[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.In addition, it negatesthose who refuse to vote on an issue, those with insufficient information to takepart, those who object to the authority under which the vote is held, and in Petersown admission, the 80 per cent who don t know what to make of it all.Many of Benn & Peters prescriptions for democratic government are missing inthe age of televised politicianship.Politicians, under the guidance of publicrelations consultants, spend more time making an impact than listening toconstituents, press conferences are timed for maximum publicity, journalists andreporters are governed by commercial presentation, and information is likely to bedelivered as commercial sound bites compatible with advertising schedules.Rather than Peters well-informed constituent expressing a rational opinion ,today s voter is more likely to be a well-massaged consumer of television images.Politicians often use the aggregate term the public to prescribe how individualsshould think about an issue.The public is certainly not a self-constituting group,but represents the category of otherness in political decision-making, those aboutwhom the decisions are made in the interests of communal harmony.Theagonistic position allows for and even promotes the existence of active minoritieswho can ensure that competing points of view are recognised, and that anyharmony that arises, does so from a space where separate voices are protected.As a theoretical ideal, democracy provides for gradual incremental change,preserving the prevailing order and removing the need for messy revolutions orauthoritarian decree.Liberal democracy then, like its attendant rationality, isattractive as an ideal, but to believe that the ideal is achievable, ignores Peters ownadmission about the frustrations , failings and hypocrisies of such an ideal inpractice.News media constantly present violent images of peace-making and truce-monitoring troops destroying whole countries and killing people in the88 NIETZSCHE, LIBERALISM AND EDUCATIONinterests of liberation, world peace, security and democratic freedom, while theirgovernments benefit economically from providing post-war aid to those samenations.National identities are formed by constructing and denigrating otherness,through such terminology as insurgent dissidents , communist infiltration and fascist regimes.The language of our liberal society has not yet adopted suchphrases as creeping democracy , capitalist rebels or liberal guerrillas , orlearned to examine the ideals of liberalism or democracy from alternativeperspectives.Everyday common sense assumes the status of truth, especially ourmetaphysical notions of the self, the transcendental nature of truth, and the capacityof language to give accurate descriptions of reality.A genealogical approach, byadopting a different political and historical perspective, problematises the ethics ofmany practices in our systems of democracy, and thereby undermines the certaintyof Peters prescription for democracy as the ethical basis for education.In highlighting the importance of discussion, Benn & Peters acknowledge thatdiscussion presupposes a consensus on fundamentals, for where this is lacking,they say, men will treat one another as scoundrels, and differences of opinion willbe undiscussable:Where men start from different assumptions, there are no adjustments and nocompromises generally felt to be fair and reasonable.In such conditionspolitics is a cynical grasping for whatever advantages temporary powercombinations can secure.without appropriate attitudes, and the will toconduct politics in a rational and tolerant spirit, democratic institutions workundemocratically (Benn & Peters, 1959, p.353).If it has done nothing else, this chapter has surely suggested that differentassumptions are not only inevitable, they are to be welcomed as part of formulatinga system of ethics particularly one that might be considered an ethics ofdifference.The presumption of consensus within a liberal democratic formulationsuggests, at base, a fundamentalism that prescribes the limits of what can be said,denigrating the possibility of agonism and precluding anything but cosmeticdifferences.In Rorty s terms, the result is the literalisation of prevailing metaphorsand an impediment to new ways of thinking anathema for education.An ethics based on agonism favours a non-closure on identity, an acceptance ofdiffering conceptual schemes, and a softening of the criteria for what would countas a point of view.Peters ethical basis for education is welcomed as one suchpoint of view, but is resisted in its entirety because it searches for an idealisedversion of the truth.If Peters were to achieve the closure inherent in the universalethic that he seeks, his work would fall prey to its own moral judgments, based onits exclusivity, its rigid prescription for a particular identity, and its insistence on atranscendental rationality as the true order for human life.Any recommendation for an ethical formulation needs to be procedural ratherthan substantive, inclusive rather than exclusive, and ongoing rather than finite.Nietzschean perspectivism does not lay out a totalising plan for action, or even acoherent philosophical framework for universal agreement.What is advocatedinstead is an ongoing problematisation of the rational overlay on social life and acontinuous interrogation of the discursive practices that subjugate otherness.In89 CHAPTER 5calling for multiple points of view, the Nietzschean critique of dogmatism avoidscertainty in the ethical realm and may be an important voice to heed inconstructing a politics that can challenge the panoply of emergingfundamentalisms (Schrift, 1995, p.125).90 CHAPTER 6NIETZSCHE, POSTSTRUCTURALISM ANDEDUCATIONNIETZSCHE AND POSTSTRUCTURALISMIncreasingly, philosophers of education are turning to post discourses forexplanations of diversity.Within the postmodern condition, the artist and thewriter are not governed by pre-established rules or judged according topredetermined categories.Rather, they are working without rules in order toformulate the rules of what will have been done (Lyotard, 1984, p.81).Lyotardsuggests it is not our business to supply reality , or to provide a totalising unity forirreconcilable language games [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl matkasanepid.xlx.pl
