35 found
Order:
  1. Spinoza on the teaching of doctrines : towards a positive account of indoctrination.Johan Dahlbeck - 2021 - Theory and Research in Education 19 (1):78-99.
    The purpose of this article is to add to the debate on the normative status and legitimacy of indoctrination in education by drawing on the political philosophy of Benedict Spinoza (1632–1677). More specifically, I will argue that Spinoza’s relational approach to knowledge formation and autonomy, in light of his understanding of the natural limitations of human cognition, provides us with valuable hints for staking out a more productive path ahead for the debate on indoctrination. This article combines an investigation into (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  2.  48
    Spinoza and Education: Freedom, Understanding and Empowerment.Johan Dahlbeck - 2016 - Abingdon: Routledge.
    Spinoza and Education offers a comprehensive investigation into the educational implications of Spinoza’s moral theory. Taking Spinoza’s naturalism as its point of departure, it constructs a considered account of education, taking special care to investigate the educational implications of Spinoza’s psychological egoism. What emerges is a counterintuitive form of education grounded in the egoistic striving of the teacher to persevere and to flourish in existence while still catering to the ethical demands of the students and the greater community. -/- In (...)
  3. Rousseau’s lawgiver as teacher of peoples: Investigating the educational preconditions of the social contract.Johan Dahlbeck & Peter Lilja - 2024 - Educational Philosophy and Theory.
    This paper argues that Rousseau’s lawgiver is best thought of as a fictional teacher of peoples. It is fictional as it reflects an idea that is entertained despite its contradictory nature, and it is contradictory in the sense that it describes ‘an undertaking beyond human strength and, to execute it, an authority that amounts to nothing’ (II.7; 192). Rousseau conceives of the social contract as a necessary device for enabling the transferal of individual power to the body politic, for subsuming (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  4. Spinoza on Ingenium and Exemplarity: Some Consequences for Educational Theory.Johan Dahlbeck - 2020 - Studies in Philosophy and Education 40 (1):1-21.
    This article turns to the neglected pedagogical concept of ingenium in order to address some shortcomings of the admiration–emulation model of Linda Zabzebski’s influential exemplarist moral theory. I will start by introducing the problem of the admiration-emulation model by way of a fictional example. I will then briefly outline the concept of ingenium such as it appears in a Renaissance context, looking particularly at the pedagogical writings of Juan Luis Vives. This will set the stage for the next part, looking (...)
    Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  5.  58
    Education and Free Will: Spinoza, Causal Determinism and Moral Formation.Johan Dahlbeck - 2018 - London, Storbritannien: Routledge.
    Education and Free Will critically assesses and makes use of Spinoza’s insights on human freedom to construe an account of education that is compatible with causal determinism without sacrificing the educational goal of increasing students’ autonomy and self-determination. Offering a thorough investigation into the philosophical position of causal determinism, Dahlbeck discusses Spinoza’s view of self-determination and presents his own suggestions for an education for autonomy from a causal determinist point of view. -/- The book begins by outlining the free will (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  6.  28
    Spinoza: Fiction and Manipulation in Civic Education.Johan Dahlbeck - 2021 - Singapore: Springer.
    This book is a philosophical enquiry into the educational consequences of Spinoza’s political theory. Spinoza’s political theory is of particular interest for educational thought as it brings together the normative aims of his ethical theory with his realistic depiction of human psychology and the ramifications of this for successful political governance. As such, this book aims to introduce the reader to Spinoza’s original vision of civic education, as a project that ultimately aims at the ethical flourishing of individuals, while being (...)
  7. The Pedagogy of "As If".Johan Dahlbeck - 2024 - Educational Theory 74 (2):145-164.
    In this paper Johan Dahlbeck sets out to propose a pedagogy of “as if,” seeking to address the educational paradox of how students can be influenced to approximate a life guided by reason without assuming that they are already sufficiently rational to adhere to dictates of practical reason. He does so by outlining a fictionalist account, drawing primarily on Hans Vaihinger's systematic treatment of heuristic fictions and on Spinoza's ideas about how passive affects can be made to strengthen reason. Dahlbeck (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  8.  26
    Education, Illusions and Valuable Fictions.Johan Dahlbeck - 2020 - Journal of Philosophy of Education 54 (1):214-234.
