‘Pupil voice’ is a movement within state education in England that is associated with democracy, change, participation and the raising of educational standards. While receiving much attention from educators and policy makers, less attention has been paid to the theory behind the concept of pupil voice. An obvious point of theoretical departure is the work of Jürgen Habermas, who over a number of decades has endeavoured to develop a theory of democracy that places strong significance on (...) language, communication and discourse. This paper is an attempt to gauge the usefulness of Habermas’ approach to understanding the theory of pupil voice, in particular how his theory of universal pragmatics lends itself to a ‘philosophy of between’, a philosophy that finds echoes in the conflicted nature of schooling that ‘pupil voice’ is supposed to rectify to some extent. The paper also explores the drawbacks of a Habermasian approach, in particular his overreliance on rationality as a way of understanding communication. Lacan’s concept of the objet petit a is introduced as an alternative way of understanding pupil voice. (shrink)

Although recent government initiatives have drawn attention to the importance of listening to young people, attempts to pay attention to their views about their education experience are rare. Drawing on two studies of disaffected and disadvantaged pupils, this article analyses what can be learned from taking their views into account.

Presents findings from a survey conducted among 30,000 13-15 year olds throughout England and Wales, giving particular attention to social, personal and moral issues.

ABSTRACTPupil involvement in planning is one way in which teachers listen to the “pupil voice”. This paper focuses on pupil involvement in planning class topics using KWL grids. The opinions of tea...

This article explores a modern approach to childhood that abandons the traditional view of children in western societies as inferior, fragile and vulnerable. The modern approach explored in this paper takes a plural perspective in the conception of children as people who are able to think for themselves and who have the absolute right to participate in the affairs that affect them. This modern approach is related in this study to the free-rangers thesis, in which childhood is interpreted as a (...) process of maturation and not as a stage of life, which is the conception linked to the traditional percepcion of childhood in the western societies. In the framework of formal education, this modern approach to childhood is related to Freire’s liberating education and the proposals for the school of philosophy with children in which philosophical practices are encouraged from an early age, thereby stimulating a much more active role for children in schools and giving their voice due recognition. So, this study highlights the importance of promoting liberating education in schools with the aim of making every effort to subvert the traditional roles of both teachers and pupils in formal education to give a more active role to children. In thi sense, this paper calls for the activity of philosophy whith children and encourages the idea of putting philosophy at the service of schools to give children’s voices greater value. (shrink)

Digital participatory media offer urban social studies teachers a unique opportunity to foster students' civic skills and public voice while enhancing their understanding of social justice within a democratic society. This article addresses the continuation of a New York City 8th grade U.S. history teacher's journey to use digital tools to foster his students' collaborative and communication skills and to help them learn social justice oriented content. While doing so, he overcame challenges related to technology integration, curricular alignment, selection (...) of appropriate digital tools, and the need to cultivate his students' online academic norms. In doing so, he confronted Livingston's query about whether the use of technology necessitates a “fundamental transformation in learning infrastructure” and the need “to rethink the relations between pedagogy and society, teacher and pupil, and knowledge and participation”. He ended this part of his journey with these new challenges: how to enable his students to become navigators of their learning; ways to align the curriculum with his students' thinking; and, managing a dynamic instructional support system guided by his students' learning. His goal is “to forge a bridge between [his students'] media production and civic engagement'. (shrink)

First, we define the concepts of well-being and happiness at school. Then, we explore well-being at school from the perspective of the teacher-student relationship, both from the point of view of the students and of the teachers. To do this, the main results of two studies carried out in 2019 and 2020, mainly in Quebec, are presented. Finally, the two perspectives, that of the pupils and that of the teachers, are confronted. The results of our analysis highlight the importance of (...) the teacher-student relationship both in the student's school experience and in the teacher's professional practice. The affective nature of the relationship seems to occupy a major place. Suggestions and recommendations for optimizing the quality of the teacher-student relationship, for the happiness of learning or teaching, are proposed. (shrink)

For young children, learning begins in conversation contexts such as schools. The author of this paper contends that talk activities are fundamental to future knowledge and understanding. Implicit is critique of a current British model that values the practice of speaking through effective talk. This view is contrasted to one centered on expressive speech and authentic listening.

