Abstraction and finitude

Education, chance and democracy

Authors

  • Richard Smith Universidad de Durham, Inglaterra

Keywords:

education, neo-liberalism, democracy

Abstract

Education in the west has become a very knowing business in which students are encouraged to cultivate self-awareness and meta-cognitive skills in pursuit of a kind of perfection. The result is the evasion of contingency and of the consciousness of human finitude. The neo-liberalism that makes education a market good exacerbates this. These tendencies can be interpreted as a dimension of scepticism. This is to be dissolved partly by acknowledging that we are obscure to ourselves. Such an acknowledgement is fostered by the mythic dimension of experience, which also recommends a degree of humility to the citizens of democratic states.

Author Biography

Richard Smith, Universidad de Durham, Inglaterra

Profesor de Educación y Director de la Licenciatura Combinada en Letras y Ciencias Sociales en la Universidad de Durham. Editor desde el 2005 de la nueva revista Ethics and Education (Etica y educación), Routledge, y fue editor de 1991 a 2001 del Journal of Philosophy of Education (Revista de Filosofía de la Educación), Blackwell. Es Licenciado en Literae Humaniores por la Universidad de Oxford (1971) y Maestro en Educación por la Universidad de Birmingham (1982). Actualmente imparte los cursos de Filosofía y Ciencia Social, Disciplina de la Ciencia Social y Nuevos Caminos en Ciencia Social. Su principal interés en Filosofía de la Educación consiste en la investigación de los aspectos éticos y políticos de la educación (principalmente de la educación superior), Educación y Terapia y el papel de la educación en la posmodernidad. Es coautor (junto con N. Blake, P. Smeyers y P. Standish) de dos libros: Education in an Age of Nihilism (La educación en una edad del nihilismo), RoutledgeFalmer 2000, y Thinking Again: Education After Postmodernism (Pensando otra vez: la educación después del postmodernismo), Bergin and Garvey 1998. Es coautor (con N. Blake y P. Standish) de The Universities we need: Higher Education after Dearing (Las universidades que necesitamos: la educación superior después de Dearing), Kogan Page 1998. Tiene más de cincuenta trabajos académicos arbitrados incluyendo capítulos de libros, presentaciones en congresos y artículos en revistas internacionales, en los que sobresalen: “Dancing on the feet of chance: the uncertain university” (“Danzando a los pies del azar: la universidad vacilante”), Educational Theory 55.2: 139-150, 2005; “Thinking with each other: the peculiar practice of the university” (“Pensando uno con otro: la práctica peculiar de la universidad”), Journal of Philosophy of Education 37.2: 309-323, 2003, entre otros. Actualmente se encuentra preparando junto con P. Smeyers y P. Standish el libro The Theraphy of Education: philosophy, happiness and personal growth (La terapia de la educación: filosofía, felicidad y desarrollo personal), Palgrave MacMillan.

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Published

2006-01-15

How to Cite

Smith, R. . (2006). Abstraction and finitude: Education, chance and democracy. Devenires, 7(13), 112–131. Retrieved from https://publicaciones.umich.mx/revistas/devenires/ojs/article/view/576

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No. 13 (2006)

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Articles

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