Egalitarian Politics and the Dimensions of an Ethical Self

Abstract

With the recent move towards activism and engagement with ethical issues through science education it is more important than ever to examine the ethical dimensions of educational policy and practice. In this chapter, I take a theoretical approach to ethics by laying out Foucault’s (1985) ethical relations of self. I argue that politicizing these ethical relations of self is the most viable way to meet the challenges of growing social inequality and climate change. While ethics and egalitarian politics may seem to go hand in hand, I argue that there are some antagonistic elements to the merging of ethics and politics—and suggest some ways to successfully merge emancipatory political perspectives with a focus on ethics as they relate to relations of self. While science education has not been a space where scholars have been encouraged to theorize, this must change if educators are going to find new ways of combatting social and environmental problems.

There is no specific moral action that does not refer to a unified moral conduct; no moral conduct that does not call for the forming of oneself as an ethical subject; and no forming of the ethical subject without modes of subjectivation and an ascetics or practices of self that support them. Moral action is indissociable from these forms of self-activity, and they do not differ any less from one morality to another than do the systems of values, rules, and interdictions.

—Foucault (1985, p. 28)