Developing an Ethic for the Learning Society and Lifelong Learning

Well, now isn’t this coincidental?

One the first day of the year, when we go back to the beginning of the calendar and reflect on what has come before, and when we make resolutions and plans about what we are going to differently from here on in, it is time to review the chapter entitled:

Back to the Beginning?

In which Jarvis plans, basically to do the same thing with regard to ….well, with regard to what exactly, we’ll have to see. 

Jarvis summarizes the previous chapters by saying “…the Enlightenment project is flawed” (p. 193) so what do we do now?  (although it doesn’t strike me at this early juncture that he differentiates what should we do from what CAN we do, now).  If we took a wrong turn down this Enlightenment path, do we backtrack?  If so, how far?  And in what direction?

He says that, a la Habermas, we may have to seek “an ethic that is not merely a reasoned argument for the good…” (p. 193).  He calls deliberative politics and communicative action “sign posts” that may be directing us toward an ethic focused on relationships founded in agapism.   He admits that agapism cannot be legalized and enforced, but since it is grounded in relationships and people’s experience, and because it does not give priority to individuals or to groups, it is not unrealistic.

Time and Change

Scheler (1980) differentiated 7 types of knowledge.  Of these he calls two “artificial” because they are not around long enough to embed in the culture, and thus are out of date quickly.  Similarly, all other forms of knowledge are experienced as “out of date” because they have long been part of the culture. 

 GC culture is encouraging the rapid turn-over of scientific and technological ideas.  If this is the measure of progress that captures our attention (negating social progress in governance, health, freedom, justice etc.) we have a very limited view of progress, and one which may be giving us a false positive reading.  Jarvis suggests that the concept of progress itself is not universally valid. 

How then should we look at social change, if not in terms of progress?

Jarvis introduces us to Sorokin’s theory of social change (He references Timisheff, 1957) which might be shortened to this for our purposes:

·         Society is interacting groups and interacting individuals

·         Culture is the totality of the meanings, norms and values of all the interacting beings.

·         All components are functionally inter-dependent

·         There are 4 subsystems of culture

o   Sensate: sense experience

o   Ideational: belief in reality behind the sense experience

o   Idealistic: Truth through reason

o   Mixed: juxtaposition of the Sensate and Ideational

·         Each of these subsystems is incompletely integreated

o   When one subsystem gets too strong, there is a change toward the other

·         Change occurs when culture flows from the Sensate to the Ideational and back again, passing through a mixed phase.

Through modernity, society was moving toward the idealistic.  But the idealistic is unachievable. We are now, in later modernity, looking at the value of a system which combines the Sensate and the Ideational.

After Virtue

Alisdair MacIntyre (1985) concluded that modernity had to fail for several reasons.  Jarvis quotes at length.  I won’t.   But the gist of it is:  “reason is not god.” (p. 196)

MacIntyre groups virtue into 3 types:

1.      What enables one to fulfill a social role

2.      What enables one to fulfill human roles

3.      What enables one to achieve success (earthly or heavenly)

Virtue when exercised (and it’s hardly a virtue if it isn’t exercised) lead to achieving “good”.

It is exercised in practice in communities.

Virtues are not grounded in reason, but in traditions of excellence in practice.

Good, therefore is being determined in relation to others.

Communities are dynamic in their practices and traditions, so they change.  (learning)

Love, fraternity and equality form the basis of the virtues in communities of practice, and this is their strength.

Jarvis suggests that there are problems with this vision for our purposes of understanding what to do with LLL and the learning society in a GC culture, but he does like the emphasis this version has on relationships.

The Agapistic Relationship

Previous chapters (and posts) have explained the Agapasitic relationship and why Jarvis proposes it as a way to ground LLL and the learning society in a morally acceptable way.   But in short, it looks for goodness in relationships, not individuals and not groups.

Jarvis introduces Derrida (through Honneth, 2007 and not primary sourced) who he says offers a morality based on friendship.   In a friendship, there are 2 subjective attitude:

·         A relationship to the other as a concrete person

·         An asymmetric responsibility (you must respond to their need without expecting reciprocity)

If the asymmetry remains unidirectional, it is not friendship, it is love. This is the love of the other, for no personal interest. This brings care back into our morality.  And this is the sole universal moral good.

Justifying Agape as the Universal Basis of Morality.

