to see teachers who deal with dialectical logic giving inadequate consideration to the problems of contemporary natural and social science, while those who concern themselves with mathematical logic give inadequate attention to problems in the realm of philosophy. The appearance and persistence of this situation have made possible a sterile and erroneous approach to theoretical problems, the discussion of which is our present aim. (shrink)

Jurgen Habermas is by far the most preeminent and influential philosopher in Germany today. The scope of his writings is remarkable. Their influence extends over a wide range of disciplines that include philosophy, social theory, hermeneutics, anthropology, linguistics, ethics, educational theory, and public policy. The impact of Habermas's writings on theology alone reaches from fundamental to political theology, from moral to practical theology. The significance of Habermas, Modernity, and Public Theology is twofold. First, it represents a genuine dialogue, an actual (...) conversation, between Habermas and theologians. While theologians have appealed to Habermas's work in innumerable articles and monographs, he himself until now has remained silent. This book, then, is unique insofar as it offers the true give and take of dialogue. Second, this book focuses on Habermas's most recent work, especially his interpretation of modernity, his theory of communicative action, and his development of a discourse ethics. In so doing, it corrects some of the prevalent misreadings of Habermas within the theological literature devoted to him. In examining the relation between critical theory and a public and practical theology, the contributors note both the promise and limitations of Habermas's basic arguments and insights. They challenge Habermas as much as they learn from him. Sharing the conviction that religious traditions contain sources for interpreting human nature and society, they argue that if Habermas would attend more to the role of religion within life and society, he would more fully realize his project for a communicative rationality under the conditions of modernity and would offer amore comprehensive understanding of rationality, society, and modernity. Taking his own turn at the end of the book, Habermas responds to each of the contributors, comments on the broader theological reception of his work, and offers his own fascinating views on the function and development of religion in modernity and on the status and claim to truth of theological discourse. The work concludes with an extremely useful annotated bibliography covering Habermas's own writings, general introductions to Habermas and to critical theory, and works devoted to specific aspects of Habermas's thought. (shrink)

This essay reviews three books that engage the writings of Michel Foucault. It examines to what extent and in what ways Foucault has been made to ‘work’ in educational practice and research. It suggests that Foucault has been narrowly appropriated in a way that is, ultimately, ironic—namely, as either liberating us from or entrapping us within our culture's structures and practices. This essay concludes by suggesting that Foucault's work was an attempt to avoid and subvert exactly such (...) binaries. (shrink)

These readings in the philosophy of education are designed to allow issues to emerge and to allow students to see how they arise, how they can be dealt with, and how a philosophy of education might be built. Of course no gathering of disparate works can deliver on that kind of editorial promise. However, this company of contributors is distinguished, and most of their entries provocative and interesting. The first section is designed to show what is special about (...) our age and what must be taken into account in order to think critically about modern issues in education. In this section Talcott Parsons, Cassirer, Melvin Seeman, Wm. H. Whyte, Marcuse, Jung, Sartre, and D. Bell talk about specialization, alienation, organization man, one-dimensional man, anxiety about values, and the knowledge explosion. This is the most "with-it" section and paints a fair portrait of our times. The last three sections are more conventional and more philosophical. There is a section on methodology which finds D. J. O'Conner, Dewey, and Whitehead discussing the nature of philosophy and which closes with Buber's opening pages from I and Thou. The last two sections have contributions by Plato, St. Augustine, Locke, Kant, Hegel, Dewey, Polanyi, and Maritain among others. These sections deal with questions of learning and with some "isms". All the sections have critical bibliographies which are enlightened, useful, and up-to-date. There is a glossary of technical terms. On the whole this is a strong anthology. Each of the four sections is sufficiently unified to provide a helpful context for the readings within it.--S. O. H. (shrink)

This paper examines the moral significance of guilt in the context of how students confront the suffering of another. Within social-justice education, such confrontations are often staged in pedagogical efforts to encourage students to assume social responsibility. Frequently, however, the guilt that students claim to endure as a result of these pedagogical encounters is not perceived to be of much ethical import. By exploring the psychoanalytic work of Melanie Klein and the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, this (...) essay argues that guilt arises out of our susceptibility to another’s pain and that it plays a crucial role both in ‘making reparation’ (Klein) and in the very formation of responsibility itself (Levinas). (shrink)

