Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence

Learning from the Other

Job, mon ami : promesses du bonheur et fatalité du mal

The Necessity of Translation in Education:: Theory and Practice

But if all justice begins with speech, all speech is not just. Rhetoric may 
amount to the violence of theory, which reduces the other when it leads
the other, whether through psychology, demagogy, or even pedagogy. 
(Derrida 1978, 106; italics in the original)The question of the pedagogical relevance of Levinas’s philosophy is captious in several ways. First, one might be reminded of the traditional division 
of labor between pedagogy and philosophy, according to which philosophy 
is responsible for the determination and rationalization of ethical goals, 
and where the task of pedagogy is to justify the means used to fulﬁ ll these 
goals with recourse to psychology, and thus guide their practical realization 
with a theory of action (Herbart 1984). Aside from the fact that such a 
teleological determination from outside pedagogy has long been the subject 
of criticism, and that it is therefore almost impossible today to formulate 
a universally valid ethics which could identify goals for pedagogy, such a 
proceeding would essentially miss the point of Levinas’s philosophy, contradicting its innermost intentions, as he neither suggests a new ethics in the 
classical sense or even a new morality, nor does he present a new educational 
ideal which could be achieved through practical pedagogical initiatives. The 
respect for the autonomous Other and the response to the call of responsibility can by no means be generated or effected through knowledge, will, or 
skill. Levinas does not give new purpose to action but rather fundamentally 
calls into question such a model of action based on intentional control. The 
question of how and where, as a pedagogue, one would have to be mindful 
of the respect for the Other-how one might even have to practice it, or 
how one could teach children or students the respect for the Other and for 
the stranger-viewed against the background of Levinas’s philosophy, is not 
only unfounded but absurd, and would turn it into its very opposite.

Thinking the Other—The Other Thinking: Remarks on the Relevance of the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas for the Philosophy of Education

In reference to the article by Hanan Alexander ‘Education in nonviolence’, the text takes up the issue of reading Emmanuel Levinas’s Talmudic texts for the philosophy of education. It intends to po...

Hospitality, asylum and education: around Emmanuel Levinas’s Talmudic readings

The current heated debate on the deteriorating status of the university raises a range of pertinent questions, including: What role can the humanities play in culture today in the face of the crisis of higher education? To answer this question, the authors begin by problematizing the relationship between culture, the humanities, and education. In the second part of the paper, they examine the changing role of the humanities in conjunction with the understandings of culture, and outline three salient ways in which culture is conceived of today. Subsequently, they focus on the loss of the dominant status that culture suffered when everyday life was discovered in modernity. In the third part, they argue that everyday life, or rather social representations of everyday life and its practices, are currently becoming the chief criterion for assessing culture, the humanities, and education. However, everyday life remains complex both in theoretical conceptualizations and in research observations. For example, everyday life harbors a range of risks and anxieties which are veiled by its own obviousness and reinforced by socialization. The authors conclude that, given this, everyday life in democratic societies calls for the work of understanding, support, affirmation, and criticism, in which the humanities can retain their superior status. In the fourth part, the authors discuss non-consensual democracy, critical community, and the pedagogy of asylum as the forms of organization and action that promote an auspicious interconnection of culture, the humanities, and education.

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Education for Critical Community and the Pedagogy of Asylum: Two Responses to the Crisis Of University Education

It can be assumed that two biblical myths – about Adam and Eve leaving the Garden of Eden and about the builders from Babel – are interesting expressions of the utopian imagination, because these myths narrate about two places where projects of sufficiently perfect social order were implemented in two different ways. At present, the school is one of the places that could be understood as the ambiguous effect of an implemented utopia of the industrial revolution era; the school is an education space designed as an important part of the project of a sufficiently perfect social order. Two original readings of the mentioned biblical myths – by Erich Fromm and George Steiner – shall contribute some new themes and outlooks to the discussion of the condition of the modern school and the discourses of critical pedagogy or the pedagogy of resistance and hermeneutic pedagogy.

/pdf/utopia-of-school-disobedience-and-translation-two-biblical-4zab400ygr.pdf

Utopia of School, Disobedience, and Translation. Two Biblical Myths in the Interpretation of Erich Fromm and George Steiner

Tekst jest recenzją najnowszej książki Zbyszka Melosika Pasja i tożsamość naukowca. O władzy i wolności umysłu, która to pierwszorzędna praca wpisuje się w toczoną międzynarodową dyskusję dotyczącą sytuacji, pozycji i pracy badaczy, nauczycieli akademickich, a także kondycji współczesnego uniwersytetu, humanistyki i nauk społecznych.

/pdf/zbyszko-melosik-pasja-i-tozsamosc-naukowca-o-wladzy-i-rzmmpihws8.pdf

Zbyszko Melosik: Pasja i tożsamość naukowca. O władzy i wolności umysłu. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu, 2019, ss. 185

Rafał Włodarczyk

Papers

Hospitality, asylum and education: around Emmanuel Levinas’s Talmudic readings

Education for Critical Community and the Pedagogy of Asylum: Two Responses to the Crisis Of University Education

Utopia of School, Disobedience, and Translation. Two Biblical Myths in the Interpretation of Erich Fromm and George Steiner

Zbyszko Melosik: Pasja i tożsamość naukowca. O władzy i wolności umysłu. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu, 2019, ss. 185