The struggle to become lucid is at the heart of The Myth of Sisyphus. To understand the absurd is to understand that the fit between our conception of the world and the world itself is fraught with uncertainty; lucidity is the elucidation of the absurd. To be lucid is to revolt against the type of certainty that leads to suffering; to revolt against philosophical suicide. Camus teaches us the intellectual humility that stays hands; there is no reasoning that justifies suffering. (...) If it is granted that the ability to recognise and respond to our own and others suffering is an important part of being human, and the task of education is to develop humans, then lucidity, in so far as it holds promise for the development of such an ability, has the potential to contribute positively to education. (shrink)

Both literature and philosophy, as genres of writing, can enable us to address important ontological, epistemological and ethical questions. One author who makes it possible for readers to bridge these two genres is Albert Camus. Nowhere is this more evident than in Camus’ short novel, The Fall. The Fall, through the character and words of Jean‐Baptiste Clamence, prompts readers to reflect deeply on themselves, their motivations and commitments, and their relations with others. This paper discusses the origin and structure of (...) the book, identifies some of its key philosophical themes, and explores some of its educational implications. (shrink)

This article provides a Taoist reading of Camus’ posthumously published novel, The first man. With its focus on the early life of the central character, Jacques Cormery, The first man is a semi-autobiographical account of learning and transformation, but it is, like so many other stories of its kind, one sustained by complex tensions: between the comfort of the familiar and the promise of the new; between possibility and despair; between resistance and acceptance. A theme that binds some of the (...) key educational elements of the book together is love: Jacques’s love of his mother and his elementary school teacher and their love for him; love of learning; and love of ‘home’. A Taoist theoretical framework is helpful in understanding the nature of this love and its pedagogical significance. In particular, the book exemplifies the importance of the figure of the mother—both in the person of Jacques’s mother and more symbolically in the notion of ‘the Great Mother’. The article concludes with thoughts on the value of literature for educational inquiry. (shrink)

Inspired by Camus’ portrayal of Sisyphus, this essay examines the act of teaching as an absurd profession, one that faces numerous obstacles and challenges and continually falls short of its intended goals. I begin my analysis by demonstrating that Camus’ understanding of the absurd was heavily influenced by Nietzsche’s conception of nihilism. I argue that for Camus the sense of absurdity comes from the conflict between humans’ longing for order and meaning and the disorder and meaninglessness that we experience in (...) our daily lives. Next, I show that Camus’ understanding of absurdity can help us make sense of the recent wave of educational reform. More fundamentally, I argue that that the existential conditions of schooling that many teachers have to negotiate daily are themselves absurd in Camus’ sense of the term. In the last part of this article, I take a close look at how a number of teachers are attempting to resist and even rebel against the new educational mandates. (shrink)

Internationally, initial teacher education has experienced shifts towards competence and school-based programmatic reforms. As a result, literature on the role of teacher educators operating within the academy suggests a sense of doom as market-based and political distrust of the academy grows. For now, initial teacher education in Ireland is largely housed within the academy. However, several governing policies have recently been published which subtly seek to marginalise the role and practices of teacher educators. Drawing on Camus’ understanding of the absurd (...) as emerging from the interaction between the longing of human beings for clarity and the universe’s indifferent and silent reply, this paper sets out to investigate possible methods that teacher educators may select in responding to an awareness of the absurd. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to make a case for The Rebel as an important educational text. Discussing The Rebel in this way for the first time, the goal is to try and demonstrate that the work could have a unique contribution; in particular there might be a number of similarities between Camus and educational thinkers relating to the goals, pedagogy and the meaning of education. The Rebel has been noted as Camus’s most underexplored text so by investigating these (...) synergies for the first time, this article aims to demonstrate another dimension to The Rebel and potential relevance for educational theory and practice. (shrink)

In this paper, we will explore how Albert Camus has much to offer philosophers of education. Although a number of educationalists have attempted to explicate the educational implications of Camus’ literary works, these analyses have not attempted to extrapolate pedagogical guidelines towards developing an educational framework for children’s philosophical practice in the way Matthew Lipman did from John Dewey’s philosophy of education, which informed his philosophy for children curriculum and pedagogy. We focus on the phenomenology of inquiry; that is, inquiry (...) that begins with genuinely felt doubt, pointing to a problematic to which the inquirer seeks a solution or resolution. We argue that the central purpose of education is to develop lucid individuals. To this end, we concentrate on Dewey and the pragmatist tradition, starting from Peirce, leading to Lipman’s development of Dewey’s educational guidelines into classroom practice. We show where Camus and the pragmatists are congruent in their thinking, insofar as they can inform the educative process of the community of inquiry. What we conclude is that the role of the teacher is to develop lucid individuals facilitated in a classroom that is transformed into a community of inquiry embedded in contemporary historical moments. (shrink)

In this paper we will explore how Albert Camus has much to offer philosophers of education. Although a number of educationalists have attempted to explicate the educational implications of Camus’ literary works (Denton, 1964; Oliver, 1965; Götz, 1987; Curzon-Hobson, 2003; Marshall, 2007, 2008; Weddington, 2007; Roberts, 2008, 2013; Gibbons, 2013; Heraud, 2013; Roberts, Gibbons & Heraud, 2013) these analyses have not attempted to extrapolate pedagogical guidelines to develop an educational framework for children’s philosophical practice in the way Matthew Lipman did (...) from John Dewey’s philosophy of education, which informed his philosophy for children curriculum and pedagogy. To this end we offer comparisons and contrasts between Camus and the pragmatist educational discourse centred on communities of philosophical inquiry (or, more broadly, collaborative philosophical inquiry). In particular we focus on the phenomenology of inquiry, namely, that “inquiry must begin with a problem, question, or doubt and must aim at a solution or resolution, both of which are genuinely felt—something in which the inquirer actually has a stake” (Gregory & Granger, 2012: 13). We conclude that what Camus calls lucidity has implications for the notion of reconstruction, prominent in Dewey’s thoughts on education, and central to Lipman’s focus on philosophy functioning educationally. (shrink)