    Saul Smilansky's Illusionism suggests that some false beliefs are important enough to warrant the indefinite perpetuation of illusions in order to protect the larger moral community from breaking down. In this article I suggest that this position actualises an old educational paradox where education is expected to protect the common moral community (even if this means maintaining some illusions), and at the same time promote the pursuit of truth. Taking Smilansky's position of Illusionism as a starting point, I argue that (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  9.  32
    The moral fallibility of Spinoza’s exemplars: exploring the educational value of imperfect models of human behavior.Johan Dahlbeck & Moa De Lucia Dahlbeck - 2020 - Ethics and Education 15 (2):260-274.
    ABSTRACTWhile Spinoza stipulates an ideal moral person in the propositions on the ‘free man’ in Ethics IV, this account does not seem to be intended to function as a pedagogical tool of political relevance. Hence, it does not seem to correspond to the purpose of moral exemplarism. If we look for that kind of practical guidance, Spinoza’s political works seem more relevant. Interestingly, when we approach Spinoza’s political theory with moral exemplarism in mind, we find that instead of constructing his (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  10.  78
    A Spinozistic Model of Moral Education.Johan Dahlbeck - 2016 - Studies in Philosophy and Education 36 (5):533-550.
    Spinoza’s claim that self-preservation is the foundation of virtue makes for the point of departure of this philosophical investigation into what a Spinozistic model of moral education might look like. It is argued that Spinoza’s metaphysics places constraints on moral education insofar as an educational account would be affected by Spinoza’s denial of the objectivity of moral knowledge, his denial of the existence of free will, and of moral responsibility. This article discusses these challenges in some detail, seeking to construe (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  11.  80
    Educating for Immortality: Spinoza and the Pedagogy of Gradual Existence.Johan Dahlbeck - 2015 - Journal of Philosophy of Education 49 (3):347-365.
    This article begins with the question: What is it to live? It is argued that, from a Spinozistic perspective, to live is not an either/or kind of matter. Rather, it is something that inevitably comes in degrees. The idea is that through good education and proper training a person can learn to increase his or her degree of existence by acquiring more adequate ideas. This gradual qualitative enhancement of existence is an operationalization of Spinoza's quest for immortality of the mind. (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  12.  62
    Education and the Free Will Problem: A Spinozist Contribution.Johan Dahlbeck - 2017 - Journal of Philosophy of Education 51 (4):725-743.
    In this Spinozist defence of the educational promotion of students’ autonomy I argue for a deterministic position where freedom of will is deemed unrealistic in the metaphysical sense, but important in the sense that it is an undeniable psychological fact. The paper is structured in three parts. The first part investigates the concept of autonomy from different philosophical points of view, looking especially at how education and autonomy intersect. The second part focuses on explicating the philosophical position of causal determinism (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  13. Towards a Pure Ontology: Children’s bodies and morality.Johan Dahlbeck - 2014 - Educational Philosophy and Theory 46 (1):1-16.
    Following a trajectory of thinking from the philosophy of Spinoza via the work of Nietzsche and through Deleuze’s texts, this article explores the possibility of framing a contemporary pedagogical practice by an ontological order that does not presuppose the superiority of the mind over the body and that does not rely on universal morals but that considers instead, as its ontological point of departure, the actual bodies of children and pedagogues through what has come to be known as affective learning. (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  14.  11
    The Unexpected Alignment of Progressive Ideals and the Commercialization of Education in Entrepreneurial Learning.Johan Dahlbeck & Peter Lilja - 2017 - Philosophy of Education 73:392-405.
