Philosophia: International Journal of Philosophy

The focus of this small contribution to (the dearth of) studies in the history of philosophy of American education falls upon the backside of the cultural upheaval between 1880 and 1920. The general purpose is to relate aspects of Herbert Spencer’s philosophy of education to pedagogical principles in the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, a document of the National Education Association’s Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, published in 1918. An attempt is made to implement this purpose by analyzing the educational principles in the NEA report, by clarifying Spencer’s educational principles in relationship to the report, and by explaining Spencer’s philosophical principles and relating them to the CRSE document. In addition to similarities between specific Spencerian principles and the 1918 report, especially noted is the ideological proximity of the “spirit” of Spencer’s evolutionary naturalism and empiricism (or positivism) to the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education.

While Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC) provides a better alternative to the usual ‘banking’ model of education, questions have been raised regarding its applicability in non-western contexts. Despite its adherence to the ideals of democratic dialogue, not all members of a Community of Inquiry (COI) will be disposed to participate in the inquiry, not because they are incapable of doing so, but because they are positioned inferiorly within the group thereby affecting their efforts to speak out on topics that are meaningful to them. In this article, I claim that it is essential to integrate positionality in P4wC research/practice. Aside from its role in helping a practitioner/researcher choose the appropriate method and materials that match the unique contexts of children, it also increases one’s awareness of the subtle forms of epistemic injustice that could leak in the COI, as well as the other subtle ways in which children are marginalized. In this regard, a P4wC researcher/practitioner must have a higher degree of sensitivity towards her positionality as this inevitably gets entangled with the positionality of children. I present some ‘areas’ in which the importance of positionality in the COI manifests, namely, restructuring classroom power relations, navigating a multi-ethnic classroom, facilitating meaning-making, and modeling reflective thinking.

In this essay, we explore the possibility and the extent of individual freedom within the Afro-communitarian set up. We contend that every community is made up of individuals whose association constitutes the community and as such, that the idea of individual freedom is not only possible but could be necessary. Granted that the idea of communitarianism presupposes the domination of communal values over individual endowments, we contend, nonetheless that when the idea of primordiality of private liberty is taken into account, individual freedom could be defended. We engage extant literature in Afro-communitarianism to make a strong case using Michael Eze’s ‘realist perspectivism’ as a veritable index that defines the relationship between the individual and the community as contemporaneous which balances private liberty with public authority. Thus, we claim that since the freedom of the individual to function is necessary for the community to function, individual freedom is defensible insofar as it does not conflict with public authority.

As an international instrument on climate change, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change embraces a general obligation to protect the climate system, from which some specific obligations for developed countries fall off from. In this paper, I discuss three of such obligations. Firstly, the obligation to address the causes of climate change and to mitigate its adverse effects, next, the obligation to assist developing countries that are vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change in meeting the costs of adaptation to those adverse effects and finally, the obligation to support other developing countries by providing them with appropriate resources in order for them to mitigate and adapt to the adverse effects of climate change. I show that these obligations are framed in the treaty as obligations of beneficence and suggest that the first two can be expressed as obligations of justice. I argue for the soundness of expressing the obligations this way and that doing so may have the added virtue of addressing both the egoistic and performance problems since it introduces some incentive for taking the obligations seriously and the possibility for their realization.

This paper argues that identity which is the locus of emotional and social phenomena of an individual becomes problematic particularly in postmodern society. Postmodern society calls for a socio-cultural and epistemological revolution which permeates the very core of our social existence. Coupled with the immensity and massive effects of the market industry, postmodern culture affects our lives through the dissolutions of boundaries, geographies, and our ethnicities so that our sense of personal and social identity is left into perpetual disintegration, struggles and contradictions. The so-called “inner” and “outer” community which we once cherished inevitably dissolved into the arena of the market industry. Consequently, the sense of “I-am” which Fromm considers as an existential human need already deeply roots itself towards commodity fixations rather than in our group or in our ethnic communal relationships. It is in these contexts that this paper contends a necessity to redeem identity not only as a psychological base but more of an existential human need. Further, this paper maintains that Fromm’s notion of relatedness and rootedness are necessary elements in identity formation since they serve as the existential psychic cores that lead towards being truly at home amidst a fragmented social world.

In this article, I present a critical exposition of and engagement with Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s schizoanalysis, and its therapeutic and revolutionary powers. Firstly, I discuss how the aftermath of the May 1968 phenomenon shapes the formulation of schizoanalysis, specifically, in relation to the French people’s desire for voluntary servitude to what they call as ‘State philosophy.’ More importantly, I discuss desire’s social investment, syntheses, and parallogisms. Secondly, I elucidate schizoanalysis’ goal of achieving freedom from all kinds of Oedipalizations and capitalist exploitations from the family to the society writ large. In this regard, it is schizophrenia which is capable of subverting all forms of oppressions or totalizations fabricated by Oedipus and capitalism. Lastly, I explicate schizoanalysis’ aim, which is to reinstate desire’s revolutionary potentialities toward a revolution fueled by “schizophrenia as a process,” which Deleuze and Guattari call as ‘permanent revolution.’

