Praxis, Language, Dialogue Human engagement with the world develops and evolves into increasingly social, complex, and explicit modes. This essay examines the evolution of meaningful human engagement from simple embodied activity, to language-less social praxis, and then to praxis incorporating increasingly rich forms of linguistic action, culminating in theory. Each mode of meaningful engagement creates a space in which new modes of meaning can develop. These new ways of experiencing, acting, and communicating create their own meaning contexts, which provide the (...) settings for the further evolution of humans' phenomenological, hermeneutic, and practical involvements. Each mode of meaning gives rise to its successors, allowing humans to acquire new powers to understand and manipulate their environments and each other. This increase and refinement of human power raises ethical issues that we address using the Gadamerian concept of dialogue. (shrink)

Discourse on Method part 3 offers une morale par provision, usually translated as ‘a provisional moral code’. Occasionally it has been questioned that this code is temporary and restricted to those engaged in pure inquiry. We argue that Descartes intends the moral code to be his final ethical position universally applicable. Since the moral code is ‘derived from’ the rules of method, it should have their permanence, holding for the time pure inquiry commences and when it completes the sciences. Moreover, (...) the four moral maxims replace the classical cardinal virtues. Thus they are meant to govern the lives of all persons. (shrink)

Schumpeter took a dim view of the deliberative capacities of the average voter who, he believed, could not be relied upon to make responsible judgements about distant and rather abstract matters of...

Contemporary poststructural and hermeneutical theories emphasize the prereflective opacity of the self and the consequent inarticulateness concerning the deep prereflective layers (‘prejudices’) of self-understanding. Some of such ontologically significant prejudices, some hermeneutical views hold, are inescapable and so the self cannot reflectively refuse or overcome them. This paper proposes the Hegelian notion of self-consciousness in the Phenomenology as the restless, unreflective–reflective negation of its own nothingness or contingent, open givenness as an alternative that both accepts the hermeneutical insight concerning the (...) deep prereflective layers of self-understanding and rejects the inescapability of ontologically significant ‘prejudices’. Hegelian self-consciousness is minimally reflective, even though it is intertwined with its prereflective, ritualistic basis and its historical situatedness. The paper depicts the reflective dimension of the prereflectively grounded Hegelian self by explicating the meaning of the Phenomenology’s conception of Bildung as ‘cultural participation’. The self that is continuously remade through its dialectical relation (cultural participation) to the social substance or Spirit is minimally reflective in the sense that it sees itself reflected or externalized in the world of its engagement, and because it inserts its own conception upon the world by participating in it. This reconceptualization of the dialectic between self and social substance, thus, escapes overemphasizing the prereflective layers of the self’s hermeneutical background without falling back on the Cartesian deworlded self of reflection and thought. (shrink)

An Irish surrogacy case from 2013 illustrates how negotiations of the mother’s identity in a given national and legal context are drawing on novel scientific perspectives, at a time when the use of new biotechnological possibilities is becoming more widespread and commonplace. The Roman dictum, ‘Mater Semper Certa Est’ is contested by the finding of this Irish court, in which the judge made a declaration of parentage stating that the genetic parents of twins born using a surrogate were the parents. (...) This article critically examines the normative background assumptions involved in this ruling. It will argue that the particular deployment of arguments from genetics and epigenetics in this court case produces a naturalization of the mother’s identity that is inherently reductive. A second surrogacy case is also examined, this time regarding the rights of a woman of Irish nationality to receive paid maternity leave or paid leave similar to adoptive leave after the birth of her daughter to a surrogate mother in the US state of California. This case, which was brought to the Equality Tribunal in Ireland and decided by the Court of Justice of the European Union, is used to illustrate the possible ramifications of conflicting definitions of motherhood in the legal system. In concluding, this article argues for the development and deployment of a more complex understanding of the evolving state of motherhood within the courts, in keeping with developments in the IVF industry and the various new mother-relations it makes possible. (shrink)

An inescapable feature of human growth is the toll in lives, including non-human ones, that occurs through the imperfect management of the institutions and technologies we develop. The histories of colonial and economic expansion, along with those of transportation, communications and political institutions, to name a few areas in man's recent growth, are replete with examples of violence, destruction and chapters of human suffering: part of the price for growing complexity. Since the increasing ability to engage in violence can be (...) considered a manifestation of this human growth, then it becomes equally important to examine the phenomena of violence alongside other phenomena of human growth. (shrink)

