Marianna PapastephanouUniversity of CyprusSince Plato’s allegory of the cave two educational-philosophical critical modes have stood out: the descriptive (reality as it is) and the normative (reali...

We are no longer in a position to attribute a positive essence to humanity and its presumed centrality. What it means to be human cannot be ascertained once and for all or in any a priori fashion....

Many political and economic forces are driven by the desire to eliminate democratic plurality in today’s political juncture. Democratic republicanism itself in its contemporary forms has failed to address many of the daunting moral, political, economic, social, technological, and ecological challenges we face today. It is argued that to fulfill its essence of egalitarian freedom and social justice, democratic republicanism must first decouple from the global neoliberal capitalist regime and secondly embrace some form of postcapitalist and posthumanist orientation guided by (...) a new attractor, a teleological approach anchored in a new telos of superhumanity. Democracy without a telos of superhumanity is a democracy in name only. It is time to lay our teleophobia aside and propose a strong teleological account in the vein of a Buddhist no-self doctrine at the heart of the onto-politico-economy. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Dewey’s pragmatist aesthetics, and in particular, his concept of consummatory experience, should be engaged anew to rethink the merits of the Philosophy for Children programme, which arose in the 1970s in the US as an innovative educational programme that aims to use philosophy to help school children improve their ability to become more conscious of and make judgments about the aspects of their experience that have ethical, aesthetic, political, logical, or even metaphysical meaning. Although (...) an international success, the PFC programme has attracted many criticisms from a variety of directions. I claim that Deweyan concept of consummatory aesthetic experience is broad and flexible enough to provide a robust framework to make sense of the pedagogical horizon of PFC and therefore fruitfully engage the various critics of the movement coming from religious and social conservatives, educational psychologists, critical theorists, postmodernists/posthumanists, and professional philosophers themselves. The goal of this paper is to offer in a preliminary fashion the basic elements of Deweyan pragmatist aesthetics, which was principally elucidated in his Art as Experience, to defend PFC as a viable pedagogy. (shrink)

In this paper, I intend to discuss what I would like to call “the ideal of teaching as consummatory experience” in relation to John Dewey’s concept of “experience,” as the latter was elucidated in his later works, especially Art as Experience. What I have in mind with the phrase “the ideal of teaching as consummatory experience” basically points to what it means to be fully alive as a teacher and what happens when teaching is experienced in such a manner. In (...) other words, what is the relationship between teaching that is truly fulfilling for the teacher and experience that is truly educative for the student(s)? There is no doubt in my mind that the two are intimately connected. Truly fulfilling teaching and truly .. (shrink)

This book presents an original exploration of philosophical questions pertaining to the ways we grasp the Absolute by bringing together the Buddhist notion of interpermeation of all phenomena into contemporary strains of thought in continental philosophy. This text introduces an ontological concept, granularity, deploying it to probe questions concerning the intersection of ontology, ethics, and education. A wide range of issues in metaphysics are covered—including being, nothingness, unity, plurality, truth, change, transformation, subjectivity, contradiction, coherence, potentiality—from the perspective of thinkers such (...) as Hegel, Heidegger, Badiou, Meillassoux, Malabou, Žižek, and Harman. The text deploys granularity in arguing for an ethics of unconditional hospitality within education. This volume is intended for students and researchers working in the areas of philosophy of education, philosophy of religion, and continental philosophy. (shrink)

An intriguing interresonance plays out between various forms of Mahayana Buddhist ontology and Žižek’s dialectical materialism. His disdainful critique of Buddhism is well-known. As a cultural critic, Žižek might be onto something in his contention that Western Buddhism functions as the perfect ideology for late capitalism. As an ontologist, however, he seems to be ambivalent regarding the parallels between the Buddhist Void, to which the Western Buddhists supposedly withdraw, and his elaboration of a new foundation of dialectical materialism. Žižek is (...) one of the few contemporary continental philosophers who do not hesitate to engage Buddhism. My claim is that, notwithstanding his criticism, Žižek is much closer to Mahayana than he thinks. My aim therefore is to demonstrate how this is so. To do this, I will mainly focus on the following forms of Mahayana thought: śūnyatā in the context of Nāgārjuna's the Two-Truth doctrine, Tiantai School of Chinese Buddhist concept of li, and Nishida Kitarō’s philosophy of basho, which was heavily influenced by the Japanese Zen/Pure Land Buddhism. After going through some of the preliminary affinities among Mahayana forms and Žižek in its absolute contradiction, and materialism as the contradictory/paradoxical field conceived as an atheistic religious field, and so on), I will analyse each school of Mahayana mentioned above and point out the parallels between these and Žižek’s own thought. (shrink)

In this paper, an account of two novel ontologies is given to point to the need to revise the status of facts in school curriculum. It is argued that schooling is in dire need of re-enchantment. The way to re-enchant schooling is to re-enliven the world we inhabit. We need to fall head over heels in love with the world again. In order to do that, we need to shake up our conception of “the hard and cold facts of the (...) world” to make the latter come alive radiating vibrancy and luminosity out into the world. Facts have to be liberated from their “cold and hard” status and become things that captivate us with their uniqueness and dynamism. To the extent that facts enchant (instead of merely re/present the world), working with them leads to educative experience. To work out how to let the facts do that, two thinkers and two ways to reconceptualize ‘facts’ are discussed: Graham Harman and his objects, and Ken Wilber and his holons. (shrink)

In their defence of the school Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons define it as a source of ‘free time.’ Drawing on Catherine Malabou's compelling reading of Heidegger in her The Heidegger Change, I aim to provide a strong ontological justification for the claims made on behalf of the school concerning free time, common goods, and renewing (changing) the world: the school provides free time; it transforms knowledge and skills into common goods; and it has the potential to give everyone the (...) time and space to renew the world. The paper enquires into what ‘free time as non-productive time,’ ‘common goods,’ and ‘changing the world’ mean on an ontological register, and why therefore the school is so precious and warrants our utmost care in the face of its conservative and progressive critics alike. I discern a single underlying notion, the notion of essence as mutability, constituting the link connecting free time, common goods, and renewal of the world. (shrink)

This article is about a pedagogical movement I discern in Quentin Meillassoux’s ontology. The goal of the essay is to introduce his approach to reality in outline form and offer it as a possible route to conceptualize education as the practice of keeping the bodymind attentive and agile against its unsound ossification by way of providing a unified heightened sense of meaning, that is, consummatory experience, in a radically open and contingent world. Meillassoux offers a new conception of necessity and (...) contingency based on the Badioun principle that ‘nothing is inaccessible to reason.’ This move helps Meillassoux to claim that reason can access the absolute for there is no inaccessible necessary transcendence by providing an intriguing critique of the principle of sufficient reason. As a result, Meillassoux’s argument leads to the conclusion that the only necessity is contingency itself. By excluding any necessary being, but also maintaining the absolute necessity of contingency itself, Meillassoux establishes what he calls the “factial.” Meillassoux’s factiality induce pedagogical interventions that lead to acquiring a new point of view whereby ossification of bodymind is staved off and a state of mind that is endlessly fascinated by the immanence, or the most radical becoming, of the world is achieved. (shrink)

In this article, it is argued that the inordinate amount of time and attention given to the use of textbooks in education inadvertently leads to deadening miseducative experiences and creates a learning environment where what Dewey calls ‘consummatory experience’ is thwarted. In order to unpack this thesis, Dewey’s pragmatist aesthetics is engaged, and in particular, his concept of consummatory experience is defined and its temporal nature is elucidated by referring to two modes of time: chronological and phenomenological. Subsequently, the relation (...) between teaching and consummatory experience is elucidated to uncover the reason why using textbooks is counterproductive. (shrink)

This paper discusses the repercussions of a new metaphysics—speculative/weird realism—for education and pedagogy. A historic shift is taking place in present-day continental philosophy, which involves an explicit and renewed call for realism. One of the most salient features of this development is a revitalised interest in ontological questions. As part of this overall trend towards realist and materialist ontologies in current continental thinking, the paper particularly focuses on Graham Harman’s object-oriented ontology, which claims that aesthetics is first philosophy. Harman’s object-oriented (...) philosophy is an approach to metaphysics and ontology that is enamored by the experience of the vibrant yet inscrutable autonomous reality of objects. In order to come to terms with this new approach to reality, I suggest education be conceived as the cultivation of an aesthetic attitude understood as the ability to uphold the tension between relational and non-relational aspects of objects understood in the Harmanian idiom. (shrink)

Oral history of philosophy: written format.

Esta conferencia formó parte del encuentro “Archivos Sonoros y cultura popular” realizado el 17 de septiembre de 2019 en el marco del Coloquio sobre Memorias Populares organizado por Doctorado en Historia y la Maestría en Historia y Memoria de la FaHCE junto a la presencia del historiador italiano Alessandro Portelli. En dicha conferencia, las autoras presentaron el archivo oral “Memorias encontradas” de la Comisión por la Memoria (CPM). Por un lado, relataron la historia de la producción y recolección de (...) entrevistas surgidas a partir de los distintos trabajos de la CPM y, por el otro, reflexionaron sobre algunas particularidades de la serie “El archivo y el testigo”: el contexto de producción, el diálogo entre el relato oficial/policial y la voz de las y los testigos, los distintos modos de narrar, de contar. (shrink)

Orality, generally defined as the preference for the spoken over the written word, is an academic discipline that has only recently received attention from the missiological community. The reality of widespread oral preference, also known as “secondary orality,” is no less true in Europe. In this article, the author focuses on the Romanian context. Using qualitative research gleaned from interviews with nine university-educated Romanians, patterns are developed that display how “secondary oral learners” choose to learn and retain new (...) information. Specific attention is given to theologically-related material. Six implications for theological education are advanced in the areas of (1) hermeneutics, (2) preaching, (3) evangelism, (4) discipleship, (5) church planting, and (6) leadership development. Paths forward for ministry in oral preference cultures like Romania are developed. The author concludes that the implementation of such suggestions could lead to more holistic ministry and is potentially transferrable to similar contexts. (shrink)

Vaccination is an important tool for handling healthcare programs both in developed and developing countries. The current global scenario calls for a more‐efficacious, acceptable, cost‐effective and reliable method of immunization for many fatal diseases. It is hoped that the adoption of oral vaccines will help to provide an effective vaccination strategy, especially in developing countries. Mucosal immunity generated by oral vaccines can serve as a strong first line of defense against most of the pathogens infecting through the mucosal (...) lining. Advances in elucidating the mechanism of action of oral vaccines will facilitate the design of more effective, new generation vaccines. There are promising developments in the use of different agents to effectively deliver the vaccine candidate. It is hoped that ongoing research may be able to set another cardinal point, after polio vaccine, in eradicating infectious diseases. BioEssays 29:591–604, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This paper examines incorrect use of oral contraceptives (OCs) in rural Bangladesh by using data from an OC compliance survey. Of the 1031 current users of OCs interviewed, about 13% took their pills out of sequence, while 17% left incorrect intervals between pill packs. Forty per cent of the women reported missing one active pill during the 6 months prior to the survey, and 74% of them took correct action with the missed pill. Of the women who missed two (...) active pills (16%), only 9% took correct action. Multivariate analyses revealed that women's education and their husbands' support helped protect against taking incorrect action with a missed pill. The fieldworker's contact was found to protect against leaving an incorrect interval between pill packs. Women who had membership of non-government organizations were less likely to interrupt their pill use, and more likely to take their pill out of sequence. The present study underscores the need for providing women with more support in their pill use, and advocates that service providers should be the focal point of efforts. Husbands' support is essential to improve the pill-taking behaviour of Bangladeshi women. (shrink)

Our understanding of the complexity of the oral biome and of the role of the various constituent bacteria in the aetiology of dental disease is growing. Probiotics and their relationship with prebiotics, as well as other microbiome‐based interventions, could be useful in preventing and treating dental disease and in promoting oral health. However, given the promise and early stage of this treatment approach, there are also a number of ethical, social and regulatory issues associated with innovative probiotic therapy. (...) In this article, a brief update is given on contemporary theories of the aetiology and management of the two commonest dental diseases, and on the roles of pre‐ and probiotics and oral biome transplant in the management of these diseases. The focus is primarily on four core issues: informed consent, risk–benefit assessment, how to determine suitable healthy donors, and commercialization and regulation. We discuss the safety and benefits of oral probiotics, not only concerning the products and quality control during their manufacture, but also regarding the depth of public knowledge about this topic. We point out that the requirement of listing ingredients honestly might be insufficient, and that the prevalent rhetoric of ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ as well as some health claims in the translational, innovative probiotic industry and markets are themselves misleading and should be carefully scrutinized. Finally, we suggest an ethical imperative to find a balance between scientific research and industry, and public health in the regulation of probiotics. (shrink)

Social epistemology has paid little attention to oral historiography as a source of expert insight into the credibility of testimony. One extant suggestion, however, is that oral historians treat testimony with a default trust reflecting a standing warrant for accepting testimony. The view that there is such a standing warrant is sometimes known as the Acceptance Principle for Testimony. I argue that the practices of oral historians do not count in support of APT, all in all. Experts (...) have commonly described oral traditions as oriented towards political, cultural and entertainment ends, and not only—or not even—towards an accurate depiction of past events. Even when accuracy is the emphasis, many historians of oral tradition do not trust such testimony as APT would suggest; the importance of gathering supporting evidence is a consistent emphasis. Yet oral historiography, both of traditions and more generally, does hold out lessons for the epistemology of testimony, implicating a wider range of social.. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPrevious research has revealed a stable preference for words with inward consonantal-articulation patterns, over outward-words. Following the oral approach-avoidance account suggesting that the in–out effect is due to the resemblance between consonantal-articulations patterns and ingestion/expectoration, recent findings have shown that when judging inward-outward names for objects with particular oral functions, valence did not modulate the effect while the oral function did. To replicate and examine further the role of edibility and valence in shaping the in–out effect, we (...) asked participants to rate inward and outward names for edible and non-edible products while controlling for valence. Results revealed that the motor-to-affect link was only observed for edible products, regardless of valence. (shrink)

Oral health is a critical part of overall health. The current COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of oral health. In this article, we describe how dental practice has been impacted by COVID-19, identify the public health response to COVID-19, and explain the gradual resumption of dental care after the initial disruption due to the pandemic. Finally, we discuss how long-standing health disparities in oral health have been exacerbated by the current pandemic.

South Africa has a long history of orality deeply embedded in the archival memory of the ‘Other’ or the history of the poor and oppressed. Their untold stories, undocumented histories with displacing identities are how the historical ‘Other’ has been perceived by colonialism and the apartheid regime. The ‘Other’ or primary oral communities in the context of this article can be seen by a name, a face and a particular identity, namely, indigenous people. This article will engage the work (...) of Finnegan on what is ‘Orality – if anything’. The term ‘orality’, as a conceptual tool, can help us to widen our horizons and attention to forms of human creativity and imagination which was neglected or unnoticed by scholars. Orality has forced scholars to ask new questions on what is the meaning of ‘text’ and encouraged and challenge scholars in orality and literacy research with a new analysis of what we thought we already knew. The article engages oral and written research and how it can assist in understanding the discourse of the ‘Other’ and the power relation in reconstructing and re-ordering of their social universe through collective memory, songs, rituals, satire, drama and political protest which at large was perceived by the apartheid era and Western colonisers as savage, uncivilised and barbaric. The oral discourse of the ‘Other’ has become part of the power struggles politically and educationally in South Africa. Orality has further reshaped the Christian discourse in South Africa and Africa as the poor and oppressed find new power in a discourse of metaphysics of presence of the Gospel through preaching and bearing witness of their new encounter spiritually. (shrink)

The indigenous people of sub-Saharan Africa approach their Supreme Being and express their reverence in diverse ways, as depicted in the different local names that describe this supernatural being. The African cultural worldview foregrounds that virtuous rapport with the Supreme Being provides wisdom and facilitates good cohabitation among humans. It is argued in this article that teachings from the Christian Bible contribute negatively to the disintegration, fragmentation and death of indigenous knowledge systems, which include African cultural values, memory and (...) class='Hi'>oral traditions. Recently, some African scholars have begun to create awareness of some of Africa’s lost treasures. However, such contributions are disappointingly few. This study argues that memory and orality among Africans should be promoted and supported through various platforms, such as academic writing. This article will discuss memory, orality and ‘God-talk’ in terms of the following: teachings on moral values (e.g. relationships, marriage, humaneness [ubuntu or hunhu]) and the preservation of cultural heritage. The discussion uses qualitative analysis of secondary data and personal observation.Contribution: Firstly, the present study will provide for the readership in general, and academia in particular, a new perspective on African customs and indigenous belief systems about a Supreme Being. For example, Musiki as a Shona local dialect name for ‘God’ was already in use before the emergence of Christianity in Southern Africa. Secondly, previous contributions have not sufficiently explored memory and orality. This investigation serves as a resource or starting point for further research on memory and orality. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the use of interviews with scientists by members of two disciplinary communities: oral historians and historians of science. It examines the disparity between the way in which historians of science approach autobiographies and biographies of scientists on the one hand, and the way in which they approach interviews with scientists on the other. It also examines the tension in the work of oral historians between a long-standing ambition to record forms of past experience (...) and more recent concerns with narrative and personal ‘composure’. Drawing on extended life story interviews with scientists, recorded by National Life Stories at the British Library between 2011 and 2016, it points to two ways in which the communities might learn from each other. First, engagement with certain theoretical innovations in the discipline of oral history from the 1980s might encourage historians of science to extend their already well-developed critical analysis of written autobiography and biography to interviews with scientists. Second, the keen interest of historians of science in using interviews to reconstruct details of past events and experience might encourage oral historians to continue to value this use of oral history even after their theoretical turn. (shrink)

This is a study of the Ugandan poet and cultural critic Okot p'Bitek. In his poems and critical essays, Okot engages with the oral traditions of his people—the songs, dances, funeral dirges, and so forth—seeing them as manifestations of the people's philosophy of life. Imbo's book aims to make explicit the philosophical questions raised in Okot's work, placing them within the wider picture of contemporary African philosophy as a whole.

This paper examines incorrect use of oral contraceptives (OCs) in rural Bangladesh by using data from an OC compliance survey. Of the 1031 current users of OCs interviewed, about 13% took their pills out of sequence, while 17% left incorrect intervals between pill packs. Forty per cent of the women reported missing one active pill during the 6 months prior to the survey, and 74% of them took correct action with the missed pill. Of the women who missed two (...) active pills (16%), only 9% took correct action. Multivariate analyses revealed that women support helped protect against taking incorrect action with a missed pill. The fieldworker support is essential to improve the pill-taking behaviour of Bangladeshi women. (shrink)

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to present the stylistic and thematic analysis of Geez poetry, in a way that examines the profound and complex meaning that it carries.Research Methodology: The article methodology consisted of qualitative research methodology and a purposive sampling was used in field work. Secondary data was also obtained from books and scholarly journals and duly acknowledged. Idiomatic and literal translation methods were used, with special emphasis on meaning rather than form. The translation from Geez to (...) English was conducted by the researcher and content analysis was used to analyze the data.Findings: The poems revealed a rich, valuable aesthetics and dynamic changes taking place in the cultural mold of the Geez speaking society. It has also revealed that a huge amount of Geez oral poetry still remains unrecorded. It has also shown that Geez oral poetry is not being learned by the young generation and this could lead to a loss in cultural practices embodied in it.Unique Contribution to Theory, Policy and Practice: The article will contribute to the preservation, documentation and research endeavors being undertaken by researches, educators as well as policy makers involved in areas related to the study of the classical language of Geez. This is because none of Geez poetry has been composed, written or recorded in any parchments or books by the churches at all. Hence, it is only too obvious that a massive amount of poetic wisdom has been lost that future generations could have benefited from. (shrink)

Often understood as synonymous with “oral history” in Indigenous title and rights cases in Canada, “oral tradition” as theorized by Jan Vansina is complexly imbricated in the European genealogy of “scientific history” and the archival science of Diplomatics with roots in the development of property law and memory from the time of Justinian. Focusing on Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia, which resulted in the first declaration of Aboriginal title in Canada, this paper will discuss Tsilhqot’in law in the (...) context of the court’s deployment of Vansina’s theory and its genealogy, and conclude that “oral tradition” functions as a legal fiction enabling the court to remain in the familiar archive of its own historiography while claiming to listen to the Elders. (shrink)

"Dr. Rubin has brought cognitive psychology into a wholly unprecedented dialogue with studies in oral tradition. The result is a truly new perspective on memory and the processes of oral tradition." --John Miles Foley, University of Missouri.

1. Something strange commenced to happen in the field of logic from the beginning of the seventeenth century. Oral disputation, rather than falling into oblivion as a relic of medieval darkness wit...

"Dr. Rubin has brought cognitive psychology into a wholly unprecedented dialogue with studies in oral tradition. The result is a truly new perspective on memory and the processes of oral tradition." --John Miles Foley, University of Missouri.

This paper examines the ethical dimensions of the closure process of an English large long-stay institution for people with learning difficulties during the last quarter of the twentieth century. It does this primarily through an analysis of oral historical interview data stemming from those managers who implemented rundown. The paper illustrates the ways in which their testimonies indicate the presence of a morally infused dominant rhetoric, which was based upon the therapeutic benefits of closure, informed by the ideas of (...) normalisation and social role valorisation. However, the paper argues that this principled managerial perspective had unfortunate ethical consequences, in that it under-acknowledged, marginalised and discredited staff viewpoints which raised pertinent issues relating to the downsizing of this particular hospital. (shrink)