Plato's Academy is commonly regarded as the most prestigious and most influential of all educational institutions in antiquity. Founded by one of the greatest thinkers of all times, its activity as a centre of philosophical and scientific research spanned at least three centuries (from ca. 387 to ca. 86 B.C.), while the influence it has exerted on contemporary and later philosophical and scientific thought is almost impossible to overestimate. The Academy's history is supposed to reflect not only the theoretical aspirations (...) of its founder and his followers, but also the manner in which they believed their views should operate within a given social context. (shrink)

This paper describes how some aspects of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy resonate strongly with an engineering outlook. He argued that practice was more “primordial” than theory, though preserving an important role for theoretical understanding as well, thus speaking to the gap between engineering education (highly theoretical) and engineering practice (mostly empirical). He also underlined the reality of “average” practices into which we are socialized, though affirming the potential for original work and action too, thus providing the grounds for self-actualization (...) whether within the routine or in transcending it. His notion of “thrownness” emphasizes the importance of context, with which engineers are constantly engaged. While all this relates to the idea of our “being”, Heidegger also dealt with the influence of time on our practices. Future death could be seen as spurring innovation, cultural history as a source for critiquing current practice and the present “situation” as the immediate context for corrective action. His major book is appropriately called “Being and Time”.1. (shrink)

In this paper, Katja Castillo approaches the phenomenon of teaching through an analysis of Emmanuel Levinas's unedited conference notes titled “Les nourritures,” “Les enseignements,” and “L'écrit et l'oral.” Levinas's thinking prior to the publication of his major works provides an entry point to his philosophy. In this light Castillo interprets his conference notes as laying the groundwork for the argument he develops later in Totality and Infinity. Drawing on the notes, she describes the phenomenon of teaching as a (...) place to bracket subjective freedom in order to let the other call it into question. The phenomenon of teaching serves as a way to describe the relationship between the same and the other. It is, according to Levinas, a unique interplay between interiority and exteriority, where subjective freedom is intertwined with responsibility to the other, with having to answer to the other. He describes the structure of teaching as characterized by six parts: by being given a past, by reflection, by penetration of freedom, by critical spirit, by transcendence of teaching, and as true symbolism. Following the discussion of Levinas's early writings, Castillo returns to his first major work, Totality and Infinity published in 1961, with the intention of examining the evolution of his phenomenological attitude over time. This approach reveals that Levinas's engagement in formulating a philosophy of education was more robust than previous research has indicated. (shrink)

For Levinas, the moment of real meaning is in the relation sustained with alterity. This relation is difficult or impossible to characterize philosophically, however, because to render it in comprehensive or objective terms would reduce the relation to one of comprehension and make it commensurate with the ego. Thus philosophy has an ambivalent status with respect to transcendence and ethics; but Levinas is convinced of the essentially transcendent or ethical meaning of Judaic practice: Talmudic exegesis, but also Jewish ritual and (...) the keeping of the sabbath; and these elements are included within a conception of Jewish educational practices. Thus to what extent transcendent meaning can be discussed in philosophical terms and evinced in philosophical work —or rather, to what extent transcendent meaning is possible at all—may be clarified by a sketch of Levinas’ broad approach to Jewish practice, particularly in terms of education. This essay shows how Jewish education is essential for transcendence and ethics for Levinas. Reference is made to several untranslated texts that Levinas published for intellectual but nonacademic French-Jewish journals, in which he explains his own pedagogical vocation. This offers an invaluable perspective on his philosophical and Judaic writings; and above all it gives an indication of his vision of the quotidian and life-long educational practices through which ethics and the transcendent relation between human beings are possible. Finally it raises the question of whether a secular or philosophical education could offer this as well. (shrink)

