Shifts in funding and a worldwide trend towards marketising higher education have led to a new emphasis on the quality of the student experience. In the UK this trend finds its strongest expression in recent policy proposals to simultaneously increase student fees and student choice so that students themselves become the drivers of higher education. We trace the policy developments of this shift over recent years and rehearse some of the criticisms against it. Accepting that there is good reason to (...) support improving the student experience, we then consider ways in which this might be achieved that foreground the relation of university teachers with their subject matter and students’ engagement in this. A higher education, we argue, should expose its students to disciplines whose standards are rightly contested and to a form of learning that intensifies or unsettles desires rather than simply aspiring to satisfy them. (shrink)

There has been increasing interest in the relevance of virtue approaches to ethics over the past 15 years. However, debate surrounding the virtue approach in the business, management and organisational studies literature has lacked progress. First, this literature focuses on a narrow range of philosophers, and, second, it has failed to analyse properly the consequences of virtue theory for action in practical settings other than in abstract terms. In order to begin addressing these issues, this paper compares what two virtue (...) frameworks—one focused on virtue in the context of community and the other on individuals as virtuous agents—lead to when evaluating the actions of parties to the 2002–2004 UK Fire Service dispute. The analysis argues that the virtue frameworks proposed by MacIntyre and Slote offer different but complimentary evaluations. Both not only point to potential problems with industrial disputes, but also recognise the legitimacy of action that is based in good motivations and carried out with regard for the virtues. It seems that fire fighters and their immediate supervisors, on the whole, met the conditions of virtue, but that it is open to question if the leaders of the Fire Brigades Union and the Government did the same. The analysis goes on to suggest which modes of negotiation would be acceptable under the virtue frameworks, and the implications for those involved in industrial dispute. (shrink)

Our aim is to explore and develop notions of objectivity that are useful and appropriate for critical realist empirical research. In Part I, we provided an initial definition that introduced the idea that objectivity is a value that must be chosen but that its significance is rooted in a series of other epistemological and ontological matters. We also addressed why it is worthwhile in realist terms to develop the notion of objectivity, and began to develop a revision of the concept (...) to recognise the role of subjectivities. This, we maintain, is an important clarification in developing social research. Part II explores the linkages between objectivity and situated action. In Part II we argue that the growth of knowledge requires engagement and critical analysis. We develop the idea that if subjects are engaged through multiple standpoints, then objectivity becomes significant as a lever of agency in the service of dialogue and debate and of transformations. Again, our aim is to be of use to practical researchers by providing underlying arguments. Specifically, we argue that objectivity is a bridge between the subjectivities of subjects and the rest of the real world. In so doing, the paper works through various desirable characteristics of an adequate theorisation of knowledge that could make objectivity (as redefined) part of the ontological underpinnings as well as the daily practices of a realist researcher. Objectivity thus links philosophical work to the everyday work of realist researchers. (shrink)

What can be learned from a small scale study of managerial work in a highly marginal and under-researched working community? This article uses the ‘goods–virtues–practices–institutions’ framework to examine the managerial work of owner–directors of traditional circuses. Inspired by MacIntyre’s arguments for the necessity of a narrative understanding of the virtues, interviews explored how British and Irish circus directors accounted for their working lives. A purposive sample was used to select subjects who had owned and managed traditional touring circuses for at (...) least 15 years, a period in which the economic and reputational fortunes of traditional circuses have suffered badly. This sample enabled the research to examine the self-understanding of people who had, at least on the face of it, exhibited the virtue of constancy. The research contributes to our understanding of the role of the virtues in organizations by presenting evidence of an intimate relationship between the virtue of constancy and a ‘calling’ work orientation. This enhances our understanding of the virtues that are required if management is exercised as a domain-related practice. (shrink)