Hermeneutic rationality arises from the idea that experience is a cumulative process, in which differences are not eliminated but preserved. The universality which derives from this process is an “intensional universality”, which follows a law of direct proportionality between extension and intension: the more an educated individual enriches her experiences, the more she is able to universalize her understanding of others. Experience is then inevitably open and never closed, that is, free for other experiences. If we use the word “domain” (...) to describe the condition of a closed and predetermined system or ontology, the entities of which are pre-assumed, we can therefore call this open universality a “universality without domain”.This description of hermeneutical experience leads to a question about its logical and ontological presuppositions. In the second part of the paper I refer to a particular practice which is central for hermeneutical theory in order to show how I understand these presuppositions: the practice of translation. In translation we experience the impossibility of rendering completely the sense of the source language in a target language, that is, we experience a difference which cannot be suppressed. I compare this experience to the discovery of the incommensurable magnitudes in ancient Greek mathematics, a discovery that shook Parmenidean and Pythagorean ontology: in my opinion, philosophical hermeneutics more or less implicitly develops the consequences of this incredible discovery, which marks the passage to a differential, comparative and integrative rationality and ontology. (shrink)

In contemporary philosophy and psychology there is an ongoing debate around the concept of theory of mind. Theory of mind concerns our ability to understand another person. The two approaches that dominate the debate are “Theory Theory” (TT) and “Simulation Theory” (ST). This paper explores the connection between theory of mind and hermeneutics. Although both speak of the nature of understanding, and the way we gain and organize our knowledge of others, certain aspects of Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics reflect a theory approach, (...) long before TT itself was developed. In contrast, Dilthey’s hermeneutics reflects a simulation approach. In contrast to both of these approaches, I propose a contextual theory, as a parallel to Gadamer’s work in hermeneutics, and as a view that offers the basis for an important critique of both TT and ST. (shrink)

The paper presents an innovative approach to teaching philosophy, which the authors name as a comicsophy approach to teaching philosophy. Such creative application of comics in the teaching of philosophy fully corresponds to the skandalonic and dialogical character of philosophy itself. The methodical value of using comics in philosophy teaching is manifested exactly in comics’ distinctly skandalonic character. The skandalon is a methodical process that seeks to provoke students' curiosity by questioning something that otherwise seemed unquestionable, self-evident, to present it (...) in a new light, in order to make it the subject of critical questioning and reflection. Given the visuality of the comics, its fun and root in popular culture, it is an excellent motivational tool for philosophical reflection and understanding of reality, philosophical issues, ideas and concepts in teaching philosophy. By introducing comics as recognizable products of pop culture close to students' reading interest and experience in teaching philosophy, it is easier for them to connect what they learn in school with real life, ie to apply what they have learned in everyday life situations. Comics can be used as a source of information, a form of learning new content, as well as a basis for encouraging dialog and discussion in the classroom. Also, students can individually or in pairs/groups create comics on specific philosophical topics, thus developing creative, critical and collaborative thinking. The paper presents specific criteria for evaluating comics on philosophical issues that students create in philosophy classes. (shrink)

The paper contrasts understandings of knowledge grounded in Enlightenment norms with the departures from those norms taken by some strands of feminism and hermeneutics, as well as the contributions made by the writing of Michel Foucault. A reading of Foucault's writings on knowledge, power and the discursive constitution of self and world is offered as a potentially useful frame within which to raise questions about nursing, nurses and knowledge.

This essay will discuss the need for the humanities to address visual culture studies as part of its interdisciplinary mission in today's university. Although mostly unnoticed in recent debates in the humanities over historical and theoretical frameworks, the relatively new field of visual culture has emerged as a corrective to a growing disciplinary territorialism on the part of art history. A study of the theoretical purview of visual culture reveals that it in truth encompasses a continuation of art history's initial (...) interdisciplinary humanist project of cultural critique initiated by Aby Warburg and Erwin Panofsky. This article will argue that art history's inability to fully appreciate visual culture's relevance in today's research and pedagogical settings has given the humanities the opportunity to address a field which is rooted in the humanities' project of interdisciplinary inquiry. (shrink)

Wilfred Carr; What is an Educational Practice?, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 21, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 163–175, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.14.

