Kantian Genesis of the Problem of Scientific Education: Emergence, Development and Future Prospects 9781138393370, 9780429401794

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Preface
Kant abbreviations
Nietzsche abbreviations
Introduction
The structure of the book
1 Scientific education: a modern orientation toward education
Reading Kant: an interpretive strategy
Scientific education
Why is the distinction between scientific education and science education needed?
Why Kant is the generative context of scientific education
2 Kant, the human being, science and education
The human being as a knowing being: Kant’s Copernican revolution
Revolution from within the human being: exit from self-incurred immaturity
The human being as an acting being: human obligation, how should we act
The human being as a feeling being
Kantian notion of science
Kant, science and good education
Education, science and the question of grounding
3 Education, science and human progress
Education as a way toward a cosmopolitan condition
Rational apparatus of education
Construction of the constitutive subject
Scientific construction of the human being
4 Scientific education and human diversity
Kant and scientific colonialism: the uneducable others
Kant and scientific racism
5 Problematisation of the Kantian paradigm
Problematisation of scientific education’s actuality
6 Beyond Kant: toward a polyphonic strategy of resistance
Demands on white Western thinkers
Western self-criticism: transforming Kant from within
Criticism from an external perspective
7 Delinking from the Kantian paradigm: a new educational orientation
From an authoritarian to a dialogic notion of criticism
From cognitivism to the diversity of daily practices
From metaphysical to ontological notions of freedom
From imperial universalism to translational universalism
From science of education to art-science of education
From homo economicus to homo polytropos
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Kantian Genesis of the Problem of Scientific Education

Kantian Genesis of the Problem of Scientific Education terms the dominant educational paradigm of our time as scientific education and subjects it to historical analysis to bring its tacit racial, colonial and Eurocentric biases into view. Using archaeology and genealogy as tools of investigation, it traces the emergence of scientific education and related racial and colonial inequities in Western modernity, especially in the works of the defining figure of Western Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant. The book addresses the key role played by Kant in establishing a Eurocentric rational notion of the human being. It also reveals genealogical continuities between Kantian and neoliberal rationality of the all-embracing market of today. The book discusses several strategies for resistance against the imperial rationality based on decolonial and postcolonial perspectives and suggests basic principles for a shift of paradigm in education, including shifts in our understanding of the notions of criticism, freedom, the universal, art and the human being. This book will be of great interest for academics and researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of education, philosophy and philosophy of education. Rasoul Nejadmehr is an independent researcher and has been working with Swedish and EU cultural and educational policies. He lives in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Kantian Genesis of the Problem of Scientific Education Emergence, Development and Future Prospects

Rasoul Nejadmehr

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Rasoul Nejadmehr The right of Rasoul Nejadmehr to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-39337-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-40179-4 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Prefacevii Kant abbreviations  x Nietzsche abbreviations  x Introduction The structure of the book  7 1 Scientific education: a modern orientation toward education Reading Kant: an interpretive strategy  12 Scientific education  18 Why is the distinction between scientific education and science education needed?  26 Why Kant is the generative context of scientific education  31

1

12

2 Kant, the human being, science and education The human being as a knowing being: Kant’s Copernican revolution 49 Revolution from within the human being: exit from self-incurred immaturity  51 The human being as an acting being: human obligation, how should we act  52 The human being as a feeling being  56 Kantian notion of science  63 Kant, science and good education  68 Education, science and the question of grounding  73

45

3 Education, science and human progress Education as a way toward a cosmopolitan condition  85 Rational apparatus of education  87

80

vi Contents

Construction of the constitutive subject  91 Scientific construction of the human being  94 4 Scientific education and human diversity Kant and scientific colonialism: the uneducable others  104 Kant and scientific racism  110 5 Problematisation of the Kantian paradigm Problematisation of scientific education’s actuality  123 6 Beyond Kant: toward a polyphonic strategy of resistance Demands on white Western thinkers  143 Western self-criticism: transforming Kant from within  146 Criticism from an external perspective  154 7 Delinking from the Kantian paradigm: a new educational orientation From an authoritarian to a dialogic notion of criticism  167 From cognitivism to the diversity of daily practices  170 From metaphysical to ontological notions of freedom  171 From imperial universalism to translational universalism  173 From science of education to art-science of education  175 From homo economicus to homo polytropos 181 Conclusion 185

99

118

140

165

Bibliography190 Index197

Preface

A nomad – by birth and in thoughts one of those nomads (sceptics) whom Kant, momentarily mentions in the preface to his first Critique as a destructive force against the settled order of men of agriculture – I am an opponent of Kant the system builder, an interlocutor in dignity, who wants to commence a transformative dialogue with him; a dialogue about his educational ideas in light of their consequences and about these consequences in light of their genesis. The aim is to disrupt harms that Kantianism has caused in education and elsewhere. To start a dialogue with Kant is a result of my intellectual transformations from certainty about the emancipatory promises of the Enlightenment to criticism, from criticism to scepticism and further to creativity; voicing new questions to Kantian paradigm and offering new resistance to his system of thought, making them sound suspicious and inventing alternatives. All these from the side of one who has gone through the scientific educational system as once was inaugurated by Kant as the highway of progress toward freedom. To be honest, I myself have taken part in suppression and subordination of my nomadic self to an authoritative intellectual framework that has presented itself as liberating; surrendered myself voluntarily to the promise of the main thinker of the Western Enlightenment in which education, enlightenment and autonomy can be used interchangeably. Aspiring to freedom through a rational order and afraid of the nomadic chaos and evils that reside in it, implanted by nature, I subordinated myself to scientific education to be disciplined, instructed, trained and formed in the image of the rational human being once suggested by Kant. Thus, to question him is to question part of myself, a fragmentary self, splintered between an old aspiration to a rationally organised self and an emerging aspiration to reclaim my nomadism as a free orientation toward education and life. From this position, against Kant’s white male imperial intellectual orientation, I suggest a new frame of mind within which conversations can be conducted between different orientations toward life and different styles of thought beyond skin colour and birthplace; between those who try to eternalise white intellectual domination by reference to a supposed natural structure in the human mind and those who question the givenness of this domination and this structure.

viii Preface

The delicate issue, however, is that this domination works invisibly and through well-intended people; it has an invisible foundation, built through generations, leading thoughts, feelings and actions in predetermined channels that make an equal dialogue impossible. The frustrating thing is not only the prolonged domination of this system of thought per se (though it is a huge problem in itself) but also its emptiness. Kant puts high demands on all arguments, namely juridical certainty,1 but his own system of arguments barely bear testimony of such a state of mind. The questions that I am going to ask Kant are: How can a philosopher of his rank and in his position assume natural intellectual inequalities between different races? How can he believe in whites being the only race capable of education, legislation and governance? How can he establish this ignorance as enlightenment? Moreover, how can he keep the honourable place he has in the history of Western thought, given his views of humanity? How can people still use him as the basis for their theorising on different aspects of life? Is it due to his beneficing certain group interests? I am aware that, in the dialogue I start with Kant, he sets the agenda, an agenda that all too often is hidden in the structure of modern institutions, languages and discourses, but the more influential at the same time. I call this invisible domination the Kantian paradigm or Kantianism. For my part, Kant is the voice through which the West (so far as we can speak of the West as a hegemonic cultural and political power) has justified racism, colonialism and sexism; declared wars on the others; and denied the others’ entitlements to rights. All of these in the name of an invented humanity whose extension barely reaches beyond Kant and his like-minded; this humanity, however, has been the exclusive legislator of Kantian imperatives – his maxims or policies of action. Kant also is the symbol of Western hypocrisy, that of an oppressive and empty universalism, valid for all on the one hand and the classification of humanity into races on the other – races who are to qualify themselves for humanity and entitlement to universal rights. And this qualification goes through rational or liberal education. I see this problem as imposing white domination through education. And as Kant wants education to be based on science, I call it the problem of scientific education – a problem that manifests itself in its productions, making all of us, as rational animals, labourers who must make rational choices within an all-encompassing market that functions as the standard of truth. In this context, the question that I ask Kant is: Given the human condition today, is homo economicus the perfect human being that he once envisioned? If no, we are to join hands to transform Kantianism in its foundation as well as its educational product, homo economicus. My suggestion is simply to renegotiate hegemonic Western standards, and their role in life and education, and move away from standardisation of human beings in accordance with these standards.You may wonder why Kant must be my interlocutor rather than other classical liberals like Lock or Adam Smith or neoliberals like Hayek? None of them would have been as interesting and influential as Kant in terms of addressing educational problems at the right

Preface ix

level in the right perspective and manner. Because none of them is “the historical threshold” (Adorno 1998) between the old and the modern as Kant is. Through my genealogical strategy, I choose Kant to investigate the genesis of the problem of scientific education since he is the point of intersection, a space of convergence, an origo of linkages, where the old and the new meet and multiple philosophical voices and influence converge, interact and become a forcible voice for the benefit of global domination of what we call the West; he connects back into the history and forward into the future, inventing and reinventing them in ways that endorse the West as the pinnacle of progress, and establishes a universalistic narrative of rights and wrongs to which anybody has to be subjected or be stigmatised as irrational. Some readers will see it as if I too hastily and too easily choose one single thinker and burden him with all too heavy a burden. I ask them the patient task of reading the bulk of this book to see that my choice of Kant is grounded on his being an epochal thinker, the most important one after Plato. The other point is that my engagement with Kant’s influence on education does not concern daily planned educational practices of individual educators, though these actions are an important matter of concern, but the ground on which these practices are based, the ground which gives them meaning and significance and determines them as educational. I am concerned with understanding education along an axis of surface–substratum and understanding current educational practices and orientation in light of a deep-seated layer of historical heritages beneath the foreground of education – a layer that is taken for granted as though it, through time, has become naturalised, withdrawn from sight, while always in the foreground through its unseen impacts on professional educators and the territory of education. Kant mapped the human being and marked territories of cognition, free moral action and aesthetic feelings and delineated their boundaries. He established an architectonic of the human mind and a method accordingly. He made the problem of grounding a philosophical one in the form of a critique of pure reason. All of these to provide a foundation on which he could transform the human being as a feeling being, given by nature, into the human being as an intelligible being, made by education. For this end he, through rapture with traditional metaphysics, inaugurated a new metaphysics of education, an educational style of thought and orientation based on the “secure path of science,” guided by law-giving reason’s ideas of human perfection.This education should be a comprehensive system or science where the place of each part and the parts’ relationships with each other should be determined by a guiding idea of the law-giving reason in order to make sure that consequences (rational human beings) can be inferred from the ground with logical necessity and apodictic certainty. This is to establish an intellectual order that is immune to attacks of nomads and subjugates uneducable savages to universal laws given by educable whites. My dialogue with Kant concerns this style of education and its ground and orientation.This book signifies nothing more than a beginning – a work in

x Preface

progress well beyond my capacity as an individual. My hope, however, is that it can open new arenas for educational discussion, research and practice.

Kant abbreviations Lectures on Logic Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View Critique of Pure Reason Critique of Practical Reason Critique of Judgment Of the Different Races of Human Beings Essay Regarding the Philanthropinum Ground Work for the Metaphysics of Morals Idea for a Universal History Lectures on Logic Lectures on Pedagogy Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science The Metaphysics of Moral Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics On Physical Geography Toward Perpetual Peace An Answer to the Question of What Is Enlightenment? What Is Orientate Oneself in Thinking?

LO Anth CPR CPPR CJ DRHB ERP GWMM IUH LL LP MFNS MM OFBS PFM PG TPP WE WOT

Nietzsche abbreviations Beyond Good and Evil BGE The Birth of Tragedy BT Twilight of Idols TI The Gay Science GS Twilight of the Idols TI Zarathustra Z

Note 1 Critique of Pure Reason is a “tribunal which will assure to reason its lawful claims” (CPR A xii).

Introduction

The starting point of this book is a distinction I make between scientific education and science education (Nejadmehr 2009). Science education refers to daily school practices such as lessons, examinations and assessments.These practices occur against a background that assigns them meaning and marks them as educational, a general orientation that leads them in the same direction and a foundation that makes them possible. Scientific education signifies this constitutive background, this orientation and foundation of educational practices and procedures. It is about unarticulated values, norms, discourses and educational presumptions that are taken for granted as well as the educational apparatus that puts them into action beyond school boundaries. Although this layer of education is extremely important for education, it works invisibly; it signifies something of which educators can become aware rather than something of which they always are aware. Through the notion of scientific education, I am trying to bring about awareness of this hidden layer of education and make its constitutive role clear on the one hand. On the other, I am trying to explain how education has become problematic today. In this sense, scientific education is a genealogical and descriptive notion. However, I do not stop at just describing historical processes that have led to the current educational system but also reveal the problematic character of these genealogical links and problematise thus the current state of education and venture to speculate about how education should be. In the first respect, I will establish the proposition that scientific education since the Enlightenment has constituted the educational world as it is today, its values and preferences, without being considered as a problem by mainstream and mainly Eurocentric educational research. It has just been taken for granted. Its problematic dimension comes into relief if we consider that scientific education has been part of the modern project to reshape the world for the benefit of the white West, to the subordination of non-whites, preventing them from becoming equal with whites in rights, access to resources, power and status. It becomes more problematic when we realise that it operates in the epistemological space between educators’ daily practices and their reflection upon the way these practices are organised and performed, between educational routines and conscious consideration of these routines’ nature, origin

2 Introduction

and consequences. Accordingly, it creates a doxastic1 veil preventing educators from coming to awareness that they are all working for an educational system bearing within itself colonial, racist, capitalist and sexist heritages, constitutive of local and global inequalities between races, classes and sexes. In other words, they are all part of a problem that most of them will combat. Strangely enough, an educational system that provides the basis through which white westerners have for centuries dominated and continue to do so is not seen as a problem or as a political issue; it is just taken for granted, since it has become the background against which educational thoughts, plans and ideas come into existence and become operational or are otherwise excluded from being educational. My attempts in this book are to open educational research to this problem and discuss its genesis, development and actuality and the way we can transform it for the better. The main tenet of this book is that the current educational paradigm is, broadly conceived, scientific. As such its genesis can be traced back to the birthplace of the hegemonic culture we call the Enlightenment; this genesis carries with itself legacies of a racist and colonial past that through time have become naturalised, invisible and silent but all the more decisive for the manner in which educators behave and education is done, for their orientation toward education and students as human beings. These legacies have become a part of the foundation on which education is done without being manifest. It is about the hidden, invisible and unarticulated web of power relationships that has no independent existence but exists solely in educational language, in its institutions and norms working in silence and impinging on any educational practice, making well-intended educators the bearers of its sophisticated expressions. From the perspective of mainstream scholarship, scientific education has been and is the most emancipatory education. But if we shift perspective from that of hegemonic Western culture and see scientific education from the perspective of colonialised and racialised people, we will come to the insight that problems like racism, colonial and sexual oppression are endemic to scientific education and, as such, that this education has become a problem. It is indeed this cluster of problems that I will make visible by the notion of the problem of scientific education. To understand the nature of this problem, we need to shift focus from everyday educational practices, where educators feel themselves at home, to the constitutive background of education and the domain between everyday educational behaviours and conscious reflection on them, which confers validity to these practices. To be scientific is here taken as education based on and enframed by science. It is signified by its taking for granted a scientific style of educational thought and orientation as the leading principle of educational thinking and practices, rather than being about details. It is about “science [being] the measure of all things” (Sellars 1956:173) in education. I trace the genesis of this style of education back to the works of Kant as the major thinker of the Enlightenment and the founding father of a new philosophical age in Europe, encompassing our

Introduction 3

own time. Such a scientific state of mind emerged because of struggles between rationalism and empiricism, which paved the way for critical philosophy, which transcended the old philosophical paradigm, established a new philosophical framework and asked new questions within this new framework. Through his Copernican revolution in philosophy, Kant established the possibility of human knowledge, moral freedom and aesthetic judgement in a new way and brought all of it into the “secure path of science,” as he states in his first Critique. By reconsidering the very condition of possibility of cognition, which precedes and underpins knowledge without being reducible to it, Kant established a theory of foundation of exact sciences and a new discourse that has been influential ever since.2 It is now impossible to discuss education and science without using Kantian ideas such as reason, rationality, critique, freedom, autonomy and rational choice. Kant’s construction of nature as the object of human knowledge, his construction of a transcendental subject of knowledge, action and aesthetic judgement, opened the path for a new human type as the starting point and end result of education. He connected this new notion of the human being to a new social order, liberalism, where public and private use of reason is essential. In fact, convergence of philosophical, political and social developments in the historical context of Kant’s life and action enabled him to embody his time’s needs and establish a new educational paradigm accordingly – an educational paradigm that has, through many twists and turns, become the dominant educational paradigm of our time. In this context, scientific education signifies a systematic orientation toward education unified by a regulative idea3 of a perfect rational human being. In such a system, consequences follow from the ground with logical necessity and apodictic certainty and each part of the system exists for the sake of other parts and all of them orientate toward the same end and in accordance with the same predetermined plan. Following Kant and seen from the perspective of transcendental philosophy, we can say that scientific education is a transcendental notion (transcendental and historical) concerning the possibilities and limits of modern education (conditions that must be in place in order for modern education to be possible). It is the educational underpinning of education conceived as daily educational practices at the school level. Such an education was unprecedented before Kant. Accordingly, I follow its genesis in Kant’s work and his comprehensive engagement with the issue so much so that one can see Kantian enlightenment as education. Rather than being concerned with the history of education, my concern with the genesis of current education considers grasping its nature through the mode of its historical formation in a system of thought prior to its current practices and these practices carrying footprints of this past within themselves. My idea is that the genesis of scientific education can be traced in Kant since scientific grounding, understanding and organisation of education were unprecedented before him. Understanding modern education and concomitant problems demands thus a reference to its origin, whereas origin is “that from where and through which a thing is what it is and how it is” (Heidegger

4 Introduction

2002:1). Further, following Heidegger, I call that which scientific education is, “as it is” its nature. Thus, the question of the origin of scientific education is “about the source of its nature” as well as problems endemic to this nature. Once we grasp the nature of scientific education, it is easier to grasp the nature of the problems attached to it, and once we grasp the nature of these problems, it is easier to solve them.The search for the origin is thus aimed at revealing the nature of scientific education in the present as “the origin of something is the source of its nature” (2002:1). At the same time, my concern with the past and present of education is to free it from their burden. The present study is thus an attempt to analyse genesis and development of scientific ideas of education, since the eighteenth century, in the hegemonic culture of Europe and the way education became problematic as regard to the kind of human beings it fosters and the kind of relationships it establishes between human beings and between them and the world. Further, it is also problematic regarding the kind of knowledge and the kind of world it introduces human beings into. We have also to do with the implications of these complex problems for the future of humanity and life on the planet. Thus, problems that are caused by scientific education go far beyond itself and can be seen from two perspectives: the one is that of humanity as such.These problems concern humanity regardless of colour, gender, geography and ability. In this regard we can speak of an alienated humanity manipulated and oppressed by a financial and consumerist version of capitalist and imperialist global social order. The main questions here are what scientific education has done to humanity, what it is doing now and how we can free ourselves from its harms. A related normative question is what education should do with humanity. The other perspective is that of different oppressed social groups. It is conditioned by colour, gender, geography, ability and so on.To my mind these problems are interconnected, and the one cannot be addressed without the other; oppressors do not only oppress the oppressed, they distort their own humanity as well. However, this does not clean oppressors of their oppressive crimes or delegitimate struggling against them; their freedom goes through educational struggles against them. My emphasis here is that we need an inclusive view of education, educational problems and their solutions in order to reshape the ground of education with the aim of educating a new type of humanity. My approach will thus be a practical one in terms of seeing impediments to this end and designing tools, then relating tools to impediments in order to overcome them. Kant himself was aware of his own revolutionary role. He talks of his philosophy and its concomitant notion of education in revolutionary terms. Indeed, Kant’s systematic body of ideas, principles and method triggered an intellectual upheaval, Kantianism, that continues to influence philosophy, education, politics and culture today. The task is then to go back to the origins and look at how contemporary education was formed to understand the state of education today. Since modern education was the product of an era in which colonialism,

Introduction 5

slavery, racism and capitalism had their given place, these ideas became part and parcel of this education and formed an implicit or tacit part of educational thought, influencing its explicit part in ways that are beyond educators’ awareness. Questions to be investigated here are the way ideas due to prolong repetitions become naturalised as if they release themselves from the context of their emergence, go beyond their originators and live a life of their own and work as if they are natural. It is about the genealogical relationships between genesis of ideas and their consequences.4 In this context, I use archaeology and genealogy as means of investigation and make a distinction between Kant as the genesis of ideas and Kantianism5 as the processes through which these ideas get a life of their own and continue to influence our time. Kantianism is not necessarily limited to what Kant has said, written and done; rather, it goes far beyond it, and though it may remain related and faithful to Kant’s style of thought and the kind of views he withheld, it encompasses the way in which his heirs as well as his opponents6 carried on his ideas and the implications of Kant’s ideas for the world after him. In this regard Kant’s ideas are prototypes or proto-ideas, as Ludwik Fleck (1979) would say, embryonic and undeveloped versions of their posterity. This is to say that Kant inaugurated a tradition that lasted beyond himself greater than Kantianism. Thus, in dealing with the genesis of scientific education in Kant, we have to do with issues such as Kant’s point of departure in laying a ground for scientific education, the way he carried it out, the originality of this foundation and how this foundation endured and become the tacit intellectual infrastructure of current education. My concern is neither Kant nor Kantianism as such; I use both to understand the actuality of education in our time. The Critique of Pure Reason shows Kant’s attempts to lay new grounds (Heidegger 1962:4) both for the certainty of modern science in the deterministic phenomenal world of experience and for the possibility of human free will in the noumenal world of moral freedom. For Kant, scientific causality and freedom were not only compatible but presupposed each other. Education has to do with both; it must follow the “secure path of a science” in order to systematically, comprehensively and consistently foster rational human beings – a concept of person as a self-sufficient, autonomous maker of herself – who will act morally and become free under the rein of moral laws. I am thus not exaggerating if I claim that Kant’s works as such, especially his major Critiques, are in scientific education, broadly conceived, as Kant’s project aims at human perfection and education is the path toward human perfection or freedom under moral law.7 A recurrent theme in this book is that Kant made the issue of the human being and her perfection the central theme of philosophy; human perfection is in its turn achievable through education, and proper education should be scientific. Kant establishes thus systematic relationships between these three entities, where each exists for the sake of the others and the one cannot work without the others. Problems endemic to one thus are transferred to the others.8

6 Introduction

To be clear at the very outset, my concern here is the constitutive background of education and its constitutive role in education rather than deliberate practices at the school level. I investigate the historical formation of this background through genealogical inquiries into the context of its emergence; how and through what process it was made possible and the processes through which it became natural and taken for granted in the current educational practice; and the way it became the given of education. Expressed differently, my concern is not explicit ideas and beliefs accidently manifested in conscious educational thoughts and assertions but deep-seated implicit background beliefs that structure educational thinking and practice on a continuous basis or by necessity; it is about ideas that have been incorporated into our habitual or “instinctive viewpoint, . . . ‘built’ into us before or independently of any overt thinking of them” (Richardson 2017:31). Such is, for instance, how we rely on beliefs in superiority of science over art as the basis for education in our most minute thoughts on how education should be shaped and work. My focus is the pervasive structuring role of background that we cannot dispense with rather than those explicit ideas of specific educators. Many undesired actions like racism, sexism and colonial prejudices reside in this luminal level. For instance, a teacher may, until he is warned by his students, not notice that he acts as racist or sexist in an unconscious way just through how he addresses his students and his body language. He does not need to attribute his actions to the constitutive background explicitly and does not need to affirm that his actions are shaped by it. It is something of which he can become aware, not something of which he always is aware. Indeed, we can find an analogy in Kant. For him, background is hidden in the very structure of the human mind as the condition for the possibility of our being humans (transcendental logic). I suggest, in contradiction, that the background is hidden in our way of life and style of thought (transcendental history – historical conditions that once made them possible and continue to assist them in their current working). Instead of being logical conditions embedded in the structure of the human mind or the way we are constituted, they are, in my opinion, hidden in the historical background conditions of education, in the structure of relations of power and domination. The distinction between scientific education and science education offers conceptual tools to keep separate different levels of educational problems on the one hand. In this regard it is about the constitutive and the constituted – the level of the constitutive background or ground of education and the constituted educational practice and daily procedures framed and based on this ground. On the other hand, it paves the way for the kind of transformations that go beyond the current educational paradigm and liberates us from its demise rather than being confined to its limits. Important to be mentioned is that the taken for granted ground of education plays a more decisive role in the kind of problems (structural racism and sexism) I am dealing with than individual educators’ daily practices as the latter is always constituted by the former. Accordingly, my critical attention will be focused on the constitutive

Introduction 7

background of education (its ground and orientation) and the taken for granted layer of education rather than the deliberately planned layer of educational practices. Starting from this distinction, important questions that I ask and investigate are: What are the contents of the hidden background of education, and how do they affect educators? Why is it so hard for educators to become aware of and have access to the hidden background of education, and, by being aware of and having access to it, how can they resolve educational problems that emerge from it? How can we get access to the contents of the constitutive background of education? What can we learn about what is hidden in it? What are the laws or rules that govern the way the contents of the constitutive background of education function, and is there any way in which those laws or rules are different from the laws or rules governing conscious educational thinking? Considering the answers to these questions, what is the most effective strategy for transforming the hidden background of education?

The structure of the book This book is structured around my basic ideas to identify the foundational problem of current education and investigate its genesis; to problematise its current state, construct conceptual tools and suggest strategies for its solution; and to identify impediments in the way of such a solution as well as ways to use tools to overcome impediments. Finally, I suggest my own alternative view of education. After giving a thorough account of my interpretive strategy concerning Kant’s works in which I suggest a holistic, organic, pragmatic and genealogical- critical reading of him, I continue by looking at the notion of scientific education as the key concept of the book and the necessity of the distinction between scientific education and science education in Chapter 1. Scientific education names the problem that is at the root of other educational problems, and by grasping it we can comprehend these problems. I aim at a new understanding of education along the axis of surface–substratum rather than linearly and chronologically. Scientific education is not a specific educational practice but education’s substratum while science education is its surface. It is the subterranean layer of education doing its work beyond educators’ awareness. My attention to this tacit layer of education, the mechanisms behind it and the way they work is due to its containing colonial, racist and sexist biases heritages making well-intended educators the agents of their implementation in everyday educational practices. To analyse and bring light to these mechanisms, I devote this section to the historicity of education, educational paradigm shifts, genealogy and archaeology of current educational ideas and problematisation of its current situation. I use these conceptual tools to bring the hidden contents of the educational substratum into awareness. I use archaeology and genealogy to show the emergence and development of historical heritages at the root of educational problems we are wrestling with today. It is an attempt to show how and in what context they emerged and how they developed and what

8 Introduction

footprints they carry with themselves. Although these notions are introduced in this chapter, their use permeates the whole book. By using archaeology, I trace the genesis of the current educational paradigm in works of Kant in the next section. I do this since Kant, as Adorno maintains, stands at “a historical threshold,” a philosophical watershed dividing the history of European though and education to times before and after himself. In him, old educational ideas and new ones meet and build a “complex configuration” of ideas, making understanding him key to understanding our time’s educational problems. Chapter 2 is devoted to Kant’s notions of the human being, science and education. It contains three sections on different faculties or powers of the human being as Kant constructs them. The first is about the human being as a knowing being. This, because Kant, in his attempts to offer the scientific worldview a foundation, started with the first Critique and the question of How are synthetic a priori judgements possible?, which concern cognition and how it is possible and should be organised. Introducing Kant as the inaugurator of the scientific notion of education, I deal with Kant’s notion of the human being as the central theme of his philosophy. This because Kant made the question of what the human being is central to philosophy and saw education, science and their relationships from the perspective of the human being. In this chapter, I also discuss Kant’s Copernican revolution in Western philosophy since this revolution can be seen as the starting point of the notions of the constitutive or transcendental subject as the condition of possibility of knowledge and its relationships with scientific education. Through this revolution, Kant established reason as the legislative power concerning nature, polity and the human being. The next section considers the human being as an acting or moral being. While the previous section was about the construction of nature as the realm of human knowledge signified by rules of causality (foundation of science), the next section is about the realm of freedom under moral law (foundation of morality). The educational significance of this realm lies in education or enlightenment being a transformation of human immaturity into maturity or autonomy – transformation of the human being as given by nature into an intelligible being.While the realm of nature has the understanding as its legislative faculty, the realm of moral freedom has reason as legislative power; it is the realm of free will as the absolute good.The next chapter is on the human being as a feeling being, on the faculty of aesthetic judgement of taste of the sublime and beauty in nature and works of art. This faculty functions as the mediating power between the realm of moral freedom and that of nature. By these three sections, I accomplish an account of Kant’s notion of the human being to move forward to his notion of science in the next section, where I describe features such as systematicity and logical relationships between the ground and the consequences as well as those of comprehensiveness, thoroughness and apodictic certainty as the main characteristics of proper science as Kant sees it. Next, I discuss the way Kant relates science to education and make it clear what it means for education to be grounded in science as well as the implication of the

Introduction 9

modern orientation toward education being scientific. In Chapter 3, I focus on Kant’s notion of progress and the cosmopolitan nature of the Kantian notion of education.This chapter gives an image of Kant’s plan for bringing all spheres of life under rational or scientific rules. Next, I discuss the apparatus needed for the Kantian systematic notion of education to work and the constitutive role of science in this respect. While all proceeding chapters had the task of preparing the stage for how the subject is constructed scientifically, the next section is devoted to scientific construction of the human being. It is about Kant’s construction of the human being – construction of a modern conception of the human, or homo criticus. Chapter 4, shows that human diversity and diversity of ways of life become problematic given Kant’s formal view of education. Generally, reason must bring unity to diversity or to the manifold by bringing them under the sway of rational rules. In Kant, diversity is related to nature and uniformity to reason. Accordingly, nature should be subordinated to reason and diversity to uniformity. By analogy, Kant sees some people governed by their natural inclination so much so that they are uneducable. Accordingly, they are to be governed by the educable whites. The next two section of this chapters are devoted to Kant’s solution to this problem, where he presents colonialism as the solution to the diversity of ways of life and racism to human diversity. He thus prefigures a pattern of global domination that is alive today. Kant uses white male bourgeois Europeans as the norm and classifies all others as uneducable and uncapable of reaching autonomy. They are thus inferior to white Europeans and in need of being governed by them. In Chapter 5, I problematise the current state of education. I first problematises the Kantian paradigm as such in order to next problematise scientific education. I devote much effort to explicate and criticise the notion of homo economicus, or economic man, as the human type aimed at by scientific education. A perversion of the Kantian notion of homo criticus, homo economicus takes rational choice to all spheres of life. As this rationality is that of the free market and the market functions as the criteria of truth, the logic of the market has now become omnipresent and steers all spheres of life. Further, through the global spread of a neoliberal market economy, this human type nowadays enjoys a global spread for the suppression of other notions of the human being. Problematising the Kantian paradigm and current state of education, I then move on to suggest ways to go beyond Kant in Chapter 6, For doing this I propose a global intellectual and practical alliance between thinkers who try to transform Kant from within (thinkers from the West) and thinkers who criticise Kant from outside, such as critical race theory, decolonial projects, feminism and postcolonial and subaltern studies. While Western self-criticism is aimed at Kantian metaphysics, non-Western perspectives can be used to counteract the racial and colonial aspects of Kantianism. A global alliance between these forces can open the way for new educational grounding and orientation. It delinks education from Kant. Chapter 7 of the book,

10 Introduction

is devoted to such a delinking, where I suggest several shifts of focus. I ­suggest a shift from the Kantian transcendental notion of critique to a transgressive or practical one, which enables us to go beyond cultural and geographical boundaries and establish a multidimensional notion of critique, enabling us to see issues at hand from a multiplicity of perspectives. I also suggest a shift from cognitivism to a practical approach to education. Related to this shift I suggest that an ontological notion of freedom, freedom as a way of being in the world, must replace a metaphysical or formal notion of freedom. In light of these shifts, I suggest a translative notion of the universal where the universal rests on the translatability of different perspective and values. This notion of the universal is distinct from imperial or Kantian universalism, which is based on imperatives. Here, the individuals decide freely to participate in different communities of thought and action or not. In the next step, I suggest an artistic orientation and ground of education to be established as an alternative to the current scientific one. Based on what has been said so far, I conclude the book by suggest a polytropos human type as the aim of education. Such a human type is not reducible to any single characteristic like that of homo economicus or homo criticus but uses its different capacities in different situations and sees phenomena from a variety of perspectives.