Simone Weil's Leçons de Philosophie are derived from a course she taught at the lyce;e for girls at Roanne in 1933-4. Anne Reynaud-Gue;rithault was a pupil in the class; her notes are not a verbatim record but are a very full and, as far as one can judge, faithful rendering, often catching the unmistakable tone of Simone Weil's voice as well as the force and the directness of her thought. The lectures form a good general introduction to philosophy, (...) ranging widely over problems about perception, mind, language, reasoning and problems in moral and political philosophy too. Her method of presentation is a characteristic combination of abstract argument, personal experience and literary or historical reference. Peter Winch points out in his introduction to the book some of the more systematic connections in her philosophical work (and between this philosophical work and her other concerns), and makes a number of suggestive comparisons between Simone Weil and Wittgenstein. The translation is by Hugh Price from the Plon edition of 1959. Dr Price has added some notes to explain references in the text that might be unfamiliar to English speaking students beginning philosophy. (shrink)

In the long river of human history, if one person can represent the civilization of a whole nation, it is perhaps Master Kong, better known as Confucius in the West. If there is one single book that can be upheld as the common code of a whole people, it is perhaps Lun Yu, or The Analects. Surely, few individuals in history have shaped their country's civilization more profoundly than Master Kong. The great Han historiographer, Si-ma Qian, writing 2,100 years ago (...) said, "He may be called the wisest indeed!" And, as recently as 1988, at a final session of the first international conference of Nobel prize-winners in Paris, the seventy-five participants, fifty-two of whom where scientists, concluded: "If mankind is to survive, it must go back twenty- five centuries in time to tap the wisdom of Confucius." This a man whose influence in world history is truly incomparable. His sayings form the basis of a distinct social, ethical, and intellectual system. They have retained their freshness and vigor for two and a half millennia, and are still admired in today's China. Compiled by pupils of Confucius's disciples half a century after the Master's death, The Analects of Confucius laid the foundation of his philosophy of humanity--a philosophy aimed at "cultivating the individual's moral conduct, achieving family harmony, bringing good order to the state and peace to the empire. Containing 501 very succinct chapters and organized into twenty books, the collection comprises mostly dialogues between the Master and his disciples and contemporaries. The ethical tenets Confucius put forth not only became the norm of conduct for the officialdom and intelligentsia, but also profoundly impacted the behavior of the common people. The great sage's unique integration of humanity and righteousness struck a powerful chord in all who attempted to understand his moral philosophy. As translator Chichung Huang contends, "What ethical principle laid down by man could be more sensible that none which blends the best our heart can offer with the best our mind can offer as the guiding light for our conduct throughout our lives?" Ever timely, Confucius's teachings on humanity and righteousness may well serve as a ready-made cure for today's ills in an era which human beings are blinded by force and lust, not unlike Confucius's own day. Far more literal than any English version still in circulation, this brilliant new rendition of The Analects helps the reader not only to acquire and accurate and lucid understanding of the original text, but also to appreciate the imagery, imagery, parallelism, and concision of its classical style. The translator Chichung Huang, a Chinese scholar born in a family of Confucian teachers and schooled in one of the last village Confucian schools in South China, brings to this treasure of world literature a sure voice that captures the power and subtleties of the original. Vivid, simple, and eminently readable, this illuminating work makes the golden teachings of the sage of the East readily available to anyone in search of them. (shrink)