Shifts in funding and a worldwide trend towards marketising higher education have led to a new emphasis on the quality of the student experience. In the UK this trend finds its strongest expression in recent policy proposals to simultaneously increase student fees and student choice so that students themselves become the drivers of higher education. We trace the policy developments of this shift over recent years and rehearse some of the criticisms against it. Accepting that there is good reason to (...) support improving the student experience, we then consider ways in which this might be achieved that foreground the relation of university teachers with their subject matter and students’ engagement in this. A higher education, we argue, should expose its students to disciplines whose standards are rightly contested and to a form of learning that intensifies or unsettles desires rather than simply aspiring to satisfy them. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt to answer the question: What is interdisciplinary communication? I attempt to answer this question, rather than what some might consider the ontologically prior question—what is interdisciplinarity (ID)?—for two reasons: (1) there is no generally agreed-upon definition of ID; and (2) one’s views regarding interdisciplinary communication have a normative relationship with one’s other views of ID, including one’s views of its very essence. I support these claims with reference to the growing literature on ID, which has (...) a marked tendency to favor the idea that interdisciplinary communication entails some kind of ‘integration’. The literature on ID does not yet include very many philosophers, but we have something valuable to offer in addressing the question of interdisciplinary communication. Playing somewhat fast-and-loose with traditional categories of the subdisciplines of philosophy, I group some philosophers—mostly from the philosophy of science, social–political philosophy, and moral theory—and some non-philosophers together to provide three different, but related, answers to the question of interdisciplinary communication. The groups are as follows: (1) Habermas–Klein, (2) Kuhn–MacIntyre, and (3) Bataille–Lyotard. These groups can also be thought of in terms of the types of answers they give to the question of interdisciplinary communication, especially in terms of the following key words (where the numbers correspond to the groups from the previous sentence): (1) consensus, (2) incommensurability, and (3) invention. (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)

This short paper is a response to Richard Smith’s ‘ion and finitude: education, chance and democracy’. In his paper Smith contends that a rationalist agenda dominates education and democracy today, and that this agenda by rendering us insensitive to the tragic dimension of life, breeds a sense of hubris, or arrogance towards fate which is fuelled by an inordinate confidence in our knowledge. In the worlds of education and politics it has led to an obsession with management and transparency, and (...) to students who fear to take risks. As a specific example of this, he takes up the recent fixation in universities with learning how to learn, which he says leads to an over-emphasis on skills in the curriculum, and to an ‘audit’ culture. While sympathising with much of his analysis of the latter, my counter-suggestion is that the contemporary world lacks anything but a sense of the contingency of things, to the contrary, that at the heart of its mangerialist culture and its performatist ethos lies the need for reassurance. My response focuses on the politics of the self-directed learner that lies at the heart of the lifelong learning literature, on learning how to learn, on the notion of transparency and on the transparent society, and on the politics of contingency and scepticism. (shrink)

In the UK, as elsewhere in the world, the global financial crisis has focused attention on the cost of public services and the need to reduce expenditure, not least in respect of higher education. This, however, raises a set of prior questions: What kind of society do we want? What is important to democratic society? What kind of higher education is desirable? The article takes Alasdair MacIntyre's critique of what he calls liberal capitalist society as a starting point for considering (...) questions concerning the kind of higher education that would be valuable and relevant to a healthy democratic society. His thesis is outlined and the implications of this for the university set out. The article examines MacIntyre's notion of community, which he elaborates in relation to medieval religious worldviews, and argues that whilst his conceptualisation is more intellectually and educationally coherent than some others, it is ultimately too restrictive. The article argues instead for a recognition, within education, of what is uncommon. This may open greater possibilities for keeping alive the serious questions that we must constantly attend to, beyond and within our communities, secular or religious. (shrink)

