Gert Biesta; How General Can Bildung Be? Reflections on the Future of a Modern Educational Ideal, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 36, Issue 3, 16 Dec.

In his later writings on ethics Foucault argues that rapport à soi – the relationship to oneself – is what gives meaning to our commitment to ‘moral behaviour’. In the absence of rapport à soi, Foucault believes, ethical adherence collapses into obedience to rules (‘an authoritarian structure’). I make a case, in broadly Levinasian terms, for saying that the call of ‘the other’ is fundamental to ethics. This prompts the question whether rapport à soi fashions an ethical subject who is (...) unduly self-concerned. Here we confront two apparently irreconcilable pictures of the source of moral demands. I describe one way of trying to reconcile them from a Foucaultian perspective, and I note the limitations in the attempt. I also try to clear away what I think to be a misunderstanding on Foucault’s part about what is at stake in the choice between these pictures. To clarify my critique of Foucault, I also relate it to a similar recent critique of virtue ethics by Thomas Hurka. (shrink)

Gert Biesta; How General Can Bildung Be? Reflections on the Future of a Modern Educational Ideal, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 36, Issue 3, 16 Dec.

Gert Biesta; How General Can Bildung Be? Reflections on the Future of a Modern Educational Ideal, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 36, Issue 3, 16 Dec.

The present article focuses on the issue of ignoring conversational partners in favor of one’s phone, or what has also become known as phubbing. Prior research has shown that this behavior is associated with a host of negative interpersonal consequences. Since phubbing by definition entails adverse effects, however, it is interesting to explore why people continue to engage in this hurtful behavior: Are they unaware that phubbing is hurtful to others? Or do they simply not care? Building on interviews with (...) students in a Danish business college, the article reveals a pronounced discrepancy in young people’s relationship to phubbing: While they emphatically denounce phubbing as both annoying and disrespectful, they readily admit to phubbing others. In other words, they often act against their own moral convictions. Importantly, participants describe this discrepancy as a result of an unintentional inclination to divert attentional engagement. On the basis of these results, the article develops the notion of digital akrasia, which can be defined as a tendency to become swept up by ones digital devices in spite of better intentions. It is proposed that this phenomenon may be the result of bad technohabits. Further implications are discussed. (shrink)

In this short reply to Riis’ paper I first deal with his perceptive defence of ICT literacy, to which I fully subscribe, showing how his ideas might gain from highlighting the ‘technical’ dimensions involved in literacy practices. Second, this will allow me to make some comments regarding the curricular and organizational aspects of contemporary education, which forms the largest part of his paper. My main line of criticism towards Riis’ paper is that I defend a ‘technical’ rather than a ‘non-technical’ (...) account of digital literacy. (shrink)

Information and communication technology has become the great technological fix of our time and not the least in the education system. There seems to be no end to the hype of ICT and the accompanying promises that education will be revolutionized—“smart” pupils will be made and the so-called knowledge society propelled. This master narrative has many co-authors, some of whom have the best intentions and realize the big challenge of educating the world population. In response to the two insightful reviews (...) of my article, I want to question this master narrative further and in doing so make clear where I agree and disagree with the reviewers. (shrink)

The entanglement of ethics and technology makes it necessary for us to understand and reflect upon our own practices and to question technological hypes. The information and communication technology literacy required to navigate the twenty-first century has to do with recognizing our own human limitations, developing critical measures and acknowledging feelings of estrangement, puzzlement as well as sheer wonder of technology. ICT literacy is indeed all about visions of the good life and the art of living in the twenty-first century. (...) The main focus of this paper is to explore and discuss ICT in relation to pupils and teachers and try to understand why and how these technologies are implemented in the school system. This focus not only allows us to better understand how concepts and habits with respect to ICT are shaped in numerous children, but teaches us to acquire an enhanced sensitivity with regard to ICT in the ‘classic’ literacy context of the educational system. (shrink)

Sven Erik Nordenbo; Bildung and the Thinking of Bildung, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 36, Issue 3, 16 December 2002, Pages 341–352, https://doi.or.

Sven Erik Nordenbo; Bildung and the Thinking of Bildung, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 36, Issue 3, 16 December 2002, Pages 341–352, https://doi.or.

Sven Erik Nordenbo; Bildung and the Thinking of Bildung, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 36, Issue 3, 16 December 2002, Pages 341–352, https://doi.or.

In his last two books and in the essays and interviews associated with them, Foucault develops a new mode of ethical thought he describes as an aesthetics of existence. I argue that this new ethics bears a striking resemblance to the virtue ethics that has become prominent in Anglo-American moral philosophy over the past three decades, in its classical sources, in its opposition to rule-based systems and its positive emphasis upon what Foucault called the care for the self. I suggest (...) that seeing Foucault and virtue ethicists as engaged in a convergent project sheds light on a number of obscurities in Foucault's thought, and provides us with a historical narrative in which to situate his claims about the development of Western moral thought. (shrink)

Trust is a central dimension in the relation between human beings and technologies. In many discourses about technology, the relation between human beings and technologies is conceptualized as an external relation: a relation between pre-given entities that can have an impact on each other but that do not mutually constitute each other. From this perspective, relations of trust can vary between _reliance_, as is present for instance in technological extensionism, and _suspicion_, as in various precautionary approaches in ethics that focus (...) on technological risks. Against these two interpretations of trust, this article develops a third one. Based on a more internal account of the relations between human beings and technologies, it becomes possible to see that every technological development puts at stake what it means to be a human being. Using technologies, then, implies trusting ourselves _to_ technologies. We argue that this does not imply an uncritical subjection to technology. Rather, recognizing that technologies help to constitute human subjectivity implies that human beings can get actively involved in processes of technological mediation. Trust then has the character of _confidence_: deliberately trusting oneself _to_ technology. (shrink)

This article focuses on tracing and extending Michel Foucault’s contributions to the philosophy of technology. At first sight his work on power seems the most relevant. In his later work on subjectivation and ethics technology is absent. However, notably by recombining Foucault’s work on power with his work on subjectivation, does his work contribute to solving pertinent problems in current approaches to the ethics of technology. First, Foucault’s position is compared to critical theory and Heidegger, and associated with the approach (...) of “technical mediation” (Latour, Ihde, Verbeek). Next, a detailed study of Discipline and Punish , results in the identification of two distinct “figures of technical mediation”. Finally, Foucault’s later work on ethics and subjectivation is employed to elaborate an ethics of technology that focuses on care for the quality of the interactions and fusions with technology. Hybridization is central in the approach: it is not to be rejected, neither is it the greatest danger, but it does deserve the greatest care. (shrink)

What can the art of living after Foucault contribute to ethics in relation to the mediation of human existence by technology? To develop the relation between technical mediation and ethics, firstly the theme of technical mediation is elaborated in line with Foucault’s notion of ethical problematization. Every view of what technology does to us at the same time expresses an ethical concern about technology. The contemporary conception of technical mediation tends towards the acknowledgement of ongoing hybridization, not ultimately good or (...) bad but ambivalent, which means for us the challenge of taking care of ourselves as hybrid beings. Secondly, the work of Foucault provides elements for imagining this care for our hybrid selves, notably his notions of freedom as a practice and of the care of the self. A conclusions about technical mediation and ethics is that whereas the approaches of the delegation of morality to technology by Latour and mediated morality by Verbeek see technical mediation of behavior and moral outlook as an answer in ethics, this should rather be considered the problem that ethics is about. (shrink)