Jarvis calls on Buber (1958) and the fact that we are all born into relationships to assert the primacy of relationships over individuality.  That relationship is most often one of love and it is experienced pre-consciously.

Jarvis refers to the development of the part of the brain (orbitofrontal cortex) largely responsible for emotion.  This development occurs sometime after birth and depends on social experiences.  Jarvis follows Gerhardt (2004) in suggesting that this suggests that this allows humans to be moulded “to the environmental niche in which he [sic] finds himself” (p. 200)

It is only later, after these relationships of love are experienced and influence the development of the brain, does a young child develop the concept of “me” as an identity separate from the world and its relationships.

Thus,

“relationship precedes the individual.”  (p. 201).

Furthermore, as described in earlier chapters (and blogs), we learn first through sensory experiences, and then cognitively. We should appreciate that much learning throughout our lives is not cognitive. He relates this to tacit knowledge, but does not define them as the same thing.  He says that “There is a sense in which the pre-conscious knowledge…is what Polanyi (1967) called tacit knowledge.”  I personally don’t equate the terms too closely, but will not explore the difference here. 

When one calls upon this pre-conscious care when we meet the Other, and I recognize my responsibility to him or her (or them), Levinas (Jarvis references Honneth, 2007) says that this is where ethics begins.  It is this pre-conscious learning that draws a response of unself-interested concern. This care is agape.

Whereas Jarvis concluded in previous chapters (and blogs) that “reason is not god” he here claims (or ascribes to Levinas, it isn’t clear) that

“love is now god” (p. 204).

There is a degree to which I do not accept his logic.  He is basically saying “since relationship and love came first chronologically, it is a superior ethic.”  This logic is fallacious.  However, if he had stated that because relationships and love are experienced pre-cognitively, and even before birth, and are therefore their development is less subject to cultural contexts, they are more universal, I would have less to argue against.  Indeed, a more universal ethic may be what Jarvis is looking for. However, it must still be acknowledged that simply because an experience is almost universal at the earliest stages of our individual lives, it does not mean that an ethic based on that experience will be universal for adults.

Another Utopia?

Since the enlightenment, money, reason and science have been used to legitimate ethics, and each has been seen to be flawed.  Here Jarvis makes the point that ethics should be legitimated by pre-conscious experience and he refers to the “…universal truth that relationship is necessary for the survival of the human species…” and that it is experienced pre-consciously (p. 204), although he doesn’t directly say that love/concern are universal.  I do think the logic is this:

·         Ethics should be based on universals

·         Pre-conscious experiences are universal

·         Relationships and concern/love are experienced pre-consciously

·         Therefore, ethics should be based on concern/love

But the conclusion is this:

Disinterested concern of one for the other, then, is the fundamental ethic of human living: it is the sole ethical good… (p. 204).

It does, however, deny that self-interested individualism is good.  “(It) is nearly always wrong.” (p. 204).    It does however, capture other values of the enlightenment’s moral philosophy. It is based on a universal and should be practiced universally.  We cannot, however, say that it will always produce good consequences.  It is ends, not means, directed in that it would support action expected to achieve positive outcomes for the Other.

Bauman (1993, p. 115) acknowledges one issue with an agapist ethic:

When the Other dissolves into the Many, the first thing to dissolve is the Face (p. 205).

It is harder to enter the “I-Thou” relationship with more than one person.  Not to mention (and Jarvis doesn’t), the complexity that grows with the number of individuals in the relationship:  what is in the interest of one may not be in the interest of another.  

Jarvis argues that this is not an infinity that can be achieved:  it is utopian as a global vision.  However, he posits that individual experiences of the phenomenon can be captured in time (as opposed to other Utopias which are beyond time).  He calls them:

...—magic moments—when relationships of care and concern are captured and the potential of the –Thou relationship is rediscovered in a group form. (p. 206).

It isn’t a utopia beyond our reach but rather, something that exists as potential experiences all the time, and we are aware of that:

There is a strange sense in which it is almost always a potentially present now…(p. 206).

Tomorrow I will review the concluding chapter of the book.  It is titled

A Revolution in Learning:  A Vision of a Better Learning Society

In which he outlines his view of the future of LLL and the learning society. 

I am finding myself in a time crunch, so from now on I am only going to be posting every other day. So, the next post will be on Jan 3.  
happy new year