哲学之我见

哲学的本质是爱智慧,是对智慧的追求。哲学思维的特点是反思、批判、超验的思维方式。哲学不是科学,甚至不能提供知识,但是哲学可以启发人们用自己的头脑去思考,锻炼人们的思维能力,教人学会不盲从。真正的哲学不是教条,不是以绝对真理自居,而是自由的学问,不是束缚人们的思想而是解放人们的思想。     

Dewey in Transition: Towards a Pragmatist Ethics of Recognition in Schools

This article aims to study one of the potential contemporary updates of pragmatist philosophy. Specifically, it explores pedagogic possibilities that open up by adding Axel Honneth's studies to the discussion on the ethics of recognition, with the community dimension of education found in John Dewey's philosophy of education. In the spirit of Richard S. Bernstein's understanding of Dewey's radical democracy and from a more clearly educational philosophical perspective, the article explores the pedagogical possibilities that arise from broadening the communitarian dimension of education found in Dewey's philosophy of education with the studies by Honneth on the ethics of recognition. In the line of Colin Koopman's definition of transitionalism as a ‘philosophical temperament’, Honneth's ethics of recognition ‘transitions’ the Deweyian tradition towards a more contemporary disposition to think through the ethical dimension of education. The article intends to make use of a fruitful dialogue between classic pragmatism and critical theory to address some challenges of contemporary school life.     

伽达默尔的诠释学作为实践哲学读解

伽达默尔的诠释学一方面继承了亚里士多德实践哲学的传统,另一方面在批判近代科学理性的同时恢复实践理性的本来面目,因而他的诠释学实际上是一种实践哲学的诠释学,或者诠释学的实践哲学。伽达默尔的诠释学作为实践哲学,在《真理与方法》中表现为对理解的应用性问题的强调;而在其后期思想中,伽氏试图以诠释学的实践哲学来维护或确立人文科学知识与真理的合法地位,把实践哲学看作具有基础意义的哲学。诠释学的理解本体论离不开语言的对话,对话也是实践哲学的基本条件,因而对话精神是伽达默尔实现诠释学实践哲学理想的有力工具。伽达默尔认为人类未来社会的最终理想就是交谈共同体。     

Educational Plasticity: Catherine Malabou and ‘the feeling of a new responsibility’

Abstract

This paper attempts to reintegrate the concept of plasticity into educational philosophy. Although John Dewey used the concept in Democracy and Education (1916) it has not generated much of a critical or practical legacy in educational thought. French philosopher, Catherine Malabou, is the first to think plasticity rigorously and seriously in a contemporary philosophical context and this paper outlines her thinking on it as well as considering its applicability to education. My argument is that her definition not only successfully reintroduces the concept in a way which is generative for contemporary educational philosophy and practice but that it also significantly extends the remit of educational plasticity as previously conceived by Dewey. This paper will examine the concept of educational plasticity as providing an opportunity as well as ‘the feeling of a new responsibility’ towards the plastic subject in philosophical approaches to education.     

Does Philosophy of Education Have a Future?

Abstract

The apparently simple question, ‘Does philosophy of education have a future?’, is without a simple answer. Like so many other questions, it all depends on what we mean, and in this case, what we mean by the expression ‘philosophy of education’. I shall look at it in all of three ways: as a social institution, as an academic activity and as an intellectual pursuit. By doing so, it will become evident that consideration of each of them in turn will give somewhat different answers, which not only adds to the complexity of the question, but also adds to the richness of the answer. From this we, as individuals and as members of a particular community, can begin to reflect on the sort of future philosophy of education might have and what, if anything, we ought to do about it.     

西方哲学认识论与直观问题的凸现--从古希腊到近代哲学

自古希腊以来,对确定性知识的追求就成了西方哲学具有特殊重要性的组成部分。这种追求是西方哲学认识论产生和发展的原动力之一。由于直观问题关系到知识的来源、标准、确定性等认识论哲学的基本问题,它从哲学产生伊始就已潜伏在其中了。随着西方哲学认识论的逐步展开和不断推进,直观问题经历了潜伏期、萌芽期和发展成熟期,逐步成为近现代哲学家不可回避的认识论哲学的核心问题。     

Derrida,Friendship and Responsible Teaching in Contrast to Effective Teaching

Educational theorists working within the tradition of Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas’s thought, posit teaching to be a site of implied ethics, that is, a realm in which non-violent or less violent relations to the other are possible. Derrida links ethics to the realm of friendship, enabling one to understand teaching as a site of the ethics of friendship. I clarify how friendship, as a re-metaphorization of differance, opens us up to a conception of teaching that provides a counterpoint to the current discourse of ‘effective’ teaching. I draw out the implications of the Derridean conception of friendship for the educator in his or her philosophical orientation towards teaching and attempt to show that friendship points the educator towards an orientation that enables a ‘fine tuning’ and opening up of one’s sense of obligation and responsibility to one’s students in ways that cannot be circumscribed to current or institutionally sanctioned ways of understanding the activity of teaching, especially as it is often envisioned in American public education.     