I argue that, in analysing the structure and development of moral traditions, MacIntyre relies primarily on Kuhn's model of scientific tradition, rather than on Lakatos' model. I unpack three foci of Kuhn's conception of the sciences, namely: the ‘crisis’ conception of scientific development, what I call the ‘systematic conception’ of scientific paradigms, and the view that successive paradigms are incommensurable. I then show that these three foci are integrated into MacIntyre's account of the development of moral traditions with a surprising (...) degree of faithfulness to Kuhn. And crucially, I argue against the overall cogency of his account, given the disparities I pinpoint between scientific and moral traditions. My overall critique is, however, fundamentally friendly, since nothing I have to say invalidates the very notion of a moral tradition, and all I am calling for are less problematic construals of that notion. (shrink)

According to Alasdair MacIntyre's influential account of practices, ‘teaching itself is not a practice, but a set of skills and habits put to the service of a variety of practices’ (MacIntyre and Dunne, 2002, p. 5). Various philosophers of education have responded to and critiqued MacIntyre's position, most notably in a Special Issue of the Journal of Philosophy of Education (Vol. 37.2, 2003). However, both in that Special Issue and since, this debate remains inconclusive. Much of this earlier discussion seems (...) to accept that teaching is a unique case in being a putative practice that does not fit readily into MacIntyre's account. In fact many supposed practices, including some nominated by MacIntyre himself, do not fit his account. A constructive critique of this account leads to a refurbished, broadly MacIntyrean account of practice. This will clarify the issue of whether teaching and a range of other activities are, indeed, practices. (shrink)

Increasingly, the world seems to shrink due to our ever-expanding technological and communication capacities. Correspondingly, our awareness of other cultures increases. This is especially true in the field of bioethics because the technological progress of medicine throughout the world is causing dramatic and challenging intersections with traditionally held values. Think of the use of pregnancy monitoring technologies like ultrasound to abort fetuses of the “wrong” sex in India, the sale of human organs in and between countries, or the disjunction between (...) the haves and the have-nots in South America when it comes to bone marrow transplants, while thousands of other children die for want of fundamental goods and services like clean water, basic inoculations, and food itself. (shrink)

Whether or not Strauss's observation is historically accurate, it does suggest two sets of questions for philosophical examination. (1) Is Strauss correct to view natural duties and natural rights as the same type of ethical concept? Do they serve the same function? Do they work on the same level, and are they necessarily in competition with each other? (2) Does saying that the individual human being is the center of the moral world require that one reject the idea of a (...) human end, or telos? Does accepting the ethical centrality of a human telos require that one reject ethical individualism? Are they mutually exclusive?Footnotes* For criticism, we are grateful to the other contributors to this volume and to its editors, as well as Paul Gaffney. (shrink)

This article has two main divisions, the first consisting in parts 1-3, the second in parts 4-8. The purpose of the first division is to assess Hauerwas's contentions regarding what he takes to be serious debilities in modern theological culture. The objects of Hauerwas's criticism are: (1) natural theology; (2) reason as it is represented in the structure of the modern university and in the "Enlightenment Project"; and (3) liberal Protestantism--the latter particularly as it turns up, by his account, in (...) Reinhold Niebuhr's theology. The article will offer a defense of natural theology and an alternative approach to Niebuhr's theology while showing how Hauerwas's contentions concerning these two matters are mistaken. Parts 4-8 are theological studies. These studies concentrate on selected though main aspects of Hauerwas's outlook. Part 4 concerns a problematic implication of the notion, mainly from Barth, of divinity's humanity; Part 5 a note of difficulty from William James about the idea of the theistic God and its pertinence to the Barthian or Hauerwasian God; Part 6 the relation between belief and witness; Part 7 theology's discourse and analogy; Part 8 the Barthian-Hauerwasian theology as a metaphysics. Part 1, concerning natural theology, stands over both divisions. These observations are not in the main intended as textual studies, though in certain passages the analysis is closely attentive to Hauerwas's text. Also, the paper does not offer the sort of account that would come from a historian, intellectual biographer, or social or cultural analyst or critic. Its focus is philosophical-theological criticism. (shrink)

