This paper considers the implications for nursing practice of what the continental philosopher Emmanuel Levinas described as the ‘non‐intentional’. The place of the non‐intentional emerges from a critique of Buber’s conception of the ‘I‐Thou’ and the ‘I‐It’ relations, and is revealed to a person in the moments prior to the grasping of conscious understanding. A specific incident that took place between a nurse and a person diagnosed with dementia is described and then used to illustrate an exploration of the ‘I‐Thou’ (...) relation and then the non‐intentional. The nurse practitioner’s pre‐understandings of the term dementia are shown to have hindered the emergence of an ‘I‐Thou’ relation and the possibility of a non‐intentional glimpse of the otherness of the other. It is suggested here that the plausible associations that become synonymous with a diagnosis like dementia detract from attentiveness to another ‘person’. The more tangible an understanding of another person becomes, the less likely it is that a person can really experience the other as separate to their perception of them. The implications for practitioner education and learning in relation to the non‐intentional are considered, in particular the need to reflect on the immediacy of the feelings experienced in a relationship. The non‐intentional highlights how ‘I’, as a nurse practitioner, can exclude the other by imposing an understanding on what is seen and experienced in relation to another person. The ‘I’ prioritizes intentional understanding and so obscures the importance of the spontaneous response to the tear in the eye of the other, which is the basis for Levinas’s conception of the non‐intentional. The spontaneity of the non‐intentional is what Levinas believed confirmed the separateness and autonomy of the other and consequently should be the basis for a therapeutic nursing relationship with a patient. (shrink)

Are animals moral agents? In this article, a theologian and an anthropologist unite to bring the resources of each field to bear on this question. Alas, not all interdisciplinary conversations end harmoniously, and after much discussion the two authors find themselves in substantial disagreement over the answer. The article is therefore presented in two halves, one for each side of the argument. As well as presenting two different positions, our hope is that this article clarifies the different understandings of morality (...) in our respective fields and will help to offset confusion in interdisciplinary dialogue. In what follows, we each present our case. In the first section, Adam Willows argues that moral activity necessarily involves the use of reason, symbolic thought, and language and is on that basis an exclusively human affair. In the second, Marcus Baynes-Rock discusses his experience of relationality with other creatures; a relationality which, he argues, creates a shared understanding of obligations which are characteristically moral. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the importance of wonder in human flourishing and is orientated towards the dynamics between the two, but with an emphasis on how the former is important for illuminating the latter. It begins with a preliminary sketch of both wonder and human flourishing and subsequently moves on to highlight three aspects of human flourishing: 1) ‘Individuality’, 2) ‘Relations’ and 3) ‘The political’, and why these play to wonderment.

Using Peirce as a guide, this paper explores the way in which light mediates finitude through the relational process of semiosis. Embodying the triadic logic of identity, difference and return, light creates space, time and matter. Attention is on simple bodily forms and the meta-physics of their relationality. The first section introduces the mathematical and metaphysical contours of Peirce’s approach. The second section motivates Peirce’s three categories as interwoven process. In the third section, Peirce’s formalism of the sign is presented (...) and applied to simple physical and biological bodies. (shrink)

In the pedagogy of Pancasila-based State, the Church recognizes the existence and function of State as the instrument of God to prevent/punish evil and strive for justice of all people. Church and state relationships inherently contain potential conflicts. This is because both the Church and State have a thorough claim on human life, in the sense that all the facets of human life have a spiritual and political dimension. The tension of the relationship between Church and State should not be (...) extinguished by subordinating one to the other, both in the form of „Church-State‟ and „State-Church‟. Therefore, in addition to rejecting totalitarianism and authoritarianism, Church and State must also reject theocracy, ecclesiocracy and a secular State. Responsibilities of the State‟s responsibility to the Church are mutual responsibilities and reciprocal cooperation and compatible with the pedagogy of Pancasila-based State in Indonesia, while the responsibility of the Church to the State is not mutual responsibilities and reciprocal cooperation, but asymmetric (being-for not being-with). (shrink)