Academies were introduced by Labour in 2000 and first opened their doors in 2002, but during Labour’s time in power the nature of the Academies changed. At first they were designed to replace existing failing schools but, by 2004, the expectation had widened to provide for entirely new schools where there was a demand for new places. From 2010, under the coalition government, two new types of Academy were introduced. While the original Academies were based on the idea of closing (...) poor schools and replacing them by dramatically redesigned and restructured ones, the _2010 Academies Act _allowed existing highly successful state-maintained schools to apply to become Academies as well. Further, while Labour had restricted Academy status to secondary schools, the Coalition extended it to primary and special schools. The result is that there has been a dramatic increase in the number and diversity of Academies. In addition to this, the 2010 Act introduced Free Schools, wherein groups of parents, teachers, or other sponsors can apply to start their own state-maintained, but officially ‘independent’, schools. These schools can either be completely new or the result of existing private schools applying to become state-maintained. The results of these changes remain under-researched. This book puts forward new research that examines the history and nature of Academies and Free Schools, the processes by which they have come into existence, and their effects in terms of social justice. The contributors do not all speak with one voice, but rather present a diversity of views on these important topics. Included in the collection are the results of research on pupil outcomes and socio-economic segregation; issues of identity and ethos in church academies; the problems of establishing free schools; the history of policy on Academies; and a comparison between Swedish independent schools and Academies and Free Schools. This book was originally published as a special issue of _Research Papers in Education. _. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Echoes of Romanticism and Expatriate Englishness in Charlotte Brontë's The ProfessorDavid SiglerCharlotte Brontë's many debts to Romanticism, and especially Lord Byron, are a well-known feature of her fiction. Yet only recently has this become an important part of the discussion surrounding The Professor, her first-written and last-published novel. The novel, written between 1844 and 1846 and published posthumously in 1857, is increasingly seen to be in dialogue with William (...) Wordsworth and Walter Scott, in addition to Byron. Anna Barton, seeing Brontë as "the pupil of Wordsworthian Romanticism" and "a daughter of Romanticism," shows how The Professor develops "intertextual exchanges that perform the failure of the Romantic lyric within the Victorian novel."1 Tanya Llewellyn has argued that the protagonist William Crimsworth, seemingly influenced by Byron's Turkish tales, Orientalizes the women in his life as a way to manage sexual threats.2 Mandy Swann, meanwhile, sees in Brontë's early work an ambivalent response to the Romantic figure of the poet-prophet, as part of the author's general struggle, early in her career, to theorize female creativity.3Yet in other recent accounts, William Crimsworth seems to be as un-Byronic and un-Wordsworthian as possible. Crimsworth has been said to be a "particularly off-putting" narrator, "defensive and humourless," whose "dubious masculinity," passionlessness, and, in one reading, stiflingly repressed homosexuality render him a comically overliteral thinker.4 I will suggest that this incapacity in him for meaningful human engagement is what leads him to fixate on British Romantic poetry as a solution, however backhanded, to his erotic and professional difficulties. [End Page 30] Yet as the echoes of Romanticism that haunt his erotic and professional relations quickly take on lives of their own, they enable the story, and its ethical vision, to exceed William's control. Once the novel directs its protagonist's obsessive personality in the direction of Romantic poetry, it can become an intriguing meditation on ethics, expatriate Englishness, and time.William Crimsworth is a hardworking Englishman living and working in Brussels. The city, which William finds too "cosmopolitan," becomes the site of his zealous self-exploration as he mingles, ever defensively, with the locals.5 Approaching the city like "a morning traveller," as he puts it, William must analyze his foreignness if he is to survive his own residual and aspirational Englishness.6 The phrase "morning traveller" is drawn from Robert Southey's 1798 poem "The Traveller's Return," which describes love as an echo-effect. It is a very auditory poem: Southey's "morning traveller" spends the day listening to unfamiliar sounds, until, in the evening, he hears a "distant sheep-bell," which teaches him that "sweetest is the voice of Love / That welcomes his return."7 A sheep bell is, of course, a tracking mechanism, facilitating the free movement and eventual return of sheep to a shepherd. Southey's speaker learns to grasp the hidden similarity between love and the sheep bell. Just as the sound of the bell goes away and comes back, signifying the wandering and return of livestock, the human "morning traveller" must begin to identify with it. He himself, hearing the sound, gets interpellated by it, once it becomes his objective correlative. Brontë's The Professor, in matters of love, uses Romantic poetry, including Southey's, as a similar tracking device for William. The echo it produces constantly and ambivalently connects the protagonist to England and secures his place within the ideological apparatuses of the state.Judith Butler has observed that "my own foreignness to myself is, paradoxically, the source of my ethical connection with others."8 She explains that because there are aspects of oneself that remain forever baffling and inexplicable, we should suppose that other people—who can also seem foreign and inexplicable—contain similar aporias. If their accounts of themselves are difficult for us to understand, we should recognize, through our inability to sympathize, that we too are surely baffling and that they, like us, are likely also baffling to themselves. Thus, [End Page 31] through the sheer dubiousness of understanding other people, we can achieve a kind of negative shared humanity. We all probably confront an inassimilable kernel... (shrink)

