Philosophy of Management

All seven papers in this issue on Fakes, Copies and Originals consider matters of reproduction and origination. They consider the interplay between culture meanings and financial capital, and share in common a concern for further developing the cultural wealth of society.

Learning mathematics in a classroom community of inquiry

This article considers the question of what specific actions a teacher might take to create a culture of inquiry in a secondary school mathematics classroom. Sociocultural theories of learning provide the framework for examining teaching and learning practices in a single classroom over a two-year period. The notion of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) is invoked as a fundamental framework for explaining learning as increasing participation in a community of practice characterized by mathematical inquiry. The analysis draws on classroom observation and interviews with students and the teacher to show how the teacher established norms and practices that emphasized mathematical sense-making and justification of ideas and arguments and to illustrate the learning practices that students developed in response to these expectations.

Levinas and the defination of philosophy: An ethical approach

Emmanuel Levinas’ thought seems to be strictly neither rational, phenomenological nor ontological, and it thus intentionally exposes itself to the asking of the question ‘why call it philosophy at all’? While we may have trouble containing Levinas’ thought within our traditional philosophical boundaries, I argue that this gives us no reason to exclude him from philosophy proper as a mere poser, but rather provides the occasion for reflection on just what it means, in an ethical manner, to call something ‘philosophical’. Instead of asking whether or not philosophy can ‘contain’ Levinas’ thought, I contend that it would be more ethical to instead re-phrase the question in terms of ‘sociality’. When we do this, I argue, we can indeed justifiably call Levinas’ thought philosophy.