Notes 1 The term “doxastic” refers to white males’ colonial, gender and racial biases hidden in the background of education. 2 On revival of Kant’s theory of ground of exact science see Hanna 2004. 3 Regulative principles are defined as opposed to constitutive ones. They concern the phenomenal realm and are about the “existence of appearances” or things as objects of experience. They can refer to the existence of things in themselves that function as cause of intuitions. Opposed to regulative principles, constitutive principles are a priori. Giving “rules of synthesis,” they determine “the manner in which something is apprehended in appearance”; they concern the synthesis of empirical intuitions and specify the “element of a priori intuition” in empirical intuition.They concern synthesis of manifold intuitions in imagination in accordance with rules and specify according to which a priori rules of synthesis of empirical intuitions will be synthesised together (CPR A178/B221). 4 A host of question can be raised concerning ideas’ genesis and their validity over time. My concern here is genealogical consequences of ideas. I focus on how ideas that were born in a Kantian context transcended their context of generation and reached our time without being cleansed from the impact of this context. Despite Kant’s claims to universality, they are local. 5 Sally Kegan makes some useful remarks on kantianism and Kantianism in her essay “Kantianism for Consequentialists” in Kant (GWMM 111–156). 6 For Kant’s influence on his “enemies,” see Deleuze, where he calls his book on Kant “a book about an enemy” (Deleuze 1995:6); however, he admires Kant and is aware of Kant’s influence om himself. For more details on Deleuze and Kant see Craig Lundy and Daniela Voss (2015). Nietzsche is another example. 7 It is about disciplining (safeguarding from deviation from rules) and cultivating (providing proficiency – Ferdigheit) reason (CPR A709/B737–A710/B738). Generally, Critique of

Introduction 11 Pure Reason is a book on cultivation of reason, where culture is considered as the end of human nature (CJ 5:431). 8 The three major works of Kant are educational: Critique of Pure Reason (disciplining pure reason regarding its own rule-governed use concerning the legitimate ground and boundaries of knowledge and concomitant method of drawing legitimate interferences from the concepts of the understanding); Critique of Practical Reason (to educate to act upon moral law; to make the highest good our final end, promote general happiness in proportion to virtue); Critique of Judgment (educating feelings; it is possible to pursue the highest good in the world).

Chapter 1

Scientific education A modern orientation toward education

Reading Kant: an interpretive strategy Before entering a detailed elaboration of the notion of scientific education, I devote this very first section of this chapter to the way I read Kant, since this reading is of paramount importance for my understanding of the problem of scientific education. For Kant, the issue of grounding of the scientific worldview is of paramount importance; it is the basis of his critical project. His plan is to build a justifiable philosophical edifice on a firm and solid ground and an architectonic method of his own and with a realistic view of the materials available (CPR). Accordingly, his philosophy builds up a system where a regulative idea of reason, that of human perfection, brings unity to the manifold of parts and determines their relationships in a manner that each part exists for the sake of the others and all of them work toward the same aim in accordance with a plan. Given the magnitude of his system and its coherence, thoroughness and completeness, he has been successful in being faithful to his principles as regard to organic unity and coherence among parts of his system.1 My reading of Kant takes these features of his philosophical system into serious consideration. In this sense, it is Kantian; it tries to grasp the ground on which Kant philosophises, the style in which he thinks, the aim he follows and the plan he has outlined to reach this aim, the method according to which he works and the relationships between these parts. Thus, my reading is far from a mechanical or technical line-by-line reading of Kant and meticulous preoccupation with the interpretation of some details with accidental connection with Kant’s overall system, the preoccupation of the majority of Kant academic scholarship. My reading is rather an organic or “pragmatic” reading in a Kantian manner, which means what one as an active reader makes and can make of Kant’s work, how one deals with his influences; it is about deliberate use and misuse of his works. It is to have a keen eye for how a “highway” has been created through many people following Kant’s “footsteps” for a long time.2 And this is a genealogical reading; reading genesis in the light of consequences and vice versa. I also apply an archaeology of Kant’s ideas and their genealogical development plus their problematisation in the present. Here, attention is paid to 1) context of emergence and 2) context of impact as

Scientific education 13

well as 3) the genealogical line of development through time, considering the turns and twists that ideas take during their lifetime. Such an approach demonstrates continuity in disruption and disruption in continuity and sees both connections and disruptions. Kant scholars on education are often preoccupied with those texts where Kant explicitly mentions the notion of education, but these texts are just the empirical part of an organic wholeness whose other part is his transcendental thinking on education.The latter is about possibility of education as such while the former is empirical application of his transcendental principles in the sensible world of everyday life. In my own terminology, the latter corresponds to scientific education, the former to science teaching or education. Given Kant’s systematic manner and style of thought, a line-by-line reading of him is anti-Kantian, a misreading of him and limited in scope. It is a microperspective and misses the overall picture. My strategy is to read Kant organically, as Kant himself invites us to do. This because he has indeed established a system (a science, as we will see) where “everything is an organ . . . everything is there for the sake of each member.” Accordingly, he suggests an organic reading, where “we obtain the same result whether we proceed from the minutest elements all the way to the whole . . ., or proceed backward to each part when starting from the whole” (CPR B xxxviii). Thus, beside genealogical reading, a proper reading of Kant must be holistic since his system is such that “any attempt to alter the smallest part immediately give rise to contradictions” (CPR B xxxviii). Though he says this of the first Critique, it is true of his oeuvre. Kant does not write or say things without purpose or connections with each other. He wants his readers to gain “command” of his ideas “as a whole” (CPR B xliv) and in their interconnectedness. This is the way I read Kant. Important to be mentioned is that a distinction between Kant and Kantianism is necessary in order to highlight genealogical continuities between Kant’s context, that of his followers and that of ours. I focus on how his ideas emerged in his context and continue to work in ours through the mediating role of his successors. This means the genealogical awareness that what Kant wrote in his context of activity are read, interpreted and made meaningful from my perspective and in retrospect. I lay great weight on what Kant’s ideas have meant for education since Kant; what they have meant for the West and its hegemonic relations with other parts of the world today as well as what they meant for his own context. This genealogical interpretive strategy puts into interplay the context of emergence and the contexts of use of ideas and engages with the ideas of the greatest philosopher of modernity in whom many ideas of modernity emerge, converge and unfold toward the future into our time. My genealogical approach to Kant is not only limited to contextualising him, since such an approach would limit him to the intellectual context of his own time. I see genealogical lines between Kant and his predecessors as well as between him and our time and put Kant’s intellectual context into dialogue with that of our own. My reading thinks against and with Kant in order to become able to think without him; it learns from him and about

14  Scientific education

him but also sees things that Kant didn’t see. It is a dialogue with Kant in an agonistic manner. All evidences for my interpretations are based on Kant’s own words, but I reconstruct Kant’s arguments as they develop and unfold through all their complexities and multiple turns and twists. My use of secondary literature is selective and to the extent that I have found it necessary and fruitful in order to clarify and develop various specific points in my understanding of scientific education. Thus, I have learned much more about the topics dealt with here from many more authors than those cited here. In the context of this study, I see Kant in the broader context of educational reforms movements before him (like humanism) that paved the way for his ideas as well as for those of his contemporary thinkers. Although his style of thought was an inaugurating event, he inherited a heritage antecedent to him, which he tried to transform, since he judged this tradition as unable to solve the problem it had caused. He knew that one generation’s life was too limited to perform a true educational transformation while he argued for an educational revolution; he suggested an idea of education as an ideal to be realised in the future. In other words, he saw the reciprocity of ideas and experience in education as well as the importance of history for ideas becoming realised. Generally, Kant is future oriented and believes in progress as the core of his teleological historiography; for him, education is enlightenment and progress. Seen in this perspective, ideas refer to ideals that outline the future of humanity, which in its turn can function as the aim of progress. Indeed, he is not the abstract philosopher most consider him. He is much interested in abstract ideas being applied in the experiential world. For him, “an idea is nothing other the concept of perfection which is not yet found in experience” (LP 9:445). Concerning education, he writes: “An outline of a theory of education is a noble ideal, and it does no harm if we are not immediately in a position to realize it. One must be careful not to consider that idea to be a chimerical and disparages it as a beautiful dream, simply because in its execution hinderances occur” (LP 9:445). This means that Kant outlined an idea of education whose realisation was still to come. This is indeed the core of Kant’s prophetic or predictive notion of history, as will be discussed later: for the moment it suffices to say that Kant provided the intellectual ground for his predictive vision of education in such a manner that calls upon our time to realise it. It is not only his classification of humanity along lines of skin colour and coloniality of power that are still in use but also his action-guiding ideas of progress and rationality. My reading will highlight Kant’s dialogue with his posterity to disrupt his hegemony as it is harmful to education. In my reading, the radicality of Kant lies in his inventing anew the notion of the human being as a knowing, acting and feeling limited but free being. He also constructed the notion of nature as the object of human knowledge. In light of these inventions, he also reconstructed notions of freedom, morality, free will and rationality. To establish all of these, he needed an idea of education

Scientific education 15

as a science, an education that follows “a secure path” like that of natural sciences instead of “groping about” (CPR B vii). Having this organising principle as the starting point of his educational system, Kant was sure that he could foster the type of human being or the kind of subject3 that could act as a proper agency and maintain, promote and interconnect all these ideas within an enlightened political organisation of the polity – a constitutional or liberal democracy. Reading in retrospect, we can see genealogical links between our time’s liberal education and liberal democracies and Kant. Indeed, our time’s crisis of liberal democracies4 is the proper context for and demands a genealogical reading if our reading of Kant is going to have any import for our time. This is indeed a Kantian5 reading, a reading in light of his own principle of interconnectedness of “grounds and consequences” (MFNS 468), where Kant himself (his texts and ideas) is the ground and our time is the consequence. It is also architectonic, where each part is based on the previous ones; it is objective or based on textual evidences. Against the background of what has been said so far, Kant’s overall work is on education, though he may not mention the term. We can indeed see scientific education and enlightenment as equivalent since both signify an exit from immaturity, a movement toward and an entrance to a state of intellectual maturity – public and independent use of reason in all spheres of life. This is a paradigm shift, or an exit from an ecclesiastical style of thought to a modern one, for which Kant can be credited. To be fair, Kant scholarship is becoming more and more aware of the centrality of education for his philosophy, although his writing under the title of education is spare. The suggestion is that his writings on education should be read “in the light of his other writings” (Roth & Surprenant 2012iv). This reading strategy, however, is yet another way to limit our scope to few Kantian texts as educational and the rest of his works as not being so while Kant’s overall approach is an educational one. Mainly, he shifts the focus from the human being created by God once and for all to the modern notion of self-creating humanity that must create itself through education. My suggestion is, accordingly, a reciprocal reading, or a genealogical/systematic reading with the idea of humanity as the guiding or regulating idea; to read his work as a system guided by the idea of human perfection, where different parts of the system are interrelated under one single guiding idea that brings unity to them – that of human perfection. In this perspective, he derives his idea of education from the ground that he has laid by inquiries into the human being as a rational being endowed with reason and her cognitive, moral and aesthetic faculties (to answer the questions of what the human being is, what she can know, what she should do and what she can hope). Education becomes then related to the idea of the human being as being free under the moral law, as the end of nature and reason. Applying this arsenal of concepts, Kant tried to educate humanity away from the tradition before him, or “self-incurred immaturity” (WE 8:35), toward freedom and autonomous use of reason. The educational impetus his own ideas triggered was strong.

16  Scientific education

What is most distinctive of my reading is its being transformative and the central place I give to education within Kant’s philosophy as a whole. In the first respect, my concern is not limited to a correct report on Kant but an investigation that can contribute to transformation of our view of education, its problems and their solutions. In the second, I see Kant’s project as an educational one.6 I base Kant’s importance for scientific education on Kant’s making the question of what the human being is the central question of philosophy; it is about the overall style of educational thought rather than specific teaching methods of science. And what is more, Kant attempts to adjust humanity to the progress of science through fostering a scientifically minded human type, mature enough to think for himself and think rationally, to make rational choices and act in accordance with the rules of pure practical reason. I have devoted much effort to two basic pillars of Kant’s philosophical thinking: 1) understanding “the path” through which he tries to ground a scientific or rational worldview, his style of thought and his general orientation toward education (a systematic orientation aimed at production of homo criticus as the perfect human being) and 2) understanding the ground on which he bases his style of though and education, which is science as he conceives it.These are two interconnected aspects of Kant’s thought as they both are connected to science. As a systematic thinker, Kant is quite clear about the important role of method, how ideas are connected to each other (B xviii, B xxii–iii) and support each other mutually and the way we think on and secure the outcomes of thinking. This led him to the idea to adjust thought and humanity to Newtonian science. Accordingly, his attempts were aimed at revolutionising the way people think in order to achieve a shift of paradigm from the old manners of thinking to that of modern sciences (B xvi). Instead of preoccupation with details in thinking, he tries to bring thought as such in the secure path of science or critical thinking. Bringing together notions of critique, science and education in a systematic way, Kant tries to cultivate reason and establish a methodology through which reason poses a problem to itself. Reflecting on these abilities, he writes: “reason is cultivated generally by pursuing the secure path of a science, as compared to its baseless groping and careless roaming about when there is no critique” (CPR B xxx–xxxi). Accordingly, for Kant the core task of education is to teach young generations “to think” (LP 9:450) and to think scientifically. And this is the genesis of scientific education as a new orientation and ground of contemporary education as Kant laid a new orientation and a new ground that are still at work. As we will see, Kant was an epochal thinker and divided educational thought to the time before and after himself. Instead of remaining within the same intellectual framework as his predecessors, Kant transformed that framework and tried to establish a transcendental critique of the nature and possibility of mental life in general within a new framework. Famously, transcendental thinking is about the condition for the possibility of things, what needs to be present for things to happen; it is about principles without which a scientifically

Scientific education 17

uneducated human being cannot attain objective knowledge of the world, act morally and judge aesthetically. Rational principles concern the way the human being can best relate to herself, the other and the world and are conditioned by human beings being scientifically educated. My reading concerns Kantian or rational principles that are still at work in education and free market liberalism. Primarily, Kant asks the question of what the human is to establish a proper starting point for education and philosophy as everything in the human world is known, done and felt from the standpoint of humanity. Kant is not interested in the human being as given by nature (homo phenomenon) but in what the human being makes of herself as a free acting being (homo noumenon). And the latter is possible only through education. In other words, proper humanity is achievable only though proper education. A proper notion of education is in its turn achievable through proper science; this means that education must be a progressive process that connects educational efforts of numerous generations in a systematic way and aims at perfection of the human species as a system instead of concerning itself with the happiness of an aggregate of individuals and their contingent wants. Kant tries to bring together notions of science, education and the human being in a systematic way. My attempts are thus aimed at understanding what Kant means by each of these notions and how he brings them together in a systematic manner to understand better education in our time. As will be discussed, for Kant, education is to move away from animality (the human being as given by nature) to humanity (the human being as what he makes of himself as free acting being), from being passively given to actively creating oneself.7 This is a process through which the human being learns the proper use of her reason. Kant focuses on the conditions of possibilities of knowledge; we are to know the limits of our faculties. We own no faculty for knowledge of things in themselves. Knowledge is thus self-knowledge in terms of awareness of our limits and resources. Further, our knowledge of the human being is limited to homo phenomenon as knowledge of thing in themselves, homo noumena, is impossible. This two-world model regards knowledge, humanity and education is central to my reading. Kant tries to lay the ground for this new system of thought, and, on this ground, he tries to compose and promote an education that is well grounded as a science, carried out “dogmatically, and systematically” (CPR B xxxvi). On this basis, he will pave the path for a revolution in human ways of thinking and acting. A further trait of Kant’s style of thought, important for my reading, is his formal or rule-dependent approach to education: Kant strives after juridical certainty in his claims as if he is before the court of reason. It is about formal ideas stripped from all contingencies of circumstance since, with contingencies as a starting point, we cannot make sure that we reach a predicted consequence (human perfection) with logical necessity and apodictic certainty, given premises. If Socrates acts as a gadfly, disturbing lazy people by engaging them in dialogue concerning their unreflected basic beliefs, and teaches them step by step

18  Scientific education

to reach at eternal and immutable principles and gain the insight that they need self-knowledge and good reasons for their beliefs, Kant, in his first Critique, establishes a court of reason: Reason should take on anew the most difficult of all its tasks, namely, that of self-knowledge, and to institute a court of justice, by which reason may secure its rightful claims while dismissing all its groundless pretensions, and this not by mere decrees but according to its own eternal and unchangeable laws; and this court is none other than the critique of pure reason itself. (CPR A xi–xii) In other words, here, self-knowledge is at stake since rules should not be imposed on the human being from outside but should be his own free choice and a priori. Here, like in Socrates, it is about awakening, though it concerns pure reason itself. Accordingly, the structure of the human mind becomes important since use of reason leads to freedom (CPPR 5:5). Also, like Socratic dialogues, the outcome of Kantian court, its verdicts, is determined beforehand since he establishes “reason’s eternal and immutable laws” (CPR A xii) as the rule of the tribunal.These laws are “objective” in the sense of being valid for all rational beings in virtue of their form. They are also a priori and given beforehand without being negotiable; they have been drawn for a safe ground (more on this issue in discussion about science and issues of grounding). Kant discovers them in the structure of the human mind itself rather than reaching at them through dialogue or experience and tries to forward them through education as a science rather than through dialogue. Further, Kant’s critique is transcendental and a priori. It is a “critique of our power of reason as such, in regard to all cognitions after which reason may strive independently of all experience” (CPR A xii). He focuses on principles of thought and conditions of possibility “and the determination of its sources as well as its range and bounds – all on the basis of principles” (CPR A xii). To understand the seriousness of “the path” Kant peruses, we must take into consideration his references to notions like that of civil war, where “dogmatists” or rationalists have established a “despotic” metaphysical reign and “the skeptics, a kind of nomads who lathe all steady cultivation of the soil, tore up from time to time the civil society” (CPR A ix). Indeed, one of these nomads, Hume, awakened Kant himself from his dogmatic sleep. To come into dialogue with Kant, one must take into consideration the very layout of struggles and the composition of the philosophical battlefield as Kant outlines them.

Scientific education As the notion of scientific education is central to this study, I devote this section of the book to explicate this notion and put it in proper perspective. Primarily, this section is not about the history of education. It is rather about

Scientific education 19

educational modernity as distinct from modern education – scientific education and science education respectively. It is about the genesis of a scientific attitude and orientation toward education and about the emergence of a scientific ground for education, a style of educational thinking and a mode of educational behaviour and concomitant conceptual and institutional apparatus in modern Europe in the first step and their global spread through the cultural hegemony of the West in the next. It is about the genealogical emergence of an educational ethos in the “soil” of the Western Enlightenment and eighteenth-century Europe on the one hand and its becoming the educational8 at a global scale. By the educational I mean the general framework against which daily educational practices receive their meaning and significance. Because of this genealogy, it is impossible to think about, research or talk about the current educational paradigm and its institutions in any country in any part of the world without using the style of thought, research paradigm or discourses whose emergence can be followed back into the European Enlightenment. This can be said of daily education behaviour, educational practices and procedures like examinations, lessons and so forth and educational theories about these practices; actions and reflections about them occur within this paradigm. Generally, mainstream scientific rationality and the related educational paradigm, regardless of context of application, bear lingering impacts of their emergence in modern Europe and its needs, interests, history and developments. Most importantly, starting from the question of what the human being is as the central question of philosophy, Kant established a modern or secular notion of humanity, a subject position with specific cognitive, aesthetic and moral capabilities and limits, that has been central to education in terms of being education’s subject as well as its object. This complex whole of material and intellectual legacies is a local European heritage that has received global influence and significance. My concern is the implication of such a heritage in the West and the world. Through introducing the notion of scientific education, I am trying to open a new field of educational research and discourse aimed at exposing the unexamined and taken for granted educational assumptions that shape our understanding of education today, blind spots that prevent us from having a view of education based on equality, free from racial and colonial prejudices. As result of this approach, researchers and educators will become engaged with problems embedded in scientific grounding of education and its impacts on everyday educational practice. Such an engagement will bring light to the current orientation toward education, reveal its problematic nature and argue for a new orientation toward education as a solution to the main educational problem of our time. For this end, I suggest a genealogical approach to education. This approach is not limited to conscious educational assumptions and deliberate daily practices or the surface of education (science education). It also includes the interconnectedness of these practices and assumptions and the way they refer beyond themselves to a constitutive background (scientific education), hidden from the critical gaze. Being the accumulated results of

20  Scientific education

centuries of doing education in a specific way and becoming natural due to repetition for long periods of time, this subterranean layer of education and culture is at the same time the most pervasive in everyday life since it is taken for granted beyond critical reflection. Although it works from the shadows, beyond educators’ awareness, it is the ground on which we do education and claims its own right.9 A ground is the underlying facts that constitute a phenomenon and render it possible. Expressed differently, it renders things possible without manifesting itself explicitly (Deleuze 2015). The ground of education leads it in a certain path, deviation from which can label actions as non-educational or antieducational. Today, it is taken for granted that every child must go through the formal educational system and that education must be based on science. Children should be introduced to scientific knowledge in order to function as proper citizens. Education is entrusted to professional educators and institutions in whose competencies people trust. Many of these presumptions are most pervasive beyond schools and are difficult to observe. Further, due to genealogical facts, racist, colonial and sexist biases are part of the current educational ground. They affect educators’ actions and beliefs beyond their awareness and cause a gap between what they believe they are doing and what they do. A reference to Wittgenstein’s riverbed metaphor is helpful in explicating the gist of my distinction between scientific education (background or substratum) and science education (foreground or surface) and the foundational role of scientific education (substratum of education) – how it constitutes a bedrock for educational practices to flow in a predetermined direction beyond any doubt or questioning. For Wittgenstein some propositions “harden” and function as “channels” for others that are “fluid” (1991:§96). Comparing this relationship with that of riverbed and movements of the waters, he writes: “I distinguish between the movement of the waters on the river-bed and the shift of the bed itself,” but he immediately adds: “though there is not a sharp division of the one from the other” (1991:§97). The same can be said of the relationships between scientific education and science education. In my view, scientific education is the riverbed while science education is the movement of the waters. Being the substratum of the educational profession, the basis of educational actions and thoughts, scientific education confers the educational system legitimacy and certainty without being visible or negotiable. Not being the movement of the waters itself, the riverbed must, however, always already be in place for the waters to necessarily flow in a specific direction.The riverbed is decisive for the movement of the waters as it determines the direction, volume and velocity of movement of the waters. Scientific education is a conceptual tool to manifest that education is done by appeal to beliefs, values, implicit presumptions and biases in a system of thought and that the system in its turn rests on a foundation or a ground. More specifically, today a scientific ground renders education possible and grants its truth. It behaves as if it is unchangeable, and the profession seldom wants to change it except in times of crisis since it is the very

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condition of the possibility and stability of education. However, until a change in this constitutive background, the assumptions upon which not just dominant educational practices and ideas but also the opposition to them make sense, we will be unable to achieve desirable transformations in education.Thus, we need to shift “the riverbed” of education, I would like to argue. Today, if we ask why education should be scientific, there are not so many people who would refer to scientific education’s genealogy and its genesis in modernity. Most probably, they take it for granted, as if education has been scientific since times immemorial, since scientific education is the only alternative available. This monopoly takes the shape of its viability and truth beyond questioning. Scientific education involves common knowledge and implicit educational certainties; it is part of one’s cultural competencies and one’s ability to orient through one’s educational culture. Accordingly, neither educators nor students are aware of it since they are born in and educated by it and it is all around them. These are indeed part of social and cultural continuity. They are things that once were strange but become natural due to prolonged repetition. Also, there are things that today will seem strange and unacceptable would they become explicit. As Heidegger puts it: “What presents itself to us as natural, one may suspect, is merely the familiarity of a long-established habit which has forgotten the unfamiliarity from which it arose” (1962:7). I provide this quotation to show that the invisibility of the problematic content of the hidden background is a matter of time, repetition, familiarity, habit and heritage. Long-established biases not only become natural and familiar but also invisible and hidden. To refer scientific education to its generative context and its explicit racial and colonial assumptions demands huge amounts of intellectual effort. Today, education as a tradition and institution is based on and organised around science as the most trustworthy and reliable knowledge of the time, and people entrust it so that they can expose their children to it. It is a matter of belief. My concern here is the genesis and development of racial and colonial facts underlying the current educational system and its problematic character. As Shamic Dasgupta puts it, ground is “the constitutive sense of because” and is “quotidian”; “it is an everyday concept by the masses” (2017:76). Saying this much about the character and content of the hidden background of education, the question is now what it contains and how we can bring this content to the surface, make it accessible, reveal the way it works and liberate education from its harms. A through answer to this question is provided by the bulk of this book; for now it suffices to say that as it is a matter of time, history, habit and heritage, it needs rather an archaeology of systems of thought and mindsets. Important to mention is that, starting from an archaeology of the context of emergence of educational thoughts of today, when looking at scientific education, the focus must be on the educational, on basic principles, orientation, ground, ideas, discourses and institutions that render daily educational practices and thoughts possible and true. This means that rather than trying to explain the problematic of daily educational practices by reference to

22  Scientific education

themselves, we need to understand them through scientific education; a historical educational ground, scientifically underpinned prevailing in educational tradition, institutions and in the mind of educators. In terms of scientific foundation of education that renders daily educational practices possible. In studying the constitutive background of contemporary education, we need a genealogical point of view, rather than a scientific one in the traditional sense of studying educational practices. My focus is not on educational actions per se but on the condition of possibility of these actions and their genesis and development as well as their problematic nature in the present. To be more precise, scientific education is an orientation toward education and humanity – it signifies the scientific understanding of an education that is characteristic of our age; it goes beyond the field of education as a discipline and is part and parcel of the modern way of looking at the world, the self and the other. The sense of scientific education as an orientation is important since the essence of education is determined by our own orientation toward it rather than being given by nature. Accordingly, shifts in educational paradigms demand shifts in our orientation. In other words, education and orientation toward it are historically conditioned. Scientific education as an orientation structures modern experiences, attitudes, values and engagement with the field of education. It signifies a scientific mode of understanding education that underlies and shapes contemporary education; it is the manner we think about and the way we relate to and engage with education, or modern educational gestell, as Heidegger (1993) would say. It is not education itself or reduceable to educational practices but frames them. Scientific framing of education stems from the Kantian drive for bringing education into “the secure path of science” as well as his drive for scientific knowledge about education; it is the general orientation toward exact science that Kantianism brought into foundation of education and culture. Seen from the perspective I am establishing here, explicit educational practices like examinations, lessons and assessments are educational but cannot explain the essence of current education by themselves or offer a clear vision of the problems attached to modern education; they drive their meaning and significance from somewhere else. The driving force of education does not reside in these practices. What gives them their significance is scientific education; the mindset through which we view and do education determines its role and place in society and its relations with power structures. While we can use the Heideggerian notion of gestell as related to the modern orientation and mindset toward education, Foucault’s notion of dispositif, or apparatus,10 can bring clearness to institutional, practical and material aspects of scientific education as it goes beyond the discursive and is defined by “a structure of heterogenous elements” as well as a “genesis” (Foucault 1989:195). For Foucault an apparatus is “a thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic

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propositions – in short, the said as much as the unsaid. . . . The apparatus itself is the system of relations that can be established between these elements” (1989:196). Roughly considered, scientific education is an apparatus, or dispositif, since it establishes organic relationships between institutional, ethical, legal and philosophical parts of a systematic whole that aims at production of certain kind of knowledge-power relations and subjectivity and, by so doing, conditions, shapes and constrains everyday educational actuality. Accordingly, understanding these practices demands grasping this apparatus. If the notion of orientation signifies a general term that shows a way of looking at education, apparatus stands for the manners in which this orientation shows itself in concrete institutions, discourses, power relations and practices – the system of discursive and non-discursive relations that is established between various elements in society in order for contemporary education to function in our historical context (the way the orientation is administered; the way in which education is guided and governed). Basically, these relationships establish an order of exclusion and inclusion11 as they define practices, roles, discourses and knowledge as truly educational or non-educational. It is an entangled web of intersections between power relations, a constellation of relationships among education, knowledge, ethic, truth and power as well as to the needs of society for educated individuals and the way these needs are defined, prioritised and satisfied. For Foucault, “apparatus is precisely the nature of the connection that can exist between these heterogeneous elements.” He also writes: “I understand by the term ‘apparatus’ a sort of – shall we say formation which has as its major function at a given historical moment that of responding to an urgent need” (1989:196). As the apparatus of modern education, scientific education forms and channelises educational practices in a way that meets the urgent needs of modern societies. Importantly, “the apparatus is thus always inscribed in a play of power, but it is also always linked to certain coordinates of knowledge which issue from it but, to an equal degree, condition it. This is what the apparatus consists in: strategies of relations of forces supporting, and supported by, types of knowledge” (1989:196). Thus, it is not only about knowledge production and dissemination but also about the type of knowledge and about the important issue of who identifies urgent needs, and through what mechanisms, and the way resources are connected to needs to satisfy them. Scientific education supports and is supported by science as true knowledge. It emerged as a response to the needs of emerging colonial Europe. Today, it contains this response within itself but in an explicit way; it is thus Eurocentric. The notion of gestell is telling when it comes to orientation and mindsets; apparatus is about power relations and ontological entities that must be in place for education to maintain its everyday function and enhance its functionality, stability and trustworthiness.Together, they cover educational orientation, practices, ideas and institutions as well as the way we link them together and think about them and our practical orientation toward them; they are the riverbed of education and do their work in and through the constitutive background

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of education. As contemporary orientation toward education and its apparatus are all based on scientific principles and methods, the riverbed, or constitutive background, of education is scientific, therefore my naming them as the problem of scientific education, a complex problem consisting of an orientation and an apparatus conjoined in the riverbed, or ground, of education. In silence it answers the question: What grounds education? Or on what ground do we educate ourselves? The essence of the problem of scientific education is that contemporary educational orientation is colonial and racist and the current educational apparatus rests on racist and colonial domination while the background, containing them, works in the epistemic space between educators’ everyday certainties and their conscious reflections upon them and creates a doxastic space. Simply, it covers racist, colonial and sexist biases and makes them an invisible part of educational culture. Historical heritages like colonialism and racism are not part of formal curriculum but have their effects at a structural level, beyond educators’ awareness and due to their non-intervention. Scientific education is constitutive of thinking that is prevalent before the teacher enters the classroom and starts a lesson. Scientific education is an analytical tool aimed at understanding how everyday educational actions take on meaning from a background that refers to historically rooted values and our present time. Therefore, understanding explicit educational practices and discourses demands an understanding of the shared educational background and prejudices embedded in it. Scientific education is the historical a priori of contemporary education, as Foucault would say. This notion of a priori is different from the Kantian one. Instead of being formal and independent of experience, it is embedded in contingent conditions that have given rise to it. It is a priori since it sets the conditions of possibility that are constitutive for the form education has taken in contemporary societies. It is the constitutive non-actions embedded in fundamental social structures beyond school boundaries while science education is limited to teaching activities in classroom situations. Accordingly, changes in science education are much easier than in scientific education. I am trying to get to the bottom of the problem of scientific education by investigating education along a surface (science education)–substratum (scientific education) axis.The need is to reveal the ground on which education rests, the context in which this ground was formed and emerged. I am not claiming that we can establish an absolute genesis of scientific education. To the extent that we can talk of a genesis, however, Kant can be established as scientific education’s founding father since no other thinker has had such a comprehensive project to provide modern culture a scientific foundation as Kant did.12 This means that we can, through studies in Kant’s view of the human being, education and science and their relationships, race, colonialism and progress, reveal the genesis of the problem of scientific education. Scientific education is useable in this connection as it refers to educational presumptions that educators acquire as members of contemporary communities while science education refers to

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their controlled and conscious actions.13 Broadly considered, the acquired parts of educators’ knowledge and skills are Kantian in essence, which means that his colonial and racist ideas have become “natural” parts of the background presumptions of education. In this sense, scientific education is the tacit infrastructure of education, a general sphere of knowledge that over more than two centuries has become a habitual or second nature. The distinction at stake here is to render this naturalness strange; rethink the ground upon which relationships among science, education and humanity rest; and question our unquestioned reliance on presuppositions that tacitly infuse Eurocentric, racist and colonial legacies into the fabric of education. To summarise, it was through introducing a host of new conceptions, ideas, rules and questions that Kant not only established an alternative framework to that of ecclesiastical education but also established a modern orientation to education, a modern ground for it, and contributed hugely to the establishment of a modern apparatus of education. Within this new framework, he offers a systematic and coherent account of science, education and the human being and their relationships with human development; he established causal or necessary relationships between them.This comprehensive Kantian programme has since developed to the modern manner of subjectification and subjectivation with huge consequences for humanity. Kant inaugurated a basically new and influential way to think about humanity, education, science and their relationships.These issues will be analysed in coming chapters. For now, the question is: Why is Kant the inaugurator of a new style of education? Before answering this question in the next chapter, it is important to mention that I am concerned with general principles of scientific education and the formation of education’s constitutive background during the last two centuries, rather than its surface and detailed accounts of different philosophers’ views on education. Accordingly, my account of different thinkers is selective and at the general level of outlining practical implications of historical ideas for current educational practices. For instance, a principle like that of Cartesian epistemic egalitarianism, shared by John Locke, implies an epistemic atomism since it sees reason as the shared property of all human beings. With this ability follows the responsibility of each individual to grasp ideas clearly and distinctly through use of analytical activities since grasping such ideas in thought is crucial to knowledge. As part and parcel of the tacit infrastructure of education, the implications of this principle for assessments of educational achievements are easy to discern. It also has implications for the current domination of rational choice theory in social sciences and education. There are, of course, genealogical transformations, appropriations and modifications between Cartesianism and the neoliberal rational choice theory prevalent in current educational practices. However, we can justifiably discern genealogical connections between the two. Against this background, scientific education is a Eurocentric education that emerged and developed out of European colonial, imperial and racial expansionism and its false educational universalism. As such, its attempts to

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be inclusive are false, as they always are done within a Eurocentric intellectual framework. Scientific education’s genesis and development are connected to modernity as a singular European event – singular in the sense of being inseparable from European events like the systematic colonialisation of the earth’s surface, enslavement of Africa’s population and imposition of nationalism and nation-state divides around the globe. It is also a falsification of history and an imposition of false narratives on education and emancipation. Accordingly, we need a transformative paradigm shift – fundamental shifts in education’s background, orientation and apparatus. Without such transformations, educational reforms such as intercultural education and so on remain modifications that do not transform Eurocentric educational ideology; they make sense within this frame of reference.