While pain is common among seniors, it is not adequately treated or managed. In particular, pain in seniors with dementia is often undertreated and undermanaged. Although the undertreatment of pain among persons with cognitive impairments represents a serious ethical concern for pain clinicians, most writers in the area explain the undertreatment of pain by focusing on issues related to liability, fears of addiction to opioids, and erroneous beliefs that pain is a normal part of the ageing process. We argue that (...) the philosophical notion of personhood must also be given careful attention when considering the problem of pain undermanagement. In this paper, we consider the undertreatment of pain among seniors with dementia, while focusing on the ontology of relationships and on existential philosophy. Moreover, we outline a series of recommendations to help minimize the probability of pain undertreatment in this population and to encourage considerations relating to personhood when treating people with dementia. (shrink)

: The main threads of Emmanuel Levinas's theory of ethics, developed in his philosophical works, Totality and Infinity (1969), and Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (1998), instruct that ethics require transcendence of being and nature, which he describes in terms of a transcendence of animality to the human. This apparent devaluation of the nonhuman would seem to preclude the development of Levinasian environmental ethics. However, a deconstructive reading of Levinas recognizes a subtext that interrupts the main threads of his (...) argument running against the inclusion of nonhuman others in ethics. Through a critical reconstructive reading of Levinas, I develop an ethic extraneous to Levinas's transcendent ethics, an ethic outside his "otherwise than being.". (shrink)

“I also talked to Buber yesterday; as a person he is lively and simple and remarkable, and seems to have nothing to do with the lukewarm things he has written” – wrote Franz Kafka to his fiancée Felice Bauer in the early 1913. What is the meaning of this harsh, yet respectful portraiture of Buber? Was it a casual ironic remark – or was it rather the way Kafka really thought of Martin Buber? And to what extent was Kafka important (...) for Buber? How can we understand the collaboration between the writer and philosopher? Close reading, contextualization and Begegnungsereignis. (shrink)

Research into violence in schools has been growing steadily at an international level, and has shown high degrees of violence at various different levels. Given the seriousness of the problem, finding ways of responding to this issue in schools becomes an imperative for educationists. In this article, we engage with this problem by defending the view that whilst violence might be endemic in schools, there are also real possibilities for working towards different ways of being in relationship in schools. Firstly, (...) we discuss Galtung’s understanding of violence and peace, paying particular attention to his concepts of structural and cultural violence, peacekeeping, peacemaking and peacebuilding. Secondly, we connect Galtung’s notions of peacemaking to Buber’s philosophy of dialogue, in order to make a case for an ‘epistemological shift’ which might enable individuals and communities to achieve ‘peace’. Finally, we direct our argument to the education context and put forward some concrete proposals for peacemaking in schools. (shrink)

This paper develops the idea, articulated by Martin Buber among others, that a religious sense cannot be identified independently of sensory and practical engagement with the world of ordinary experience. It begins by rejecting the ‘doxastic’ model’ on which religiousness is equated with propositional belief. Criticisms, however, are made of some attempts to soften the contrast between belief and practice. The religious sense, which need not be a theistic one, is understood in terms of a sense of the mystery or (...) ineffability of things – one that has become occluded in modernity. This sense, in turn, is understood in terms of how it may be cultivated and exemplified in and through practices. This claim is elaborated by considering the East Asian notion of ‘Ways’ – practices, like ‘The Way of Tea’, that aim at self-cultivation and spiritual enlightenment. Gardening, in particular, has been regarded as an exemplary Way through which a sense of mystery is cultivated and shaped. The paper concludes by proposing that, when engaged in appropriately and mindfully, almost any ordinary practice may both reflect and confirm an attunement to a mystery that is diffused over the world at large. (shrink)

This paper attempts to show the complementarity between phenomenology and physical education as human sciences, and discusses how a consideration of this relation might inform the questions we ask and the methods we use in our research and teaching. We enter the common ground shared by phenomenology and physical education by way of three sensitizing concepts: lived experience, intersubjectivity, and insiders stories. Using examples from physical education and phenomenology, the paper shows the connections between these two increasingly compatible partners, emphasizes (...) the primary connection — the body — and shows the practical and heuristic applications of phenomenology in the lifeworld of physical education. (shrink)

