Todd, Sharon
(2016)
Education Incarnate.
Educational Philosophy and Theory, 48 (4).
pp. 405-417.
ISSN 0013-1857
Abstract
For the past 15 years, scholars in education have focused on Levinas’s work largely in terms
of his understanding of alterity, of the self-Other relation, of ethics as ‘first philosophy’ and
the significance these concepts have on rethinking educational theory and practice. What I do
in this paper, by way of method, is to start from a slightly different place, from the assertion
that there is indeed something ‘new’ to be explored in Levinas’s philosophy – both in terms of
ideas to be found within his work, and also in terms of the demands educational ideas and
practices place on his work from without. That is, how does the actual, lived specificity of
educational encounters occasion a different set of questions than one would otherwise pose if
thinking only from within the discipline of philosophy, or from a purely theoretical point of
view? In light of this, this paper explores Levinas’s ideas of sensibility, materiality, and
embodiment. I see these not simply as supports for his ethical thought, but as the very core of
incarnation without which his ethics makes no sense. I propose that these ideas are
quintessentially pedagogical aspects of his thought – that is, they are always already rooted in
a relational context of change and alteration of the subject.
| Item Type: |
Article
|
| Keywords: |
Levinas; embodiment; sensibility; pedagogy; bodies; transcendence; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Social Sciences > Education |
| Item ID: |
8528 |
| Identification Number: |
https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2015.1041444 |
| Depositing User: |
Prof. Sharon Todd
|
| Date Deposited: |
01 Aug 2017 08:50 |
| 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 |
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