Why is the distinction between scientific education and science education needed? Given my analysis of the two different but interconnected levels of education and the relationships between them, the question is why this distinction is necessary and of what use is it. This question can be answered by reference to my suggestion that a true understanding of education happens along an axis of surface–substratum. Simply put, daily problems in education like those of racism, sexism and colonialism cannot be comprehended in their own terms. The answer involves explaining the problems on the surface of education (everyday educational problems) in terms of its constitutive background to apprehend why some problems are persistent despite our apparent refutation of them.Why can well-intended educators become agents of discriminatory educational norms, values and procedures? By making clear the constitutive role of the background of education (orientation and apparatus) in relation to daily educational practices, I am trying to open the field for a transformative understanding of educational problems. The goal is to open new fields of educational research and new discourses based on seeing genesis in terms of consequences and vice versa. Beside bringing light to the subterranean nature of some educational problems, critical investigation of educational problems in terms of our orientation toward education, and its grounding and heading, is among the advantages of this distinction. Through making clear the Eurocentric genesis of problems of racism and colonialism in education, we can open perspectives external to the dominant educational paradigm, namely perspectives of racialised and colonialised people. This is to address the problem of scientific education in a mode of thought that goes beyond the confines of Eurocentrism on the one hand and assists educators in seeing through the veil of the background and overcoming its doxastic effects. It is about awareness of what educators are doing instead of what they believe they are doing. The distinction at hand enables us, inspired by Foucault, to approach scientific education through a genealogical-critical perspective. I use a tripartite

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methodological tool consisting of an archaeology of the context of the emergence of scientific education and the conditions of its possibility, a genealogy of its development throughout the course of history and a problematisation of its current actuality. When it comes to archaeology, Foucault gives a clue when he asks us to focus on “the epistemological field” or “the episteme in which knowledge, envisaged apart from all having reference to its rational value or to its objective forms, grounds its positivity and thereby manifests a history which is not that of its growing perfection, but rather that of its conditions of possibility” (1989:xxii). In a Foucauldian sense, then, archaeological inquiries mean to go beyond rational justification of the current educational system and the established history of education as cumulative progression toward human perfection. The goal is to unearth the context in which conditions of its possibility were in place. The questions are: What were these conditions, and how did scientific education become possible? Primarily, seen from this perspective, to think and introduce scientific education into the field of pedagogy was revolutionary; it was an historical event. By seeing scientific education as a historical event, I aim at questioning its current self-evidence to establish that it was one among many competing educational alternatives rather than being necessary. In other words, there is no natural bond between science and education. Education can be informed by other framing perspectives or orientations, like that of the aesthetic. Also, it can have other groundings than science. That science became the framing perspective was conditioned by the wider context of class interests of growing capitalist Europe and its need for colonial expansion, division of intellectual and corporal labour and control of unpaid slave labour and its productions. In other words, it is not about “the universal structures of all knowledge” (Foucault 1984:46) or those of all possible educational actions but the singular and local Eurocentric instances of educational discourse that determine what educators think, say and do. The idea of scientific education could not be established in isolation but as part of a timely system of ideas that addressed the intellectual needs of Kant’s age. Kant wanted to erect an educational edifice on a scientific ground that could endure for innumerable generations and accumulate their educational efforts since he saw emancipation possible only through human progress in a long historical perspective. Through his architectonic method, he established, contra Hume, that the world had a causal order, the foundation of science. According to this principle, there is an objective order of events, and everything which happens presupposes something upon which it follows according to a rule. Kant tried to reconcile this deterministic world with that of free will. The need was an education that could forward scientific knowledge as the story of causal relationships in nature as well as use this systematic knowledge as a way toward moral freedom and emancipations. Kant not only established causality as necessary relationships between phenomena in nature but also nature as the sum of objects of human knowledge as well as the raw state within the human being upon which education should do its work. These ideas were among the

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main presuppositions of a scientific orientation toward education. The notion of a constitutive subject whose perspective is the main vista through which cognition, morality and aesthetic are constituted as well as the notion of exact sciences as true knowledge were among other necessary elements that prepared the way for a scientific grounding of education. Further, the notion of science as a systematic body of cognition paved the way for education as an apparatus. They made Kant an educational and philosophical turning point as he made these elements organic parts of a coherent system – a strong narrative of human progress toward freedom and emancipation through history. In education, Kant gets nature and reason to collaborate in gradual emancipation of the human being from nature through education to ethical and cognitive autonomy and self-determination. Although he localises education in the realm of phenomena, it leads to freedom in the realm of noumena. Here, as everywhere, the characteristic of Kant is that he establishes the condition of experience at the same time as the condition of the objects of experience. To describe these processes, I use scientific education as a heuristic notion that signifies a “form of metastatic educational transformation” (Nejadmehr 2017:103). It is about conditions of a historical educational alternation as well as the orientation, scope, continuity and importance of its influence and the way it expanded beyond the context of its genesis. Here, rather than giving an exact date of birth for an idea, the main concern is struggles, tendencies, counter-tendencies, agreements, disagreements, continuities and disruptions that together give rise to an idea. Kant shows his will to paradigm shift in education and demonstrates a hopeful view of the future of humanity. He gives voice to these tendencies through attempting to delineate a “scheme of education better suited to further its objects, and hand down to posterity directions as to how this scheme may be carried into practice, so that they might be able to realize it gradually” (LP 9:445). In the following chapters, my main concern is the condition of possibility of a scientific revolution in education and its constituent elements, mainly introduced to the fields of philosophy and education by Kant.To investigate the former is thus also to underpin the latter claim. I am primarily concerned with grasping the way in which education became scientific, not through a theory, but through analysis of how discursive structures, norms and technologies of knowledge/power have, since Kant, become interwoven with and developed as an integrated part of Western modernity and, most importantly, how they positioned human beings as knowing, acting, normalised and disciplined subjects on the one hand and how they established patterns of racial and colonial hierarchies on the other. This leads us to shed light on the genealogical kinship between 18th-century Enlightenment as an educational project and the current global domination of neoliberalism and its educational ideology. It reveals that scientific education was made possible in the same context in which Kant classified the world population in a hierarchical order of educable and uneducable based on geography and skin colour on the one hand and made the humanity of human beings dependent of being educable on the other.

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To investigate scientific education from a historical–genealogical perspective and shed light on its historical nature is to break free of the one-dimensional and linear Eurocentric narrative of education and its establishing of westernisation as the way toward emancipation of the globe. This narrative structures time and history around ideas of “progress” and “development” in a way that endorses Eurocentrism, racism and colonialism while covering their effects on patterns of moral, cognitive and aesthetic behaviour deeply embedded in the Western way of life and education. European modernity and its educational ideology then become the inevitable destiny of the globe – an ideal to be followed by all. We need thus to reveal the risks attached to this heading, orientation and ground for the sake of humanity as a whole.The aim of my distinction is to show that as scientific education has emerged and developed within the Western power/knowledge regime, its global spread has been a process of global westernisation and uniformization of education and its outcomes – a one-sided and alienated human type. It is not westernisation per se that is the target of scrutiny here, but rather its harmful effects on humanity, education and life. To focus on the hidden background of the global system of education is now necessary as it works for Western cultural hegemony. It carries within itself unexpressed assumptions of neoliberal economic system as related to values such as rationality, modernity and science and other cultures as being primitive and undeveloped. Indeed, the neoliberal system is supported by a Eurocentric knowledge system (Quijano 2000:535)14 based on a division of cognitive labour between the West as producer of knowledge and other parts of the world as consumers and objects of scientific studies.To grasp, transform and replace these values with new ones, we need to sort out how they once emerged, developed and became part of the tacit infrastructure of education. While the archaeology of scientific education uncovers the context, mode and conditions of its possibility, genealogy interrogates its development through time and the way it became the educational actuality of today. Both strategies signify shifts from scientific education as a universal event to it as instances of discourse and a historical event. Here, I follow Foucault when he writes of his notion of criticism that “it is genealogical in its design and archaeological in its method.”When it comes to genealogical critique, he writes:“it will separate out, from the contingency that has made us what we are, the possibility of no longer being, doing, or thinking what we are, do, or think. It is not seeking to make possible a metaphysics that has finally become a science; it is seeking to give new impetus, as far and wide as possible, to the undefined work of freedom” (2003:45–46). Genealogical criticism is thus a transformative approach aiming at freedom from historical events and discourses that have become problematic. To my mind, scientific education is such an event. Accordingly, this transformative mode informs my approach to scientific education throughout this book. Genealogy of scientific education is at the same time genealogy of the normative white notion of humanity since it is the human type at which scientific education explicitly or implicitly aims; they develop in tandem. Genealogy

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of the white human type or normative Europeans as rational, progressive and emancipated reveals this human type as the oppressor of humanity rather than its saviour, as has been claimed. It also reveals that Kant contributed hugely to establish such a subjectivity or subject position as normative.While archaeology and genealogy interrogate the discursive and sociocultural conditions of possibility for scientific education, problematisation investigates the present conditions of scientific education. It focuses on its actuality in order to transform it into something better. It is to problematise some of its main presumptions, like the systematic standardisation of humanity in accordance with the general principle of competition or the primacy of rationally calculable individual interests at a price of undermining the common. Using the distinction between scientific education and science education means careful reading of the educational landscape backward and forward (genealogical axis) as well as in the present and downward (surface–substratum axis). It also means investigation conditions for the possibility of scientific education. Against this background, we can now say that the problem of scientific education is many things. First, it is a genealogical problem; it is a subterranean problem, invisible but all around due to it becoming the most natural and familiar way of doing education in contemporary societies. As scientific education has emerged and developed in tandem with Europe’s colonial expansion as well as oppressive racist hierarchies, colonial and racist ideas and practices have gradually penetrated it during a long period of time. They have become a natural part of it and create a gap between what educators believe they are doing and what they actually do. We need thus archaeological and genealogical investigations to identify their genesis and make them visible to counteract them. Second, it is a problem of orientation and mindset. Our orientation toward education is scientific; it is a technic of subjectification (making others subject to and subject of truth) and subjectivation (making oneself subject of and subject to truth) that focuses on an abstract and universal idea of what the human being is and imposes it on the diversity of human conditions. Third, it is a problem of grounding; science grounds and renders scientific education possible and presents it as true. Given science’s position in the world today, the problem of scientific education is given. While a scientific grounding, orientation and related discourses and institutions are taken for granted and remain unquestioned, much research efforts are aimed at daily educational practices, without seeing them in light of their grounding and genealogies; we need to shift focus from the latter to the former to make the problem of scientific education visible; Finally, it is a problem of perspective (a matter of cultural and epistemic beliefs that function for the disadvantage of racialised and oppressed people) rather than a professional one (professional skills in teaching science). Accordingly, a solution to this problem demands shifts in the current educational, orientation, ground and perspective rather than improving science teaching methods or improving teachers’ skills in teaching the sciences. Therefore, my concern here is not limited to improving planned school practices

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like teaching, examinations or assessments. I am concerned with how we can make the constitutive background of education accessible to critical scrutiny to reveal historical heritages and implicit racist and colonial biases embedded in the current educational foundation that have brought us to an impasse when it comes to equality between social groups, justice, fairness and dialogic relations between cultures and knowledge perspectives. It is thus necessary to go beyond good intentions and conduct inquiries that go beyond counteracting explicit biases and include the part of well-intended educators in the educational oppressions: Are they not themselves part of the problem? My approach to these issues is practice oriented based on multiplicities of perspectives, voices and experiences, enabling people to reveal and overcome colonial and racial oppressions that stay in the way of cultural, political and epistemic equality, embracing the concerns of westerners and non-westerners alike. The perspective I take does not assume that race is equivalent to blackness. Neither do I think along a West-East binary when it comes to colonialism, although I argue for a reorientation of philosophical thought toward the centrality of colonialism for construction of the West. The kinds of racial and colonial oppression I am dealing with here work across these divides and need cross-boundary approaches; they are embedded in the background presumptions of the global system of capitalism and work through individuals of all strands. The oppressed can work against themselves.

Why Kant is the generative context of scientific education The reader may wonder why I consider Kant, a single thinker, as the founder of scientific education. The short answer is because of Kant’s unique and influential position in modern Western thought. What makes him the strongest candidate for this role are the new images he introduces of the human being, science and education and the systematic way he brings them together. Kant’s Copernican turn in philosophy was at the same time a scientific turn. It discredits preceding intellectual frameworks as ignorant, dark, dogmatic and incapable of solving problems concerning the human being’s cognitive, moral and aesthetic powers and limits and their proper use. His own philosophical system was to solve these problems. I choose Kant as the inaugurator of scientific education since understanding him is key to understanding our time’s educational problems. This can be said because of his standing at “a historical threshold,” as Adorno (1998:144) maintains, where the old and the new educational ideas converge and build a “complex configuration” that unfolds toward the future and our time.15 To my view the relationships among science, education and the human being, as established by Kant, are a complex configuration. In this context, Kant’s philosophy brought to the surface some paradoxes, like that of the transcendental and the empirical subject, whose understanding helps us understand the paradoxes of our time.

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Kant was a decisive shift in the history of European thought and “opened the way for the advance of critical thought” (Foucault, in Allen 2013:33). Simply expressed, Kant inaugurated the modern episteme (Allen 2013:33). Kant established the Kantian paradigm that became the basis of different philosophical traditions in Europe; both analytic and continental traditions obtain inspiration from Kant (Braver 2007).16 Foucault maintains a similar view when writing, “Kant seems to me to have founded the two great critical traditions which divide modern philosophy. Let us say that in his great critical work, Kant posited and founded this tradition of philosophy that asks the question of the conditions under which true knowledge is possible and we can therefore say that a whole side of modern philosophy since the 19th century has been defined and developed as the analytic of truth” (Foucault 1997:94). Accordingly, Kant’s influence on the relationships among education, science and the human being is spread across the philosophical tradition in the West. Famously, Whitehead has asserted that Western philosophical tradition “consists of a series footnotes to Plato” (1985:39).17 However, this must be modified when it comes to Kant. He is an epochal philosopher. Like Plato, Kant divides philosophy into before and after himself. Through his comprehensive engagements in different issues, disciplines and events, Kant gave a new direction to Western philosophy by changing the subject of philosophy18 from the ground up in many ways and made “exact sciences” constitutive of humanity as the way to enlightened humanity or human perfection – the demarking line between proper humanity as obedient under rational laws of reason and animality as being dominated by senses and inclinations. These ideas became the ground upon which Kant established his idea of a new human type, homo criticus, as the aim of education, as Foucault says. To my mind, Kant was the most influential philosophical event since Plato, and he redefined Western thought. No other Western philosopher has created such an innovative, revolutionary, complete, comprehensive, systematic and influential philosophical system as Kant, and no other philosophical paradigm19 has had such a great influence across philosophical divides as Kantianism.20 Kantianism’s influences are not limited to the West but have spread to other parts of the world as well. As I am dealing with the influence of the Enlightenment on the one hand and the educational hegemony of the West on the other, no other philosopher is as paradigmatic as Kant in both respects. His philosophy was in dialogue with its predecessor while he was a break with the past and a new beginning, giving rise to new ideas of philosophy and education that have been imperative in their fields. His work “was an extremely important step forward in philosophy opening up the space for the important work to follow” (Braver 2007:344). In Kant’s own words, Kantian style of thought was an inaugurating event and a “revolution in the way of thinking” (CPR B xi). Kant rightly asserts that critical philosophy is “a perfectly new science, of which no one has ever even thought, the very idea of which was unknown” (PFM 7:262). Kant succeeded in establishing classical thought as dogmatism and opening

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the path for critical thought as an educational project21 so much so that Foucault identifies Kantianism as “the thought that is contemporaneous with us, and with which, willy-nilly, we think” (1989:250). We think within a Kantian framework, in other words. Putnam (1978), Pippin (1997) and Solomon (1988) are among the major philosophers who emphasise the revolutionary nature of Kant’s philosophy. Some scholars suggest Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason as the starting point of modern philosophy and his time as the starting point of modernity proper (Braver 2007). Revolutionising Western thought and grounding education on science was one aspect of Kant’s philosophy. Its other side concerns Kantianism becoming the genesis of Eurocentrism, scientific racism and colonial differentiation of humanity (Eze 1997) due to systematic classification of humanity across racial and colonial axes. Before Kant, these phenomena were sporadic and episodic. He conferred them systematicity or scientificity and made them basic features of Western thought, conferring them legitimacy by referring to nature. As education was the cornerstone of Kant’s system, scientific racism and scientific colonialism became also constitutive of education. And as time went by, they withdrew to the background and became invisible or normalised. A return to Kant is a way to make them explicit again and bring them to the foreground in order to liberate education from their grip. Besides being the threshold of modernity, Kant was a point of convergence; he can be seen more than just one individual. He not only inherited the educational legacies of antiquity and the Renaissance (humanism), he also was part of a widespread educational reform movement in the 18th century, engaging major philosophers and writers of the time.22 The ambition was to reform the educational system. Historically, scientific pedagogy was a widespread debate in the 18th century (Lenhart, in Munzel 2006), and the idea of pedagogy as science had strong advocates (Kerstin, in Munzel 2006). Indeed, during this era separation of the concepts of art and science took clearer contours, and new disciplines emerged. Dilthey maintains that attempts to establish a science of pedagogy predate Kant (Dilthey, in Munzel 2006). Kant’s Lectures on Pedagogy, where he advocates a shift from the art of pedagogy to the science of pedagogy, is in line with theories of some educational pioneers like the Czech educator Comenius (1592–1670) and the Swiss educator Pestalozzi (1746–1827), who tried to make education scientific.23 A friend of Newton, John Locke was also an advocate of natural sciences being included in the curriculum. There are five aspects that distinguish Kant, however. First is his idea that the desired educational transformations are not achievable by “a slow reform but a swift revolution” (ERP 2:449).24 Basically, what makes Kant an educational turning point is his “Copernican revolution” in Western philosophy, through which the subject and object changed position when it came to the basic conditions for the possibility of knowledge (in the same manner that the sun and the earth changed position in the Copernican heliocentric model). Through this revolution, he introduced new modes of knowledge and established a new system

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of thought. The transcendental subject became the creator of the phenomenal world, and the epistemological became prior to the ontological since the priority of the knowing subject demands epistemological engagement. Kant thus reformulates the aim of education and its problems and questions in a new conceptual framework, that of science as the paradigm of critical thinking; humanity, educability and scientificity become coextensive and constitutive of each other. This justifies a reading of Kant in the context of the development of science. It is crucial to establish a critical dialogue with the context that made a science of pedagogy and a scientific enframing of it possible. It is about highlighting Kant’s significance for our educational actuality rather than an anachronic reading of his notions of education, science and the human being. Genealogical reading is aware that “science has since radically changed in ways that were entirely unforeseen (and unforeseeable) in the eighteenth century” (Friedman 1992:xii). Kant’s significance for education today is in terms of the general philosophical foundation of scientific education and epistemological principles related to science. These aspects of his view of science transcend the Newtonian science of his time and make them “as acceptable” in our time as in “the eighteenth century” (1992:xii). Here, we proceed from consequences to ground. Kant’s engagement with Newtonian science as the pinnacle of human achievement was comprehensive and saw critical philosophy as its deciding framework. To claim that Kant is a philosophical watershed whose influence extends far beyond his context of life is not controversial. My claim is that his influence is not limited to what is explicitly agreed in our time and explicitly referred to him but also to things that have become part of Western cultural givens and lore. For instance, Kant is established as the founding father of scientific racism (Bernasconi 2001). It has been shown that it does not matter that the same science that Kant used as the ground of racism has showed racism groundless; racism is quotidian in Western societies anyway. In addition, Kant established the notion of the human being as a rational or scientific being whose behaviour and actions are rationally motivated and performed. Although philosophical studies and studies within economics, political science and psychology show the contrary, capitalism as an ideology and market mechanisms are commonly believed to be based on the human being as a rational being. It is to agree with Lee Braver that “the century and a half following Kant was spent vanquishing his shadow. The major philosophers in his wake rejected his thought but still retained vestiges of it even in their attacks on it” (Braver 2007:10). It seems like Kant’s influence on modern culture is like religious faith; belief in God is not an argument but an attitude and an orientation. Even if you, by reasoning, reach the conclusion that God “is dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. – and we – we still have to vanquish his shadow” (Nietzsche GS§10). Of Kant’s long shadow over 21st-century philosophy (in both its analytic and continental strands), we can, together with Manfred Kuehn, repeat “the old adage that one may

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philosophize with Kant or against him, but that one cannot philosophize without him” (Kuehn 2010:113). Kant is part of popular philosophy in the West. Second, Kant naturalised his educational ideas. He suggests a radical shift from education slavishly “copied from old habit and unexperienced ages” to education “wisely derived from nature itself ” (ERP 2:449). He partly defends modern profane knowledge (science), or “the attentive eyes of expert,” against inherited and sacral knowledge. In Kant’s educational theory, obtaining a moral character is the ultimate result of education and “presupposes an already favourable natural predisposition” (Anth 7:39). Education is the formation of the human being, not mechanically, but organically and practically. For this study, the main change that Kant brought in was placing the human being and its cognitive, moral and aesthetic capacities at the centre stage of philosophical thought. The implication of his Copernican revolution was that the ideas or laws of the reason are imbedded in the structure of the human mind, ready to be applied by the subject, instead of being pregiven in an external world, as in Plato. The educational implications of this change are comprehensive. While in Plato for the human being to be educated is to undertake a painstaking journey and discover ideas of the good, the beautiful and the true in an external world, in Kant to become enlightened or educated is to transform one’s own animality, as given by nature, and become enlightened in using one’s own reason and think for oneself and obey rules of reason or duty, to deduce these ideas from an empirical body of sense representations, through intuitions, via concepts of understanding and finally ideas of reason.25 Freedom for prisoners of the Platonic cave is their being able to unfetter themselves and behold the sun of truth, beauty and goodness as shining independently of themselves while Kantian rational human beings are free whenever they act in accordance with rules of their own practical reason – rules that are dependent on the systematisation efforts of the human mind in accordance with the architectonic method of rational sciences.This is a shift in what can be known and how it can be known as well as in the relationship of the knower to the known; what can be done, how it must be done and the relationships between deeds and the doer; and what can be felt how and the relationships among the beautiful, the sublime and the feeling being. Kant not only makes the question of what the human being is central to philosophy, but he also considers himself as having completed the mapping of the human being and as knowing the topology of the human mind and its faculties, functions, resources and limits. He also considers himself as knowing the human body and its drives, desires, instincts and abilities as well as the relationships between human mental and bodily lives; he knows humanity as an intelligible and sensible being.26 The important issue, however, is not knowledge of these faculties, functions and resources but the proper use of them in the service of human perfection, of which Kant also has a clear and distinct idea. For him this idea is regulative, or action guiding (presents a map). For this end, human faculties should be cultivated and the proper human being fostered. Indeed, critical

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philosophy is a propaedeutic to this. For Kant, “reason is cultivated generally by pursuing the secure path of a science” (CPR B xxx–xxxi). Without such a secure and systematic mode of thinking, there will be a “baseless groping and careless roaming around when there is no critique,” where humanity falters in relation to its own purpose and retraces its steps, and various generations’ educational endeavours cannot bring to agreement without use of science (CPR B xxx–xxxi). Kant aims at constructing a new human type, homo criticus. Kant asserts that he has opened a new path that he hopes to become a highway toward this human type. The main issue is on what ground Kant inaugurates a path and why and through what processes this path has become a highway. Kant’s answer would be the cleverness of nature; nature does not educate the human being but implants talents in her and gets her to work for their realisation. Educating the Kantian human being must be based on 1) faculties that nature has implanted in the human being (purposiveness of nature), 2) systematic or scientific education (scientific orientation and grounding of education) and 3) progress through accumulative efforts of generations. To make sure that these happen, Kant tries to bring education into “the secure path of science” (CPR B xxx–xxxi). In such a systematic orientation, a systematic body of principles can be established on which he can base universal educational truths, where the consequence, homo criticus, is deducible from the ground with logical necessity and apodictic certainty. To make this project possible, he introduced the notion of human perfection as the aim of education. From the perspective of this human type, he asked the question of the possibility of nature as the object of knowledge and about the nature of experience itself. Critique becomes a central notion through which he investigated the limits and possibilities of pure reason. Third is the comprehensiveness and systematic unity of Kant’s educational thought and its incorporation in his philosophy as a rational whole or science. Primarily, as Kant replaces metaphysics with a transcendental logic, rational or logical inferences become important; educational principles should be drawn from a ground with logical necessity. He wants to ground education on an a priori or objective basis (discernible in the structure of the human mind) through which it can gain universal validity. Such a validity is not possible through empirical or subjective grounds. To make the universal validity of educational principles discernible by all rational beings, Kant’s overall project was to provide education with a systematic or scientific ground and “to introduce a new language” (CPPR) 5:10). Generally, his aim was to establish “a firm basis . . . for a scientific system or philosophy, both theoretical and practical” (CPPR 5:10), where “rational cognition and cognition a priori are one and the same” (CPPR 5:10).27 Accordingly, the most important characteristics of the modern ground of education are systematicity, completeness, comprehensiveness, teleology and progressiveness. A scientific or systematic ground not only renders a scientific education possible, but it also grants its truth since, according to Kant, systematicity is the “touchstone for

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truth” (CPR A647/B675).To become scientific means that educational propositions are true by necessity or apodictically true as distinguished from assertoric (actually true but not certain) and from problematic (possibly true). Further, systematicity is applied to education to make it a priori or rational to satisfy demands of reason.28 Modern education is a system in two interconnected ways: It is a system as a science. It also is a system in a broader sense in relation to science and the human being. In the first sense, systematicity concerns different parts of education itself; it unites education’s ground, orientation and apparatus and enframes the educational efforts of individuals, generations and the human species as such. In the latter sense, systematicity concerns education’s relation to humanity and organisation of the polity. While, in the former sense, education is a system in itself, in the latter it is part of a lager system. In this regard, the Kantian systematic orientation is comprehensive and regards rational organisation of all spheres of life and society. According to him, the human species is “a species of rational being that strives among obstacles to rise out of evil in constant progress toward the good. In this its volition is generally good, but achievement is difficult because one cannot expect to reach the goal by the free agreement of individuals, but only by a progressive organisation of citizens of the earth into and toward the species as a system that is commonplacely united” (Anth 7:333). In Kant, the human being is destined to develop herself into a rationally organised cosmopolitan society. Considered in historical perspective, the best accumulative educational efforts of the human species, rightly performed, consist of a system or a science as distinct from efforts of the multitude, which “does not yield a system but only an aggregate gathered together” (Anth 7:328). This is a scientifically grounded orientation toward humanity unpresented antecedent to Kant. Important to be mentioned is that, from this perspective, education is not about science teaching, but rather about laying an orientation scientifically grounded for it and making it a systematic wholeness; such a reading brings in two interrelated points: 1 To bring education into secure path of a science (CPR B vii). Here, the critical edge is aimed at traditional thought’s lack of systematicity, plan, foundation, apodictic certainty, maxims, lack of reflective judgement and ultimately its explicit lack of grounding in the moral law. Science of education has to has an architectonic method. To make this point clear, I refer to Kant, where he writers: “by transcendental doctrine of method I mean the determination of the formal conditions of a complete system of pure reason. With this aim, we shall be dealing with a discipline, a canon, an architecture and finally history of pure reason” (CPR A708/B736). Kant plan is, as he maintains in the first Critique, to reconstruct reason’s edifice, ruined by sceptics and dogmatists.This edifice manifests at the same time reason’s progress in and through history, from infancy to maturity, from predispositions

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dormant in the human being to a state constitution that “can fully develop all predisposition of humanity” (CJ 8:27). This is a teleological educational or enlightenment process with a rational and prophetic notion of progress at the ground. 2 Scientific education is also a holistic system (a science) or apparatus when it comes to application of abstract ideas. In Kant, it is impossible “to establish a science without grounding it on an idea” (CPR A834/B862). We can ask what the unifying idea of the system is or, as Kant himself puts it, what is the idea of the whole (CPR B xliv) or the “soul of the system” (PFM 4:374). The answer is that of human perfection. Generally, Kant operates with the idea of human perfection and sees education as the way to this perfection or freedom under the moral laws. For him, although “our idea of perfect humanity” (CPR A568) is produced by reason a priori (independently of experience), it is applicable in everyday reality. The systemising and regulative idea of humanity functions as the basis for a regime of educational practices and brings unity into the system and determines the position of each part and the relationships between parts. To highlight the action-guiding function of ideas, Kant writes: “ideas become efficient causes (of actions and their objects)” (CPR A317). To rationally produce the idea of human perfection is thus to establish a model to be followed by educational practices.29 In this sense, instead of living human beings, with all their contextual diversity and shortcomings, the idea of human perfection functions as a universal paradigm of education (the idea of humanity brings unity to diversity of human species and creates pure models).30 Clearly, this idea guides educational actions as it is this action-guiding or regulative idea that education should realise in the sensible world. Importantly, the starting point is an abstract or universal idea, and the end result is human beings in a sensible realm, in a cosmopolitan community, as it is the perfection of humanity as a whole that is at stake, not that of specific individuals. In Kant, a system is complete. The parts of a system must be necessarily related to each other and to the whole. In an educational context, the manifold’s unity is seen in the light of the internal purposefulness of the future of humanity embedded in human destiny. It is related to the Kantian overall story of human progress from its past and present states of diversity toward perfection and conformity under moral laws, the telos of which is predetermined by nature and reason as the highest good and governance due to “civil constitution” (Anth 7:327). To make education scientific means to subordinate it to such a predetermined guiding idea, an inner purpose and a style of thought, ultimately to make it part and parcel of an overall story. The starting point is epistemic, as for Kant the knowing subject is at the centre of cognition and prior to the acting subject. Further, this subject is transcendental and independent of the context of life. Scientific education becomes the way to emancipation, and science becomes the emancipatory form of knowledge.

