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An Appetite for Transcendence: A Response to Doris Santoro’s and Samuel Rocha’s Review of The Beautiful Risk of Education

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Notes

  1. Here I take inspiration from Levinas, when he writes: “My task does not consist in constructing ethics; I only try to find its meaning.” (Levinas 1985, p. 90).

  2. I am aware that this is a very condensed way to discuss a complex issue but nonetheless hope that the reader gets the gist of what I am trying to say. The reason why I try to confine these reflections to the modern Western world is because I think that those who have been at the receiving end Western modernisation and liberation may have different perceptions and judgements.

  3. The words ‘infantile’ and ‘grown up’ may suggest that children are infantile and adults grown up in the ways in which they exist in and with the world. This is not what I think is empirically correct. There are children who are able to exist in and with the world in a grown up way and there are (many) adults who do not manage. The distinction, therefore, is an existential one and might better be described as the distinction between an ego-logical and non-ego-logical way of existing (see also Biesta in press).

References

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  1. Brunel University London, London, UK

    Gert Biesta

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  1. Gert Biesta
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Correspondence to Gert Biesta.

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Biesta, G. An Appetite for Transcendence: A Response to Doris Santoro’s and Samuel Rocha’s Review of The Beautiful Risk of Education. Stud Philos Educ 34, 419–422 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-015-9475-2

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