The trope of the repressive Muslim, obstinately attached to their regressive world views, recalcitrant antagoniser of modernity, has become a thoroughly familiar drama. Redundant spectacles abound: events often highly mediatised, substantiated by conservativism and liberalism alike, deployed as justification for policing, surveillance and invasion. The 2019 protests against the ‘No Outsiders’ LGBT lessons held in Birmingham, England are one such spectacle. Foregoing the dominant portrayal of the protests as an event of Muslim homophobia, I instead examine the social processes that (...) render the event exceptional in the British imaginary and the statecraft it subsequently enables. First, the protests’ production as a spectacular event is analysed through the historical conditions of Europe’s self-constitution through Islam-as-Threat. It is through liberalism’s amnesiac frame, one that erases its imperial and racist culpability, that the sexual exceptionalism that undergirds the spectacle of the protests can be understood. Second, reading the protests ‘sideways’, I argue, reveals how the displacement of homophobia onto Muslims continues liberalism’s tradition of situating its Others as oppositional to its purported gendered and sexual freedoms. In this context, sex education as deradicalisation of Muslim pupils becomes normalised, even as British liberalism disavows racism. Thirdly, the inclusion of queer Muslims as the authentic voice emerging from the cross-sections of queer and Muslim identity is critiqued as a ‘non-performativity’. Rather than offering a relational understanding of queer, Muslim and queer Muslim vulnerabilities, this inclusion elides an intersectional analysis of British homonationalism. I conclude by arguing for ‘an unalienated politics’ that is vigilant to co-optation, refusing to treat queerness as an exceptional site of injury. As such, how can we imagine the ‘queer’ in queer Muslim as a political position that refuses to capitulate to the hierarchisation of the human? (shrink)