Menexenus is one of the least studied among Plato's works, mostly because of the puzzling nature of the text, which has led many scholars either to reject the dialogue as spurious or to consider it as a mocking parody of Athenian funeral rhetoric. In this book, Pappas and Zelcer provide a persuasive alternative reading of the text, one that contributes in many ways to our understanding of Plato, and specifically to our understanding of his political thought. The book is organized (...) into two parts. In the first part the authors offer a synopsis of the dialogue, address the setting and its background in terms of the Athenian funeral speech, and discuss the alternative readings of the dialogue, showing their weaknesses and strengths. In the second part, the authors offer their positive interpretation of the dialogue, taking particular care to explain and ground their interpretive criteria and method, which considers Plato's text not simply as a de-contextualized collection of philosophical arguments but offers a theoretically reading of the text that situates it firmly within its historical context. The book will become a reference point in the debate about the Menexenus and Plato's political philosophy more generally and marks an important contribution to our understanding of ancient thought and classical Athenian society. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In DialogueResponse to Roger Mantie, “Bands and/as Music Education: Antinomies and the Struggle for Legitimacy,” Philosophy of Music Education Review 20, no 1 (Spring 2012): 63–81Panagiotis A. KanellopoulosRoger Mantie’s paper “Bands and/as Music Education: Antinomies and the Struggle for Legitimacy,”1 looks at the educational band-world through a perspective informed, in his words, by “three concepts flowing from the work of Michel Foucault: power, truth, and (...) discourse.” This is an ambitious intention, and to my mind, it has to be carried through with courage, and by that I mean addressing the full consequences of the project at hand.Mantie argues that there is a break between the traditional musical practices of “American wind bands” and the contemporary institutionalization of banding that has induced the creation of the “pedagogical band world” within contemporary school and university contexts. Whereas the former aimed to promote music “of the people and for the people,” institutionalized music education band [End Page 191] practices sought to solve “the problem of their educational legitimacy in adopting the presentation of ‘art music’ as their raison d’etre.” Whereas, in the “old band world” what mattered most was “the here and now celebration of immanent time, space, and place,” contemporary approaches to band as a means for music education celebrate “the timeless and unassailable qualities of the music itself.” This break entailed the creation of “a schizophrenic creature that suffers a continual crisis of identity.”On IdealizationOne of the core issues that emerge out of Mantie’s text relates to a not uncommon tendency to regard a non-institutionalized form of musical practice as constituting the “true” instantiation of this very musical practice, as opposed to the subsequent contaminated version that is the inevitable result of institutionalization.2 Such an approach seems to me quite at odds with Foucault’s nominalism, with his emphasis on problematization and eventalization or eventialization [évènementialisation]—“the bringing to light of ‘ruptures of evidence,’”3 which is rooted in methodological individualism.4 For Foucault, eventalization entails a “breach of self evidence.... It means making visible a singularity at places where there is a temptation to invoke a historical constant, an immediate anthropological trait, or an obviousness which imposes itself uniformly on all.”5 Edward Said has noted Foucault’s “predilection for the analysis of discontinuous but actual spaces,”6 in other words, his tendency to adopt a spatial instead of temporal perspective, preferring to talk about places, fields, loci, topical institutions, events, their singularity and their discontinuities and fragmentations, instead of unified processes of temporal developments.Mantie’s text tends to take as granted issues that should be regarded as loci of problematization. In his account, “the American wind band” (and despite his cautious comment in a footnote) is regarded as a bounded cultural phenomenon that constitutes an enactment of democracy, based on openness, inclusiveness, informality, and plurality, elements that have, it is suggested, vanished from its contemporary pedagogical incarnations. One of the most important strengths of a Foucauldian approach is that it does not help us to easily take sides. Taking as an unquestionable fact that traditional band practices were an instance of practicing democracy masks active processes of exclusion, operating on the basis of racial and gender oppression and discrimination. A Foucauldian perspective might be important for developing multiple local micro-historical accounts of traditional wind band practices, emphasizing not only what these practices forefront (thus contrasting it with contemporary practices) but, most importantly, what they exclude or silence.7Instead of claiming that “bands were simply appropriated by schools,” an argument [End Page 192] that implies a uniform passage from an original form of the band world to its educational distortion, the aim could be “to fragment what was thought unified, and show the heterogeneity of consistency,”8 directing our attention to the microphysics of power/knowledge relationships as they emerge in different (educational or other) contexts and in the passage from older to more recent practices. A Foucauldian view of the relationships between old and contemporary band practices, as well as the position of the latter within larger music education discourses would not lead to a process of discovering “uncontaminated... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Philosophy and the Modern African American Freedom Struggle: A Freedom Gaze by Anthony Sean NealKordell DixonPhilosophy and the Modern African American Freedom Struggle: A Freedom Gaze Anthony Sean Neal. Rowman & Littlefield, 2022.Philosophy and the Modern African American Freedom Struggle begins with a clear and concise establishment of its aim: to analyze and expand upon those figures mentioned when discussing the academic project of studying black people. Neal (...) broadens the account of black scholars examining racialized existence by centering his work on the modern era and its initiator W. E. B Du Bois. Neal develops an ethnic reflective canon that documents the long history of black thinkers attempting to define their blackness and advance the conception of freedom. This book does an excellent job of capturing the genealogical structure of the struggle for freedom. Within the work, Neal denotes that all relevant figures in this tradition are freedom gazers. These gazers are spectators of a radically imagined future liberated from the oppressive systems that encumber the persecuted. Du Bois's approach to freedom gazing uses academic training to examine his blackness and inevitably to solve the "race problem." What Neal provides the reader is a road map of the intellectual work of black scholars. This road map details the common themes among black thinkers and how these themes relate to Du Bois. Neal's intricate network of philosophers uses their experience and their expertise to write about what is necessary for black people to obtain freedom. Neal composes a complex and remarkable catalog of black scholars that demonstrates the interconnectedness and progression of black thought on oppression and liberation.In the second chapter, Neal elucidates why Du Bois is chosen as the inaugurator of the modern era. As a formally educated black man, Du Bois questions his experience and what tethers him to oppression. Neal uses Du Bois as a focal point, not because Du Bois is the first black person to document their struggle with their racialized existence, but because he believes that Du Bois is the first scholar to analyze the black experience completely. The holistic nature of Du Bois's study of the existential conflict that race can manifest within its subjects allows Du Bois's analysis to be used as a tool to unify other works that discuss race and the struggle for freedom. Neal expresses how other scholars such as Frederick Douglass, Martin Delany, and Anna Julia Cooper all had work that takes up a similar task as Du Bois's but lacks the fullness of Du Bois's study. Here, Neal does not articulate clearly [End Page 87] how these figures are inadequate with respect to their work. It could be argued that each scholar named could be said to have accomplished a task similar to that of Du Bois. However, how these figures are studied throughout different disciplines gives the impression that their examination of race and freedom is much more focused on one specific field. This point speaks to how we interpret the work of these scholars and not to these scholars' work itself. Neal proceeds to describe Du Bois as a freedom gazer and explains how Du Bois's imagining of black persons as freed would allot a perceptual framework that motivates them to proclaim their right to mental and physical freedom. Further, Neal establishes that Du Bois's position as a freedom gazer allows him to expand the ethnic reflective canon. This canon includes Ida B. Wells, whose journalism on the lynching of black people during the Reconstruction era made headway on what social sciences could contribute to the struggle against injustice. Anna Julia Cooper is included in this canon; her radically imagined future was thought to be achieved through education. Wells and Cooper proceeded and directly influenced the work of Du Bois, creating a lineage of radical social thought. Neal maps his transition through the intellectual work of black scholars by using conceptions of peace, rebellion, revolution, and freedom as relational markers. The reader can identify the relationships among the varied work of freedom gazers despite the vast range of their spatiotemporal placement.In the third chapter, Neal examines the subjects Hubert Harrison, William H... (shrink)