Education has long been charged with the taskof forming and shaping subjectivity andidentity. However, the prevailing view ofeducation as a project of producing rationalautonomous subjects has been challenged bypostmodern and poststructuralist critiques ofsubstantial subjectivity. In a similar vein,Emmanuel Levinas inverts the traditionalconception of subjectivity, claiming that weare constituted as subjects only in respondingto the other. In other words, subjectivity isderivative of an existentially priorresponsibility to and for the other. Hisconception of ethical responsibility is thusalso a radical departure from the prevailingview (...) of what it means to be a responsible moralagent. In this paper, I use jazz improvisationas a metaphor to focus on three interrelatedaspects of ethical responsibility on Levinas'saccount: passivity, heteronomy, andinescapability. I then point toward some waysin which reframing responsibility andsubjectivity along this line might offer newpossibilities for conceiving subjectivity andmoral agency in education. (shrink)

Given that one of the major goals of the practice of Philosophy for Children (P4C) is the development of critical thinking skills (Sharp 1987/2018, pp. 4 6), an urgent question that emerged for one of the authors, who is of Chinese Heritage and a novice practitioner at a P4C summer camp was whether this emphasis on critical thinking might make this practice incompatible with the fabric of Chinese culture. Filial piety (孝), which requires respect for one’s parents, elders, and ancestors (...) is considered an important virtue in Asian culture, as is the preservation of harmony. But if one of the goals of P4C is to teach youngsters to courageously pursue reasoned dialogue, does this not set-up young Asians for serious conflict when they come face-to-face with positions that are articulated by elders, but which are ones to which they are diametrically opposed; a racist grandmother, for instance, or an uncle who insists that those at the Tiananmen Square uprising were nothing but hooligan’s. It is this question that we will explore in this presentation. In the process, we will come to the conclusion that, when positions seem irreconcilable, rather than continuing to pursue rigorous critical interchange that may do little other than escalate insult, the facilitator, rather, ought to move toward creating a deeper understanding of each position juxtaposed against its opposing view (a process that we refer to as ‘collaborative caring’), so as to produce side-by-side understanding, knowing that communal bonds have been maintained and, hence, that the opportunity for genuine reasoned collaborative inquiry on other issues and at future times remains open. (shrink)

Ubuntu has been described as an African moral philosophy that finds actions grounded on good will to be right if they promote shared identity. I contend that freedom of expression is consistent with ubuntu. Freedom of expression enables people to be the most they can be, enabling the establishment of communities in which people can live together harmoniously. With reference to the violent South African society, the study examines broadcast media violence that may harm children to draw new insights concerning (...) the moral philosophy of ubuntu, media practice, and media literacy. (shrink)

I seek to provide a systematic and comprehensive framework for the description and analysis of scientific practice—a philosophical grammar of scientific practice, ‘grammar’ as meant by the later Wittgenstein. I begin with the recognition that all scientific work, including pure theorizing, consists of actions, of the physical, mental, and ‘paper-and-pencil’ varieties. When we set out to see what it is that one actually does in scientific work, the following set of questions naturally emerge: who is doing what, why, and how? (...) More specifically, we must arrive at some coherent philosophical accounts of the following elements of scientific practice: the agent—free, embodied, and constantly in second-person interactions with other agents; the purposes and proximate aims of the agent; types of activities that the agent engages in; ontological principles necessarily presumed for the performance of particular activities; instruments and other resources that the agent pulls together for the performance of each activity. After sketching the general framework, I also give some illustrative contrasts between the more traditional descriptions of scientific practice and the kind of descriptions enabled by the proposed framework. (shrink)

