For the Love of Our Children: Hannah Arendt,the Limits of Freedom and the Role of Education in a Culture of Violence

This essay critically examines the underlying assumptions about freedom and democracy at the basis of those like the NRA who argue that the United States does not have a gun problem and that the second amendment protects citizens' rights to own any gun they wish. Inspired by Hannah Arendt's political philosophy, the author first discuss three problematic notions of freedom—free will, sovereignty and liberation—and show how they have been appropriated by the NRA and other pro-gun organizations to justify their agendas. Adopting Arendt's conception of political freedom, he then demonstrates how it is integrally related to the notions of civic responsibility and plurality. In the last part of this essay, the author introduces Arendt's understanding of educational authority, which she defined as assuming responsibility for our common world. He argues that this notion of educational authority can help us address the issue of the role that education ought to play in a culture that glorifies violence.     

Visiting good company: Arendt and the development of the reflective practitioner

ABSTRACT

The importance of the concept of reflective practice within the teaching profession has been stressed heavily in recent decades. How it is enacted and how beginning teachers, in particular, have been encouraged to exercise it remains somewhat unclear, with the risk that it becomes a cursory, ill-informed exercise in self-affirmation rather than a central pillar of professional life. In this paper, Hannah Arendt's thinking on judgement, drawn from her studies of Kant, and particularly her concept of ‘enlarged thought’, are used to suggest a stronger basis for the nature of reflective practice and for the validity of the professional judgement involved. The paper concludes with some suggestions as to what could be involved in making fruitful use of Arendt's concept of judgement in the development of beginning teachers as reflective practitioners.     

Hanna Arendt: a political theorist on the theme of renewal in education

The article is about the writing of a political theorist, Hannah Arendt, on the subject of education. The two major themes of her work (the concept of public and private worlds and the idea of renewal) are described and related to educational questions. Two forces which help the educator to avoid conservatism or utopianism are the variety of mankind and the artist's and scientist's vision. The influence of these thoughts on the teacher's task is then studied with particular attention to Arendt's notion of responsibility. Other implications for educators are the understanding of the school as a social institution, implications for curriculum planning and the relationship between education and society. The essay ends by setting out Arendt's resolution of the paradox of preparing children with assurance for an unpredictable future.     

ACCEL: Thoughts From the Field

This author responds to Sternberg (2017) and his article, “ACCEL: A New Model for Identifying the Gifted,” published in his special issue of the Roeper Review focused on “wisdom in a changing world.” Wisdom is evident throughout Sternberg’s essay as he invites readers to consider the relevance of his ACCEL (Active Concerned Citizenship and Ethical Leadership) model in the context of its relationship to gifted individuals and the pressing need for change in society. The spiritual concept of wisdom and humanistic educational theory is implicit throughout this review. The author considers elements of the model’s utility and implementation in light of his experience in the field as a veteran educator and consultant, his own research relating to self-efficacy of teachers’ teaching critical thinking, the Kaleidoscope Project, and its similarities to his own Chandelier methodology.     

Hannah Arendt and the ‘freedom’ to think

ABSTRACT

Dissatisfied with the Western tradition of political philosophy, Arendt maintained a tension between the political, which she associates primarily with the freedom to act, and the philosophical, which she associates principally with the activity of thinking, throughout her works. Whilst Arendt's work is underpinned by a focus on political action, her work on the thinking/non-thinking dichotomy is of significant educational value. Taking a broadly phenomenological approach, and reading Arendt through an educational lens, this paper seeks to demonstrate how the thinking/non-thinking dichotomy and the perils of ‘non-thinking’ reveal the wider dangers of instrumentalism and the performative models of education that accompanies it. It is suggested here that Arendt's work exposes ‘non-thinking’ as a form of instrumental thinking, which is not only a threat to the development of the capacity for critical thought but also to the development autonomy and the capacity for moral judgement.     

“There Is No Substitute for a Sense of Reality”: Humanizing the Humanities

Do the humanities have a future? In the face of an increased emphasis on the so‐called practical applicability of education, some educators worry that the presence of humanistic study in schools and universities is gravely threatened. In the short‐term, scholars have rallied to defend the humanities by demonstrating how they do, in fact, advance our practical interests. Martha Nussbaum, for example, argues that the humanities uniquely support democratic citizenship by cultivating critical thinking and narrative imagination — two skills needed for the development of sympathetic and autonomous judgment. Defending the humanities in this manner, however, puts practitioners of the humanities in an impossible position. In this essay, Megan Laverty explains that while arguments such as Nussbaum's, which defend the instrumental value of the humanities, are persuasive and strategic, their use is double‐edged. They belie the fact that the humanities are valuable for their own sake. Such arguments imply that the humanities derive their value from their ability to provide extrinsic benefits such as critical thinking and narrative imagination. Moreover, they can prevent individuals from discovering that the value of the humanities is revealed over time and from the inside out. In fact, having to answer the question of why the humanities matter puts us in an impossible position precisely because humanistic study is what Laverty describes, drawing upon the work of Talbot Brewer and R. F. Holland, as a form of dialectical activity: one in which the activity's constitutive ideals and internal goods are progressively clarified by means of the individual's ongoing engagement in the activity itself. Having redescribed the humanities as intrinsically valuable, Laverty goes on to distinguish humanistic study from other forms of dialectical activity, arguing that the humanities call upon students to imagine alternative linguistic and conceptual possibilities — thereby connecting us with others. It is in the pursuit of this question about the nature of our humanity — not its answer, but the question itself — that the meaning of humanistic study continues, indefinitely, to unfold.     

