This article is the result of a mutual interest in the radical philosophical dialogue discussed by Martin Buber. The radical dialogue is rooted in western European values of humanism, values that are challenged because they exclude women, people with disabilities, non-western, indigenous people and sexual minorities. With our basis in radical dialogue we are discussing flaws within the very concept of dialogue, how dialogue is challenged in encounters between people with severe disabilities and their helpers, and we are proposing a (...) new interpretation of dialogue in a posthuman area. To illuminate what might be at stake in relations where power is clearly imbalanced we use Pierre Bourdieus theory of the gift when asking ourselves: “How can we understand dialogue when there apparently is one dominant giver and one receiver unable to return the gift?” Discussing this question, we draw on Rosi Braidotti and her Posthuman Critical Theory to see if we can find new grounds to build dialogue on. (shrink)

The advent of societies with low employment rates will present a challenge to education. Education must move away from the discourse of skills and towards the discourse of meaning and motivation. The paper considers three kinds of non-waged optional labor that may form the basis of the future economy: prosumption, volunteering, and self-design. All three require the ability of a worker to make meaning of his or her own life.

The paper establishes the principle of ‘back-formation’ of artistic creation, the process by which artists realise in their work a theme or motif that had not been previously intended but is brought into being as the work comes to fruition. The authors suggest that teaching also should be guided by this principle. To solve the inherent problem of power imbalance in teaching, they appeal to Bakhtin's recourse to aesthetical judgment in addressing relational issues. Gadamer's rehabilitation of prejudices shows that not (...) only is an ethics of relation worked out as an aesthetic practice, but also that aesthetic practices are worked out within an ethics of relation. (shrink)

The paper examines “Campbell’s Law”: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.” The examination of measurability leads to explaining the reason for existence of a class of unmeasurable phenomena. The author describes a kind of habitus in which a strong taboo against measuring must exist by necessity, not by (...) choice. The taboo is, in effect, a result of degradation of a certain kind of habitus. And finally, the paper demonstrates under which conditions the Campbell’s law is in effect, and how we can mitigate its effects in social decision-making. (shrink)

This paper advocates for a shift from insular paternalism to developmental paternalism in education, contending that students' engagement with erroneous ideas is crucial for building the ability to resist harmful notions and support democracy. The proposed inoculative approach exposes students to problematic ideas, guiding them through the process of overcoming these beliefs using the pedagogy of relation. The author employs behavioral economics to explore the shortcomings of insular paternalism and the early Christian notion of metanoia to explain the importance of (...) changing one's mind. This developmentally-informed approach fosters rational thinking and curbs extremist ideologies. The paper asserts that prioritizing an inoculative approach over an insulatory one equips students to navigate the complexities of the modern world and uphold democratic values. (shrink)

In this review of three recent books on higher education, Alexander Sidorkin shows how the disinterested discourse that appears to be anticapitalist and anticommercial is actually a way of obtaining income from state subsidies. What links the books under review—Cary Nelson's No University Is an Island: Saving Academic Freedom, Frank Donoghue's The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities, and Jennifer Washburn's University, Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education—is their critical evaluation of the corporatization and (...) commercialization of higher education. In his analysis of this common theme, Sidorkin considers discourse as a means of production, and he maintains that the semiotic fields produced by discourse may create inflationary bubbles unless they engage in innovative discursive practices. Higher education is shaped by the trend toward massification, which makes the innovative discourse essential. Sidorkin concludes that the discursive energy of proponents of higher education should be focused on solving the numerous problems that arise from the massification of higher education rather than trying to reverse the trend and return to some golden age of academia. (shrink)

Baumol’s cost disease explains rising costs in education without corresponding increase in productivity. The philosophical meaning of it is in the phenomenon of relational labor that is at the core of education. Its productivity remains constant while cost increases. The total size of education as a non-progressive sector will continue to expand, while progressive sectors of economy will shrink. To avoid large social crises associated with defunding of public education, we must conceive of a cultural shift where relationality becomes the (...) end, while learning—a means of education. The author uses the theory of Trinity developed by early Christian philosophers to construct a framework for such a shift. (shrink)

Educational reforms in developed countries are not successful, because we do not have a clear understanding of what is education. The essence of education is the limits of its improvement. Education is understood as the artificial extension of human ability to learn, as the product of learner's own efforts, and finally, as a series of historic forms of labor arrangements.

The evolution of teaching is examined in three stages: apprenticeship, classical schooling, and mass schooling. All three stages use different social technologies to operate. The mass schooling is analyzed from the point of view of economic anthropology developed by Karl Polanyi, as a non-market economic system. Mass schooling uses the forms of motivation found in archaic, tribal economies: students do their homework and attend school out of considerations of reciprocity. Schools must be treated differently with respect to their improvement. School (...) improvement should be based on perfecting existing non-market economic mechanisms, not on plunging schools into market economy. (shrink)

The paper establishes the principle of ‘back-formation’ of artistic creation, the process by which artists realise in their work a theme or motif that had not been previously intended but is brought into being as the work comes to fruition. The authors suggest that teaching also should be guided by this principle. To solve the inherent problem of power imbalance in teaching, they appeal to Bakhtin's recourse to aesthetical judgment in addressing relational issues. Gadamer's rehabilitation of prejudices shows that not (...) only is an ethics of relation worked out as an aesthetic practice, but also that aesthetic practices are worked out within an ethics of relation. (shrink)