Richard Rorty, in his ‘Consequences of Pragmatism’ (1982), acknowledging the pragmatic direction taken by both modern and postmodern philosophy, declared that ‘James and Dewey were not only waiting at the end of the dialectical road which analytic philosophy traveled, but are waiting at the end of the road which, for example, Foucault and Deleuze are currently traveling’ (Rorty, 1982, p. xviii). This paper does not aim to establish who traveled the farthest along the road posited by Rorty. Instead, its purpose (...) is to trace a common direction as a sort of pragmatic trajectory that will map a territory constituting Gilles Deleuze’s new image of thought, or rather as he put it, a thought without image. By addressing some of Deleuze’s ideas on thinking and learning, especially with regard to the problematics of sources of knowledge, this paper posits the convergence between his philosophical position and Dewey’s philosophy of education despite the two being seemingly separated by time, place and culture. The paper further shifts the focus from the factual knowledge to an experimental and experiential process of knowing and asserts the latter’s far-reaching implications for education as a developing and generative practice. (shrink)

The author discusses why the philosophy of the subject has been important\nto postmodernists. The author commences with a discussion on the\nintellectual background of postmodernism and its relations with other\nkinds of philosophy and with history. This paper concludes with a\ndiscussion about Michel Foucault's views on education and training\nand what impact this had on development of policy in New Zealand.

How can philosophy exert its critical function in society and in education if any appeal to independent and even relatively ‘certain’ criteria seems problematic? The epistemological doubts that foundationalist models of justification encounter unavoidably seem to raise this question. In particular, the relativist implications that seem to result from rejecting such models seem to paralyse the critical potential of philosophy of education. In order to explore the possibilities of a conception of educational critique that avoids the pitfalls of foundationalism, I (...) analyse the epistemological dimensions of this much-feared relativism, illustrating this with some characteristic examples. Solving the problems raised will require an interpretation of critique that leaves our daily sense of critique intact, without literally adopting its—foundationalist—basic assumptions. After systematically developing such an alternative interpretation of critical usage, a non-relativist but still non-foundationalist and powerful conception of philosophical critique seems possible. I illustrate results with some examples from philosophy of education. (shrink)

This is a sequel to my paper, "Searching for a Foundational Approach to Philosophy of Science", which appeared in an earlier issue of this Journal [Ginev 2001, Journal for General Philosophy of science 32, 27-37]. In the present paper I continue to scrutinize the possibility of a strong hermeneutics of scientific research. My aim is to defend the position of cognitive existentialism that combines the advocacy of science's cognitive specificity and the rejection of any form of essentialism. A special attention (...) will be paid to the notion of the thematizing project of scientific research. (shrink)

This is a sequel to my paper, "Searching for a (Post)Foundational Approach to Philosophy of Science", which appeared in an earlier issue of this Journal [Ginev 2001, Journal for General Philosophy of science 32, 27-37]. In the present paper I continue to scrutinize the possibility of a strong hermeneutics of scientific research. My aim is to defend the position of cognitive existentialism that combines the advocacy of science's cognitive specificity and the rejection of any form of essentialism. A special attention (...) will be paid to the notion of the thematizing project of scientific research. (shrink)

Educational Research is commonly regarded as a rational pursuit aimed at the production of objective knowledge. Researchers are expected to avoid value bias by detaching themselves from the normative conceptions of education that shape practice in schools and classrooms, and by casting themselves in the role of the impartial spectator. It is assumed that, as a rational pursuit, educational research is not directly concerned with changing practice but simply with discovering facts about it.This paper claims that it is possible to (...) construct a view of educational research as a form of rational and disciplined inquiry that does not depend on any underpinning spectator theory of knowledge. Nor, the paper claims, does it imply any underpinning foundational principles of rational action and choice. Rather it implies a form of disciplined conversation in which reasons for action are scrutinised, critiqued and modified without resort to foundational principles of rationality. Drawing particularly on the work of John Dewey, Richard Rorty and Amartya Sen, the paper casts educational research as a practical science—a form of action research—that is underpinned by a democratic conception of rationality. In doing so, it contrasts educational research, shaped by a pragmatic theory of knowledge, with research on education that is shaped by a spectator theory. (shrink)

