The title incorporates the assumption that the 'human' in education is being threatened by certain processes. The guiding questions are: What are these processes and what constitutes the 'human' in education? Which activities characteristically performed by human beings are so central that they seem definitive of a life that is truly human and which changes or transitions in educational thinking are compatible with the continued existence of a being as a member of human kind and which are not? It is (...) argued that the present debate on education is still dominated by the language of performance and global economic comparison. Educational practice must and will have to help the individual through a confluence of insights in his/her journey through life to form independent judgement. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Why Rancière Now?Joseph J. Tanke (bio)I. IntroductionAs philosophy's representative at an art college, a question is put to me by my colleagues, students, and other art-world types frequently enough that it is worth considering systematically: Why Rancière now? The query is in large part prompted by a recent issue of Artforum devoted to the work of the French philosopher Jacques Rancière, the publication of which caps a seemingly (...) overnight ascendance within discussions of art and politics. The very temporality of the question indicates that the discovery of Rancière by art professionals is a relatively recent development. Why is this taking place now? To begin to answer this question, we must first understand something about the current relationship between theoretical discourse and artistic practice.That Rancière is only now beginning to be discussed within the art world is indeed surprising, given the long-standing reliance upon theoretical approaches and the fact that Baudrillard, Derrida, and Deleuze now function as standard reference points. While it would be incorrect to say that Rancière was an unknown quantity in the Anglophone world until recently, the sense of revelation suggested by the query "Why now?" must be understood in terms of the ongoing exchange between European theory and contemporary art. This is a conversation that, independent of one's perspective as to whether it has had positive or negative consequences, cannot be denied. With this relationship between Continental philosophy, art making, and critical discourses, one is justified in asking, Why is Rancière only now coming to be read with any seriousness in art circles? The point is sharpened when we note that Rancière's work, unlike that of some of the more [End Page 1] celebrated names, is more readily suited for an interface with critical art discourse, concerned as it is with aesthetic issues and the analysis of contemporary art.One might be tempted to find lurking behind our question a certain amount of suspicion about further incursions by theory and detect a sense of exasperation at having yet another French name to pronounce. Those of us who find this interaction between art and theory edifying, however, should not simply shrug off this question and attribute it to an aversion to philosophy, or to a backlash against the excess of the past two decades. Understanding the context in which the question is posed allows us to expand it. And, while not all would agree, I think it is safe to say that there is a tacit consensus that fruitful arrangements between art and philosophy can be forged. With this situation in mind, we might, therefore, transform our question into something like the following: What might Rancière contribute to the work of the nonphilosopher, placed, for good or ill, within a dispositif wherein art and European theory discourse about many of the same phenomena, but in different idioms? The advantage of this formulation, of course, is that it allows us to avoid many of the facile responses to our initial question, variations on a theme suggesting that Rancière is simply one of the few members of that esteemed generation of thinkers still living and that the turning to his work is indicative of a generalized anxiety about the future of theoretical developments. We might also, in thus expanding our question, sketch an answer directed at those working at the edges of their respective disciplines: philosophers, artists, critics, historians—in short, all those interested in questions of contemporary culture. In accordance with what Rancière describes as the fortuitous breakdown of specializations, my efforts in this essay are intended as a contribution to an interdisciplinary conversation that is grappling with the intellectual issues raised by works of art, their reception, and the historical discourses that are created around them.II. To Avoid Two Discourses of MourningThe temporality of our question, why now?, is hinted at by Rancière at various points throughout his own work and pertains to what might be characterized as the default theoretical position of art, that of "mourning." For Rancière, this mourning takes two major forms: spectacle and the impossible. The former finds its genesis... (shrink)

Jacques Rancière: An Introduction offers the first comprehensive introduction to the thought of one of today's most important and influential theorists. Joseph Tanke situates Rancière's distinctive approach against the backdrop of Continental philosophy and extends his insights into current discussions of art and politics. Tanke explains how Rancière's ideas allow us to understand art as having a deeper social role than is customarily assigned to it, as well as how political opposition can be revitalized. The book presents Rancière's (...) body of work as a coherent whole, tracing key notions such as the distribution of the sensible, the aesthetics of politics, and the supposition of equality from his earliest writings through to his most recent interventions. Tanke concludes with a series of critical questions for Rancière's work, indicating how contemporary thought might proceed after its encounter with him. The book provides readers new to Rancière with a clear overview of his enormous intellectual output. Engaging with many un-translated and unpublished sources, the book will also be of interest to Rancière's long-time readers. (shrink)