The notion of authority in education has become an increasingly negative concept, regarded by some as championed only by rigid traditionalists and those who cling on to outdated educational theory and philosophy. Authority and the Teacher seeks to overturn the notion that authority is a restrictive force within education, serving only to stifle creativity and drown out the voice of the student. William H. Kitchen argues that any education must have, as one of its cornerstones, a component which encourages (...) the fullest development of knowledge, which serves as the great educational emancipator. In this version of knowledge-driven education, the teacher's authority should be absolute, so as to ensure that the teacher has the scope to liberate their pupils. The pupil, in the avoidance of ignorance, can thus embrace what is rightfully theirs; the inheritance of intellectual riches passed down through time.By invoking the work of three major philosophers - Polanyi, Oakeshott and Wittgenstein - as well as contributions from other key thinkers on authority, this book underpins previous claims for the need for authority in education with the philosophical clout necessary to ensure these arguments permeate modern mainstream educational thinking. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:La seconda polis: Introduzione alle Leggi di Platone by Bruno CentroneRafael FerberBruno Centrone. La seconda polis: Introduzione alle Leggi di Platone. Rome: Carocci Editore, 2021. Pp. 348. Paperback, €32.30.After the death of some of the great Italian scholars who devoted a considerable part of their lifetimes to the study of Socrates and Plato, including Gabriele Giannantoni (1932–98), Margherita Isnardi Parente (1928–2008), Giovanni Reale (1931–2014), and Mario Vegetti (1937–2018), (...) a new generation of Italian scholars has moved to center stage. One outstanding member of this group is Bruno Centrone of the University of Pisa, who has been productive for decades, even more so in recent years. After editing, inter alia, the collected articles of Gabriele Giannantoni in Dialogo socratico e nascita della dialettica nella filosofia di Platone (Naples: Bibliopolis, 2005) and publishing numerous translations with commentary of Platonic dialogues, he has now also written an extensive introduction to Plato's Laws.The Laws is one of Plato's last dialogues. Its main speaker is an Athenian, in whose voice we may discover, at least in part, the voice of Plato. In his soul, according to a saying of Paul Friedländer (1882–1968), cohabited "Socrates and Solon" (Platone [Milan: Bompiano, 2004], 1127). On the one hand, Plato remains a loyal pupil of Socrates in the Laws, one who defends and refines the Socratic dicta that virtue is knowledge and that nobody does wrong willingly (see 731c1–5, 860d1). On the other hand, he lays out the laws for the imaginary city of Magnesia. Hence, Aristotle writes, "Most of the Laws consists, in fact of laws, and [Plato] has said little about the constitution. He wishes to make it more generally attainable by actual city-states, yet he gradually turns it back towards the Republic" (Politics 2, 1265a1–4). Surely, the Laws was also written for "actual city-states," and especially also "for the ears of the younger generation" and the "Guardians of the Laws in charge of education" (811d4–6, trans. Trevor Saunders [London: Penguin Books, 1970]). It is interesting to note in this context that the Athenian starts from an institutionalist view of the law as the "common dogma of a state [dogma poleôs koinon]" (644d3) before proceeding to his own conception of the law as "reason's distribution": "we should run our public and our private life, our homes and our cities, in obedience to what is immortal in us, and dignify this distribution of reason [tou nou dianomê] with the name of 'law' [nomos]" (713e8–714a2, trans. Trevor Saunders with modification).The Third Letter, whether or not it was written by Plato, tells us that Plato had been working with Dionysius on "preambles" (prooimia) (Ep. III, 316a3). In fact, in a passage in the Laws, we are told that the legislator ought to use two methods: persuasion and force (722b6). Force corresponds to the laws themselves and persuasion to the preambles to the laws (prooimia nomôn) (722d2). The Laws contains not only laws, but also prefaces to the laws, which are persuasive in a way that is similar to the discourses of the free physician addressed to his patients, with logoi "close to philosophizing" (tou philosophein engys chrômenon tois logois) (875d2). Notably, the word 'philosophy' (philosophia) does not appear in the Laws, which is not really a "pure" philosophical work and was not intended by its author to be so, with the exception of some passages in the tenth book, where the deus-mensura thesis is stated (716c) and which also contains proof of the priority of the soul (see 896a–d). The Laws represents Plato's descent into the cave.Centrone rightly draws our attention to the fact that Plato, who via Socrates in the famous digression in the Theaetetus recommends the flight from "here to there [enthenden ekeise]" [End Page 325] (176b8–c1), descends into the cave in the Laws, that is, addresses the details of legislation. But, as Centrone rightly observes, these are merely two sides of the same coin (321). In the Theaetetus, Plato, in the guise of the Platonic Socrates, recommends leaving the cave, while in the Laws, he returns... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:220 THEATRE AND RELIGIOUS HYPOTHESIS* We are placed in this world, as in a great theatre, where the true springs and causes of every event are entirely concealed from us.... David Hume La collection des idées s'appelle imagination, dans la mesure où celleci désigne, non pas une faculté, mais un ensemble des choses, au sens le plus vague du mot, qui sont ce qu'elles paraissent: collection sans album, pièce (...) sans théâtre, ou flux des perceptions.. Gilles Deleuze In Part III of Hume's Dialogues concerning Natural Religion the character Demea contests the analogy drawn by Cleanthes between an orderly world and a coherent, articulate speech, stating that, When I read a volume, I enter into the mind and intention of the author: I become him, in a manner, for the instant; and have an immediate feeling and conception of those ideas, which revolved in his imagination, while employed in that composition. To begin reading Hume's Dialogues with such false and naive premises would inevitably result in a failure to pick up on all the different voices in this text. In fact, no written text can really enable a reader "to enter into the mind and intention of the author." Moreover, such a predisposition on behalf of a naive reader will become further complicated by the processes of 'distanciation' and avoidance of a central point of view, which are brought into play by Hume in this text, where religion is being considered from a purely speculative point of view. Hume has in fact given the reader a clue in the introduction as to how 221 to approach reading the Dialogues. when Pamphilus, the narrator, expounds to his friend Hermippus the advantages of presenting a discussion in the form of a dialogue rather than as a direct statement. He argues that by using a dialogue it is possible to avoid any overtones of an author addressing his reader, or a pedagogue his pupil (D 127). Confronted with a text that is paradoxically both lucid and unclear, any reader whose attitude is still limited by certain metaphysical categories might very well want to know who is actually Hume's spokesman and who he is really addressing in this discussion on the nature and existence of God. These questions are in fact related to traditional oppositions, such as that between a central and subsidiary point of view in a dialogue; between the essential and non-essential of a discussion. In his Dialogues, Hume creates a second degree of separation between himself and the characters involved in the discussion by using the literary process of 'distanciation', when he introduces the fictitious character Pamphilus, who tells Hermippus of the discussions he has heard. From this point of view the style of the text is immediately more disconcerting than Cicero's De Natura Deorum, (which inspired Hume's text), as Cicero does identify himself with his narrator, such that any effect of distanciation is far smaller. Cicero's narrator does, however, emphasize that the multiplicity of points of view in this text results in a certain degree of scepticism and suspension of judgement: "Though it is possible that they are all of them false, it is impossible that more than one of them is true" (p. 71). As Hume does in his Dialogues, Cicero here tries to avoid imposing a 222 central point of view or a single authoritative angle to his discussions, as if given by a teacher; in fact, "in a discussion of this kind our interest should be centred not on the weight of the authority but on the weight of the argument" (p. 73). Thus, wearing the mask of Pamphilus, Hume can play an ironic role, without having to give a central point of view, by having his character present the idea that "reasonable men may be allowed to differ, where no one can reasonably be positive" (D 128). These two texts therefore use the same process of disassociation from a central truth by using a supposedly neutral narrator. When reading the Dialogues one can rely neither on the authority of the author, as he has hidden himself away in the shadows backstage, nor on that... (shrink)

