Toward a broader appreciation of human motion in education

Motion is a fundamental activity for the healthy functioning human organism. Its importance, however, is increasingly de-valued in Western cultures as they speed toward adopting technologies and virtual experiences as adjuncts to, and even replacements for7 traditional educational structures and processes that involve physical activity. Organised and reflective experience of human motion is becoming increasingly marginalised in teaching methodologies and learning programs in educational institutions at all levels around the globe. This inquiry sets out to gain a greater understanding of why people and human motion become disconnected, particularly during periods of formal education. A central question and two sub-questions form the basis of the inquiry. The central question asks why human motion is not valued and more utilised in education. In particular, why do learning areas that directly represent involvement with human motion, such as physical education, continually struggle in education programs. It directs the investigation to focus on the causes rather than the symptoms of the disuse and devaluation of human motion in Australian education. The two sub-questions split the praxis of the study. The first seeks to understand how the causes of devaluation work in the educational context lo affect the lack of acknowledgement; and the second considers ways to counter the disuse of human movement in education programs. To address these questions, the research focuses on rebutting the notion of a mind-body dualism. Rather, it seeks to better understand how humans learn and function as monists - integrated beings, acquiring self-knowledge in their 'world of being' in which bodily and emotional experiences, and reasoning are inextricably intertwined. I have approached this qualitative research as an ethnographic sociologist examining the issues from a critical high modernist perspective in order to demonstrate the pervading influence in Australian education of strong beliefs and values from the era of Enlightenment. Narrative analysis of 'memoir' in the form of self-defining memories was selected to gain a sensibility of the connectedness between human emotion, motion and reasoning in the lived experiences of students in three primary and three secondary schools across Years 2-12. An opportunity for human movement to be more valued and utilised in emerging educational frameworks that have life knowledge, dispositions and capabilities at their core is identified. The inquiry proposes a conceptualisation of human motion in education for new times characterised by the need for people to develop personal resources and strong positive identities in order to cope with a world of rapid change and uncertainty.

Sophistic 3.0 and the end of media relations

This paper looks at Web 2.0 as a new form of discursive art which may be changing human subjectivity - which may be producing new kinds of people. It casts the Web 2.0 era as the 'Third Sophistic' in comparison to the two other sophistics: (1) the period from the Ancient Greek Enlightenment when grammar, rhetoric and dialectic were invented by the original pre-Socratic sophists up until the times of Plato, Aristotle, and Isocrates; and (2) the Second Sophistic in the early centuries of the Common Era when 'epideictic,' that is subtle, artistic rhetoric was perfected. These sophistics marked alterations in the possibilities for human cultural expression and conception. Are we experiencing a 'Sophistic 3.0'? If so what are the likely consequences for contemporary discourse and its media?

Fictional endstates

Studies the intellectual in power striving to realise the universal State or Empire. Examines this theme through the medium of four fictional narratives: Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, Aldous Huxley's Brave new world, Arthur Koestler's Heart of darkness, and George Orwell's Nineteen eighty-four. The hypothesis of the inquiry is that all four of these texts provide fictional redescriptions of a crisis of confidence in the Enlightenment ideal of progress.

Tradition in a free society : the fideism of Michael Polanyi and the rationalism of Karl Popper

Michael Polanyi and Karl Popper offer contrasting accounts of social tradition. Popper is steeped in the heritage of the Enlightenment, while Polanyi interweaves religious and diverse secular strands of thought. Explaining the liberal tradition, Polanyi features tacit knowledge of rules, standards, applications and interpretations being transmitted by “craftsmen” to “apprentices.” Each generation adopts the liberal tradition on “faith,” commits to creatively developing its art of knowledge-in-practice, and is drawn to the spiritual reality of ideal ends. Of particular interest to Popper is the rationality of social traditions. Likened by him to scientific theories, Popper’s traditions are criticizable and improvable, assisting agents to understand, and act in, the world as stable and predictable. Polanyi’s is the more informative rendering of tradition. Polanyi delves deeply into important areas where Popper only scratches their surface: the tacit dimension, transmission by way of apprenticeship, the meaning of tradition for those who participate in it, and the extent of its authority over them.

Perfecting nature : Friedrich Nietzsche's ideal and politics of cultivation

What I have called the Ideal of Cultivation is a fundamental ethical principle of civilisation, originated by aristocratic warriors in Greek antiquity who held that the true purpose of humanity is to perfect nature

It was then professed that individuals and even entire peoples could consciously develop and improve themselves in a way that was thought to obey the original lawful impulses of nature, a process which was likened to those of agriculture and animal husbandry.