    In this paper we aim to use the Swedish example of entrepreneurship in education as a springboard to discuss the unexpected alliance between student-centered progressive education and the commercialization of schools. In doing so we wish to highlight the effects of this alliance on the relationship between teaching and learning and, consequently, on the teacher-student relation. In order to do this, we will first examine the conditions for the commercialization of contemporary education, and its impact on the teacher-student relation. Having (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  15.  76
    The inadequacy of ADHD: a philosophical contribution.Mattias Nilsson Sjöberg & Johan Dahlbeck - 2018 - Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties 23 (1):97-108.
    Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is a widely spread diagnosis.The dominant paradigm of ADHD is biomedical where ADHD isdefined as a brain disorder. At the same time, the legitimacy of thediagnosis is being questioned since it is unclear whether or not ADHDcan be deemed a medical disorder in itself. The aim of this article is tocritically assess the merits of understanding the diagnosis of ADHD as amedical condition defined as a brain disorder. This is being done usingthe seventeenth century philosopher Benedict (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  16. Satan as teacher : the view from nowhere vs. the moral sense.Johan Dahlbeck - 2022 - Ethics and Education 17 (1):14-29.
    To what extent should teachers promote the view from nowhere as an ideal to strive for in education? To address this question, I will use Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger as an example, illustrating the stakes involved when the view from nowhere is taken to be an attainable educational ideal. I will begin this essay by offering a description of Thomas Nagel’s view from nowhere. Having done this, I will return to Twain’s story, providing some further examples of how access (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  17.  37
    Becoming virtuous: character education and the problem of free will.Johan Dahlbeck - 2018 - In Paul Smeyers (ed.), International Handbook of Philosophy of Education. Springer. pp. 921-936.
    How can we reconcile the fact that in order to act virtuously we appear to need to refer to the concept of a free will, while, at the same time, there are convincing philosophical arguments (aligned with a contemporary scientific understanding of natural causation) discrediting any viable notion of an unconstrained or uncaused will? Taking its cue from this important question, this chapter will proceed along the following lines. First, I aim to substantiate the link between contemporary character education and (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  18.  62
    The egoistic teacher: educational implications of Spinoza’s ethical egoism.Johan Dahlbeck - 2017 - Ethics and Education 12 (3):304-319.
    In this paper I suggest that Spinoza’s understanding of virtue and collective flourishing, rooted in his psychological and ethical egoism, offers a fresh perspective on the question of egoism in education. To this end, I suggest an understanding of the teacher as egoist, where the self-seeking of the teacher is conditioned by – and runs parallel to – the flourishing of his or her students. The understanding of the egoistic teacher is offered as a productive counter-image to the altruistic ideal (...)
    Direct download (7 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  19.  13
    The Concept of Authority and the Swedish Educational Crisis.Johan Dahlbeck & Peter Lilja - 2016 - Philosophy of Education 72:265-273.
    No categories
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  20. At the wake, or the return of metaphysics.Johan Dahlbeck - 2018 - Educational Philosophy and Theory 50 (14):1451-1452.
    We have all been told of the death of grand narratives. We have been told that the days of asking eternal metaphysical questions in philosophy are long since over. When Wittgenstein’s (1953/2009, p. 174) famous spade hit bedrock it reminded us that we had better stop wasting our time on lofty questions without answers. Foucault (1970) prompted us to recall Borges’story of a certain Chinese encyclopedia showing us that there are many ways of ordering the world and that each way (...)
    Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  21.  31
    The educational fiction of agential control: Some preliminary notes on a pedagogy of ‘as if’.Johan Dahlbeck - 2023 - Educational Philosophy and Theory 55 (1):100-110.
