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Abstract
In this paper an ethical approach to educational methodology is discussed in relation to the philosophies of Emanuel Levinas and Robert Cox. Cox’s anti‐essentialist understanding of historical materialism and Levinas’ metaphysical idealism are applied to an analysis of the (self)‐reflective methods required today in Higher Education in the UK, such as Problem‐Based Learning (PBL) and Personal Development Planning (PDP). The paper identifies a post‐Kantian paradigm of the subject–object dichotomy as a cause of the ontological constraints which pervade critical pedagogy, and instead it proposes a pre‐ontological ethics of the relationship with the other which questions self‐centred strategies of reflection.
Notes
1. Levinas’s (Citation1949) argument differs from traditional metaphysics mainly on the ethical ground that precedes any ontological concept of being: ethics here lies in an approach to being that starts in a meeting with the other. This approach requires abandoning of the concept of the subject as posited against the object, or a particular being as recognised against a universal Being. Primarily Levinas draws upon Heidegger who introduced a new ontology by pointing at the relational connection between being and Being which laid foundation to the Levinasian later critique. Levinas, however, put his teacher’s philosophy under scrutiny and criticised it for separating ontology from the eternal and for omitting the role of the other in our understanding of being. For Levinas, the Heideggerian project of the selfhood derives from a totalising dimension of the Same where being and Being (the equivalent of the existent and existence) are contained in each other and where ontological relationship emerges within the boundaries of an exclusive Selfhood. The immersion of being in Being before death has a different direction in Levinas: human existence (being) derives from a temporal relationship with existence (Being) as a prior condition of which we do not know anything until our realisation of the presence of the other. Levinas (Citation2006, 5) writes: ‘The other is a being and counts as such’ whereas ‘for Heidegger, to relate to beings qua beings means to let beings be, to understand them as independent of the perception that discovers and grasps them’ (Levinas Citation2006, 5). What is crucial in the debate on pedagogy is this point of departure between the two philosophers which involves their different understanding of the relationship between the particular and the universal. Levinas (Citation2006, 4) cannot accept that ‘to understand is to relate to the particular, which alone exists, through knowledge, which is always knowledge of the universal’. Levinas does not appreciate metaphysical insight in reflection that returns to itself via a personal narrative about the relationship with the world. Reflection in Levinas (Citation2006, 4) cannot be complacent with reflection on itself or existence, but instead on the other who conceives of the exteriority and enables thought. The very core of metaphysical reflection lies in that moment when ‘thought becomes conscious of itself and at the same time conscious of the exteriority that goes beyond its nature, that encloses it’. See a detailed analysis of Levinas’s argument against Heidegger in Chanter (Citation1987) and a discussion by Derrida (Citation1984). On the history of traditional metaphysics which supports subject–object oppositional relationship, see (Bader Citation1979; Citation1983; Habermas Citation1987). For a history of counter concepts in metaphysics including Levinas’s ontological theory of anti‐essentialism, see Coreth (Citation1989).
2. The mythical meaning of the wholeness of society, Laclau (Citation1990) argues in New Reflection on the Revolution of Our Time, where he admits that the impossibility of that fullness makes a desire to achieve it deeply ethical. In that sense, the interrelations between objects do not take place in time and place but they, in fact, create time and space. Where Laclau meets with Levinas and Cox is the conviction of the author of New Reflections that decisions are made on the ground of the a priori principle external to the decision itself. He writes: ‘[T]he Cartesian illusion of an absolute starting point must also be given up, since the person making ethical judgments is never an abstract individual, but a member of a certain community that already believes in a number of principles and values’ (Laclau Citation1990, 243). Particular decisions, for Laclau, can be only made against the horizon of infinity which transcends the singular. Interestingly, for Laclau it is also the conceptualisation of time and space that has to be revisited if a social and historical making of society is to become a responsible/ethical process. Although clearly Newtonian in its principle, Laclau’s strict divide between time and space brings about a new explanation of the social relations which take place within them. According to Laclau (Citation1990, 84), spatiality on it own is impossible, ‘any effort to spatialise time, ultimately fails and space becomes an event’.