O'Donnell, Aislinn
(2018)
Spinoza, experimentation and education: How
things teach us.
Educational Philosophy and Theory, 50 (9).
pp. 819-829.
ISSN 0013-1857
Abstract
This essay focuses on three primary issues i. The conceptual resources offered
by Spinoza to challenge the idealism and perfectionism underpinning
much educational theory and dominant educational imaginaries; ii. His
descriptions of a non-ideal, practical and systematic approach to developing
understanding that could be applied to educational theorising and
practice; and iii. The potential for a different vision of education premised
upon understanding the human as simply a part of nature. Decentring the
human and treating affective and mental life as one would lines, planes, and
bodies, as Spinoza claims we must in Ethics, invites another way of thinking
about the politics and ethics of educational practice. Enacting experimental
approaches to pedagogy produces new subjectivities and also invents
new connections and relations between different bodies and different
ideas. I argue that a properly Spinozist understanding of education would
require it to be understood through practices of experimentation, in short,
developing capabilities to compose relations in such a way that one also
develops a the awareness of oneself as finite, dependent, vulnerable and
as a part of nature. Seemingly paradoxically then, having understood how
and that one is determined, and which bodies agree or disagree with one,
one becomes more capable of agency and thus an ethical life.
| Item Type: |
Article
|
| Keywords: |
Spinoza; education;
experience; pedagogy;
imagination; affect; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Social Sciences > Education |
| Item ID: |
11419 |
| Identification Number: |
https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2017.1382351 |
| Depositing User: |
Prof Aislinn O'Donnell
|
| Date Deposited: |
23 Oct 2019 17:01 |
| Journal or Publication Title: |
Educational Philosophy and Theory |
| Publisher: |
Taylor & Francis |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
Repository Staff Only(login required)
 |
Item control page |
Downloads per month over past year
Origin of downloads
Altmetric
Altmetric