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The fourth aspect that signifies Kant is the principle of universality of Kant’s notions of education and the human being. He speaks of “the education of the human race, taking its species as a whole, that is, collectively (universorum), not all of the individuals (singulorum), where the multitude does not yield a system but only an aggregate gathered together” (Anth 7:328). We are already familiar with Kant’s notion of systematicity or organic unity as distinct from an aggerate of things. Kant grounds education on science to suggest a systematic or scientific orientation toward humanity, education and their relationships. Here, it is about application of systematic and universalistic principles of reason and rational methodologies of science to humanity as systematic whole rather than humanity as aggregate of individuals. It is not just about the transmission of these principles and methods to young generations but transforming them accordingly, making intelligible beings out of sensible beings. Accordingly, education in Kant becomes a scientific orientation toward the human being and concerns the constitution of her character as the character of the human being is “acquired” (Anth 7:295). It aims at a new human type signified by intellectual maturity or autonomy. In accordance with this style of thought, Kant establishes strong links among science, education and the human being as the elements of the same system or constellation of ideas, where all parts of the system are necessarily related to each other and to the whole with logical certainty and the perfect human being can be drawn as a logical consequence from the ground. This must be drawn with apodictic certainty and in accordance with a plan. For this to be possible, “the mechanism in the art of education must be transformed into science, otherwise it will never become a coherent endeavor, and one generation might tear down what another has already built up” (LP 9:447). For Kant, education is an organic or planed transformation of nature within the human being rather than accidental or mechanical changes in his appearance. As neither does this process happen by itself nor has nature equipped the human being with an educational instinct; the human being is left to chance and accidents and to circumstances if education is not brought into the path of science. Fifth is the interconnectedness of teleological notions of education and history, where stages of human evolution corresponded to those of each individual’s development. Kant sees humanity as malleable. For him, the humanness of the human being or human nature becomes a function of education: “we animal creatures are made into human beings only by education” (LP 9:444, also Anth 7:324). In this sense, human perfection through education became the destiny of modern humanity; the modern human being must design and produce herself, form her life and take control of it without any external assistance. This is to establish a new relationship between the human being and the world (knowledge, truth), between human beings themselves (relation of power, governance) and between the human being and herself (morality, ethics). Education in this sense is the only characteristic that is exclusively human. In Kant, the human being can share rationality with other rational beings but not

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education; the human being is the only animal that needs education; human perfection is only achievable through education. On the other hand, the human being is the only being that is destined to perfect itself; this is her vocation, and it should be realised through education as a transformative force.The teleological notion of humanity is related to human capacity to set ends, to what the human being as a free acting being should make of herself. In this respect, there are overlaps between Kant’s notions of education and pragmatic anthropology as they regard the issue of what the human being as a free acting being should make of herself. If we consider this question from the standpoint of the human being (as free but finite knowing, acting and feeling being) and try to provide a systematic response to it, we end up in the human perfection as the end of the human being and nature, achievable through education as science in accordance with plan and systematic manner.31 Last, but very important to the purpose of this book, are the relationships between Kant’s notion of education and the racial and colonial classification of humanity. His classification of humanity to educable and uneducable categories based on skin colour and geography of birth, despite his claims to cosmopolitanism and universality, brings in the issue of the perspective from which Kant philosophised.This perspective is as important as his explicit wordings. While the latter is Kant’s individual contribution to the emergence of scientific education, the former signifies the way Kant made himself the locus of a perspective shared by large majority of his contemporaries. This perspective was that of “coloniality of power,” to use a wording the Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano (2000) – a perspective of colonial inequalities, racial and gender hierarchies. Kant justified and conferred a more agreeable shape to colonial differences and racial hierarchies through classifying white male Europeans as educable by nature, capable of education and governing themselves, while people from other parts of the world were classified as not being capable of educating and governing themselves. As in Kant, humanity is achievable only through scientific education, rather than being given in any human being by birth or nature; uneducable people fail to reach humanity and as such are excluded from humanity proper or dehumanised.32 Further, as in Kant, where the rational part of the human being must dominate the human being as given by nature, it was considered as natural that uneducables could be enslaved and colonialised by white people that had reached higher degrees of humanity. This harmful orientation of thought toward the white self and its relationships with the others and the world has explicitly or implicitly ever since been the guiding principle; it is a living heritage that has just changed shape from being explicit to being implicit. Consequently, this orientation to humanity, the self, the other and the world had blinded white humanity to the modes in which humanity, the self, the other and the world truly are – an ignorance that still is at work. Scientific education, which was pretending to bring to humanity precise knowledge, freedom and an aesthetic view of the world, has made the

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white part of humanity miss the truth of what humanity, the self, the other and the world are, and they have made oppressors of themselves while oppressing others. In this way humanity has been corrupted. Before going further, some points are important to be made when it comes to Kant being the founder of scientific education. One is that I am talking about contextual emergence of ideas rather than their birth from the mind of a single person. However, the context of Kant’s life and work was such that made him a point of convergence where rationalism and empiricism met and gave rise to a new philosophical movement, deeply rooted in the past and with great potential to be developed and unfold toward the future and continue in different shapes into our time. What made Kant the paradigmatic philosopher of modernity with a global influence was his ability to change the traditional philosophical framework and ask new questions within a new or modern framework, questions that resonate more aptly with modern times and their needs. He brought together this philosophical framework and that of Newtonian science and integrated them into a unified ground of modern thinking; he gave voice to embryonic intellectual currents that became decisive for our time. This made him a turning point in Western thought. No other philosopher had the capacity to become the spokesperson or collective voice of modernity like Kant. A further point is that when I talk of scientific education in Kant, I mean a “proto-ideas” of this education, to use an expression borrowed from Ludwik Fleck (1979). Accordingly, when I term “scientific education” as the Kantian educational paradigm, it does not mean that it was exclusively Kant who created a complete idea of scientific education and implemented it accordingly. Rather it is about a preliminary, unarticulated and hazy idea in the Kantian style of thought. As mentioned prior, it was outlines of a scheme of education that Kant handed to his posterity to articulate, explicate and implement. I should make it clear that, by making these points, I am not trying to weaken the inaugurative role of Kant. I have no doubt that he was his own exemplar and educator for his contemporaries. He was a pioneering and paradigmatic figure who let a constellation of ideas around a scientific notion of education come forward clearly by using them in new contexts and in unprecedented ways. Beside establishing a new framework for philosophical thought, asking new questions within this framework and stipulating new philosophical tasks accordingly, he established a new common ground for philosophy and education. In the coming chapters, I start with the Kantian question of what the human being is. I then proceed to his account of science and the link among the human being, science and education. Finally, I will discuss Kant’s understanding of proper education. If I succeed in spelling out what Kant means by each of these three concepts and how he relates them to each other in a systematic or organic manner, where every element is for the sake of the other, then I will succeed in explaining how they are important for our time’s educational paradigm.

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Notes 1 Kant makes a distinction between dogmatism as a philosophical tendency like rationalism and dogmatically following one’s own principles once one has established and agreed to them. His emphasis on the acting out of one’s own maxims and principles, following one’s own plan, is related to the orthodoxy toward one’s own principles and following them without deviation; it is like giving promise. 2 Also, in the second Critique, Kant wants us to read him like this. 3 Descartes establishes the notion of the subject as a thinking thing, and Kant puts it to work, as it has to establish its own world through the use of reason; the motto sapere aude refers to its need to be educated, and it is gained through education, rather than being given by nature. This is the essence of Kant, modernity and enlightenment, the light is the reason. 4 Hegel would say the owl of Minerva flies in the dusk. 5 Or systematic and scientific reading. 6 In Kant, Human beings can become humans through education. Famously, the Enlightenment was an educational project, and thinkers like Rousseau and Lock were specifically interested in education and published on the topic. 7 Important to be added is that, in Kant, the result of education is determined by an antecedent idea and achievable through humanity as a whole acting according to a plan and a purpose. 8 To highlight Kant’s division of humanity into an educable we and uneducable others, I use the notion of the educational. Analogous to Carl Schmitt’s notion of the political (Schmitt 1996), the notion of the educational is based on the basic distinction between educable and uneducable people. A central theme of this book is Kantian use of human diversity to establish a white educable we as opposed and superior to uneducable or savage others – a dichotomy that legitimated racism and colonialism and continues to do so in our time, though in a tacit manner. As for Kant, education is constitutive of humanity, uneducable people are deprived of their humanity. 9 Critical in the sense of asking the simple question of ‘On what ground I believe in this or that proposition and act accordingly?’ 10 I use this term as it is similar to Kant’s notion of system. I use it for the capacity of complex entities to organise, unify, control, integrate, direct and govern. Scientific education is such an entity; it has an abstract orientation that attains concrete shapes in educational apparatuses (regimes of discourse and practice). It is a process of subjectivation in which the subject is captured, controlled and shaped by apparatuses of education. Apparatus shows the inevitability of certain kinds of education, given historical circumstances. 11 Although I use notions of exclusion and inclusion, they are inadequate when it comes to the oppressive nature of scientific education. My turn to genealogy is due to exclusion and inclusion not being explicit as they were in Kant. They are now embedded in the very nature of scientific education without being recognised. 12 It is too risky to present a single person as the founding father of such a comprehensive notion like that of scientific education. I take the risk, however, as Kant was the point of convergence of many intellectual currents and thought styles. He gave voice to the Enlightenment as an educational movement. 13 This distinction is made by Wittgenstein (1991:208). 14 Quijano writes, “Europe’s hegemony over the new model of global power concentrated all forms of the control of subjectivity, culture, and especially knowledge and the production of knowledge under its hegemony” (2000:540). 15 Foucault also calls the first Critique “the threshold of our modernity” and a “fundamental event – certainly one of the most radical that ever occurred in Western thought” (1989:263).

Scientific education 43 16 See also Paul Guyer (2007). “Kant radically and irreversibly transformed the nature of Western thought” (3) and Kant as “the center” of history of modern philosophy (5). 17 We find a similar idea of the history of Western philosophy in Nietzsche; he sees Christendom as Platonism for the masses. 18 For a great philosopher as the changer of the subject of thought see Raymond Guess (2017). 19 Lee Braver believes that Kant, by offering “a coherent, powerful alternative account of reality, subjectivity, and knowledge,” establishes “the Kantian paradigm” (2007:33). 20 Generally, I agree with Raymond Guess’s reading of history of philosophy. Rather than a linear chronicle of the questions, we need to examine how philosophy “changes the question, and what is most interesting to observe and most interesting is to look carefully at why and how the question changes, for what reason and with what results” (Guess 2017:1). In this respect, Kant changed the philosophical framework and asked new questions due to the needs of his time. Ha made the question of what the human being is the central focus of philosophy, and from this perspective he asked the question of how synthetic a priori knowledge is possible – both new questions asked in a new manner, that of modern science. 21 Although Foucault blames Kant for closing this door. 22 John Locke: Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1683–1689), Rousseau: Émile or On Education (1795), J.M.R. Lenz: The Tutor, or Advantage of Private Education (1774), G. E. Lessing: The Education of the Human Race (1777), Schiller: On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795), Goethe: Wilhelm Meister Lehrjahre (1796), A. F. Knigge: On Human Social Intercourse (1796) and Fichte: The Vocation of Man (1800) are among the literature on the topic. 23 Kant was also inspired by the philanthropinismus movement in Germany, whose leading figures, Basedow and Christian G. Salzmann, were attempting to implement the educational theory of Rousseau’s Émile. Attempts to make comprehensive learning and knowledge universally available, or write encyclopaedias, are also worth mentioning. Another political and educational event, which developed into a globally important happening, was the Prussian reform of education in 1794. 24 Indeed, scientific education appropriated some principles of humanism, namely the educational ideology of the Renaissance. As generally happens, the Kantian paradigm shift did not happen overnight. Rather it was preceded by long-standing struggles between competing educational ideals where the new ideals challenged the old ones before the shift became inevitable. Furthermore, there was an appropriation process after the shift where many elements of the old paradigm were appropriated and used in new forms. The main shift was that of sacral knowledge to profane knowledge and to reason as a self-legislative source of knowledge and judgement.This was also a rediscovery of antiquity as a source of knowledge and inspiration worthy of being imitated. Given Kant’s influential position, this comprehensive view of education had a crucial role in institutionalising and professionalising education. 25 There is also a reverse process when it comes to application of the ideas of reason. 26 However, all of these are knowledge of the human being as an appearance and not as a thing in itself. 27 Systematicity is an essential recurrent theme in Kant; the central task of the human being is to bring systematicity or rationality to cognition, morality and feelings. And this should be done under the guidance of reason’s ideas. Reason’s use of its regulative ideas is not merely logical. “Its goal” must be to work in tandem with “the arrangement of nature”; systematicity is the common feature of reason and nature and of itself (CPR A651/B679). For Kant, systematicity is the “touchstone for truth” (CPR A647/B675), “nor would it confidently expect and search for it in circumstances where it was far from evident” (CPR A657/B685). Kant calls this belief a transcendental principle or presupposition (CPR A650/B678, A651/B679) – the sole basis of the logical use of the regulative principles (as heuristic or methodological). For Kant systematicity has “objective but indeterminate

44  Scientific education validity” (CPR A663/B691): it is “the maxim of regarding such an order as grounded in nature in general” (CPR A668/B696). 28 “Under the government of reason our cognitions cannot at all constitute a rhapsody but must constitute a system” (CPR A832/B860). Ideas, of unity, manifoldness and affinity mark out the three vectors of systematic order (CPR A662/B690). 29 Kant writes of “the moral ideas, as archetypes of practical perfection” that can “serve as the indispensable rule of moral conduct and also as the standard of comparison” (CPPR 5:129 note). 30 On education through educators or models, Kant maintains that the wise man of the Stoics is “an ideal, i.e., a human being who exists merely in thought” (CPR A569). 31 At this point, the equation may be raised of what use is all this knowledge of Kant’s view of education for educators today. Understanding Kant is relevant to our time in many ways. The most important one is the way Kant relates education to humanity as its consequence and defines humanity in terms of racial differences as educable or uneducable beings; humanity and the consequence of education. In order to gain some perspective on our own orientation to education, and thus achieve a perspective on the problem of scientific education, Kant is the right philosophical context in which the question of the genesis of the problem of scientific education can be asked. 32 A such, it is easier to subject them to white colonial and racial atrocities.

Chapter 2

Kant, the human being, science and education

In the previous chapter, I explicated my distinction between scientific education and science education and explained how it can be used as a conceptual tool for revealing the genealogical rootedness of scientific education and its genesis in the Kantian paradigm. In this chapter, I elaborate on Kant’s notions of the human being, science and education and the constitutive relationships among them. To begin with, a proper understanding of Kant’s view of education needs to start with his most important question, namely the question of what the human being is since, for Kant whatever the human being can know, should do and may hope can be done “only from the human standpoint” (CPR A26/ B41). Indeed, in Kant, the human being “has two standpoints from which it can consider itself and know the laws of the use of its powers, thus of all of its actions, first, insofar as it belongs to the world of senses, under natural laws (heteronomy), second, as belonging to the intelligible world, under laws which, independent from nature, are not empirical but grounded in reason alone” (GWMM 4:452). And education is to develop the latter standpoint toward perfection – a transformation from natural heteronomy to rational autonomy. Indeed, Kant is more interested in what the human being can or should make of herself as a free acting being or “independent of nature” (GWMM 4:452). More exactly, it is about what the human being should through education make of himself, a field Kant undertakes to base on a scientific foundation. He starts by what the human being is to underpin what she should make of herself. Education must be thorough and comprehensive and “develop all the human being’s natural predisposition proportionally and purposively, thus leading the whole human species toward its vocation” (LP 9:446). For Kant, such an “idea of education . . . is indeed truthful” (LP 9:445) since, for him, purposiveness of nature means that “all the natural capacities of creature are destined sooner or later to be developed completely and in conformity with their end” (CJ 8:18). Thus, for Kant, education is related to capacities that nature has implanted in the human being on the one hand. On the other hand, knowledge, morality, aesthetics and education are to be seen in light of how the human being is constituted.This means that Kant’s philosophical project as such is an anthropological

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project in the broadest sense – knowledge of the human being “systematically formulated” (Anth 7:119). Generally, to know the world, we need to know the human being. Kant writes, somehow in an anthropocentric manner: “To know the human being according to his species as an earthly being endowed with reason especially deserves to be called knowledge of the world, even though he constitutes only one part of the creatures on earth” (Anth 7:119). That knowledge of the human being can be called knowledge of the (phenomenal) world is consistent with Kant’s view that the objects of the empirical world conform with the structure of the human mind, and the condition of the possibility of experience is at the same the condition of the possibility of objects of experience. Accordingly, knowledge of the human being is knowledge of the empirical world as it is made cognisable by the human being.This is not only true of cognition but also of the human faculty of volition or morality: Kant believes that “the special determination of duties as human duties, with a view to classify them, is possible only after the subject of the determination (the human being) is cognized as he is really constituted” (CPPR 5:8). The same can be said of human feelings of pleasure and displeasure and purposiveness of nature (power of aesthetic judgement). Kant declares that “the discovery of the order of nature is an occupation of the understanding conducted with regard to a necessary purpose of its own; that is, the unification of this order under principles” (CPPR 5:25). It is thus not exaggeration if we claim that the idea of the human being brings unity to the Kantian system and determines the position of its parts and their relationships to each other. More clearly, it brings together his three Critiques and corresponding faculties, through which Kant tries to render the human being possible through a priori accounts for these faculties. This is a transcendental account of the human being. Kant adds an empirical and a pragmatic dimension to his transcendental anthropology or knowledge of the human being to bring together knowledge from interior, or from within, to knowledge from outside, or exterior, of the human being. He brings together three aspects of the human being: the way the human being is constituted (a transcendental perspective), knowledge of what the human being can make of himself according to his species being (a pragmatic perspective) and knowledge of the way the human being is in everyday life (an empirical perspective). The human is limited by her bodily or earthly being on the one hand and species being on the other and endowed with reason as the basis of her freedom. Indeed, Kant himself give us hints of his philosophical project being understood through his a priori accounts of human faculties (cognition, volition and feelings) as they are investigated by three Critiques (CJ 5:198).This is consistent with the way he poses the question “What is the human being?” Kant not only posed the question of what the human being is as the most fundamental question in philosophy (LL 9:25) but also related it to three other central questions. He writes: The field of philosophy in the cosmopolitan sense can be brought down to the following questions: What can I know? What ought I to do? What may

Kant, the human being, science, education 47

I hope? What is the human being?1 Metaphysics answers the first question, morals the second, religion the third, and anthropology the fourth. Fundamentally, however, we could reckon all of this to anthropology, because the first three questions refer to the last one. (LL 9:25) This passage suggests that we have to do with one main question with three sub-questions. And the main question can be answered by anthropology.2 Important to mention is that Kant’s notion of anthropology is related to knowledge about the human being in the broadest sense (GWMM, 4:389); thus, it embraces critical philosophy as such rather than being anthropology as we conceive it today, a discipline preoccupied with investigations into different cultures.3 For Kant, anthropology is a normative way of looking at the human being. Its educational significance becomes clear if we see anthropology from a Kantian perspective, namely a “pragmatic” one. It is then “the investigation of what he4 [the human being] as a free-acting being makes of himself, or can and should make of himself ” rather than “the investigation of what nature makes of the human being” (Anth 7:119).5 Thus, Kant’s critical project is educational or about what the human being as free acting being makes of herself. Considered in this way, as mentioned prior, all three Critiques are preoccupied with different aspects of the question of what the human being is or how it is constituted and should be. We can thus reasonably claim that Kant sees philosophy as such as anthropological and concerned with exploration of different aspects of the human being seen from empirical, pragmatical and transcendental points of view. This, because for him the human world and whatever in it (what we can have knowledge of, can do and should do and hope) is conditioned by human abilities and limits. In Kant, the human subject is a constitutive subject, where things that are humanly possible are constituted through human capacities. The point that I am trying to make here is of paramount importance for my study; we have seen that for Kant the human being, as an autonomous moral and rational being, is the central idea that brings unity to his system of thought. Further, “the human being can only become human through education” (LP 9:444). Hence, education is the determining ground on which the human being becomes human. Further, and this is of paramount importance for my purpose, Kant, consistent with his “love of science,” maintains that “the mechanism in the art of education must be transformed into science,” otherwise it will never become a coherent endeavour, and one generation might tear down what another has already built up (LP 9:447). Accordingly, science is the determining ground of education. Thus, Kant’s orientation to education and its relationship to the human being is scientific. For Kant, the human being is malleable or educable in accordance with a regulative idea of reason at a transcendental and pragmatic level. Consequently, in Kant, education renders the human being possible while science renders education possible; science becomes then constitutive of the human being since the human being is not given by nature and

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must be constituted through scientific education. Education and science are a priori or transcendental conditions, or conditions for the possibility of the human being, as Kant sees her – a perfect or enlightened human being who thinks for herself, acts morally and has a feeling for the beautiful and the sublime. Lack of or failure to employ any of these capabilities in a rational manner can lead to deficiencies in one’s humanity. In my account, the human being is the connecting link between science and education; as means for realising the idea of humanity, education and science are in their turn constitutive of the human being since they make her humanity possible. It is about conditions of possibility of the proper human being or what must be the case for the human being to be possible, what can render the human being possible. These three ideas build a constellation of ideas that cover the realm of causality (nature, or phenomena) as well as that of freedom (moral, or noumena) and feeling for the beautiful and sublime. To return to my main line of argumentation, although Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View is an important text concerning his view of the human being, his view on this issue is not limited to this text. Further, this work, as Foucault (2008) demonstrates, is based on and intimately connected to Kant’s critical writings. Clearly, in Kant anthropology can be considered the study of whatever concerns and is significant in relation to the human being, like the study of the nature of human knowledge, claims about nature of the empirical world and freedom and aesthetics. It is in this sense that I maintain that Kant’s anthropology can be considered an umbrella notion for Kant’s system of thought, concerned with one main question: What is the human being? Or what should she as free acting being make of herself through the science of education? The sub-question “What can I know?” is answered by epistemology and metaphysics, established in the first Critique, where Kant offers transcendental analysis of human sensibility and understanding and their contribution to human experience of the phenomenal world. In this capacity the human being is a knowing subject who reminds of Descartes’s cogito. Before I proceed to other parts of Kant’s answer to the question of what the human being is, it is important to mention that Kant is aware of the selfreferentiality of whatever view of the human character we offer, as it is done by the human being herself.6 Kant writes, “The problem of the character of the human species is absolutely insoluble” (Anth 7:321), since there is no perspective external to humanity from which we can look at it. Rather the human being is the only “terrestrial rational being” (Anth 7:321), without there being “non-terrestrial rational beings that would enable us to indicate their characteristic property and so to characterize this terrestrial being among beings in general” (Anth 7:321). Therefore, the human being herself determines what the character of the human being is or what Kant wants her to be. What distinguishes the human being from all other animals is that “he has a character, which he himself creates insofar as he is capable of perfecting himself according to ends that he himself adopts” (Anth 7:321). The human being is thus the

Kant, the human being, science, education 49

transcendental subject and the object of knowledge at the same time.Therefore, we cannot come up with more than the claim that the human being is the creator of his own moral character (Anth 7:321). Important in this context is that Kant investigates the human being educationally. Generally, Kant sees “all cultural progress” in the light of how “the human being advances his education” (Anth 7:119). Education for Kant is wider than schooling alone, although his use of schooling is sometimes interchangeable with that of education. The aim of education is the formation (Bildung) of human moral character, which is implanted in his nature. Further, “the character of living being is that which allows its destiny to be cognized in advance” (Anth 7:329). Kant thus knows the destiny of the human being “in advance” and plans for it to be realised through education. Accordingly, education has an aim determined beforehand. Education here means that the human being actively transforms “what nature makes” of him (Anth 7:119) (in the realm of causality) and brings it under the pure idea of human perfection (the realm of freedom). Accordingly, education considers the way through which the human being makes a free human being out of what is given by nature, in grip of its inclinations and instincts – from constraints of nature to a choice of her own.

The human being as a knowing being: Kant’s Copernican revolution Seen against the background of what have been said so far, for Kant, the question “What is the human being?” is a normative one that can be considered as the gist of his Copernican revolution in Western philosophy since this revolution shifted the perspective of philosophy from the world of the objects to that of the cognitive structure of the human mind. It placed the human being and her cognitive faculties at the centre stage of philosophy and made the objects of the phenomenal world conform to the laws of reason. Kant was inspired by Copernicus in his shifting the place of the human observer and celestial bodies when prior knowledge failed to explain the movement of celestial bodies. In the same vein, Kant explains the failure of his predecessors (rationalists and empiricists) to understand the proper way the human being generates knowledge of the world by getting knowledge to conform to the objects.To solve this problem, Kant shifted the prospect and got the objects to conform to human cognition. Accordingly, the Kantian world of the objects is explained from the perspective of the human observer (CPR B xvi). From this perspective Kant makes the daring claim that “the conditions of the possibility of experience are at the same time conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience” (CPR A158/B197). This is to establish truths about objects of knowledge a priori or prior to their being given in experienced. He writes: Up to now it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to the objects; but all attempts to find out something about them a priori

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through concepts that would extend our cognition have, on this presupposition, come to nothing. Hence let us once try whether we do not get farther with the problems of metaphysics by assuming that the objects must conform to our cognition, which would agree better with the requested possibility of an a priori cognition of them, which is to establish something about objects before they are given to us. This would be just like the first thoughts of Copernicus, who, when he did not make good progress in the explanation of the celestial motions if he assumed that the entire celestial host revolves around the observer, tried to see if he might not have greater success if he made the observer revolve and left the stars at rest. (CPR B xvi) Thus, from the prospect of this revolution, the way the human being is constituted is constitutive of the world of objects as objects are to conform to her cognition. Generally, for Kant objects are possible as those of human experience. Accordingly, we need, first, to know what the human being is to, second, be able to understand what the human being can know and how objects of knowledge are constituted. This view of the human being is not limited to cognition but encompasses what the human being ought to do and may hope.7 Important to my study is that Kant not only places the human being in the centre of the world but sees her in a scientific or systematic manner;8 he tries to give a complete and comprehensive account of the human being, seeing her cognition, volition and feeling as well as a priori principles that govern them in an interconnected or organic way, where each part exists for the sake of others.9 As this account is the nature or character of the human being, it is the task of education to produce it in reality and according to predetermined plan.10 As Kant does not limit revolution to education but strives after a “sudden revolution in people’s way of thinking” (CPR xii), his notion of education should be studied from this point of view – in light of a new orientation or style of thought. Correspondingly, opposition against Kant is an opposition against his notion of the human being as well as that of critique and orientation of thought. To liberate the human being from the grip a predetermined idea of her established by Kant, we need a new outlook at the world and life. In the preface to second edition of the first Critique, Kant spells out his notion of revolution as a rapid change in ways of thinking and tries to apply this to cognitions and the way the human being organises it. The paradigmatic notion of revolution for Kant is the progresses in mathematics and natural sciences of his time achieved “by a revolution accomplished all at once.” He indeed recommends us to “imitate” these revolution “by the way of experiment” (CPR B xvi) and work for a “transformation of the way of thinking” (CPR B xvi).11 By getting objects to conform to the structure of human cognition, Kant hopes to solve problems of metaphysics or epistemology that both rationalism and empiricism have not been able to solve. For this end, he establishes the architectonic of human cognition (intuition, understanding and reason) as well

Kant, the human being, science, education 51

as a division of cognitive labour between them. In Kant human reason has its own fixed structure and laws, laws of pure practical reason, that distinguishes the human being from other animals.12 This is the general basis of Kantian metaphysics, applying universal (a priori and necessary) laws to all phenomena (in epistemology, morality and aesthetics). We need, therefore, according to Kant, universal rules and an idea of everything to attain systematic knowledge of them. While the human being receives intuitions (what is given by human sensibility) passively through senses and forms them in pure forms of intuition (space and time), her understanding actively places them under its categories like that of causality. Reason in its turn produces regulative ideas that should conduct human actions.13 Reason also produces universal principles and maxims to which the human being should conform. Human capacities to receive sense impressions and process them through concepts of understanding collaborate to make cognition possible. Accordingly, Kant believes that he has gathered merits of empiricism and rationalism without suffering from their vices. His answer to both sides is nicely cached in his device: “Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind” (CPR A51/B75). Kant’s radicality resides in his concern with the issue of ground or foundation, conceived as critique of pure reason, i.e., delineating cognitive possibilities and limits of the human mind as the ground of all philosophising: “the critique of our power of reason as such, in regard to all cognition after which reason may strive independently of all experience” (CPR A xii). In other words, Kantian critique is a priori. This is to account for the rules under which human understanding must work on the one hand and the boundaries that these rules establish regarding the limits of human knowledge on the other. Starting from this point, he establishes a new foundation on the basis of which he renders objects of human knowledge, the human being, education and science possible in a way that broke with the past and paved a new path for the future. He not only embodied ideas in his time but also embodied an opposition against the tradition and presented ideas on race, colonialism, sexism, science, education and rights that, in the hands of his followers, assumed forms he could scarcely realise as his. The ground he established was developed to a tacit infrastructure of Western culture that continues to work in our time. To understand Kant’s views of these issues is to grasp the emergence of new notions of humanity, education and science in Western thought. This is also important for offering alternative nations to established ones.

Revolution from within the human being: exit from self-incurred immaturity Kant agrees on differences between human minds. Although different minds may have the same structure given by nature, they differ pragmatically, or as used by the human beings as free acting persons (where the human being or his free will is the cause of his actions). Although Kant is interested in the former,

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the realm of causality, where phenomena are exposed to causes external to themselves, he constructs new notions of science and teaching and relates them to each other to enable the human being to move away from constraints of the causal realm and enter the realm of freedom. This is to become enlightened or educated and think for oneself, released from external constraints. Kant recommends any autonomous mind to establish three maxims as guiding principles of thought: autonomy or freedom from constraints as regard to oneself, communication or capability to recognise the principles of others as regard to the others and logic or consistent thinking as regard to thinking itself. Kant formulates these maxims in the following way: “1. To think for oneself 2. To think oneself (in communication with human beings) into the place of every other person. 3. Always to think consistently with oneself ” (Anth 7:228).14 In the first regard, the human being defies constraints put on him by external powers to think for him; in the second, he takes the liberal principle of seeing the world from the perspective of the other, and in the third, he thinks logically and consistently. This is what Kant terms as enlightenment to which education should lead. These maxims (policies) lead to a revolution from within the human being, where the human being exits from “his self-incurred immaturity” (WE 8:35) and employs actively faculties intrinsic to him (understanding, judgement and reason), rather than letting others think for him. Analogous to Kant’s Copernican revolution in philosophy, here a constitutive human subject is placed in the centre of cognition; he thinks for himself, communicates with others and thinks consistently independently of the constraints related to the contexts of life such as sex, gender, class or geography. This is the main aims of scientific or modern education, as Kant outlines. Attaining these capabilities, the enlightened person satisfied the demands that reason, by legislating universal laws (principles), puts on cognition. Kant summarises these demands in three questions directed to three cognitive faculties: “What do I want? (asks understanding), What does it matter? (asks the power of judgment),What comes of it? (asks reason)” (Anth 7:227). Important to keep in mind is that all these questions are asked before the court of reason with its universal laws. In Kant rational behaviour benefits all since it is not motivated by self-interest or private inclinations; rather, it is motivated by formal principles of public reason, achievable by education.

