Learning from the Other

Levinas, Psychoanalysis, and Ethical Possibilities in Education

Sharon Todd

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780791458365, 9780791458358
• eBook ISBN: 9780791486290
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

How does ethics influence the myriad ways we engage difference within educational settings?

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.

Table of contents

• LEARNING FROM THE OTHER
• 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