Carbon pricing is one of the most politically important approaches for the mitigation of climate change in the world today. Most political actors who are not committed to climate change denial favor carbon pricing, either as emissions trading or carbon taxation. In this article, I argue that carbon pricing should be considered unfair in most of its forms. I present a line of criticism called the Unfair Burdens Argument. It states that the most politically relevant ways to price carbon needlessly (...) burden the less affluent more than the more affluent. This is unfair because, among other things, the more affluent have on average done more to create the problem of climate change in the first place. Principles for the fair distribution of burdens under climate change mitigation like the Polluter Pays Principle, which were thought to support carbon pricing, turn out to speak against it, when interpreted properly. Although the Unfair Burdens Argument on its own cannot show that carbon pricing is impermissible, it offers important clues for what a morally permissible form of climate change mitigation would look like. (shrink)

This paper describes findings of a research inquiry into the lived experience of homelessness in Peel, a suburban region located in the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario, Canada. It is based on the data from a collaborative project undertaken by members of the Faculties of Health and Education of York University with two local community organizations. The dominant theme of the narratives was that suburban homelessness is similar to being engulfed in a grotto of poverty , isolated from the rest (...) of the community and invisible to it. Once entrapped in the grotto, it is almost impossible to escape from it. There were four sub-themes: (a) falling into the grotto , (b) living/struggling in the grotto , (c) envisioning escape routes from the grotto, and (d) beauty, community and hope in the grotto . Following a discussion of the findings, researchers describe strategies to address homelessness through promotion of social justice for all. (shrink)

What is the practical relevance of the Non-Identity Problem (NIP) for our climate change-related duties? Climate change and the NIP are often discussed together, but there is surprisingly little work on the practical relevance of the NIP for the ethics of climate change. The central claim of this article is that the NIP makes a relatively minor difference to our climate change-related duties even if we pursue what has become known as the ‘bite the bullet’ strategy: endorse a person-affecting view (...) threatened by the NIP and not modify it in such a way as to evade the NIP. In particular I will argue that a harm-based view can justify the big-picture call for action emerging from the field of climate ethics. The key to reaching this conclusion is pointing out the consequences of our climate change-related decisions for people whose existence does not depend on these very decisions. (shrink)

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including the relationship between art and politics, the history of aesthetics, and the political valences of art, literature and aesthetics.

The writings of François Jullien are an indispensable starting point for those hoping to eschew the provincialism hampering many forms of art theory today. In the first instance, his writings help identify the limitations of aesthetic theory fashioned according to the European model. These "limitations" refer to both the practical limits that prevent such theory from taking account of the different forms of artistic production in our world more generally, as well as to the constitutive limits that define European thought (...) in its specificity. Jullien allows us to approach our own thought as we might another culture, namely as a group of historically contexualized ideas deprived of their sense of self-evidence. In... (shrink)

The extent of our duties to mitigate climate change is commonly conceptualized in terms of temperature goals like the 1.5°C and the 2°C target and corresponding emissions budgets. While I do acknowledge the political advantages of any framework that is relatively easy to understand, I argue that this particular framework does not capture the true extent of our mitigation duties. Instead I argue for a more differentiated approach that is based on the well-known distinction between subsistence and luxury emissions. At (...) the heart of this approach lies the argument that we have no budget of substantial, net-positive luxury emissions left. In a world in which dangerous climate change has begun, we must expect all further substantial, net-positive luxury emissions to cause harm. Since they lack the kind of justification needed for them to be nevertheless permissible, I conclude that we must stop emitting them with immediate effect. I also briefly discuss the difficult case of subsistence emissions and offer some first thoughts on the morality of a third category of emissions, what I call ‘transition emissions’. (shrink)

As philosophy's representative at an art college, a question is put to me by my colleagues, students, and other art-world types frequently enough that it is worth considering systematically: Why Rancière now? The query is in large part prompted by a recent issue of Artforum devoted to the work of the French philosopher Jacques Rancière, the publication of which caps a seemingly overnight ascendance within discussions of art and politics. The very temporality of the question indicates that the discovery of (...) Rancière by art professionals is a relatively recent development. Why is this taking place now? To begin to answer this question, we must first understand something about the current relationship between .. (shrink)

This essay challenges some of the recent scholarship which claims that Michel Foucault was more sympathetic to neoliberalism than is typically acknowledged. Accordingly, it considers the possible motivations for Foucault’s 1978-1979 lecture course, The Birth of Biopolitics; the relationship between liberalism and the various forms of power identified by Foucault; and, finally, claims that Foucault’s account of the ‘care of the self’ was itself informed by the neoliberal theory of human capital. It finds that Foucault regarded neoliberalism as coercive social (...) arrangement on par with the other forms of power/knowledge targeted by his work. And it concludes with some reflections on how Foucault’s account of the ‘aesthetics of existence’ might facilitate resistance to neoliberalism. (shrink)