Reconciling ourselves to reality: Arendt,education and the challenge of being at home in the world

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I explore the educational significance of the work of Hannah Arendt through reflections on four papers that constitute this special issue. I focus on the challenge of reconciling ourselves to reality, that is, of being at home in the world. Although Arendt's idea of being at home in the world is connected to her explorations of understanding, such understanding should not be approached as a matter of sense making, but in terms of ‘eccentric judgement’. For judgement to be eccentric, we must expose ourselves to otherness, which has to do with friendship if we understand friendship as a public rather than an entirely private matter. While political judgement requires a ‘being in the presence of others’ Arendt's views on thinking and its role in moral judgement indicate the necessity of solitude, of being alone with oneself. Rather than seeing this a process through which one calls oneself into question, I highlight the importance of the experience of being called into question, which I understand as the experience of ‘being taught’. I conclude that the educational significance of Arendt's work particularly lies in this link with teaching, and less so in notions of learning, reflection and sense making.     

Friendship and the Public Stage: Revisiting Hannah Arendt's Resistance to “Political Education”

Hannah Arendt's essays about the 1957 crisis over efforts of a group of youth, the “Little Rock Nine,” to desegregate a high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, reveal a tension in her vision of the “public.” In this article Aaron Schutz and Marie Sandy look closely at the experiences of the youth desegregating the school, especially those of Elizabeth Eckford, drawing upon them to trace a continuum of forms of public engagement in Arendt's work. This ranges from arenas of “deliberative friendship,” where unique individuals collaborate on common efforts, to a more conflictual “public stage,” where groups act in solidarity to change aspects of the public world. While Arendt famously asserted in her essay “The Crisis in Education” that political capacities should not be taught in schools, it makes more sense to see this argument as focused on what she sometimes called the conflictual “public stage,” reflecting the experience of the Little Rock Nine. In contrast, Schutz and Sandy argue that Arendt's own work implies that “deliberative friendship,” as described in her essay “Philosophy and Politics” and elsewhere, should be part of everyday practices in classrooms and schools.     

Hannah Arendt,education, and the question of totalitarianism

The aim of this paper is to consider the ways in which Arendt's writings on totalitarianism act as a warning sign for political and miseducational circumstances in the USA. Because the term totalitarianism has been used imprudently (largely in the mass media) to express repressive conditions in so-called models of democracy, this paper seeks to both clarify and raise questions concerning its meaning as a form of nation-state-sanctioned power and/or economic-technological force. This analysis draws largely from Arendt's definition of totalitarianism expressed as an antipolitical phenomenon characterized by terror-ruled ideological indoctrination which destroys both the public realm and the private identities. I contend that analyses of twentieth-century totalitarianism are significant to today's unprecedented questions and circumstances germinating in and having significance beyond the USA. I also describe the difficulty of action under extreme conditions. In the last analysis, I deliberate on the site of education as a totalitarian coercion.     

The discourse and nature of creativity and innovation: Ways of relating to the novel

In the discourse of the knowledge-based economy, the link between creativity and innovation is usually taken for granted. However, not only is this link of recent date, it joins together two diametrically opposed concepts: the economic concept of innovation and the humanistic concept of creativity. In research too, there is a lack of enquiry into the nature of the processes of creativity and innovation and into how these processes are similar yet different. Building on the original insights of Henri Poincaré and Joseph Schumpeter, I present the hypothesis that creativity and innovation are similar in nature, not in regard to knowledge or skills, but in that both are ways of relating to the novel. My findings suggest, meanwhile, that creativity and innovation differ in that creativity is about experiencing the novel in the creative process, whereas innovation is about willing the novel as a strategy for the innovative process. Furthermore, my findings suggest that there exists a structural similarity between creativity and innovation and Aristotle’s concepts of practical and philosophical wisdom, in that innovation is a form of practical wisdom in regard to the novel, whereas creativity is a form of philosophical wisdom in regard to the novel.     

The field of speech, 1953: An overview

Inherent in the rhetorical tradition of symbolic form is the search for the rhetorical processes which convert experience into the social forms of community. Fusing Robert Scott's notion of rhetoric as dynamic with the rhetorical concept of “spectacle,” this essay explores “the dynamic spectacle” as a rhetorical document of community building. Black America's struggle for identity in White America is offered as a case study.     

