This paper explores relationships between environment and education after the Covid-19 pandemic through the lens of philosophy of education in a new key developed by Michael Peters and the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia. The paper is collectively written by 15 authors who responded to the question: Who remembers Greta Thunberg? Their answers are classified into four main themes and corresponding sections. The first section, ‘As we bake the earth, let's try and bake it from scratch’, gathers wider philosophical (...) considerations about the intersection between environment, education, and the pandemic. The second section, ‘Bump in the road or a catalyst for structural change?’, looks more closely into issues pertaining to education. The third section, ‘If you choose to fail us, we will never forgive you’, focuses to Greta Thunberg’s messages and their responses. The last section, ‘Towards a new normal’, explores future scenarios and develops recommendations for critical emancipatory action. The concluding part brings these insights together, showing that resulting synergy between the answers offers much more then the sum of articles’ parts. With its ethos of collectivity, interconnectedness, and solidarity, philosophy of education in a new key is a crucial tool for development of post-pandemic education. (shrink)

A critique of Freire's thinking, the influence of his work and ways in which his theories may be developed into the future.

The origins of philosophy of education as a discipline are relatively late, and can be traced in the Anglo-American academic world from the 1960s and a specific emphasis on conceptual problems deriving from the analytical tradition of philosophy. In more recent years, however, there has been a notable ‘Continentalist’ turn in the discipline, leading to a re-evaluation of key texts and philosophers from the French and German traditions and their relation to the discourse of education. One paradigmatic example here is (...) the work of the French postmodernist thinker Jean-Francois Lyotard. In this essay, I explore how Lyotard’s powerful critique of education in his early work, especially with regard to his influence on the May ‘68 events at Nanterre University, can be seen as crucially important, now again, to a current crisis in educational philosophy in the Western world. Moreover, Lyotard’s post-’68 work, with his paradigmatic The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge as especially important, can be seen as providing a very challenging riposte to both ‘managerialist’ and instrumentalist philosophies on the one side but also to overly simplistic ‘liberatory’ educational critiques on the other side. (shrink)

I apply some of Gash’s interpretation of radical constructivism to an analogous critique of naïve realism in contemporary philosophy of education. It explores the significant potential in ….

Derrida, Artaud, and the "writing of the body" -- "Except for a certain laughter" : Derrida, Bataille, and the transgression of dialectic -- From the "outwork" to "Plato's pharmacy" : on Derrida, Plato and, Pickstock -- Mallarmé after Plato : on Derrida and "la double séance" -- What if truth were a woman on spurs : Nietzsche's styles -- On Derrida and feminism -- Re-politicising deconstruction : from "the old mole" to cosmopolitanism to an economic forgiveness.

Whither the seminal thinking and practice of Paulo Freire in contemporary times? If Covid 19 is the most seismic health crisis in living memory, it is also just as much an unprecedented crisis for education and society. While Paulo Freire's work so often calls attention to the deprivations and exploitations suffered by the weakest in our society, at no stage does Freire's work succumb to a negativism or a pessimism about the possibilities of transformation. To the contrary, Freire's work is (...) always animated by a strong and fundamental affirmative spirit which calls on people to join together to make change, as opposed to simply waiting around for it to happen. This text on Freire's contemporary importance thus seems a timely intervention. Originally a conversation between engaged interlocutors at a University of Catania symposium, this discussion then broadens out to include connection to the particular rendering of these issues across different national and international contexts. Including essays by established and new thinkers in the Critical Pedagogy perspective, the book also includes up to date and exciting interviews with contemporary practitioners of Theatre of the Oppressed and related social-therapeutic approaches in Italy. (shrink)

This essay explores the original political significance of the posters of May ’68 as a critique of capitalism, as well as extending this approach to a critique of contemporary capitalism in 2020. The slogans of ’68 are deceptively simple and we look to the importance of the political ideas expressed aesthetically as having immediate impact in the late 1960s, but also the underlying Situationist philosophy which influenced them.We also explore the contemporary significance of Situationist theory, especially in the context of (...) the renewal of Marxist thought in the 21st century. This renewed Leftist critique of capitalism emerges as articulated through newer social and political movements of the current times, particularly through the political philosophy of Slavoj Žižek and his auto-critique of the former Yugoslavia. (shrink)

_The Pursuit of Existentialism_ explores how existentialism has survived and how its key themes and concerns remain integral to continental philosophy today. _The Pursuit of Existentialism_ places the creation of existentialism - in the work of Sartre, Camus and Beauvoir - in its historical context, assessing how it drew on the work of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. The book then goes on to focus on the complex heritage of post-Sartrean thinking from Heidegger to today. Theorists and schools covered include: Heidegger's infamous (...) critique of existentialism; "the dissident surrealists" from Bataille to Blanchot; feminist thinking from Arendt to Kristeva; postmodernist theorising from Baudrillard and Lyotard; psychoanalytic thinking from Lacan and Žižek; and deconstructive and political philosophy from Derrida and Badiou. (shrink)

_The Pursuit of Existentialism_ explores how existentialism has survived and how its key themes and concerns remain integral to continental philosophy today. _The Pursuit of Existentialism_ places the creation of existentialism - in the work of Sartre, Camus and Beauvoir - in its historical context, assessing how it drew on the work of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. The book then goes on to focus on the complex heritage of post-Sartrean thinking from Heidegger to today. Theorists and schools covered include: Heidegger's infamous (...) critique of existentialism; "the dissident surrealists" from Bataille to Blanchot; feminist thinking from Arendt to Kristeva; postmodernist theorising from Baudrillard and Lyotard; psychoanalytic thinking from Lacan and Žižek; and deconstructive and political philosophy from Derrida and Badiou. (shrink)

The Pursuit of Existentialism explores how Existentialism has survived and how its key themes and concerns remain integral to continental philosophy today. The Pursuit of Existentialism places the creation of Existentialism - in the work of Sartre, Camus and Beauvoir - in its historical context, assessing how it drew on the work of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. The book then goes on to focus on the complex heritage of post-Sartrean thinking from Heidegger to today. Theorists and schools covered include: Heidegger's infamous (...) critique of existentialism; (the dissident surrealists÷ from Bataille to Blanchot; feminist thinking from Arendt to Kristeva; postmodernist theorising from Baudrillard and Lyotard; psychoanalytic thinking from Lacan and Zizek; and deconstructive and political philosophy from Derrida and Badiou. (shrink)

In recent years, the popularity of the inimitable Slavoj Žižek has perhaps cast a shadow over the collective influence exerted by Slovenian intellectuals on modern day philosophy. Yet despite his image as an isolated genius, this timely book relocates Žižek as a thinker whose ideas are born of a specifically Slovenian context. Although only coming to international notice in the early 1990s, the Slovenian school needs to be understood as the culmination of a series of intellectual, artistic and political movements (...) inextricably connected to the quest for the succession of Slovenia from Yugoslavia. These developments in thought must also be seen in the light of one of the giants of Continental philosophy: Jacques Lacan.Featuring brand new interviews with three of its forerunners - Slavoj Žižek, Mladen Dolar and Alenka Zupancic - this fascinating account details each philosopher's individual concerns, whilst shedding light on the complex genealogy and continuing development of the Slovenian Neo-Lacanian school. Rarely are we afforded such an opportunity to study the birth of a philosophy from a seminal moment in modern history. (shrink)