This article analyses the gendered nature of teachers’ views on schools and security. Current research on security emphasizes masculinity and the absence of femininity in relation to the security field – traditionally dominated by the military and emergency rescue services. However, there is a lack of knowledge on the areas of society that are new to the security field. Schools, pupils and teachers are gendered in many ways. What happens when security is added to this nexus? Existing, limited research suggests (...) that this relationship may be both complicated and gendered. A qualitative content analysis is conducted based on interviews with teachers and principals from two municipalities in Sweden. It shows that teachers hold gendered views of their roles as security actors; of pupils in relation to security, as subjects of risks and sources of threats; and of external security threats. Men are embodied as positive or negative actors, whereas women are embodied mostly as powerless actors. Teachers give voice to a discourse focused on everyday insecurities. This is important, as the role of teachers as promoters of democratic citizens risks becoming undermined, and individual perspectives of security risk becoming replaced by national perspectives. (shrink)

Simone Weil's Leçons de Philosophie are derived from a course she taught at the lycée for girls at Roanne in 1933–4. Anne Reynaud-Guérithault was a pupil in the class; her notes are not a verbatim record but are a very full and, as far as one can judge, faithful rendering, often catching the unmistakable tone of Simone Weil's voice as well as the force and the directness of her thought. The lectures form a good general introduction to philosophy, (...) ranging widely over problems about perception, mind, language, reasoning and problems in moral and political philosophy too. Her method of presentation is a characteristic combination of abstract argument, personal experience and literary or historical reference. Peter Winch points out in his introduction to the book some of the more systematic connections in her philosophical work, and makes a number of suggestive comparisons between Simone Weil and Wittgenstein. The translation is by Hugh Price from the Plon edition of 1959. Dr Price has added some notes to explain references in the text that might be unfamiliar to English speaking students beginning philosophy. (shrink)

Although considered a figure of great importance and influence by his contemporaries, Edmond Holmes has been consigned to relative obscurity in the progressive educational tradition. This book reinstates Holmes as a key figure in the history of progressive education, both as a School Inspector and educational thinker, who was instrumental in forming a set of ideas and principles which continue to resonate in education today. Working as Chief Inspector, Holmes scorned mechanical obedience in the classroom and was appalled by the (...) inability of teachers to allow pupils to express themselves freely and imaginatively. His seminal publications positioned him at the vanguard of educational reforms and he became a notable contributor to the New Education Fellowship. His work, however, was not exclusively educational, and in later life Holmes published on religion, philosophy, poetry and literature, subsuming his educational viewpoint into a much wider ‘philosophy of life’. His spiritual leanings and call for an improved education system which would draw out the potential for development already within the child inspired successive generations of progressive educators. Combining biographical detail and key critical analysis, this book will contribute to current debates surrounding creativity and the curriculum, along with the need for alternative educational voices within the state system of regulation. (shrink)