    This paper addresses the rift between the teacher’s sense of self as a causal agent and the experience of being in lack of control in the classroom, by way of Hans Vaihinger’s philosophy of ‘as if.’ It is argued that understanding agential control in terms of a valuable educational fiction—a practical (ethical) fiction in Vaihinger’s vocabulary—can offer a way of bridging this rift and can help teachers make sense of the tension between their felt need to strive for control and (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  22.  23
    Author-Meets-Critics: Johan Dahlbeck, Spinoza: Fiction and Manipulation in Civic Education.Johan Dahlbeck - unknown
    This book is a philosophical enquiry into the educational consequences of Spinoza’s political theory. Spinoza’s political theory is of particular interest for educational thought as it brings together the normative aims of his ethical theory with his realistic depiction of human psychology and the ramifications of this for successful political governance. As such, the book aims to introduce the reader to Spinoza’s original vision of civic education, as a project that ultimately aims at the ethical flourishing of individuals, while being (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  23.  44
    Introduction: the role of the exemplar in Arendt and Spinoza: insights for moral exemplarism and moral education.Johan Dahlbeck & Morten Timmermann Korsgaard - 2020 - Ethics and Education 15 (2):135-143.
    “Can you feel the warmth of the Hive?”Tom in Leave No Trace (2018).In a haunting scene in the motion picture Leave No Trace1 (Granik 2018), Tom, an adolescent girl living on the edges of normality,...
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  24.  26
    Against ressentiment: Response to Mackenzie.Johan Dahlbeck - 2016 - Educational Philosophy and Theory 48 (9):943-945.
    First off I would like to thank the editors of this journal for allowing me this space to respond to Jim Mackenzie’s ‘Dahlbeck and pure ontology’ (written in reply to my ‘Towards a pure ontology’). I would also like to thank Mackenzie for taking the time to read and to respond at length to my article. I’m pleased Mackenzie engaged with my article so intensely. In response, I will not quibble—word by word—with Mackenzie’s vigorous attack upon my work. I think (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  25.  22
    Confessions of a causal determinist, or some preliminary notes on a pedagogy of 'as if'.Johan Dahlbeck - unknown
    This paper addresses the rift between the teacher’s sense of self as a causal agent and the experience of being in lack of control in the classroom, by way of Hans Vaihinger’s philosophy of ‘as if.’ It is argued that understanding agential control in terms of a valuable fiction—a practical fiction in Vaihinger’s vocabulary—can offer a way of bridging this rift and can help teachers make sense of the tension between their felt need to strive for control and their experience (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  26.  16
    Education for sustainable development and the humanization of nature.Johan Dahlbeck - unknown
    In this paper I argue that there are some telling examples from the discourse of education for sustainable development that hint at a reliance on a reversed sense of causality, manifesting itself in a teleological and anthropomorphic understanding of nature. In order to substantiate this claim, I will consider some of Spinoza’s arguments concerning the limitations of human imagination -- and the prejudices that tend to arise from this -- and I will also link this with some of Freud’s claims (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  27.  38
    Fictionalism: The Art of Teaching Truth Disguised as Lies.Johan Dahlbeck - 2023 - BRILL.
    Fictionalism confronts the dual epistemological nature of education. In this book, Johan Dahlbeck argues that all education, at bottom, concerns a striving for truth initiated through fictions. This foundational aporia is then interrogated and made sense of via Hans Vaihinger’s philosophy of ‘as if’ and Spinoza’s peculiar form of exemplarism. Using a variety of fictional examples, Dahlbeck investigates the different dimensions of educational fictionalism, from teacher exemplarism to the basic educational fictions necessary for getting started in education in the first (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  28.  63
    On Following Commands: A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Governing Values of Swedish Early Childhood Education.Johan Dahlbeck - 2013 - Studies in Philosophy and Education 33 (5):527-544.
