This thesis explores the place and logics of the scene of teaching in the works of four major thinkers: Descartes, Freud, Hegel and Levinas. More detailed reasons for my choice of authors, the order in which they are examined and my method of approach are given in the Introduction. The most general context of the thesis is deconstruction, specifically the texts of Jacques Derrida, which highlight the complexity of the limit - of the relations between the "inside" and the "outside" - and which therefore open onto a reorganisation of domains traditionally held apart and hierarchically structured. Specifically, the thesis sets out to explore the scene of teaching "in" the works of these thinkers, and argues that the scene of teaching can be coherently placed neither within, nor as an empirical outside of the domain of philosophy. "Philosophy" is understood here as the thought of auto-institution or autoformation, in which the alterity of teaching is either absorbed or excluded as a contingency; this "definition" is explained and justified in the course of the thesis. The thesis is divided into four chapters, one for each of the thinkers above. My readings show that the logic of teaching in each of the four thinkers is aporetic, and the thesis demonstrates that these aporias settle into a coherent schema. The thesis argues that the systematic emergence of these aporias across this range of texts signals an excess of the scene of teaching, as instituting scene, over the logic of institution or foundation provided by the texts studied. This excess takes on specific forms in each of the thinkers researched, but I demonstrate that in each case it is a question of an originary involvement of ethico-political stakes in the domain of philosophy, an involvement which cannot be situated as derived or contingent. The thesis does not examine theories or philosophies of teaching; nor does it focus on or develop a particular theory or practice of teaching. It is concerned, rather, to address the scene of teaching "in" the texts of these thinkers, without presupposing its proper site, nor the scope of its "illogical" effects.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:386004 |
| Date | January 1993 |
| Creators | Brown, Saskia Natalia |
| Publisher | University of Sussex |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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