Michael A. Petersa and Fazal Rizvib aBeijing Normal University, Beijing, PR China; bMelbourne University, Melbourne, Australia Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to ‘no...

The essay examines the impact of thought insertion on typical conceptions of self-consciousness. Stephens and Graham have recently argued that thought insertion is compatible with the inseparability thesis, which maintains that with regard to self-consciousness subjectivity is a proper part of introspection--introspection and subjectivity are inseparable. They argue that thought insertion is an error of agency and not an error of subjectivity. The essay contends that even if they are correct in their interpretation that thought insertion is an error of (...) agency rather than subjectivity, which is unlikely, they are incorrect to maintain that it is not also an error of subjectivity. Evidence is put forth to indicate that thought insertion is, at best, a mistake of agency and subjectivity. It is concluded that thought insertion is incompatible with the inseparability thesis, and a new inseparability thesis is thereby postulated. (shrink)

With higher education around the world in a period of extreme flux, this volume explores its underlying philosophy, a core element of the ongoing debate. Offering a diverse range of perspectives from an international selection of renowned scholars of higher education, the book is full of imaginative insights that add up to a substantive contribution to the discussion. As universities attempt to adapt to a new environment characterized by stiff international competition, networked remote learning, burgeoning student numbers, and comparative performance (...) assessment, how we conceptualize the purpose and ethos of our higher learning institutions is more important than ever. This publication features a multitude of distinctive approaches that illuminate potential solutions to the complex issues universities must grapple with in these uncertain times. Rather than espousing a singular philosophical approach, the editors have assembled views from across the spectrum and from differing national contexts, representing a multidisciplinary response to the situation. This collection of papers aims thus to inspire fresh developments in the way we think about the complexities of, and options available to, higher education. (shrink)

This deliberately wide-ranging book addresses issues related to trust, compassion, well-being, grace, dignity and integrity. It explores these within the context of higher education, giving existential and empirical accounts of how these moral duties can be expressed within the academy and why they ought to be. The chapters range from values used in the marketing and management of institutions to their realisation in therapeutic and teacher training spaces. The book opens with a specific introduction which positions the work and outlines (...) the context of duties and obligations at play. This is followed by two distinct but related sections including chapters on theoretical issues, organisational practices and personal praxis. The first part is more abstract and theoretical, the second locates the values discussed within the practices of the university. In doing so the book encompasses a wide range of issues from multi-disciplinary and geo-political regions. The authors are a mixture of world-leading authorities on values in higher education and earlier career researchers, who are nonetheless equally passionate contributors. This mix gives the book vibrancy and offers insight which appeals to both an academic and managerial readership. (shrink)

Heidegger’s early works provide his most important contribution to our understanding of being, while his discussion of the effects of technology on that being in his later works is one of his best known contributions. I use his phenomenological approach to understanding the workplace and then, from a range of potential applications, choose to describe the functioning of higher education as a workplace for academic professionals. Heidegger seemingly fails to offer a subtle approach to what is labouring, or to whether (...) there is a substantive difference between labouring and working. To find such approaches I draw upon work of both Marcuse and Arendt which specifically relates to these distinctions. (shrink)

Higher education and the institution of the university exist in time, their essential nature now continually subject to change; change in students, in knowledge, in structure and in their own communities and those service. The nature of time in all the contemporary work on the university has been largely overlooked. This is an important omission and Universities in the Flux of Time has gathered leading academics whose contributions to the volume raise a debate as to the influence and use of (...) time in the university. They do this in an exploration of how these changes are perceived in higher education and how these affect its temporality from local, national and global perspectives. The book opens new spaces for the development of the university and civic society. The book develops an interdisciplinary understanding of the temporal issues of engaging with the past, present and future of higher education and its institutions, through consideration of the increased speed demanded for the production of able students and innovative research, to the accountability pressures from central governments and commerce. Reflecting on these issues in the higher education sector, Universities in the Flux of Time is split into three parts, with each one addressing time and its multiple relationships with the university: - Past, Present and Future - Knowledge and Time - Living with Time This volume will provide essential reading for those on Higher Education Studies courses as well as a wider audience of managers, practitioners, policy makers, academics and students and from many disciplinary perspectives including sociology, organisation studies, social psychology and the philosophy of education. (shrink)

The world changes and we are encouraged to change with it, but is all change good? This book asks us to stop and consider whether the higher education we are providing, and engaging in, for ourselves and our societies is what we ought to have, or what commercial interests want us to have. In claiming that there is a place for a higher education of learning, such as the university, amongst our array of tertiary options the book attempts to explore (...) what this might be. Drawing from the existential literature and in particular Heidegger, the book investigates the case for such a form of higher education and settles on existential trust as the ground upon which the community of scholars that ought to be the university can flourish. This book is written for those who are concerned about the trends towards performativity and for those who are not yet so concerned! It offers a controversial and, some might say, idealistic view of what might be but makes no apology for that since the book proposes that higher education is becoming evermore unacceptable for those who value democracy, tolerance and learning. (shrink)

Around the world, the landscape of Higher Education is increasingly shaped by discourses of employability, rankings, and student satisfaction. Under these conditions, the role of universities in preparing students for all facets of life, and to contribute to the public good, is reshaped in significant ways: ways which are often negative and pessimistic. This book raises important and pressing questions about the nature and role of universities as formative educational institutions, drawing together contributors from both Western and non-Western perspectives. While (...) the editors and contributors critique the current situation, the chapters evince a more humane and compassionate framing of the work of and in universities, based on positive and valued relationships and notions of the good. Drawing together a wide range of theoretical and conceptual frameworks to illuminate the issues discussed, this volume changes the debate to one of hopefulness and inspiration about the role of higher education for the public good: ultimately looking towards a potentially exciting and rewarding future through which humanity and the planet can flourish. (shrink)

Higher education, and especially universities, is undergoing tremendous change. Many directly affect the lives of the academics and student whose presence defines the university. In this short introduction to the book we explore the context in which values in higher education are being questioned, defended and ignored. We then offer an outline of the content of the book.

This paper recognizes that we become bored in our post-modern, consumerist Western world and that boredom is related to this existence and hidden within it. Through Heidegger, it seeks to provide a way to structure our understanding of boredom and suggest ways of acknowledging its cause, and then to allow it to liberate our authentic appreciation of the world of our workplace and what can be learnt through it. Using the approach of focusing on being in a societal workplace environment, (...) and the link to Heidegger’s notion of mood, revealed in Being and Time, boredom’s fundamental role is shown as a complex temporal manifold. Our superficial attempts to deal with things in datable time means that we miss the essential importance of the temporal manifold through which our being is revealed and where the Augenblick, (moment of vision) is the authentic present and temporalises itself of the authentic future (Heidegger in Being and time (trans: J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson). Blackwell, Oxford, 1962 , p. 338). For Heidegger this is to be understood as ecstasis (ibid, p. 338) when the resolute Dasein “is carried away to whatever possibilities and circumstances are encountered (ibid, p. 338). Such resoluteness enables the private capabilities to arise in public practice, not, however, in the conformity of what ‘one does’ (Das Man) but as an authentically choosing being. The challenge of an ontological pedagogy, regardless of its place of revelation that this prescribes a possibly be edifying mission for Dasein. Instead of chasing away boredom through busyness, a moment of vision could produce creative and authentic ways of being. (shrink)

This book is not just about thinking or acting in transdisciplinary ways, but about being transdisciplinary. To achieve this requires a deconstruction of our current way of acting within the definition of being that others impose upon us. Transdisciplinarity is a phenomenological perspective of reality and its manifestation in the world in which we exist. The volume develops a widely based transdisciplinary understanding of the issues faced by higher education institutions and those who work within and with these institutions to (...) educate professionals. It incorporates international contributions from organisational theory, anthropologists, historians, psychologists, social sciences, philosophers and practitioners to create a volume that makes an important and distinct contribution to the literature on higher education and professional practice. "Transdisciplinarity provides one of our greatest challenges in higher education, both to the way it is organized and to the nature of the curriculum. This book is an important contribution to the debate about its implications." "Higher education is being challenged by the nature of knowledge and how it is organized-the world is transdisciplinary but out institutions are constrained by the disciplines. This book contributes to the important debates about the challenges transdisciplinarity provides to our institutions." Professor David Boud Emeritus Professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney. (shrink)