Using Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of Levinas’s other, the paper argues that philosophy’s involvement with nonphenomenality necessarily leads to a discussion of the im/possibility of God. Because the nonphenomenal is proper to God, then the theological trap becomes explicit in the study of philosophy. The paper operates within an exposition of Derrida’s “Violence and Metaphysics,” while arguing in three sections. The first section discusses the theological trap implicit in Levinas and the language that he engages. The limitations of this theological language and the negativity involved in the discussion of the other leads us to consider difference as nonphenomenal. The second section investigates the violence that language entails in Derrida’s understanding of Levinas’s Husserl and Heidegger. This is to demonstrate the point made in section one and to bridge the idea to section three, which investigates the limitations of this language and its implications to any understanding of God as the effect of the trace. If anything, the paper utilizes Derrida’s reading of Levinas to argue for the theological trap and the understanding of God as the effect of the trace.

Vietnam is a communist country. For a Marxist ideologue, “religion is the opium of the masses.” But many communist countries—over the years—have evolved from a strictly atheistic persuasion to a tolerance for religious practices. Except probably in North Korea, this transformation from an atheistic perspective to religious tolerance has become a phenomenon in communist countries like Russia and China.Vietnam did not have that experience. This paper will show that religious pluralism was tolerated, even accepted, in communist Vietnam. I will show how vibrant this religious amalgamation is in Vietnam and demonstrate, as in the case of market economics thriving in communist countries, that Vietnamese communism and religious pluralism can robustly coexist with each other.

The most prevalent modes of philosophy, educational theory, and philosophy of education currently extant in the United States represent a pronounced departure from the fundamental patterns of the Greek-Jewish- Christian tradition. Among the noteworthy characteristics of the more popular trends is a tendency toward the denial of, or an indifference regarding, the existence of a Transcendent Being. This feature alone has effected a radical departure from the scholarly traditions which are characterized by investigations into the relationships between theology and philosophy. This factor, in turn, bears potentially strong influence upon the theory and practice of education. Partially in order to promote the revivification of a heritage not unrelated to that of many early American intellectual leaders, the main purpose of this paper is to exemplify the structure and an aspect of the substance of a theology-philosophy of Catholic education in accord with a selected passage from A New Catechism: Catholic Faith for Adults (known as the “Dutch Catechism”). The theological-philosophical dimension of this structure is represented by a developmental process entailing three stages of progression: from human love through an awareness of the “God of the philosophers” to belief in Christ. It is shown how theological and philosophical elements of this process bear upon the importance of early childhood religious education as well as of Catholic education somewhat more broadly conceived. It is noted that, although the theological-philosophical foundations allow for numerous options in education, there are bounds within which the direction of this education must be retained. The current importance of this kind of investigation lies in 1) the fundamentally empiricist approaches in philosophy of education so prominent today, 2) the inability of empiricist philosophies to confront prescriptive values in an authentically rational fashion, and 3) the necessity of a theological-philosophical approach for the Christian who wishes to think rationally about prescriptive values, and to formulate the kinds of educational plans which will prove to be effective in promoting authentic human happiness. Brief references to the practical (including educational) efficacy of theoretical (including theological and philosophical) conceptions, and to teacher education, conclude the paper.

With its use of the powerful technology of computer, the computational theory of mind or computationalism, which regards minds as computational systems, has been widely hailed as the most promising theory that will carry out the project of explaining the workings of the mind in purely scientific terms. While it continues to serve as the primary framework for scientifically inclined theorizing and investigations about the nature of minds, especially in the area of cognitive science, it, however, continues to face strong objections from its critics. And with the growing complexity and sophistication of the arguments used to promote and reject the theory, the debate has become intractable. It has become quite difficult to assess which side of the dispute is gaining the upper hand. Such difficulty may be due to a variety of reasons. In this essay, I critically examine two of such reasons. The first concerns the ambiguity of the theory’s intended scope of application: whether it is limited to the mind’s cognitive features only or it also includes the mind’s phenomenal features. The second concerns the vagueness of how the so-called computer modelling of human cognitive processes is able to duplicate such processes. Accordingly, if insufficiently addressed, they remain as two roadblocks to the entire project of computationalism.

John Rawls’s political liberalism and Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach have been among the most influential theories in political philosophy. Their theoretical and practical implications have also been an important aspect of discussion in the field of philosophy of education. This study provides a discussion focusing on the concepts justice, education, and equality from the perspectives of political liberalism and the capabilities approach. It also examines impacts of neoliberal economic theory over education policies and finalizes with a discussion on why democratic societies need to consider egalitarian education policies.