3. • “one of the most profound, exacting and original
philosophers of twentieth-century Europe”
• Levinas’ works have been the object of
increasing attention among Anglophone
intellectuals (i.e. intelligent English speaking
people) as more of his texts are translated.
• Levinas explains: “My task does not consist in
constructing ethics; I only try to find its meaning.”
4. • Chapter 8 – it is neither an interpretation of the
philosophy of Levinas nor an attempt to outline
the consequences of his philosophy of the other
for rethinking pedagogical concepts, problems,
or theories.
• For Levinas, the relation to the Other is a relation
of solicitude (be responsible for the other), where
the Other is not knowable and cannot be made
into an object of the Self.
5.
6. Applications
• Relevance of Levinas’ philosophy: One must be
reminded of the traditional division of labor
between pedagogy and philosophy [i.e.
philosophy is responsible for the determination
and rationalization of ethical goals and pedagogy
is to justify the means used to fulfil these goals
and thus guide their practical realization with a
theory of action].
• For Levinas, the purpose of education is to
convert “the ignorant immature into the
knowledgeable mature”.
7. • The concept of the Other invokes ethical and
religious connotations. The Other is also the
subject of pedagogical efforts.
Ruptures, Aporias, Paradoxes
• Speech which cites the Other, points to the
Other, or believes to be able to express the
Other as such remains within the horizon of the
power it may believe to have overcome in turning
toward the Other.
• The decision to turn to the Other might be the
most indirect and secret way of escaping from
the Other and turning away.
8. • The Other cannot be determined in the light and
in the dark, but it must manifest himself/herself to
be experienced, and if not in space, then in time.
The Other would have to be imagined as
someone speaking, yet speaking would be
unthinkable without something spoken.
• For Levinas, the enigma is the “face”, which must
not be regarded as the image of a face.
• The experience of the Other brings the
impossible, the unreal, and the undecidable into
play.
9. Dealing with Paradoxes
• Undecidability is a condition for a judgement that
must, and yet cannot, be guided by given rules,
norms, bodies of knowledge or presettings if it is
to do justice to the singularity of the Other.
• The deconstructionist method could then be
described as a skeptical method, in which the
making of a judgement, manifests in texts of all
kinds:-
- in philosophies
- in interpretations set into institutions
- in all cultural systems of meaning
10. • Deconstruction must therefore be considered as
an “experience of the impossible and the ‘there is’
”
• Hence, the great decisions that must be taken and
affirmed should do so at the very moment in which
they are no longer possible, they become possible,
i.e. “These are the only decisions possible:
impossible ones.”
• Derrida explains then that a kind of thinking which
would be suited to the paradox might be called a
perceptive thinking, which may comply with the
duty to respond, articulated in itself as a paradox.
• In this case; morality, politics, responsible thought
and action, would only be possible to take any
11. Some Consequences for pedagogical
discourse
• Wimmer explains that the “mindset” decides
whether to remain conscious of its own limitation
of undecidability in the very moment when one
feels one has to make a decision, or to decide
something in accordance with an objective
criterion.
• He also explains that deconstruction resolves the
resolutions in which the problem, the object, and
pedagogy disappear, and reinscribes paradox
into the discourse.
• The impossible and the undecidable are
constitutive of pedagogical thought and
12. • Action itself must be understood as a
deconstructionist experience inasmuch as it is
confronted with the singularity of the Other and
of the situation, with the problem of
undecidability and justice.
Conclusion
It was not the author’s intention at all to propose a
new model for action but rather to lay out a
different possible approach to the paradox
problem, starting from which fundamental and
collateral issues of pedagogy may be
reconsidered.