In this paper I ask how educational researchers can believe the subjective perceptions of qualitative participant-observers given the concern for objectivity and generalisability of experimental research in the behavioural and social sciences. I critique the most common answer to this question within the educational research community, which posits the existence of two (or more) equally legitimate epistemological paradigms—positivism and constructivism—and offer an alternative that places a priority in educational research on understanding the purposes and meanings humans attribute to educational practices. (...) Only within the context of what I call a transcendent view from somewhere—higher ideals that govern human activities—can we make sense of quantitative as well as qualitative research findings. (shrink)

: This paper both elaborates and interrogates the transactional model of human experience at the center of Shannon W. Sullivan's Living Across and Through Skins. In particular, it highlights the need (especially given her concerns and commitments) to supplement her account with a psychoanalytic reading of our gendered subjectivities. Moreover, it stresses the necessity to focus on such humanly important—and irreducibly somatic—phenomena as grief and eros.

This paper both elaborates and interrogates the transactional model of human experience at the center of Shannon W. Sullivan's Living Across and Through Skins. In particular, it highlights the need to supplement her account with a psychoanalytic reading of our gendered subjectivities. Moreover, it stresses the necessity to focus on such humanly important—and irreducibly somatic—phenomena as grief and eros.

This paper both elaborates and interrogates the transactional model of human experience at the center of Shannon W. Sullivan's Living Across and Through Skins. In particular, it highlights the need to supplement her account with a psychoanalytic reading of our gendered subjectivities. Moreover, it stresses the necessity to focus on such humanly important—and irreducibly somatic—phenomena as grief and eros.

The pragmatist view of politics is at its very heart epistemic, for it treats morals and politics as a kind of deliberation or inquiry, not terribly unlike other kinds of inquiry. With the exception of Richard Rorty, the pragmatists argue that morals and politics, like science, aim at the truth or at getting things right and that the best method for achieving this aim is a method they sometimes call the scientific method or the method of intelligence – what would (...) now be termed deliberative democracy. Hence, the pragmatists offer an argument for democracy which appeals to the quality of the decisions supplied by democratic procedure. Why should we value decisions that are the products of voting after open debate over private decision-making and then voting, over bargaining, or over elimination of those who disagree with us? We should value them because the deliberative democratic method is more likely to give us true or right or justified answers to our questions. Rorty, of course, thinks that no inquiry aims at the truth and that nothing about pragmatism speaks in democracy's favor. This paper will show how his brand of pragmatism betrays what is good and deeply interesting in the pragmatist tradition. (shrink)

In this article, the relationship between philosophy and history of education is delved into. First, it is noted that both disciplines have diverged from each other over the last few decades to become relatively autonomous subsectors within the pedagogical sciences, each with its own discourses, its own expositional characteristics, its own channels of communication, and its own networks. From the perspective of the history of education, it seems as though more affiliation has been sought with the science of history. The (...) history of education, in any event, has in the past few years become more historicizing and less ‘educationalizing’. According to the author, (who is not a philosopher of education) there are signs that indicate that such an analogous line of reasoning, mutatis mutandis, also applies for the philosophy of education. Does this mean that there are no longer any bridges from the one area to the other or that none are possible? Probably not. In the second portion, it is shown that the modern or even postmodern ‘new cultural history of education’, with its often ironical and demythologizing traits uses or can use a considerable amount of ‘grand theory’ (à la Foucault). Indeed, the development of an adequate conceptual apparatus that also has to cope with the problem of ‘presentism’ assumes a constant dialogue with the past and for this a philosophical‐interpretative (casu quo, hermeneutic) approach is still the best situated. Inversely, the Foucauldian perspective shows that philosophy in general and philosophy of education in particular equally hardly do without history. Within the reflection on pedagogical praxis, the historical and the philosophical thus probably will continue to rely on each other—if only as allies against the dominance of short‐winded empirical‐quantitative research. Still, it would be naive to think that, from this possible alliance, the fragmentation of historically developed knowledge systems with their own sociological and institutional foundation of scientific activities can be rectified in a trice. (shrink)