The aim of this article is to present re-enactment interviewing and to propose that it can be used to reveal tacit caring knowledge. This approach generates knowledge not readily attainable by other research methods, which we demonstrate by analysing the epistemological and methodological underpinnings of re-enactment interviewing. We also give examples from a study where re-enactment was used. As tacit knowledge is often characteristic of care, re-enactment interviewing has the potential to engage the informant in a holistic mode and thereby (...) reveal wisdom of the body. When the care provider recalls an event, the details are articulated, which contributes to in-depth data, which subsequently serves as a basis for trustworthy analysis. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to present re‐enactment interviewing and to propose that it can be used to reveal tacit caring knowledge. This approach generates knowledge not readily attainable by other research methods, which we demonstrate by analysing the epistemological and methodological underpinnings of re‐enactment interviewing. We also give examples from a study where re‐enactment was used. As tacit knowledge is often characteristic of care, re‐enactment interviewing has the potential to engage the informant in a holistic mode and thereby (...) reveal wisdom of the body. When the care provider recalls an event, the details are articulated, which contributes to in‐depth data, which subsequently serves as a basis for trustworthy analysis. (shrink)

The modern West has vigorously sought to overcome death, or at the very least minimize the suffering that it entails. Whereas the former has been predominantly pursued through modern scientific medicine, the minimization of the adversity of death and dying has been sought through ‘death technologies’. This technologization of death is analyzed in light of Martin Heidegger’s phenomenological philosophy. The analysis begins with an outline of the fundamental tenets of Heidegger’s ‘philosophy of Being’. In turn, his philosophical framework is utilized (...) to highlight the manner in which the technologization of dying serves to conceal the central existential questions about being and finitude that dying gives rise to. The paper concludes with a discussion of how Heidegger’s work can inspire a more authentic stance toward dying. Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych is referred to in order to illustrate Heidegger’s construal of this existential struggle toward dying. (shrink)

Accepted standards of parental decisional autonomy and child best interests do not address adequately the complex moral problems involved in the care of critically ill children. A growing body of moral discourse is calling for the recognition of `tragedy' in selected human problems. A tragic dilemma is an irresolvable dilemma with forced terrible alternatives, where even the virtuous agent inescapably emerges with `dirty hands'. The shift in moral framework described here recognizes that the form of conduct called for by tragic (...) dilemmas is the practice of phronesis. The phronetic agent has acquired a capacity to discern good agency in tragic circumstances. This discernment is practiced through the artful creation of moral narratives: stories that convey that which is morally meaningful in a particular situation; that is, stories that are `meaning making'. The phronetic agent addresses tragic dilemmas involving children as a narrator of contextualized temporal embodied human (counter)stories. (shrink)

The author reflects upon her role as a public health nurse striving to attain practice authenticity. Client assessment and nursing interventions were seemingly sufficient until she became curious about ‘Who is this person sitting across from me?’ and ‘What are her experiences in the world as a lone parent living in poverty at the margins of society?’ The author begins to think that she could shift from mere client investigation to pure wonderment about the Other by imagining herself as a (...) researcher, an explorer of another's life world. Ultimately this process enables her to enhance the ‘caring’ in her practice with the knowledge gained of the perceptions and meanings impoverished clients assigned to their everyday lives. Jurgen Habermas’ theory of communicative competence serves as the reference map guiding exploration. The author uses Habermas’ theoretical principles of intersubjective mutuality – the validity claims of comprehensibility, truth, sincerity, and legitimacy. Comprehensibility embodies understanding, an attitude of unconditional acceptance, and care respect of another's individual person and self‐defined reality. Intersubjective mutuality also requires that one dwell in the moment with the Other, satisfied that communication is founded on truth. Sincerity implies fostering the Other's expression of authentic self apart from oppressive distracters. Lastly, legitimacy reconciles the author's altruistic pursuit to know the Other's ontological truth with the reality of the present world. (shrink)

