The use of philosophy in educational programmes and practices under such names as philosophy for children, philosophy with children, or the community of philosophical enquiry, has become well established in many countries around the world. The main attraction of the educational use of philosophy seems to lie in the claim that it can help children and young people to develop skills for thinking critically, reflectively and reasonably. By locating the acquisition of such skills within communities of enquiry, the further claim (...) is that engagement with philosophy can foster the development of moral reflection and sensitivity and of social and democratic skills more generally. Claims like these provide a set of arguments for the inclusion of philosophy in the school curriculum that goes well beyond philosophy as just another curricular subject or body of knowledge. The aim of this article is to raise some questions about the conception of education that appears to inform the discussion about the educational use of philosophy. My ambition is to suggest an additional rather than an alternative view about the educational use of philosophy in the hope that this may act as a reminder of a different way in which one can engage with philosophy in educational settings which, in turn, might also act as a reminder of how philosophy might engage with us. The philosophical distinction in which my argument is phrased is that between humanism and post-humanism and the guiding educational concept is that of exposure. (shrink)

Offers a revised understanding of human subjectivity that avoids the extremes of both traditional humanism and cultural relativism.“Acknowledging the importance of the ‘middle voice’ of rhetoric is a worthwhile endeavor. For this, Vivian’s goals are to be applauded.” — Rhetoric and Public Affairs.

Technology is not just a tool but an amalgam of conceptual, institutional, and interactional issues that occupy the space of technical reason. In this space, parents' identity is becoming narrowed according to a limited conception in which the place of caring is in danger of being lost. Parents are increasingly required to adopt knowledge on parent ing instead of adapting it to their child's needs. By use of the Heideggerian idea of Enframing, I argue that educational experts and practitioners need (...) to undo parent ing from this technological straitjacket. It needs to be recognised that being a parent is about ac knowledging that caring for your children is about questioning the borders of Enframing rather than accepting its boundaries uncritically. I argue that experts, in order to provoke parents to care, ought to create space for ethical questions on how the Information and Communication Technology we once managed has come to manage us. (shrink)

This article explores and extends Levinas’s ideas of singularity and community as multiplicity and argues that his identification of language and discourse as the means to create ethical communities provides tangible possibilities for rebuilding genuine democracy in a humane world. These ideas help us reimagine school and classroom as communities open to differences. They also give education the opportunity to support the emergence of the singular and the irreducible—infinite human beings.

At least since Aristotle, phronesis (practical wisdom) and poetics (making or creating) have been understood as essentially different activities, one moral the other (in itself) non-moral. Today, if anything, this distinction is sharpened by a Romantic association of poetics with inner subjective expression. Recent revivals of Aristotelian ethics sometimes allow for poetic dimensions of ethics, but these are still separated from practical wisdom per se. Through a fresh reading of phronesis in the French hermeneutical phenomenologist Paul Ricoeur, I argue that (...) phronesis should be viewed as at least in part poetic at its very core. That is, phronesis deals with the fundamentally tragic human situation of moral incommensurability, and it responds to this by making or creating new moral meaning. Such a poetics of practical wisdom helps phronesis stand up to significant and important critiques made of it by a range of modernists and post-modernists, pointing a way forward for some important contemporary moral debates. (shrink)

This paper develops a response to the ethical conception of the human Other formulated by Gilles Deleuze in his review of Michel Tournier’s 1967 novel Friday. The central contention here is that although Deleuze develops a compelling notion of intensive ethics in response to Tournier’s novel, that ethics also remains deeply problematic in refusing to ascribe a positive role to the human Other. My wager is that some of these problems can be brought to light by placing Deleuze’s philosophy in (...) dialogue with that of Emmanuel Levinas. As I seek to show, Levinas’s philosophy of alterity not only reveals that Deleuze is mistaken in failing to ascribe a positive ethical role to the human Other, but also begins to point the way toward a more positive conception of ethics that does not oppose the Other to the intensive realm that Deleuze so much values. (shrink)

