Introduction: Foucault and political philosophy -- Marx: antinormative critique -- Lenin: the invention of party governmentality -- Althusser: the failure to denormativise Marxism -- Deleuze: denormativisation as norm -- Rorty: relativising normativity -- Honneth: the poverty of critical theory -- Geuss: the paradox of realism -- Foucault: the lure of neoliberalism -- Conclusion: What now?

Develops a rigorous theory of narrative as apost-deconstructive model for interpretation.

_Reinvigorates Jürgen Habermas’ early critical theory._.

This article will examine the consequences of highlighting ‘subject and difference’ in one of the curriculum theories that has been inspired by postmodernism. The term postmodernism is here first and foremost meant to signify the attempt to combine politics and morality with epistemology in accordance with Levinas, Lyotard and Bauman. The article will highlight some themes that need to be developed further for a postmodernism-inspired curriculum theory. A starting-point is a critique of the type of curriculum theory which has its (...) base in the new sociology of education . From this critique, focused on universal claims, the Habermasian-inspired universalism is quickly and critically dropped and left behind, and another form of reasoning is embarked upon. The latter is inspired by a ‘minotarian politics’ concept and tries to dissolve universalism as a prerequisite for critical conversations. With this background and with the help of Levinas, the article sets out to talk about ‘difference’ without reduction to the Same and finally suggest a direction for a postmodern curriculum theory with a ‘normative’ focus on knowledge. (shrink)

Although postmodernist thought has become prominent in some educational circles, its influence on science education has until recently been rather minor. This paper examines the proposal of Michalinos Zembylas, published earlier in this journal, that Lyotardian postmodernism should be applied to science educational reform in order to achieve the much sought after positive transformation. As a preliminary to this examination several critical points are raised about Lyotard's philosophy of education and philosophy of science which serve to challenge and undermine Zembylas’ (...) project. Subsequently, the three main theses of Lyotard that Zembylas considers beneficial and wishes to transpose onto science classrooms and pedagogy are scrutinized and found to be more of a hindrance than a help to curriculum reformers. (shrink)

This paper examines conceptions of truth and “the human” in an effort to engage contemporary discussions of neointerventionism. A central question in the paper is whether one facet of the self‐justifying structure of neointerventionism is an operative framing of theories of truth underlying the explanans sought by foreign policy officials and state actors. To address this question, I turn to an unlikely source within philosophy of language, neopragmatist theorist Richard Rorty, to offer an example of an antirepresentationalist and nonobjectivist description (...) of truth that may help explain the terms and stakes of neointerventionist policies. My claim, however, will be, following the critical insights of Cornel West, Chantal Mouffe, and Sylvia Wynter, that neopragmatist efforts of the sort outlined by Rorty, while sophisticated in their analyses of the nature of truth and forms of justification, fail to thoroughly engage the political conception of “the human” that orders and frames debates regarding objectivity and solidarity. I conclude by returning to the problematic of neointerventionism from Wynter’s framings of what she calls the “coloniality of truth” and “embattled humanisms.”. (shrink)

The introduction of corporate mode into universities with the widespread of neoliberalism has posed threats to intellectuals’ academic creativity and political sensitivity. To respond to the threats, I argue that it is high time we talk about educating hope. Moreover, I contend that Richard Rorty and Gilles Deleuze’s theories on hope can be of great help in understanding the complexity and exquisiteness of hope—non-representational and non-metaphysical, dependent on contingent encounters, transformative and political.

The modernism-versus-postmodernism divide has to a large extent emerged from major disagreements among philosophers of both sides whose engagement with one another’s work had otherwise been rather minimal and non-thorough. Jean-François Lyotard and Jürgen Habermas’s debate has been a case in point. Despite the fact that Lyotard’s attack on Habermas’s philosophy was limited to a couple of ideas, Lyotardian followers have inflated the attack to a hasty and blanket dismissal of Habermas’s theory. As I argue in this article, this blocks (...) the possibility of a more fruitful exchange and of a less polemical and more balanced response on the part of Habermasians. The article aims precisely to fill this gap by reconstructing some important points of a critical dialogical response to Lyotard’s philosophy along Habermasian lines yet beyond established polemics. These points concern assumptions on language that remain neglected especially in discussions of Habermas and Lyotard that give priority to the issue of legitimation. Hopefully, this reconstruction reinforces neither an impression that a dialogue between Lyotardians and Habermasians is reducible to a differend nor that the charge of a foundationalist “ideal speech situation” is as damning as critics of Habermas assume. (shrink)

In this paper I examine problems besetting forms of philosophical and social critique that are motivated by the 'hermeneutics of suspicion' and normatively oriented to the goal of 'unmasking'. I argue that there is an urgent need to correct the one-sided emphasis on 'unmasking', and we can do this by reorienting critique to the practice of individual and social transformation. The argument goes like this. The practice of unmasking critique has split off from utopian projects in whose service it was (...) originally placed, and has become the vehicle of a self-consuming, practice-crippling skepticism that - from Friedrich von Schlegel to Paul de Man and Richard Rorty - goes by the name of irony or ironist theory. Postmodernism, in one of its aspects, is the latest form of this skepticism. I interpret postmodernism as the manifestation of a crisis of confidence (in our ideals and in our agency) and as an ironization of critique. Drawing upon Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Foucault, I reformulate the normative demands of critique such that its practice avoids the problem of self-reference while responding to the problem of self-reassurance. Key Words: confidence • critique • irony • postmodernism • reason • skepticism. (shrink)

Theoretical commentaries on AI often operate as a metadiscourse on the way in which science represents itself to a wider public. The sciences and humanities do the same kind of work but in different fields that encourage them to talk about their work differently: science refers to a natural world that does not talk back, and the humanities refer continually to a world with communicative people in it. This paper suggests that much AI commentary is misconceived because it models itself (...) on the way that science represents itself, rather than on the actual practice of science.AI theorists have become increasingly worried about the lack of evaluation in AI, the lack of reflexivity, and the lack of contact with society. Frequently these writers turn to concepts of tacit knowledge to work through these worries. In doing so they are recognising the problem of AI's second-order representation of science and trying to deal with it. However, this recognition of a problem with the representations of science simply turns back to the legitimation crisis of Western politics where many commentators use science precisely as a ‘model’ for western political institutions. They do so because science is one of the few areas of knowledge where it has been legitimate to use plausible methodology for representation that allows for arbitrary designations of authority as well as parallel systems of different authority. However, the plausible rejects any control on reflexivity, assumes an ethnocentric club culture and does not address social context.It is in this sense that the problems of legitimation in political liberalism are similar to those of legitimation in sciences, both are rooted in their uses of representation. AI's link with the representation of science places it in the heart of this debate about legitimacy. This paper suggests that AI does need to learn about reflexivity and that it might well do so by looking at the recent work on experimentation and representation by historians of science, and by looking to the debates about representation by historians of science, and by looking to the debates about representation within the humanities. However, reflexivity may not be enough. Devising rules of thumb for the appropriate halting of reflexivity, is also needed to address social context and take action. (shrink)

How does public discussion contribute to the reasonableness with which power is exercised in a democracy? Contemporary answers to this question (such as formulated by Rawls or Habermas), are often based upon two interconnected preconceptions. These are, 1. the idea that the value of public discussion lies primarily in the fact that citizens can reach a reasonable consensus through argumentation and discussion and, 2. the belief that the exercise of power is legitimate only if it is determined by a reasonable (...) consensus among citizens. In this sense, 'reasonable consensus among citizens' eliminates, under ideal conditions, the 'autonomy' of the exercise of power. However, these ideals of democracy appear to conflict with certain aspects of democratic society; aspects, moreover, which we tend to value quite highly. I therefore advance an alternative account of the reasonableness of power in democratic societies; one which acknowledges both the characteristically unlimited scope of public discussion in democratic society and the fact that such discussion rarely or perhaps even never ends in a general consensus. In order to elucidate the democratic character of society we must explain the relationship between discussion and power in such a way that we understand both the need for discussion and the necessity of an autonomous exercise of power. (shrink)