The article aims to explore the ways in which scholars from Poland and Ukraine engage with Graham Harman’s philosophical work1. The introductory part briefly describes Harman’s ontology and demonstrates the link connecting Harman with Polish and Ukrainian intellectual environments. Harman’s object-oriented ontology (OOO) states that objects are the fundamental building blocks of reality and cannot be reduced either to what they are made of or to what they do, that is, either to their constituents or to their effects. The connection (...) with Poland and Ukraine goes back to the theory of objects suggested by the Polish philosopher Kazimierz Twardowski, whom Harman names among the predecessors of his ontology and who influenced both Polish and Ukrainian intellectual milieus. The next part of the article examines the history of the reception, identifying its key events and publications. The reception in Poland proves to be much more substantial than in Ukraine. A common tendency is determined: a conflation of Harman’s OOO and speculative realism by mistakenly ascribing the features of the former to the latter (broader concept), which suggests that speculative realism is being received through the lens of Harman’s project. The next part establishes the key discursive points that are used to map Harman’s ideas within the contemporary philosophical landscape. They can be summarised by the terms antianthropocentrism and antireductionism. The final part analyses the strategies for applying Harman’s theory showing that it can become the lens for interpretation and direct our attention to nonhumans and the hidden, inexplicable dimension of things or provide an ontological grounding for semi-literary and literary discourses. The methodology of this application, though, needs further development and clarification. Overall, in Poland, two of Harman’s books and two articles have been translated, and at least two books, one Ph.D. dissertation, and around two dozen articles discuss or apply his ideas. Apart from philosophy, his OOO is used for discussing literature, video games, films, humanities in general, education, management processes, antique studies, and ecocriticism. In Ukraine, one of Harman’s articles has been translated, and around ten articles and one collective monography engage with his philosophical project. Some of the Ukrainian works also apply Harman’s OOO in contexts that are not strictly philosophical, namely, in literary criticism, urban studies, film studies, and humanities in general. This paper can be of use to researchers studying OOO and its reception in different countries. In addition, it can help Ukrainian and Polish scholars who want to discuss or use OOO to familiarize themselves with the previous reception in their countries, thus facilitating domestic philosophical interaction. (shrink)