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

Support in different modes, expressions and actions is at the core of the public welfare culture. In this paper, support is examined as an everyday interpersonal phenomenon with a variety of expressions in language and ways of relating, and its essential meaning is explored. The fulcrum for reflection is the lived experience shared by a young woman with mental health problems of her respective encounters with two professionals in mental health facilities. A phenomenological analysis of the contrasting accounts suggests that, (...) when the professional relationship includes openness and risk, a certain degree of freedom of action is possible for both parties involved in the inevitably asymmetrical relationship. Support as “given” eludes controllable and measurable objectives, but imposes itself on the lived experiences of both the giver and the receiver as subject to readiness for acceptance. By not making assumptions about what support is, we open ourselves to the possibility of reciprocally experiencing moments revealing the essential meaning of support as lived. (shrink)

This paper is based on the eco-pedagogical aspiration to live with domesticated animals in accordance with Alphonso Lingis's Community of those who have nothing in common. I draw upon this remarkable text as well as Lingis's animal writings in describing moments and movements of pathic community. Such a community in affective affiliation with one another, where symbiotic relations are possible and bodily kinships are exercised, exemplifies what is possible in more rational human communities where domesticating impulses seek to harness the (...) vital powers of coconstitutive life. Of telling significance are predatory threats, the manner in which they appear, and the protectionist responses they occasion. By recasting these threats and responses in terms of motional affordances, it may well be possible to move with non-human creatures, both literally and figuratively, beyond the anthropocentric confines of domestication. Animals with whom we appear to have nothing specifically, or in species terms, in common can show us how to cultivate more pathic communities of our own kind. (shrink)

In a globalized world where the traditional, the modern, and the postmodern increasingly meet, there is a growing need for understanding, particularly of views different from our own. In this paper, I want to explore the concept of epistemological multilingualism and its value to scholarship, advancing the notion that epistemological multilingualism—the ability to respect and understand multiple epistemic standpoints—emerges out of a postmodern, integral perspective which sees the reality of several epistemological frameworks, as well as the ability to understand, learn (...) from, and even to contribute to the development of those frameworks. I examine the dialogical capacities that contribute to epistemological multilingualism, and conclude that epistemological multilingualism can play a vital role in a world of education where differing worldviews manifest within the same classroom and the lives of the learners with whom we work. (shrink)

The paper exemplifies how we as teachers see children, and indicates ways of understanding the existential educational meanings of what we see. The authors suggest that the phenomenon of seeing is a personal and relational intentional act that opens up, as well as delimits educational practice. A hermeneutic phenomenological approach to education is suggested and the thought of seeing and telling as interwoven representations is put forth. However, despite a phenomenological inquiry’s immense qualities as a pre-reflective experiential source to understanding, (...) the authors believe that phenomenology cannot overcome or erase the aporetic unavailability of a pedagogical practice and a pedagogical-ethical language. The paper intends to show that seeing pedagogically always will be more complex, paradoxical and unsettled than what can be shown and told phenomenologically. (shrink)

Starting from the practice of hermeneutic phenomenological writing as it has been advanced by van Manen, this paper addresses the understanding of an ‘experiential givenness’ of the world as basis for our ‘lived writing’; an understanding that is essential to the new phenomenological writer if s/he is to be part of the phenomenological writing process. As the ultimate givenness of the world is the basis of knowledge, we constantly strive to “reach out on life beyond itself” (Gadamer, 1960/1985, p. 62), (...) and thus need the right language to let the phenomenological text speak. The phenomenological writer’s understandings of the chiasm of world and self, the depth of phenomenological awareness, and the interlacement of ethic-aesthetical poetic writing, are qualities discussed as essential for the phenomenological writer to understand in a felt–sensed way in order to write a phenomenological text. A deconstructive approach to (pre)reflective phenomenological writing is put forth by provocatively asking what it means to be involved in, and profoundly enclosed with the “wordliness of the world” (Saevi, 2011a, p. 3). The radical hermeneutic phenomenological openness to what it means to be human and how to encounter the human givenness of phenomenological seeing and writing renders it possible for the writer’s personal voice to evolve. (shrink)

Starting with a decisive scene in Victor Hugo’s novel Les Miserables, the paper searches for a place for trust to reside in the interludes between the situations where it appears in our relations and generously attaches us to each other.