Modern thought typically opposes the authority of tradition in the name of universal reason. Postmodernism begins with the insight that the sociohistorical context of tradition and its authority is inevitable, even in modernity. Modernity can no longer take itself for granted when it recognizes itself as a tradition that is opposed to traditions. The left-wing postmodernist response to this insight is to conclude that because tradition is inevitable, irrationality is inevitable. The right-wing postmodernist response is to see traditions as the (...) home of diverse forms of rationality. This requires an understanding of the Socratic, self-critical aspect of intellectual traditions, which include both modern sciences and the great world religions. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to examine the role of methodology in action research. It begins by showing how, as a form of inquiry concerned with the development of practice, action research is nothing other than a modern 20th century manifestation of the pre‐modern tradition of practical philosophy. It then draws in Gadamer's powerful vindication of the contemporary relevance of practical philosophy in order to show how, by embracing the idea of ‘methodology’, action research functions to sustain a distorted (...) understanding of what practice is. The paper concludes by outlining a non‐methodological view of action research whose chief task is to promote the kind of historical self‐consciousness that the development of practice presupposes and requires. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to examine the role of methodology in action research. It begins by showing how, as a form of inquiry concerned with the development of practice, action research is nothing other than a modern 20th century manifestation of the pre-modern tradition of practical philosophy. It then draws in Gadamer’s powerful vindication of the contemporary relevance of practical philosophy in order to show how, by embracing the idea of ‘methodology’, action research functions to sustain a distorted (...) understanding of what practice is. The paper concludes by outlining a non-methodological view of action research whose chief task is to promote the kind of historical self-consciousness that the development of practice presupposes and requires. (shrink)

Background:A growing number of frameworks for the practice of clinical ethics are described in the literature. Among these, hermeneutical frameworks have helped highlight the interpretive and contextual nature of clinical ethics practice.Objectives:The aim of this article is to further advance this body of work by drawing on the ideas of Charles Taylor, a leading hermeneutical philosopher.Design/Findings:A Hermeneutical Rapprochement Framework is presented for clinical ethics practice, based on Taylor’s hermeneutical “retrieval” and “rapprochement.” This builds on existing hermeneutical approaches for the practice (...) of clinical ethics by articulating a framework with interpretive and reconciliatory scope that extends beyond the presenting “local” context. A Hermeneutical Rapprochement Framework considers broader socio-historical horizons and imaginaries grounded on Taylor’s expansive work in epistemological, ontological, political, and moral philosophy.Discussion:The framework is discussed in terms of how it can be operationalized for clinical practice as well as normative development. Implications for the educational preparation of clinical ethicists are also discussed. Although this work is directly relevant for clinical ethicists, it can also help inform the ethical practice of all clinicians. (shrink)

Since the wide corpus of Chan 禪 literature includes a significant number and a consistent variety of ironic features such as puns, wordplay, extravagant acts, and so forth, a clarification of the role and functions of irony is especially relevant to this framework. The idea of the present essay is that irony works in Chan Buddhism as a functional strategy purposely employed in textual compositions and oral communication. Analysing the Blue Cliff Record, one of the most influential and significant texts (...) in the history of East Asian Buddhism, I individuated three functions of irony that clarify its role in the wider context of Chan rhetoric. Specifically, these functions consist in performing a rhetoric of self-desecration, inducing amusement, and instilling doubt. Upon defining the notion of irony, the current essay expounds on these functions with reference to the text, then the role of irony in the Blue Cliff Record is finally identified as a hermeneutic device. (shrink)

The significance of critical phenomenology for psychiatric praxis has yet to be expounded. In this paper, I argue that the adoption of a critical phenomenological stance can remedy localised instances of hermeneutical injustice, which may arise in the encounter between clinicians and patients with psychosis. In this context, what is communicated is often deemed to lack meaning or to be difficult to understand. While a degree of un-shareability is inherent to subjective life, I argue that issues of unintelligibility can be (...) addressed by shifting from individualistic conceptions of understanding to an interactionist view. This takes into account the contextual, historical and relational background within which meaning is co-constituted. I conclude by providing a corrective for hermeneutical injustice, which entails a specific attentiveness towards the person’s subjectivity, a careful sensitivity to contingent meaning-generating structures, and a degree of hermeneutical flexibility as an attitude of openness towards alternative horizons of possibility. (shrink)