Levinas is usually discussed as a philosopher wrestling with the nature of our experience of others, ethical obligation, and the divine. Unlike other phenomenologists, such as Husserl and Heidegger, he is not often mentioned in discussions about issues in philosophy of mind. His work in that area, especially on perception, is underappreciated. He gives an account of the nature of perceptual experience that is remarkable both in how it departs from that of others in the phenomenological tradition and for (...) how it fits in among presently available views about the nature of perceptual experience, namely, as a form of naïve realism. (shrink)

Introduction: education, philosophy and politics -- Writing the self: Wittgenstein, confession and pedagogy -- Nietzsche, nihilism and the critique of modernity: post-Nietzschean philosophy of education -- Heidegger, education and modernity -- Truth-telling as an educational practice of the self: Foucault and the ethics of subjectivity -- Neoliberal governmentality: Foucault on the birth of biopolitics -- Lyotard, nihilism and education -- Gilles Deleuze's 'societies of control': from disciplinary pedagogy to perpetual training -- Geophilosophy, education and the (...) pedagogy of the concept - Humanism, Derrida and the new humanities -- Politics and deconstruction: Derrida, neoliberalism and democracy -- Neopragmatism, ethnocentrism and the politics of the ethnos: Rorty's 'postmodernist bourgeois liberalism' -- Achieving America: postmodernism and Rorty's critique of the cultural left -- Deranging the investigations: Cavell on the philosophy of the child -- White philosophy in/of America. (shrink)

A chronological approach that examines the progression of Levinas's deliberations on time over six decades, thus providing new insights about aspects of Levinasian thought that have consistently troubled readers, including the differences between Levinas's early and later writings, his controversial invocation of the feminine, and the blurry line between philosophy and religion in his work"--Provided by publisher.

This article revisits the theme of the feminine in Levinas's writings and the Daodejing. First it addresses the question why the feminine as thematized through eros in Levinas's early work loses her centrality in his later texts. Second it explores the feminine water metaphor and the Dao of ci 雌 in the Daodejing. On the basis of these interpretations, it attempts at an analysis of relevant ambiguities and problematics concealed in Levinas's philosophical enterprise, and urges for (...) the exigency of an intercultural perspective, instead of remaining within a singular intellectual tradition. (shrink)

We have become estranged from the cosmic movements, according to Bataille. We are confined by the error linked to the representation of ‘the stationary earth’. We have negated the immersive immanence of the whole and made nature into a fixed world of tools and things. How then do we recognise ourselves as part of the ‘rapture of the heavens’? Bataille urges us to consider life as a solar phenomenon, the free play of solar energy on the earth. This paper argues (...) how Bataille’s cosmic vision anticipates both planetary and ecological thinking. This entails a base materialism of difference based on a radical Nietzschean and Heraclitean theory of becoming and flux. This thought is developed along Bataillean concepts such as the movement of the whole, the labyrinthine, and compound beings, ipseity, as well as the concept of a communifying movement. This materialism paired with Vladimir Vernadsky’s biosphere lays the foundation for the laws of the general economy, which also constitutes an economy inclusive of a general ecology: a tragic vision of Gaia and Dionysos. Finally, poetry is considered, as a way we might reconnect with the universe and stimulate ecological imagination. (shrink)