In much theory there is a tendency to place thought above action, or the opposite, action over thought. The consequence of the first option is that philosophy or scientific evidence gains the upper hand in educational thinking. The consequence of the second view is that pragmatism and relativism become the dominant features. This article discusses how different branches of the Aristotelian tradition can mediate between these two views. I argue, contrary to some other Aristotelian approaches, that thinking and action are (...) both separated and yet prerequisites for each other and point to some educational consequences of this way of thinking. To build this argument I draw on selected aspects of the philosophy of Hanna Arendt, Leo Strauss and John Dewey. (shrink)

Is Gert Biesta is a philosopher of Bildung? The answer is “both yes and no. First I argue that Biesta's philosophy is based on a denial of the concept of Bildung, and that he, by the very nature of...

This essay explores the implications of what we call attachments to innocence for critical scholarship and progressive politics. After tracing the appearance of innocence in various strands of contemporary thought, we turn to how it shields individuals and groups from examining the depth of our own participation in oppression and harm. This evasion of responsibility works in our perspective as a hindrance to understanding power and engaging with others ethically. The essay more concretely examines how the reductionist and authoritarian dimensions (...) of innocence dovetail with the neoliberal uptake of ‘progressive’ politics in university and activist settings. We are interested in how academics and activists of different kinds are rewarded for cultivating their innocent-selves through discursive and material interventions that leave power relations untouched. It is not merely monetary or status rewards that perpetuate this, but the crisis produced by our implication in the very violence we reject. Working with and through the mobility of agency, power, abuse, and justice, we explore what is at stake in shedding our attachments to innocence in the hope of a different sort of encounter – one that proceeds from the recognition that innocence is not a precondition for our engagement in political life. (shrink)

Este artículo explora las implicaciones para la academia y la política de lo que llamamos apegos a la inocencia. Luego de rastrear las formas en que la inocencia aparece en diferentes corrientes del pensamiento contemporáneo, nos concentramos en cómo ella protege a individuos y grupos de confrontar nuestra profunda participación en la opresión. Esta evasión de la responsabilidad funciona, en nuestra perspectiva, como un obstáculo para comprender el poder e interactuar éticamente. El artículo también examina cómo las dimensiones reduccionistas y (...) autoritarias de la inocencia se fusionan con la apropiación neoliberal de la política progresista en la academia y el activismo. Nos interesan los modos en que académicos y activistas son recompensados por cultivar un yo-inocente a través de intervenciones discursivas y materiales que mantienen intocadas las relaciones de poder. No son las recompensas meramente monetarias o de estatus las que perpetúan esto, sino la crisis que produce nuestra implicación personal y colectiva en la violencia que supuestamente rechazamos. Trabajando con y a través del carácter móvil de la agencia, el poder, el abuso y la justicia, exploramos qué está en juego a la hora de poder, o no, superar los apegos a la inocencia. Hacemos esto con la esperanza de delinear otro tipo de encuentro: uno que procede del reconocimiento de que la inocencia no es una condición para nuestra participación en la vida política. (shrink)

The article deals with phenomenology in Lithuania. The main thesis of the article is this: phenomenology is a living tradition in need of both development and interpretation. The minor thesis follows from the main one: the Western phenomenological tradition and Lithuanian philosophy interact and develop in tandem with one another. According to the authors, the contact between poetics and philosophy is the dominant form of phenomenology in Lithuania. The phenomenological tradition is treated as creative and living philosophical thought.