The human being as an acting being: human obligation, how should we act In the preceding two sections, I was concerned with Kant’s account of the human being as a knowing being as established by his theoretical use of reason. This section deals with what the human being should do as a free acting being under moral law, which signifies practical use of reason. Concerning cognition, Kant starts his first Critique with an intrinsic concern of human reason and its perplexity, namely its tendency to transgress its limits (CPR

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A vii)15 in seeking the unconditional. His critical project aims at solving this problem by establishing epistemological insights into limits of what the human being can know. Kant establishes that any knowledge of the unconditional is impossible. In order to establish this, he carefully accounts for how intuition and understanding work to make experience possible; the former provides the content while the latter the form, the former is human receptivity and the latter human spontaneity (the former belongs to lower cognitive faculties while faculties of understanding, judgement and reason are higher ones). Understanding is the legislative faculty when it comes to cognition.16 According to Kant, the “general problem of pure reason” (CPR B1–9) is the question of how synthetic a priori judgements are possible. He proposes an entirely new or transcendental science to answer this question (CPR A10–16/B24–30). He suggests a paradigm shift or a change of “method in our way of thinking” and establishes that “all we think a priori about things is what we ourselves put into them” (CPR B xviii); this is simply the nature of the human mind and the way it works. Thus, the transcendental philosophy or science that Kant introduces does not deal directly with objects of empirical cognition. Instead, it investigates the conditions of the possibility of human experience of them by examining the mental capacities that are required for the human being to have any cognition of objects at all. Accordingly, philosophy as anthropology investigates how the human being, through her faculties, experiences reality. Basically, Kant suggests a two-worlds system, where the noumenal world is the a priori ground of the phenomenal world while the phenomenal world is the sensible manifestation of the noumenal. In this way, the possibility of human knowledge of the sensible world based on principles of natural sciences is demonstrated; human knowledge is limited to the sensible world without being denied altogether. Establishing the possibility of knowledge of the natural world, governed by laws of causality, we have now to do with the ambiguity of the coincidence of freedom and causal relations in the same being (CPR A532–558/B560–586, GWMM 4:455), which arises as regard to the status of the human being in the world of freedom and in that of natural necessity. And this leads us to the issue of the human being as an acting being, dealt with in the second Critique. The basic question here is whether the law-governed realm of causal relations rules out freedom or not. Kant’s position17 in this regard is transcendental idealism. It is the simultaneity of causal relations and transcendental freedom.While causality governs in the realm of nature, transcendental freedom governs in the realm of things-in-themselves (CPR A336/B564). Accordingly, the human being has an “empirical character,” which is impure, and an “intelligible character,” which is pure (CPR A539/B567).Through the empirical character, human actions are governed by natural laws, while through the intelligible character, the human being (as subject or person) is herself the cause of her actions, without herself being governed by laws of the empirical realm. More clearly, Kant approaches the question of what the human being is in a “twofold way” to show that

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freedom and causality “have to be thought as necessarily united in the same subject” (GWMM 4:456). He maintains: The union of causality as freedom with causality as natural mechanism, the first of which is established by the moral law, the second by the law of nature, and indeed in one and the same subject, the human being, is impossible without representing him with regard to the first as a being in itself but with regard to the second as an appearance, the former in pure, the latter in empirical consciousness. (CPPR 5:6) Accordingly, Kant sees the human being as “a thing in its appearance (belonging to the world of sense)” subject to natural laws, but “as thing or being in itself is independent . . . in his use of reason of sensible impressions” (GWMM 4:457). In the first capacity, the human being belongs to the objects affected by senses and causal laws and thus is unfree; in the second the human being belongs to the world of understanding and reason and is free. As in Kant, noumenal (freedom) and phenomenal (causal necessity) worlds are established for the sake of each other, corresponding to the human being as an idea (intelligible) and the human being as an object among others (empirical), the world of freedom is compatible with that of causality. The former is presupposed by the latter as its formal conditions as opposed to empirical conditions. Thus, Kant establishes the human being as a free acting being but finite. For him, freedom is transcendental, or within the boundaries of moral law. In this respect the human being is a purely rational idea “cleansed of everything empirical” (GWMM 4:388), employed at the level of a priori moral principles, where the will is only determined by moral laws. It is about connections between theoretical and practical use of the concept of freedom and the human being as a free knower and a free doer. Kant connects cognition and morality to two different kind of use of reason. While the practical use of reason is “concerned with the determining grounds of the will” (CPPR 5:15) and its causality, the theoretical use of reason is “concerned with objects of the cognitive faculty only” (CPPR 5:15).These two uses concern what the human being ought to do (the concept of morality) and what the human being can know (the concept of nature) respectively. Moral truths, however, are compatible with science’s truth.18 Kant presupposes consistently that moral freedom is intrinsic to the human being rather than being imposed from outside. Freedom belongs to the human will (and so to the will of all rational beings as well) (CPPR 5:15). For Kant, practical philosophy works if we presuppose human freedom and the free will or the absolute good. In the latter capacity, the human being is an acting being, a free subject, an agent or a person with a free will. In order for the human being to act morally or freely, she must liberate herself from the casual world of nature and the sensible realm of the bodily inclinations and enter the intelligible realm of reason and its

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abstract principles applicable to any and all. Leave her individuality behind and enter the realm of the human being as a species being. Generally, Kant’s aim by laying a ground (establishing a metaphysic) is to bring together two interconnected but conflicting theses. He will establish, contra Hume, that the natural world is ordered in accordance with the laws of causality (the ground of science); for every event, there is an antecedent event that has by necessity caused it.19 Kant writes: “all which happens is at all times previously determined by a cause, according to fixed laws” (PFM §15). This is an adaptation of nature in the sense of “the sum-total of all the objects of experience” (PFM §16) or the natural world subjected to Newtonian science as well as specific natures of objects. Kant also maintains, contra determinists, that it is possible for human beings to act freely. Human will is free, or under moral law.20 He talks of freedom as a fact (CPPR 5:6). For him, “the will, as the faculty of desire, is one of the many kinds of natural causes in the world, namely that which operates in accordance with concepts.” This is a sufficient ground for morality. Kant continues: And everything that is represented as possible (or necessary) through a will is called practically possible (or necessary), in distinction from the physical possibility or necessity of an effect to which the cause is not determined to causality through concepts (but rather, as in the case of lifeless matter, through mechanism, or, in the case of animals, through instinct). (CJ 5:172) The difference between the free will as cause and natural causes is that the former is morally practical and belongs to practical philosophy or doctrine of morality while the latter is mechanically practical and belongs to theoretical philosophy or doctrine of nature (CJ 5:172). The relationships between education and the free will becomes complicated as regard to whether education is a concept of nature or concept of freedom. Theoretically, Kant presupposes freedom of the will as the ground of morality to make morality possible.21 According to him, “among all the ideas of speculative [theoretical] reason freedom is also the only one the possibility of which we know a priori . . . without having insight into it because it is the condition of the moral law, which we do know” (CPPR 5:4). However, this idea is speculative or a theoretical staring point. Education or enlightenment is practical whenever human beings practically can act out of freedom, when autonomy is the result of education. Kant’s assumption of autonomy of reason as a starting point can determine education and its concept and make the concept of education practical. Generally, the notion of critique can be related to education as a pure idea (A711/B739).22 Education as an empirical notion can be examined through the “touchstone of experience” (A viii). Kant’s elaboration of the structure of the human mind and free will concerns how reason can be disciplined and cultivated; especially what it can know, as knowledge is the essence of enlightenment as well as basis of

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human action and feeling. Like all other beings, the human being as the object of knowledge belongs to the realm of nature and under natural laws while the pure idea of humanity, idea detached from sensibility, belongs to the intellectual world, which is free but remains unknown for the human subject (GWMM 4:451). Despite the latter, we can say, Kant’s insistence on education becoming a rational science involves making it morally practical rather than mechanically practical. It is an attempt to relate it to the free will and practical philosophy rather than the natural realm of causality since it is in the former sense that it can has the free will as cause; it becomes a free choice, determining itself from itself, without preceding by any other cause. Seen in this light, freedom becomes necessary or human destiny. As will be elaborated in the next chapter, Kant sees a missing link between education in experiential and freedom realms and tries to establish a transition between the two by educating our aesthetic feeling.

The human being as a feeling being The last two sections were devoted to Kant’s issues of what the human being can know and what the human being ought to do. It was established that, for Kant, the human being is a knowing and acting being under a priori laws. The understanding legislates a priori for nature as object of experience (cognition) and reason legislates a priori for freedom and its own causality (volition); the understanding establishes what is true, and reason determines what is good. Accomplishing this, it seems that Kant has completed his accounts of “the starry heavens above,” the human being (he renders nature possible as phenomena cognisable for the human being) and “the moral law within himself ” (he renders the human being as an intelligible being free under moral law) (CPPR 5:56). In other words, he determines the human being’s “place in the world” as well as her “personality” (CJ 5:561). These were done by the first and the second Critiques respectively. However, Kant realised that his transcendental analysis lacked completeness and thoroughness to account for every and all faculties of the human being and their application. He found no systematic and organic link between “the concepts of nature and the concept of freedom” (CJ 5:195). The concept of nature determines nothing regarding the domain of practical laws of freedom, and the concept of freedom determines nothing regarding theoretical cognition of nature. It seems like the first Critique has not established a priori how the human being’s knowledge has an impact on the realm of freedom in a systematic way. In the same vein, the second Critique has not demonstrated a priori how the highest good (freedom under moral law), the end that the human being ought to follow, is applicable to the empirical or natural world. As Kant saw the issue, the realm of the concepts of nature (under the governance of the understanding as legislator) and the realm of the concept of freedom (with reason as legislator) were “completely cut off from all reciprocal influence” (CJ 5:195), and the one had no impact on the other. As a system builder philosopher, Kant could not be satisfied with this “broad gulf ”

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in his system since it defied a systematic or scientific account of the human being, as Kant wanted to provide. Critique of the Power of Judgment, devoted to ­transcendental analysis of the power of judgement as a faculty, sets up to “throw a bridge” between faculties of the understanding and reason to make possible a transition from purely theoretical to purely practical and establish a dialogue across “the broad gulf that divides the supersensible from phenomena” (CJ 5:196). This mediating concept is provided by the power of judgement and its transcendental principle, namely that of purposiveness of nature: That which presupposes this a priori and without regard to the practical, namely, the power of judgment, provides the mediating concept between the concepts of nature and the concept of freedom, which makes possible the transition from the purely theoretical to the purely practical, from lawfulness in accordance with the former to the final end in accordance with the latter, in the concept of a purposiveness of nature; for thereby is the possibility of the final end, which can become actual only in nature and in accord with its laws, cognized. (CJ 5:196) This passage is important as it establishes judgement as a middle term and purposiveness of nature as a priori “a principle, which it cannot take from experience” (CJ 5:18). For Kant judgement as a power or faculty has “principles peculiar to itself upon which laws are sought, although one merely subjective a priori” (CJ 5:177). In Kantian terms, this principle has a “territory . . . with a certain character, for which just this very principle alone may be valid,” although it has “no field of objects appropriate to it as a realm” (CJ 5:177). Beside clarifying the role Kant assigns to the power of judgement in connecting the realm of freedom to that of nature, this passage implies the importance of application of abstract cognitive rules and constitutive moral rules in the empirical world. Generally, for Kant, “the concept of freedom is meant to actualize in the sensible world the end proposed by its laws” (CJ 5:176). In this connection, the mediating function of the power of judgement can be understood if we read it against the background of the peculiar notion of nature that Kant establishes in relation to reflective judgements, according to which nature is constructed “in such a way that in the conformity with the law of its form it at least harmonizes with the possibility of the ends to be effectuated in it according to the laws of freedom” (CJ 5:176). By constructing such a notion of nature, Kant renders the transition from the realm of freedom to that of nature possible. In Kant judgements are categorised under two general rubrics of determining and reflecting judgements depending on the way they work with the universal and the particular: The power of judgment in general is the faculty for thinking of the particular as contained under the universal. If the universal (the rule, the

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principle, the law) is given, then the power of judgment, which subsumes the particular under it (even when, as a transcendental power of judgment, it provides the conditions a priori in accordance with which alone anything can be subsumed under that universal), is determining. If, however, only the particular is given, for which the universal is to be found, then the power of judgment is merely reflecting. (CJ 5:179) My focus here is on aesthetic judgements, or judgements of taste. An aesthetic judgement is “a special faculty of judging according to a rule, but not according to concepts” (CJ 5:194) and is related “to the beautiful and sublime, whether of nature or art” (CJ 5:169). For Kant reflective judgements have two functions corresponding to their function in relations to human representation of nature and representations within human cognitive powers. In the first regard, they have a rational or scientific function as they organise human representations of nature into a wholeness and direct them toward an end; they are, in Kantian terms, teleological judgements. In the second sense, reflective judgements concern free play among cognitive faculties of the human being. Importantly, the space for this “free play” is related to imagination instead of responding to concepts of the understanding. In this capacity they are aesthetic judgements, or judgements of taste. The “free play” among the human being’s cognitive faculties is due to freedom from concepts of the understanding. Since to be a reflective judgement for an aesthetic judgement means that “only the particular is and the universal has to be found for it” (CJ 5:179), aesthetic judgements are without pregiven concepts. In Kant, beauty is what pleases the human being within free play of the faculties of human mind – a pleasure that happens at the very moment of the judgement of taste. As such, aesthetic judgements precede any determination or concept. Kant sees the faculty of taste as feeling of pain or pleasure in relation to the disagreement or agreement among cognitive faculties that brings to free play of faculties a kind of harmony. Aesthetic judgements are granted by “the faculty of judging an object in reference to the free conformity to law of the imagination” (CJ 5:240) while the understanding grants teleological judgements. This is in line with Kant’s notion of beauty as “purposiveness without a purpose” (CJ 5:226). Aesthetic judgements not only concern harmony among the human being’s cognitive faculties but also are the very conditions of the possibility a priori of this harmony. They are the basis of subjectivity and objectivity. The free play between imagination and the understanding originates from the feeling of beauty and the free play between reason and imagination in the feeling of the sublime. They are, indeed, subjective experiences. However, they are communicable and as such universal (CJ 5:194). Generally, aesthetic judgements can become universal or communicable according to rules rather than concepts. Here, the problem of meaning (aesthetic judgement) proceeds those of truth (causality) and duty (freedom).

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Important to be mentioned is that reflective judgement is directed to application (CPPR 5:169). Seen from this perspective, the highest good does not remain an abstract end in the realm of freedom, but rather something that must be recognised and applied in empirical world. Thus, the worlds of freedom and phenomena are not closed monads, as it may misconceived, but are open to each other through the mediating role of the power of judgement. What is important for Kant is that all applications are rule governed or rational. Logic, morality and aesthetics are formally or a priori connected rather than by arbitrary or accidental connections. Kant writes: Through the possibility of its a priori laws for nature the understanding gives a proof that nature is cognized by us only as appearance, and hence at the same time an indication of its supersensible substratum; but it leaves this entirely undetermined.The power of judgment, through its a priori principle for judging nature in accordance with possible particular laws for it, provides for its supersensible substratum (in us as well as outside us) determinability through the intellectual faculty. But reason provides determination for the same substratum through its practical law a priori; and thus the power of judgment makes possible the transition from the domain of the concept of nature to that of the concept of freedom. (CJ 5:196) A systematic account of human faculties is thus established based on concepts of nature, freedom, the understanding, reason, faculty of judgement and purposiveness of nature, where “the consequences arising from the supersensible and bearing the sensible” (CJ 5:195). On the one hand, the principle of the formal or logical is satisfied since “only form is capable of laying claim to a universal rule for the feeling of pleasure” (Anth 7:241), and the faculty of representing the universal is the understanding and “prescribes laws a priori for nature as an object of the senses” (CJ 5:195).23 On the other hand, “the judgment of taste is not only an aesthetic judgment but also a judgment of understanding” (Anth 7:241); in this capacity, it is “the very form of our experience in general” (Puche Diaz 2017:119). Kant had to establish that there is something a priori in human feeling that connects understanding to volition, connects knowledge of the world and autonomy of the will. For this end, the power of judgement assumes the purposiveness of nature as the transcendental principle for understanding since judgement is “intermediary between the understanding and reason” (CJ 5:177, CJ 5:168). Kant writes: Now between the faculty of cognition and that of desire there is the feeling of pleasure, just as the power of judgment is contained between the understanding and reason. It is therefore to be suspected at least provisionally that the power of judgment likewise contains an a priori principle for itself, and, since pleasure or displeasure is necessarily combined with the

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faculty of desire (whether, as in the case of the lower faculty of desire, it precedes the principle of that faculty or, as in the case of the upper, it follows only from the determination of that faculty through the moral law), it will likewise effect a transition from the pure faculty of cognition, i.e., from the domain of the concepts of nature, to the domain of the concept of freedom, just as in its logical use it makes possible the transition from understanding to reason. (Anth 7:179) The feeling of pleasure is located between faculties of cognition and desire (the understanding and reason). By theoretical use of reason, Kant had already established nature as the object of experience; now he assumes a priori purposiveness of nature as a transcendental principle to establish an “order of nature” out of disorder. This is to overcome the chaotic stream of empirical precepts because, without presupposing this, we would have no order of nature in accordance with empirical laws and hence no guideline for an experience of nature in all its multiplicity and for inquiry into it. Generally, in Kant, reproduction of intuitions in imagination in accordance with rules is employed to bring unity to the diversity of experience. Purposiveness of nature is a priori for aesthetic feeling (CJ 5:189). As such, this transcendental principle is pure or formal (a matter of orientation) since it represents only the way in which the human being organises experiences rather than representing the objects of experience. As such it is neither a concept of freedom nor a concept of nature but a subjective principle of the judgement bringing faculties of the understanding, judgement and reason into harmony with each other – harmony between natural and rational parts of the human being. To summarise what has been said so far, judgement is the power of producing concepts by thinking the particular as contained under the universal. It was also mentioned that disinterested pleasures are judgements of aesthetic pleasure, or of taste related to beautiful things in art and nature or to the sublime. To this I will now add that, to be qualified as disinterested pleasure, they need to be universal and necessary – and communicable. In Kant, disinterested feeling of pleasure rather than objective sensations leads to judgement of beauty, as the beauty of the object so conceived is not something in the object but in subject or in the structure of the human mind; it is subjective but universal or communicable, as anybody owing rational capacity ought to see or feel in the same manner. Judgements of taste are necessary, exemplary and universal but not based on cognitive concepts or rules of the understanding. This is the difference between aesthetic and science that can be proved. Judgements of taste have thus no end the object must satisfy, although they represent purposiveness. This agreement of nature with our faculty of cognition is presupposed a priori by the power of judgement on behalf of its reflection on nature in accordance with empirical laws while, at the same time, the understanding recognises it objectively as contingent and only the power of judgement attributes it to

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nature as transcendental purposiveness (in relation to the cognitive faculty of the subject). Heterogenous laws of nature are then brought under higher laws. I agree with David Puche Diaz that the third Critique is “the ground for the whole critical edifice” (2017:119). He bases his argument on the structure of aesthetic judgement, as the form of judgements in general: “the aesthetic judgement not only delimits the realm of science and morality, but also unifies the very realm of human experience” (2017:119) and overcomes the split between realm of nature and freedom. Further, he sees purposiveness of nature as a regulative principle rather than being a form of cognition, as reflective judgement cannot find a concept for this principle; the notion of reflective judgement or judgements of taste have special relations with the a priori principle of purposiveness of nature. As established in the third Critique, the latter is the basis of the human being’s hope of attaining perfection, the aim of education. To conclude this chapter, Kant wants to offer a scientific or systematic account of the human being, and, as such, it must be complete and comprehensive, explaining any and all aspects of the human being. Further, this account must be done organically, where every element is for the sake of other elements. There also must be logical relationships between the ground and consequences, where consequences follow by necessity from the ground as well as with apodictic certainty. In the third Critique, Kant presents his view of the human being in a table, showing all faculties of the human mind and their relationships. I bring it here as it gives a graphic overview of the Kantian human being:

All the faculties of the mind

Faculty of cognition

A priori principles

Application to

Faculty of cognition Feeling of pleasure and displeasure Faculty of desire

Understanding Power of judgement Reason

Lawfulness Purposiveness

Nature Art

Final end

Freedom

Educationally, this mapping of human faculties or powers is a new mode of posing the issue of what the human being should make of himself as a free acting, feeling and knowing being and how this can be achieved through education. Accordingly, in this mode of education, the human being is to be created out of animality (what is given by nature) by the human being himself rather than being given by God. Thus, instead of accepting the authority of theological tradition, the new mode of education entrusts a profane type of knowledge as its foundation – a manner of rationalisation and systematisation of nature as object of knowledge and formation of nature within the human being. The mapping of human faculties provides education with a rational regulative idea of the perfect human being as guiding principle of educational practices in the phenomenal world.

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Kant’s knowledge of the human being concerns her as part of nature, as earlier mentioned. To this I will now add that Kant’s notion of the human being is ideologically constructed with vast global implications. From a provincial perspective, he establishes a universal architectonic of the human mind and introduces this perspective as that of humanity. Since Kant, the way the human mind is constituted has become extremely important since, in Kant, the mind imposes structure on human experience with the objects of the world. Kant emphatically maintains that “reason has insight only into what it itself produces according to its own plan . . . and compels nature to answer reason’s own questions” (CPR B xiii). Kant’s Copernican revolution was an anthropological turn in Western thought, a paradigmatic philosophical event in the sense that it has made European people what they are now. Although, in Kant, education is a formation of nature in the human being by formative power intrinsic to her that coincides with education in a broad sense (Bildung), Kant posits nonwhites in the realm of nature on a perpetual basis. As such, they are incapable of human perfection, attaining intellectual maturity, moral autonomy or aesthetic judgement since they are uneducable and as such inferior to white males as capable of education. Accordingly, Kant’s mapping of human faculties has political implications. The idea of the human being as homo noumenon (humanity as an idea), a member of the intelligible world, distinct from homo phenomenon,24 governed by the laws of the sensible world of appearances, has political implications.25 As a member of the intelligible world, the human is free.This is a practical freedom consisting of negative and positive dimensions.While in the former sense the human being is independent of the laws of empirical causation which govern the sensible world, the latter sense refers to the human being’s ability to adopt norms and maxis of policies of action (GWMM 4:446–447). In the latter case, the human being determines herself in accordance with laws that she herself legislates while, in the former case, she remains part of the natural world, subject to empirical causation or external laws and prone to act on inclinations, while human perfection is to obey only rules of duty or reason. Expressed differently, as homo phenomenon, the human being must obey the laws she legislates as homo noumenon (MM 6:418). The point that I am trying to make is the political implication of the Kantian construction of the idea of the human being; it is “not merely about the structure of our brain or society, but about implications of that structure for human choice, for what we should do with ourselves” (Frierson 2013:3). Rather than knowing nothing about the human being in advance, Kant’s aim is more about the implications of the architectonic of the human mind for what the human being should make of herself. Consequently, it is also about the implications of this question for the kind of polity we should create and the kind of phenomenal world we should construct. As it will be elaborated, the implications of our answer to this question are constitutive for our relationship with the other as well as for education. Seen from the perspective of transcendental philosophy, solutions to these issues are implied in the question of what the human being

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is. This means that, in Kant, the descriptive and normative aspects of what the human being is merge and build the ground of his critical philosophy. This is to say that the possibility of knowledge of things in the human world as well as human actions are conditioned by mental capacities of the human being. As a result, this is not only the perspective from which Kant philosophises in general but also that of his concern with education, with what the human being should make of herself. He starts with the question of what it is to be human as an outlook to articulate his idea of the human being. The answer to the question of what the human being is encompasses the answers to what we can know, what we ought to do and what we may hope. Yet human beings become humans only through education. Accordingly, knowledge (what I can know), morality (what I ought to do) and happiness (what I can hope) are achievable only through education. In this context, this idea is crucial since it brings together the “what” and the “how” of humanity, its theoretical and experiential aspects. Kant’s starting point, however, is theoretical, or the “what,” which is the idea of humanity, and not the “how,” or its experiential reality, as for him ideas are prior to experience.

Kantian notion of science The previous section was devoted to Kant’s notion of the human being as a break with the traditional notion of the human being as created by God to the notion of the human being constituted by rational methods of science.This was part of the rationalisation of the human being, a rational systematisation of this notion whose achievement was conditioned by a scientific education. In sum, in Kant, proper knowledge is science, proper education is scientific and proper humanity is rational or scientific; each exists for the sake of others, and each is constitutive of the others. In this section, I will discuss Kant’s notion of science as a general intellectual framework within which he establishes scientific notions of the human being and education. Kant’s commentators have scarcely paid attention to the genealogical connectedness of Kant’s idea of proper science for his concept of the human being and his notion of education and their significance for education in our days, although it has been a thorough process with implications for rationalisation of all spheres of life. This lack of attention can be partly explained by Kant’s ideas becoming naturalised and invisible so much so that scholars cannot see Kant’s view of science and education and their relationships as influencing the contemporary educational paradigm. In my view, however, the rational ground that Kant laid for education is always at the surface of education today in all its invisibility. A thorough account of Kant’s view of science is beyond the scope of this study. My concern here is rather the impact of Kant’s view of science on his idea of education – the establishment of a scientific or rational foundation for education and its implication for the modern notion of the human being. My study of Kant’s influence on education investigates the “relationships between structures of rationality which

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articulate true discourse and the mechanisms of subjugation which are linked to it” (Foucault 2007:56). I investigate mechanisms of subjugation at work in education through which the subject, power and science as true knowledge became entangled in ways that made a local subject position globally normative as the perspective of truth. Most importantly, my concern is how “structures of rationality,” as articulated by Kant, gave birth to an educational apparatus that continues to work in our time and is constitutive of our humanity and its obsession with rational choice. More precisely, my concern is formation of scientific education to show how and within what system of thought such an education was made possible. I investigate questions about the genesis of scientific education’s actuality through its metaphysical foundation in Kant. In this section, I will try to elaborate on Kant’s view of science in order to understand what he, consistent with his overall style of thought, means when he suggests a shift from the art of education to the science of education. Although this was characteristic of his time, and many other thinkers tried to adjust humanity to Newtonian science, Kant’s ambition was to establish a scientific notion of the human being through rationalisation; to establish a rational idea of the human being through adjusting the notion of the human being as well as that of nature to the Newtonian science of his time. When I refer to science in my reading of Kant, I mean science as a method of organising cognition, a style of thought and an approach distinct from prescientific organisation of cognition; it is a broad sense of science as it was conceived in early modernity. A reference to the preface to the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786)26 is helpful when it comes to Kant’s notion of science. Here, Kant makes a distinction between proper science and improper science. While the former is pure or rational science, the latter is nothing more than “a systematic art” (MFNS 468). In the context of this study, the important issue is the characteristics of a proper science as a rational style of thought. It is about a notion of rationalisation that, as Foucault maintains, characterises “not only Western thought and science since the 16th century, but also social relationships, state organizations, economic practices and perhaps even individual behaviors” (Foucault 2007:55). Rationalisation encompasses thus a much wider context than cognition and can be connected to the formation of capitalism in Europe and concomitant colonial and racist domination, constitutive of the establishment of nation states and their educational ideology – rationalisation of education.27 This can be said because Kant sees the Enlightenment as an exit from a self-imposed immaturity (heteronomy) on the one hand. On the other hand, it is an entrance into the field of rationality or autonomy where the subject has the courage to use its own reason publicly as well as privately. There are thus two notions of the human the being; the one is an immature type that due to cowardice and laziness lacks the courage to use his reason. The other is a mature one capable of using his own reason. The educational task is to transform the former to the latter; the motto of the Enlightenment is “sapere aud! Have the courage to make use of your own understanding” (WE 8:35).