The author develops the concept of communicative equality based on Habermas’ theory of communicative action aimed at understanding. Linguistic interaction presupposes communicative equality as a priori condition of mutual understanding. It raises the critical issue of a role and place of misunderstanding and disagreement that we can meet in everyday communication. Following Rancir’s examination of disagreement the author is tracing sensible perception of social inequality by a part of communicators, as well as the emergence of political disagreement as its consequence. (...) The main part of the article devotes to realization of a conflict produced by speaking beings’ equality and experiencing inequality of distribution of parts of the common good. The author analyses Rancir’s innovative interpretation of concepts of politics, the politics of aesthetics, the police, the wrong, and new reading Aristotle’s and Plato’s notion of blaberon. The double logic of communication as both equality in mutual understanding and as the class struggle for social equality is shown, followed Ranciеr, on the example of historian and philoso- pher Ballanche, who in the early 19th century direct compared events of the French Revolution and the secession of Roman plebeians on Aventine Hill. The critics of Habermas’ theory of discursive rationality occupy the particular place of the article. His model of communication rejects an active role of the third person, i.e., the observer’s position in communicative actions oriented towards understanding. But addressing to other historical example of both the theorist-observer and one of Ukrainian revolution 1917–1921 leaders, writer Volodymyr Vynnychenko assists to clarify the meaning of “the third person” in communicative formation of a new political and cultural community. Finally, referring to Schmitt’s concept of the political as the existential conflict of recognition or negation of an opponent’s way of existence allows for a conclusion that studying existential dimension of communication can add to analysis of communication. (shrink)

This paper comments on ‘Critique and Negativity: Towards the Pluralisation of Critique in Educational Practice, Theory and Research’ by Dietrich Benner and Andrea English. Negativity is a disquieting ghost for teachers, educational researchers, administrators and other professionals of this field, including those involved in the design of policy. First, I make some remarks in response to the essay by Benner and English in order to draw attention to the importance of dealing with negativity. Second, I introduce a further problematisation of (...) negativity: I deal with the practical issues that emerge from the conceptual reactivation of negativity and the possible consequences that result from this in the context of teaching graduate seminars. I am especially concerned with the ways in which negativity is inscribed in the process of knowledge production (that is, research), and in the possible consequences of subscribing to one or the other concept of negativity (teleological negativity, parasitic negativity, and relational negativity as the sine qua non condition for any ontology). Lastly, I raise some points for discussion with regard to certain possible consequences of the use of one or another notion of negativity in teaching and research. (shrink)

This paper comments on ‘Critique and Negativity: Towards the Pluralisation of Critique in Educational Practice, Theory and Research’ by Dietrich Benner and Andrea English. Negativity is a disquieting ghost for teachers, educational researchers, administrators and other professionals of this field, including those involved in the design of policy. First, I make some remarks in response to the essay by Benner and English in order to draw attention to the importance of dealing with negativity. Second, I introduce a further problematisation of (...) negativity: I deal with the practical issues that emerge from the conceptual reactivation of negativity and the possible consequences that result from this in the context of teaching graduate seminars. I am especially concerned with the ways in which negativity is inscribed in the process of knowledge production (that is, research), and in the possible consequences of subscribing to one or the other concept of negativity (teleological negativity, parasitic negativity, and relational negativity as the sine qua non condition for any ontology). Lastly, I raise some points for discussion with regard to certain possible consequences of the use of one or another notion of negativity in teaching and research. (shrink)

In this paper, we will explore how Albert Camus has much to offer philosophers of education. Although a number of educationalists have attempted to explicate the educational implications of Camus’ literary works, these analyses have not attempted to extrapolate pedagogical guidelines towards developing an educational framework for children’s philosophical practice in the way Matthew Lipman did from John Dewey’s philosophy of education, which informed his philosophy for children curriculum and pedagogy. We focus on the phenomenology of inquiry; that is, inquiry (...) that begins with genuinely felt doubt, pointing to a problematic to which the inquirer seeks a solution or resolution. We argue that the central purpose of education is to develop lucid individuals. To this end, we concentrate on Dewey and the pragmatist tradition, starting from Peirce, leading to Lipman’s development of Dewey’s educational guidelines into classroom practice. We show where Camus and the pragmatists are congruent in their thinking, insofar as they can inform the educative process of the community of inquiry. What we conclude is that the role of the teacher is to develop lucid individuals facilitated in a classroom that is transformed into a community of inquiry embedded in contemporary historical moments. (shrink)