In this paper, the endeavour to understand how to think of education ‘after progress’, viz. in an age in which progress has become problematic, is undertaken by focusing on the theme of time. Dovetailing Klaus Mollenhauer’s reflections on the rise of the Bildungszeit at the dawn of modernity with Thomas Popkewitz’s analyses of ‘cosmopolitan time’ presiding over pedagogical reform from the 19th century to the present, I shall, first, explore this temporal configuration of modern schooling (which goes hand in hand (...) with a specific understanding of the child). Against this backdrop, I shall, second, advance an interpretive hypothesis, that of substituting what will be called the ‘child-as-migrant’ for the ‘cosmopolitan child’, by appropriating, in an educational key, some insights of Thomas Nail’s ‘migrant cosmopolitanism’. I shall thereby suggest an alternative view of ‘progressivity’, construed not along modern-developmentalist lines but as a form of non-conservativeness, linked with a recognition of the ekstatikon (that is, destabilizing) character of time. This will require a revisiting of some Aristotelian intuitions about time as the rhythm of movement, reinterpreted as the affective experience of that ek-statikon without which there is no potential for the new. Accordingly, ‘progressive’ education (in the different interpretation investigated here) is the concern to allow all of us as ‘migrants’ to live actively in the abode of our ek-static and unpredictable condition and, therefore, to be vulnerable to the new, without merely remaining in a taken-for-granted ethos, cosmopolitan, inclusive, and progress-oriented though it may be. (Editor's note: This paper forms part of the suite entitled ‘Education After Progress’.). (shrink)

Biesta distinguishes three functions of education: qualification, socialization and subjectification. We focus on subjectification. When first addressing this concept, Biesta referred to action as defined by Arendt, thereby stressing the importance of ‘the question of freedom’. More recently, the question of freedom is replaced by ‘the question of responsibility’. For Levinas responsibility is related to irreplaceability. While the concept of responsibility is valuable, we question the call upon irreplaceability in education. Actively taking responsibility where irreplaceability might not be either present (...) or felt should be central to education. Unlike the morally clear examples invoked by Biesta, complex societal issues like the climate and refugee crisis are not accessible as an immediate appeal to a specific subject. Therefore, we propose a return to Arendt and her concept of action. Action allows and requires students to create the world anew, to take a position without pretending that the outcome can be controlled. Biesta refers to this as the impossibility of education. However, rather than repeating the theme of impossibility, we focus on the possibilities of education: there are several ways to create the world anew. (shrink)

Most workers report that they are alienated from their jobs and find their workplaces to be stifling and uninviting. Given this condition, the introduction of computer technology, including AI, will only make matters worse, unless a more humane organizational culture is created. The key point in this article is the need to produce a responsible technology, so that employees are not further overworked and manipulated. To achieve this end, phenomenology is invoked, particularly the life world, to provide technology with a (...) human foundation. In practice, this shift in philosophy means that when AI is introduced into an organization, workers have a central role in the design, implementation, and evaluation of this technology. Computer technology can thus promote human flourishing instead of control and alienation in workplaces. (shrink)

Most workers report that they are alienated from their jobs and find their workplaces to be stifling and uninviting. Given this condition, the introduction of computer technology, including AI, will only make matters worse, unless a more humane organizational culture is created. The key point in this article is the need to produce a responsible technology, so that employees are not further overworked and manipulated. To achieve this end, phenomenology is invoked, particularly the life world, to provide technology with a (...) human foundation. In practice, this shift in philosophy means that when AI is introduced into an organization, workers have a central role in the design, implementation, and evaluation of this technology. Computer technology can thus promote human flourishing instead of control and alienation in workplaces. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to elucidate the genesis of communality in the urban street. Although in the modern world cities have long been seen as research laboratories, in today’s context of globali...

Diogenes, Ahead of Print. The aim of this study is to elucidate the genesis of communality in the urban street. Although in the modern world cities have long been seen as research laboratories, in today’s context of globalization they are becoming more radical and dynamic; they are becoming experimental theatres of social change. Since the end of the twentieth century, the political and economic reorganization of the world order is producing dramatic changes in various societies throughout the globe. This is (...) bringing about changes which tend to standardize society and atomize individual subjects. These changes are seemingly connected, but they do exist alone, separately. In this complex situation, we are confronted with the fundamental question, how can people construct communality transcending differences among them? The present study looks for an answer to this question, paying special attention to collective violence in the urban street, where ‘emergent but real’ norms are constructed among the rioters and the communality genesis mechanism is activated. In order to make a case for this urban communality, the analysis focuses on events in the streets of Nairobi at the time of the Second Liberation of 1990s and during the Post-Election Violence of 2007–2008. People with different political and religious affiliation and ethnic identity were involved in violent urban riots. They were originally strangers, but they generated new social order and norms. In the street, they constructed and shared a provisional communality, which was emergent and fluid but also real and firm. (shrink)

