Critical thinking, considered as a version of informallogic, must consider emotions and personal attitudesin assessing assertions and conclusions in anyanalysis of discourse. It must therefore presupposesome notion of the self. Critical theory may be seenas providing a substantive and non-neutral positionfor the exercise of critical thinking. It thereforemust presuppose some notion of the self. This paperargues for a Foucauldean position on the self toextend critical theory and provide a particularposition on the self for critical thinking. Thisposition on the self is (...) developed from moretraditional accounts of the self from Descartes toSchopenhauer, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Do psychological perspectives constitute the only way through which the role of musical creativity in education can be addressed, researched and theorised? This essay attempts to offer an alternative view of musical creativity as a deeply social and political form of human praxis, by proposing a perspective rooted in the thought of the political philosopher and activist Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–1997). This is done in two steps. First, an attempt is made to place the pursuit of the concept of musical creativity (...) within a larger educational and societal context of conflicting trajectories that run through (a) Modernity and (b) Education. Then, I revisit the issue of educational value of improvising and composing through creating conceptual links between the process of music-making through improvisation and composition and the project of political autonomy as conceived by Castoriadis. By foregrounding instituting imaginary over instituted imaginary, improvising and composing become active processes of positing new legitimacies, and of creating a music-making context that searches for its own foundations. It is in and through creative musical praxis that we can think about issues of hierarchies, musical values, social dimensions of different music-making processes, our relationship to past values and to historical dimensions of music. By arguing that improvisation and composition might be seen as ways of positing the issue of political autonomy in musical terms, this paper emphasises the role of improvisation and composition as a mode of potentially transformative educational practice that may foster the development of critical consciousness, linking music education to a larger project of re-discovering and at the same time re-defining democracy. (shrink)

(1997). Education and the philosophy of the subject (or constitution of self) Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. v-xi. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.1997.tb00523.x.

In this paper the authors take up James Marshall's work on the individual and autonomy. Their suggestion is that although the liberal notion of the autonomous individual might give us a standard of reference for the freedom of persons, the liberal tradition also circumscribes that freedom by prescribing it both as an attribute of persons and as a necessity for persons to exercise, in the form of choice, even though the range of choice is in fact limited. Starting from an (...) account of James Marshall and Colin Lankshear's respective work on the nature of the individual, and using Heidegger, Nietzsche, Merleau‐Ponty and others, they reintegrate the individual into society as it were, and finally, search for means of escape from the determinism of ‘governmentality’. Drawing on notions such as ‘technologies of the self’, hysteria and excess, integration of body and mind, individual and environment, subject and object, they describe the difficult, hesitant work of bringing existing parameters of thought and behaviour into consciousness. Some consequences for the relations of teachers and students within the school context are suggested. (shrink)

Michael A. PetersBeijing Normal UniversityMy deepest condolences to Pepe, Dom and Marcus and to Jim’s grandchildren. Tina and I spent a lot of time at the Marshall family home, often attending dinn...

The term ‘knowledge economy’, like the term ‘globalisation’, has become a catchword in political and educational debate over the last decade or so, especially in debates upon educational policy where the role of education in preparing young people to take their part in the Knowledge Economy is often seen as paramount over other traditional schooling activities. It is said in such debates that the production of knowledge, information and skills, will become more valuable than traditional primary and secondary production. A (...) lot is said about the knowledge required in the Knowledge Economy, and about how institutions, businesses, activities and human beings are to be ordered or structured in accordance with views of knowledge and new Management theories. But little is said of the young people expected to take their part in the knowledge economy. Do they have a choice? Is lying on a surfboard excluded from their life options? How will they be developed, trained or educated to take their part? Will they be committed to developing their selves in accordance with the model of the IT Knowledge Entrepreneur presented as a model for education by policy makers in the Knowledge Economy? This article will argue against this latter notion of the development of the self, arguing that because knowledge is prioritised over ethics, there is both an inadequate notion of the self and the educational development of the self and, because of its implicit view only of ethics, an inadequate ethical and moral view of education [246 words]. (shrink)

Confucius reinvented the concept of Junzi （君子）, an idea of personhood which invites continual assessment whether the concerns people were once devoted to are worthy of ongoing devotion, and how they make a place in the world—a place where they hope they can exercise some governance in their lives. Junzi （君子）is a agent, and has the properties and powers to monitor their lives, and to contribute to societal transformation. Cultivating a person is centrally involved in the politics of subjectivity, in (...) forming and constituting the self because self always reflects the bounds and conventions of its history. The term Junzi （君子）is harnessed to make the individual a significant element for the state through the exercise of a form of power. So this kind of self-mastery incorporates notions of governmentality, freedom and the historical–social context to understandings of the self. So if we understand that the essence of civil society consists in agency-building self-transformation, there is ample evidence that Confucius was committed to reconstructing moral agency and civil society in a way that would be characteristically Confucian. Junzi (君子) is the case in point. (shrink)