    In this article I will investigate a perceived tension in Swedish early childhood education (ECE) policy between reevaluating certain foundational claims on the one hand and following universal moral commands on the other. I ask the question; how is it that certain commonly held assumptions are being debunked and others left undisturbed in this particular context? To this end, I look at some of the preconditions of framing the educational practice by universal moral commands so as to make visible some (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  29.  21
    Spinoza's anti-humanism and ethics of education.Johan Dahlbeck - unknown
    Given the growing interest in Spinoza’s work in recent years, there is surprisingly little written on the subject of Spinoza and education. There are a handful of journal articles, such as Aloni’s “Spinoza as educator”, Derry’s “The unity of intellect and will”, Puolimatka’s “Spinoza’s theory of teaching and indoctrination” and Dahlbeck’s “Educating for immortality”, and a few notable anthology chapters, such as Genevieve Lloyd’s “Spinoza and the education of the imagination”, but overall the literature on Spinoza and education is quite (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  30.  21
    Spinoza’s Doctrine of the Imitation of Affects and Teaching as the Art of Offering the Right Amount of Resistance.Johan Dahlbeck - unknown
    Proposal Information: In this paper it is argued that although Spinoza, unlike other great philosophers of the Enlightenment era, never actually wrote a philosophy of education as such, he did – in his Ethics – write a philosophy of self-improvement that is deeply educational at heart. When looked at against the background of his overall metaphysical system, the educational account that emerges is one that is highly curious and may even, to some extent at least, come across as counter-intuitive in (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  31.  29
    In the Absence of Adults: Generations and Formation in Hunt for the Wilderpeople.Peter Lilja & Johan Dahlbeck - 2019 - Journal of Philosophy of Education 53 (2):407-424.
    Taika Waititi's recent film ‘Hunt for the Wilderpeople’ (2016) portrays the coming‐of‐age of a young boy, Ricky, in a world with few recognisably responsible adults. While the film does not engage explicitly with formal education, it raises several questions central for understanding education as formation, highlighting the generational aspects of educational relations and pointing to the importance of an adult world taking responsibility for the formation and upbringing of the younger generation. Departing from a discussion on the role of formation (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  32.  23
    Naturens ansikten.Johan Dahlbeck - 2016 - Studier i Pædagogisk Filosofi 5 (2):1-18.
    This paper explores the moral underpinnings of education for sustainable development by studying the humanization of nature in contemporary teaching materials. To this end, Spinoza’s and Freud’s naturalistic psychological accounts – suggesting, among other things, that the human psychological constitution tends to further a reversed sense of causality – are invoked as resources for explaining the image of nature as portrayed in education for sustainable development. It is argued that the examples looked at rely on two problematic assumptions: that there (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  33.  61
    ‘Needle and Stick’ save the world : sustainable development and the universal child.Johan Dahlbeck & Moa De Lucia Dahlbeck - 2012 - Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 33 (2):267-281.
    This text deals with a problem concerning processes of the productive power of knowledge. We draw on so called poststructural theories challenging the classical image of thought – as hinged upon a representational logic identifying entities in a rigid sense – when formulating a problem concerning the gap between knowledge and the object of knowledge. More specifically we are looking at this problem in the contexts of sustainable development and childhood using illustrating examples in order to test the validity of (...)
    Direct download (7 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  34.  44
    Spinoza on the role of the state in education.Johan Dahlbeck - 2019 - Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory.
    Is the education of citizens a private matter or is it primarily a concern for the state? Throughout the history of political and educational philosophy, this question has remained central. Different philosophers have answered the question in different ways and different periods have witnessed different ways of organizing public education in response to it. At the root of this question is another question. This question concerns how we understand the state and how we construe the relation between the state and (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  35. Transformative gestures. [REVIEW]Johan Dahlbeck - 2022 - Theory and Research in Education 20 (1):105-111.
    Douglas Yacek’s recent book The Transformative Classroom proposes a useful aspirational model of transformative education. In this critical commentary, I review this model and suggest that while it succeeds in overcoming some ethical shortcomings of other dominant models of transformative education, I would like to suggest that focusing on more subtle transformative gestures could have the benefit of being less dependent of the teacher’s intention to transform and of being less constrained by the expectation that transformation should take place primarily (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation