In a recent paper in BJES, John Wilson examines the question of the desirability of education and argues that the enterprise can only be justified if it is thought to be necessary 'as a means of salvation'. Here I expose a number of flaws in Wilson's argument and defend a rather more prosaic justificatory strategy.

Michel Foucault’s _History of Sexuality_ has been one of the most influential books of the last two decades. It has had an enormous impact on cultural studies and work across many disciplines on gender, sexuality, and the body. Bringing a new set of questions to this key work, Ann Laura Stoler examines volume one of _History of Sexuality_ in an unexplored light. She asks why there has been such a muted engagement with this work among students of colonialism for whom (...) issues of sexuality and power are so essential. Why is the colonial context absent from Foucault’s history of a European sexual discourse that for him defined the bourgeois self? In _Race and the Education of Desire, _Stoler challenges Foucault’s tunnel vision of the West and his marginalization of empire. She also argues that this first volume of _History of Sexuality_ contains a suggestive if not studied treatment of race. Drawing on Foucault’s little-known 1976 College de France lectures, Stoler addresses his treatment of the relationship between biopower, bourgeois sexuality, and what he identified as “racisms of the state.” In this critical and historically grounded analysis based on cultural theory and her own extensive research in Dutch and French colonial archives, Stoler suggests how Foucault’s insights have in the past constrained—and in the future may help shape—the ways we trace the genealogies of race. _Race and the Education of Desire_ will revise current notions of the connections between European and colonial historiography and between the European bourgeois order and the colonial treatment of sexuality. Arguing that a history of European nineteenth-century sexuality must also be a history of race, it will change the way we think about Foucault. (shrink)

While critical utopias sought to rescue the political import of utopia, recently scholars have questioned their overemphasis on literary forms and a disempowering pluralism. Challenging the applicability of these claims to one of the instigators of critical utopias, I provide a political reading of Miguel Abensour's understanding of utopia and connect this to councils as a concrete institutional infrastructure. This begins with a re-reading of his influential conception of the ‘education of desire’ in relation to the simulacrum as a utopian (...) ‘model’ that, in rejecting identity-thinking, refuses to reduce utopias to a blueprint. I then turn to conceptualising the utopia of councils through the simulacrum on two fronts: first, as a form subject to innovation in the context of the dialectic of emancipation; second, as a content that aims to both ‘democratise utopia’ by embracing plurality and ‘utopianize democracy’ by expanding the realm of democratic space. (shrink)

This paper mobilises the psychoanalytic concepts of desire and enjoyment to better understand how processes of education aimed at extending and defending democratic life might respond to and engage with populist politics. I approach this task by engaging with a particular vector of Mouffe and Laclau’s political philosophy, moving from a critique of liberal democracy’s rationalist pretensions to their insistence that left populism and its passionate construction of a ‘people’ is the central task facing radical politics. This attention to the (...) libidinal basis of political identification locates them in a community of Left Lacanian thinkers who reframe the problems of democratic politics in terms of desire and enjoyment rather than miseducation or its lack. Whilst this position might suggest a binary choice between different analytical frames, I inquire into what insights are generated by theorising left populism as an ‘education of desire’. The paper is organised into four main parts: the opening discussion clarifies my understanding of education by engaging with the literature on educational agonism. The second section lays the groundwork for a critique of the way in which education is fetishized, in different ways, by liberals and radicals as a panacea for populist politics. The third section reframes democratic crisis as an enjoyment problem in order to better grasp the relationship between the liberal democratic disavowal of its own irrationality and the structure of right-wing populist enjoyment. The fourth section applies these insights to develop a critical analysis of what is at stake when we explicitly consider the left populist construction of a ‘people’ as an educational task. I conclude by drawing together and summarising the main features and considerations of left populism understood as an education of desire. (shrink)

The ancient Stoics proposed one of the most sophisticated and influential ethical frameworks in the history of philosophy. Its impact on theory and practice lasted for centuries during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Today, their arguments and theories still inform many contemporary ethical debates. Moreover, some of the framework’s main tenets have been used as a theoretical foundation for cognitive–behavioural therapy (CBT), a widely used psychosocial intervention for improving mental health. Much of its lasting impact is the result of the (...) special attention Stoic ethics pays to moral psychology, action theory and education. Stoics consider one of the main components of the development of virtue to be a careful and systematic training of our desires and aversions. -/- This chapter will offer a clear, succinct and up-to-date discussion of four main topics: (1) the Stoic theory of desire; (2) the complex taxonomies of desire offered by the ancient Stoics; (3) the arguments, educational strategies, and practices the Stoics recommend to discipline our soul and extirpate our irrational desires and finally (4) a brief discussion of the possibility of adapting the Stoic philosophy for the education of desires in the present day. (shrink)

Americans increasingly cite moral values as a factor in how they vote, but when we define morality simply in terms of a voter's position on gay marriage and abortion, we lose sight of the ethical decisions that guide our everyday lives. In our encounters with friends, family members, nature, and nonhuman creatures, we practice a nonutilitarian morality that makes sacrifice a rational and reasonable choice. Recognizing these everyday ethics, Anna L. Peterson argues, helps us move past the seemingly irreconcilable conflicts (...) of culture and refocus on issues that affect real social change. Peterson begins by divining a "second language" for personal and political values, a vocabulary derived from the loving and mutually beneficial relationships of daily life. Even if our interactions with others are fleeting and fragmentary, they provide a viable alternative to the contractual and atomistic attitudes of mainstream culture. Everyday ethics point toward a more just, humane, and sustainable society, and to acknowledge moments of grace in our daily encounters is to realize a different way of relating to people and nonhuman nature—an alternative ethic to cynicism and rank consumerism. In redefining the parameters of morality, Peterson enables us to make fundamental problems such as the distribution of wealth, the use of public land and natural resources, labor and employment policy, and the character of political institutions the preferred focus of debate and action. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 29.4 (1999) 150-177 [Access article in PDF] The Desire for the Sovereign and the Logic of Reciprocity in the Family of Nations Lydia H. Liu It may sound like a truism that the modern nation cannot imagine itself except in sovereign terms. But what is this truism saying or, rather, withholding from us? When Benedict Anderson wrote his influential study of nationalism in 1983, he circumscribed the imagining (...) of the nation as "both inherently limited and sovereign" and relied on this basic understanding to explain the global transformation of dynastic empires into nation-states [Imagined Communities 6]. That insight, however, has not drawn to itself as much attention or scrutiny as some of his other concepts, like "print capitalism" or "creole nationalisms." If one were to name a few of the blind spots in the contemporary discussions of nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and diaspora, one of them would be the place and placing of sovereignty and sovereign right. To those of us whose initial purpose has been to historicize the nation and nationalism, this blind spot cannot but raise some serious methodological and interpretive questions. Insofar as sovereignty articulates a major mode of exchange between nation and empire in recent history and moreover figures prominently in the realm of what Anderson calls "quotidian universals" [Spectre of Comparisons 33], the truism of its truth needs to be unpacked carefully.Hence, I would like to raise some tentative questions about desire and sovereignty, not in terms of legal studies, but in light of what we have learned about colonial exchange and its production of difference, fetishism, identity, and the logic of reciprocity. I am going to show that these intellectual and material developments have had significant bearings on the making of international law such that our inquiry into the latter can no longer be confined to the self-explanatory evolution of legal discourse. For sovereign thinking is one of those areas that must be reexamined, to borrow Edward Said's words, "according to a detailed logic governed not simply by empirical reality but by a battery of desires, repressions, investments, and projections" [18].In this essay, I begin with a critical analysis of Benedict Anderson's work, focusing on the interplay of the historical and the universal in his study of the nation. I am particularly interested in examining what Anderson chose to do, or not to do, with sovereignty in his theory of nationalism, and I raise some questions about his idea of the "modular," whereby the universal takes on the role of a migrant figure making histories [End Page 150] here and there. Section two introduces the subject of fetishism and desire into the discussion by linking the display of the thrones of the Emperor Qianlong in British museums to significant moments of sovereign thinking in the reign of Queen Victoria and the Empress Dowager of China at the turn of the century. In section three, I attempt a detailed discussion of the sovereignty complex of Ku Hung-ming, a diasporic subject who grew up in colonial Malaysia, was educated in Europe, and ended up serving China as his adopted sovereign country. My analysis centers on Ku's well-known defense of the Empress Dowager during the popular nationalist uprising of 1900 and his work as a translator and publicist in Anglo-Chinese military confrontations. Finally, I turn to the theories of international law itself and ask how nineteenth-century jurists revised the notion of sovereignty to arrive at a new constitutive theory of recognition in the heyday of imperialist expansion. I argue that any attempt to explain the rise of the modern nation-state must take full account of this significant revision in the early nineteenth century, because the revision signaled a paradigmatic shift from natural law to positivist jurisprudence to the effect that a constitutive understanding of sovereign right would eventually overcome and displace the natural law notion of universal sovereignty. Sovereign Thinking in Migrant Nationalisms In Imagined Communities, Anderson pointed to sovereignty as a necessary condition in thinking about the nation when, for example, he... (shrink)