Es gibt kaum Veröffentlichungen, die sich explizit mit der Relevanz des Klimawandels für Menschenbilder beschäftigen, aber es gibt eine Vielzahl von Debatten rund um den Klimawandel, die wichtige Anknüpfungspunkte zum Themenkomplex Menschenbilder beinhalten. Fünf dieser Diskussionen werden im Folgenden aufgegriffen und in ihrer Relevanz erläutert. Im Hinblick auf Menschenbilder berührt der Klimawandel insbesondere Fragen nach der Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos, nach zentralen menschliche Verhaltensfaktoren und nach dem guten bzw. sinnvollen menschlichen Leben.

English summary: In "Also Spoke Zarathustra," Nietzsche referred to, considerably more than in his other writings, the sum-total of the western tradition and condensed within it our cultural heritage in a stupendous synthesis, which he configured in a curious space of citations, parodies, and echoes. Already the colorful singularity makes the text an important bearer and filter of tradition and a model case, on which literary and philosophical approaches, confronted with the question of cultural memory and Nietzsche's reassessment of it, (...) are able to mutually compliment and illuminate each other. This anthology documents a spectrum of possible avenues into Nietzsche's chief work, into his characteristic dynamic of recreation, and to the specific forms in which he actualized the compression of western tradition in "Zarathustra." The pathos of "Zarathustra," Nietzsche's parody, and the concept of cryptomnesia (the forgotten memory), in which the transvaluation of tradition is placed within the horizon of productive forgetting, are therefore special challenges for literary studies as well as the thinking of the present. German description: In 'Also sprach Zarathustra' bezieht sich Nietzsche weit mehr als in anderen Schriften auf den Fundus der abendlandischen Uberlieferung und verdichtet mithin unser kulturelles Erbe in einer riesigen Synthese, die sich als eigentumlicher Spielraum von Zitaten, Parodien und Anklangen konfiguriert. Gerade die schillernde Singularitat dieser Synthese macht den Text zu einem bedeutenden Trager und Filter der Tradition und somit zu einem Modellfall, an dem sich literaturwissenschaftliche und philosophische Zugangsweisen, die sich mit der Frage nach dem kulturellen Gedachtnis und dessen Umwertungspraxis bei Nietzsche konfrontieren, erganzen und gegenseitig beleuchten konnen. Der Sammelband dokumentiert ein Spektrum moglicher Zugange zu Nietzsches Hauptwerk, zu seiner charakteristischen Dynamik der Neuschopfung und zu den spezifischen Formen, in denen sich die Verdichtung der Tradition im 'Zarathustra' artikuliert. Das Pathos Zarathustras, Nietzsches Parodie und der Kryptomnesie-Begriff, der die Umwertung der Tradition in den Horizont eines produktiven Vergessens stellt, werden dabei zu besonderen Herausforderungen der Literaturwissenschaft sowie des Denkens der Gegenwart. (shrink)

This essay offers a new interpretation of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s landmark work of critical social theory Empire. It develops an account of the politics of exile by situating this political strategy in terms of Hardt and Negri’s claim that it is no longer feasible to confront capitalist power head-on. It attends closely to Hardt and Negri’s account of Empire’s pyramidal structure, and the problems that this structure creates for the multitude’s passage from virtuality to actuality. It criticizes the (...) authors’ assertion that, under Empire, the institutions associated with modernity have become indistinguishable from one another in ‘society of control.’ This essay concludes by theorizing the historicity and power of the university, in an attempt to specify what the democratic self-organization of the multitude, together with its exodus from Empire, might look like. Accordingly, it contends that the production of knowledge and higher education depend upon an idea of absolute value which outstrips the commodity-form, and in so doing, provides an intimation of the multitude passing to the exterior of Empire. (shrink)

This essay is concerned with some of Michel Foucault's writings on art. The author talks about the analyses of painting Foucault conducted during the period in which Foucault was developing the philosophical methodology known as archaeology. Despite archaeology's strong epistemological orientation, that methodology gives rise to a form of seeing that suspends the imperatives for the production of meaning that accrue around works of art. Some of the consequences of this suspension are explored in the final section of this essay (...) where the author describes archaeology as giving rise to an artistic‐philosophical thought that operates outside of the bounds of truth and falsity. The author contends that it is particularly well suited for approaching the artistic products created during and after the breakup of mimesis, the European cultural paradigm that articulated strong connections between art – considered as representation – and reality. (shrink)

Introduction -- The stirrings of modernity -- Rupture -- Non-affirmative painting -- Anti-platonism -- The cynical legacy.