Cuatro modos del pensamiento son presentados en la encíclica Fides et ratio: eclecticismo, historicismo, cientificismo y pragmatismo, que se basan en una democracia absoluta. Estos cuatro modelos son un telón de fondo nihilista de la cultura presente que llevan al agnosticismo, al relativismo y al escepticismo. La encíclica ofrece también un modelo de filosofía cristiana, que si bien no es el único, sí es el más recomendado, a saber, el de santo Tomás.

In texts such as “Richard Rorty’s Pragmatic Turn” Jürgen Habermas defends a theory that associates, on the one hand, the truth-claim raised by a speaker for a proposition p with, on the other hand, the requirement that p be “defendable on the basis of good reasons […] at any time and against anybody”. This, as is known, has been the target of criticisms by Rorty, who−in spite of agreeing with Habermas on the central tenet that the way of evaluating our (...) beliefs must be argumentative practice−declares that the only “ideal presupposed by discourse” is “that of being able to justify your beliefs to a competent audience”. We will consider two texts from 1971, -surprisingly neglected in most approaches to the debate-, in which Habermas did include such a “competence condition” to elucidate the notion of truth. We will discuss whether there are good reasons to relinquish such a condition and to refer, instead, only to the formal or procedural properties of argumentative exchanges, as Habermas does in presenting the notion of “ideal speech situation”. As we will try to argue, there are no such good reasons. (shrink)

Lyotard’s diagnosis of a ‘postmodern condition’ has been repeatedly interpreted as a disavowal of the universal aspiration of political action and judgment. This article challenges this interpretation by showing that postmodernity involves an attempt to reconsider universality in such a way that it involves dissensus rather than consensus. I proceed by reconstructing Lyotard’s critique of the idea of consensus as a ground of political action and judgment, which in his view is based on a certain model of production of scientific (...) knowledge. Then, I analyse Lyotard’s turn to Kant’s judgment of the sublime as an alternative to a consensus-based conception of universal judgments. In the judgment of the sublime, universality stems from the disagreement between the faculties, which arouses respect for universal ideas. Analogously, political judgments stem from the disagreement between heterogeneous discourses, which produces a universal call to invent new languages that make communication possible. (shrink)

The author uses the heidegger debate to juxtapose adorno's modernism to the 'postmodernism' of heidegger and others, Including rorty and lyotard. In contrast to heidegger, The author finds adorno's modernity to be more informed by enlightenment categories. Starting with adorno's suggestion that "ratio" must "transcend" the self-Preservation of instrumental thought, The author interprets adorno as moving in a somewhat universalist direction. According to this interpretation, Although adorno would agree with heidegger's critique of "identifying thought," he would find the category of (...) "rational identity" something much more positive than did heidegger. In contrast to heidegger, Adorno's critique of instrumentality has a strong ethical component. (shrink)

It is not unusual to think of Rorty’s work as a success in rhetoric and a failure in political philosophy. In this article we re-evaluate this assessment by analyzing a typical feature of Rorty’s writing: his frequent use of “we so-and-so.” Taking stock of the existing literature on the subject we discuss how Rorty’s use of the “we” was received by peers and how he himself made sense of it. We then analyze Rorty’s oeuvre in order to show that a (...) better understanding of his rhetorical “we” could make his politico-philosophical “we” more appealing. We suggest that Rorty’s pragmatist take on “ethnos” is preferable to other notions that are currently championed in political theory and philosophy. (shrink)