The primary focus of this work is Isocrates as a teacher, his works, and his pedagogy including both his educational practice and the philosophy that underlies it. In addition I examine the epistemological basis of Isocrates's teaching and the connection between the Isocratean conception of the nature of knowledge and the development of character. Many modern scholars consider Isocrates's educational philosophy to be relativistic and his moral position identical to contemporary sophists. This work suggests that both of these (...) positions are incorrect. Isocrates establishes Logos as a transcendental locus and discourse, either between people or within one's own mind, as the means for the discovery of knowledge and the development of arete. Isocrates is called by some the "father of humanistic culture," and his paideia represents an expression of historical Greek cultural practice. Isocrates was an important and influential figure in the development of Greek and by extension Western education. Today, however, his reputation is as an orator whose highly refined style is his major achievement. Isocrates's work has not received the attention that his influence merits, and his educational philosophy should help inform modern practice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ethical Theory and Responsibility Ethics: A Metaethical Study of Niebuhr and Levinas by Kevin JungMichael SohnEthical Theory and Responsibility Ethics: A Metaethical Study of Niebuhr and Levinas KEVIN JUNG Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2011. 237 pp. $69.95In Ethical Theory and Responsibility Ethics, Kevin Jung presents a historical and constructive analysis of two of the most prominent defenders of responsibility ethics: H. Richard Niebuhr and Emmanuel Levinas. The (...) Niebuhr and Levinas specialist will find detailed, historical discussions and clear, rigorous analyses of these thinkers’ philosophical and theological thought. But where Jung’s project really makes a distinct contribution to the field of ethics—and where his work may be of interest to the nonspecialist—is when he brings their insights and oversights into critical conversation with analytic philosophy. Rendering a mutually productive dialogue, he persuasively argues that categories within analytic philosophy cohere with and clarify their respective positions; conversely, their concrete responsibility ethics may contribute to analytic philosophy. [End Page 223]Chapter 1 introduces key concepts and issues within contemporary analytic philosophy relevant to responsibility ethics; these concepts and issues resurface toward the end of the book when Jung puts them in dialogue with the ethical theories of Niebuhr and Levinas. Chapter 2 reconstructs the philosophical and theological background of Niebuhr’s moral theory, engaging a number of influential thinkers—Friedrich Schleiermacher, Albrecht Ritschl, Ernst Troeltsch, Karl Barth, Josiah Royce, and Martin Buber—who shaped his thought. Chapter 3 examines more closely Niebuhr’s responsibility ethics itself. In the next two chapters, Jung applies the same structure of analysis to Levinas’s ethical theory: he considers Levinas’s philosophical and theological context; engages the works of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Franz Rosenzweig, and Buber; and then exposits Levinas’s own distinct position. Jung traverses and navigates complex and divergent concepts and ideas proposed by Niebuhr and Levinas with clarity and finesse. His purpose is to interpret their arguments in light of their respective positions in ethical theory. In the final two chapters, Jung’s work turns more explicitly constructive when he puts their theories into conversation with analytic philosophy.The specialist in Niebuhr or Levinas studies may find that Jung’s attempts to clarify their thought with foreign, extrinsic categories do violence to their works. Indeed, on occasion Jung seems to shoehorn their ideas into analytical concepts that may not do full justice to the full breadth of their thought. For instance, Jung rightly indicates that Levinas rejects a certain kind of abstract ethical universalism on the basis of his emphasis on the concrete relation to the particular other. But to conclude from this that he is an ethical particularist does not adequately account for the categorically imperative nature of the ethical demands and responsibility to the other that Levinas proposes. In other words, it seems to me that Levinas offers a form of ethical universalism that begins precisely in the concrete situation without collapsing into an ethical particularism.Despite these minor reservations, Jung’s work is to be commended not only for its excellent exposition and rigorous studies of Niebuhr and Levinas but also for its successful attempt overall to clarify and give greater coherence to their ideas with the tools of analytic philosophy. In so doing, Jung provides robust theoretical reflection on responsibility ethics in a time of augmented human power and capacities. [End Page 224]Michael SohnCleveland State UniversityCopyright © 2014 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Derrida's first book-length work, The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy , was originally written as a dissertation for his diplôme d'etudes superieures in 1953 and 1954. Surveying Husserl's major works on phenomenology, Derrida reveals what he sees as an internal tension in Husserl's central notion of genesis, and gives us our first glimpse into the concerns and frustrations that would later lead Derrida to abandon phenomenology and develop his now famous method of deconstruction. For Derrida, the problem of (...) genesis in Husserl's philosophy is that both temporality and meaning must be generated by prior acts of the transcendental subject, but transcendental subjectivity must itself be constituted by an act of genesis. Hence, the notion of genesis in the phenomenological sense underlies both temporality and atemporality, history and philosophy, resulting in a tension that Derrida sees as ultimately unresolvable yet central to the practice of phenomenology. Ten years later, Derrida moved away from phenomenology entirely, arguing in his introduction to Husserl's posthumously published Origin of Geometry and his own Speech and Phenomena that the phenomenological project has neither resolved this tension nor expressly worked with it. The Problem of Genesis complements these other works, showing the development of Derrida's approach to phenomenology as well as documenting the state of phenomenological thought in France during a particularly fertile period, when Levinas, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, and Tran-Duc-Thao, as well as Derrida, were all working through it. But the book is most important in allowing us to follow Derrida's own development as a philosopher by tracing the roots of his later work in deconstruction to these early critical reflections on Husserl's phenomenology. "A dissertation is not merely a prerequisite for an academic job. It may set the stage for a scholar's life project. So, the doctoral dissertations of Max Weber and Jacques Derrida, never before available in English, may be of more than passing interest. In June, the University of Chicago Press will publish Mr. Derrida's dissertation, The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy , which the French philosopher wrote in 1953-54 as a doctoral student, and which did not appear in French until 1990. From the start, Mr Derrida displayed his inventive linguistic style and flouting of convention."--Danny Postel, Chronicle of Higher Education. (shrink)