Philosophy for Children,Values Education and the Inquiring Society

Abstract

How can school education best bring about moral improvement? Socrates believed that the unexamined life was not worth living and that the philosophical examination of life required a collaborative inquiry. Today, our society relegates responsibility for values to the personal sphere rather than the social one. I will argue that, overall, we need to give more emphasis to collaboration and inquiry rather than pitting students against each other and focusing too much attention on ‘teaching that’ instead of ‘teaching how’. I will argue that we need to include philosophy in the curriculum throughout the school years, and teach it through a collaborative inquiry which enables children to participate in an open society subject to reason. Such collaborative inquiry integrates personal responsibility with social values more effectively than sectarian and didactic religious education.     

Truth telling in Foucault and Arendt: parrhesia,the pariah and academics in dark times

In this paper, I consider the problem of truth telling through the notion of parrhesia as developed and explicated in Foucault’s last lectures at the College de France (1982–1983 and 1983–1984) and the figure of the pariah that runs throughout Arendt’s work. In tracing connections and tensions in the way the two thinkers explore questions and dilemmas around the courage to tell the truth in philosophy and politics, I look into the current climate within the UK academia, where there is a lot of ambivalence about whether people mean what they say or say what they mean anymore. In a Foucauldian mode of inquiry, I raise the question: what is the role of the academic when going through ‘dark times’, vis-à-vis questions of truth telling; what are the conditions of possibility for truth telling itself to be recognised as a question or a problem and how can we start mapping the effects of what we as academics do or refrain from doing?     

The University as Microcosm

This paper puts forward the model of ‘microcosm‐macrocosm’ isomorphism encapsulated in certain philosophical views on the form of university education. The human being as a ‘microcosm’ should reflect internally the external ‘macrocosm’. Higher Education is a socially instituted attempt to guide human beings into forming themselves as microcosms of the whole world in its diversity. By getting to know the surrounding world, they re‐enact it intellectually. Such a re‐enacting is a guiding theme in certain philosophies of education studied here. It is with the Neo‐Humanist tradition culminating in Humboldt's reforms that an additional step was taken: the university should become itself the reflecting ‘microcosm’. This role is nowadays taken up by unconventional LLE, though with far‐reaching changes.

The paper is divided into four interconnected Sections each one developing a specific manifestation of the micro‐macro relationship.

The main thesis is that: (I) contemporary schemes of never‐ending higher education or of so‐called ‘transformative learning’ and of ‘universities‐multiversities’ have their intellectual underpinnings either in similarity or in direct contrast to specific predecessors. Inherent tensions found in these predecessors have left their mark on this micro‐macrocosmic model to the extent that it is present in them; (II) the proposed analysis in terms of this model enhances significantly our in‐depth understanding of some latent aspects in current trends in LLE and related innovative university schemes; at the same time this model helps us structure appropriately and without anachronisms our humanisticly‐inspired critical response to them for abandoning the ideal of the ‘wholeness’ of the human person.     

Education policy and the ‘inter’‐regnum

In the UK, the vocabulary of public services is becoming infused with the prefixes ‘inter’‐, ‘multi‐’ and ‘co‐’. Public‐sector agencies are being encouraged to adopt ‘multi’‐ or ‘inter‐agency’ configurations; ‘workforce reform’ seeks to dissolve once‐impermeable professional boundaries; leadership is to be ‘distributed’. This tendency is referred to as the ‘inter’‐regnum in education policy. (This does not mean that we are dealing with an ‘interregnum’ in the sense that we are somehow between modes of governance.) The term ‘regnum’ is used to emphasise that this propensity for the ‘inter’ is asserting itself as a new ‘reigning philosophy’. Examples of the ‘inter’‐regnum are presented from the UK (mainly England), and these are located conceptually within an analysis of hierarchies, markets and networks. Thereafter the cultural, intellectual and economic contexts which allow for the ‘inter’‐regnum to emerge as policy are explored. The ‘inter’‐regnum draws its legitimacy from a number of sources. First, it resonates with the culture of consumerism, and it takes further that earlier market‐based regime of governance which was associated with the new public management. Second, it is functional for the ‘new capitalism’ as a new work order of affinity‐ and solution‐spaces. Third, it has important intellectual supports: that is, in addition to its association with recent marketing theory, it can appeal to emerging theory and research in organisational learning.     