This article analyzes testimony before four Congressional subcommittees, between 1972 and 1975, on a proposed federal shield law. it is argued that within the testimony the press articulates a public, professional mission, but it fails to clearly define who qualifies for protection as a journalist. Following Jurgen Habermas's idea of communicative ethics, it is suggested that the testimony reveals how closely journalism is tied to the public sphere, but also how questions of journalistic practice are raised outside of that public (...) sphere. (shrink)

O fenómeno religioso tem sido, ao longo dos tempos, objecto de particular atenção. Foi sendo redefinido perante as suas circunstâncias históricas e socioculturais. Parece ter sobrevivido aos diversos anúncios do seu desaparecimento, anunciados tanto pela via da alienação intelectual (Comte) e antropológica (Feuerbach), como psíquica (Freud) e socioeconómica (Marx). Todavia, é inegável que a modernidade, com a sua consequente individualização social, deixou e continua a deixar marcas de uma progressiva secularização da sociedade. Tal facto conduz a um progressivo desgaste dos (...) referentes provenientes dos costumes e tradições da religião institucional, levando, por um lado, a uma perda da influência da institucionalidade religiosa e, por outro, a uma vivência religiosa mais íntima e privada. Esta transformação, reconfiguração ou inclusive decomposição do religioso na modernidade revela a capacidade que este fenómeno tem em manter-se em constante processo de mudança, adaptando-se e assumindo os contextos socioculturais em que se insere. É desde a actualidade, desde o diagnóstico actual e da sociedade que nos envolve que olhamos para o passado e para o futuro, tentando auscultar a situação sociorreligiosa portuguesa, de forma a caracterizar a religiosidade dos portugueses e perceber até que ponto esta se identifica com a de outros países de semelhante matriz histórico-religiosa (como é o caso de Áustria, Bélgica, Espanha, França, Irlanda, Itália e Polónia), bem como se procura precisar as novas formas ou tendências do religioso em Portugal. (shrink)

This inaugural handbook documents the distinctive research field that utilizes history and philosophy in investigation of theoretical, curricular and pedagogical issues in the teaching of science and mathematics. It is contributed to by 130 researchers from 30 countries; it provides a logically structured, fully referenced guide to the ways in which science and mathematics education is, informed by the history and philosophy of these disciplines, as well as by the philosophy of education more generally. The first handbook to cover the (...) field, it lays down a much-needed marker of progress to date and provides a platform for informed and coherent future analysis and research of the subject. -/- The publication comes at a time of heightened worldwide concern over the standard of science and mathematics education, attended by fierce debate over how best to reform curricula and enliven student engagement in the subjects There is a growing recognition among educators and policy makers that the learning of science must dovetail with learning about science; this handbook is uniquely positioned as a locus for the discussion. -/- The handbook features sections on pedagogical, theoretical, national, and biographical research, setting the literature of each tradition in its historical context. Each chapter engages in an assessment of the strengths and weakness of the research addressed, and suggests potentially fruitful avenues of future research. A key element of the handbook’s broader analytical framework is its identification and examination of unnoticed philosophical assumptions in science and mathematics research. It reminds readers at a crucial juncture that there has been a long and rich tradition of historical and philosophical engagements with science and mathematics teaching, and that lessons can be learnt from these engagements for the resolution of current theoretical, curricular and pedagogical questions that face teachers and administrators. (shrink)

Kolb discusses postmodern architectural styles and theories within the context of philosophical ideas about modernism and postmodernism. He focuses on what it means to dwell in a world and within a history and to act from or against a tradition.