Subsequently the cognate idea of a politics of cultivation arose which deemed that society should be organised specifically to produce more virtuous or perfect human types. Given their fundamental association with Hellenism both ideas have been revisited constantly in the intellectual history of the west, and most notably during the great secular periods, the Renaissance and Enlightenment when active attempts were made to retrieve the ideals of antiquity. Both ideas were particularly pervasive in the German enlightenment, the Aufklärung, and were assimilated by the succeeding Romantic generation.

In nineteenth century Germany, when interest in these ideas was quickly waning, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche acquired an unswerving attachment to them and made the service of them his life's work.

The intention of this essay is to trace methodically the appearance of the Ideal of Cultivation in Nietzsche's philosophy and politics, and to outline his responses to a world which was abandoning the principles in which he deeply believed. This essay should be regarded as a case study in the long history of a fundamental ethical idea rather than one about the philosopher Nietzsche.

Centring the subject in order to educate

It is important for educators to recognise that the various calls to decentre the subject—or self—should not be interpreted as necessarily requiring the removal of the subject altogether. Through the individualism of the Enlightenment the self was centred. This highly individualistic notion of the sovereign self has now been decentred especially through post-structuralist literature. It is contended here however, that this tendency to decentre the subject has been taken to an extreme at times, especially by some designers of school frameworks and curricula, who have eliminated the subject altogether. Such elimination is argued to contribute to the numbers of youth who are dropping out of school. By adopting an existential perspective and by drawing mainly upon Kierkegaard's subjective truth and Dewey's notion of centeredness, the case is made that for education the subject should not only be included but should actually be centred—at least momentarily.

Neo-positivist or neo-kantian? Karl Popper and the Vienna Circle.

This paper re-contextualises Popper within a Kantian tradition by examining his interaction with the Vienna Circle. The complexity of Popper’s relationship to the Vienna Circle is often a point of confusion as some view him as a member of the Vienna Circle while others minimise his association with this group. This paper argues that Popper was not a member of the Vienna Circle or a positivist but shared many neo-Kantian philosophical tendencies with the members of the Circle as well as many of their philosophical problems and interests. By better understanding the influence of the Circle’s members upon Popper, we not only remove the myths surrounding Popper’s positivism, but also place the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle within its proper philosophical context. This paper further argues that it was Popper’s friend during his formative philosophical years in Vienna, Julius Kraft (1921–1960) who was responsible for the way in which Popper approached Kant. Through Kraft, Popper was introduced to the thought of Leonard Nelson (1882–1927) and Jakob Fries (1773–1843) as well as a tradition of critical rationalism which Popper would continue both in his methodological orientation as well as through his late German Enlightenment intellectual values.

Intimacy and making : thinking constellations of consciousness and the movements of invention

This paper takes up the three terms - creativity, consciousness and intimacy - and positions them as possible ‘ultimate terms’. Inquiring into the use of these terms to garner approval, status or power within cultural contexts, the paper attempts to unpack them, and simultaneously to seek out any structural similarities in the ways that they operate. The term ‘creativity’ is deconstructed via a Derridean framework, wherein ‘inventiveness’ is posited as a more rigorous alternative in most cases. Consciousness is read closely in relation to its association with notions of awareness and ‘enlightenment’. And ‘intimacy’ is playfully explored as an alternative term for enlightenment, a manoeuvre which brings to the fore some structural assumptions about that which intimacy might comprise. The assumption of intimacy as a spatially-dependent notion is also interrogated. The paper contends that intimacy may involve an unsettling of spatial assumptions proper, and therefore not be simply a function of closeness or distance. It draws on Serres’ notion of the angel as messenger and as analogy for the preposition, indicator of position, but occupant of none. Finally an example from art practice is offered, one that arguably performs the terms intimacy and creativity at once: an epistolary adventure in poetry and photographs, called The Post Project.

Teaching ethics in organisational behaviour : a Humean viewpoint

Problem Statement: Concepts of ethics have rarely been easy to teach in the organizational behaviour curriculum. The philosophical bases of ethics are often abstract and prone to multiple interpretations and dilemmas. The changing global environment of organisations adds complexity to the interacting values that people bring into the workplace. To redress the situation, this articlerepresents the stance of David Hume on human morality and proposes an original nexus of his concepts for application in the teaching and learning of ethics in the field of organizational behaviour.

Method: Based on the literature, we develop a conceptual model from a thread drawn between Hume’s influence on the Scottish Enlightenment and accordingly the current complex business environment which was fostered in part by the economic models espoused by his Enlightenment associates. The concepts are presented as a matrix and relevant examples are explained in this context.

