Towards a Pure Ontology: Children’s bodies and morality

Towards a Pure Ontology: Children’s bodies and morality

“…Finally, in the fourth study included, 'Towards a Pure Ontology' (Dahlbeck, 2011), the empirical material is provided by, on the one hand, a personal reflection about the meaning-making process underlying the practice of displaying laminated signs with ethical values in a Swedish ECE context. On the other hand, it draws on a philosophical discourse (studying texts of Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Deleuze) on the tensions between an ontology of identity -where Being is defined in terms of recognizing material expressions as mere instances of preconceived categories -and an ontology of difference -where Being is understood in terms of an immanent process where the material world is understood to give rise to shared ethical ideas in a reciprocal sense.…”

“…In a Swedish educational setting, ESD has resulted in the recent rapid uptake of projects such as Green Flag where focus is placed on establishing and disseminating commonly held ethical values (De Lucia Dahlbeck & Dahlbeck, 2011). These values may be un-derstood in terms of ethical principles as they rely on children being able to judge concrete practices according to a fixed scale of 'right' and 'wrong'/'good' and 'evil' in a universal sense.…”

“…(Kant, 1803(Kant, /2007 Furthermore, this training in making moral judgments (adjusting subjective maxims so that they correspond with and conform to already established ethical principles) is conceptualized in terms of an ever present aspect of education -as a form of interdisciplinary element -serving to allow children and students to cultivate these capacities in a manner that allows them 'to practice them by combining them with other kinds of education' (Moran, 2009: 478). And as we shall see, the focus on having moral education permeate other forms of education -be it subject-based or theme-based -is one that rings true for the case of ESD which is designed to cover several subject areas or themes and in doing so provides a form of ethical framework for the entire educational practice (see Dahlbeck, 2011).…”

“…We reach our destiny only when we are able to act autonomously in accordance with the moral law. (Giesinger, 2011: 7) The coordination of these two (sometimes seemingly incompatible) foundational claims -the autonomy of the free will and the determinism of a transcendentalist framework 13 -emerges as an important task for ESD (being a device for disseminating and implementing normative ideals) and as such it is visible in the Swedish implementational program of Green Flag (De Lucia Dahlbeck & Dahlbeck, 2011). Insofar as the overarching ambition of education -from a Kantian perspective -entails that human beings should 'acquire the disposition to choose nothing but good ends' (Kant, 1803(Kant, /2007 there emerges an interesting tension -visible in Kant's own lectures on education as well as in contemporary educational examples implicitly relying on a Kantian ethical framework -between learning to make use of one's own free will (through participatory decision making) and learning to make the 'right' choice with regards to a fixed normative ideal; that is, being able to identify an action as being in accordance with the prevailing moral law.…”

“…And so it is at the level of philosophical inquiry -rather than at the level of implementation -that philosophers such as Nietzsche and Deleuze have tackled the question of what ethics might be, and in doing so have continued (although taking it in a radically different direction perhaps) the philosophical labor of Kant. 15 In what follows I will sketch out some of the key components of Nietzsche's and Deleuze's contributions to ethical theory in order to then situate these in an educational setting by asking how an immanent ethics (in ways different from a transcendent ethics) might impact educational thought and practice through what has come to be known as affective learning or affective education (see Dahlbeck, 2011: Sellar, 2009Semetsky, 2009;Watkins, 2006;Watkins, 2007).…”