Abstract
To rethink curriculum we must be prepared to investigate those very apparatuses on which curriculum implicitly and explicitly rests, chief among whom is the epistemic stance we call “reason.” For it is precisely in such investigations that the ontological character of knowledge is revealed, taking us closer to the structures that underwrite the modern curriculum. It is suggested that the deconstruction and resultant self-consciousness of reason can contribute meaningfully to the pedagogic situation. In other words, ratio is, or could be, more than a mode of conveyance, arrangement of thought, or logical apparatus; under sustained interrogation, it reveals the metaphysical “spin” and the consequent “gyroscopic” stability that underwrite its self-presence. To the extent that each subject of reason becomes cognizant of this ontological underpinning, reason becomes a living process and not something supplied from the outside as fixed epistemic procedure. The present chapter looks into the enigma of reason with reference to the works of Kant, Husserl, Freud, and others, coming upon interesting dissonances and aporias that are at odds with the public face of reason. This alerts us to the reconstructive possibilities of reason within the curriculum.
Part of this chapter was published by the author under the title “Education and the Subject of Reason: A Phenomenological Inquiry,” International Journal of Advanced Research in Social Science and Humanities, Vol. 5, Issue 7, August, 2016, 158–166.
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- 1.
For a useful discussion of a velocity-bound society, see Paul Virilio, Negative Horizon: An Essay in Dromoscopy (New York: Continuum, 2005).
- 2.
George Klosko, “The Rule of Reason in Plato’s Psychology,” History of Philosophy Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 4, Plato Issue (October 1988), pp. 341–356.
- 3.
Ibid., p. 343.
- 4.
Max Horkheimer , Eclipse of Reason (London: Bloomsbury, 1974), pp. 2–7.
- 5.
Ibid., p. 11.
- 6.
Garrath Williams, “Kant’s Account of Reason,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2016/entries/kant-reason/.
- 7.
One of the reasons why Kant objects to intuitive or mystical truths as reasonable is that there are little cognitive correlates or agreements between hypotheses in this domain.
- 8.
Ibid.
- 9.
The Bible, Mathew 7:12, King James Version.
- 10.
Immanuel Kant , Practical Philosophy, trans. M. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 69.
- 11.
Ibid.
- 12.
Today we know that no such complete account is possible. Gödel’s Incompleteness theorem has shown that all closed systems suffer from incompleteness, meaning that certain self-referential propositions can neither be proved nor disproved within that system.
- 13.
Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (London: Humanity Books, 1999), pp. 3–4.
- 14.
G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History (New York: Dover Publications, 1956), p. 19.
- 15.
Herbert Marcuse , Reason and Revolution, p. 232.
- 16.
Ibid., p. 233.
- 17.
Available in the public domain at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_09.htm Karl Marx. See also Marx Engels Collected Works, vol. 1, trans. Clemens Dutt (London: International Publishers, 1975), p. 397.
- 18.
Witold Plotka, “The Riddle of Reason: In Search of Husserl’s Concept of Rationality,” Bulletin d’Analyse Phenomenologique, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2009. http://popups.ulg.ac.be/1782-2041/index.php?id=303.
- 19.
Edmund Husserl, Experience and Judgment: Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 37. Italics in original.
- 20.
Ibid.
- 21.
Ibid.
- 22.
Plotka, op. cit., pp. 9–10.
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
Ibid.
- 25.
Ibid.
- 26.
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, trans. James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002).
- 27.
The idea of the conscious versus the unconscious did not originate with Freud. Dynamic psychotherapy and ideas of a fluid subterranean constitutive of the human make-up had been around for at least a century preceding Freud. But the latter was singularly responsible for bringing this credibly before the public and in making the idea popular.
- 28.
Alfred I. Tauber, “Freud’s Dreams of Reason,” History of the Human Sciences, http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journals 22:4; 1–29; DOI: 10.1177/0952695109340492 http://hhs.sagepub.com.
- 29.
Sigmund Freud , “The Structure of the Unconscious,” in New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, trans. W. J. H. Sprott (New York: Norton, 1933), p. 11.
- 30.
This fact is very important for psychoanalysis , and opens the way to eliminate pathology by the route of making repressed memories conscious.
- 31.
Freud, “The Structure of the Unconscious,” p. 13.
- 32.
Ibid.
- 33.
This is not to be confused with the pathological condition called “split personality,” etc.
- 34.
The Categorical Imperative, as we have seen, cannot truly and fairly be considered as a secular proposition.
- 35.
Here, a parallel can be drawn with Kafka’s unfinished literary work, Der Bau or The Burrow. The narrative concerns an animal’s attempt to set up an absolutely secure burrow for itself. The animal feels hunted and burrows ever deeper in response. It is really an allusion to human attempts to construct a rational world of their own making against the outside world dominated by irrational and unpredictable forces.
- 36.
None of the available livability indexes show well-being increasing over time. Technology has not improved the human condition, it has only made it more complex.
- 37.
In Indian mythology, the view is precisely in the contrary direction: beginning with Sat yuga (Age of Truth), human behavior deteriorates to reach Kali yuga (Age of Darkness) or the current age. This parallels the Christian idea of Fall of Man, rather than subscribing to any theory of ascension.
- 38.
We have to acknowledge that Marx too made the error of putting science outside history, but we will side-step that issue in favor of a rich insight useful from the perspective of education.
- 39.
Plotka, op. cit., p. 13.
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Roy, K. (2018). Reason and Curriculum: On Rethinking the Logistikon . In: Rethinking Curriculum in Times of Shifting Educational Context. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61106-8_2
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