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Unsettling Knowledge: Irony and Education
Author(s) -
SMITH RICHARD
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of philosophy of education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.501
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-9752
pISSN - 0309-8249
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9752.12444
Subject(s) - irony , undoing , socrates , epistemology , socratic method , philosophy , fundamentalism , sociology , philosophy of education , aesthetics , law , psychoanalysis , psychology , higher education , political science , linguistics , politics
Philosophy is sometimes thought of as having two principal dimensions: one that aims to build systems and doctrines, and another that is concerned to unsettle fixed ways of thinking. Richard Peters seems to position himself in both camps. I suggest that education in the UK today increasingly bears the marks of rigid thinking, largely as a result of the domination of neoliberal fundamentalism, and is in particular need of unsettling. This, I argue, was a major part of western philosophy's mission at what we think of as its birth in the work of Socrates and Plato's dialogues. In these texts too we see depicted the arrogance and complacency of characters who may sometimes remind us of our contemporaries. The Socratic irony that is evident everywhere in the dialogues is their undoing.