In Teaching for Dissent, Sarah Stitzlein argues that not only is American society obliged to include the concept of dissent in the educational curriculum, but that pragmatist doctrines provide encouraging rationale for its practice. When we think of dissent and education, they are usually at odds; images of student protests or a recalcitrant pupil are likely foremost in our minds. As the father of a rambunctious toddler, I am not so sure that teaching for dissent is high on my (...) list of preferred preschool activities, but there is something to be said for making citizens aware of their right and democratic duty to voice opposition. Stitzlein is making the case that it is a civic obligation to practice dissent and .. (shrink)

Thirty three years lie between Geoffrey Mure’s beginning upon the study of Literae Humaniores at Oxford before the First World War, and my own arrival there for the same purpose at the end of the Second. To read this book is to be made vividly aware how far the world moved in the single human generation. That I shared so many of Mure’s ideals and enthusiasms made me something of a freak in the Oxford of my own time; yet I (...) remember vividly my feeling, when I first read his Study of Hegel’s Logic, that here was someone talking to himself in an empty room. I was a student reading Hegel’s Logic while everyone else was discussing The Concept of the Mind. No one was ever more consciously out of step than I. Yet I felt no urge to seek out the Warden of Merton; and with this small testament of a philosopher’s life before me, I can see that this was because I belonged as firmly to my generation as he did to his. He was a pupil of H.H. Joachim and I of H.H. Price. Price was not my “tutor”, but it was from his living example, more than any other, that I learned that philosophy is a perennial activity in which many discordant voices can have their place - and perhaps be brought to concord. I was lucky, I think, to learn this from one whose principal concerns were so far removed from mine, and not - like Mure - to take the impress of philosophy as a perpetual concordia discors from someone with whom I was in perfect sympathy. To comprehend discordia concors as a young rebel is better than to find that one’s concordia has become discordant in later years. (shrink)

What can Hannah Arendt's writings offer to current thinking on the environment? Although there are some obvious connections between her work and current issues in environmental ethics, not very much has been written on the topic. This article argues that Arendt's philosophy is particularly fruitful for environmental thinking because she explicitly links the material and biological conditions of human existence with the political conditions of human freedom. This is articulated in the article as the requirement of both constrained consumption and (...) unconstrained deliberation. The article elaborates these notions before concluding that Arendt's philosophy uniquely combines the existential task of self-understanding with the practical task of confronting our environmental challenges. (shrink)

IDEAS EXPLAINEDTM Daoism Explained, Hans-Georg Moeller Frege Explained, Joan Weiner Luhmann Explained, Hans-Georg Moeller Heidegger Explained, Graham Harman Atheism Explained, David Ramsay Steele Sartre Explained, ...

The meaning of privacy has been frequently disputed in the philosophical and -/- legal literature since Warren and Brandeis first argued for it as a distinct and -/- important personal and social value. Nevertheless, while the meaning of privacy -/- is held to be vague, there is general agreement that Warren and Brandeis were -/- correct in their assessment of its value. Theorists of democracy, on the other hand, -/- have been ambivalent towards the realm of the private. This paper (...) interrogates the -/- intersection between privacy and democracy, questioning the place of privacy as a -/- distinctly democratic value. (shrink)

Is there a principled way to understand what liberal democratic states owe, as a matter of justice, to the victims of disasters? This article shows what is normatively special and distinctive about disasters and argues for the view that there are substantial duties of justice for liberal democratic states. The article rejects both a libertarian and a utilitarian approach to this question and, based on broadly Rawlsian principles, argues for a ‘political definition’ of disasters that is concerned with the restoration (...) of citizens' dignity and their capacities for effective citizenship. (shrink)