Diogenes, Ahead of Print. The aim of this study is to elucidate the genesis of communality in the urban street. Although in the modern world cities have long been seen as research laboratories, in today’s context of globalization they are becoming more radical and dynamic; they are becoming experimental theatres of social change. Since the end of the twentieth century, the political and economic reorganization of the world order is producing dramatic changes in various societies throughout the globe. This is (...) bringing about changes which tend to standardize society and atomize individual subjects. These changes are seemingly connected, but they do exist alone, separately. In this complex situation, we are confronted with the fundamental question, how can people construct communality transcending differences among them? The present study looks for an answer to this question, paying special attention to collective violence in the urban street, where ‘emergent but real’ norms are constructed among the rioters and the communality genesis mechanism is activated. In order to make a case for this urban communality, the analysis focuses on events in the streets of Nairobi at the time of the Second Liberation of 1990s and during the Post-Election Violence of 2007–2008. People with different political and religious affiliation and ethnic identity were involved in violent urban riots. They were originally strangers, but they generated new social order and norms. In the street, they constructed and shared a provisional communality, which was emergent and fluid but also real and firm. (shrink)

The skin is always and already a serietl of planes which signify race, gender, age and such. Tattooing creates a new surface of potential significance upon the body. Tattooing can call into question concepts of volition in reference to the power to inscribe and define one's subjectivity through one's own skin, and the social defining of the subject. Skin is the involution or event between subject and object, will and cultural inscription, the social and the self. Feminists, particularly corporeal feminists, (...) have attempted to think ways in which the female flesh may be recognized and self-defined without risking essentialism through reification of the meaning of ‘woman's body’. Thinking a tattooed female body thus resonates with some of the risks and benefits feminism has found in theorizing a marginalized body. Using Deleuze, Guattari, Lyotard and other major influences on corporeal feminists, this article explores ways in which significance is sought in skin, and possible configurations of skin and world, which challenge the desire to read the flesh as a legible incarnation of subjectivity. (shrink)

There has been a significant increase in studies devoted to Søren Kierkegaard’s Works of Love in contemporary Kierkegaard research. There are several good reasons why this is so. The single theme that dominates, though, is the relation between preferential love and neighborly love. Are they reconcilable or not? The present paper recasts this discussion by situating Works of Love in the trajectory of deconstructive readings of community from Jean-Luc Nancy and onwards. It is divided into three sections. It is first (...) shown that a deconstructive take on preferential and neighborly love indicates how any community has a place for love as its condition of (im)possibility. The opening of this place is then located in the Christian love-commandment. Finally, the expanse of this place is found in the spreading-out of the promise of love. The paper is conceived as a step towards letting love find its place in the analytics of being-there—as the phenomenon which opens the “there” without losing its “with.” The paper concludes with a postscript that points towards this broader context. (shrink)

To agonise is to undergo great mental anguish through worrying about something, according to the New Oxford Dictionary of English. I suggest that agonising in this sense is a fundamental response to any ethical dilemma. It has a long intellectual and literary lineage. In this essay, I agonise over the dilemmas posed by street beggars, their intrusiveness and their appeal to our intuitive sense of social duty. I explore the discomfort we may feel at their presence, and the value that (...) discomfort may have for the evolution of our ethical lives. (shrink)

