政治自由主义 = Political liberalism

Conclusions and Recommendations, are particularly interesting in view of the controversies aroused by the Warnock Report. Many of the recommendations contained here are similar to Warnock's (for example, concerning the legitimacy of AID children, the need for a licensing authority to supervise the work ofAID and IVF centres, etc), but others are at odds with the corresponding Warnock recommendations. In general, the authors place higher value on the family as an institution than did the Warnock Committee and display a much livelier awareness of the possible social dangers of the new techniques. One weakness of the book is that since its authors are approaching these topics from the standpoint of social scientists, their recommendations for legislative action which surely must be based on properly ethical considerations, not merely sociological ones seem devoid of any satisfactory rational support. For example, they concede that experimentation on human embryos is an objectionable practice, since 'the material acting as the subject of the experimentation is a human being at the beginning of its individual development' (p 178); but the practical recommendation which they make concerning this practice is disappointingly feeble:

https://jme.bmj.com/content/medethics/12/3/165.full.pdf

Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy

Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy

The Critical Theory of Jurgen Habermas

World Report ニューヨーク

Problem-based learning (PBL) is an innovative educational approach that dates back to the 1960s. However, the twenty-first century goal of sustainable education poses a challenge to PBL, especially as it relates to isolation. Here we discuss the underlying issue of isolation in three respects. First, the information-processing model of PBL depends on generalized skills, whereas real life problem-solving skills involve context-bound cognitive processes. Second, in all models of PBL, the focus on knowledge acquisition for a specific problem improves performance but separates education from the world at large. Third, the existing culture of measurement strengthens the aforementioned isolating effects. In response, we introduce a conceptual approach based on Hannah Arendt’s technical notion of ‘world’. We make suggestions to meet the criteria of sustainable education by reconnecting PBL to our shared world, and emphasizing a responsibility for this shared world.

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PBL and sustainable education: addressing the problem of isolation.

Depoliticization presents itself to us both as a theoretical and a practical-political problem. The argument of the thesis aims to develop depoliticization as a philosophical concept which gains its impetus from and is tested against the politics of the European Union (EU). My approach to depoliticization (critique) is that ethics provides part of the solution, rather than simply being part of the problem. After a conceptual reflection, I analyze EU politics in terms of its modes of self-justification, the incontestable nature of some of its central institutions, and its one-sided reliance on negative integration through juridical means. In an attempt to develop the relationship between politics and ethics more constructively, I then develop an account of both direct and indirect relations. 

A key aspect of my analysis is the distinction between localized and generalized depoliticization critique – only the latter extends to the ontological dimension, which is why the former falls short. This leads to an ambiguous patchwork of politicizing and depoliticizing effects, which is illustrated by the development of the ethical-political relationship between Rousseau and Schmitt. These are what I call direct relations between politics and ethics, in which ethics is directly ‘brought’ to politics. 

I then consider indirect relations, in which a specific procedure is interposed: I consider Habermas’ proposed reforms of EU politics, and interpret Rawls’ political liberalism as a complementary account. In the end, direct relations between politics and ethics are found to be insufficient by themselves, and indirect relations, while promising, end up depoliticizing in ways that complement each other as much as the relations themselves. In order to remedy these flaws, I introduce a notion of political engagement that combines what is promising about direct and indirect relations. Political engagement combines a polemical politics with the shutting out of depoliticizing effects and is thus able to politicize across the board, fulfilling the requirement of generalized depoliticization critique. Europopulism, which I define in connection with Laclau, is my proposal to extend political engagement to European politics.

/pdf/europe-s-political-frontier-on-ethics-and-depoliticization-myiaximiot.pdf

Europe’s political frontier : On ethics and depoliticization critique

For Hannah Arendt, authority is the shape educational responsibility assumes. In our time, authority in Arendt’s sense is under pressure. The figure of Greta Thunberg shows the failure of adult generations, taken collectively, to take responsibility for the world and present and future generations of newcomers. However, in reflecting on Arendt’s use of authority, we argue that her account of authority also requires amendments. Arendt’s situating of educational authority in-between past and future adequately captures its temporal dimension. We make explicit another, spatial, dimension: authority in-between world and earth. Arendt’s neglect of the material earth also has implications for the relational dimension of authority. Arendt’s authority depends on a dichotomy between the private (education, the child) and the public sphere (politics, the adult). This is problematic. First, we agree with Arendt’s feminist critics that the personal can be made into the site of the political. Second, we point once more to Thunberg, the child, taking the public stage, thereby contesting the division between public and private. In response, we situate the relational dimension of authority in-between private and public. The three dimensions of educational authority taken together imply that it is situated in-between domains that cannot be reduced to each other or taken as absolutes: past and future (time), world and earth (space), and the private and public sphere (relation). This brings us to our concept of ambiguous authority, which expresses the Arendtian nature of our reflections and the ways in which we seek to renew her original insights on educational authority.

Ambiguous authority: reflections on Hannah Arendt’s concept of authority in education

Biesta distinguishes three functions of education: qualification, socialization and subjectification. We focus on subjectification. When first addressing this concept, Biesta referred to action as defined by Arendt, thereby stressing the importance of ‘the question of freedom’. More recently, the question of freedom (Arendt) is replaced by ‘the question of responsibility’ (Levinas). For Levinas responsibility is related to irreplaceability. While the concept of responsibility is valuable, we question the call upon irreplaceability in education. Actively taking responsibility where irreplaceability might not be either present or felt should be central to education. Unlike the morally clear examples invoked by Biesta, complex societal issues like the climate and refugee crisis are not accessible as an immediate appeal to a specific subject. Therefore, we propose a return to Arendt and her concept of action. Action allows and requires students to create the world anew, to take a position without pretending that the outcome can be controlled. Biesta refers to this as the impossibility of education. However, rather than repeating the theme of impossibility, we focus on the possibilities of education: there are several ways to create the world anew.

/pdf/insisting-on-action-in-education-students-are-unique-but-not-1zyg6qdypm.pdf

Insisting on Action in Education: Students are Unique but not Irreplaceable

In this paper, this theme of the open question is offered as a hermeneutical approach to problem-based learning. Most of the scientific literature on problem-based learning is in the realm of the behavioral-sciences. To the extent that the latter becomes the exclusive focus of research on problem-based learning, there is a risk of instrumentalization. The hermeneutical approach of this paper is meant to complement this field of research. The subjects of humanities research are not directly available to a humanities scholar, at least not in the way experimental subjects are to a natural scientist. This is Wilhelm Dilthey’s epoch-making understanding of the humanities in a nutshell. Philosophical anthropologist Helmuth Plessner, drawing on Dilthey, extends this insight to the historicity of human existence as such, summarizing the latter as an ‘open question’ that is always impressing itself upon us as human beings, but which at the same time cannot be answered definitively. It is through this process of asking and answering that we leave behind a history in the first place. I use these arguments to show that the theme of the open question yields a series of interconnected educational insights: notably the importance of subjectification, the social and historical context within which education necessarily takes place, and the construction of new knowledge and experience. These educational insights are rendered explicit and put into practice in problem-based learning. I hope in this way to develop a research perspective on problem-based learning as not only a set of behaviors, but as the scene of meaningful action.

https://journals.aau.dk/index.php/pbl/article/download/7373/6403

Julien Kloeg

Papers

PBL and sustainable education: addressing the problem of isolation.

Europe’s political frontier : On ethics and depoliticization critique

Ambiguous authority: reflections on Hannah Arendt’s concept of authority in education

Insisting on Action in Education: Students are Unique but not Irreplaceable

Education as an Open Question