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Further, the rational individual is to know his possibilities and boundaries or practice critique in a Kantian sense. This is a sense of self-knowledge according to which the individual can become a self-legislative or modern subject. Kant sees this subject as constitutive of knowledge, where proper knowledge is scientifically organised. Accordingly, the subject, science and education become constitutive of each other. Generally, for Kant, a proper science is a comprehensive system of cognition that is characterised by systematic unity and logical interconnectedness between the ground and consequences as well as apodictic certainty. Further, the application of mathematics is a further characteristic of any proper natural science. As this characteristic is not relevant for science of education, I will not spend time on elaborating it. To begin with, Kant maintains that “systematic unity is what first turns common cognition into science” (CPR A832/B860). In the same passage, he makes a distinction between system as a manifold unified under guidance of an idea and a “mere aggregate.” According to Kant, a system is “the unity of the manifold cognitions under one idea. This is the rational concept of the form of a whole, insofar as through this the domain of the manifold as well as the position of the parts with respect to each other is determined a priori” (CPR A832/ B860). The role of the idea of reason in making science possible is to organise cognition by bringing unity to the manifold of cognition. This unity is architectonic (where any element of cognition is based on antecedent element as its cause), organic and intrinsic to the system, related to the unity of the end of reason and outlined by an idea; it is like a living body (CPR A832/B860). Kant writes: What we call science, whose schema28 contains the outline (mono gramma) and the division of the whole into members in conformity with the idea, i.e., a priori, cannot arise technically, from the similarity of the manifold or the contingent use of cognition in concreto for all sorts of arbitrary external ends, but arises architectonically, for the sake of its affinity and its derivation from a single supreme and inner end, which first makes possible the whole; such a science must be distinguished from all others with certainty and in accordance with principles. (CPR A834/B862) Decisive for the Kantian overall project, this view of science partly indicates a methodology, elaborating that this method should be based on principles of reason: “science” requires “a method, i.e., a procedure in accordance with principles of reason, by which alone the manifold of a cognition can become a system” (CPPR 5:151). It is an architectonic method as opposed to a method of analogy (or induction). It is not the similarity of parts that creates unity, coherence and systematicity. The need is rather an intrinsic purpose, a unifying idea and a rational style of thought consistent with it since unity is crucial. Systematic

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unity is achieved by the ideas of law-giving reason. This is the most important feature of the scientific style of thought. In his first Critique, Kant writes: If we survey the cognitions of our understanding in their entire range, then we find that what reason quite uniquely prescribes and seeks to bring about concerning it is the systematic in cognition, i.e., its interconnection based on one principle. This unity of reason always presupposes an idea, namely that of the form of a whole of cognition, which precedes the determinate cognition of the parts and contains the conditions for determining a priori the place of each part and its relation to the others. Accordingly, this idea postulates complete unity of the understanding’s cognition, through which this cognition comes to be not merely a contingent aggregate but a system interconnected in accordance with necessary laws. (CPR B645) In matters of scientific organisation of cognition, Kant contrasts the rational to the empirical (CPR A835/B863) and focuses mainly on the work of the highest human faculties, namely faculty of law-giving reason as a “faculty of principles” (CPR A299/B356). It is the “faculty of the unity of the rules of understanding under principles” (CPR A303/B358). Reason works on top of intuition and understanding and has a unique legislative role concerning metaphysical and empirical truths. Kant writes, “the law of reason to seek unity is necessary, since without it we would have no reason, and without that, no coherent use of the understanding, and, lacking that, no sufficient mark of empirical truth” (CPR A651/B679). In science, reason assigns “unity a priori through concepts to the understanding’s manifold cognitions” (CPR A302/ B359). This is a rationalisation process through which the human being moves from nature to culture, from experiencing herself as a feeling being to recognising herself as a rational being, from animality to proper humanity, from a natural being to a moral and rational being, from contingency of circumstance to necessity and to a being with a free will (GWMM 4:393). Kantian science is signified by thoroughness, completeness and self-sufficiency (CPR B xxiii– xxiv). According to Kant, reason brings to the flow of cognition 1) systematicity and interconnectedness, 2) complete unity and 3) interconnectedness according to necessary laws. This deterministic and architectonic manner may give the impression of its happening in the natural world of causality rather than in the free world of pure reason. However, systematicity is based on one principle and unity occurs in accordance with one single idea prior to the wholeness of cognition.This idea determines the place of each part and its relationships to all other parts. This happens independent of experience, or a priori. We remember that Kant distinguishes between a “merely contingent aggregate” (CPR A832/ B860) and a system of cognition. A system is put together “in accordance with necessary laws” or logical rules establishing necessary relations between different cognitions.29

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As cognition is based on the structure of the human mind; there is a predetermined road map with determinate signs and directions that it should follow to become proper science, otherwise it remains a contingent aggregate of representations, sense impressions and confused feelings. Science is a secure way in which cognition is organized, and this organisation is monitored by the faculty of reason, which has its own rules, ends and ideas, steadily applying them on the manifold of representations delivered by the senses and putting them under different conceptions by faculties of judgement and understanding. Although an important feature, systematicity is necessary but not sufficient for distinguishing science proper from improper science. It must bring in coherence and logical order to cognition. Accordingly, any proper science must satisfy a second condition – that is, interconnection of ground and consequences, or objective grounding. Proper science must be systematically ordered and constitute an interconnection of ground and consequences, where consequences follow by logical necessity given grounds. Kant maintains: “Any whole of cognition that is systematic can, for this reason, already be called science.” He adds immediately an important condition as regard to proper science: “and if the connection of cognition is an interconnection of grounds and consequences, even rational science” (MFNS 4:468). According to Kant’s architectonic method, every element in cognition rests on a previous element.Through this architecture of knowledge, or casual chain, he establishes universal truths discernible by any rational being, as for him scientific truths are universal. In a proper science the truths of consequences follow by logical necessity or a priori from its premises, and the question of on what right these consequences have been drawn receives its proper answer. We must bear in mind that, in Kant, all cognitive operations should be justified in the tribunal of reason, with juridical certainty, and when he talks of impossibility of human knowledge of the noumenal realm, he means knowledge with this kind of certainty. As Kant operates with the ideas of things, science is about logical inferences by reason. This is exemplarily demonstrated in the first Critique, where he tries to establish a ground to prove different propositions in terms of logical certainty; he bases the relation between ground and consequence on logical interference. In every inference the conclusion is drawn from the ground and the inference demonstrates that the truth of the conclusion is drawn from the truth of the ground (CPR A303/B360). In Kant, cognition starts with sense experience, phenomena,30 but it is logical inference that allows reason to show that what is asserted in the antecedent of a hypothetical judgement is a ground of cognition for the truth of what is asserted in the consequent.31 It is this kind of grounding relation that must be established between scientific education and its consequences, rational human beings and rational organisation of polity.The same can be said of scientific cognitions since science is concerned with objective explanations that represent the order of nature. A third characteristic of proper science is, according to Kant, apodictic certainty (CPR A xv). Apodictic or philosophical certainty (CPR A92–93) is

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about absolute necessity of truths of cognitive systems. Kant writes: “any cognition that is to hold a priori proclaims on its own that it wants to be regarded as absolutely necessary” (CPR A xv). Such truths are to be established by reason a priori, or independently of contingency of experience, by the human being as a rational being rather than a sensible being. In his logic Kant writes: “What can be called proper science is only that whose certainty is apodictic; cognition that can contain mere empirical certainty is only knowledge improperly socalled” (MFNS 4:468).Thus, empirical certainty is not enough for cognition to become a science. Also, in B-preface Kant argues that hypothetical assumptions should “be proved not hypothetically from the constitution of our understanding of space and time and from elementary concepts of the understanding” (B xxiin). In Kant, certainty and distinctness are closely related. He talks of two kinds of distinctness: “the discursive (logical) distinctness arising through concepts” but also “an intuitive (aesthetic) distinctness arising through intuitions, i.e. through examples or other illustrations in concerto” (A xviii). Science is logically distinct. In sum, Kant tries to reach logical perfection, namely interconnectedness or systematicity with distinctness (Deutlichkeit) and thoroughness (Gründlichkeit), as an ideal of scientific cognition. Again, for him, completeness of a system means an organic unity, where “everything is an organ, i. e., everything is there for the sake of each member, and each individual member is there for the sake of all” (B xxxviii). By implication, for Kant, an educational apparatus must be based as well as aimed at this kind of knowledge; it is the starting and end result of education. When he suggests that the art of education must be transformed into a science, he aims at a systematic or rational orientation toward and a scientific grounding of education as a way to foster human maturity or reach enlightenment with logical certainty. Now, we are in a better position to offer a proper answer to the question of under what condition science could become the ground of education. Without pretending to an exhaustive answer to this question, it should be said that the general development of thought in Europe was such that led to the generative context of scientific education in the 18th century. In this context, Newtonian science was considered the highest achievement of humanity and was legitimate for it to claim a place in curriculum. Kant, however, had a larger political and ideological ambition, namely to revolutionise the way people think. His educational revolution was part of a larger revolution, in other words. Such a revolution was the result of changed circumstances that shifted from ecclesiastic education (the dominant educational paradigm of the Middle Ages) to a modern secular education.

Kant, science and good education Beside what was said in the previous section, in Kant, education is connected to science in two ways: 1) in a narrow sense, he wanted to make pedagogy a

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scientific discipline among other disciplines like anthropology, geography and history; 2) in a broader sense, he wanted to shift the total framework of education from ecclesiastical education or rational theology to a scientific one to provide a new metaphysics of education, in the sense of making valid universal laws and principles of pure practical reason in the field of education. To see Kant’s three Critiques in this light makes the central place of the third Critique obvious as it concerns cultivation of moral sense in reason and understanding. In the first sense, education is a science of teaching (science education) within curricula and a school framework. In the second sense, it is about educational grounding and orientation that transgresses the school boundaries and becomes the frame of the Kantian cosmopolitan education, a mode of subjectivity through which the “accomplished apprentice is introduced to the stage of his destiny, namely, the world” (DRHB 2:443). In previous sections, I explained Kant’s notion of the human being as an acting, knowing and feeling being and her vocation as well as that of proper science as the rational framework of these notions – rational ground and orientation. In this section, I will connect these notions with each other and show how they underpin education. Kant mobilises his intellectual arsenal to establish a “good,” or scientific, notion of education to realise the human being’s potential faculties in a way that corresponds to the purposes of nature and the ends of reason. He is aware of obstacles in the way of such an education. He maintains that “education is the greatest and most difficult problem that can be given to the human being” (LP 9:446). The human being is educated by other human beings like himself who may not have gone through a good education and may transfer their vices instead of making him good. Basically, the individuals are preoccupied with their own wants, inclinations and contingent happiness while good education should be released from the contingencies of individual wishes and aim at universal or rational happiness as related to the human species. Good education is thus beyond individual aims and must be entrusted to the human species. Kant is optimistic when it comes to linear notions of progress and places his own time on the top of progress “because now for the first time we are beginning to judge rightly and understand clearly what actually belongs to good education” (LP 9:444). Consistent with these new insights, for Kant, education must be seen from the standpoint of the human being and his vocation since not only “the human being can only become human through education” (LP 9:443) but also “behind education lies the great secret of the perfection of human nature” (LP 6:444). Thus, education is to realise what nature has purposively implanted in the human being. However, although the germ of human perfection is dormant in the human being, it cannot be realised immediately and by itself. It needs a proper conception of education. Kant writes: “Human nature will be developed better and better by means of education, and that the latter can be brought into a form appropriate for humanity. This opens to us the prospect of a future happier human species” (LP 9:444).

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Here, the notion of progress comes in, according to which the human species is getting better and better through time. The same can be said of education as well. More on this topic later. For now, it suffices to say that it is from this hopeful prospect that Kant puts much effort in outlining an idea of a scientific education and tries to ground it in a way that can lead to desired consequences with logical necessity and apodictic certainty – thus, rationalisation of education. For Kant, realisation of an idea of reason is a matter of its correctness. Of the idea of education, he writes: “If our idea is only correct, then it is by no means impossible, despite all obstacles which stand in the way of its execution.” (LP 9:445). Accordingly, the ground for education becoming a science is laid since, as we have seen, for Kant, science is a systematic body of cognition unified by an idea of reason. For education to be based on science means that it must, first, “develop all the human being’s natural predisposition proportionally and purposively” (LP 9:446) and, second, lead “the whole human species toward its vocation” (LP 9:446); as will be explained, education concerns thus the future of humanity in a manner proper to the idea of humanity and its complete vocation (LP 9: 447). Third, education must have an idea as an ideal of reason to be followed and as a standard for evaluating educational practices, beliefs and outcomes.The guiding idea here is that of human perfection, and its use can be both constitutive and regulative – in the former sense, by postulating a specific human type as the aim of education, it constitutes this human type as an object of possible experience, an entity to be realised in the experiential world. As such it is an object of knowledge as well. Regulative use of this idea is action guiding; it guides educational theoretical activities without concerning constitution of the aim of education. These two uses are interconnected and cover the process and product of education. Fourth, the outcomes can be drawn from the ground by logical necessity, and its proposition must have apodictic certainty (LP 9:447); last, it must be done in a “cosmopolitan manner” for the best of the world (LP 9:448).32 To be scientific or good for education means that rather than being an aggregate of accidental individual actions, concerned with contingent individual happiness, it must be a systematic body of actions of generations of humanity, unified by the idea of human perfection and based on a rational or scientific ground from which the happiness of the human species can be drawn with logical necessity and apodictic certainty. Throughout his life and work, Kant outlined such a scientific education for his posterity; he tried to put together cognitive, moral and aesthetic elements of such a humanity.33 He maintains: “What we can do is work out the plan of an education more suitable to the human being’s purpose and hand down instruction to that effect to posterity, which can realize that plan little by little” (LP 9:445). Accordingly, education of the human being is achievable in the perspective of humanity and through human progress from “a raw state” to a state where human nature has been brought under rules of reason or rational maxims. This all-encompassing rationality is to change “animal nature into human nature” (LP 9:441) – the

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predetermined destiny of the human being. Rather than the actuality of the human being, Kant sees humanity as the destiny of the human being (LP 9:442), which can be destroyed by “his animal impulses” (LP 9:442), although it is achievable through education at the same time. Generally, in Kant freedom is under law and “savagery is independent from law” (LP 9:442) or evil. Accordingly, the human being needs discipline to submit to the law (LP 9:442). Generally, good education is comprehensive and thorough in the sense of being the source of all the good. Kant writes: Good education is exactly that from which all the good in the world arises. The germs which lie in the human being must only be developed further and further. For one not find grounds of evil in the natural predisposition of the human being.The only cause of evil is this, that nature is not brought under rule. In the human being lie only germs for the good. (LP 9:448) It is important to see Kant and his influence from the right point of view, if we are to trace out his impact on our time correctly. The pivotal task that transcendental philosophy undertakes is to establish a universal standpoint of the human being as well as a universal idea of humanity, a model educator from which Kant can derive rational organisation of faculties of cognition, volition and feeling as well as their realisation. Kant will not leave these tasks to accidental circumstances but will entrust them to science, signified by logical necessity and apodictic certainty. The basic principle of transcendental philosophy as educational project is that the determination as well as the realisation of the faculties of the human being are “possible only after the subject of the determination (the human being) is cognized as he is really constituted” (CPPR 5:8).34 Seen from this perspective, a main principle is that the determination of the human being as well as his education must be based on things intrinsic to the human being, things that are a priori or are the choice of the human being himself as a rational being.Transcendental philosophy’s claim is to correct dogmatists’ (rationalists) and empiricists’ misconceptions related to knowledge, morality and aesthetic through being realistic in the sense of bringing philosophy to an earthy point from where it can focus on the kind of beings we are (and can make of ourselves) and our capacities and limits. Besides, the relationships between these faculties is organic, where each one exists for the sake of the others.This means that the human being must become an organic whole of faculties, from which one knows what to expect (which is autonomous and can promise), rather than an aggregate of actions, knowledge and feelings. Knowledge, morality and aesthetic are thus interconnected in the individual. They are also related to power relations. For Kant, good education is about subjectivation (making oneself subject to and subject of formal truths) in accordance with rational forms, we can say. It must thus focus on the human being and his intrinsic abilities and exclude

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extrinsic circumstances that impose things upon the human being that do not belong to his nature. Transcendental philosophy reduces everything to pure forms like pure reason and pure forms of intuition, time and space. The same can be said of the idea of the human being and that of education. In Kant’s hand, they are pure ideas independent of time, space and historical circumstance. They are the same for generations of humanity and can thus function as the starting point and end result of education regardless of time and space. Generally, for Kant, critique concerns pure faculties and forms. He tries to empty all material contents of ideas and keep the form, which are communicable by their rational forms as they are a priori or intrinsic in every human being. In Kant, education can be considered an inherent formative power in relation to the human being’s natural talents and powers as material. The human being is in possession of a “formative power” as an intrinsic capacity of giving form to matter. Besides being a power or faculty inherent to humanity and not external to him, this power “is a self-propagating formative power, which cannot be explained by the capacity of movement alone, that is to say, by mechanism” (CJ 5:374), as is the case with machines. In Kant, if we draw an analogy between nature and art, “our mind is an artist – a rational being – working from without” (CJ 5:374). In my view, true Kantian education is such an “inherent formative power” related to rational formation of the human being as given by nature.35 The human being has also a vocation that can be related to the formative power.The formative power distinguishes the human being from other systems like machines (clocks or cars) that are mechanically or extrinsically organised and only have “motive power” (capacity for movement); it is an extrinsic power. In my reading, the formative power and motive power signify two kinds of causality and two kinds of change. While the former is a teleological and transformative capacity intrinsic to the human being and related to final causation and the final end of the human being (human vocation), the former is imposed upon machines from outside without a plan or final end. Changes motivated by the formative power are practical or organic, they transform the organism, while changes motivated by motive power are mechanical and accidental. The formative power is thus related to human vocation or human perfection, which distinguishes the human being from other animal beings since it can be related to transformation of the sensible character of the human being to an intelligible one.36 The transformative power, in other words, is an educational capacity aiming at transformation of the human animal to human perfection since it is related to the human vocation. For Kant, we have “to carry on our existence in accordance with the highest vocation of reason” (CJ 5:108). The human being must be considered in light of its natural end, or teleologically (CJ 5:374), for behind education lies the great secret of the perfection of human nature.37 Further, Kant starts from humanism and believes that humanity is the organised “being upon this earth who is “the ultimate end of nature” and the one in relation to whom “all other natural beings constitute a system of ends” (CJ

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5:429–430) – a technological orientation related to human capacity to produce. Accordingly, humanity owns culture.The human being cultivates nature within and around herself. She is “the single being upon earth that possess understanding, and, consequently, a capacity for setting before himself ends of his deliberate choice.” For Kant, “he is . . . lord of nature” (CJ 5:431).38 Purposiveness of nature means that nature implants capacities within the human being and prepares him “for what he himself must do in order to be a final end” (CJ 5:341). The final end of education is the highest good. Kant writes: Now, inasmuch as virtue and happiness together constitute possession of the highest good in a person, and happiness distributed in exact proportion to morality (as the worth of a person and his worthiness to be happy) constitutes the highest good of a possible world, the latter means the whole, the complete good, in which, however, virtue as the condition is always the supreme good, since it has no further condition above it, whereas happiness is something that, though always pleasant to the possessor of it, is not of itself absolutely and in all respects good but always presupposes morally lawful conduct as its condition. (CPPR 5:111) Accordingly, “moral lawful conduct” or subjectivation is the end of education rather than happiness, especially individual happiness, since it is not a systematic happiness of the human species; its possibilities depend on accidental conditions that the human being “can only await at the hand of nature” (CJ 5:431). In other words, it is extrinsic to humanity, where the human being does not employ “nature as a means in accordance with the maxims of his free ends generally” (CJ 5:431).39 As an organically or intrinsically organised being, nature prepares the human being to educate himself by implanting predispositions in him. Nature does not educate him; he himself must educate himself. To be clear, given by nature, the human being is an imperfect being subject to inclinations and drives. Nature, however, has human perfection as a purpose for the human being. In the third Critique, Kant establishes the purposiveness of nature as related to the human vocation toward perfection.

Education, science and the question of grounding Scientific education signifies a scientific grounding. Important questions are: Why should education be based on science? Why, for what reason and how does Kant make education scientific? What is at stake here? And what are the consequences? These questions can be considered in two interconnected perspectives: One is the kind of criticism that Kant makes of his contemporary education. This criticism regards education’s inadequacy concerning human vocation. Kant writes: “With the present education the human being does not fully reach the purpose of his existence” (LP 9:445). This motivates Kant

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to establish a scientific ground for education that renders achievement of the purpose of human existence or human perfection fully possible with logical necessity and apodictic certainty; it grants its truth, as we have seen. It is about his Copernican revolutions and its focus on the way the human being is constituted as an acting, knowing and feeling being, a free but finite being; in the wake of this revolution, the possibility of knowledge of objects became constitutive of them. A human being is free to make oneself worthy of humanity but finite to make this individually because of the way nature has implanted these faculties in him and the way they are to be developed to their full capacities. Further, Kant is clear about the cause of inadequacies in the education of his time. It is a matter of foundation: All educational art which arises merely mechanically [without plan and ordered by given circumstances] must carry with it many mistakes ad defects, because it has no plan for its foundation. The art of education or pedagogy must therefore become judicious if it is to develop human nature so that the latter can reach its vocation. (LP 9:447) Now, the question is how education can plan for its foundation. Kant answers: “The mechanism in the art of education must be transformed into science” (LP 9:447). While art is mechanical, science is practical or organic. As cited earlier, Kant is clear that education “will never become a coherent endeavor, and one generation might tear down what another has already built up” (LP 9:447) if it is not transformed into a science. By asserting that the art of education should become a science, Kant not only establishes education as a system with necessary relationships between ground and consequences but also provides it with objective grounding or universal necessary agreement (Anth 9:482). Through this grounding, Kant wants to provide educational inferences with universal validity since, in Kant, a rational or scientific foundation provides a ground for attributing to all rational beings the same way of representing things. And this under the unifying function of an action-guiding idea of law-giving reason, that of human perfection (CPPR 5:13). As such, this idea is valid for all human beings as rational beings since law-giving reason includes the whole of humanity in its idea (MM 6:451). Given Kant’s definition of science, we get hints of his foundation for educating humanity as a whole; it also makes clear the kind of idea of education he has in mind and its place in his overall philosophy. Such a foundation must render education of the human being possible and grant its truth as being in accordance with human nature and the purpose of his existence. And this leads us to the other perspective, namely what it is to be a good education and what it is for such an education to relate to the purpose of the human being’s existence as a rational species destined for perfection. More clearly, it is about the relationship of education to the character of the human being since character allows

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human destiny to “be cognized in advance” (Anth 7:329). Further, nature wills that the human being reaches its destiny “through the appropriate development of all predispositions of its nature” (Anth 7:329). As we have seen, scientific or good education is about the development of the predisposition of the human being in line with the purpose of nature. About the centrality of the character for his educational project,40 and its relationship to nature, Kant has four points to make: 1) “the first character of the human being is the capacity as a rational being to obtain a character”; 2) such a character concerns not only the human being himself but the society in which he lives; 3) such a capacity presupposes that nature has implanted the germ of goodness in the human being; and 4) lack of character is evil since evil is without lasting principle and in conflict with itself (Anth 7:329). For Kant, character “consists in the aptitude of acting according to maxims” (LP 9:481). To act according to maxims of one’s own is human perfection or freedom. In Kant, the issue of ground of education is at the same time “the grounding of character” (LP 9:481). Now, we are in a position to ask how science renders education possible as true education instead of how scientific education was possible. Kant’s answer to this question can be considered as part of his answer to the question of what the human being is since science’s conditions of possibility can be grounded in the structure of the human mind and the way it cognises the experienceable world of objects, acts as free being under moral law and judges things aesthetically. Conversely, proper humanity is achievable only through science or, more correctly, scientific education; the human being is the link between science and education – while science grounds both – construed as objects of knowledge. Thus, the human being, science and education are interconnected laterally and render each other possible. Accordingly, what Kant means by science is of paramount importance for notions of the human being and education. Kant wanted to create a new discourse and a new way of thinking or a new culture. Accordingly, he writes: “moral culture must be based on maxims” since a maxim “forms the way of thinking” (LP 9:480); important of be mentioned is that Kant bases his view of humanity on a rational concept antecedent to it. This as part of his comprehensive plan, as Friedman maintains, “to adjust” notions of nature, education and the human being to “the profound intellectual and spiritual upheavals of the scientific revolution and its aftermath” (2013:X). The Kantian revolution was an epistemological turn, meaning that human agency or subject (always a constitutive one) equipped with profane knowledge (method of proper science, as he only has access to his experiences of things, not things in themselves) can make himself free (to act according to his maxims) and make society a locus for the good life – a place for “greatness of humanity” (Anth 7:293) or general happiness. This was a revolutionary shift from the scholastic notion of the book of nature as a source of God’s revelation (where God was the legislator) to the spacio-temporal world of Newtonian science – making this world a product of the human mode of cognition. Kant makes reason the legislator. The human subject shifts from being the spectator

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to becoming a judge. The world is a court, where every claim to knowledge should be justified before the court of reason, rather than a pre-written book of revelation. Scientific education is a rational orientation toward the human being. Although education has to do with the human being from a natural perspective and is about realisation of natural predispositions as well as empirical educational actions (empirical perspective), Kant’s perspective is a rational one as he operated with reason’s ideas of the human being, his perfection (character) and the idea of education. At stake here is a human being who has reached its destiny or perfection and organises his relationships with himself, with the other and with the world in a rational manner. He also organises society, relationships between nations and relationships between people and states in a rational way. In this process, Kant sees the faculties of the human being – his resources for development and his individual inclination – as obstacles in the way of such a development. Generally, we need to consider Kant’s notion of education as an organic part of his overall project for human emancipation through science as a general or public style of thought; everything should be organised in accordance with principles of science and public ideas of reason. Thus, Kant’s appeal is to laws of reason in cognition, morality and aesthetic; generally, the good organisation and governance of society are rational and scientific. This style of thought and organisation of polity is not achievable except by science itself. To summarise, from the perspective of the human being, the short answer to question of why education must be a science is that education, besides being based on universal ideas and principles, needs to be based on science in order for it to become a comprehensive, thorough and complete system or apparatus, where the relationships between parts are determined by a regulative idea of reason and consequences (perfect human beings) follow by logical necessity from a firm ground and with apodictic certainty. More clearly, Kant wants an education that develops all faculties of the human being (cognition, volition and feeling) in a systematic manner. Generally, in Kant,“completeness is achieving each of the purposes (Zweche) set for us, and comprehensiveness is achieving all of the purposes” (CPR A xiv). Scientific education is comprehensive since it concerns rationalisation of all faculties and complete as it concerns each faculty of the human being. Important to mention is that regulative use41 of reason’s idea of systematicity brings order into manifold of particular cognitions. It is by establishing such a systematic notion of education that Kant makes sure that he gets from the raw state of nature (the human being as given by nature) a cultural and moral being (the human being as what he can and should make of himself). Because pure principles of morality are scientific or rational, education should become a science. As was mentioned, Kant wants to make sure that education is not governed by chance and accident but is rule governed or scientific in the sense elaborated in previous section since he connects education with the idea of progress and a teleological notion of historiography; his plan includes the perfect human being

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in a perfect polity governed by a republican constitution and a federation of liberal states, where the minute things are regulated by rational principle valid for any and all beyond contingent circumstances. Thus, for Kant, comprehensive and complete liberal education encompasses the individual human being (although this is subordinated to the idea of humanity), humanity as such, the civil constitution when it comes to governance of societies and cosmopolitan international relations. Such a comprehensive educational programme needs, of course, systematicity of science, as Kant established. This is a transformative and problem-solving orientation toward education based on the needs of humanity for cognitive certainty, moral freedom, aesthetic judgement, civil constitution and perpetual peace. Such an endeavour is a matter of generations and cannot be left to accident but must be planned meticulously, Kant maintains.

Notes 1 See also CPR A804–A805/B832–B833. 2 It is not an accident that Kant’s Anthropology is a general rehearsal of his entire philosophy. It is educational in the sense of dealing with the question of what the human being as a finite but free acting being makes of itself. 3 Kant saw anthropology as a broad-based inquiry into the nature of human beings in general rather than studies of other cultures (Jacobs & Kain 2003:3). Generally, for Kant, anthropology concerns general properties as the nature of the human being rather than local or changeable ones. 4 In Kant, the human being always is a he. 5 The opposition between what is given by nature (homo natura) and what the human being can make of herself runs through Kant’s work. The former is the raw matter on which education does its work. 6 This is also to say that concern with the question of humanity is an anthropological one, in Kant’s sense, of course, since there are no other terrestrial rational beings to contemplate on this question. 7 At the same time, these two have no existence independently of each other. 8 This is, at the same time, an educational task as the perfect human being does not exist in empirical reality and is to be made possible through education. 9 A finite but free being, the human being, for Kant, is a being in between. On the one side, the human being is not an animal, which have only intuitions and “mere sensations,” without the ability to have experience, since the latter demands understanding and reason. On the other side is God, whose intellectual intuition brings things into existence; it is creative (CPR B72) instead of thinking about them. He knows them through creating them. 10 Analogous to Kant’s Copernican revolutions in cognition, we can say that Kant places himself in the centre stage and gets the human being (as objects in the natural world) to conform to his idea of the human being (his idea in the realm of freedom). Thus, it is not the ideas that must conform to the human being, but the other way around. 11 This is part of my choosing Kant at the founding father of scientific education, as no other philosopher has worked so systematically to transform the very notion of humanity through using the method of science.To de-Kant Western thought, we need a revolution of the same calibre that aims at transformation of the very principles of the Kantian notion of education. 12 For Kant, reason has its own architecture and fixed structure, and all human beings have such a reason, are rational beings and participate in reason, its structure and its laws.

78  Kant, the human being, science, education 13 The two-world model of Plato is still at work here. But ideas are produced by reason itself rather than being given in a heaven. 14 Axes of personality (ethic), power (the other) and logic (truth). 15 This notion of reason (theoretical and practical reason) overstepping itself, or going beyond its boundaries, is a general concern for Kant regarding critique of reason, recurring in the second Critique (CPPR 5:3) as well. 16 Accounting for human cognition and its organisation is, at the same time, the possibility of objects of experience (a metaphysics of nature) as these objects must conform to human knowledge. 17 For Kant,“the greatest concern of the human being is . . . to rightly understand what one must do in order to be a human being” (Kant in Frierson 2013:3). 18 From cognition to morality, from “doctrine of nature” to “doctrine of morals” (GWMM 4:387). 19 Hereof Kant’s architectonic method according to which all systems, systems of thought as well as those of the natural world, are architectonically organised. 20 “A free will and a will under moral law are the same” (GWMM 4:447). 21 Since “if freedom of the will is presupposed, then morality follows together with its principle from mere analysis of its concept” (GWMM 4:447). 22 Reason in its empirical use needs no critique. 23 So that we may have a theoretical knowledge. 24 There are two interpretations of Kant’s position, two-world and two-standpoint interpretations (Frierson 2013). While, according to the former, Kant believes in two metaphysically distinct worlds, noumenal (in which the human being is free) and phenomenal (in which the human being is determined by natural laws), the latter sees Kant as believing in one world seen from two different perspectives: the world as sensible (determined by natural laws, including the human being as spectator or observer) and as intelligible (the world of freedom, where the human being can be seen as a responsible moral agent). 25 This corresponds to the distinction Kant makes in Critique of Pure Reason between things-in-themselves and empirical objects. 26 Kant’s concern was to provide the scientific or Newtonian worldview with a certain ground. This was his main concern, one can say, and he was broadly engaged with this issue from the very outset and published in science prior to his critical phase. Broadly conceived following treaties are in science: On the True Estimation of Living Forces (1747) and the Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755), known as the KantLaplace cosmology. In the same year, he also published Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio (in Latin), or New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition. Kant’s other treaties on science is Physical Monadology. 27 This trait becomes important when we see it in light of current neoliberal rationality, where all spheres of life are subject to market rationality. 28 In Kant “For its execution the idea needs a Schema, i.e., is an essential manifoldness and order of the parts determined a priori from the principle of the end” (CPR A832-3/ B861-2). 29 Kant describes the requirement of systematicity, together with those of distinctness (Deutlichkeit) and thoroughness (Gründlichkeit), as logical perfections. These perfections provide ideals of scientific cognition (CPR A298–302/B355–359). 30 “Cognition only begins with experience, but it [cognition] does not derive from it [experience]” (CPR A1). 31 This is a constitutive use of reason’s ideas. 32 Important to be mentioned is that by presenting an idea of education, Kant establishes an “ideal” (LP 9:444) or a standard for education to be followed and a measure for educational actions. 33 The whole works of Kant see education from a transcendental perspective; those texts on pedagogy see it from an empirical one.

Kant, the human being, science, education 79 34 It is also important to bear in mind that the human being is the subject and the object of determination here. 35 This power can indeed be imparted “to material devoid of it – material which it organizes” (CJ 5:374). 36 By analogy, we can say that education is “Not merely a mean, but at the same time also an end, and, insofar as it contributes to the possibility of the whole, its position and function should also be determined by the idea of the whole” (CJ 5:375 note 2). 37 Louden (2000:37) call this species perfections. 38 Against the background of harms that this lordship has caused nature, this orientation toward nature is now commonly questioned. The same cannot be said of scientific education, although the orientation toward the human being is the same. 39 Only culture “can be the ultimate end which we have to attribute to nature in respect of the human race” (CJ 5:431). Kant emphasises that “the production in a rational being of an aptitude for any ends whatever of his own choosing, consequently of the aptitude of being in his freedom, is culture” (CJ 5:431). 40 Surprisingly, Brian Jacob (2003) talks of the centrality of character for Kant’s philosophy and anthropology but does not mention education. 41 There are two kinds of regulative ideas with which one could construct the outline of a universal history: on the one hand, a theoretical idea, constructed on the basis of natural teleology, and on the other, a practical idea, taken instead from rational teleology.

Chapter 3

Education, science and human progress

In Kant, teleology is a basic notion since nature has a purpose by implanting the faculty of reason in the human being so that he can become such a being that chooses his own ends and plans to realise them. It is through education that such a human being is possible. Nature and reason converge in the notion of education to realise the human being’s vocation, to become autonomous and mature and use his own understanding. Now, the question is: Is it empirical and existing human beings that are the aim of Kantian education or a pure idea of humanity that is to be realised in the future, and what are the relationships between the two? Kant takes a clear stand for the idea of the human being that is to be realised in the future when he writes: “children should be educated not only with regard to the present but rather for a better condition of the human being species that might be possible in the future; that is, in a manner appropriate to the idea of humanity and its complete vocation” (LP 9:447). Kant writes of his own age as “an age of enlightenment” with possibilities to work or make progress toward “an enlightened age” – toward humankind’s emergence from its self-incurred minority (WE 8:41). By analogy, we can say that Kant’s age – our own – is an age of education rather than an educated age since education and enlightenment are nearly the same; they are the starting point and the end result of progress. Further, the ends of reason and nature are such that they must be followed collectively1 and demand time spans that exceed by far the lifespan of the individuals. Only the human species can fulfil the purpose of nature and the end of reason.Thus, the need of systematic and accumulative efforts of numerous generations in rationally organised societies rather than aggregates of ill-organised individual efforts. While the former is scientific, formal and rational, independent of contingent circumstance of the individuals’ lifeworld, the latter is subject to contingencies of individual inclinations and historical circumstance. To take a stand for the former, Kant establishes the notion of progress toward the better, where the human being makes herself free from natural contingencies by obeying universal laws of reason. It is a transformative process to “develop good out of evil” (Anth 7:329) through human educational efforts. The notion of progress is then the result of convergence of reason, nature and education.

