Opening, Brigitte Frelat-Kahn (University of Picardie), Dominique Ottavi (Paris 10 University) and Alain Vergnioux (Caen University)
Moral chronicle : The philosophy of François Châtelet, Alain Vergnioux (Caen University)
François Châtelet (1925-1985) never stopped teaching in high school and in pre-university classes and he always maintained that the practice of philosophy was inseparable from teaching. From books, prefaces, articles and interviews, the article proposes to restore the radical critique directed by Châtelet against institutional practices of the kind of teaching in high school as in university, namely, the reduction of philosophy to its history and to commentary upon this history. He then examines the conditions according to which new practices of philosophy should be envisaged – in the broader context of a re-definition of the whole culture.
Notion : Interculturalism, Valentina Crispi
The influx of immigrants following decolonization, economic imperatives and widespread globalization of social phenomena are fundamentally changing modern societies demographically and culturally. The problems raised by the encounter between migrant and host communities, coexistence, exchanges or confrontations between cultures become paramount; and it is difficult to conceptualize them in their complex multiplicity of different registers and processes. This article presents and analyses how the concepts and issues (otherness, difference, deconstruction of identity, multiplicity) forged in recent decades by French philosophers, in particular Deleuze, Derrida, Ricoeur and Levinas, can contribute to the effort to clarify and to promote understanding.
Report: Michel Foucault: heritages and perspectives in education et training
Presentation, Hubert Vincent (Rouen University)
Another look at the disciplines of knowledge, François Jacquet-Francillon (Lille 3 University)
In L’ordre du discours, Foucault distinguishes three types of « limitations » internal to discourse: the technique of commentary, building on authors, and opposed to the previous two, the training of disciplinary scholars, But this opposition also illuminates the history of the culture of scholarship, which for two or three centuries, and not before, has been structured as a set of disciplines that themselves incorporate the standards of legitimacy of the objects of knowledge (standards of experience) and the standards of truth of scientific claims (standards of proof).
From the « pedagogization » of the care of the chronically ill to therapeutic education measure, Nicolas Guirimand (Rouen University)
The constant increase in the number of chronically ill for more than half a century has prompted doctors to rethink their practice. Building on some theories of psychology and philosophy of education, modern medicine has taken a new form by incorporating in it new educational measures. Michel Foucault’s work allows for the re-thinking of the necessary conditions for the appearance of these measures and their effects on the doctor-patient relationship and more widely on medical institutions. These institutions have no longer the sole purpose of care of the ill, of generating medical knowledge and of transmitting it to future doctors, but also find themselves with a new responsibility, that of educating patients. While some educational approaches attempt to promote patient empowerment, others fail by institutionalizing the normalization of the subject.
Foucault as educator: writing as an art and a self-study model, Hubert Vincent (Rouen University)
The desire to pay tribute to Michel Foucault, both to himself that his work can take several paths. Here I have selected two. The first route concerns Foucault’s very style, specifically its expository style. Foucault seems to me to have a very generous writing style or style of exposition, especially in his lectures at the Collège de France. I wanted to provide an analysis of this generosity and of its constitutive traits. The second concerns more a problem or concept, namely that of self-formation or the practice self-formation. The analyses that Foucault devoted to certain techniques of reading and writing inherited from Greek philosophy seem to be me well able to throw an original light on these techniques.
Heterotopia’s production in school: the care of oneself and subjectivation,, Silvio Gallo (State University of Campinas, Brasil)
Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish is a very important critic of school, as a disciplinary institution. This paper poses the question: is it possible to think the school in other ways, with Foucault? The paper works with the heterotopia concept to interrogate the possibilities of producing, at school, other spaces of learning – learning knowledge; learning the life; or learning the self. The lasts Foucault’s lessons at Collège de France (lessons of years 1980 up to 1984) are focused to search for lanes that allow thinking in other ways education and school.
The question of listening in the work of Michel Foucault, Annie Hourcade (Rouen University)
Michel Foucault addresses the issue of listening in his course Cours au Collège de France, especially in L’Herméneutique du sujet and in the Le Gouvernement de soi et des autres, relying mainly on ancient texts. This questioning plays a vital role in the developments that Foucault sets in train on the activity of parrhesia and more widely that of counselling. Listening appears as the other side of philosophical discourse but also the condition of its existence. The two aspects of listening – its dimension of passivity but also the active attitude that it prompts in the hearer are invitations to question, along with Foucault, the fine line between a philosophy whose mission is to care for souls in the context of educational counselling and a philosophy that aims primarily to form philosophers.
Foucault, reader of Plutarch: from the notion of « éthopoétic » knowledge to the development of an « aesthetics of existence », Edouardo Machado
We try to show in this article the « author function » Plutarch occupies in Foucault’s work while highlighting its educational dimension. The study shows a significant use of the work of Plutarch as a conceptual tool and highlights two figures, the biographer and philosopher therapist. These two figures represent two key aspects of the educational thought of Foucault: the rejection of the imitation models of the past, embodied in the humanist paradigm of biographies of famous men, and the promotion of a pedagogy of practices on the self. This reflection prompts the educational problematization of the link and path developed by Foucault from Plutarch’s notion of an « ethopoetic » knowledge » to the possibility of building a certain aesthetic idea of man.
Studies : The expression of beliefs in the history textbooks for public schools: the case of Poland before and after 1989, Sébastien Urbansky (Lyon 2 University)
This article proposes a distinction between « collective beliefs » and « personal beliefs » that allows for the application of certain of Durkheim’s reflections in philosophy and sociology of education. This distinction is applied to the case of Polish history textbooks for public schools. Until 1989, the authors expressed collective beliefs (the Marxist ideology of the State); today, they express a strong « negative liberty » orientation, leading many of them to express personal beliefs – especially religious ones – which are particularly noticeable in history books.