Johan Dahlbeck

Spinoza’s claim that self-preservation is the foundation of virtue makes for the point of departure of this philosophical investigation into what a Spinozistic model of moral education might look like. It is argued that Spinoza’s metaphysics places constraints on moral education insofar as an educational account would be affected by Spinoza’s denial of the objectivity of moral knowledge, his denial of the existence of free will, and of moral responsibility. This article discusses these challenges in some detail, seeking to construe a credible account of moral education based on the insight that self-preservation is not at odds with benevolence, but that the self-preservation of the teacher is instead conditioned by the intellectual deliberation of the students. However, it is also concluded that while benevolence retains an important place in Spinoza’s ethics, his causal determinism poses a severe threat to a convincing account of moral education insofar as moral education is commonly understood to involve an effort to influence the actions of students relative to some desirable goal.

First off I would like to thank the editors of this journal for allowing me this space to respond to Jim Mackenzie’s ‘Dahlbeck and pure ontology’ (written in reply to my ‘Towards a pure ontology’). I would also like to thank Mackenzie for taking the time to read and to respond at length to my article. I’m pleased Mackenzie engaged with my article so intensely. In response, I will not quibble—word by word—with Mackenzie’s vigorous attack upon my work. I think curious readers should read it for themselves. Here, I would like to focus upon the larger issues and assumptions at play in our debate.

This article begins with the question: What is it to live? It is argued that, from a Spinozistic perspective, to live is not an either/or kind of matter. Rather, it is something that inevitably comes in degrees. The idea is that through good education and proper training a person can learn to increase his or her degree of existence by acquiring more adequate ideas. This gradual qualitative enhancement of existence is an operationalization of Spinoza's quest for immortality of the mind. While Spinoza's idea of immortality differs from the traditional Christian account of the immortality of the soul in some key respects, it nevertheless concerns a form of immortality of the mind albeit grasped from a strictly naturalistic standpoint. And as such it is clear that we are faced with not only a philosophical and metaphysical problem of some magnitude but that we have come up against an educational problem that is rarely addressed. The educational problem, emanating from this, concerns the tension between Spinoza's necessitarianism and the overall goal of education. Why educate people at all if their lives are already predetermined? In addressing these problems, this article marks an attempt to present a pedagogization of the degrees of existence in Spinoza. To this end, it is argued that the imitation of affects is key to understanding Spinoza in an educational setting and; that teaching, in a Spinozistic context, involves the act of offering the right amount of resistance

In this article I will investigate a perceived tension in Swedish early childhood education (ECE) policy between reevaluating certain foundational claims on the one hand and following universal moral commands on the other. I ask the question; how is it that certain commonly held assumptions are being debunked and others left undisturbed in this particular context? To this end, I look at some of the preconditions of framing the educational practice by universal moral commands so as to make visible some of its underlying ontological assumptions. Correspondingly, I look at some necessary epistemological and ontological prerequisites for understanding knowledge formation as essentially relational, such as it is construed in the policy documents concerned. I connect this with a broader trend in educational philosophy and theory, one where the destabilizing of a Cartesian notion of subjectivity has opened up for more relational conceptions of subjectivity. Next, I will take a closer look at some key passages from the policy documents where the appeal to moral universalism runs parallel with an appeal to a relational ontology. Having done so, I point to some epistemological problems with combining these two conflicting approaches on a policy level. To conclude, I formulate some final thoughts regarding how one might begin to resolve this tension within the discourse of Swedish ECE by coming to terms with what kind of ontological and epistemological foundation to rely upon. I do this by trying out the notion of a pedagogy of dosage

Following a trajectory of thinking from the philosophy of Spinoza via the work of Nietzsche and through Deleuze’s texts, this article explores the possibility of framing a contemporary pedagogical practice by an ontological order that does not presuppose the superiority of the mind over the body and that does not rely on universal morals but that considers instead, as its ontological point of departure, the actual bodies of children and pedagogues through what has come to be known as affective learning. When considering the potentiality of a pure ontology, as outlined by Spinoza, I argue that Nietzsche’s critique of higher values and universal morals allows for a deeper understanding of the limitations of a traditional image of thought. Furthermore, I argue that Deleuze’s conception of the dogmatic image of thought can provide a helpful framework when connecting the work of the two aforementioned philosophers and when conceptualizing a possible image of thought based on the body as a singularity harboring flows of power, rather than one where the body is considered a necessary obstacle to be overcome in the quest for higher values that are situated always beyond the reach of the experiencing body.This philosophical discussion is then situated within the field of educational philosophy via the concept of affective learning which enables the incorporation of these ideas into a concrete educational setting.