Anthropologists have tended to treat dreams as private fantasies arising from restless libidos struggling with reality. In this view, the dreamer is a victim of what she or he does not want, the intentions of the dreamer, and dreamed of, are often confused or illusory, and what happens in the dream is subj ect to a more primary, more objective, waking reality.The Barok people of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea, define dreams as both sleeping and waking experiences. Their dreams are (...) expressions of spiritually powerful persons who deal with a spiritual reality.In waking and real, but substantially dreamlike experiences such as one I describe in this paper, the desires and intents of all involved were perceived as wild possibilities. In the three sleeping dreams that I describe, the desires and intents of the dreamers were true, clearly expressed, and effective in creating or foretelling reality.Describing such subjective and willful experiences entails personal and professional risk. But toward understanding what happened, I undertake this in personally revealing terms, and I recommend Barok and other Native perspectives for the light they shed on dreams and reality.Social science has, for the most part, left dream analysis to the psychologists, and dreaming experiences to "the natives.” People educated in modern European traditions, and especially in academe, learn to not talk plainly or too much about their more subjective experiences or awarenesses, e.g, sex, emotions, and dreams. This applies not only to our lives as fieldworkers, but to our private lives in Western culture.Even recent publications1 still define dreams as a softer and more subjective, or even false, too private, in contrast to the harder and more objective, true reality of waking life (see Tedlock 1987). From this perspective, the accepted truth of there being an objective, socially defined, wakeful reality is not seriously called into question.Fieldwork experiences have shown me different distinctions between dreaming and not‐dreaming realities. I have learned to both expect and get more from dreams. I did not seek nor intentionally precipitate these experiences. They were a congruent part of my learning during four different periods of fieldwork.These experiences suggest a link between the ambiguity of intent in western style, non‐Native2 dreamers, and a lack of creative power. This contrasts with the clarity in the intent of Native style dreamers, and a real creative power.This link short‐circuits conventional academic distinctions between dreaming and waking experiences. For this reason, people like myself have not paid attention to these kinds of field experiences, much less written them up. We fear being disbelieved and discredited. Treating dreams on a comparable footing with objective reality is tantamount to "going native.”3 As Katherine Ewing has stated it, the problem is how to believe the Native meaning of dreams in defiance of the taboo against anthropologists' accepting the "temptation to believe" that "the subjects of one's research actually know something about the human condition and an encompassing 'reality'"(Ewing 1994:572).The field experiences I describe here have made me a believer of both the Native version of what happened, and the truth of there being an encompassing (Native) reality.4 They also convinced me of the necessity of trying to deal openly with what I know of the internal, private, libidinous, and willful stuff that is a part of these dreaming experiences. I reveal my own intent, desires, and needs, in both personal and professional terms, in order to lay some of the cards on the table, in order to look at them from both Native and non‐Native perspectives on what happened.I have learned that the difference between dreams and reality is not what it has been made out to be. On the one hand, the conventional definition of reality too strongly limits my ability to talk about my subjective experiences of it. On the other hand, the conventional definition of dreams does not make enough sense of my real experiences.By describing the real, non‐dreaming experience in which my subjective feelings are centered, the problematic issues of my own wakeful intent as a person and as an anthropologist are centered. This allows comparison of what is supposedly the nature of waking reality with what I experienced in the three sleeping dreams (hereafter "sleepdreams") which follow.The first three sleepdreams were experienced when I was living among Barok people at New Ireland, PNG, between 1979 and 1985. The fourth occured at Taumako, Solomon Islands, in 1993. (shrink)