The paper is a response to Russell Daylight’s “In the Name of Democracy”. I argue that Daylight’s postmodernist approach to the question of democracy is flawed in several respects. First, he interprets the claim that the meaning of democracy is open to entail that there can be no closure when democratic norms are in dispute. I argue that normative closure is not only essential but also necessary to democratic practice, in particular for democratic legitimacy. I reject the claim that normative (...) closure requires transcendental truths or dubious metaphysical commitments. Second, I critically examine Daylight’s positive proposal for “language-citizens.” I end by offering a sketch of a theory of democratic legitimacy that I believe evades the charges that Daylight and postmodernists offer against normative democratic theory. (shrink)

This paper argues that the categorical authority of love’s imperatives is derived from a sentimental contract. The problem is defined and the paper argues against two recent attempts to explain the authority of love’s demands by Velleman and Frankfurt. An argument is then set out in which it is shown that a constructivist approach to the problem explains the sources of love’s justifications. The paper distinguishes between the moral and the romantic case but argues that the sources of authority are (...) paralleled in each. The paper ends by asking what we are to say when the demands of morality and the demands of love conflict. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that noise is a significant source of social harm and those harmed by noise often suffer not merely a misfortune but an injustice. I argue that noise is a problem of justice in two ways; firstly, noise is a burden of social cooperation and so the question of the distribution of this burden arises. And, secondly, some noises, although burdensome, are nevertheless just because they arise from practices that are ‘reasonable’. I offer a number of (...) distinctions, between necessary and unnecessary noise, between public and private noise and between reasonable and unreasonable noise. What justice requires will differ according to what kind of noise we consider. My purpose is to give normative urgency to the problem of noise by understanding certain instances of it as not merely annoyances and nuisances but instances of injustice. (shrink)

For Rawls, the demands of justice compete with moral and religious obligations that are part of citizens’ comprehensive doctrines. The ways we love are shaped by our comprehensive doctrines; however, love can also stand in opposition to our moral and religious beliefs. I will argue that love – spousal, familial and associational – constitutes its own register of values along with its own set of obligations. For this reason love confronts not only our moral and religious beliefs, it also confronts (...) the demands and requirements of justice. Rawls has worked out a negotiated peace between the obligations of justice and the demands of citizens’ comprehensive doctrines in the form of an overlapping consensus on a free-standing political conception of justice. I will argue that in Rawls’s philosophy, justice has not yet made peace with love. (shrink)

Political philosophy has been under the sway of a certain picture since Rawls's A Theory of Justice was published in 1971. This picture com- bines the idea that the problem of justice should be approached from the direction oi ideal normative theory, and that there are some anchor- ing ideas that secure the justificatory role of a hypothetical agreement. I think this picture and the hold it has over political philosophy is beginning to fragment. This fragmentation I think is most (...) evident in the skepticism that has become a routine response to the Kantian idea that 'we' can 'discover' the terms of an agreement that has both a categorical force and a universal scope. But as the picture fragments we are still left with the framework and vocabulary of Rawls's difficult and elaborate theory. The major difficulty confronting the Rawlsian project (the problem of pluralism as I will argue below) is itself defined in terms of Rawls's conceptual language. And this serves only to obscure the real challenge and keep us 'bewitched' by Rawls's nar- row way of seeing issues. In being bewitched in this way we do not see that the problem of pluralism confronts Rawls's project as a whole, rather than requiring adjustments and accommodations. (shrink)

Drone warfare disrupts the generally understood experience of war, and drone operators’ distance from the battlefield has called into question the authenticity of their experiences as participants in conflict. This article examines the autobiographies of three US military drone operators, analysing how the narration is discursively oriented to particular spatial and ideological perspectives. It argues that the linguistic construction of point of view in each text reflects a dynamic and sometimes paradoxical relationship between drone operators and their distance from the (...) battlefield. Observing the position and shifting of deictic centres, the analysis draws parallels between spatial perspective, ideology, and the social identities of drone operators and victims of drone strikes. It concludes by reflecting on the variety of discursive strategies employed across these texts, and considers this variation itself to be an emerging trend in the discourse of drone warfare. (shrink)