Ilan Gur–ze’ev; Bildung and Critical Theory in the Face of Postmodern Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 36, Issue 3, 16 December 2002, Pages.

Ilan Gur–ze’ev; Bildung and Critical Theory in the Face of Postmodern Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 36, Issue 3, 16 December 2002, Pages.

This paper characterizes a present institutionalizedunwillingness of both the Israeli and Palestinian educationalsystems to acknowledge each other's suffering because of the presenceof what the author terms `the otherness of the other.' This isdone largely through hegemonic control of memory of genocidesendured by both and through limiting constructions of the self.Coming to terms with `each other' paves the way for ahumanistic-oriented counter-education, one based in mutualacknowledgment and open dialogue.

This article follows the formulation of a new Palestinian attitude toward the Holocaust memory. It presents it as a bold challenge to past Palestinian perceptions of and attitudes toward the Holocaust memory. This novel Palestinian stance connects the Holocaust memory to the memory of the Nakbah, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948. It is part of a critical deconstruction of the manipulation of collective memory in the service of nationalism. The authors of this article respond by providing their own deconstruction of (...) the memory's manipulation on both the Israeli and the Palestinian side of the divide. This additional analysis is meant to contribute to a dialogue that would enable us to explore further the dialectical relationship between the Holocaust and Nakbah memory in the Arab-Israeli conflict. This is not a mere academic exercise. Like others who had already participated in this dialogue, the authors believe firmly that such an exposure is a precondition for the elimination of the violence, direct or symbolic, from Israeli-Palestinian coexistence. (shrink)

From a contemporary perspective, the work of the Frankfurt School thinkers can be considered the last grand modern attempt to offer transcendence, meaning, and religiosity rather than “emancipation” and “truth.” In the very first stage of their work, Adorno and Horkheimer interlaced the goals of Critical Theory with the Marxian revolutionary project. The development of their thought led them to criticize orthodox Marxism and ended in a complete break with that tradition, as they developed a quest for a unique kind (...) religiosity connected with the Gnostic tradition and emanating, to a certain extent, from Judaism. This religiosity offers a reformulated Negative Theology within the framework of what I call “Diasporic philosophy.” In his later work, Horkheimer explicitly presented Critical Theory as a new Jewish theology. Rearticulating Critical Theory is of vital importance today, both for understanding the current historical moment and for going beyond the oppressive dimensions of Critical Pedagogy. This article does not satisfy itself by offering a new reconstruction of Critical Theory; its goal is to offer a blueprint for a Diasporic counter‐education that transcends Critical Pedagogy and goes beyond the emancipatory dimensions of Judaism itself. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger is, perhaps, the most controversial philosopher of the twentieth-century. Little has been written on him or about his work and its significance for educational thought. This unique collection by a group of international scholars reexamines Heidegger's work and its legacy for educational thought.

Ilan Gur-Ze'ev and Education: Pedagogies of Transformation and Peace critically analyses and introduces the main ideas of Ilan Gur-Ze'ev, reflecting on their continuing theoretical and practical relevance for the field of education. This book offers an accessible, higher-level critical discussion on the thought of Ilan Gur-Ze'ev with an impressive breadth and contemporary focus. The book focuses on Gur-Ze'ev's 'counter-pedagogy' project, which brought him much attention and attempts to establish an alternative and non-dogmatic form of education. Gur Ze'ev's (...) views go against 'critical pedagogy' and 'neoliberalism', because while the former advocates achieving an utopia in which there is no oppression, the later defends the idea that 'wants and desires' need to be satisfied through a process of 'marketisation'. This book brings into notice Gur-Ze'ev's concepts of 'counter-education' and 'diasporic education' which seeks to pursue the truth in everyday life, rather than achieving a utopian goal, or the Promised Land. This unique and up-to-date monograph will be of great interest for researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the fields of philosophy of education, theory of education, peace education, Jewish education, neoliberalism, and sociology of education. (shrink)

Ilan Gur Ze’ev gave his last lecture on January 4, 2012, in room 363 in the Haifa University’s Faculty of Education. Ilan passed away on the morning of January 5, 2012 at the Italian Hospital in Haifa. In this last lecture given to friends, colleagues and students he said ‘The challenge is to counter immersion of ourselves in the fashionable and in frozen identities. Important doors are opening for education to love. To summarize my part of this encounter, (...) as I depart from you after so many years of passion as part of this endeavour, let me say goodbye, with infinite thanks, for the opportunity to be part of this community. In the hope you will continue to educate to be critical, to educate to inspiration and above all to do so out of love’. I want to pay my own tribute now to my friend, Ilan, by rehearsing some of the main themes in the body of teaching that he has left us. (shrink)

Neste artigo aponta-se para uma importante contribuição que o Pacto Nacional pelo Fortalecimento do Ensino Médio introduz no campo da educação, quer dizer, a possibilidade de constituição do professor-improvisador, tão defendido por Ilan Gur-Ze’ev. Como resultado desta pesquisa empírica com análise qualitativa de dados mostra-se que, sem o apoio de tais ações, a oportunidade de os indivíduos expandirem suas capacidades críticas é reduzida, comprometendo o potencial para o surgimento e/ou revelação desse professor improvisador, crítico e encorajador da crítica. Ainda: (...) busca-se destacar a importância desse tipo de ação no que concerne à valorização e à melhoria da escola pública. Palavras-chave: Formação de professores. Educação Continuada. Ilan Gur-Ze’ev. (shrink)

Este artigo discute o tema do papel do(a) professor(a) na Educação a partir da produção teórica dos autores Henry A. Giroux, Paulo Freire e Ilan Gur-Ze´ev, e de uma pesquisa de campo aplicada a professores(as) formadores(as) no Brasil. Para tanto, aborda alguns conceitos propostos por cada um dos três autores, tais como o conceito de intelectual transformativo proposto Giroux, a perspectiva do(a) professor(a) como um libertador político desenvolvida por Freire, e o conceito de professor-improvisador descrito por Gur-Ze´ev na sua (...) teorização sobre a contraeducação. Na segunda parte, as contribuições teóricas destes autores servem como referência para interpretar os dados obtidos em uma pesquisa qualitativa aplicada a professores(as) de disciplinas pedagógicas de cursos de licenciatura de uma universidade pública federal no Estado do Rio Grande do Sul sobre o papel do(a) professor(a) na Educação contemporânea. Na análise de dados, retoma-se a questão do emprego do termo “papel” apresentada à introdução, bem como do emprego da expressão “papel do(a) professor(a)” como categoria de análise da pesquisa, em relação à qual os entrevistados demonstraram, em sua maioria, identidade conceitual. Dentre as falas dos entrevistados, destacam-se as temáticas da intencionalidade da ação docente, da neutralidade e da politicidade da ação docente, as quais têm grande relevância na obra dos autores estudados e ainda têm repercussão no debate social brasileiro, vide os mais variados projetos de lei apresentados nas casas legislativas brasileiras que intentam, à sua visão, despolitizar a educação no país. (shrink)

This article sets forward a new concept of reflection, to be contrasted with more usual reading of the concept for which we use the term `reflectivity'. The contrast is related to a distinction between normalizing education and counter-education. We claim that within the framework of normalizing education there is no room for reflection, but only for reflectivity. In contrast to reflectivity, reflection manifests a struggle of the subject against the effects of power which govern the constitution of her conceptual apparatus, (...) her knowledge, her consciousness and her limitations and possibilities for successful functioning. Reflectivity re-presents the hegemonic realm of self-evidence and the productive violence of social and cultural order. Reflection, by contrast, aims to challenge the supposedly self-evident and the present order of things. Reflection aims at transcendence and represents a moral commitment in respect of the otherness of the Other, which power relations in every realm of self-evidence oblige us to neglect, to destroy or consume. Transcendence is a concrete utopia, and so is the subject in her nonrepressive communication with the Other: they are part and parcel of our present possibilities, sometimes in microscopic arenas, struggled for, and from time to time even realized. (shrink)

If national education is, as Ilan Gur-Ze’ev thinks, inevitably a matter of agents for and victims of a national system, only a “counter-education” can correct it. Martin Buber shared many of Gur-Ze’ev’s concerns, but advocated a more positive view of national education. This essay examines Buber’s development of his pedagogical theory in its context, notes his influence on several educational models, investigates how his view of national education either continues or is ignored in the modern State of Israel, and (...) shows that his positive view draws not only on his “I-Thou” dialogical insight but also on his advocacy of a myth of Zion, a myth that provides an alternative not just to the dominant myths in Israel today but also to Gur-Ze’ev’s counter-education. (shrink)