According to Martin Buber’s philosophy of dialogue, our being-in-the-world is to be conceived of as an existential dialogue. Elsewhere, I have conceptualized the teacher–student-relation accordingly (see Jons 2008), as a matter of calling and responding. The conceptualization rests on a secularised notion of vocation, paving way for discovering, articulating and discerning pedagogical relations in a new way. In the present article, I take this conceptualization one step further, applying the concept of calling and responding to the pedagogical relation between a (...) learner—might it be a student or a scholar—and the subject studied. The aim of the study is to afford a new way of conceiving the process as well as the outcome of learning. Thinking learning within the framework of calling and responding means understanding the learner and the subject as addressing and responding to each other. This means that predicaments of the subject—such as the truths that the subject holds and the anomalies it suffers from—address the learner in e g lectures, readings, theories, assignments, challenging the knowledge of the learner and in responding to this address, the learner in turn challenges the truths of the subject. By paying heed to, responding responsibly and challenging each other, the outcome of learning becomes a twofold phenomenon, namely both the learner and the subject reconstituting themselves, enlarged by the contribution of each other’s mode of coming-into-presence. (shrink)

This paper argues for an alternative notion of spirituality for education, based on Theo de Boer’s idea of a spirituality of the desert. Rather than depicting an inner, additional region named the spiritual, spirituality here is thought of as a discourse that depicts the everyday world in a particular way. In dialogue with David Purpel’s analysis, the paper argues for a notion of spirituality that is located in an ongoing oscillation between ‘the individual’ and ‘the community.’ This oscillation turns out (...) to be the call of justice. This analysis helps understand classroom dynamics differently, providing a place of critique for current practices. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for the impossible possibility of an ethical dwelling with technology. In arguing for an ethical comportment in our dealing with technology, I am not only arguing for the consideration of the ethical implications of technology (which we already do) but also, and more importantly, for an ethics of technological artefacts qua technology. Thus, I attempt to argue for a decentering (or rather overcoming) of anthropocentric ethics, urging us to move beyond any centre, whatever it may (...) be—anthropological, biological, etc. I argue that if we take ethics seriously we must admit that our measure cannot be that of man. To develop the argument, I use an episode in Star Trek where the fate of the highly sophisticated android Commander Data is to be decided. I show how the moral reasoning about Data remains anthropocentric but hints to other possibilities. I proceed to use the work of Derrida and Levinas (with some help from Heidegger) to suggest a possible way to think (and do) an ethos beyond traditional ethics—an ethics of hospitality in which we dwell in a community of those that have nothing in common. (shrink)

This article is about our relationship with things; about the abundant material geographies that surround us and constitute the very possibility for us to be the beings that we are. More specifically, it is about the question of the possibility of an ethical encounter with things (qua things). We argue, with the science and technology studies tradition (and Latour in particular), that we are the beings that we are through our entanglements with things, we are thoroughly hybrid beings, cyborgs through (...) and through – we have never been otherwise. With Heidegger we propose that a human-centred ethics of hybrids will fail to open a space for an ethical encounter with things since all beings in the sociomaterial network – humans and non-human alike – end up circulating as objects, enframed as ‘standing reserve’, things-for-the-purposes-of the network. We suggest that what is needed is an ethos beyond ethics, or the overcoming of an ethics – which is based on the will to power – towards an ethos of letting be. We elaborate such a possibility with the help of Heidegger, in particular with reference to the work of Graham Harman and his notion of ‘tool-being’. From this we propose, very tentatively, an ethos that has as its ground a poetic dwelling with things, a way of being that lets being be (Gelassenheit). We show how such a poetic dwelling, or ethos of Gelassenheit, may constitute the impossible possibility of a very otherwise way of being with things – an ethos of a ‘community of those who have nothing in common’ as suggested by Alphonso Lingis. (shrink)

This article uses Alphonso Lingis’s essay The Murmur of the World as a catalyst for a phenomenological inquiry into the experience of making room for an articulate world; a world that speaks. A great deal has been written about vision as our primary source of insight and understanding. Visual perception dwarfs the other modalities by which we know the world. In The Murmur of the World, Lingis calls us into the realm of background noise where things hum with activity, but (...) are rarely noticed. I propose that the soundscape can be lifted out and re-animated, and so, too, our world, with deeper awareness and innovative listening. Drawing on the work of Jane Bennett and Theodor Adorno, I suggest a creative, pedagogical practice may bring forth for us the community of vital, expressive presences in which we are immersed. (shrink)

The concept of trauma has recently expanded its reach to include what otherwise might be understood as intimate experience. This overextension represents a threat to our ability to conceptualize intimate experiences, hence to use concepts to engage in intimate communication. An analysis of Wallace Stevens’s poem “The Auroras of Autumn”, demonstrates how poetry provides a supplemental vehicle for the communication of intimate experiences. Poetry is therefore characterized as an essential element in ethical life.