人文精神培育途径及对高校思政教育的意义

高校人文精神是高校所特有的精神环境和文化气氛,是以大学生为主体形成的文化观念、思维形式、行为特征和行为方式,它包括学校精神和传统、校风和学风、人文关怀与集体舆论等内容。将培育大学生人文精神的过程与思想政治教育结合起来,是高校进行思想政治教育的有益尝试。培育大学生人文精神既体现大学生个体发展需要,又符合社会主义核心价值体系的内涵。因此,人文精神的培育对大学生思想政治教育具有重要影响。     

An introduction to the special issue on wisdom and moral education

ABSTRACT

This essay introduces the present special issue on wisdom and moral education, which draws on a conference held in Oxford in 2017. Some of the seven contributions (by Sanderse; Ferkany; and Hatchimonji et al.) make use of the Aristotelian concept of phronesis, or practical wisdom, while others focus more on the wisdom concept as it has developed in contemporary psychology (Huynh and Grossman; Ardelt; and Brocato, Hix and Jayawickreme). One (by Swartwood) straddles the distinction between the two. All the contributions, however, address in different ways practical questions about how wisdom can be evaluated and how it relates to issues of moral development and education.     

Discourse,Justification, and Education: Jürgen Habermas on Moral Epistemology and Dialogical Conditions of Moral Justification and Rightness

In this essay Walter Okshevsky addresses the question of whether a certain form of dialogically derived agreement can function as an epistemic (universal and necessary) criterion of moral judgment and ground of moral authority. Okshevsky examines arguments for and against in the literature of educational philosophy and develops Jürgen Habermas's affirmative answer as presented in his discourse theory of morality. Habermas's position is articulated as a moral epistemology (“strong dialogicality”) and is developed through his critique of the “monologism” of certain aspects of Immanuel Kant's moral theory. Okshevsky concludes with a consideration of some educational implications of Habermas's position.     

“媒介权力”下的随笔写作——以近十年来传媒明星的随笔为例

传媒明星的随笔写作近年来倍受读者热捧。时代转换的大背景下,大众社会的崛起所形成的“媒介权力”,为这些写作者提供了一个独特的话语生产空间;而随笔的文体特征、自由精神,则成为他们的写作最适宜的形式,其中的优秀之作,贴近现实,紧扣时代,闪烁着智性的光芒,呈现着个人的理性之思与人文关怀。     

Love,Socrates, and Pedagogy

A recent report on the UK's higher education system by Lord John Browne exemplifies the dominant trend in education policy initiatives toward a focus on education primarily for employment and for the acquisition of skills. In this essay, Alison Assiter argues that such an entrepreneurial approach neglects essential aspects of the processes of teaching and learning. She draws on the work of Hannah Arendt, who saw the proper role of education as imparting the love of a subject, to critique the view expressed in Browne's report. Assiter then uses Søren Kierkegaard's reflections on education to further develop Arendt's perspective. While Kierkegaard certainly would have agreed with Arendt that teaching is a process of inspiring in students the love of a subject, he went beyond this to suggest that teaching also must encourage students to believe they can make a difference in the world and must instill in both teachers and students a commitment to engaging in a mutual process of development.     

THE CONCEPT OF PHILOSOPHICAL EDUCATION

Strangely, the concept of philosophical education is not much in use, at least not as a philosophical concept. In this essay, Steinar Bøyum attempts to outline such a philosophical concept of philosophical education. Bøyum uses Plato's Allegory of the Cave, René Descartes's life of doubt, and Immanuel Kant's criticism of metaphysics as paradigms or defining examples of this concept. Bøyum's aim in this essay is not exegetical; rather, he hopes to describe these examples in a way that will let their character as conceptions of philosophical education show forth. His underlying aims are to show which forms such conceptions may take and why philosophical education is or should be an important topic for both philosophy and education.     

老子思想中折射出的后现代主义

老子是中国古代杰出的哲学家,其哲学思想深刻而丰富,被视为道家经典的旷世巨作《道德经》,充分彰显了＂道＂的多元内涵;文中涉及到老子对德善思想、生态智慧、崇尚女性、人文理想等方面的思考,可谓与后现代主义思想殊途同归,二者共同体现了对社会现实的深刻反思精神。     

品味历史的美感:历史教学中的审美教育刍论

初中历史课程标准指出学生要从历史中汲取智慧,培养人文素养,以应对新世纪的挑战。基于基础教育改革的不断推进和完善,初中历史课程教学这一动态生成的活动离不开历史审美教育的观照。文章通过思考初中历史课程中历史审美的概念,探讨现阶段初中历史审美教育所面临的问题和承担的使命,并提出对历史审美教育的些许展望。     

近十年鲁迅杂文艺术特质研究综述

鲁迅杂文"形象化"的基本文体特征是议论的"曲张力";逻辑判断同审美判断统一、使逻辑思维向形象思维转换融合是鲁迅杂文的基本思维方式;比喻、趣味、主情、言志、想象等玉成和强化了杂文的"诗"性;鲁迅杂文的主要美学风格是"力之美"、冷峻、凝重、含蓄等;语言同这些艺术追求相统一;与外国作家和同时代作家比较显示出鲁迅杂文的独特艺术价值;现代传媒和特殊的文化环境与杂文的文体、艺术特点紧密相连.