We respond to a number of objections raised by John Harris in this journal to our argument that we should pursue genetic and other biological means of morally enhancing human beings (moral bioenhancement). We claim that human beings now have at their disposal means of wiping out life on Earth and that traditional methods of moral education are probably insufficient to achieve the moral enhancement required to ensure that this will not happen. Hence, we argue, moral bioenhancement should be sought (...) and applied. We argue that cognitive enhancement and technological progress raise acute problems because it is easier to harm than to benefit. We address objections to this argument. We also respond to objections that moral bioenhancement: (1) interferes with freedom; (2) cannot be made to target immoral dispositions precisely; (3) is redundant, since cognitive enhancement by itself suffices. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aesthetics, Education, the Critical Autonomous Self, and the Culture IndustryMarianna Papastephanou (bio)IntroductionE Lucevan le Stelle disconnected both from Tosca and Puccini becomes incidental music and brings strong recollections of the detergent advertisement it once coated. Last Year in Marienbad has caused some of the deepest yawn relief to many hopefuls for the title of the sophisticated who wished to cash out the film's cultural and social capital. A painting (...) by a well-known artist in the living room of a middle-upper-class residence often matches the colors of the carpet, and a piece of African art in the corner testifies to the hosts' cosmopolitan respect for otherness and the proper dose of hybridity in their selfhood. The young of the family are said to search for freedom from the puritan lifestyle in Ecstasis. Or, they rebel against the oppressive order of the system through idolizing music bands of an unconventional style and, as a matter of fact, of "unconventional" wealth accumulated precisely through the systemic exploitation of their idolization. The whole family, including the discontented young, will unite in the enjoyment of a new movie in which, just as in hundreds before it, police detectives can solve cases only after their suspension from duty and foreigners prefer to converse in perfect English when they are alone. What all members of the family are sure of by the end of the day, some of them through the prism of heavy drinking and others in the sober appreciation of the latest reality show, is that they exercised once again their free will in all instances. For they oriented their desires, treated as natural and self-posited, to objects they initially lacked but "autonomously" and "critically" found and selected from a rich and all-encompassing marketplace of culture. [End Page 75]How are art, its education, and its educational ideals of autonomy and critique related to this particular cultural reality that I have highlighted? Pseudo-individualism, escapism, Ersatzbefriedigung, fetishization, reification, and educationalization are some of the terms Adorno employed to approach the reality of artistic production and reception in capitalist times while preserving the distance that art offers for critiquing reality.1 In contrast with the above-sketched reality, in Adorno's ultimate aesthetic vision through art the self is not supposed to "forget in dreams the present world, but to change it by the strength of an image."2 Adorno attacks the drive toward a "totally administered" society—that of late capitalism—which "reduces every aspect of present-day life to the dead level of conformist popular 'taste' as dictated by a wholesale culture industry given over to the purposes of mass indoctrination."3 Fundamentally, the culture industry hinders the formation of autonomous, critical, and independent individuals.4I shall argue that such a theoretical framework gives us additional insight through which to combat what has already been perceived in pedagogical discourse as educational inability to cultivate reflective and critical subjectivities. Instead of autonomy, education nurtures narcissism. and instead of critique, it promotes appeasement5 —all the more so when education succumbs to the culture industry or fails to encourage students' critical stance to its imperatives.My position here is that by reclaiming their own valuable connection to reflective artistic experience and reception, aesthetic theory and art education can contribute to a reconceptualization of autonomy and critique and, perhaps more importantly, to a reorientation of educational practice.6 Adorno's aesthetics is exceptionally relevant to this aim because his work exemplifies in a unique way the necessary awareness of the antinomic qualities of autonomy and critique, their ineluctable dependence on society and culture, and their secret culpability in domination. Moreover, Adorno's cultural criticism comprises an unsurpassable diagnosis of those social pathologies that leads away from critical and reflective subjectivity and offers conceptual means for setting a critical eye on some current impoverished practices of teaching art. Above all, Adorno's aesthetic theory displays a remarkable topicality regarding contemporary positions on purely artistic concerns and contentions. Thus, the current neglect of his work in aesthetic educational theory7 must be dealt with since accommodation of such aesthetics within art educational discourse will serve significantly the latter's... (shrink)

