The Subject and the World: Educational challenges

Abstract

The paper explores the notion of ‘the subject’ in the context of education as an alternative to more limited concepts such as the student or learner. Drawing on the thought of Cornelius Castoriadis, the subject under consideration is a conscious, self-reflective subject that organizes and modifies itself in relation to a world of significations. Through the capacity for conscious self-modification, the subject becomes a self-reflective agent in a socially instituted world of significations. For Castoriadis, this kind of subjectivity is not readily available in every kind of social organization; rather, it is a possible product of a society that has instituted itself explicitly or autonomously. This socially instituted reflexivity is for Castoriadis historically associated with democracy, politics and philosophy. In the second part, the discussion is extended to the non-human realm and the world of the living being. Here, too, meaning—or proto-meaning in the case of the living being—is a constituent in the formation of a world. In this discussion, where Francisco Varela is an important source, concepts such as meaning, signification, normativity and purpose are introduced in the natural sciences, or rather, the sciences of human and non-human nature. The aim of the paper is twofold: on the one hand, to introduce pedagogical reflections into discussions about human on non-human nature; and, on the other, to develop a richer conceptual repertoire for exploring educational phenomena than what is immediately available. An important background, in both cases, is the possibility of ecological crisis, which poses new problems for educators.

Keywords:

• subjectivity
• world
• Bildung
• Cornelius Castoriadis
• ecology

Notes

1. A related, somewhat narrower concept is the notion of the self, see K. Kristjánsson, The Self and its Emotions, New York, Cambridge UP, 2010; C. Taylor, Sources of the Self, Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1989. Distinctions and connections between the concepts of self and subjectivity will not be discussed here. The same goes for the terms subjectivization/subjectification and subject positions in the tradition from Althusser and Foucault.

2. Consequently, a social institution that loses the ability to provide meaning ceases to exist as such. The fall of empires and disappearance of civilizations for no apparent (external) cause spring to mind.

3. According to Castoriadis, there is a certain element of violence in the socialization process. In order to give up its unsocialized, monadic, psychotic, yet pleasurable state, the psyche has to accept the meaning offered by social-historical.

4. To talk about an end to the Bildung process is, of course, an abuse of terms. Ends, in this context, must be seen not as expressions of temporality (finalities), but rather as ideals.

5. Castoriadis does not use the term Bildung in the meaning used here, but he uses the term paideia (paideia in the ‘true’ sense), which is a paideia aimed at subjectivity.

6. At the same time, however, the world of the single living specimen is connected with the species as a whole. The one exemplar creates its own world, and is at the same time encased in the world of the species (Castoriadis, 1997b).

7. In Castoriadis’s ontology of magma, which cannot be elaborated here, everything that exists exists the way it does because there is support in what precedes it, like layers or strata of historical and natural existence.

8. Notably, evolutionary psychology inspired by biology.

9. The imagination for Castoriadis is not only an asset of individuals; the imagination of the social-historical in fact holds a more important place in his thought. Concepts used to describe this dimension are the radical imaginary and the radical anonymous collective.

10. This is why autonomy, for Castoriadis, is always both individual and collective.

11. In other terms, the distinction between autonomy and heteronomy as conceived by Castoriadis.

12. One of their dialogues has been published in Castoriadis, 2011.