The paths and the ways: an insight into transdisciplinarity: This is a short study of how the notion of thinking that Heidegger developed in his writing, in the Conversation on a Country Path about Thinking, can be read through a consideration of a Chinese Taoist text Tao Te Ching and the Confucian, though a Taoist inspired text, by Zisi, the Zhongyong, to illuminate the essential nature of openness in transdisciplinarity and the restrictions of disciplinarity of knowing taken as the ritual (...) and rules of methodology. This approach offers a way to understand unconcealment in the onto-cosmology of the harmony of all Being and of personal cultivation which is essential to the ontology of Heidegger. I then suggest how this might be offered in what could be called a transdisciplinary pedagogy. Key words: Heidegger. Confucianism. Taoism. Transdisciplinarity. Harmony. Os caminhos e os meios: uma visão da transdisciplinaridade Resumo: Este é um breve estudo sobre como a noção de pensamento que Heidegger desenvolveu em seus escritos, em Conversation on a Country Path about Thinking [Uma Conversa no Caminho do Campo sobre o Pensar], pode ser lida através da consideração de um texto taoísta chinês Tao Te Ching e de um texto confucionista, embora inspirado por taoístas, de Zisi, o Zhongyong [A Doutrina do Meio], para iluminar a natureza essencial da abertura na transdisciplinaridade e as restrições da disciplinaridade do conhecimento a serem tomadas como ritual e regras da metodologia. Essa abordagem oferece uma maneira de entender a desocultação na ontocosmologia da harmonia de todo o Ser e do cultivo pessoal, essencial à ontologia de Heidegger. Sugiro então como isso pode ser oferecido no que poderia ser chamado de pedagogia transdisciplinar. Palavras-chave: Heidegger. Confucionismo. Taoísmo. Transdisciplinaridade. Harmonia. Los caminos y los medios: una visión de la transdisciplinariedad Resumen: Este es un breve estudio de cómo la noción de pensamiento que desarrolló Heidegger en sus escritos, Conversación sobre un camino rural sobre el pensamiento, puede leerse mediante la consideración de un texto chino taoísta Tao Te Ching y un texto confuciano, aunque inspirado por los taoístas de Zisi, el Zhongyong [La Doctrina del Medio], para iluminar la naturaleza esencial de la apertura en la transdisciplinariedad y las limitaciones de la disciplina del conocimiento a tomado como ritual y reglas de metodología. Este enfoque ofrece una forma de entender la falta de cultivación de la ontocosmología de la armonía de todo Ser y el cultivo personal, esencial para la ontología de Heidegger. Luego sugiero cómo se podría ofrecer esto en lo que podría llamarse pedagogía transdisciplinaria. Palabras clave: Heidegger. Confuciano. Taoísmo. Transdisciplinariedad. Armonía. Data de registro: 30/07/2020 Data de aceite: 21/10/2020. (shrink)

This book offers a moral rather than instrumental notion of university education whilst locating the university within society. It reflects a balancing of the instrumentalization of higher education as a mode of employment training and enhances the notion of the students' well-being being at the core of the university mission. Compassion is examined in this volume as a weaving of diverse cultures and beliefs into a way of recognizing that diversity through a common good offers a way of preparing students (...) and staff for a complex and anxious world. This book provides theoretical and practical discussions of compassion in higher education, it draws contributors from around the world and offers illustrations of compassion in action through a number of international cases studies. (shrink)

The totalising effect of consumerism, well-being and satisfaction is a discourse which may negate the value of struggle and mastery of complex subjects and a realization of personal potentiality. Why Universities Should Seek Happiness and Contentment considers the consequences of a hedonistic and well-being centred model of student education as one of the goals of higher education and proposes an alternative goal for higher education. In a globalised consumer society where the anxiety for an identity leads to the fear of (...) not reaching the standard, Paul Gibbs shows how anxiety can be harnessed to secure contentment with one's own future without the fear of consumer-induced emptiness. He conceptualises higher education in a counter-valued way to the current dominant discourse of higher education institutions and educational policy while placing students at the centre of their own educational activity. In doing so, Gibbs proposes contentment as a guiding principle of higher education. (shrink)