Unsettling Knowledge: Irony and Education

Smith, Richard

doi:10.1111/1467-9752.12444

Unsettling Knowledge: Irony and Education

Smith, Richard

Authors

Professor Richard Smith r.d.smith@durham.ac.uk
Emeritus Professor

Abstract

Philosophy is sometimes thought of as having two principal dimensions: one that aims to build systems and doctrines, and another that is concerned to unsettle fixed ways of thinking. Richard Peters seems to position himself in both camps. I suggest that education in the UK today increasingly bears the marks of rigid thinking, largely as a result of the domination of neoliberal fundamentalism, and is in particular need of unsettling. This, I argue, was a major part of western philosophy's mission at what we think of as its birth in the work of Socrates and Plato's dialogues. In these texts too we see depicted the arrogance and complacency of characters who may sometimes remind us of our contemporaries. The Socratic irony that is evident everywhere in the dialogues is their undoing.

Citation

Smith, R. (2020). Unsettling Knowledge: Irony and Education. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 54(3), 757-771. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.12444

Journal Article Type	Article
Online Publication Date	Jul 2, 2020
Publication Date	2020-07
Deposit Date	Jul 22, 2020
Publicly Available Date	Jul 22, 2020
Journal	Journal of Philosophy of Education
Print ISSN	0309-8249
Electronic ISSN	1467-9752
Publisher	Wiley
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	54
Issue	3
Pages	757-771
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.12444

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Copyright Statement
© 2020 The Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.