Erotic Counter Education is the educational position of the late Ilan Gur- Ze'ev. In ECE Gur-Ze'ev combines two opposing positions in the philosophy of education, one teleological and anti-utopian, the other teleological and utopian. In light of this unique combination, I ask what mediates between these two poles and suggest that the answer lies in the concept of eros. Following a preliminary presentation of the concept of eros in ECE, I define it as a form of transcendental cognition that (...) distinguishes between ‘what is to be perceived’, conceptual and human, and ‘what is not to be perceived’, divine and absolute. I subsequently show how the ‘nature’ of this conception of eros permits the establishment of a normative meta-theory of education that gains its strength from critical theory and counter education. (shrink)

In this review essay, Mark Brenneman and Frank Margonis address three recent book-length contributions to the ongoing discussion around cosmopolitanism and educational thought: Mark Olssen's Liberalism, Neoliberalism, Social Democracy: Thin Communitarian Perspectives on Political Philosophy and Education, Sharon Todd's Toward an Imperfect Education: Facing Humanity, Rethinking Cosmopolitanism, and Ilan Gur-Ze’ev's Beyond the Modern-Postmodern Struggle in Education: Toward Counter-Education and Enduring Improvisation. Brenneman and Margonis argue that these contributions exhibit a marked disenchantment with Enlightenment conceptions of human possibilities as these (...) inform concrete recommendations in the field of the philosophy of education. All three books call for a rethinking of modernist categories in educational thought, a call that is supported by the authors' respective distrust and ultimate disenchantment with the residual presence of ideas of human perfectibility harbored in the philosophical categories that animate discussions in multicultural, liberal, neoliberal, and postmodern educational discussion. Brenneman and Margonis argue that each of these books theorizes from its own respective regionally specific circumstances, and they therefore prove valuable to philosophers of education who struggle toward their own local responses to human difference and the pedagogical possibilities of educational relations. (shrink)

Metaphors help us understand a concept by resorting to the imaginary because it is sometimes difficult to do so through the use of words alone. Thinkers have made use of metaphors to not only describe ‘falling in love’, ‘the pain of losing someone dear to us’, but also to describe particular concepts both in arts and sciences. In fact, the use of metaphors in some disciplines, particularly the sciences, is now regarded as something essential for the development of the field. (...) We note that influential philosophers of education, such as Martin Buber, Paulo Freire, Michael Apple, Gert Biesta and Ilan Gur-Ze’ev have also made use of metaphors to discuss education and specific issues in educational contexts. In this article, we do two things: we discuss the methodological importance of metaphors in helping us make better sense of concepts and particular problems; building on this methodological discussion, we critically discuss the problems posed by the current processes of ‘marketisation’ and ‘learnification’ in education. We conclude by arguing that metaphors do not provide us with ultimate answers to the problems we face; rather, they help us unveil a diversity of novel perspectives and a world of new possibilities. (shrink)

A reflexão parte da tarefa que Benjamin atribui aos que estão vivos: originar um verdadeiro “estado de exceção”. Compreende-se que essa é a tarefa primeira de uma Educação Histórica ética e estética. O artigo está organizado em três partes que compreendem os três elementos indissociáveis que constituem os primeiros movimentos no sentido de superar o “estado de Exceção” da violência sem memória. Na primeira parte, discutimos, a partir de Adorno, o “estado de exceção” da violência sem memória e reafirmamos o (...) dever de memória que se opõe a barbárie. Na segunda parte, comentamos, seguindo Levinas, a ética da responsabilidade. Na terceira, analisamos a estética do Eros contraeducativo de Gur-Ze’ev. Conclui-se que a postura de um pensar histórico ético e estético perpassa a recusa de esquecer e o desenvolvimento de uma atitude crítica para consigo mesmo, para com o Outro, e finalmente para com a realidade. (shrink)

Aaron Ben-Ze'ev carries out what he calls "a careful search for general patterns in the primeval jungle of emotions.".