This essay revisits the topic of how we should measure the things that matter, at a time when we continue to mismeasure our lives, as we hold fast to outworn myths of usefulness, popularity, and the desire to influence others. /// Three central, unquestioned presumptions have come to govern much of contemporary society, education, and the professions. They are: the high value placed on usefulness, on the passion to achieve popularity, and on the desire to influence others. In this essay, (...) the psychologist-philosopher author makes the case against these presumptions, presumptions which lead to exclusionary commitments that stand in the way of human cultural development. (shrink)

My topic may seem a bizarre mixture of epistemology and value theory; and perhaps it is best to acknowledge this oddity at once. I should also, perhaps, confess that such a mixture has always seemed something to aspire to. Any philosopher who has made it seem that feeling strongly about something, valuing it highly, is an inevitable consequence of the nature of human understanding , that from the facts of knowledge or perception one can derive the inescapable facts of emotion (...) or desire, any such philosopher has always deeply appealed to me. I am therefore a confessed perpetrator of the naturalistic fallacy. Indeed I go further, and say that I love the fallacy. So Spinoza, Hume and Sartre all seem to me to be real philosophers, on the grounds that for them this connexion between knowing and wanting seemed inevitable. My aim is to illustrate this kind of connexion by suggesting that the human imagination is such that we ought to value it and respect it more highly than anything else; and that therefore, if it can be educated and improved, it is to this education that we should give priority, if we are concerned with education at all. It may seem on the face of it absurd to say that we ought to value any particular human faculty or capacity. It may be thought that this is not the kind of object or evaluation with which at any rate philosophers should be concerned. But the fact is, of course, that we do value very highly indeed all kinds of capacities that we have, such as sight, and hearing and understanding. And being unashamedly naturalistic, I have no hesitation in saying not only that we do value them, but that we ought to; they are, in every sense, valuable. (shrink)

My topic may seem a bizarre mixture of epistemology and value theory; and perhaps it is best to acknowledge this oddity at once. I should also, perhaps, confess that such a mixture has always seemed something to aspire to. Any philosopher who has made it seem that feeling strongly about something, valuing it highly, is an inevitable consequence of the nature of human understanding, that from the facts of knowledge or perception one can derive the inescapable facts of emotion or (...) desire, any such philosopher has always deeply appealed to me. I am therefore a confessed perpetrator of the naturalistic fallacy. Indeed I go further, and say that I love the fallacy. So Spinoza, Hume and Sartre all seem to me to be real philosophers, on the grounds that for them this connexion between knowing and wanting seemed inevitable. My aim is to illustrate this kind of connexion by suggesting that the human imagination is such that we ought to value it and respect it more highly than anything else; and that therefore, if it can be educated and improved, it is to this education that we should give priority, if we are concerned with education at all. It may seem on the face of it absurd to say that we ought to value any particular human faculty or capacity. It may be thought that this is not the kind of object or evaluation with which at any rate philosophers should be concerned. But the fact is, of course, that we do value very highly indeed all kinds of capacities that we have, such as sight, and hearing and understanding. And being unashamedly naturalistic, I have no hesitation in saying not only that we do value them, but that we ought to; they are, in every sense, valuable. (shrink)

In an increasingly globalized world, empathy has been identified as a core competency of future global citizens and thus as an important skill to be fostered in global citizenship education (GCE). Despite this, however, what empathy is, and how it can play the pivotal role often claimed for it in the literature, have not been adequately explored. Here, Eirik Risberg argues that, pace the common conception of empathy, empathy should not be construed narrowly, as an affective concept, but broadly, as (...) a cognitive and epistemic concept. Drawing on recent work in philosophy and psychology, Risberg explores a suggestion that construes empathy as a complex self-directed perspective-taking of the situation of another. While this may constitute a conception of empathy that is more modest than the most ardent proponents of empathy would like, it has the benefit of avoiding the objections that have been leveled against empathy as a moral concept and thus allows us to maintain that empathy is a valuable skill to be cultivated in educating global citizens for the twenty-first century. (shrink)

An issue in current animal welfare ethics is the use of animals in medical education. At stake is the conflict of pain and suffering of the animals vs. the benefit to the students. The educator's role is to balance these two concepts. If the animals do suffer, this has to be justified by clearly establishing the necessity of their use. Neither this justification nor the methods for making the decision are clear. Addressed in this discussion are the arguments for and (...) against animal use, alternatives, and proposals for the resolution of the controversy. (shrink)

