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Chains of Dependency: On the Disenchantment and the Illusion of Being Free at Last ( P art 2)
Author(s) -
Smeyers Paul
Publication year - 2012
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/j.1467-9752.2012.00862.x
Subject(s) - disenchantment , illusion , sociology , dependency (uml) , philosophy of education , media studies , psychology , social science , higher education , law , political science , computer science , cognitive psychology , software engineering , politics
This paper is the sequel to P art 1, which appeared in this J ournal, Vol. 46 No. 2, 2012. Following C avell and his insistence that we should not try to escape from the existential conditions we find ourselves in and look for false certainties, the relevance of embracing a particular stance is elaborated. A commitment to giving substance to an ideal of ‘the good life’ is neither an injustice towards the other nor an ignorance of her freedom. On the contrary, here responsibility is accepted and at the same time it is acknowledged that we always have only the particular points of departure that we contingently start from. Coming to terms with this kind of dependency constitutes living out the scepticism that is implied by our being human: the logic of this is given along with our human condition.