Current literature on resistance focuses on the elements of action and opposition as its main components. However, when we use the term resistance we are not necessarily referring exclusively to the active expression of opposition, but could also be referring to discussions about such events or to stimuli that may cause these acts. Thus resistance, for the purposes of this study, is perceived in terms of action, external conversation and stimuli, and it is argued that these external characteristics may be (...) further processed through deliberation and internal conversations about resistance. An exploratory empirical study revealed inner aspects of resistance, and examined whether internal conversations about resistance could actually be experienced by agents. This article further supports the argument that, as individuals produce internal conversations about resistance, they may end by following one of the suggested options: they may keep their internal conversations unspoken, or produce a course of action related to resistance (and identified as such), or they may produce external conversations about resistance, or they may end by producing resistance that is not recognisable (to others) as such. In all these cases, internal conversations about resistance are involved and it is therefore argued that the causal impact of resistance may derive from agential processes and powers as well as from action, stimuli or external conversations related to resistance. (shrink)

As a political thinker nurtured in early 20th-century German, Hannah Arendt is most often identified with the Greek philosophical tradition. This article argues that the crisis in reality that threw her into politics also, though unacknowledgedly, threw her into ‘Jewish modes of thinking’ as an alternative source where she found the Greek tradition lacking. This claim is controversial, given Arendt’s vehement criticisms of any recourse to the absolute, or metaphysical truths in the realm of politics. Nevertheless, and consistent with a (...) number of early 20th-century Jewish thinkers (Rosenzweig, Levinas, Buber, Shestov) who explicitly identified the Hebrew God not as the metaphysical but as the condition of possibility for authentic freedom under conditions of finitude, one finds in Arendt a move towards an understanding of the seat of human freedom that sits far more comfortably in the Jerusalem than in the Athens tradition. Specifically, in her emphasis on natality and genuine futurity, one senses a strong resonance with the notion of pure creation in the Hebrew Bible, as one does, notably, in her insistence that forgiveness and promises (covenants) form the two pillars for human sociality. Throughout the history of Jewish thought, one consistently finds precisely this Arendtian struggle to represent a model of law that holds the tension between binding fidelity to promises, memory and the past, and an openness to futurity, to the infinity of interpretation that gives meaning to those promises. Closely resembling the midrashic tradition, Arendt’s political community of speech is one in which meaning is open ended and plural, allowing for the binding together that sustains a polity, while also opening up to the radically new of each new birth. (shrink)

This article draws on the conclusion of the Commission on the Humanities in The Humanities in American Life that the aim of a liberal arts education is to foster critical reasoning through the use of language or discourse. This paper maintains that the critical method is in itself insufficient to achieve its purpose. Its failure is in its exclusion of feeling and of silence from the thinking process. Hence, the ultimate object of my analysis is to correct and to complement (...) the critical method with the aesthetic method of teaching the humanities. Central to the aesthetic method is art as a means to cultivate contemplative and creative skills. The essay brings out and examines the value of art as voices of silence in Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Dionysius, Bonaventure, Maurice Merleau‐Ponty and Paul Gauguin, and pays particular attention to the diaries of Eugène Delacroix. In the course of doing so, I shall be trying to make clear that art teaches us how to listen and how to encounter ourselves totally and completely. It goes on to suggest several pedagogical principles or consequences that flow from this aesthetic pedagogy. (shrink)

The ongoing cynicism about leaders and organizations calls for a new standard of ethical leadership that we have labeled “transformative leadership.” This new leadership model integrates ethically-based features of six other well-regarded leadership perspectives and combines key normative and instrumental elements of each of those six perspectives. Transformative leadership honors the governance obligations of leaders by demonstrating a commitment to the welfare of all stakeholders and by seeking to optimize long-term wealth creation. Citing the scholarly literature about leadership theory, we (...) identify key elements of the six leadership perspectives that make up transformative leadership, suggest leaders who exemplify each perspective, describe the ethical foundations and message of each perspective, and offer ten propositions that scholars and practitioners can use to test the dimensions of this new transformative leadership model. (shrink)