Gert Biesta claims that education involves introducing young people to a pathway from what they want to what it is good for them to want, offering the conditions for children to cross from the former to the latter. This shift from a realm of individual desires to the realm of the desirable constitutes a “de-centered existence”. Since there is an undeniable normative dimension in this view, it seemed important to search for the guiding values or principles that frames it. (...) In his ICPIC talk, G. Biesta refers to the Levinasian concept of responsibility, identifying individual desires (children’s desires) with the egological way of existence. In his 2014’s book, The beautiful risk of education, Biesta mentions the concept of educational wisdom (educators’ wisdom), through an Aristotelian standpoint. In either perspective, the author grants normative privileges to adults, claiming that, in an educational environment, adults have the responsibility to be educators and not learners. We follow from here to question Biesta’s statement of education as a risk, since if there are evaluative standards according to which educators can orient their practices, as well as students behaviors (either the responsibility in face of the Other or the ability to make good and wise judgments), how can one still talk about a risk in education? We end up our commentary by looking for deeper meanings for the concept of risk in education. (shrink)

Machiavelli is commonly known by a political theory associated to his name: "machiavellism". The initial effort of the article is to take apart Machiavellian thought from such a conception. After this it tries a detailed analysis of all occurrences of the term "education", which amounts to eleven times in his work. The hypothesis by which our reflexion is guided is that education is conceived by Machiavelli as a force addressed to control the desire's as well as the nature's inherent movement (...) disorder, preventing the deleterious effects of the first on the political life. Due to education the human being is able to know the "nature of things", i.e., to know what things "always were", and, through such knowledge, to anticipate to the "course of the things ordered by the heaven". Finally, we will try to demonstrate that for Machiavelli education provides the adaptation of the individuals behaviour in such a way that it is possible to redirect the course of things for a coherent order in regard to the collective good.Maquiavel é popularmente conhecido por uma teoria política associada ao seu nome: "maquiavelismo". O artigo realiza um esforço inicial para afastar o pensamento maquiaveliano de semelhante concepção. Em seguida, faz uma análise detalhada de todas as ocorrências do termo "educação", num total de onze, na sua obra. A hipótese que orienta nossa reflexão é de que a educação é pensada por Maquiavel como uma força destinada a controlar a desordem inerente ao movimento tanto do desejo quanto da natureza impedindo os efeitos deletérios daquele sobre a vida política. Graças à educação, o homem é capaz de conhecer a "natureza das coisas", isto é, saber o que as coisas são "desde sempre" e, desta maneira, antecipar-se ao "curso das coisas ordenado pelos céus". Por fim, procuramos mostrar que, para Maquiavel, a educação possibilita moldar o comportamento dos indivíduos de tal modo que é possível redirecionar o curso das coisas para uma ordem coerente com o bem coletivo. (shrink)

This narrative study explores the late-career issues among 15 senior teacher educators from Israeli Academic Colleges of Education (ACEs), in light of the growing conversation about pre-pension maintenance of senior faculty members employed in teacher education institutions. The data analysis of semi-structured interviews highlighted dedication to daily tasks (research activity, administration, teacher education and leading Professional Learning Communities), and a sense of mission during career experiences (leaving legacy to student teachers and colleagues). It was reflected in two parallel work patterns: (...) the ‘work pattern of sharing’, and the ‘work pattern of expertise’. The discussion raises similarities between the literature and the first work pattern, in line with the unique culture of teacher education systems in the world. However, the existence of the ‘work pattern of expertise’ in the literature remains vague and requires more in-depth thinking and research. (shrink)

In 2017, the Faculty of Theology celebrates its centenary at the University of Pretoria. Celebrating a centennial is as much as looking back as looking forward. In a changing world with changing paradigms how does one remain relevant? Different challenges and expectations presented to tertiary institutions of education in a new dispensation puts all concerned with higher education in South Africa under pressure. The question addressed in this article is how will a Faculty of Theology remain relevant to such an (...) extent that it is continued to be viewed as desirable to have such a faculty present at a university, participating in the academic process and simultaneously continues to contribute to the well-being of the South African society. The author suggests the following guidelines for consideration. In order to remain relevant for the next couple of hundred years the Faculty of Theology should engage contextually with society, practise interdisciplinary Theology, engage in interreligious dialogue while still remaining connected to faith communities. A paradigm of post-foundationalism enables Theology to exercise Theology in a relevant and meaningful manner. (shrink)

