‘To Catch at and Let Go’: David Bakhurst,Phenomenology and Post‐phenomenology

This paper examines David Bakhurst's attempt to provide a picture of ‘the kinds of beings we are’ that is ‘more realistic’ than rationalism. I argue that there is much that is rich and compelling in Bakhurst's account. Yet I also question whether there are ways in which it could be taken further. I introduce the discussion by exploring Bakhurst's engagement with phenomenology and, more specifically, Hubert Dreyfus—who enters Bakhurst's horizon on account of his inheritance of the philosophy of John McDowell. Whilst I recognise that Bakhurst's encounter with Dreyfus demonstrates his achievements—over rationalism and over Dreyfus—I also suggest that it opens up certain questions that remain to be asked of his position on account of its conceptualism. These questions originate, not from a Dreyfusian phenomenological perspective, but from the post‐phenomenological perspective of Jacques Derrida. Through appealing to key Derridean tropes, I aim to show why the conceptual idiom Bakhurst retains may hold us back from understanding the open nature of human thought. I end by considering what therefore needs to come—and what needs to be let go—in order to best do justice to the ‘kinds of beings we are’.     

‘How Can We Know the Dancer from the Dance?’ Personal Concern and Sexual Desire in the Educational Relationship

Drawing on both philosophical and imaginative sources, this article explores the profile of concern and caring in the teacher–learner relationship. Following a defence of the role of narrative in educational theory, the nature of the teacher–learner relationship and the role of concern in the relationship are addressed. The main part of the essay draws on the autobiographical fiction The Pupil: A Memory of Love by Irish author Monk Gibbon to demonstrate the process whereby shared passion for literature can become—on the part of the teacher—an obsessive sexual desire for the learner. Eschewing virtue‐signalling and moral grandstanding, the third and concluding part of the essay endeavours to explain the inappropriateness of the erotic in the teacher–learner relationship.