This book presents an original comprehensive approach to some of the most difficult problems concerning sense-perception and other mental states. After rejecting prevailing approaches, the author presents his own viewpoint which may be characterized as direct, critical realism. Basing his conclusions on conceptual analysis, psychological evidence and historical considerations, the author is able to offer new insights into traditionally unsolved problems concerning the nature of perceptual states, the ontological status of perceptual environment, the cognitive mechanism in perception and the explanation (...) of perceptual mistakes. The book also discusses the implications of this approach for other mental states such as memory and consciousness. (shrink)

Envy involves the wish to have something that someone else has; jealousy involves the wish not to lose something that the subject has and someone else does not. Envy and jealousy would seem to involve a similar emotional attitude. Both are concerned with a change in what one has: either a wish to obtain or a fear of losing. This is not a negligible distinction, however. The wish not to lose something is notably different from the wish to obtain something (...) and this difference has significant implications. (shrink)

Cholbi suggests three unique features of grief which are “unlike most emotional conditions”: (1) grief is a concatenation of affective states rather than a single such state, (2) grief is not a perception-like state but a form of affectively-laden attention directed at its object, and (3) grief is an activity with an inchoate aim. While I essentially accept this characterization, I believe that these arguments are not unique to grief but common to all (or at least most) emotions.

In this article, James Gibson’s influential notion of “perceptual affordances” is applied to the romantic realm. The core idea of Gibson’s view rests on the possible, meaningful actions that the perceptual environment offers the animal. In order to sustain this idea, Gibson posits two additional major characteristics of affordances: (a) affordances are perceived in a direct cognitive manner, and (b) affordances have a unique ontological status that is neither subjective nor objective. While I accept the core idea, I have doubts (...) as to whether the two other characteristics are necessary in other types of affordances, such as social and romantic affordances. The romantic realm offers an abundance of many enticing affordances. In this regard, I discuss phenomena like the availability of a romantic alternative, romantic ambivalence, choosing a romantic partner, sexual fantasies, the road not taken, reciprocity, playing hard to get, cultivating backup mates, romantic affordances in old age and in the digital realm. In light of the abundance and complexity of romantic affordances in our current romantic environment, knowing the nature of these affordances is most useful from both pragmatic and theoretical viewpoints. (shrink)

Emotions are fascinating phenomena which occupy a pivotal position in our lives. I have presented elsewhere (Ben-Ze'ev, 2000) a comprehensive framework for understanding emotions in our everyday life. The paper briefly describes the characterization of typical emotions, while indicating their relevance to online personal relationships. It discusses issues such as emotional complexity; the typical emotional cause, concern, and object; emotions and intelligence; and managing the emotions. The paper then goes on to examine whether the emotions elicited in online relationships are (...) similar to those in face-to-face relationships or whether we are witnessing the emergence of new types of emotions. (shrink)

Enduring romantic love is highly significant for our wellbeing, and there is much scientific evidence for its value. There is also evidence that marital sex is important for the flourishing of wellbeing for both partners. Casual sexual relationships and experiences (CSREs) are often characterized in a non-normative way, as sexual behavior occurring outside a committed romantic relationship. However, the prevailing normative description is negative, perceived as superficial behavior that harms our wellbeing. Although sexual activities are linked to many psychological and (...) physical health benefits, these are rarely attributed to casual sex. Instead, scholars and laymen have warned against the negative consequences of non-committed sex, particularly for women. Yet, positive reactions to casual sex, such as satisfaction, confidence, self-knowledge and social engagement, are stronger and more common than negative reactions. Accordingly, the two major aims of this article are to understand the complexity of CSREs better, and to substantiate the claim that in various circumstances, CSREs contribute to our wellbeing. (shrink)

Is love best when it is fresh? For many, the answer is a resounding “yes.” The intense experiences that characterize new love are impossible to replicate, leading to wistful reflection and even a repeated pursuit of such ecstatic beginnings. Aaron Ben-Ze’ev takes these experiences seriously, but he’s also here to remind us of the benefits of profound love—an emotion that can only develop with time. In The Arc of Love, he provides an in-depth, philosophical account of the experiences that arise (...) in early, intense love—sexual passion, novelty, change—as well as the benefits of cultivating long-term, profound love—stability, development, calmness. Ben-Ze’ev analyzes the core of emotions many experience in early love and the challenges they encounter, and he offers pointers for weathering these challenges. Deploying the rigorous analysis of a philosopher, but writing clearly and in an often humorous style with an eye to lived experience, he takes on topics like compromise, commitment, polyamory, choosing a partner, online dating, and when to say “I love you.” Ultimately, Ben-Ze’ev assures us, while love is indeed best when fresh, if we tend to it carefully, it can become more delicious and nourishing even as time marches on. (shrink)