Learning from the Other: Levinas, Psychoanalysis, and Ethical Possibilities in Education

by Sharon Todd

Overview

Learning from the Other presents a philosophical investigation into the ethical possibilities of education, especially social justice education. In this original treatment, Sharon Todd rethinks the ethical basis of responsibility as emerging out of the everyday and complex ways we engage difference within educational settings. She works through the implications of the productive tension between the thought of Emmanuel Levinas and that of Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, Judith Butler, Cornelius Castoriadis, and others. Challenging the idea that knowledge about the other is the answer to questions of responsibility, she proposes that responsibility is rooted instead in a learning from the other. The author focuses on empathy, love, guilt, and listening to highlight the complex nature of learning from difference and to probe where the conditions for ethical possibility might lie.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780791458365
Publisher:	State University of New York Press
Publication date:	10/23/2003
Series:	SUNY series, Second Thoughts: New Theoretical Formations
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	188
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Sharon Todd is Associate Professor of Education at York University and the editor of Learning Desire: Perspectives on Pedagogy, Culture, and the Unsaid.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Learning from the Other: A Question of Ethics, a Question for Education

1. "Bringing More than I Contain": On Ethics, Curriculum, and Learning to Become

2. Being-for or Feeling-for? Empathic Demands and Disruptions

3. A Risky Commitment: The Ambiguity and Ambivalence of Love

4. Strangely Innocent? Guilt, Suffering, and Responsibility

5. Listening as an Attentiveness to "Dense Plots"

Postscript: Where Are Ethical Possibilities?

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Editorial Reviews

"This book contains many original insights into the ethical character of the educational relationship. Although there is a tradition of this kind of theorizing in continental educational philosophy, it is quite unique--and quite needed--in the English-speaking world. Todd displays an excellent command of the complex material that she uses to develop her argumentation and presents an excellent balance between theoretical and philosophical argumentation on the one hand, and practical issues on the other."

From the Publisher