Already in his earlier works Levinas proposes a distinct phenomenological project which takes into consideration the radicality of the other and otherness by questioning intentionality and the validity of intersubjectivity within intentional consciousness. His move “towards Heidegger and against Husserl” was due primarily to Heidegger’s Dasein analysis, understanding of Being and being-with. However, in his major work, Totality and Infinity, Levinas proposes a new perspective on reading intersubjective relations with the Other which strongly contrasts with the Heideggerian concept (...) of intersubjectivity. This paper addresses the question of the Other, intersubjectivity and ethics in the writings of Levinas and Heidegger respectively. It considers Levinas’s critique of intersubjectivity as provoked and developed by Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein, and concentrates on Levinas’s specific understanding of intentionality in his account of metaphysics, metaphysical desire and the Other. It also takes up the question of temporality as a necessary condition for intersubjective relation and explores its implication for the self and the Other in Levinas’s and Heidegger’s respective philosophies. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, Volume 10, Edition 2, October 2010: 23-32. (shrink)

Here we reconsider teachers’ changing subjectivities as autonomous agents whose practices acknowledge risk as an essential element in intellectual inquiry. We seek alternative descriptions to the limiting language of teachers’ current practices within the primacy of the market. We are convinced by Levinas’s claim that ethics is the first philosophy with its concomitant responsibility for the Other. This provides a valuable point of departure and our understanding of its relevance is expanded by Biesta and Todd. This perspective allows interruption (...) of the global reform ensemble with its reductionist understandings of teachers’ subjectivities within concerns for a ‘visible pedagogy’ and performativity. We illustrate how this global policy imperative is reworked in policies in the Republic of Ireland and share reflexive insights from our tutoring of teachers studying for a Master’s degree in Education. We show that teachers’ autonomy, which we understand as the capacity of teachers to facilitate risk and make ethically informed local judgements, is severely restricted by imposed standards, codes and laws to which there is tightly policed adherence. Instead we describe teachers’ practices occurring within an Invisible Pedagogy, which is not concerned with totalising and limited performativity but instead, explores risks associated with existential possibilities beyond commodification. (shrink)

Alfred Schutz's (Vienna 1899 — New York 1959) research into the philosophy of music certainly cannot be regarded as the most notable aspect of this writer, born and educated in Vienna, later a naturalized American citizen. Nor can it legitimately be maintained that Schutz's writings on the subject form a systematic corpus in his work. Schutz was above all a social scientist, strongly attracted, as were many writers of the first half of this century, to the project of aphilosophical (...) foundation within his field of expertise. In this project, where phenomenology is encountered, the question ofintersubjectivity together with that ofcommunication among individuals, plays a crucial role. It is, therefore, undoubtedly correct to consider Schutz's theoretical interests in music within this framework; thus music tends to assume a paradigmatic value, in the sense that the musical piece in its concrete temporal development, in the presence of performers and listeners, demonstrates in a truly exemplary manner, how the process of social relationship actually functions.Although mindful of this frame of reference, nontheless we feel it can be asserted that the works of Schutz which we are about to examine are in themselves interesting stimuli, independently of any organic connection with the author's general project. These stimuli have furthermore proveked a theoretical debate that is still going on in the USA. (shrink)