Results: Pointing out the challenge of the global rifts in organisational morality, we relate the fable of the traveller from Hume’s writings and make the point that the Humean nexus, now distilled from the elaborate reasoning of Hume, provides educators and managers alike with a helpful centre of gravity around which to develop analyses of decisions and actions in order to gain moral perspective that transcends time and place.

Conclusions: Business ethics lessons have sometimes been abstract and emotive in organisational Behavior education but the empirical concepts of Hume in this new form have the potential to be useful and agreeable for many.

Karl Popper on Jewish nationalism and cosmopolitanism

This paper re-contextualizes Karl Popper’s thought within the anti-nationalist cosmopolitan tradition of the Central European intelligentsia. It argues that, although Popper was brought up in an assimilated Jewish Viennese household, from the perspective of the Jewish Enlightenment or Haskalah tradition, he can be seen to be a modern day heterodox Maskil (scholar). Popper’s ever present fear of anti-Semitism and his refusal to see Judaism as compatible with cosmopolitanism raise important questions as to the realisable limits of the cosmopolitan ideal. His inability to integrate an understanding of Jewishness in his cosmopolitan political ideal resulted in his strong opposition to Zionism and the state of Israel. By comparing Popper’s positions with those of Hermann Cohen, another neo-Kantian philosopher, I argue that although their solutions fall short in certain respects, their arguments have continuing purchase in recent debates on cosmopolitanism and the problem of the integration of minority groups. In addition, the arguments of the Jewish Enlightenment thinkers offer important insights for the current debates on minority integration and xenophobia.

The western humanist tradition

In this essay, I describe the development of at least three traditions of humanism: the Platonic, the Aristotelian, and the Promethean. These traditions have developed and intermingled so as to produce the complex and multifaceted face of humanism today. The first, Platonic tradition involves a turning away from the world in order to find wisdom and spirituality in a metaphysical realm. The Aristotelian tradition stresses the need to be at home in the world and happy in life even as we contemplate their unchangeable realities. It speaks of the perfectibility of human beings in muted tones and shows a reverence for the changeable world, as well as for the fragile, vulnerable, fallible, and mortal condition of being human. However, it is the Promethean tradition, with its celebration of science, progress, and technology, that has had the greatest effect upon modern civilization and spirituality. The culmination of these various streams of thought was the Enlightenment: a movement that its greatest philosopher, Immanuel Kant, interpreted as giving humanity permission, for the first time, to think for itself. But the Enlightenment leads to a disenchanted world in which spirituality seems to have no place. I argue that my subjectivity is a transcendent reality and that our very subjectivity becomes a real self and a social being insofar as it is drawn towards the Other. Accordingly, a humanist spirituality is possible in the form of reverence, love, and humility in the presence of transcendence. While religions give the names of their gods to this transcendence, humanism gives it other names: Subjectivity, the Other, Beauty, Goodness, and Truth.

Recession-oscopy : can universities be the light at the end?

This paper paints the philosophical and ethical backdrop to some of the issues raised in Australian Universities’ Review vol. 53, no. 2. It links academic performance pay; the measurement of research output; and the astonishing pay levels of vice chancellors to the present global financial crisis. These are explained as part of a general malaise of institutions, which has its roots in the early Enlightenment. Drawing from semioticians Charles Sanders Peirce and John Deely it uses the terms ideoscopy and cenoscopy to characterise the hijacking of unwarranted scientific status for much of the way our world is managed. But crisis can lead to opportunity. Consequently, the paper points to the glaring opportunity for thinkers who can articulate the present situation in a way which could avert disaster.

Gadamer and political authority

The rehabilitation of the concept of authority is one of the more contentious positions advocated by Gadamer in Truth and Method (1960). Habermas in particular challenged the universality of Gadamer’s hermeneutic project by presenting this rehabilitation as a conservative legitimation of prevailing prejudices which truncates the role of critical reflection. Given that Gadamer’s primary focus is upon the ramifications of the Enlightenment dichotomy between reason and authority for historical hermeneutics, however, and that his examples are drawn primarily from educational domains, the extent to which his account of authority sustains a political interpretation is far from self-evident. In this article I argue that Gadamer’s account can nonetheless make at least two important contributions to contemporary philosophical debates on political authority. Following a brief exposition of Gadamer’s account of authority in Truth and Method, I examine his suggestion that the basis of legitimate political authority is to be found in the normative status of the right to be authoritative, rather than in the factual status of being in a position of authority. This account, I suggest, places in question the abstract dichotomy between theoretical and practical authority which informs much contemporary debate on political authority. I then demonstrate how Gadamer’s emphasis upon the historicity of tradition offers important insights for discussions of the relation between political authority and moral autonomy.