The research about strategic human resource management (SHRM) has suggested that human resource professionals (HRPs) have the opportunity to play a greater role in contributing to organizational success if they are effective in developing systems and policies aligned with the organization's values, goals, and mission. We suggest that HRPs need to raise the standard of their performance and that the competitive demands of the modern economic environment create implicit ethical duties that HRPs owe to their organizations. We define ethical stewardship (...) as a model of governance that honors obligations due to the many stakeholders and that maximizes long-term organizational wealth creation. We propose that if HRPs adopt an ethical stewardship framework and the qualities of transformative leaders, they will be more aware of their ethical duties to their organizations and more effective in helping their organizations to create increased wealth, achieve desired organizational outcomes, and establish work environments that are more satisfying to employees. (shrink)

Leaders in today's world face the challenge of earning the trust and commitment of organizational members if they expect to guide their companies to success in a highly competitive global context. In this article, we present empirical results indicating that when leadership behaviors are perceived as trustworthy through the observer's mediating lens, trust increases and leaders are more likely to be viewed as ethical stewards who honor a higher level of duties. This article contributes to the growing body of literature (...) about the importance of ethical stewardship in the trust relationship. (shrink)

In a world that has become increasingly dependent upon employee ownership, commitment, and initiative, organizations need leaders who can inspire their␣employees and motivate them individually. Love, forgiveness, and trust are critical values of today’s organization leaders who are committed to maximizing value for organizations while helping organization members to become their best. We explain the importance of love, forgiveness, and trust in the modern organization and identify 10 commonalities of these virtues.

The ability of leaders to be perceived as trustworthy and to develop authentic and effective relationships is largely a function of their personal identities and their self-awareness in understanding and making accommodations for their weaknesses. The research about self-deception confirms that we often practice denial regarding our identities without being fully aware of the ethical duties that we owe to ourselves and to others. This article offers insights about the nature of identity and selfawareness, specifically examining how self-deception can create (...) barriers to self-awareness within both a personal and a business context. (shrink)

Political philosophy in the last decades has turned away from universal narratives of progress, on grounds that these narratives produce exclusion and justify domination. However, the universal values that underlie emancipatory political projects seem to presuppose universal history, which explains its persistence in some contemporary political philosophers committed to such projects. In order to find a response to the paradox according to which universal history is inherently exclusionary and yet necessary to uphold universal values, I examine the contrast between Adorno’s (...) and Lyotard’s perspectives on the problem of writing history ‘after Auschwitz’. For both philosophers, Auschwitz interrupts our fundamental normative and cognitive values, because any attempt to identify the meaning of the camps by means of these values misunderstands the suffering that took place in them. Yet this interruption produces a feeling that calls for the institution of new universal normative values. For Adorno, this value is a purely negative command to act in such a way that Auschwitz does not repeat itself. For Lyotard, by contrast, it is the demand to invent new idioms that make it possible to find meaning in Auschwitz. (shrink)

Cooperation and conversation in the public sphere may overcome historical and other barriers to rational argumentation. As an alternative to evidence-based medicine (EBM) and patient-centered care (PCC), the recent development of a modern version of person-centered medicine (PCM) signals an opportunity for a conversational pluralogue to replace parallel monologues between EBM and its critics, and the calls to EBM to debate its critics. This article draws upon elements of Habermas’s theory of communicative action in order to suggest the kind of (...) pluralogue that is required for stakeholders in modern medicine to benefit more from publicly conversing with each other than speaking alone or using debate to argue against each other. This reasoned perspective has lessons for all discourse when deep value-based and epistemological differences cannot be easily adjudicated. (shrink)

This philosophical essay is inspired by a four-year pedagogical relationship that continues in its altered form today. The main focus of this piece is the transformation of a mentor as an immediate addressee into mentor as a superaddressee, an influential third listener who oversees observable dialogues. I explore the mutual responsibilities of a student and a mentor in order to uncover the elements in the pedagogical chemistry responsible for the transformation of an addressee into a superaddressee. Confirmation (a perfect form (...) of understanding) of a student’s intellectual and moral uniqueness, incarnation of a particular value deemed desirable by a student, and education of a student into the dialogic ways of being on his or her own are the necessary ingredients of the process of becoming a superaddressee. Initially a mentor engages in the pedagogy of understanding whose ideal outcome is confirmation of a student’s intellectual and moral makeup. After the dialogue is over, a mentor often moves into the domain of inner speech from where he or she continues to offer perfect understanding, especially in the absence of such understanding from an immediate addressee. Two types of superaddressees are identified and their relationship with the invoking consciousness is explored. I conclude that becoming a superaddressee is the most generous pedagogical contribution to a student’s future: a mentor thus makes his or her voice available to a student’s inner dialogue, often without receiving anything in return. (shrink)