.In addition, it negatesthose who refuse to vote on an issue, those with insufficient information to takepart, those who object to the authority under which the vote is held, and in Petersown admission, the 80 per cent who don t know what to make of it all.Many of Benn & Peters prescriptions for democratic government are missing inthe age of televised politicianship.Politicians, under the guidance of publicrelations consultants, spend more time making an impact than listening toconstituents, press conferences are timed for maximum publicity, journalists andreporters are governed by commercial presentation, and information is likely to bedelivered as commercial sound bites compatible with advertising schedules.Rather than Peters well-informed constituent expressing a rational opinion ,today s voter is more likely to be a well-massaged consumer of television images.Politicians often use the aggregate term the public to prescribe how individualsshould think about an issue.The public is certainly not a self-constituting group,but represents the category of otherness in political decision-making, those aboutwhom the decisions are made in the interests of communal harmony.Theagonistic position allows for and even promotes the existence of active minoritieswho can ensure that competing points of view are recognised, and that anyharmony that arises, does so from a space where separate voices are protected.As a theoretical ideal, democracy provides for gradual incremental change,preserving the prevailing order and removing the need for messy revolutions orauthoritarian decree.Liberal democracy then, like its attendant rationality, isattractive as an ideal, but to believe that the ideal is achievable, ignores Peters ownadmission about the frustrations , failings and hypocrisies of such an ideal inpractice.News media constantly present violent images of peace-making and truce-monitoring troops destroying whole countries and killing people in the88 NIETZSCHE, LIBERALISM AND EDUCATIONinterests of liberation, world peace, security and democratic freedom, while theirgovernments benefit economically from providing post-war aid to those samenations.National identities are formed by constructing and denigrating otherness,through such terminology as insurgent dissidents , communist infiltration and fascist regimes.The language of our liberal society has not yet adopted suchphrases as creeping democracy , capitalist rebels or liberal guerrillas , orlearned to examine the ideals of liberalism or democracy from alternativeperspectives.Everyday common sense assumes the status of truth, especially ourmetaphysical notions of the self, the transcendental nature of truth, and the capacityof language to give accurate descriptions of reality.A genealogical approach, byadopting a different political and historical perspective, problematises the ethics ofmany practices in our systems of democracy, and thereby undermines the certaintyof Peters prescription for democracy as the ethical basis for education.In highlighting the importance of discussion, Benn & Peters acknowledge thatdiscussion presupposes a consensus on fundamentals, for where this is lacking,they say, men will treat one another as scoundrels, and differences of opinion willbe undiscussable:Where men start from different assumptions, there are no adjustments and nocompromises generally felt to be fair and reasonable.In such conditionspolitics is a cynical grasping for whatever advantages temporary powercombinations can secure.without appropriate attitudes, and the will toconduct politics in a rational and tolerant spirit, democratic institutions workundemocratically (Benn & Peters, 1959, p.353).If it has done nothing else, this chapter has surely suggested that differentassumptions are not only inevitable, they are to be welcomed as part of formulatinga system of ethics particularly one that might be considered an ethics ofdifference.The presumption of consensus within a liberal democratic formulationsuggests, at base, a fundamentalism that prescribes the limits of what can be said,denigrating the possibility of agonism and precluding anything but cosmeticdifferences.In Rorty s terms, the result is the literalisation of prevailing metaphorsand an impediment to new ways of thinking anathema for education.An ethics based on agonism favours a non-closure on identity, an acceptance ofdiffering conceptual schemes, and a softening of the criteria for what would countas a point of view.Peters ethical basis for education is welcomed as one suchpoint of view, but is resisted in its entirety because it searches for an idealisedversion of the truth.If Peters were to achieve the closure inherent in the universalethic that he seeks, his work would fall prey to its own moral judgments, based onits exclusivity, its rigid prescription for a particular identity, and its insistence on atranscendental rationality as the true order for human life.Any recommendation for an ethical formulation needs to be procedural ratherthan substantive, inclusive rather than exclusive, and ongoing rather than finite.Nietzschean perspectivism does not lay out a totalising plan for action, or even acoherent philosophical framework for universal agreement.What is advocatedinstead is an ongoing problematisation of the rational overlay on social life and acontinuous interrogation of the discursive practices that subjugate otherness.In89 CHAPTER 5calling for multiple points of view, the Nietzschean critique of dogmatism avoidscertainty in the ethical realm and may be an important voice to heed inconstructing a politics that can challenge the panoply of emergingfundamentalisms (Schrift, 1995, p.125).90 CHAPTER 6NIETZSCHE, POSTSTRUCTURALISM ANDEDUCATIONNIETZSCHE AND POSTSTRUCTURALISMIncreasingly, philosophers of education are turning to post discourses forexplanations of diversity.Within the postmodern condition, the artist and thewriter are not governed by pre-established rules or judged according topredetermined categories.Rather, they are working without rules in order toformulate the rules of what will have been done (Lyotard, 1984, p.81).Lyotardsuggests it is not our business to supply reality , or to provide a totalising unity forirreconcilable language games [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]