Researchers misunderstand their role in creating ethical problems when they allow dogmas to purportedly divorce scientists and scientific practices from the values that they embody. Cortina, Edwards, and Powell help us clarify and further develop our position by responding to our critique of, and alternatives to, this misleading separation. In this rebuttal, we explore how the desire to achieve the separation of facts and values is unscientific on the very terms endorsed by its advocates—this separation is refuted by empirical observation. (...) We show that positivists like Cortina and Edwards offer no rigorous theoretical or empirical justifications to substantiate their claims, let alone critique ours. Following Powell, we point to how classical pragmatism understands ‘purpose’ in scientific pursuits while also providing an alternative to the dogmas of positivism and related philosophical positions. In place of dogmatic, unscientific cries about an abstract and therefore always-unobservable ‘reality,’ we invite all organizational scholars to join us in shifting the discussion about quantitative research towards empirically grounded scientific inquiry. This makes the ethics of actual people and their practices central to quantitative research, including the thoughts, discourses, and behaviors of researchers who are always in particular places doing particular things. We propose that quantitative researchers can thus start to think about their research practices as a kind of work, rather than having the status of a kind of dogma. We conclude with some implications that this has for future research and education, including the relevance of research and research methods. (shrink)

Being and Time argues that we, as Dasein, are defined not by what we are, but by our way of existing, our “existentiell possibilities.” I diagnose and respond to an interpretive dilemma that arises from Heidegger's ambiguous use of this latter term. Most readings stress its specific sense, holding that Dasein has no general essence and is instead determined by some historically contingent way of understanding itself and the meaning of being at large. But this fails to explain the sense (...) in which Being and Time is a work of fundamental ontology, concluding in Heidegger's claim to have found the meaning of Dasein's being in the concept of originary temporality. On the other hand, readings that stress the general sense of “existentiell possibilities” find Heidegger on a fruitless quest for the transcendental conditions necessary for Dasein's existence, which seems to founder on the claims that Dasein is constitutively thrown, factical, and “in-each-case-mine” [jemeinig]. Both readings are problematic and, I contend, result from a failure to disambiguate and explain the ontologically unique relationship between the specific and general aspects of Dasein's essence. I argue that we can better explain this relationship, Heidegger's method for investigating it, and the sense in which Dasein has an essence that is open to philosophical investigation, if we read Being and Time's ontology of Dasein in terms of what Anton Ford calls “categorial” genus-species relationships. (shrink)

Often seen as a typical Chaoskampf, the cosmic struggle between Marduk and Tiamat in the Babylonian epic of creation, Enuma Elish, looked at closely belies this reading that has been dominating scholarship since the nineteenth century. Through a close-reading of the epic’s narrative against its modern/colonial reception, the article argues that Enuma Elish provides a rich and complex narrative in which motherhood and monstrosity do not oppose each other, nor do they run together with each other. The textual, historical and (...) philological analyses, as well as reception-critiques, ultimately serve to theorize from within the ancient cosmology an immanent and decolonial logic that is beyond ‘either/or’. (shrink)

ABSTRACTCurrently, the repetition of a critical way of speaking results in a stagnating tendency in educational debates. This had led to the endeavour of developing a ‘post-critical pedagogy’. This paper employs Rortyan and Latourian language in order to tackle the question of how such a post-critical pedagogy should deal with critique. It argues that if one takes critique as what Latour calls a debunking activity, then post-critical pedagogy should leave critique behind. If however critique means simply to say how something (...) should not be, then post-critical pedagogy should remain critical. In addition, however, there is a need for enriching the critical vocabulary with more affirmative language. For accomplishing this need, in contrast to recent suggestions to go back to ontology, the paper suggests that new propositions developed by literary theorists like Sedgwick and Felski are more promising. All these arguments are framed by Rorty’s notion of philosophy as cultural politics. (shrink)

In this paper, I will outline some of the important points made by Kripke and Putnam on the meaning of natural kind terms. Their notion of the baptism of natural kinds- the process by which kind terms are initially introduced into the language — is of special concern here. I argue that their accounts leave some ambiguities that suggest a baptism of objects and kinds that is free of additional theoretical commitments. Both authors suggest that we name the stuff and (...) then let the scientists tell us what properties it really has, and hence what the real meaning is. I contend that such a barren baptism, taken at face value, cannot succeed in the semantic roles it has been assigned and that softening the stance on baptism suggests a more subtle and complex relation between reference and theoretical commitment than has emerged thus far. (shrink)