This essay attempts to reconfigure our understanding of the relationship between Michel Foucault and the French photographer and writer Hervé Guibert. It contends that this relationship has been mi...

This special issue of Philosophy and Social Criticism is dedicated to James Bernauer, S.J. on the occasion of his retirement from full-time teaching. It contains original essays from Bernauer’s stu...

: This essay appropriates the understanding of ethics developed by Michel Foucault in his courses at the Collège de France from 1980 until his death in 1984, with the aim of formulating a progressive environmental politics. As such, it attempts to navigate some of the long–standing divides between the movement for animal rights and environmental ethics proper, finding in the practice of vegetarianism a form of self-relation that is conducive to critical forms of speech and politics. The final phase of (...) Foucault's work is replete with insights into how the care of the self can serve as a resistance to forms of power and political stasis. This paper presents these unpublished materials, allowing for a glimpse of the unknown Foucault, and reinterprets vegetarianism as a form of self-practice that is linked with truth and critical speech. (shrink)

Der Utilitarismus ist eine der einflussreichsten Moraltheorien in der Geschichte der westlichen Philosophie und wurde historisch von Autoren wie Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill und Henry Sidgwick entscheidend geprägt. Er gehört zu den konsequentialistischen Moraltheorien; bewertet die Moralität von Handlungen also ausschließlich über deren Folgen und den Vergleich zu den Folgen anderer möglicher Handlungsoptionen. Allgemein gesprochen besagt der Utilitarismus, dass unser Handeln darauf zielen sollte, den Gesamtnutzen zu maximieren. Diese Forderung wird von verschiedenen Varianten des Utilitarismus unterschiedlich konkretisiert.

Producing food on a large scale without killing any animals seems currently impossible. This poses a challenge for deontological positions that involve a prohibition against killing sentient creatures: it seems that according to these positions omnivorous, vegetarian and vegan diets all rely on food produced in impermissible ways. In order to meet this challenge, deontologists might introduce consequentialist considerations into their theories, for example some principles that effectively require to kill as few animals as possible. This is the kind of (...) strategy Tom Regan has pursued. However, we argue that the challenge for deontological positions on the ethics of food production can also be met by invoking a prominent deontological principle. The doctrine of double effect, with its distinction between bringing about harm intentionally and bringing about harm as a merely foreseen consequence of one’s action, enables us to see a morally significant difference between the various ways to produce food other than the number of animals killed. In this paper we will review some of these ways using Warren S. Quinn’s version of the DDE and show that a more thoroughgoing deontological ethics of food production than Regan’s classic theory is possible. We thereby present a novel way of evaluating modes of food production. (shrink)

What triggers the act of creating? What role do sensory cues, environmental factors, and interdisciplinary exchanges play in this? The semiotic theories of Jacob von Uexküll, a Baltic German biologist, served as an important starting point in addressing these questions. In 1934 he proposed the concept of the Umwelt as a means to assess the behaviour of humans and animals, their realm of experience, and capacity to act. An investigation into the complexity of these Umwelten, from the natural world to?inner (...) worlds? and?time worlds?, is carried out by theorists, artists, and architects such as Andrés Jaque, Esther Venrooy, Bart Decroos, Isolde Vanhee, Joseph Kohlmaier, and more. (shrink)

This contribution takes as its point of departure the spatial turn in law and the notion of spatial justice. It traces the term ‘spatial justice’ as introduced through the Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act and it looks at the underlying view of space that has influenced the spatial turn in law. It furthermore investigates the ways in which the spatial turn in law has been influenced by the thinking of Henri Lefebvre, who relies on a Leibnizian conception of (...) space. Lastly the link between Leibniz and legal positivism is considered in order to reach the final conclusion in the form of a caution against merely adding the language of spatial justice to an approach to space that remains caught up in abstract space. This will only further entrench existing fault lines in society. For this conclusion the work of Roger Berkowitz is central. Berkowitz argues convincingly that the work of Leibniz was central in the development of legal positivism, despite Leibniz in general being considered as a natural law thinker. The same applies to spatial justice theory, where the work of Leibniz is central: it may present the possibilities of another law – the law as it ought to be. The law conceptualised as ‘ought’ instead of ‘is’ would promote reconciliation. Alternatively, spatial justice can simply present the law as it ‘is’ and reconfirm and deepen the chasms in our world. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.