Virtue and deontological ethics are now commonly contrasted as rival approaches to moral inquiry. However, I argue that neither metaethical party should seek complete, solitary domination of the ethical domain. Reductive treatments of the right or the virtuous, as well as projects that abandon the former or latter, are bound to leave us with a sadly diminished map of the moral territories crucial to our lives. Thus, it is better for the two parties to seek a more cordial and equal (...) relationship, one that permits metaethical pluralism, and acknowledges mutual dependence. I do not seek to prescribe how that relationship should look: this essay offers less a positive metaethical position than a prolegomenon to such a position, one that attempts to head off harmful attempts to reduce the territory of the aretaic to that of the deontic, or that of the deontic to the aretaic. (shrink)

It has been common for researchers and commentators within the discipline of Social and Public Policy to evoke Rawlsian theories of justice. Yet some now argue that the contractualist tradition cannot adequately incorporate, or account for, relations of care, respect and interdependency. Though contractualism has its flaws this article proposes that we should not reject it. Through a critique of one of its most esteemed critics, Martha Nussbaum, it proposes that contractualism can be defended against the capabilities approach she prefers. (...) The article concludes by suggesting how and why the moral philosophy of Thomas Scanlon offers a basis for reconciling the strengths of a contractualist, egalitarian liberalism with those of Nussbaum’s capabilities approach. (shrink)

This paper examines Kierkegaard 's discussion of patience in some of his Upbuilding Discourses, and its connection with his understanding of the nature of selfhood as it appears both in the Discourses and in The Sickness unto Death. That understanding stresses that selfhood is not simply given, but is a task to be achieved—although a task that can only be achieved by the self that is formed in the process of undertaking it. For Kierkegaard, an account of the self that (...) recognizes its essential temporality must give a crucial role to patience as a virtue necessary for the formation and maintenance of personal identity. However, although the self is essentially temporal for Kierkegaard, it is also essentially such as to participate in eternity, and this complexity and tension in his concept of the self gives his understanding of patience a particular character—one that presents an important challenge to some of the dominant assumptions of recent and contemporary philosophy in both the analytic and the continental traditions. (shrink)

Karl Jaspers argued that academics must be prepared to accept, perhaps even to welcome, the fact that most students 'will learn next to nothing' from a university education. In this paper I shall argue that, while Jaspers' model is unpersuasive as an ideal and inaccurate as a description, there is an uncomfortable truth lurking behind his forthright but gloomy conclusion; viz., that university teaching pays little direct attention to the needs of the student in the wider world (i.e. to the (...) needs of the student qua employee or qua citizen or even qua rounded human being) and pays even less attention, or perhaps none at all, to the needs and expectations of third parties such as employers. In terms of the political context universities now find themselves in, this is an uncomfortable and embarrassing truth for faculty to admit, for it appears to epitomise a self-regarding and inward looking academy. Yet, despite this, perhaps it is a truth that academics should be prepared to accept, even to welcome. At least, in starting any serious discussion on the nature of a university education, it should be a truth we are prepared to admit. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore a mode of concern with the question of personal identity in which the latter is raised as a problem of a practical order. What provokes this is a concern with the experience of discontinuity within the self and with the perception of continuity as a fragile and uncontrollable good. I discuss the relation which this practically oriented perspective bears to the philosophical form of engagement with personal identity, and the reasons which make the perspective of (...) the latter particularly enticing to the former, yet at the same time entirely inadequate to its needs. Finally, I consider how the need in question can instead appropriately be met, within a broader (and broadly Wittgensteinian) interest in the tendency of philosophical questions to mask?and thus sometimes betray?the need that inspires them. (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)