This article examines the limits and potential of hospitality through struggles over auditory space in care at the end of life. Drawing upon empirical research and a nurse’s account of noisy mourning in a multicultural hospice ward, I argue that the insurgent force of noise as corporeal generosity can produce impossible dilemmas for care, while also provoking surprising ethical relations and potentialities. Derrida’s ideas about the aporias of the gift and absolute responsibility are used to make sense of the pushy (...) generosity of alterity as it is made to matter through sound. (shrink)

Ugliness is largely considered an aesthetic, cultural construct and, though infrequently defined, is often seen as the opposite of existing conceptions of beauty. This definition of ugliness, however, provides little understanding of the lived experience of encountering it, particularly when that ugliness is found upon the face of another. This article explores the questions: what is ugliness? And what does it mean to experience another person as ugly? Through describing the experience of encountering an ugly face, ugliness is explored as (...) a highly embodied, interpersonal experience that implicates the person who sees and recognizes another’s ugliness as much as it involves the ugly person, him- or herself. (shrink)

Una de las críticas recurrentes a la concepción de la guerra de Maquiavelo es que considera este fenómeno como algo totalmente “natural”. La guerra pertenece a la “naturaleza de las cosas” y por lo tanto es inútil preguntarse si es posible que exista un mundo libre de guerras, ni si la forma de hacer la guerra tiene que obedecer a un sistema de reglas establecidas en el ámbito de la ley. Sin embargo, la idea maquiaveliana de la guerra como algo (...) “natural” no resulta del “sentido común” o de la experiencia inmediata. Al contrario, se trata de una concepción filosófica, se podría decir incluso ontológica, que depende de una idea de “orden” y de “naturaleza” que remite, en última instancia, al atomismo antiguo. (shrink)

Trust is a key term in social sciences and organizational research. Trust as well is a term that originates from and speaks to our human relational experience. The first part of the paper explores trust as it is interpreted within contemporary sociology and organizational research, and systematically questions five basic assumptions underlying the interpretation of trust in organizational research. The last part of the paper reviews selected phenomenological methodological studies of trust in work life situations, in a quest for how (...) experiential trust can emerge and be studied in professional organizations. We suggest looking for the “in-betweens” or spaces of possibilities within organizational structures, roles and tasks for emerging, experiential trust. (shrink)

In a footnote to The Inoperative Community French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy wonders how to escape Hegelian dialectics. Because Nancy in his later work often returns to this attempt of a ‘disclosure of our metaphysical horizon’, we not only consider this note as a crucial one in his attempt to ‘disclose’ our metaphysical horizon; on top of that, we think this note is really worthwhile considering for our philosophical era in general: how to think after the so called ‘end of metaphysics’? (...) Nancy’s work is an explicit confrontation with this horizon. Therefore, in this paper we prefer to reconstruct his line of thought in this, from the influence of Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot, over Friedrich Hegel up to Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida. We focus on the way attempts for the disclosure of our metaphysical horizon out from the problem of community, one of the central topics in his work. We conclude with a discussion why Nancy’s ontological framework has the potential to break up the metaphysical horizon of our philosophical era. (shrink)