This essay, published originally in 2002, is reprinted in “Contextualism—The Next Generation: Symposium on the Future of a Methodology,” because of its impact on the thinking that informs and has led to this new symposium. Burke's argument is that the term context has become “an intellectual slogan or shibboleth” and that “there is a price to pay” for its “more and more frequent use... in a number of disciplines—among them, anthropology, archaeology, art history, geography, intellectual history, law, linguistics, literary criticism, (...) philosophy, politics, psychology, sociology, and theology.” A brief history of the uses of the term and its cognates in these disciplines is provided, along with an examination of “recent interest in the phenomenology of recontextualism or ‘reframing,’” which “depends on agency, creativity, and the power to adapt” and which, indeed, almost defines what is meant by “originality, innovation, invention, or creativity.” The essay concludes that context ought to be used mainly in the plural to indicate that no topic is properly interpretable in any single framework. (shrink)

This essay offers resources for the development of visual ethics by exploring Islamic fashion-veiling in one context: contemporary Indonesia. After providing a methodological framework and historical background for the case study, the moral discourse of two aesthetic authorities is discussed via a fashion blogger and print advice literature. The essay identifies how the practice of fashion-veiling generates norms, what is defined as morally valuable in this practice and why, and how this practice both offers opportunities for the critique and the (...) reinforcement of gendered norms. (shrink)

In this article I argue against the view, recently espoused by several authors, that the `incommensurability of values' and `political pespectivism' offer us decisive reasons as to why we should break the link between representation and (the quest for) unity. I hold that it is of paramount importance to retain this essential link. Since Sir Isaiah Berlin has played a major (and in my view unfortunate) role in linking `politics as the quest for unity and the common good' with the (...) `totalitarian temptation', I proceed to show how it is possible to have an understanding of politics as precisely such a quest, but without succumbing to the temptation to totalitarianism that Berlin alerts us to. I then take issue with Chantal Mouffe's view that the tendency to antagonism, rather than the quest for unity and rational consensus, is `the essence of the political'. (shrink)

In his book, A Theory of Truces, Nir Eisikovits offers a perceptive and timely ethics of truces based on the claim that we need to reject the ‘false dichotomy between the ideas of war and peace’ underpinning much current thought about conflict and conflict resolution. In this article, I concur that truces and ‘truce thinking’ should be a focus of concern for any political theory wishing to address the realities of war. However, Eisikovits’s account, to be convincing, requires engagement with (...) a tradition of thought figuring only marginally in his reflections on truces, that is, just war theory. I argue this for three reasons. Without incorporation of the just war principles that should inform the decisions to enter conflict, to maintain conflict, and to cease conflict, any theory of truces will be, first, normatively inadequate, failing to provide us with requisite direction, and, second, open to the charge of permitting intolerable injustices, a charge Eisikovits wishes to avoid. Third, engagement with just war theory is important for arriving at a nuanced understanding of peacemaking, one which grants truces their place in our deliberations and spurns simplistic ‘war versus peace’ binaries whilst keeping more ambitious ideals of peace firmly in sight. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to show how teachers’ experiences of one dimension of enjoyment of work, namely joy as a subtle atmosphere, can be described and understood from a lifeworld perspective. The lifeworld phenomenological approach contributes to the whole research design and provides the concepts that form the theoretical basis for the analysis. The specific lifeworld concepts used are ‘intertwinement’, ‘natural attitude’, ‘pre-predicativity’, ‘intentionality’ and ‘intersubjectivity’. Using these concepts, the results illuminate and describe the meanings of enjoyment of (...) work, based on what the teachers expressed in interviews. The empirical study consisted of interviews with five teachers working with pupils aged seven to nine years. The results illuminate some vital and fundamental characteristics of teachers’ experiences of enjoyment of work and its significance. These characteristics include its basic function and its inherent possibility for opening up the whole classroom situation to the teachers. In this sense, enjoyment of work is similar to standing in a doorway and involves an expectant foreshadowing. The study also found that teachers’ experiences of joy are intertwined with their experiences of flow and control. The results found that enjoyment of work was significant in the sense of the confirmation of good work, like a receipt. Finally, the results revealed new concepts and metaphors for a richer understanding of this phenomenon. The research implications of the study illustrate how the lifeworld approach enables a deeper understanding of emotional dimensions in teachers work. The approach provides useful concepts that broaden the understanding of the content, function and meaning of teachers’ experiences of enjoyment of work. The paper also points to the need for more research in this area. The results illuminate new and different aspects of teachers’ work that may be a valuable resource in this profession. (shrink)