This paper reviews a publication entitled ‘Ethics Matters. Managing Ethical Issues in Higher Education’, which was distributed to all UK universities and equivalent in October 2005. The publication proposed that HEIs should put in place an institution‐wide ethical policy framework, well beyond the customary focus on research ethics, together with the mechanisms necessary to ensure its implementation. Having summarised the processes that led to the publication and the publication itself, the paper then considers whether following the now commonplace corporate practice (...) of implementing a code of ethics is appropriate for such institutions. Drawing on both the empirical evidence in relation to codes in the business ethics literature and a consideration of the nature of the university as an institution, the paper offers an alternative suggestion for how ethical issues in higher education might be managed. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article addresses the question‘What is the justification of higher education in modern society?’ It takes issue with writers such as Alasdair Macintyre and Allan Bloom, who argue that the fragmentation of value characteristic of modernity has undermined the possibility of providing a coherent justification of higher education. Against MacIntyre and Bloom, I argue that we should understand education as a means of developing reflective consciousness in students, and that that will require fragmentation and the immanent conflict of traditions (...) rather than a background of agreed values. (shrink)

This essay addresses a moral and cultural challenge facing health care in the People’s Republic of China: the need to create an understanding of medical professionalism that recognizes the new economic realities of China and that can maintain the integrity of the medical profession. It examines the rich Confucian resources for bioethics and health care policy by focusing on the Confucian tradition’s account of how virtue and human flourishing are compatible with the pursuit of profit. It offers the Confucian account (...) of the division of labor and the financial inequalities this produces with special attention to China’s socialist project of creating the profession of barefoot doctors as egalitarian peasant physicians and why this project failed. It then further develops the Confucian acknowledgement of the unequal value of different services and products and how this conflicts with the current system of payment to physicians which has led to the corruption of medical professionalism through illegal supplementary payments. It further gives an account the oblique intentionality of Confucian moral psychology that shows how virtuous persons can pursue benevolent actions while both foreseeing profit and avoiding defining their character by greed. This account of Confucian virtue offers the basis for a medical professionalism that can function morally within a robustly profit-oriented market economy. The paper concludes with a summary of the characteristics of Confucian medical professionalism and of how it places the profit motive within its account of virtue ethics. (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)

Nauczanie etyki w szkole uznawane jest za ważne i potrzebne. Ale czy etyki można się nauczyć? I czy nauczanie jej powinno polegać na przekazywaniu wiedzy o koncepcjach etycznych, ewentualnie dyskusji wokół nich, czy raczej na kształtowaniu moralnych postaw uczniów i właściwych zachowań? Artykuł podejmuje namysł nad tymi problemami w nawiązaniu do różnych tradycji myśli etycznej i teorii moralności. Za główny punkt odniesienia i podstawę praktyki edukacyjnej proponuje przyjąć odnowioną współcześnie Arystotelesowską etykę cnót. Koncepcja phronesis jako rozumności praktycznej, pozwalającej tworzyć sądy (...) moralne wrażliwe na kontekst i uwzględniające złożoność trudnych do uzgodnienia interesów i dóbr, wydaje się dla edukacji moralnej wciąż aktualnym modelem. Nauczanie i dyskusja nastawione na rozważanie konkretnych przypadków i opowieści, czyli kształcenie umiejętności tego typu osądu, pozwala uniknąć zagrożeń, jakie niesie nauka skupiona na zagadnieniach teoretycznych: uwikłania w definicyjne niejasności w określaniu wartości moralnych, czy myślenia oderwanego od emocji i od doświadczenia. Nauka polegająca na analizie filozoficznej tradycji wiąże się z ryzykiem, iż przekazywana wiedza okaże się nieadekwatna do wieku i poziomu osobistego rozwoju ucznia, generując moralny subiektywizm i relatywistyczny sceptycyzm. Argument ten nie jest jednak skierowany przeciwko teoretyzowaniu i wprowadzaniu abstrakcyjnych rozważań w procesie kształcenia, nawet na najwcześniejszych etapach: teoretyzowanie i budowanie racjonalnych uzasadnień jest potrzebne, ale powinno wynikać z inspiracji i rozwoju intelektualnych predyspozycji, a nie z przekazu gotowej wiedzy. (shrink)