Today, the improper is not only a philosophical issue; it is also a political question. In particular, striving to abandon the improper is central to the contemporary political agenda in many Western countries. Given the risks of a political agenda abandoning the improper in a proper way and realizing a “closed community,” contemporary philosophers such as Roberto Esposito and Jean-Luc Nancy have thought about the relationship between the proper and improper. It is remarkable that Martin Heidegger is an exemplary figure (...) in the analyses of both philosophers. I will analyze Heidegger's line of thought on this issue and how Esposito and Nancy have responded to it. Both Esposito and Nancy state that it is “impossible to abandon the improper in a proper way” in their writings on community. Every proper existence is always marked by impropriety, Nancy and Esposito argue; there is no “original” or “proper” commonality that would liberate us from all things improper. Even before one can appropriate one's property, it is already traversed by the improper. The question “how not to abandon properly the improper?” is in fact one of the imperatives behind their arguments: if indeed the proper is always already, in one way or another, related to or contaminated by the improper, it is indeed an illusion to think we can simply leave the improper behind. (shrink)

As philosophers such as Fendler, Bauman and Young have shown, the concept of community poses significant challenges for diversity by reinforcing similarity, necessarily bracketing that which is viewed as outside, other or strange. In this paper, I interrogate the concept of community as it applies to Québec's intercultural context. I explore how intercultural dialogue, a mechanism to promote intercultural community building has, through a number of public displays of xenophobia, reinforced a discourse of intolerance in Québec's public sphere. Québec's Geography, (...) History, and Citizenship education course is aimed at creating an intercultural ‘micro-society’ in which students practice the demands of intercultural citizenship, such as dialogue. As a curricular requirement, intercultural dialogue places educators with the responsibility of perpetuating an intolerant discourse of difference. (shrink)

The controversial case of Terri Schiavo came to a close on March 31, 2005, with her death following the removal of a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy tube. This event followed years of controversy and social upheaval. Voices from across the entire political and cultural spectrums filled the airwaves and op-ed pages of major newspapers. Protests ensued outside of Ms. Schiavo’s care facility. Ms. Schiavo’s parents published videos of their daughter on the internet in an effort to prove that she was not (...) in a vegetative state and could potentially recover. There is a certain mystery to the entire controversy given the fact that, legally, it was largely a matter of settled law. Precedent cases and legal statutes clearly set out the proper procedures and decisions to be followed in this case. Nonetheless, powerful challenges and virulent opposition to these standards arose. Through an investigation of this case as well as a comparative study of the case of Dax Cowart (in particular, the documentary depictions of Dax Cowart’s case) and of a photograph by Joel-Peter Witkin, I plan to investigate the source of these social upheavals and hypothesize that they were largely the result of a phenomenological reaction to the human face. (shrink)

While dominant medico-psychological approaches in suicidology depict suicide as resulting from individual psychic/corporeal pathologies, suicides of minority groups are frequently understood in muc...

Phenomenology has remained a sheltering place for those who would seek to understand not only their own “first person” experiences but also the first person experiences of others. Recent publications by renowned scholars within the field have clarified and extended our possibilities of access to “first person” experience by means of perception (Lingis, 2007) and reflection (Zahavi, 2005). Teaching phenomenology remains a challenge, however, because one must find ways of communicating to the student how to embody it as a process (...) rather than simply to learn about it as a content area. Another challenge issues from the fact that most writings on applied phenomenology emphasize individual subjectivity as the central focus, while offering only indirect access to the subjectivity of others (for example, by way of analyzing written descriptions provided by the individual under study). While one finds in the literature of psychotherapy plentiful elucidations of the “we-experience” within which therapists form impressions of their clients’ experience, there is still need for a more thoughtful clarification of our rather special personal modes of access to the experience of others in everyday life. This paper will present “second person perspectivity” as a mode of resonating with the expressions of others and will describe class activities that can bring students closer to a lived understanding of what it means to be doing phenomenology in the face of the other. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the connection between narrative ethics and the increasing emphasis on historical consciousness as a way to cultivate moral responsibility in history education. I use Timothy Findley’s World War I novel, The Wars, as an example of how teachers might help students to see history neither simply as a collection of artefacts from the past, nor as an effort to construct an objective view about what went on in those other times and places, but rather as (...) something that makes ethical demands on us here and now. Theoretically, this paper draws on Adam Zachary Newton’s conception of narrative ethics and Roger Simon’s conception of historical consciousness, both of which rest on the Levinasian themes of irreducible difference, the face, and subjectivity as a position of ethical responsibility to and for the other. (shrink)