This paper revolves around the question of how we can phenomenologically interpret the application of the mirror metaphor to intersubjectivity. To answer this question, we must first clarify the phenomenon of the mirror itself, and specifically its function and how the objects it reflects appear, as well as the modes of self- and other-relations that it makes possible. We can compare these properties with the characteristics of intersubjectivity in order to find out how sound or significant the mirror metaphor is (...) here. Our goal then is not to show whether the mirror metaphor is a ‘correct’ or ‘false’ descriptive determination of intersubjectivity. Redeeming the metaphor in the phenomenological sense would require that we elucidate which aspects of the mirror phenomenon permit an analogy with the Other and which do not. If the metaphor were to conform perfectly with the analogy, and if one could transform it into a verifiable and complete description, it would no longer be a metaphor. In other words, metaphors live by the dialectic of their resolvable and irresolvable descriptive elements. We must preserve this tension in our phenomenological analysis while bracketing any overarching assessments of the metaphor. Only when we have worked out the individual aspects of the core of the matter, can we examine the adequacy of its application to the sphere of intersubjectivity. In the following, then, our task is a critique of the metaphor, in the sense of unpacking its specific phenomenal features, on the basis of which we may then discuss whether or not we can carry out a metaphorical translation of those features. Indeed, even though the metaphor is such a prominent one, the paper demonstrates its limitations when it comes to determining social relations. (shrink)

The increased influence of neoliberalism in education has allowed the trend of evidence-based teaching to dominate professional development in many Western countries. Despite increased and persistent neoliberal measures in education, education critics argue that neoliberal reforms have a naive view of teaching. This narrowed neoliberal view both ignores the complexities involved in the everyday interaction between teacher and student and constrains the teacher’s judgement thereby limiting their contribution in the educational process. Many educators will note the significance of reflection in (...) learning as essential and often emotional. However, the emotional experiences embedded in teacher reflections are often ignored, even discounted, in the discussion of teachers’ professional development. Investigating this phenomenon of emotions in teacher reflections, analysed by drawing on lifeworld theory, revealed how emotional experiences can be a resource in teachers’ professional development. To acknowledge teachers’ emotional experiences means recognizing that the teacher’s subjective and lived body is involved in the reflective and learning process of becoming professional. (shrink)

It is accepted that research should be systematically examined to judge its trustworthiness and value in a particular context. No such appraisal is required of reports published by organizations that have possibly even greater influence on policy that affects the public. This paper explores a philosophical framework for appraising reports. It gives the reasons why informed engagement is important, drawing on Popper's concept of the open society, and it suggests a method for appraisal. Gadamer's concept of the two horizons and (...) Jauss's reception theory offer a methodological framework to enable the individual citizen, whether professional or lay, to engage in debate about policy that affects him or her. By way of a worked example, the framework is applied to two international reports on nursing. Conclusions suggest that nursing policy should be subjected to robust interrogatory appraisal by both profession and public for a democratic debate and creative discourse. Although this analysis is related to international nursing policy, it has a wider relevance and application beyond nursing. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

In 2012, chief nursing officers (CNO) in England published a policy on compassion in response to serious criticisms of patients’ care. Because their objective is fundamentally to shape nursing, this study argues, following Popper, that the policy should be analysed. An appraisal tool, developed from Popper, Gadamer, Jauss and Thiselton, is the framework for this analysis. The CNO policy document identified six values and behaviours, termed ‘6Cs’, required by all nurses, midwives and care staff. The document contains no data, references (...) or acknowledgements, but is similar to the 6Cs defined by the Canadian nursing nun, Sister M. Simone Roach, in her theory of caring published 30 years earlier. Roach considered caring and the components of it, including compassion, to be moral virtues, an inner motivation to care. This study suggests that without explicit reference to Roach's ideas, and her underlying theoretical base, the CNO requirement has the effect of turning virtues into commodities and a form of external control, described by Ritzer as a McDonaldized dehumanization. This study, which has international relevance beyond England and the UK, suggests that the CNO revise their policy by acknowledging Roach's 6Cs and openly discuss the implications of her work for their policy. (shrink)