Over the last several decades, Richard Rorty has developed a compelling metaphilosophical theory on the history of analytic philosophy. On this telling, analytic philosophy was atavistic from the outset, a forlorn attempt to reinstate scheme/content distinctions. Rather than asking whether our claims "correspond" to some nonhuman, eternal way the world is, we should ask about their pragmatic utility. On Rorty's account, analytic philosophy terminates in pragmatism. In this paper, I argue against this assessment of the fate of our tradition. More (...) specifically, I argue against Rorty's indictment of the notion of correspondence truth. My aim is to show that correspondence truth, in providing an indispensable background for the intelligibility of pragmatism, is not the needless dogma that Rorty takes it to be. Rorty's pragmatism, I thus argue, fails to be a freestanding doctrine. (shrink)

Norman Bowie wrote an article on the moral obligations of multinational corporations in 1987. This paper is a response to Bowie, but more importantly, it is designed to articulate the force and substance of the pragmatist philosophy developed by Richard Rorty. In his article, Bowie suggested that moral universalism (which he endorses) is the only credible method of doing business ethics across cultures and that cultural relativism and ethnocentrism are not. Bowie, in a manner surprisingly common among contemporary philosophers, lumps (...) Rorty into a bad guy category without careful analysis of his philosophy and ascribes to him views which clearly do not fit. I attempt to provide both a more careful articulation of Rorty's views, and to use his pragmatism to illustrate an approach to business ethics which is more fruitful than Bowie's. This brand of philosophy follows the Enlightenment spirit of toleration and attempts to set aside questions of Truth, whether religious or philosophical, and have ethics centered around what James called that which is good in the way of belief. Rather than looking for metaphysical foundations or some type of external justification, ethicists perform their craft from within the cultural traditions, narratives and practices of their society. (shrink)

In this Special Issue of Journal of Critical Realism on Normativity, Elder-Vass has provided a paper that in part responds to one that Chris Winship and I wrote together, which was presented at the...

Despite Donald Davidson's influential criticism of the very notion of conceptual schemes, the notion continues enjoying its popularity in contemporary philosophy and, accordingly, conceptual relativism is still very much alive. There is one major reason responsible for Davidson's failure which has not been widely recognized: What Davidson attacks fiercely is not the very notion, but a notion of conceptual schemes, namely, the Quinean notion of conceptual schemes and its underlying Kantian scheme-content dualism. However, such a notion simply cannot carry the (...) weight of conceptual relativism for it does not catch the essences of conceptual relativism. Consequently, I argue that the very notion of conceptual schemes and conceptual relativism have survived Davidson's attack. Therefore, the failure of the Quinean notion of conceptual schemes and Kantian scheme-content dualism, even if Davidson can claim victory, does not mark the end of the very notion of conceptual schemes.[ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]. (shrink)

The RoutledgeFalmer Reader in Philosophy of Education brings together a number of book chapters and articles in the philosophy of education. These cover a wide range of issues that engage and, in many cases, trouble contemporary philosophers of education, beginning with the perennial and fundamental one of the relationship between philosophy and education. The other sections, which include a rich selection of readings, concern the nature of education and its politics, policy‐making and the moral dimensions of teaching. The whole is (...) preceded by a provocative introductory essay written by Wilfred Carr, the book's editor. In it he suggests a different Aristotelian perspective on these issues, a different narrative from the usual contemporary post‐analytic one we are used to and a means of responding to them, inspired mainly by the work of Alasdair MacIntyre. This essay both takes up Carr's provocations in this Introduction and comprehensively reviews the book and the chapters in it. (shrink)

Alasdair MacIntyre and Richard Rorty, in their different ways, have represented the tension between acculturation and individuation, truth and freedom, as central to modern education systems, a tension which, both agree, they have failed to resolve. The paper argues that an additional complication is that in the contemporary postmodern landscape, which prioritises the notion of lifelong learning in its policy discourse, the very notion of education is threatened, and asks whether we should care. It considers MacIntyre’s suggestion that the notion (...) of the educated public can solve the former tension and concurrently re-launch the notion of education in the postmodern world—central to MacIntyre’s plan is the reform of the university. And against it Rorty’s suggestion that acculturation and individuation be regarded as different but connected processes, with individuation conceived as self-creation and located in the non-vocational university. (shrink)