The problem with authenticity—the idea of being “true to one’s self”—is that its somewhat checkered reputation garners a complete range of favorable and unfavorable reactions. In educational settings, authenticity is lauded as one of the top two traits students desire in their teachers. Yet, authenticity is criticized for its tendency towards narcissism and self-entitlement. So, is authenticity a good or a bad thing? The purpose of this article is to develop an intimate understanding of authenticity by investigating its current interpretation (...) and criticisms, its struggle with narcissism and relation to freedom. Examining authenticity as multilayered self-exploration reveals a composite of understanding, care, and acceptance. While a side current of acceptable tension shifts our understanding of authenticity from the security of self-determination to the messy interplay involved in being “true to one’s self” and being “in-the-world”. (shrink)

Research indicates that upwards of 80% of our students experience the devastation of bullying during their school years. To date, research on bullying has mainly employed empirical methodologies, including quantitative and qualitative approaches. This research has largely concluded that bullying is situated in a lack of skill, understanding, or self-control and involves intentional action directed toward status dominance. Based upon these assumptions current anti-bullying strategies focus on training students toward more appropriate avenues of status acquisition and social interaction. Against the (...) backdrop of an actual bullying encounter this paper employs a psychoanalytic philosophical lens to offer a fresh perspective on this enduring educational issue. Employing the philosophical work of Adam Phillips, Jessica Benjamin, and Emmanuel Ghent I ask the question: What is the desire to bully a desire for? Here I consider what is sought and what is at stake in the typical bullying encounter. Through careful analysis I argue that the domination represented in bullying is not simply situated in a lack of social skills or in disregulated aggression––skill deficiencies that require training. Instead, or perhaps in addition to these possibilities, I contend that bullying is foundationally a move toward establishing identity, a self. On this view bullying becomes an activity of self construction through attempted omnipotence. I argue that the status dominance inherent in bullying should be seen not as an end (a tool to secure resources or privilege), but as a means to something more foundational. I conclude that status dominance becomes a means toward the end of providing a secure place for the self to stand. Hence, instead of advocating that we train students to get along better this paper outlines the futility, as well as the insatiability of bullying, opening up new territory focused upon a re-construction of the bully through the relational bonding and differentiation available in the concrete Other. (shrink)

Flaubert’s Sentimental Education, published in 1869, is a novel about thwarted desires. My essay looks at some pathologies of desire the novel’s protagonist, Frédéric Moreau, may be said to exemplify in order to bring into view the conditions that make desire satisfaction possible. I take the tribulations of the protagonist not as mere consequences of his personal flaws but as significant clues about the mechanics of desire in general. I discuss the ways in which the style and form of (...) the novel mirror the predicament of the desire-driven character, and I conclude by questioning the view that Flaubert’s aestheticism amounts to a banishment of desire. (shrink)

Numerous empirical studies have been conducted to examine first-generation college students, those individuals whose parents have not attended college. Their personality characteristics, cognitive development, academic preparation, and first-year performance have all been topics of research; yet there appears to be little in the literature exploring the motivation of these individuals to seek higher education. There are even fewer studies targeting academic motivation in Hispanic students. The purpose of this study is to conduct a phenomenological examination of the desire to attend (...) college among first generation Hispanic students participating in an academic support program. One-hour taped interviews were conducted with three volunteer participants enrolled in the Student Support Services program at Sul Ross State University. Meaning units and constituents were extracted, and general structures were developed using the Descriptive Phenomenological Method . The phenomenological analysis resulted in two structures that address the effectiveness of academic outreach programming and identify the roles of self-efficacy, successful experiences in high school, a desire for improved socioeconomic status, a need to contribute to the well-being of others, a break with tradition, and the influence of respected role models in facilitating a desire for higher education in first-generation Hispanic college students. (shrink)

Desire is a rich term meaning wish and want, willingness and relish, appetite and lust. This volume is an effort to analyze the concept of desire and its different practical contexts from a morally philosophic point of view. By analyzing multiple definitions and studying underlying motivations, the authors offer a variety of explanations and interpretations. The volume consists of three main parts. The first part, "Desire and Practice," examines desire as a mental state that seeks personal satisfaction. The second part (...) of the volume, "Desire and Moral Life," explores social, cultural, and literary facets of desire. Finally, in the third part, "Business Ethics and Other Contexts," the authors apply praxiological principles to the business world, examining the conflict between frugality and consumerist ideology, the role of intuition in decision-making, and the need for design education as the basis of effective planning. The contributors to this, the newest volume in Transaction's Praxiology series, seek to explore desire in praxiological terms, with an eye toward the three E's of praxiology: ethics, effectiveness, and efficiency. In doing so, they demonstrate that desire is central for practical activity in general and work in particular. (shrink)