This chapter examines the relationship between the two fields of science education and philosophy of education to inquire how philosophy could better contribute to improving science curriculum, teaching, and learning, especially science teacher education. An inspection of respective research journals exhibits an almost complete neglect of each field for the other (barring exceptions).While it can be admitted that philosophy has been an area of limited and scattered interest for science education researchers for some time, the subfield of philosophy of education (...) has been little canvassed and remains an underdeveloped area. To help bring science education closer into the fold of educational philosophy and theorizing, the historical development of science education and philosophy of education are sketched to reveal their common roots, interests, and concerns. Thereto, the contours of a new philosophy of science education are presented (as an integration of three academic fields). Arguments are provided which seek to illustrate why philosophy in general and philosophy of education in particular can make positive contributions to teacher education and the research field together with suggesting future directions and possible reform contributions (scientific literacy, educational aims, educational theory, pedagogical content knowledge, science teacher, and curricular epistemologies). (shrink)

Jurgen Habermas is a second-generation social philosopher of the Frankfurt school, the birthplace of critical theory. He suggests that modernity is a project of substituting rationality for religion. In his analysis, such a succession is the result of a process of social evolution, in which each developmental stage has its basic concepts and modes of understanding subjective, objective, and social worlds. For him, the salient feature of rationality consists of differentiation between various validity claims of truth, truthfulness, and sincerity which (...) are indistinguishable in religious language. The rationalization of religion, hence, progresses in terms of a differentiation between validity claims, a decentration of human understanding, the disenchantment of the world, and the linguistification of the sacred. Habermas proposes a universal pragmatics in which two modes of language use are separated: instrumental-strategic, and communicative. He thinks that the failure of the enlightenment movement to replace religion with reason stems from its preoccupation with instrumental reason and language use, dispensing with communicative rationality; and the remedy lies in communicative rationality. (shrink)

A sympathetic reviewer has noted that the best a critic of Rorty can do is to compare his views invidiously to alternative views. Taking this advice to heart, I contrast Rorty's social and political views to Dewey's, and then to an alternative account which I elaborate. My standards of comparison are two liberal ideals than which, according to Rorty, none others are higher. These are: amelioration of suffering, and leaving people alone to pursue their own visions of personal perfection. ;In (...) Chapter One, I point out that there are significant differences between Rorty and his alleged progenitor, Dewey, notably when it comes to their respective conceptions of how to harmonize personal freedom with public responsibility. Unlike Dewey, Rorty advocates abandoning the attempt to fuse the public realm of altruism and the private realm of sublimity by means of one all-encompassing theory. ;In Chapter Two, I argue that the existing liberal democracies Rorty is concerned to defend bear little resemblance to his democratic utopia, in which "the quest for autonomy is impeded as little as possible by social institutions." I introduce an alternative vocabulary, according to which political institutions, broadly conceived, traverse nearly the entire length and breadth of the private sphere in the north Atlantic democracies. ;In Chapter Three, I argue that existing liberal democracies fare little better with reference to Rorty's public ideal of ameliorating suffering than they did with reference to his private ideal of making room for self making. Then I suggest an alternative setup which I believe to be more promising for purposes of ameliorating suffering. ;In the final chapter, I argue that Rorty's private role as ironist and his public role as self-described apologist for bourgeois liberal democracy are not so much incommensurable as they are incompatible. The better he fulfills one role, I argue, the more seriously he compromises the other. (shrink)

Since the 1980s, there have been many attempts to bring together Critical Theory of Frankfurtian strain and French theories generally referred to as poststructuralist. The present text seeks to readdress the problem of their tricky articulation by taking a look at some vicissitudes those two currents of thought underwent in Brazil. In addition to the risk – embedded in the Parisian passion for dissolution – of positivizing atrocious aspects of Brazilian society related to the country’s multi-secular informality and backwardness, what (...) is at stake is the adequate understanding of the meaning and relevance of dialectical criticism in a peripheral country, in other words, the capacity to weigh the influx and gravitation of foreign ideas and forms in a society of inorganic culture, the possibility, finally, of critically verifying the supposed universality of hegemonic theories and categories in light of a cultural experience amassed under a heterodox modernization. (shrink)

This essay explores the nihilistic nature of the idea of postmodern aesthetics in the Western world by highlighting its historical and cultural specificity in contrast with non-Western postmodernities, in particular in East Asia, and this in spite of their formal similarities. We then have to question the nature, possibility and implication of Western postmodern aesthetics overcoming itself within the context of globalisation.