This work analyzes certain aspects of postmodernist thought in terms of the challenges it presents to the secular, radical democratic project to which the author subscribes. It is argued that much of postmodernist thought has been effective in attacking foundationalism, as well as supporting marginalized persons and ideas, but holds little promise with regard to building an integrative democratic community. Postmodernist radicalism has not usually been directed against capitalist power; therefore, it is not clear how this form of radicalism can (...) be useful to a project that is predicated upon the incompatibilities between capitalism and bona fide democracy. (shrink)

Some philosophers have become atheists because of “intellectual probity.” Martin Buber relates two occasions during which he advocated his view of the term “God” and rejected alternative perspectives. He never justified the basis for either his advocacy or his rejection, yet both play an important role in all his writing, especially his specific type of Zionism. Using what has been called the mere theism of William James’ “The Will to Believe” and the criteria for faith that James advances in that (...) essay illuminates both Buber’s general view of the divine and more particularly his Zionism. Once Buber, no less than James, is understood as a mere theist the basis of what he accepts and what he rejects as true religion becomes clearer. Buber’s theism meets James’ requirement of being a live, forced, momentous option and his Zionism also strives to meet those standards. (shrink)

If national education is, as Ilan Gur-Ze’ev thinks, inevitably a matter of agents for and victims of a national system, only a “counter-education” can correct it. Martin Buber shared many of Gur-Ze’ev’s concerns, but advocated a more positive view of national education. This essay examines Buber’s development of his pedagogical theory in its context, notes his influence on several educational models, investigates how his view of national education either continues or is ignored in the modern State of Israel, and shows (...) that his positive view draws not only on his “I-Thou” dialogical insight but also on his advocacy of a myth of Zion, a myth that provides an alternative not just to the dominant myths in Israel today but also to Gur-Ze’ev’s counter-education. (shrink)

In June 2008 the UK government, supported by the Royal College of Nursing, stated that nursing care would be measured for compassion. This paper considers the implications of this statement by critically examining the relationship of compassion to care from a variety of perspectives. It is argued that the current market-driven approaches to healthcare involve redefining care as a pale imitation, even parody, of the traditional approach of the nurse as “my brother’s keeper”. Attempts to measure such parody can only (...) measure artificial techniques and give rise to a McDonald’s-type nursing care rather than heartfelt care. The arguments of this paper, although applied to nursing, also apply to medicine and healthcare generally. (shrink)

Traditional Christian belief in the existence of human life after death within a transformed material universe should be capable of rational justification if one chooses carefully the philosophical scheme underlying those claims. One should not have to appeal simply to the power of a loving God to justify one's beliefs. A revision of Whitehead's metaphysical scheme is proposed that allows one to render these classical Christian beliefs at least plausible to a broad range of contemporary thinkers as a consequence of (...) a cosmology based on the principle of universal intersubjectivity and the need for a common ground between opposing subjectivities. (shrink)