Excessive alcohol consumption can have adverse effects on health, and patients who suffer from alcohol use disorders are subject to much stigmatization. Nurses are often the first point of contact when patients enter the acute medical unit, and it is pivotal that this contact establishes the basis for future collaboration. The aim of this study is to elucidate nurses’ lived experience of providing care to patients suffering from alcohol use disorders. This present study has a qualitative research design, anchored in (...) phenomenological and hermeneutical methodology as described in reflective lifeworld research. Ten in‐depth, open‐ended interviews with nurses working in an acute medical unit were conducted. The analysis showed that providing care to patients suffering from alcohol use disorders was a highly complex task to accomplish. This required the nurse to engage with the patient in a sensitive cooperation in order to be dealing with the intricacy of the patient's life situation and balancing care between standardized procedures and the complexity of the patients. Further, a two‐sided feeling of responsibility emerged: a professional responsibility and a personal responsibility causing the provision of care as being caught between feelings of despondency and resignation. Nurses lack opportunities for being creative in determining how to provide care; instead, patients' perspectives of well‐being should be taken into account and should guide the provision of a meaningful care. Nurses must call for opportunities to deviate from the firmly established procedures restraining the care of this population. (shrink)

This paper addresses the problem of reflexivity in modern social inquiry in general and in sociology in particular. This problem is inherited from Weber''s very conception of sociology, is transformed by phenomenology and ethnomethodology, deepened by the linguistic turn of hermeneutics and Wittgenstein''s later philosophy, and has been the central concern of the work of Alan Blum and Peter McHugh. The issues and spectres raised by reflexivity are methodological arbitrariness, the need to take responsibility for one''s own talk (and the (...) cultural assumptions embedded in talk) and, finally, the deep fear of nihilism – the sense that with regard to inquiry (along with everything else in the world) nothing matters. As such, reflexivity raises the most fundamental issue that can be raised for modern social inquiry. Through an oriented interpretation of the work of Blum and McHugh and other contemporary social theorists (particularly Gadamer and Arendt), this paper works through what a dialectical engagement with these issues look like. (shrink)

Although research on epistemic injustice has focused on the effects of prejudice in epistemic exchanges, the account of prejudice that emerges in Fricker’s (2007) view is not completely clear. In particular, I claim that the epistemic role of prejudice in the structure of testimonial justification is still in need of a satisfactory explanation. What special epistemic power does prejudice exercise that prevents the speaker’s words from constituting evidence for the hearer’s belief? By clarifying this point, it will be possible to (...) address two more general issues concerning the nature of prejudice: its resistance to counterevidence and the steps involved in overcoming prejudice. I propose a hinge account of prejudice, based on the recent perspective of hinge epistemology, to help clarify these aspects. According to the hinge account, prejudices share a fundamental feature with hinges: they work as norms of evidential significance, and as such, they determine what can and cannot count as evidence for belief. (shrink)

This paper takes the passing of Peter McHugh as an occasion to examine the intellectual development of his work. The paper is mainly focused on the product of his collaboration with his colleague and friend, Alan Blum. As such, it addresses the tradition of social inquiry, Analysis, which they cofounded. It traces the influence of Harold Garfinkel’s Ethnomethodology on McHugh and on the beginning of Analysis. The collaboration with Blum is examined through a variety of coauthored works but most especially (...) in the two books On the Beginning of Social Inquiry (1974) and Self Reflection in the Arts and Sciences (1984). It also examines the relation of his independent writing before 1974, and since 1984 to the expression of the tradition of inquiry as exemplified in those two texts. The paper builds on some interview material with Peter McHugh and reflects on the influence of Peter the teacher as well as the theorist McHugh. Most especially, through its engagement with this material, it seeks to exemplify the dialectic and living nature of the program called Analysis. (shrink)

In the Crito, a dialogue that is highly influential for the traditions both of philosophy and of political thinking, Socrates resists the pleading of his friend Crito to escape the city that has condemned him. For Arendt, the dialogue instantiates the separation between humans as thinking beings and humans as acting beings, and so between political theory and philosophy. For others, the dialogue shows Socrates’ reasoning to be self-contradictory. Socrates’ introduction of the Athenian Laws as a world of greater moral (...) force than the empirical Athens of Crito’s appeal aims to ground principled action. Yet, there are many competing principles that, interpretively speaking, have been understood as validated by this dialogue. Is there any necessary or analytic principle that can be articulated and, if so, what are the grounds of such? Drawing on the theory and methods of Blum and McHugh’s analysis and Gadamer’s hermeneutics, this article seeks to demonstrate that practical action needs to be understood in an analytic context to grasp fully its ethical and political implications. Along the way, reference will be made to Garfinkel’s articulation of members’ methods for discovering agreements and Arendt’s articulation of the common world that the conversation among friends sustains. (shrink)