What do Social Networking Sites (SNS) ‘do to us’: are they a damning threat or an emancipating force? Recent publications on the impact of “Web 2.0” proclaim very opposite evaluative positions. With the aim of finding a middle ground, this paper develops a pragmatist approach to SNS based on the work of Richard Rorty. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, we analyze SNS as conversational practices. Second, we outline, in the form of an imaginary conversation between Rorty and Heidegger, (...) a positive and negative ‘conversational’ view on SNS. Third, we deploy a reflection, again using Rortian notions, on that evaluation, starting from the concept of ‘self-reflectivity.’ Finally, the relations between these three steps are more detailedly investigated. By way of the sketched technique, we can interrelate the two opposing sides of the recent debates—hope and threat—and judge SNS in all their ambiguity. (shrink)

El artículo se pregunta qué sentido tiene la práctica de conferir o reconocer derechos y sostiene que son sus consecuencias lo que nos interesa y lo que hace sensata la práctica relacionada con ellos. La virtud de esta tesis es que permite aterrizar el vocabulario aéreo de los derechos y que invita a determinar sus contenidos específicos con la mayor precisión posible. Se trata de una tesis realista y pragmatista respecto de los derechos. Realista, porque busca comprender en qué consiste (...) realmente ser titular de derechos; pragmatista, en la medida en que, para hacerlo, se interesa por las consecuencias de su titularidad. El artículo busca también mostrar el modo en que una tesis pragmatista sobre los derechos puede dar cuenta de los derechos fundamentales. (shrink)

Language is the tradition of nations; each generation describes what it sees, but it uses words transmitted from the past. When a great entity like the British Constitution has continued in connected outward sameness, but hidden inner change, for many ages, every generation inherits a series of inapt words — of maxims once true, but of which the truth is ceasing or has ceased. As a man’s family go on muttering in his maturity incorrect phrases derived from a just observation (...) of his early youth, so, in the full activity of an historical constitution, its subjects repeat phrases true in the time of their fathers, and inculcated by those fathers, but now true no longer. (shrink)

This article undertakes a critical examination of the political philosophy of Richard Rorty with special reference to his treatment of patriotism, pragmatism and democracy. Pragmatism, especially in the work of John Dewey, provided an energetic defence of American democracy, claiming that American democratic culture did not require any philosophical lessons from European social theory. American pragmatism is in this sense a celebration of indigenous political traditions. In his defence of pragmatism and patriotism against the cosmopolitanism of Left cultural critics, Rorty (...) advocates pragmatic ethnocentrism. Through a parallel commentary on socialist internationalism, this article asks whether ‘democracy in one country’ - the United States of America - is either feasible or compatible with the critical legacy of pragmatism. In its response to the growth of international terrorism, especially in its ‘liberation of Iraq’, the United States is in danger of becoming a ‘predatory democracy’. While Rorty has in the past argued that America cannot function as a global policeman, the trend of contemporary international relations is to create an American Empire. The article concludes by arguing that Rorty’s patriotism functions as ‘a final vocabulary’ that contradicts his postmodernism and makes it difficult for modern pragmatism to remain a critical theory. (shrink)

The western philosophy in general is regarded by Richard Rorty as the result of the fouitless and diferent theoretical dualisms in the history of philosophy. In the context of literary Salvaging Culture, he tries to deconstruct the diferent problems of philosophy and to remove those dualisms. In his view the classic philosophers were believing in extra-human and extra-historical realities and they were regarding human beings as servants and discovers of them. By separating the personal or private realm from the public (...) realm or society and politics, he shows that the realm of politics has no need to get its foundations from the individual criteria of private realm. Instead of using the classical concept of philosophy, that is truth, proposes the concept of solidarity. Solidarity, in his thought, means nogetiation on the diferent problems which is result of pragmatic view on things and being influenced by special norms of society and instrumentel usage of words. He believes that by creating new words which are instruments to be in consistency with envierment, human beings try to make more solidarity between individuals and to establish a free and justly society whitout any discrimination and offence. This article tries to show that the philosophical thought of Rorty, at the first and in the direction of a political thought and takeing a Shoanist attitude by himself, is an effort to provide situation for a libral democratic society. (shrink)