In the field of business ethics, expositions of ethical theory have tended to focus on deontology and utilitarianism. More inclusive reviews of ethical theory tend to be historical and unsystematic. This paper approaches the task of representing the variety of ethical theories systematically. It does so by constructing a schema of possibilities in ethical theory which maps out six "voices", or theoretical positions, all of which are relevant and important for understanding ethics in business. This approach helps to account for (...) the continual presence of dilemmas and conflicts in ethics. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to contribute to a more robust theory of leadership that shifts the frame of reference from leadership as exclusively facilitated through a single inspired leader to one that includes the view of leadership as an emergent and complex social phenomenon. The article begins with a review of the leader-centric approaches that dominated much of twentieth century leadership studies then moves on to present contemporary critiques of leader-centric approaches leading to an alternative perspective of leadership (...) as an emergent and complex social phenomenon. Viewing leadership as an emergent and complex social phenomenon changes our attitude regarding the roles that leaders and others play in the creation of leadership. A central theme of this article is the impact that the concept of emergence has on leadership theory. In response to this changing attitude, the article then moves to return to and reassess the ontological, epistemological and ethical grounds of leadership and concludes that there is an underlying philosophy that supports viewing leadership as an emergent social phenomenon and further suggests that recent work in virtue epistemology along with Calvin Schrag’s theory of communicative praxis and transversal rationality, can facilitate a better understanding of leadership as an emergent social phenomenon. (shrink)

This paper proposes that contained within Martin Buber's works one can find useful support for, and insights into, an educational philosophy that stretches across, and incorporates, both the human and non-human worlds. Through a re-examination of his seminal essay Education2, and with reference to specific incidents in his autobiography (e.g. the horse, his family, the theatre and the tree) and to central tenets of his theology (e.g. the shekina, the Eternal Thou and teshuvah) we shall present a more coherent understanding (...) of Buber's notion of relationship which is developmental in nature and posits intrinsic, necessary and unavoidable relational ties to both the human and non-human worlds. This understanding of Buber's view of relationship as a developmental process will add new meaning to his central ideas of 'bursting asunder' the educational relationship and the educator who is cast 'in imitatio Dei absconditi sed non ignoti'.3 Ultimately this paper wants to suggest that, for Buber, the infant is unable to become fully adult without being immersed in relationship and then coming to full awareness of it, and it is the educator who can play a pivotal role in supporting the development of this adult relationality through encounters with both individual humans and the larger non-human world. (shrink)

This paper provides an analysis of Martin Buber’s not very well-known essay “Distance and Relation”, which is his most relevant contribution to philosophical anthropology. In the essay, which was published almost thirty years after the publication of his most famous book, I and Thou, Buber elaborated on the anthropological foundations of his cosmic vision of dialogical life. The central question is “How is man possible?” Buber’s answer is very important to the further development of his principle of dialogue in psychology (...) (primarily his notion of confirmation) and philosophy of art, but it is not quite clear how compatible it is with some of his earlier theses from I and Thou. In particular, the relation between “distance” and the I-It relation is unclear. There are two seemingly contradictory statements: “In the beginning is the relation” and “The primal distance is a presupposition of the relation”. The aim of this paper is to examine these anthropological foundations and to elucidate this apparent contradiction. (shrink)

I, along with others, have been critical of the social construction of brain death and the various social factors that led to redefining death from cardiopulmonary failure to irreversible loss of brain functioning, or brain death. Yet this does not mean that brain death is not the best threshold to permit organ harvesting—or, as people today prefer to call it, organ procurement. Here I defend whole-brain death as a morally legitimate line that, once crossed, is grounds for families to give (...) permission for organ donation. I do so in five moves. First, I make the case that whole-brain death is a social construction that transformed one thing, coma dépassé, into another thing, brain death, as a result of social pressures. Second, I explore the way that the 1981 President’s Commission tried to establish the epistemological certainty of brain death, hoping to avoid making arcane metaphysical claims and yet still utilizing metaphysical claims about human beings. Third, I explore the moral meaning of the social construction of a definition that cannot offer metaphysical certainty about the point at which somebody becomes just some body. Fourth, I describe how two moral communities—Jewish and Catholic—actually ground their metaphysical positions with regard to brain death in the normativity of prior social relations. Finally, I conclude with a reflection on the aesthetic-moral enterprise of the metaphysical-epistemological apparatus of brain death, concluding that only such an aesthetic-moral approach is sufficiently strong to stave off the utility-maximizing tendencies of late-modern Western cultures. (shrink)

