Out of Love for Some‐Thing: An Ontological Exploration of the Roots of Teaching with Arendt, Badiou and Scheler

Abstract

In this article we develop the idea that there exists a unique educational love and that it moreover can be identified as essential to education. First, developing Arendt's claim that education is about the existing generation introducing newcomers to the world, we argue that the object‐side of educational love is not the student, but first and foremost the thing that is studied in the classroom. Educational love is love for the world, not for a person. It expresses itself in the act of affirming that a particular thing is interesting: a part of the world that is worth the effort of being studied together with the new generation. Second, we follow Badiou's account of love as the labour of fidelity to the event, in order to render teaching in terms of staying faithful to one's falling in love with a particular subject matter. Teaching is therefore a continuous attempt at making this event of falling in love present in the classroom. Thus, love for the thing materialises itself in an effort to make the thing endure and to show to the next generation that it is worth of care and attention. Finally, indicating the erotic and agapeic dimension of educational love we turn to Scheler and his position on love and hate as two distinct ways of relating with the world, which respectively come down to an opening and a narrowing‐down mode of world‐disclosure.

El amor en educación física: una perspectiva filosófica basada en Max Scheler y José Ortega y Gasset (Love in physical education: a philosophical perspective based on Max Scheler and José Ortega y Gasset)

“…Para los filósofos mencionados, el amor es un sentimiento metafísico y, por ende, objetivo, o sea, un acto intencional que pretende conservar lo que se reconoce como valioso. El amor antecede, es decir, es el trasfondo, de nuestros buenos sentimientos, pensamientos, deseos y actos humanos (Alves, Barea, Werneck, Grzibowski, Rodrigues & Silva, 2018;Chaparro, 2014;Ortega y Gasset, 2018;Rodríguez, 2012;Scheler, 2001Scheler, , 2005Scheler, , 2008Scheler, , 2010Vendrell, 2015;Vlieghe & Zamojski, 2019). Dado que el amor es conservación de lo valioso, se puede amar todo ser, objeto o actividad que se considere valiosa.…”

Out of Love for Any Thing? A Response to Vlieghe and Zamojski on Some Pedagogical Problems with an Object-Oriented ‘Educational Love’

“…the point at which we become both ‘militant of truth and the teacher’—when we give our love a name. The moment at which someone says ‘I love Schubert’ is offered as an example of the moment at which we fall in love with a thing such that ‘ it becomes an event to which one can be faithful ’ (2019 p. 526, emphasis in original). Here the love of Schubert translates immediately into a love of piano playing and, by extension, ‘something good and beautiful in the world’ ( ibid .).…”

“…Nel Noddings and bell hooks are cited as examples of thinkers whose work has often conflated interpersonal relations with purely educational ones. By contrast, according to the authors, we also live in a time when educational psychology seems motivated to dispense with the language of love altogether, in favour of ‘defining education as a cognitive and individual process of developing knowledge and skill’ (Vlieghe and Zamojski, 2019, p. 519). The authors seek to tread a new path in pursuit of an ‘essence of teaching’, one which preserves the need for love at the heart of education, but a love which more objectively ‘discloses the world’ without the messy interference of teacherly emotion—either paternalistic, maternalistic or erotic.…”

“…If it is the case that our love for a thing can't help but betray an element of egoism within it also, then it is not just the next generation that is implied in our love for the world, but our selves also. We don't have to accept that Barthes’ account is right, but we ought to accept that it is possible— and if so, it makes us think twice about whether the sharing— if not the preaching—of our loves indeed always entails a purely ‘internal necessity’, as Vlieghe and Zamojski would have it (Vlieghe and Zamojski, 2019 p. 521); indeed, it may well be an unacknowledged and yet healthy aspect of our egoism that serves a useful function in inviting others in also, to ‘take up the call to engage with the subject matter in their own (unforeseen) ways’, as Vlieghe and Zamojski put it.…”

Manifestations of the post-critical: from shared principles to new pedagogical paths

“…Puede encontrarse una exploración más del amor educativo desde una perspectiva post-crítica, en la contribución que Vlieghe y Zamojski hacen en el número especial dedicado al amor de la revista Journal of Philosophy of Education (Vlieghe y Zamojski, 2019c).…”