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The overall orientation toward these notions and concomitant discourses are scientific or universal. The same can be said of educational institutions and organisations since education concerns the “species as a whole” (Anth 7:327) on the one hand and is a persuasion of the species’ happiness on the other. Against Rousseau, Kant writes: “The human being is destined by his reason to live in a society and in it to cultivate himself, to civilize himself, and to moralize himself ” (Anth 7:325). Consistent with this line of argumentation, progress means 1) to cultivate nature (through the human being’s technical predisposition or the ability to produce things), 2) to civilise the human being’s relation with the other (through his pragmatic predisposition, the ability to use other for his own ends) and 3) to moralise relation with the self (through moral predisposition, the ability to discern good and evil) (Anth 7:325). Contrary to Rousseau, who sees culture as weakening human strength, civilisation as the cause of inequalities among human beings and moralisation as deterioration of the way of human thinking, Kant believes in these phenomena as human progress for the better.2 His tendency is toward rational comprehensive, consistent and complete organisation of different spheres of life or “toward an envisaged civil constitution, which is to be based on the principle of freedom but at the same time on the principle of constraint in accordance with law” (Anth 7:328), where a civil constitution (the basis of society’s endurance) is combined with freedom and law, which is a republic (Anth 7:331). Kant claims with certainty, though this is a moral certainty, that those human beings who inflict harms on others and society at last reach a consciousness of belonging to the species that eventually will realise its destiny as represented in reason’s ideal. Consequently, they subordinate their private interest to the public interest and submit themselves to civil constraints and to laws they themselves have given. In such a way, they not only obtain character themselves but also give character to the society they by necessity live in (Anth 7:330). This is roughly what Kant means by progress. Beside bringing systematicity to cumulative efforts of generations to realise reason’s ends and nature’s purpose, Kant’s systematic orientations toward education have another dimension as well. In this respect, we also need to connect geography (object of external sense), anthropology (object of inner sense) and pedagogy (the way to humanity) to a fourth grounding: the temporal or narrative dimension of human development as Kant sees it – a teleological notion of history. This because, in a Kantian perspective, “the human species should and can itself be the creator of its good fortune” (Anth 7:328); however, this capacity cannot be inferred a priori from natural predisposition but only from historical experiences. Accordingly, we need to examine how the human being has been and how he is now, as well as what he can become by virtue of his vocation, to which his nature “constantly impels” him to strive for – progress toward realisation of the destiny of the human species with regard to happiness. As the human being is not simply what he is, but what he makes of himself through education (by which he learns to use his reason publicly), his need for education is obvious; it offers a grounding for anthropology and geography as educational

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means.The human being’s destiny can be understood by studying his evolution through education and through time. To bring these educational issues forward is the merit of critical philosophy. In Kant, education is the ground of human progress from animality to humanity and from darkness to enlightenment. Given Kant’s view of science, an education based on science is a promise of bringing humanity in the highway of progress toward perfection, meaning freedom under moral law and a rational organisation and governance of society. His frequent use of notions of the path and highway indicates progress and teleology, a process toward human autonomy and emancipation from natural constraints. That education is related to the notion of progress means a connection to universal history. Accordingly, historical and educational teleology coincide. In Kant, there is “a definitive natural plan for creatures who have no plan of their own” (IUH 8:18). Given that the human being is an acting, knowing and feeling being and as such in need of education, what follows? In Kant, to call the human being an educable being is not an arbitrary act. Rather, it is based on the concept of humanity as well as in the purpose of nature. Nature has a purpose by putting faculties in the human being and plans for their realisation without realising them automatically; their realisation demands human efforts. The principle of educability does not mean that all human beings become educated.The human being must make education the process of his realisation by his own efforts. Indeed, humanity is a concept of understanding that needs realisation. Human capacity to put ends for herself is the basis of this realisation; such a realisation is imbedded in the concept of humanity and history. Kant writes: The concept of an object insofar as it at the same time contains the ground of the reality of this object is called an end, and the correspondence of a thing with that constitution of things that is possible only in accordance with ends is called the purposiveness of its form. (CJ 5:181) In this sense, the human being, in educating herself, acts in accordance with the a priori principle of purposiveness of nature. Educability of the human being is itself an a priori principle that has its origin in the purposiveness of nature as well as in the concept of humanity that as a concept of understanding contains the basis for the unity of the manifold of its empirical laws. Indeed, the principle of educability bring together the reflective power of judgement with the concept of the understanding as well as reason’s idea of humanity.3 It is the very condition of possibility of the human being as human being proper. In Kant, nature does not put faculties in the human being without purpose as reason does not create an idea without that idea being realised. In this perspective, as an object in the natural realm, the concept of the human being contains the ground for realisation of human perfection, which, at the same time, is the vocation of the human being. Transcendental principles of purposiveness

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of nature and educability are embedded in the concept of the human being as conditions for the possibility of human perfection, we can say. The human being is destined to perfection. Educability manifests the purposiveness of humanity as it is embedded in the constitution of the human being while the human being is the site for realisation of the principle of educability. This is to say that purposiveness is not extrinsic to the human being but intrinsic. As a thing in nature, the concept of the human being contains the ground of its reality; it is embedded in human constitution, as explained by three Critiques (the human being as a knowing, willing and feeling being). Understanding’s concept of the human being contains its purposiveness and its call or vocation. The human being as an empirical thing is educable in its manifold since the concept of understanding contains the unity of its manifold. Educability relates to the progress of the human being as a species from animality to freedom. Thus, for human beings to be uneducable is for them to fail to reach human perfection. Indeed, the concept of human perfection contains the human being as an acting, knowing and feeling being in the same rational being. For instance, as an element of human perfection, in Kant, moral perfection is possible only by dutiful action, commanded by pure practical reason, together with knowledge of these laws through the understanding, while an aesthetic notion of moral feeling makes space for and brings in such a feeling. Seeing education as a formative power, we have to do with cultivation of aesthetic responses to nature and art on the one hand. On the other hand, it is about formations of dutiful actions as well as the ability to bring unity to the chaotic manifold of natural world and sense impressions through the concepts of understanding. And all of these in accordance with a priori principles. Reason, the understanding and the power of judgement harmonise like in the feeling of the sublime and the beautiful. In this perspective, the third Critique demonstrates not only a mature stage of Kant’s philosophy, but also the educational character of his works, as it deals with cultivation of moral feeling as well as feeling as such so that they are brought into harmony with understanding, the concept of nature, and reason, the concept of freedom. In an educated or enlightened human being, cultivation of aesthetic response to works of art and nature can contribute to the development of feelings compatible with the requirements of pure practical reason in performing dutiful actions. On the other hand, “without the development of moral ideas, that which, thanks to preparatory culture, we call sublime, strikes the untutored individual as terrifying” (CJ 5:265), Kant maintains. Accordingly, “culture is requisite for the judgement upon the sublime in nature” (CJ 5:265). At the same time, its foundation is “moral feeling,” “a native capacity for the feeling for (practical) ideas” (CJ 5:265), as beauty and sublimity reside “only in our own mind” (CJ 5:264). It is “the idea within us” (CPR A707/B735). Again, we have the idea of the human being as the starting point and end result of education; the concept of the human being is given beforehand and determines the aim of education. Important to keep in mind is that, without the idea of educability and the related principle of the purposiveness of nature, there will

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be no human perfection.This because reason, like the understanding and power of judgement, is a natural predisposition in the human being, but it “does not operate instinctively, but rather needs attempts, practice and instruction in order to progress from one stage of insight to another” (IUH 8:19). Accordingly, nature “needs an immense series of generations, each of which transmits its enlightenment to the next, in order finally to propel its germs in our species to that stage of development which is completely suited to its aim” (IUH 8:19). Kant repeats this point in his Lectures on Pedagogy more clearly: Education can only advance by slow degrees, and a true conception of the method of education can only arise when one generation transmits to the next its stores of experience and knowledge, each generation adding something of its own before transmitting them to the following. What vast culture and experience does not this conception presuppose? It could only be arrived at a late stage, and we ourselves have not fully realized this conception. (LP 9:446) By quoting these passages, in this context, I want to make two interconnected points. One is the interconnectedness of education and the notion of progress in Kant. These two notions are related to reason unfolding in time, and as such they are historical. Historical time is thus constructed along a chronological line running in one direction, where previous generations prepare the stage for the perfection of coming ones. Such a history is, according to Kant, a plan of nature, which aims at preparing the path for full development of reason in history despite human beings acting with no plan of their own (IUH 8:18). Besides, this is a universal history since it concerns humanity as a whole and across generations as the locus of rational development and its “steadily progressing through slow development of its original predisposition” (IUH 8:18); while the individual is mortal, the species is immortal and can attain completeness in the development of their predispositions. Universal history thus concerns human development from natural predisposition to cultural achievements, a transformation of nature into history and culture. To reach the end of this process, “the teleological doctrine of nature” works together with “the guidelines of reason” (IUH 8:18), where the former provides predispositions and the latter guiding ideas and principles or a priori laws like that of educability. The second point concerns the systematicity of such a process related to unifying the manifold under a regulative idea of reason. It is not only natural predispositions that are given by nature, but also reason’s ideas are pregiven. For these to work together, as we have already seen, the power of judgement must bridge the gap between the concept of nature and that of freedom. And this is the ground of the comprehensiveness and completeness of education in Kant. As was elaborated in previous chapters, to secure the path of progress toward the end results of such a prolonged process of development, education must

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follow the secure path of science regarding its ground, orientation, organisation, ends and relationships between these parts. In other words, as progress concerns the cultivation and disciplining of reason, it is an educational process, and education, in Kant, should be a science. Generally, reason is disciplined only through science in the Kantian sense. Accordingly, to make oneself worthy of well-being goes through achieving rational or scientific conduct (IUH 8:20). As will be made manifest later, this homogenising idea becomes oppressive regarding the diversity of humanity and ways of life. Generally, Kantian emancipation has showed a darker side as regard to colonial expansion and domination.

Education as a way toward a cosmopolitan condition The previous section was devoted to the Kantian notion of progress as a matter of generation. The relationships between the notion of progress with the Kantian notion of teleological historiography were also discussed. I brought together notions of education and history, both constructed from a systematic or scientific point of view, to make sure that progress, through all twists and turns, follows a plan outlined in advance. To these ideas we can now add that progress has a rational end – a cosmopolitan condition or rationally organised global community as imperative of Kantian reason. Again, the aim is a complete, comprehensive and systematic development of all human natural predispositions to make the full use of reason possible. Although this achievement is a matter of generations, “the species is immortal” (IUH 8:20) enough to accomplish it. Kant bases a rational education of the human being and rational organisation of global community on a scientific foundation. As mentioned earlier, in Kant, it is not enough for the human being to “obtain a character as such for his own person.” He is to obtain the same “for the society in which nature has placed him” (Anth 7:329). The two correspond to each other. Kant’s ambition was “to write a history in accordance with an idea of how the course of the world would have to go if it were to conform to certain rational ends” (IUH 8:29). Seen in the light of what has been said so far, the purposiveness of nature in equipping the human being with the faculty of reason as well as human vocation legitimates such a teleology. Kant writes: “And this gives hope that after many transforming revolutions, in the end that which nature has as its aim will finally come about – a universal cosmopolitan condition, as the womb in which all original predispositions of the human species will be developed” (IUH 8:28). As we have seen, education in Kant is a transformative force unfolding in history; “this idea should still serve us as a guiding thread for exhibiting an otherwise planless aggregate of human actions, at least in the large, as a system” (IUH 8:29). It is to bring systematicity out of aggregates of cognition, actions and feelings as well as a rational organisation of the polity.The scientific organisation of the human being’s knowledge, actions and feelings and the rational

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organisation of society presuppose each other mutually. For Kant, purposiveness of nature means that “nature does not proceed without a plan or final aim even in the play of human freedom” (IUH 8:29). The history of human species becomes, then, the completion of nature’s “hidden plan” (IUH 8:27). This hidden plan aims at the internal perfection of the human being as well as “an external perfect state constitution.” Kant sees this condition as “the only” condition appropriate for development of human predispositions (IUH 8:27). In his Toward Perpetual Peace, Kant gives an image of what the rational political system can look like: “The civil constitution in every state shall be republican” (TPP 8:349) while “the right of nations shall be based on a federalism of free states” (TPP 8:354) and “cosmopolitan right shall be limited to conditions of universal hospitality” (TPP 8:357). This encompasses rights of citizens of a state, rights of nations and rights of citizens of the world that must be based on rational principles discernible by any rational being. Otherwise there will be no other ground for states and citizens to obey them; a state without rule is, for Kant, the same as evil. Therefore, “the art of education must be transformed into science” (LP 9:447) in order to secure its predetermined end result, namely a scientific or rational type of human being who acts in accordance with the pure or practical reason’s imperatives in a rationally organised society, with a republican constitution, included in a federalism of states. Kant’s transformation of the art of education to a science of education aims at a systematic unity of manifold human empirical states of being under a single idea (the idea of human perfection). He also makes education a matter of people being systematically organised rather than being an aggregate of the individuals. Further, Kant’s attempt is aimed at bringing all human affairs into the “secure path of science” or making them rational in order to secure pre-planned end results. For him, the human being’s “nature constantly impels him to strive for destiny of the species, with respect to happiness. Reason limits the condition of worthiness to be happy; that is morality” (Anth 7:326). As the human being can only become human through education, it is crucial for education to be systematic in order to hit the target, and this is possible if it follows “the secure path of science” (CPR B vii.). As such, it can systematically follow a predetermined plan or idea. The question is: Why did Kant pay so much attention to science? Is it “providing a potentially secure scientific basis for metaphysical reflection” (Harvey 2009:21), as Harvey says? It probably is. A more germane response, however, would be to relate these efforts to the notions of systematicity and progress as associated with modernity. Further, through making them scientific, Kant not only links three compatible dimensions of the human being but also views him from three perspectives: what he is (geography), what he can make of himself (anthropology), and the means (education) through which he can transform what he is into what nature has planned for him. These three pragmatic perspectives are compatible with and a basis for Kant’s critical project, where he deploys logic and transcendental subjectivity and brings together descriptive,

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normative and pragmatic perceptions regarding the formation of the human being’s character. What is most distinctive of my approach is the central place I give to education within these three perspectives. I suggest that it is not possible to comprehend critical philosophy as such, and Kant’s Geography and Anthropology in particular, without paying attention to his engagement with education as a science. Kant scholars pay increasing attention to his Anthropology and Geography, but his Pedagogy is still waiting for this attention. My aim is to bring these three perspectives together as significant for how Kant wants us to guide our moral and practical life and for organising knowledge and polity. They are interconnected parts of the knowledge of the world, which “serves to procure the pragmatic element for all otherwise acquired sciences and skills, by means of which they become useful not only for the school but rather for life and through which the accomplished apprentice is introduced to the stage of his destiny, namely, the world” (DRHB 2:443). This is, as Foucault maintains, to make room for “a cosmopolitical perspective with a programmatic value, in which the world is envisaged more as a republic to be built than a cosmos given in advance” (2008:33).

Rational apparatus of education My engagement with Kant concerns grounding, orientation, principles of thought and his constitutive and action-guiding educational ideas. It is therefore text based and theoretical. However, it does not neglect the practical aspects of his views. Rather, my attempts are aimed at highlighting the practical implication of these ideas and principles. Kant proposed a comprehensive, complete and thorough system of education to his contemporaries and his posterity, where consequences follow logically given the ground. Taking this seriously, I am reading his system in light of its consequences – i.e. education in our time and, while these consequences in light of their genesis i.e. Kant. Kant’s starting point was the way the human being, according to him, is constituted. However, as the concept of the human being was proceeded its actuality, Kant’s efforts were aimed at how and through what mechanisms this idea can be realised, through what processes the proper character of the human being and the character of the society in which he is placed can be produced. Such an approach demands “the genuine educational” institutions or an apparatus, as Foucault would say, which fit “to nature as well as civil purposes” (ERP 2:447). Further, it is about a new language and “establishing the right principles throughout and making them comprehensible and acceptable to children” (LP 9:429).To establish a system of relationships among the ground, orientation and concomitant educational discourses and base them on the human being’s faculties is one side of the issue. The other side is to establish strategies for governance, subjectivation and subjectification. In other words, his system of thought needs subjects to perform it while at the same time are themselves moulded by

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it. These relationships encompass the subject’s relation to itself (the use of one’s own reason) as well as to the others (communicability of one’s universal maxims and judgements), society and the world (objectivity of one’s knowledge). The subject is thus entangled in a web of authoritative relations. Historically, this notion of the subject (person or agent) signifies a modern human type – a constitutive rational subject as a part of the larger context of emerging capitalist and colonial Europe, a response to its colonial needs and orientation. As regard to the human being, these needs and orientation make him the subject of and subject to social truths and power relations. Kant also constitutes nature as the object of this subject’s knowledge or science. The subject’s orientation toward the world, the other and the self is determined through a formal system of thought, unified by pure reason’s idea of human perfection (a white person), realisable through science and education – a promise of an emancipated and enlightened human being to come. This subject became normative of cognition, aesthetics and morality for the exclusion of those not malleable according to the same mould. Thus, the issue of the subject becomes a question of prospect with comprehensive implications for knowledge, morality, aesthetics and rights, where a white “we” took shape whose needs and interests became the norm for the subordination of the others and for extraction of their resources, their labour and its products.The correlation of this subordination is manipulation of nature to extract its resources as well. In the context of this study, the essential point is the conclusive relationships that Kant establishes among the human being, science and education as elements of the same system of thought through which the human being is modelled, through which discursive and non-discursive actions are conducted and educational aims are determined. Within this system, proper humanity is only achievable through education, and education is achievable through science. Kant also establishes conclusive relationships between the idea of the human being and the possibility of specific kinds of cognition of the phenomenal world – free will and feelings of pleasure and displeasure.This is to establish an apparatus or system within which boundaries for what can be said, seen, known, done and hoped for are determined; it determines the boundaries for what can be anticipated as regard to the future of humanity. The power dimension of this system shows itself when it becomes the basis of new forms of subjectivity and a modern kind of individuality. It becomes a system of exclusion and inclusion of knowledge and actions. The dividing line goes between science and non-science. The claim is that if educational actions are not guided by the rational idea of the human being, as Kant conceives it, they cannot be part of a systematic science and thus cannot hit the target. They are then excluded from the field of proper education and classified as an aggregate of episodic and accidental actions subject to empirical contingencies. A more explicit politics of exclusion demonstrates itself when Kant claims that education makes humans worthy of proper humanity and thereby worthy of perfection and happiness. Accordingly, there is no humanity beyond and outside

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education and no proper education without science. The Enlightenment era dawns upon education, and Kant pioneers our time by claiming that proper education should be a proper science. Within this new educational paradigm, humanity, science and education build a new constellation of ideas, and proper education renders proper humanity possible (is its ground) while proper science renders proper education possible (is its ground). Scientific knowledge becomes thus the common ground of education and humanity and the knowledge basis informing educational behaviours. Given Kant’s notion of the relationships between the ground and consequences, these three notions presuppose each other by necessity. They not only render each other possible but determine each other’s truth as well. Humanity presupposes education for its truth and possibility; education does the same as regard to proper science. Together they constitute a closed system, where consequences are driven from the ground by necessity or logical certainty. After all, Kant’s system is a response to Humean scepticism. To defy this scepticism, Kant must underpin his architectonical method by establishing casual and necessary relations among science, education and proper humanity. Kant not only establishes conclusive bounds between education, science and proper humanity but also presents these bounds as the work of nature.The lawgiving reason that brings unity and direction into education, through its ideas, is a natural predisposition in the human being. This faculty, however, needs education as it “does not operate instinctively, but rather needs attempts, practice and instruction in order to progress from one stage of insight to another” (IUH 8:19).To maintain this continuity and progress, reason’s law demands that education should become a science of education as conceived at the close of 18th century instead of being an art. This discourse thus bases its authority in nature itself. Seen from a Kantian perspective, education is based on nature in yet another respect: “care (maintenance, support), discipline (training) and instruction together with formation [Bildung]” (LP 9:441) are parts of a system of education on the one hand. On the other hand, this system is interconnected to the natural phases of human development. They correspond to the human beings being “first infant, then pupil, and then apprentice” (LP 9:441). Further, as was mentioned, Kant considers education in light of human historical development. Education becomes self-education when it comes to humanity as a whole since there is no other force than humanity itself to cultivate human potentialities and natural predispositions. The question is:What are the practical implications of education being rationally constructed? The answer is to be sought in the fact that, in Kant, the human being is an amphibian animal capable of two antagonistic modes of being, corresponding to two parts of his nature: a passive or sensible and an active or intelligible part. Partly, the human being is “an animal endowed with the capacity of reason (animal rationabile)” (Anth 7:322). This “animal part of human nature” (natural predispositions, aptitude and temperament or sensibility) is what the

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human being is as a natural being, what nature passively makes of the human being. According to Kant, this part is “most inimical to education that would fit us for our higher vocation . . . to make way for the development of our humanity” (CJ 20:233). Partly, the human being is identified with what he actively “can make out of himself a rational animal (animal rationale)” (Anth 7:322). This part is his moral or pure character (the human being’s way of thinking). It refers to what the human being actively, through education, makes of himself (Anth 7:285). Kant is clear about the relationships between the human being as sensible and the human being as intelligible being. He writes: “According to his sensible character the human being must also be judged as evil (by nature), while seen from his “intelligible character . . . the human being is good according to his innate predispositions (good by nature)” (Anth 7:324). Thus, there is an inborn tension between an evil part and a good part in the human being. The important point is that rational or scientific education is a transformative force that brings about goodness out of evil. Kant insists that “the human being must . . . be educated to the good” (Anth 7:325) or rationality. Education is thus a progression from evil to goodness, from sensibility to intangibility. Since “nature has planted in it the seed of discord, and has willed that its own reason bring concord out of this” (Anth 7:322),4 the human being is “in need of education.” Although Kant sees an inborn conflict in the human being away from educability, he considers him as an educable animal, strongly emphasising the exclusive relationship between education and humanity: “The human being is the only creature that must be educated” (LP 9:441). Kant’s insistence on education “following the secure path of a science” instead of “groping around” or “faltering and re-stepping time and again” (CPR B vii) is due to this exclusive relationship between the human being and education. Raising education to the status of science means a universal, cumulative and systematic notion of education, where outcomes are granted beforehand. Here, some words on the role of conflicts in history and in education are in place. Kant sees conflicts in relationship with progress and human development. From this perspective, progress in history and education is not a harmonious process. Kant maintains that “the means nature employs” to accomplish the development of all human predispositions is “antagonism in society, insofar as the latter is in the end the cause of their lawful order” (IUH 8:20). Kant regulates human relationships in terms of a republican constitution (regarding citizens of a state), federation of free states (with regard to rights of nations) and universal hospitality (with regard to citizens of the world) (TPP 8:349). He sees antagonism in society as “unsociable sociability” and writes: “All culture and art that adorn humanity, and the most beautiful social order, are the fruits of unsociability, through which it is necessitated by itself to discipline itself, and so by an art extorted from it, to develop completely the germs of nature” (IUH 8:23). Analogous to unsociable sociability, we can talk of uneducable educability. Kant sees a drive to freedom in the human being away from educability and sociability. He writes: “Now by nature the human being has a powerful propensity

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toward freedom that when has grown accustomed to it for a while, he will scarify everything for it” (Anth 9:442). As such, the human being resists being disciplined or educated, processes that eventually lead to limitation of freedom under rules of duty or reason. In Kant freedom in nature is indeed not freedom proper since it is lawless; freedom receives significance in a civil society (rationally organised) and under moral law. He writes:“to the principle through which reason places limits on a freedom which is in itself lawless, they can nevertheless serve quite well (if one attends merely to their form) as examples of pure concepts of reason” (CPR A569).

Construction of the constitutive subject One of the most important and revolutionary elements in Kant’s philosophy is his redefinition of the notion of the human being and her role in cognition; he also constructed nature as the object of human knowledge5 and established new subject-object relationships.6 Further, Kant operates with a new notion of subjectivity, different from that of Descartes, as the main focus of philosophy. Cartesian dualism drives an unsurpassable line between subjective experience and objective reality. Contrary to this, Kant establishes that the very possibility of experience and its structure is dependent on the way human thought about experience is structured; nature is possible as the object of human experience. Kant has thus much to say about the nature of the external world by referring to the nature of experience while Descartes cannot. One can say that Descartes is aware of and enclosed within his own ideas or mental states while Kant explores the possibility of immediate experiences of the phenomenal world by exploring the structure of the human mind. However, Descartes’s introduction of the dichotomy of subject–object and a universal notion of the thinking subject as the primary source of certainty into Western epistemology was a basic precondition for scientific education. This subject establishes its own existence unaffected by the context of life on the one hand and reduces nature to “mere material” to be dominated on the other. For Kant, it was not only nature as the object of knowledge that was at stake, but the natural or animal part of the human being must also be brought under the control of reason as it was judged as evil. This was a crucial step toward the West becoming the universal measure of humanity since it brought in a notion of a thinking and knowing subject independent of circumstances in which it lives, knows, acts and feels. Descartes believed in the power of reason “by nature being equal in all men.” His concern was educating humanity to “apply,” use and “conduct” this power well (Descartes 1997:72) since having a faculty does not automatically mean its proper use. Kant expanded this dichotomous notion of constituting subject in two interconnected ways. Partly he added a time axis to it. The act of “I think” does not happens once and for all. It must happen in each moment and act of thinking. The subject is not a substance as in Descartes, but its faculties are universal. In addition, Kant places the body in the realm of appearance and

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reason in the realm of freedom and noumena (a mind-independent reality), the relationships of which are based on antagonism. The important point in this context is that, as Bowie (2003) maintains, Kant made subjectivity the focal point of philosophy, and this was a shift from the old to modern philosophy. Kant applies his two-way approach to subjectivity. Within this context, subjectivity is related to the possibility for lived experience within a lifeworld while the subject is the possibility of being a certain human type or a definite type of person that is possible within this lifeworld. In the latter respect, Kant gave the notion of the subject its modern educational, cognitive, aesthetic and moral significance as a transcendental subject, as a necessary precondition for thinking and the condition of possibility for all knowledge, morality and aesthetic. As such it contains all the conceptions, principles, ideas and qualities it ascribes to the sensible world of nature as well as legislation in the intelligible world of freedom. In the former respect, the subject is an entity given by nature and constituted by empirical circumstances. As a result, a tension emerged between the transcendental subject (the constitutive subject) and the empirical notion of the subject (the constituted subject). Foucault sees this tension as the “polemic of contemporary philosophy” (2008:105). Foucault himself tries to shift the focus from transcendental subject to empirical subject; this means to reverse the focus from the subject as the condition of possibility of all experience to the subject as constituted by experience. Kant redefined the human being, science and education by blaming rationalists and empiricists for their attempt to adjust human cognition to objects of an independent reality. As mentioned, he revolutionised philosophy by reversing these relationships. He established the position of the human being as that of a transcendental subject. Instead of a subject always situated in linguistic, cultural, social and political situations, this Kantian notion of the subject is constitutive of all knowledge; it is a constitutive subject instead of being constituted by historical conditions. It is given before any knowledge and aesthetic judgement and at the start of all cognitive and aesthetic processes, prior to them and conditioning them. Not only objects of the empirical world comply to the structure of the mind of this subject, but it also knows the truth about itself since it, through education or enlightenment, can use this structure in all spheres of life. Thus, this structure is a priori or given before any experience, and the structure of experience complies with it. In his essay “What Is Orientation in Thinking?” Kant argues for a shift of epistemic paradigm, where the modern subject is encouraged to shift from methods of rational theology to those of reason. As in Kant, the idea of such a human type was anterior to its empirical existence, and this idea became constitutive of the human being; it also guides educational practices. As mentioned earlier, Kant takes his ideas of the human being as true (LP 9:444) since they are a priori given and part of the purposiveness of nature.These ideas are, at the same time, his adjustment of his notions of education and that of the subject to Newtonian science. Indeed, by inventing the idea of perfect humanity as

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an action-guiding and constitutive idea, Kant provided a universal standard to which actual individuals must comply – in the same manner as objects must comply to human cognition.7 Through Kant, the idea of a transcendental subject and a new human type, a scientifically minded human type, homo criticus, became the starting point and end result of education. Foucault talks of the genesis of “homo criticus” through Kant’s critical philosophy, an image of the human being “the structure of which” was “essentially different from the image of man that went before. . . . Which is to say that, in addition to its particular role as a ‘propaedeutics’ to philosophy, the Critique would have also played a constitutive part in the birth and the development of the concrete forms of human existence” (Foucault 2008:19–20). Thus, Kant was not only concerned with the transcendental condition for possibility of a certain type of human being but also with its concrete form – its realisation through education. It was about embodying an ethos of enlightenment in the real world. Kant’s Copernican shift, where the subject and the subject changed place, is the birthplace of this human type and the transcendental or constitutive subject. Instead of its being constituted by conditions of its lifeworld, this subject is constitutive of knowledge, morality and aesthetics as they as a priori principles are constitutive of it. Different Kant scholars are usually focused on the importance of the Kantian shift within their own disciplines, although Kant’s engagements and influence are comprehensive and cross-disciplinary.To my mind, this shift must be seen as an intersectional point of the transformations that changed Western culture in its ground and brought in new dimensions to European modernity, a process that was antecedent to Kant, although he became its philosophical leader. In this regard, I follow Foucault and his concept to “envisage modernity rather as an attitude than as a period of history” (Foucault 1984:39) and relate it to the human type that emerged from the Kantian revolution in Western thought and as part of a rational world system prefigured by Kant. By “attitude,” Foucault continues: I mean a mode of relating to contemporary reality; a voluntary choice made by certain people; in the end, a way of thinking and feeling; a way, too, of acting and behaving that at one and the same time marks a relation of belonging and presents itself as a task. A bit, no doubt, like what the Greeks called an ethos. And consequently, rather than seeking to distinguish the “modern era” from the “premodern” or “postmodern,” I think it would be more useful to try to find out how the attitude of modernity, ever since its formation, has found itself struggling with attitudes of “countermodernity.” (1984:38) Accordingly, modernity and its educational ideology, the Enlightenment, were struggles for gaining hegemony and domination. The ethos of modernity, as we saw, was signified by autonomous use of one’s own reason in public

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settings, away from acceptance of old authorities. This use of reason was a universal intellectual orientation in dialogues with one’s own time. It was a peerto-peer rational conversation. Indeed, the new rising class and concomitant capitalism were not satisfied with local resources and scopes but had claims to global domination, and Kant gave voice to these needs and demands by establishing a bourgeoise universal and cosmopolitan subject. This can be said because a different subjectivity with a new orientation toward the self, the other and the world was constituted; Kant saw also the potential of science to function as the ground on which this orientation was based and the apparatus through which it could operate. Due to becoming the intersection of these forces, the new subject also became the contact point of new notions of cognition, morality and aesthetics, as Kant conceived. Indeed, despite claims to universal validity, Kant made the structure of male Western subjectivity (subjective consciousness) the condition of objective or scientific knowledge and the origin of rules of duty as well as the source of the capacity to apprehend as well as the ability to produce something beautiful (to appreciate the beautiful and sublime in nature and create beauty in the arts). Through these convergent capabilities, subjectivity became the link between the domain of freedom and that of nature (as the object of human knowledge). This was a fundamental step into a new era since all these capabilities were alienated from deities and placed in the human being herself. More radically, this sense of autonomy was established at the very condition of being a human being. The modern subject became thus a transformative force toward itself, the other and nature (education leads to civilization and moralisation).

