Idiots Rather Than Persons? The Crisis of Education in the Neoliberal Era
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24310/Metyper.2022.vi28.14666Keywords:
Education, person, individual, neoliberalism, universityAbstract
Once a place for educating citizens, the university is increasingly giving in to the overwhelming weight of neoliberalism. While democracy is giving way to post-democratic and populist regimes wherein democratic forms are preserved while its substance is abandoned, the university is progressively adopting formalistic approaches for the mass-production of useful workers, self-centered individuals incapable of critical and independent thought. These narcissistic individuals (“idiots,” in the sense of the Greek ?????) fail to assume their role as tolerant, participative, and emphatic citizens. This work traces the parallels between the political and the academic, asserting that, in the end, both rest on the same rejection of a robust notion of the human person and her dignity, which is at the basis of any democratic experiment.
Downloads
Metrics
References
ARISTOTLE. The Politics and the Constitution of Athens. Edited by Stephen Everson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
BALOT, R. Greek Political Thought. Malden: Blackwell, 2006.
BEINER, R. Political Philosophy. What it is and Why it Matters. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
BROWN, W. In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.
BUBER, M. I and Thou. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Touchstone, 1996.
COLLINS, Ch., OCAMPO, O., and PASLASKI, S. Billionaire Bonanza 2020: Wealth Windfalls, Tumbling Taxes, and Pandemic Profiteers. https://bit.ly/3fkWjzx.
CROUCH, C. Post-Democracy. Cambridge: Polity, 2004.
CROUCH, C. Post-Democracy After the Crisis. Cambridge: Polity, 2020.
DAWSON, Ch. Religion and the Rise of Western Culture. New York: Doubleday, 1991.
ERIKSON, M., and ERIKSON, M. “Learning outcomes and critical thinking—good intentions in conflict.” Studies in Higher Education vol. 44, no. 12 (2019): 2293–2303.
FREEDOM HOUSE. Freedom in the World 2020. A Leaderless Struggle for Democracy. https://bit.ly/2Q65Gcs.
FRIEDMAN, M. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002.
GAUCHET, M. The Disenchantment of the World. A Political History of Religion. Translated by Oscar Burge. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.
GIROUX, H. A. “Democracy’s Nemesis. The Rise of the Corporate University.” Cultural Studies ? Critical Methodologies 9, no. 5 (2009): 1-27.
HAYEK, F. The Collected Works of Friedrich August Hayek. Volume I: The Fatal Conceit. Edited by Bruce Caldwell. London: Routledge, 1988.
HAMILTON, A., MADISON, J., and JAY, J. The Federalist with Letters of “Brutus.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
HUTCHINS, R. M. The University of Utopia. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1953.
KAKUTANI, M. The Death of Truth. London: William Collins, 2018.
KEE, A. Marx and the Failure of Liberation Theology. Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990.
KIERKEGAARD, S. Two Ages. Kierkegaard’s Writings, XIV. Translated by Howard V. Hong a d Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.
KLEIN, N. No Logo. New York: Picador, 2009.
LEFORT, C. Democracy and Political Theory. Translated by David Macey. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988.
LEVITSKY, S., and ZIBLATT, D. How Democracies Die. New York: Crown, 2018.
LIPOVETSKY, G. La Era del Vacío. Translated by Joan Vinyoli Sastre and Michéle Pendanx. Barcelona: Anagrama, 2000.
MCINTYRE, L. Post-Truth. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2018.
MACINTYRE, A. Dependent Rational Animals. Chicago: Open Court, 1999
MACINTYRE, A. Whose Justice, Which Rationality? Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988.
MILBANK, J., and Oliver, S. eds. The Radical Orthodoxy Reader. New York: Routledge, 2009.
MOUNIER, E. Personalism. Translated by Philip Mairet. London: Routledge & Kagan Paul Ltd. 1952.
MOUNK, Y. The People vs. Democracy: Why our freedom is in danger and how to save it. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018.
NEWMAN, J. H. The Idea of a University. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1986.
NIETZSCHE, F. Beyond Good & Evil. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage, 1989.
NUSSBAUM, M. The Monarchy of Fear. A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.
NUSSBAUM, M. Not for Profit. Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.
PIKETTY, Th. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. London: Harvard University Press, 2014.
PLATO. Republic. Translated by G. M. A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992.
POLANYI, K. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston: Beacon Press, 1957.
PRISER, E. The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think, New York: Penguin, 2011.
RAHNER, K., and Ratzinger, J. Episcopate and The Primacy. New York: Herder and Herder, 1962.
RATZINGER, J. Joseph Ratzinger in Communio. Vol. 2: Anthropology and Culture. Edited by D. L. Schindler and N. J. Healy. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2013.
RATZINGER, J. Values in a Time of Upheaval. Translated by Brian McNeil. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006.
RATZINGER, J. Introduction to Christianity. Translated by J. R. Foster. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004.
ROUSSEAU, J.J. The Basic Political Writings. Translated by Victor Gourevitch. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2011.
RUNCIMAN, D. How Democracy Ends. London: Profile Books, 2018.
SCHMITT, C. The Concept of the Political. Translated by George Schwab. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007.
SINGER, J. W. No Freedom Without Regulation. The Hidden Lessons of the Subprime Crisis. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015.
STIGLITZ, J. The Great Divide. Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2015.
STRAUSS, L. What is Political Philosophy? And other Studies. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988.
TAYLOR, Ch. The Language Animal. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016.
TAYLOR, Ch. The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003.
TAYLOR, Ch. A Catholic Modernity? Charles Taylor’s Marianist Award lecture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
THUCYDIDES. The Peloponnesian War. Translated by Martin Hammond. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
TOCQUEVILLE, A. Democracy in America. Translated by Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002.
URBINATI, N. We the People: How Populism Transforms Democracy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2019.
VATICAN II. Apostolic Constitution Gaudium et spes. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1965.
WAGNER, E, and Newell, S. “‘Best’ for whom?: the tension between ‘best practice’ ERP packages and diverse epistemic cultures in a university context.” Journal of Strategic Information Systems no.13 (2004): 305-328.
WOLIN, Sh. Democracy Incorporated. Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.
ŽIŽEK, S. First as Tragedy, Then as Farce. New York: Verso, 2009.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Authors who have publications with this journal agree to the following terms:
a. Authors retain their copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication of their work, which is simultaneously subject to the Creative Commons Attribution License that allows third parties to share the work provided that its author and first publication in this journal are indicated.
b. Authors may adopt other non-exclusive licensing arrangements for distribution of the published version of the work (e.g. depositing it in an institutional telematic archive or publishing it in a monographic volume) provided that initial publication in this journal is indicated.
c. Authors are allowed and encouraged to disseminate their work via the Internet (e.g. in institutional telematics archives or on their website) before and during the submission process, which can lead to interesting exchanges and increase citations of the published work (see The Open Access Effect).
17.png)