In recent years a number of writers have defended and attacked various features of structural, or neo-realist theories of international politics. Few, however, have quarrelled with one of the most foundational features of neorealist theory: its assumptions about the nature of science and scientific theories. In this essay I assess the views of science underlying much neorealist theory, especially as they are articulated in the work of Kenneth Waltz. I argue not only that neorealist theories rest on assumptions about science (...) and theory that have been questioned by postpositivist philosophers and historians of science, but also that the failure to consider the work of these writers yields theories of international politics that are deficient in several respects: they are weak theories in the sense that they cannot illuminate crucial features of international politics, they presuppose and sustain a narrow view of power and power relations, they reify practices and relations in the international arena and they offer little promise of producing the sort of Copernican Revolution for which Waltz called (or, more modestly, even a minimally satisfactory theory of international politics). In light of these shortcomings, I sketch an alternative approach to the study of international affairs, one that has been termed prototype studies. I contend that such an approach provides scholars with a rigorous way of studying international politics, without being a theoretical science. (shrink)

In An Introduction to Metaphysics Heidegger asserted that “it wasnot German idealism that collapsed; rather, the age was no longer strong enough to sustain the greatness, breadth, and originality of that spiritual world, i.e., truly to realize it”. He was at this point launchinginto one of the major themes of his later work: the “darkening of the world” in the form of the materialism and “demonism” typified by the antitheses of the USSR and the USA, a polarity of seeming opposites (...) obscuring an underlying fundamental similarity. This was the modernist faith of both cultures in the power of science to solve all of the problems that have plagued humanity for untold centuries, a faith in the power of science to tell us the absolute truth about the nature of reality. In 1955 Heidegger also characterized science and technology in “The Question Concerning Technology” as an “enframing”, a particular dominant interpretation of reality dependent on the interest of control and which conceals far more than it reveals. For one thing, “the essence of technology isin a lofty sense ambiguous. Such ambiguity points to the mystery of all revealing, i.e., of truth”. Although enframing “lets man endure,” only art as the successor of philosophy transcends techne by allowing us to see that “the essence of technologyis nothing technological”. Much earlier, in Being and Time, he gave his first sustained account of science as the interpretationof reality driven by technological interests, and spoke of Being as the “transcendens” lying beyond “every possible character which an entity can possess” [p. 38]. It remains debatable whether this characterization of Being survived into Heidegger's later period, but despite his nostalgia for the spirituality of the early nineteenth century, the role of Beingin these earlier works might best be explained as some kind of realism. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFor Rorty, any attempt to articulate a theory of truth as such is of no interest. This implies that although it may be meaningful to differentiate the truths from the falsehoods, it is pointless to say what the property of goodness is in the things we believe are good to do. Rorty points out that our no longer understanding Philosophy – with the capital ‘P’–as the framing of normative notions would make room for a post-philosophical culture where the philosophers’ activity (...) would be closer to the practices of cultural critique with the self-imposed limitation of devoting themselves exclusively to advancing descriptions of how things relate to each other. This article aims to explore what would happen if this provocation were brought to the field of Pedagogy. Taking on this Rortyan theme, keeping hope on the potentially liberating and transformative power of education implies a hopeful attitude by which individuals involved in education processes express their love for the world as a commitment to a better future, as well as their belief in its possibilities. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe article investigates which epistemological considerations justify how religious life fits into the school life, and examines the debate on the participation of religiosity in the education system. I do this, first, by addressing the pedagogical implications of the distinction between public and private as maintained by Richard Rorty and, second, by reconsidering the pluralist metaphysics held by William James as an alternative path to understanding and re-addressing the question of religious life in school life. The article analyzes how the (...) strict separation of projects of individual self-creation and the public sphere, as defended by Rorty, poses problems in implementing pluralism in democratic societies and their educational institutions. (shrink)