Levinas for Psychologists provides a rigorous, yet accessible, examination of Emmanuel Levinas's philosophy, and its implications for Psychology and the Human and Social Sciences. Comprehensive in scope, this book traces Levinas's thought across the arc of his oeuvre, from the earliest works to the last interviews and essays. Laubscher provides numerous examples of how Levinas's thought challenges current clinical and psychotherapeutic work, psychological theory, social science research and social theory, but also offers promising alternatives. Such alternative (...) ways to think and practise psychology are richly illuminated by accessible examples from therapy, research, and the social everyday. The volume makes Levinas's dense and demanding philosophical language comprehensible and accessible, without losing the radical, profound, and poetic qualities of the original. Issues of justice, racism, and nature are addressed throughout, and these insights and conclusions are placed within a contemporary context. This book is essential reading for psychologists, philosophers and anyone interested in the legacy of Levinas's work. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hegel’s Ethics of Recognition by Robert R. WilliamsLawrence S. StepelevichRobert R. Williams. Hegel’s Ethics of Recognition. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998. Pp. xviii +433. Cloth, $60.00.The eminent Hegel scholar, Vittorio Hoesle, perceived the major weakness of Hegel’s philosophy in its seeming failure to adequately deal with the issue of interpersonal relations. Hardly a new objection, as Hoesle’s critique has a lineage that reaches at least as (...) far back as Schleiermacher. Against this thesis, Robert Williams had earlier developed a counter-argument which he presented in his work, Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other (1992). In this foundational work, Williams drew out and clarified Hegel’s concept of recognition from its inchoate source in Fichte; and by so doing defended “Hegel against charges that his thought violates intersubjectivity and difference by reducing the other to the same.”(1) In the present work, the conceptual and textual grounds established by Williams in his first work on the topic allow for a more extensive extrapolation of Hegel’s doctrine, and argues that “The story of recognition is a story about Fichte and Hegel. Fichte introduced the concept but did not make it the basis of either his ethics or his politics. Hegel appropriated and transformed the concept of recognition and regarded it as the fundamental intersubjective structure of ethical life.” (26)After a brief introductory critical survey of some of the more or less misleading contemporary views of both Hegelians and non-Hegelians regarding Hegel’s concept of interpersonal recognition, Williams proceeds to present its historical genesis, of how it emerged from its early and unfocused appearances in the philosophies of Fichte and Schelling. Williams then traces the further development and elaboration of this concept as it gains expression in the course of Hegel’s own ethical theory, not only as it is found in such major works as the Phenomenology of Mind and The Philosophy of Spirit, but also as it appears in his earlier and lesser known Jena Manuscripts of 1805. After this preliminary doctrinal and historical introduction, Williams turns to the most substantial section of his study, that work of Hegel’s in which the concept of recognition would be expected to and does indeed play its most evident ethical role: The Philosophy of Right.Almost every category within The Philosophy of Right is examined not only for the appearance of the concept, but for the defining role which it plays in the construction of that category. Such an examination is necessary for Williams, since “Reciprocal recognition in its various determinate types and instances is the general structure of ethical life and the embodiment of social reason that underlies and supports the concepts of law and state.” (364) Among the categories considered, categories that Williams discusses within the context of contemporary issues and each of which is taken up in a separate chapter of his work, are Family, Crime and Punishment, Poverty, and the State. In every instance considered he argues that an understanding of the defining role of recognition is a necessary prerequisite not only for a clear and correct comprehension [End Page 174] of Hegel’s ethical theory but of all ethical theory. Certainly, after this scholarly tour de force Hegel’s concept of recognition will have to be taken into account in any credible discussion of his ethical theory. In a final chapter Williams turns to some contemporary ethical theorists who have not taken that concept into consideration, or if they have, have either misunderstood or have rejected it. For Williams, such thinkers as Kojeve, Sartre, Deleuze, Derrida and Levinas, in their misunderstanding or rejection of the ethically mediating concept of recognition, have all contributed toward the “disrupted and fragmented cultural situation at the end of the twentieth century.” (412)In sum, Williams’ presentation and support of Hegel’s ethical employment of the concept of intersubjective recognition cannot but encourage theorists to reconsider the subject, and to see in it not only a conceptual tool which can serve to lucidly contextualize Hegel’s ethical theory into the matrix of his total philosophical system, but also as a needed ethical concept able to transcend both... (shrink)