马克思主义哲学中国化是马克思主义中国化的哲学结晶

马克思主义哲学中国化不是将马克思主义哲学概念、体系直接“移植”到中国并结合中国实际“改造”、“变形”后的理论形态,也并非在中国从事纯粹学理性的马克思主义哲学研究;而是坚持马克思主义理论的“整体”与中国具体实践相“结合”,是对实践过程中产生的“复合型经验”的分学科（哲学层面）总结。毛泽东哲学就其生成机制、基本特点,抑或主要内容而言,都集中彰显了马克思主义哲学中国化的鲜明特质,是马克思主义哲学中国化的典型代表。无特定哲学体系、围绕实事求是思想路线、强烈现实针对性是马克思主义哲学中国化的本质特征,而在中国的马克思主义哲学则主要侧重于脱离实际的纯粹学理性推究,无关革命与建设实践经验的总结,无关实事求是思想路线的理论论证;因此,不能混淆二者之间的本质区别。     

The Inalienable Alien: Giorgio Agamben and the political ontology of Hong Kong

Abstract

Drawing on the work of Giorgio Agamben, this article offers a philosophical interpretation of Hong Kong’s recent Umbrella Movement and the city’s political identity since its 1997 handover to China. With the constitutional principle of ‘one country, two systems’ it has held since 1997, Hong Kong has existed as an ‘inalienable alien’ part of China not dissimilar to that of Agamben’s political ontology of the homo sacer’s ‘inclusive exclusion’ in the polis. In addition to highlighting how Agamben’s politico-ontological notions such as ‘exception’ and ‘inclusive exclusion’ can illuminate the events of the Umbrella Movement, this article focuses particularly on the figure of the student, which many have seen as the symbolic face of the protest campaign. Considering how the student may also be regarded as a figure of ‘exception’, this article argues that the ‘exceptional’ role of the student highlights the unique sociopolitical as well as pedagogical aspects of the Umbrella Movement. Finally, comparing Hong Kong’s 2014 protests to Agamben’s philosophical account of the 1989 Tiananmen protests, this article concludes by suggesting that the Umbrella Movement is not simply a one-off event but fundamentally a manifestation of Hong Kong’s continuing political existence since 1997.     

为着公共利益的教育哲学:五个挑战与一个议程

1917年,杜威在他的一篇名为《哲学复兴的需要》的文章中写道:“当哲学不再是处理哲学家们的问题的手段时,而是成为由哲学家们发展出来的处理人类问题的方法时,哲学就得以复兴了.”在这篇论文中,我论述教育哲学也是如此,因为教育哲学应当聚焦在教育问题上,而不是哲学问题上.当然,教育哲学应当以哲学专长来面对教育问题.这不仅是一个学术任务,而且是一个政治任务,特别是在一个教育作为公共利益的观念遭遇压力的时代,在一个教育日益被看成个人利益和经济利益的时代,尤为如此.我在文中阐述了在我看来教育哲学家能有所贡献的五个领域.它们不仅为未来的教育哲学工作提供了一个议程,而且为转向存在主义的教育哲学建构了一个论述.这个转向包括在所有教育中都含有我所认为的“美丽风险”.     

Philosophy as Literature

How best to introduce philosophical ideas? Is the best and only way by studying the history of philosophy and its rational arguments and discussions? But can literature, usually hived off from philosophy, be used instead and can this be as effective as rational argument? This paper explores these questions. First it considers a text which introduces philosophy through the analysis of literature, in particular James Joyce's ‘Araby’, arguing that the traditional analytic approach employed by the text, by concentrating on epistemology, obscures other philosophical insights offered by Joyce. It then turns to French philosophy and literature and suggests that Sartre, Beauvoir and Camus by ‘blurring’ the analytic distinction between philosophy and literature have much to offer to the grasping and understanding of philosophical ideas and principles.     

试论黑格尔对数学的批判及其哲学根据

西方哲学有与数学结盟的强大传统,但黑格尔是西方哲学家中的异类,他尖锐地批判数学。文章分三部分。文章首先交代了西方哲学的强大数学传统,这是黑格尔批判数学的背景;其次,深入分析了黑格尔对数学的批判,包括他对数学证明、数学洞见、数学自明性的批判;最后,讨论了黑格尔的量的观点,作者认为这是黑格尔批判数学的哲学根据。     

The Inner (and Unavoidable?) Violence of Reason: Re‐reading Heidegger via Education

Since Plato, Western thought has framed knowing as a method within ‘some realm of what is’ and a predetermined ‘sphere of objects’. The roots and the consequences of this stance towards reason and truth were noted by Heidegger, who equates the history of Western thought with the history of metaphysics. Since Plato, truth has relied on definition, hierarchy and mastery. Discourse on the truth begins to be discourse on the limits of things and, thus, on who is able to set these limits and discourse. This dominant position erases its own traces, presents itself as unique and unavoidable, and excludes all other ways of thinking. This exclusion includes violence, and this violence is not merely a philosophical matter. It is written in the history of the West, which is a history that includes conquest, genocide and war. However, we can also identify in Heidegger ways to transcend this inner violence by returning to the originating stance towards truth, namely, truth as aletheia, or world disclosure. This article provides the groundwork to argue that Heidegger's thought, based on a call for existential responsibility, requires education to remake our existence.     

The new philosophy of science and educational research

Our conceptions of educational research depend very much on our philosophical views. Positivism, in its various guises, is the dominant tradition. Three key positivist notions are considered and evaluated in the light of recent work in postpositivist philosophy of science. The first is foundationalism and the theory-ladenness of observation; the second is verification and holistic revision; the third is value-freedom and epistemic virtues. It is concluded that even if positivism is rejected, a scientific account of educational research can still be retained.