In 2012, a provincial bill amended the Ontario Education Act to provide more focused measures to eliminate bullying on the basis of sexual orientation. Bill 13 specifically requires that students be allowed to establish gay-straight alliances (GSAs), including in the publicly-funded Catholic school system. The Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association responded by proposing an alternative policy, called “Respecting Difference,” on the grounds that GSAs run contrary to Catholic teaching. Respect is a complex ethical notion with a long philosophical history. Through (...) an overview of what philosophers from different traditions (including Kant, Buber, Levinas, Hegel, and Rawls) have said about respect, it becomes apparent that the kind of respect that is due to all persons requires recognition, or a willingness to accept the other as a self-identifying subject who is irreducible to my experience. In its discussion of LGBT students, the OCSTA fails to accord them such recognition, even while it emphasizes the meaning of difference. Consequently, there is reason to conclude that it does not truly respect sexual minority students and that it is not fully committed to eradicating homophobia-based bullying in the Catholic school system. “Respecting Difference” declines to heed best evidence about the factors that actually protect LGBT students from bullying, and uses the guidelines for “Respecting Difference” groups as an opportunity to reinforce its pathologization of LGBT identity itself. (shrink)

The translation of the Guru Granth Sahib (GGS), or Sikh ‘scripture’, within the discourse of (European) colonial/modernity was enacted by the use of hermeneutics—which oversaw the shift from the openness of praxis to the closure of representation and knowledge. Such a shift demoted certain indigenous interpretive frames, wherein the GGS is assumed to enunciate an excess that far transcends the foreign demand to fix the text’s ‘call’ into singular meanings (beyond time), but rather transforms the hermeneutic desire into a process (...) of learning (Sikhi) through multiple meanings (in time). Thus the GGS is not translated according to a particular life-world, but actively transforms the life-world of those that respond to its excessive call. How should hermeneutics be reformed in this case? If the GGS as text demands interpretation, then the text as Guru demands engagement, and together they would necessarily call forth a radicalization of hermeneutics via a certain poetic reticence to all philosophical messengers. (shrink)

Two major features of emotions are their personal, interested nature and the centrality of the self-other relation. There seems to be a built-in tension between the two: this is evident, for example, in negative emotions such as envy and hate, where one person has a significant negative attitude toward another. This tension is also obvious in positive emotions, such as schadenfreude, where an individual is pleased about the other’s misfortune. Such tension may even be greater in romantic love, where the (...) lover should give special attention and status to the beloved. The tension gains further momentum when we assume that self-fulfillment is an essential feature of romantic relationships. Indeed, it seems that in many low-quality romantic relations, the tension between self-fulfillment and the needs of the beloved is real and toxic. However, in enduring profound love, which involves the personal growth of each partner, self-fulfillment is not egoistic, and the tension drives mutual thriving. (shrink)

This article examines the concept of dialogue in the philosophy of Emmanuel Lévinas, with a focus on the context of education. Its aim is to create a conversation between the Lévinasian theory and the theories of other philosophers, especially Martin Buber, in an effort to highlight the ethical significance that Lévinas assigns to the act of dialogue itself. As a philosopher whose essential interest was trained on the infinite ethical responsibility of the human subject, Lévinas places major emphasis on the (...) ethical meaning of dialogue. On a more fundamental level, he considers the ethics that precede dialogue and enable it to exist, as well as the individual's acceptance of responsibility during dialogue stemming from his recognition of the alterity of the Other. (shrink)

At a certain time during the filming of Daki Menan I began to question my own readiness to make metaphor of the experience of others. I began, instead, to regard the literal words of the Temi-Augama Anishinaabe elders with whom I was working as accurate representations of what they thought, especially the way they thought about how the world worked. But if this move to literalism were justified, I had to acknowledge that what I thought to be the parameters of (...) being would change. This paper is about that change, as mediated through the concept of attentive receptivity. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the dialogical and creative character of pedagogic work by analyzing the affinities between Martin Buber's I-Thou relation and Lev Semenovich Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development. Backed up by empirical studies on the teacher-student relation, we understand that education can only result in students' development if meaningful processes are undertaken. The paper asserts that education shall primarily aim at promoting relational possibilities.