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Philosophy, Dialogue, and Education. In this book we are not concerned primarily with dialogue as a literary genre. We are interested in some modern European philosophers understanding of dialogue and of its use in education. This is important for at least two reasons:
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Philosophy, Dialogue, and Education • In this book we are not concerned primarily with dialogue as a literary genre. • We are interested in some modern European philosophers understanding of dialogue and of its use in education. • This is important for at least two reasons: • First, dialogue is understood usually as a conversation, as an exchange between two or more individuals or sets of individuals. • Secondly, dialogue has been the focus of many enquiries in Western philosophy of education since the Socratic dialogues of Plato and of Xenophon.
The Relations of Dialogue • However, these have usually focussed on whether effective communicative exchange is in place. • They have not always considered the relations involved in the dialogue e.g. power, symmetric, asymmetric. • Dialogue may have an agreed specific goal, but it may also be open and fluid with none of the participants knowing where it might lead. • In practice dialogue does not simply operate across a divide between two persons or groups ; it is comprised also of internal tensions and contradictions.
Dialogue and Critical Pedagogy • Dialogue has also become a fashionable concept particularly among those who wish to encourage a critical pedagogy or ‘critical skills’ in education, derived for instance from Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony and from educators such as Paulo Freire, Ivan Illich or the feminist bell hooks. • A paradox may be that such dialogue often becomes institutionalized, developed according to ‘correct’ formulae. This does not take into account sufficiently complexities such as history and culture with their normative values and power relations. • In practice dialogue is dependent on disposition and on situation and is often difficult to initiate, let alone sustain. Consider its use in conflict resolution (Morgan and Guilherme, 2014/2016).
Hannah Arendt on Education & Civil Society • The quote continues: • ‘…and by the same token save it from that ruin which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and young would be inevitable. And education too, is whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, not to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world.’ • The Crisis in Education. • ‘The polis, properly speaking, is not the city state in its physical location; it is the organization of the people as it arises out of acting and speaking together, and its true space lies between people living together for this purpose, no matter where they happen to be.’ • The Human Condition.
Hannah Arendt • Hannah Arendt wrote several influential books on political philosophy, notably The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), and The Human Condition (1958). The best known is Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) that reported on the trial of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann and coined the phrase ‘…the banality of evil.’ The controversy it aroused is dramatized in a film directed by Margarethe von Trotta, with Barbara Sukowa as Hannah Arendt (2012).
Dialogue and Monologue • Consider this: • ‘On the educational scene there is no competition between dialogue and monologue; for various reasons dialogue rules the day. If we look at dialogue as a basic form of communication, it becomes clear that it has its limitations. Conversely, monologue possesses valuable qualities that are mainly ignored. Monologue is not in itself an authoritarian form that treats listeners like objects, but one that gives them freedom to respond or not to respond, and to interpret the message in their own individual ways.’ • (Kvernbekk, 2012, 977).
Conclusion • Finally, what of dialogue as a social philosophy? • There are limits, occasions when dialogue breaks down both between individuals and between communities. There comes a point, for example, when one must defend one’s humanity and that of others. This is the starting point of the concept of the just war that has a long philosophical history dating from St. Augustine of Hippo (Walzer, 2006). • We have tried to show these dilemmas in an earlier discussion of Martin Buber and Frantz Fanon (2014). It is only by remaining open to or at ‘the disposal of dialogue’ as Buber says, that it continues to be a meaningful possibility.
References • Kvernbekk, T., (2012), ‘Revisiting Dialogues and Monologues’, Educational Philosophy and Theory, Vol. 44, No. 9, pp. 966-978. • Walzer, M., (2006) Just and Unjust Wars: A moral argument with historical illustrations, Basic Books, New York. • Morgan, W. J., and Guilherme, A. (2014), ‘The Contrasting Philosophies of Martin Buber and Frantz Fanon: The political in Education as dialogue or defiance.’ Diogenes, Vol. 61, No. 1, pp. 28-43. • Morgan, W. J., and Guilherme, A. (2014/2016), Buber and Education: Dialogue as conflict resolution, Routledge, London and New York. • Guilherme, A., and Morgan, W. J., (2018), Philosophy, Dialogue, and Education: Nine modern European philosophers, Routledge, London and New York.
Thank You! Diolch yn Fawr! • W. John Morgan