This is the story of North Carolina parent choice advocates' push for the creation and expansion of choice policies in the state. The exploration of the politics, ideology, and interests surrounding parent choice in this conversation includes but also stretches beyond the most frequently discussed choice policies of charter schools, school vouchers, and tuition tax credits. Here, Lewis makes the argument that parents push for these policies are closely akin to parents' rejection of busing and redistricting policies in Charlotte-Mecklenburg and (...) Raleigh-Durham, parents' advocating for the state-support of home-schooling options across the state, and parents' pushing for the expansion of magnet and intradistrict choice options. He shows how central to parents' advocacy for all of these policies lies a more foundational desire to reconceputalize public schooling, with parents having much more individual control over how public funding is used for the education of their children. (shrink)

This paper explores the value of the eros motif for critical pedagogy and citizenship education. The conceptual affinities between eros and democracy are identified and integrated into a theory of democratic political education. Long recognized as vital to the process of self knowledge, the ancient Greek concept of eros has nevertheless been largely erased from contemporary educational debate. By retrieving eros from the fringe of academic discourse and integrating it with critical pedagogy, the aims of radical democracy can be more (...) fully achieved. The essay emphasizes the civil society or cultural dimensions of democracy as against its legal or procedural aspects. Renewed emphasis on the associational qualities of democracy underscore the importance of eros as an educational principle. The ancient pedagogical motif of educating the desires is posited as an alternative to the liberal/modernist paradigm of education which de-values affective domains of knowledge. (shrink)

In recent years the concept of eros has found its way back into educational literature with the aim of integrating human desires into educational theories and counteracting a devaluation of emotional life. This paper holds the view that this integration is important because desire expresses a fundamental way of relating to the world. However, part of the literature on eros and education also rethematizes the concept of eros as an educational value in support of democracy. The paper argues that (...) the binding together of eros and democracy is based on a one-sided description of eros, which is too hasty when we look at the plurality of lived desires. (shrink)

Certain attributes are particularly desirable for public educational websites, and websites for ethics education in particular. Among the most important of these attributes is wide accessibility through adherence to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards for HTML code. Adherence to this standard produces webpages that can be rendered by a full range of web browsers, including Braille and speech browsers. Although almost no academic websites, including ethics websites, and even fewer commercial websites are accessible by W3C standards, as illustrated (...) by the Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science 〈http://onlineethics.org〉, even websites created on limited budgets and with an undergraduate student staff can fulfill these standards. Other desirable attributes, such as provision of annotation for all links and the use of annotated links to give the user alternate ways of ordering and organizing content, are important for making full use of the educational possibilities of hypermedia for websites. (shrink)

In this article, I attempt to bring some colour to a discussion of fraught topics in education. Though the scenes and stories (from education and elsewhere) that feature here deal with racism, the discussion aims to say something to such topics more generally. The philosophers whose work I draw on here are Stanley Cavell and Judith Butler. Both Butler and Cavell develop (or depart from) J.L. Austin's theory of the performative utterance. Butler, following Derrida, argues that in concentrating on the (...) illocutionary force of utterances (their capacity to do things), Austin fails to account for the force of words themselves. The iterability of language means that words are never at one with themselves. They carry their old contexts with them as they enter into new ones. This has important consequences for ethical issues that pertain to what Butler calls the ?performativity? of gender and race. Though we are performed by language, this performance has a dynamic quality that leads to the reshaping of identity. In contrast, for Cavell, the disappointing aspect of Austin's thought relates to the latter's neglect of the perlocutionary effect of language ? what is done ?by words?. By taking on this project, Cavell embraces the unconventional aspects of language characterised by ?passionate? expression and exchange. Butler and Cavell approach the performative utterance from different directions. In the last part of this article, the significance of this difference is discussed in relation to the provision of a moral education with regard to tackling issues surrounding racism. (shrink)