Responsibility beyond rationality: the case for rhizomatic consequentialism

Abstract

A key challenge for education is to encourage children to act responsibly. If ‘spiritual literacy’ does not involve an autonomous, rational soul capable of ‘reading and writing the world as God intended’, it must refer to ethical (and perhaps religious) capacity in relation to contingent actions in a context free of moral absolutes. In relation to the former, Kant's Categorical Imperative supposed that actions are either right or wrong according to an absolute reason derived from the most basic templates of human sense making. According to Kant, therefore, right is rational irrespective of the apparent consequences of specific actions. In contrast, in an age lacking Kant's beliefs in both God and absolute reason, it is tempting to see an unethical pragmatism as the only alternative to the Categorical Imperative. However, it is possible to instil responsibility through a consequentialism based on a broader conception of relatedness, inspired by Deleuze and Guattari's notion of the ‘rhizome’. ‘Rhizomatic consequentialism’, as here defined, provides a ‘third way’ for moral education between instilling an understanding of absolute right and wrong and encouraging the belief that ‘right is what you can get away with’.

Keywords:

• Moral education
• Philosophy
• Deleuze
• Guattari
• Kant

Notes

Corresponding author. Department of Education, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK. Email: [email protected]

For a general discussion see Guyer (1992).

I know I exist; even if I doubt my existence, there is still an ‘I’ who doubts (Descartes, 1984, Cambridge edition).

See, for example, Hume (1963) and Locke (1959) for accessible, relatively modern editions.

For a discussion of the Categories see Guyer (1992, p. 132 ff).

One of the consequences of Kant's position is that morality is only human, i.e. we should act morally towards nature but the natural world is essentially amoral. This has considerable implications during a period when nature itself seems under threat; Kant's position is essentially that if we damage nature (are cruel to animals, for example), we are letting ourselves down.

The structuralist psychoanalyst, for example, is widely quoted as having described the unconscious as ‘structured like a language’. For an influential critique of both Kantianism and (consequentialist) Utilitarianism as the basis of moral systems, see the work of Bernard Williams: particularly Utilitarianism: for and against (Williams, 1973) and Utilitarianism and beyond (Williams & Sen, 1982). Williams argued that the emotional, personal and social contexts cannot be ignored in discussions of supposed abstractions such as goodness and duty.

Recent work in neuropsychology, ‘brain‐mapping’, reinforces this, suggesting that the development of the capacity to make reasoned judgements is not complete until at least late adolescence, and perhaps well beyond: a finding that may come as no surprise to many parents and teachers!

‘Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object’ (C. S. Peirce, quoted in Urmson & Re´e, 1989, p. 256).

‘Fallacy of single causation’ is a phrase not used by Deleuze and Guattari (1987).

See also Stables (2002), which considers how education for environmental sustainability is made difficult by the continuation of an effective art–science divide in school education: whatever the protestations of leading scientists and philosophers, at the level of secondary education, the overriding message is still along the lines of ‘science is about facts; art is about feelings and opinions’.