Scientific construction of the human being In the previous chapters, I was trying to show that Kant’s mapping of human faculties was aimed at constructing a transcendental subject as the basis of concrete forms of subjectivity in modern societies and as the subject position for the possibility of new forms of knowledge, morality and aesthetics. All of these as part of a Kantian project to foster a new human type: the modern human being. As the human being is constitutive of knowledge and of the phenomenal world, the kind of human being that we educate is thus extremely important for the kind of world we wish to live in. Accordingly, for Kant, human perfection, the purpose and the ground of constituting a perfect world, is the aim of his critical project, and science is the firm ground on which this perfection can be built while education is the means for achieving this aim. To not leave this important issue to accidental contingencies of circumstances, Kant presents science as the secure link and the mode that brings these three ideas together in a systematic manner; it is the ground on which the proper notion of humanity rests, the secure path through which a perfect humanity is achievable. Accordingly, scientific education signifies an orientation toward the human being and his place in history and society rather than being a specific educational practice

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or theory of education. It is a rational orientation that emerged as an organic part of the Kantian system of thought, where the power of reason constructed an idea of the enlightened human being realisable through education, – a human type capable of practicing critique in the sense of being aware of its limits and powers.This idea of the human being was considered to play an action-guiding role in practice of education. Further, the idea of scientific education is a formal orientation, and its basic aim is to produce “rational well-being” as the highest good rather than “well-being, which each individual depicts to himself according to his inclination in this or that way.” Rational well-being is formal and valid for all rational beings. It is good by virtue of “objective principles, which requires universality” (Anth 7:331). Accordingly, in scientific education, abstract ideas are crucial since they function as educational ideals, which are independent of the contingencies of individual circumstance. As such, they are more appropriate to function as model educators than existing human beings since exemplary individuals cannot lead the human being to perfection “no matter what degree of formation they are able to bring to their pupils” (Anth 9:446). Examples of ideal human beings can be imitated, as they, by their example of life, show that things are possible. However, they cannot replace ideas of reason since they live and act in contingent historical circumstances and cannot be valid over time. Ideas are, by contrast, rational, a priori and universal and have a constitutive and regulative role independent of experiential contingencies. They bring systematicity to aggregates of sporadic generational and individual educational actions and direct them toward human vocation. They can make a rationally organised collective of otherwise unorganised individuals work toward common ends of humanity rather than being drawn in all direction by ends based on their own contingent inclinations. As Kant, more than any other philosopher, was seriously concerned with bringing up an enlightened human being, he dealt with the application of his idea of the human being in the empirical world, although transcendental philosophy may seem to have no relevance for society. In suggesting ideas of the human being and education, Kant is more interested in the practical results these ideas. In postulating humanity as the subject and object of education rather than individual human beings, he plans to establish a scientific or enlightened style of life and the corresponding human type to conduct such a life (cognitively, aesthetically and morally) – an enlightened human type that thinks for herself, thinks from the perspective of the other and thinks coherently. Basically, since, in Kant, the human being cannot have access to things in themselves, rational or abstract ideas of these things become the basis of moral choices and rational organisation of the polity. Accordingly, working properly with formal or logical organisation of abstract ideas is the most important thing the human being can do and be educated for. And rational organisation of cognition or science is what Kant calls for. This is a task of reason, for which humanity should be educated. Reason should learn the correct way ideas can be derived from each other, connect to each other and relate to the whole in a systematic manner

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and in accordance with a priori principles, hence the importance of rationality. As a result, consistency of systems of ideas is more important than things in the sensible world as the latter must conform to the former. Distinction between reality and appearance is also a result of the idea of reality becoming an object of knowledge only as appearance. Accordingly, Kant constructs an idea of the human being stripped from empirical contents of specific human beings such as gender and physical appearance and concerns only human beings as knowing, acting agents (as persons or subjects) as well as feeling rational beings conducting a life in accordance with universal laws. Kant presents a clear and distinct idea of humanity as a rational being as the starting point and end result of education; it is the starting point as it precedes the concrete existence of the human being, and it is the end result as education aims at it. Basically, Kant’s orientation is the results when it comes to application of scientific principles. He writes: “Whether someone’s treatment of the cognitions pertaining to reason’s business does or not follow the secure path of a science – this we can judge from the result” (CPR B vii). As Kant thinks rationally or scientifically, his concern is universal validity of his ideas of humanity and education rather than the context of his own life and work. Accordingly, he invents an a priori idea of humanity as a creation of “lawgiving reason, which includes the whole species (and so myself as well) in its idea of humanity as such, includes me as giving universal law along with all others” (MM 6:451). So, if someone questions the empirical existence of Kant’s perfect human being in the sensible world, he would agree. However, he would immediately add that it is about heuristic use of the regulative idea of humanity in education rather than human beings as they are. However, ideas are constitutive of the human being. Kant engages with idea of the human being as “he ought to be” (MM 6:480), or what he can make of himself through education or enlightenment. This is the reason why Kant refuses to accept education through good examples. As mentioned, any empirical example is by necessary limited to its contingent circumstances, and Kant is not satisfied with a less than universally valid idea of the human being8 since this idea of the human being is applicable to all circumstance while the reverse cannot be valid. As we will see, this is the main problem with Kant’s educational theory. It becomes racist, colonial, authoritarian and imperial as Kant tries to impose his own perspective on humanity. Scientific orientation brings systematicity and coherence to the aggregate of educational actions. The human species works like a system rather than an aggregate of individuals (or multitude) that pursues its path toward its destiny, a cosmopolitan society. Reason’s ideas make a scientific orientation possible. Kant aims at bringing about the scientific human being, homo criticus, a type of human being that is fostered by science and acts scientifically in a rationally organised society. Education is thus a process of subjectification, without Kant mentioning it. As Kantian human type is not given by nature, it is to be

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constituted by scientific education. There is thus conflict as well as collaboration between education and nature; the science of education should go beyond the given and reshape what is given by nature in accordance with the ideas of reason. The germ of this, however, is implanted in the human being by nature. Kant is clear about the human being consisting of natural (evil) and rational (good) elements; as natural being he is given by nature as an animal being in the sensible world and constrained by laws of causality. As Kant is interested in what the human being makes of the stuff given by nature, he studies the human being transcendentally (how the human being is possible), empirically (how the human beings are) and pragmatically (what the human being as an acting being makes of himself). Although anybody is in possession of faculties of knowing, acting and feeling at a transcendental plane, it is not given that all make proper use of these faculties at an empirical level or can make themselves into proper human beings at a pragmatic plane. Kant starts from the idea of the human being as a standard and maps the faculties of the human being; he describes her to prescribe what she should be. Education becomes the way through which Kant’s idea should be produced in experience. Accordingly, the idea of the human being has action-regulating and systematising functions when it comes to education; it is a model and a standard to live up to rather than an experiential actuality. It also can function as the basis for appraisal of human moral actions: “it is only by means of this idea that any judgment as to moral worth or its opposite is possible” (CPR A315).

Notes 1 Kant places the collective against the “multitude” that “does not yield a system but only an aggregate gathered together” (Anth 7:327). 2 For instance, Kant writes of the role of war that “civil or foreign war in our species, as great evil as it may be, is yet at the same time the incentive to pass from crude sate of nature to the civil state” (Anth 7:330). 3 Kant calls reason’s ideas as a kind of concept. Reason’s ideas of the human being and the understanding’s concept of the human being both contain a priori her perfections through educability. 4 Also: “The human being wills concord; but nature knows better what is good for his species: it wills discord” (IUH 8:21). 5 “The order and regularity in the appearance, which we entitle nature, we ourselves introduce. We could never find them in appearance, had not we ourselves, or the nature of our mind, originally set them there” (CPR A 125). 6 As Pippin maintains “The implication of Kant’s argument was a more comprehensive and wide-ranging revolution in conceiving mind-world and subject-object relations than ever before effected within the Western tradition” (Pippin 1997:9). 7 The power of understanding legislates as regard to the human being as part of the realm of nature, and reason does the same as regard to the human being as a free acting being, and the power of judgement intermediates between the two. Further, in a systematic manner, the scientific idea of the human being and the scientific idea of education are interconnected, and one exists for the sake of the other. In his Lectures on Pedagogy, Kant

98  Education, science and human progress is clear about his idea of education preceding experience as the idea brings unity into the system and determines the relationships between its parts in an organic manner, otherwise it remains an aggregate of disconnected ideas. 8 “A good example (exemplary conduct) should not serve as a model but only as a proof that it is really possible to act in conformity with duty. Law itself must serve as our incentive” (MM 6:480).

Chapter 4

Scientific education and human diversity

If humanity exclusively consisted of white, bourgeoise male Europeans, there would have been no contradiction in Kant’s philosophy. However, humanity is signified by diversity of ways of life and perspectives on the world and corresponding rationalities of whom Kant was aware. Instead of using this diversity in construction of the human being, he tried to homogenise it through an idea of the human being applicable to all beyond contextual diversity. Moreover, he saw this diversity though a lens of domination and used it as the basis for a structure of inferiority and superiority among different parts of humanity. As mentioned, he was aware of conflicts within humanity and sided with white male Europeans and assigned to them an exclusive role as law giving. Like in cognition, it seems that Kant tries to bring systematic unity to the manifold of ways of life by a formal idea of reason – that of human perfection – which regulates education, science, morality and power relations among human beings globally. And this becomes problematic when he does it from a white male perspective. This creates a contradiction at the heart of critical philosophy dissimilar to paradoxes between transcendental and empirical subject. Kant claims universal validity for his ideas on the one hand and philosophises from a German bourgeoise perspective on the other. His universality, then, confuses a local perspective with a universal one. Seen from a Kantian perspective, his totalising idea of the human being and its application to the diversity of people is not arbitrary since it is formal and released from all empirical contents and can be applied independently of the contingency of empirical circumstances. Kant sees himself capable of philosophising outside his body, his historical context and his own interests and needs. Accordingly, he thinks for any and all, and his ideas must be universally valid. He bases his vision of uniformity of behaviour of states and human beings on an idea of human perfection. Generally, “an idea,” Kant maintains, “is nothing other than the concept of a perfection which is not yet to be found in experience” (LP 9:444). This means that ideas must be applied “in the experiential world . . . to give objective reality” to their unifying function (WOT 8:139). Otherwise they will remain mere ideals without relevance for human practices. Kant wanted to educate people around the globe in accordance with his

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ideas of education and the human being. The idea of education sets boundaries within which one makes oneself worthy of happiness and realises the hope of happiness so central for Kant’s teleological historiography. Human beings reach the purpose of their existence, which is freedom in accordance with rational principles. This freedom is formal and reachable through a process of rationalisation. Enlightenment or education is conceived as autonomous public use of reason in accordance with rational forms. However, there is an obstacle in the way of rational uniform thinking: the diversity of ways of life and rationalities that first must be solved for happiness to be possible. And this solution comes through universally valid rational principles. Kant writes: “For how differently do people live! There can only be uniformity among them if they act according to the same principles, and these principles would have to become their second nature” (LP 9:445).The task of education, then, is to subsume all subjects to the same set of principles by making these principles the “second nature” of the individuals. The overarching unifying idea is human perfection through education.The rational idea of human perfection or the form of the whole integrates education into the overall Kantian critical project for emancipation of humanity on the one hand and determines a priori its position within this project on the other. It also brings systematic unity into education and makes it scientific to use it as means for the moralisation of human beings. Preoccupied with an exclusive notion of universality, Kant never reflected that ideas can be constructed and used from a variety of perspectives and interests. And his own notion of human perfection was constructed from his local perspective and cannot be universally valid unless it engages with various perspectives ready to interact on an equal basis. He sees no need of participation and negotiations among all relevant perspectives for ideas to become universal. A participatory notion of universality is a matter of deliberate decisions made by human beings with different perspectives to participate in it rather than being given by virtue of its logical form since logical consistency is one requirement of the universal among many others and revisable. Further, the universal is revisable. Those who share such a universality can leave it by or expand it in light of new insights, new dialogues and understandings; it also changes as result of interaction with other notions of universality. Such a notion of universality would then be translational – aimed at common understanding rather than imperial imperatives. Kant takes the side of the latter by disqualifying the perspectives of the others by reference to their skin colour or the like.1 Now, the question is why Kant pays no attention to the diversity of ways of life. Why he chooses to make the European way of life dominant. What are the consequences of such a choice? What are its educational implications? The answers can be sought in a rising will to domination that finds intellectual expression in Kant’s work and makes him the mouthpiece of white male Europeans and their imperial ambitions. It is not an accident that, in Kant, education or enlightenment become a move away from diversity of ways of life toward uniformity and formal laws of European reason.This is the philosophical side of

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the colonial coin; in Kant, rational and colonial uniformity coincide. This was done as part of a wider enlightening mission by critical philosophy to bring education into the secure path of science away from diversity of art, a shift of paradigm that places uniformity above diversity. For Kant, art was related to human skills, the ability to perform universal principles or make things in contingent empirical situations (what we actually do; our know-how) (CJ 20:304), while science was related to universal principles, or “theoretical employment” of reason to formal or objective principles (what we ought to do).2 For Kant, freedom means to move away from nature and bring the diversity of ways of life under predetermined rational principles since for him universality is identical to uniformity – to act in accordance with maxims, deviation from which can exclude one from the sphere of proper humanity. Empirically, this has meant a mechanism for establishing hierarchies of superiority and inferiority – a mechanism of classification and systematisation – on basis of which Kant classified peoples and cultures and made some superior to others. Kant brings collective and cultural dimensions to education: “The education of human race, taking its species as a whole, that is, collectively (universorum), not all of the individuals (singulorum)” (Anth 7:328), he writes; according to him no individual can reach universal uniformity by himself since the life of individuals is finite in relation to human perfection. Human perfection is a matter of collective progress through countless generations; it is a moralisation process with universally valid principles rather than being limited to the individuals; it is collective since it is in society that the human being must “cultivate,” “civilize” and moralize” himself (Anth 7:324–325). Kant, against Rousseau, sees progress as intrinsic to humanity since in all other animals every individual is capable of reaching its destiny individually; “with the human being only the species, at best, reaches it,” he continues, “so that the human race can work its way up to its destiny only through progress in a series of innumerably many generations” (Anth 7:324). Thus, notions of education and progress are taken to be intrinsic to humanity and mutually related as part of a culture of progress. This is, at the same time, the human being’s capability to have character or perfect himself: “according to ends that he himself adopts” (Anth 7:321). To become an enlightened human being is a process of making oneself a rational animal out of a natural animal “endowed” with the capacity of reason. This is a process of progress toward scientificity or systematicity. In the process, the human being “first preserves himself and his species; secondly, trains, instructs and educates his species for the domestic society; thirdly, governs it as a systematic whole (arranged according to principle of reason) appropriate for society” (Anth 7:322).3 For Kant, preservation of the individual and the species is something natural and common between animals and humans.To educate oneself for a civil society and govern oneself as a systematic whole is to give character to oneself and one’s society; it is to rise oneself above nature within (inclinations) and nature outside oneself. Here, Kant draws a demarking line between those capable of educating and governing themselves

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and those who are not. Unsurprisingly, this line goes along racial and colonial divides. More on this later; for now I will reiterate my view that racism and colonialism are intrinsic to the Kantian system of thought rather than episodic or imposed on it from outside. They are endemic to Kant’s view of science and scientific and his systematic orientation toward humanity. As was mentioned, education concerns humanity “collectively (universorum)” rather than human “individuals (singulorum).” Kant judges the truth of two approaches by his criteria of systematicity. While, in the latter, “the multitude does not yield a system but only an aggregate gathered together” (Anth 7:328), the former yields such a system. As we remember, to yield a systematic organisation of things is to be rational or scientific while to be an aggregate signifies an irrational, unorganised and chaotic situation, without any proper relations between parts or a guiding idea, plan or right direction. Thus, for the human being to be educated is to systematise or rationalise his life and his relationships with the others and with the world. Accordingly, scientific education becomes constitutive of humanity as a collective whole and rational organisation of the polity. Scholars like Robert C. Solomon (1988) see the root of the problem of conformity in Kant’s notion of transcendental subject becoming the entire concern of philosophy. As this notion of the subject functions as the universal paradigm of all modern persons everywhere, all selves are supposed to share the same structure and obey the same set of rational rules that with time have become those of colonialism. Education has then been shaped around this notion of subject and its assumed need to progress toward perfection. Although established in the image of the white man, this subject was assumed to be any person in any place and its needs valid for any and all everywhere at any time. These assumptions have since caused serious colonial-educational problems as the white subject has become the measure of education and humanity.Wording the assumption of a transcendental subject as “transcendental pretense,” Solomon astutely writes: “In its application the transcendental pretense becomes the a priori assertion that the structures of one’s own mind, culture and personality are in some sense necessary and universal for all human kind, perhaps “for all rational creatures” (1988:7). Although “transcendental pretense” is a powerful metaphor and marks an authoritative image of man to be imposed on humanity across cultures, continents and times, I prefer to term this problem as transcendental difference since having the transcendental subject as a form and as the starting point in education and imposing a pregiven or a priori form on any and all is one side of the contradiction whose other side is the impossibility of the other becoming like or equal to the self since the other is always the other and not reducible to the self. Besides, in Kant the other is not educable and as such incapable of becoming autonomous. The implication of ineducability is thus incapability of the other to govern; the other is to be governed by the self. Accordingly, a structure of domination is established at a transcendental level to be realised in the empirical world. It is not about other subjects being like the self but about hegemony and

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domination, putting oneself in a superior position inaccessible to the other and constructing the other accordingly. This inaccessibility is not just historical but is embedded in the very structure of modern educational institutions today. If it were about likeness or resemblance between the self and the other, some sense of equality would have come into the picture in terms of recognising the same set of rights to the other; it is, however, about subordination of the other. The other becomes disposable. Seen in a historical and global perspective, it is about inequalities based on modern race and colonial differences that take different expressions in different parts of the world. Its core characteristic is a complicated matrix of power placing Europe in the position of truth and enlightenment, a position that supposedly legitimates colonial domination and the inferiority of the other, as Quijano (2000) maintains.While Quijano sees the issue in terms of the coloniality of modernity and the global system of capitalism, Edward Said starts with the notion of discourse and knowledge production in order to “understand the enormously systematic discipline by which European culture was able to manage – and even produce – the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively during the post-Enlightenment period” (Said 2003:3). In this perspective Orientalism is “a Western style of domination, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (2003:3).The Orient is then a “man-made” entity,“an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West” (2003:5). Seen from the perspective of this study, Orientalism is a part of a wider context of rational-colonial organisation of the globe. Said sees Orientalism as an academic or scientific discipline, “a way of coming to terms with Orient that is based on the Orients’ special place in European Western experience” (2003:1). Generally, Said sees Orientalism as “a style of thought based on an ontological and epistemological distinction between “the Orient” and (most of time) “the Occident” (2003:2), whose genesis is the late 18th century. He writes: “Orientalism can be discussed analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient – dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing view of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it” (2003:3). Most interestingly, as Said sees, Orientalism can be manifest or latent (2003:206). What is important in an educational context is that the Orient was created through knowledge production about the other; it is about the scientific classification of humanity and the invention of the inferior other whose implications are latent in the very structure of educational institutions and disciplinary tradition. Said asserts rightly that “the Orient was almost a European invention” (2003:1). Like Said, Enrique Dussel (1995) maintains that the invention of Latin America was related to the spread of European imperialism and colonialism.4 Further, this scheme of geopolitical divide was accompanied by “the social classification of the world’s population around the idea of race” (Quijano 2000:533).What Said, Dussel and Quijano bring to attention is Eurocentrism, a

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mode of rationality and a mental construction that has been confused with the universal and pervades the global model of power today. There are genealogical connections between the racial axis and the colonial axis of classification of the world’s population as well as that of the gender axis. Therefore, the model of power that is globally hegemonic today presupposes an element of coloniality, as Quijano (2000:533) maintains. My mention of Said, Quijano and Dussel is aimed at founding alternative views of the rational and systematic organisation of the globe suggested by Kantian paradigm. It makes it possible not only to question the relationships between systematicity and truth but also to conceive of the modern world system as a sociohistorical structure coincident with imperial expansion of capitalism. Kantianism has played a decisive role when it comes to legitimising this system as it considered the expansion of Western imperialism as an enlightening or educational process. And this leads us to educational colonialism.

Kant and scientific colonialism: the uneducable others Previous chapters were devoted to Kant’s question of who the human being is and the way he suggests us to qualify ourselves for humanity, happiness and freedom of acting in a rationally and organised polity; the latter is a matter of people being capable of governing themselves, otherwise they are to be governed by forces external to themselves. It was mentioned that Kant established a systematic strategy for inclusion and exclusion based on who is capable of educating and governing themselves. In order to understand who is included, why and on what basis, we need to shift the focus from what to who the human being is and why belief in such a notion of human being is necessary. Further, in a Kantian manner, we can ask questions of the relationships of the Kantian human type to herself (ethics), to the other (power) and to the world (truth). Kant considers education as an active and transformative approach to one’s life (and to nature) through which the crudity of one’s natural predispositions and animal tendencies can be transformed to moral character. Further, it means to give character to one’s society – to establish a civil society. Human perfection means a life under eternal uniform laws of reason rather than under diversified contingencies of empirical situations or the raw state of nature; the former is a scientific or systematic mode of being where there is a logical relation between the ground and consequence while the latter is an aggregate of events without logical relations between the two. To establish the former mode, the human being is to overcome the diversity of his inclinations as well as natural laws and obey universal rules of reason or duty; this is to develop “good out of evil (Anth 7:329). It is also to rationally organise all spheres of life and polity as well as relationships between states. If, in the first respect, the individual makes use of her free will and makes herself worthy of humanity, in the second respect it is

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about “civil constitution” and “the act of the general will by which a multitude becomes a people” (TPP 8:352). When it comes to relationships with the other, an educated or enlightened human being is a human being with moral character, “a rational being endowed with freedom,” “from whom one knows what to expect,” while an uneducated or evil human being is driven by the diversity of his natural drives and is without intelligible character since evil carries conflict with itself and permits no lasting principle in itself (Anth 7:329). Through struggling and overcoming obstacles that one’s animal inclinations erect on the way to practical education (education for freedom), one can make oneself worthy of happiness and humanity (Anth 7:328). Kant devotes great effort to answer the questions of what the human being is and how achieving humanity is possible through education as a science. In this regard he talks in universal terms. He maintains that “the human being is capable of, and in need of education” (Anth 7:323). When it comes to the maxim or politics of exclusion and inclusion or to the question of who counts as the human being, there is a racial contract, as Mills (1997) would say, that regulates power relations between whites and non-white and grants white people supremacy. There is also a colonial contract, we can add, that legitimates European rule “over the nations in Asia and Africa, and the Pacific” (1997:25). Kant bases this on whites being capable of educating themselves, establishing a civil constitution to govern themselves, while non-whites are not. This is to say that inclusion and exclusion politics go along racial lines. In Kant, the questions of who the human being is or who is qualified for the position can be answered in three Kantian modes: from a transcendental, a pragmatic and an empirical perspective. In a transcendental sense, Kant sees anybody in possession of faculties of cognition, volition and feeling (as dormant natural predispositions) as potentially a human being. The pragmatic mode demands the individuals take an active approach to their lives; it is about what they should and can make of themselves as free acting beings, it is about educability or attaining a character. Related to this is an empirical sense – public use of reason and rational organisation of the polity. Here, it becomes a matter of power and colonial and racial interests and concerns classification of people in accordance with the criterium of educability toward such a use of reason.Thus, equality at a transcendental level becomes inequality at the empirical level, conditioned by capability to theoretical (in nature) and practical (in morality) use of reason. Kant dictates conditions for such a use in a way that whites can perform but non-whites cannot. Kant gives colonial ideas a scientific appearance and makes them an organic part of his system of thought. He pretends as if he has discovered colonial differences in nature itself and that Eurocentrism is given by nature. The essential point to be made is that it is not important what Kant thinks. Equally important is how and through which perspective he thinks, since nobody can think neutral, but, as Nietzsche would say, philosophy is autobiographical and affected by philosophers’ will to power. Kant philosophises from a racist perspective

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and from the perspective of the coloniality of power, as Quijano would say. The perspective of coloniality is embedded in the very design of Kant’s idea of the human being and the relationships among the human being, science and education. As education is a matter of collective efforts, he invents a normative idea of a white “we” as the locus of science and education, steadily progressing toward perfection. We can then ask, as Robert Louden suggests, “Who is the ‘we’ that is progressing toward perfection?” (2014:102). Most importantly, we can ask:What kind of relationships of power are there between this “we” and its others? What is its relation to colonial classification of the surface of the globe and peoples into conquerors and conquered, oppressors and oppressed? We also need to bring to the fore the implications of such a “we” for the global neoliberal order of today. The question is whether Kant, as the major representative of the Enlightenment, offers critical tools to counteract colonial oppression or endorses it. To begin with, Kant endorses colonial differences by stating, “Humanity is at its greatest perfection in the race of the whites. The yellow Indians do not have a meagre talent. The Negroes are far below them and at the lowest point are a part of the American peoples” (Kant in Eze 1997:63). Accordingly, he makes the white race the master of realm of humanity as well as that of nature (within the human being as well as the sum of objects of scientific knowledge). Philosophising from the perspective a white “we,” he assigns a leading position to Europe by virtue of it being the habitat of whites and maintains that “our part of the world” will “give laws to all the others” (IUH 8:30). As Simmons (2016) maintains, Kant offers no legitimate basis or plausible account of how educated or enlightened European colonial powers might legitimately legislate for populations and territories outside Europe, govern them, seize their natural resources and control their territories.5 Even if we agree that the Western colonial powers were just, it gives them no right to impose their legislation on others. Kantian cosmopolitanism becomes colonial, and his notion of universality becomes confused with white domination. Kant tried to make a Eurocentric image of humanity globally valid, as if rational thinking was an exclusive European ability and as such it was only white males who could establish social contracts. Again, a reference to Mills is helpful to explicate the nature of colonial differences. Mills maintains that the basic “metamorphosis” concerning the establishment of civil society out of the state of nature “is the conceptual partitioning and corresponding transformation of human population into ‘white’ and ‘nonwhite’ men” (1997:13). The imbalance in power emerges due to this contract not being “between everybody (‘we the people’), but between just the people who really are people (‘we the white people’)” (1997:3). Through these processes race becomes a real sociopolitical force in the construction of the human being without having any biological basis. Accordingly, we can say, in Mills’s words, “Whiteness is not really a color at all, but a set of power relations” (1997:127). The problem with Kant’s style of thinking is that it works through exclusion and subordination rather than through equality, inclusion,

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dialogue and affirmation of the diversity of perspectives and peoples. By rendering his own position and his own system of ideas as all-encompassing and self-sufficient, Kant renders the others superfluous and in need of assimilation into this system. This magnificent overarching project of classification, standardisation and subordination to abstract ideas and principles had a price for the cruel disadvantage of non-white people. As in Kant, human perfection and corresponding political organisation of polity are predestined and achievable through generations and by the human species, and education or enlightenment becomes a transgenerational and universal form, bringing uniformity to the manifold of peoples and diversity of ways of life rather than affirming them. It goes without saying that those who determine this form can shape others in their own image. Accordingly, human perfection becomes white. This is done at the price of extinguishing some of the “undeveloped” manifestations of human life. Kant is aware of the price of his educational strategy in terms of human suffering and the oppression, wars and harms they cause. However, he sees war and cruelties as the cunning of nature in achieving its purpose (IUH 8:24–25). Some must pay the price for human perfection – those who are at the lower levels of development. Kant pioneered colonialisation of education, knowledge and culture by making Europe the territory of education and the others uneducable by themselves and dependent on white Europeans. Education for Kant is cosmopolitan; the human being is destined to this end. Reflecting on the diversity of humanity race, he writes: “It is a multitude of persons” who “feel destined by nature to [develop], through mutual compulsion under laws that come from themselves, into cosmopolitan society (cosmopolitismus)” (Anth 7:331). However, anthropological and geographical contingencies stand in the way of such an education. Kant saw the solution to the problem of diversity through homogenising imperatives of pure reason and through a pedagogical perspective linked with history. He makes education equivalent to subordination and assimilation of the others into the European way of life, explaining: It is also observable in savage nations that, though they may be in the service of Europeans for a long time, they can never grow accustomed to the European way of life. But with them this is not a noble propensity toward freedom, a Rousseau and others believe; rather it is a certain raw state in that animal in this case has so to speak not yet developed the humanity inside itself. (LP 9:442) Here, Kant is clear about the divide he established between Europeans as rational and savage nations as non-rational, whom Kant dehumanises. For him, they are in grip of their animality since they do not assimilate in the European way of life.6 Contrary to the Eurocentric claims in this passage, this

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dehumanisation did not happen simply by Kant’s scientific observations and his sudden discovery of it; it was, rather, an invention for certain interests. To position “savage nations” in a raw state of nature was to subordinate them since, in Kant, education was to subordinate nature to reason. Further, in Kant, it is the object of knowledge that complies with ideas of reason. By analogy, as object of white knowledge, savage nations are to comply with their Kantian image as undeveloped. Accordingly, to describe non-whites as savage or pre-political was to subordinate them to the political West. The notion of the savage was part of wider system of thoughts, ideas and debates on educability, exploitation and subordination in which the savage nations never spoke for themselves; Europeans spoke for and represented them in their own way.This was not done as an isolated phenomenon but as part of a discourse, or a configuration of power. Kant’s contribution to colonialism was a formidable body of ideas and a language on the one hand. He made colonial ideas appear as scientific on the other; through scientific disciplines like anthropology and geography, in whose establishment as scientific disciplines he had a central role, Kant gave his invention of colonial ideas an appearance of scientific discoveries and made them part of a comprehensive and thorough system. Kant considers savagery and civilisation in relation to education. For him, behind education lies the “great secret of the perfection of human nature”; it is progress toward human destiny, “a happier human species” (LP 9:444). Education encompasses, but is not limited to, disciplining, training and instruction. Savagery for Kant means lack of discipline, irrationality and “independent of law” (LP 9:442). Discipline means submission to “the laws of humanity” (LP 9:442). It changes “animal nature into human nature” (LP 9:441). To be independent of the rational laws of humanity is, in its turn, an evil that is irremediable (LP 9:444). It is not that savages are not free; rather, they are attached to their “lawless freedom” and prefer “mad freedom to a rational freedom” (IPP 8:355). It is up to “civilized people” to bring them under coercion of rational freedom. However, some people can never become rationally free. Kant sees different degrees of educability. There are those who are educable: “The Hindus . . . are educable in the highest degree.” But Kant adds immediately, “only to the arts and not to the sciences. They will never achieve abstract concepts” (Kant in Eze 1997:117). Thus, Hindus cannot reach full humanity as, for Kant, science and abstract thinking are the zenith of human development. Inferior to this degree of humanity are those who are not educable at all. Kant writes: “The race of the American cannot be educated.” As becoming worthy of being human is conditioned by being educable, the uneducables are excluded from becoming humans. Kant gives expression for an inborn savagery: “The Negro can be disciplined and cultivated, but is never genuinely civilized. He falls of his own accord into savagery” (Kant in Barnesconi 2002:158). As a scientific discipline, education became connected to the colonial rulers, where the colonialised were uneducable while colonisers were educable. As natives of other continents were deemed to be uneducable, they could not govern themselves.

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According to Kant, “American and blacks cannot govern themselves.They thus serve only for slaves” (Kant in Kleingeld 2007:577). Colonial masters had then the mission to govern them. Imperial and expansionist notions of education and governance were sanctioned in a manner that non-Europeans could barely make themselves worthy of autonomy. Kant was an individual intellectual and a general intellectual as part of the same reality. He was a pioneer at an intellectual level. He also was a professor at a general level with broad intellectual engagement and taught this kind of ideas at a European university. He was part of ongoing trades that needed a notion of savages suitable for economic exploitations and sociological theories of human development as well as a leading figure in an emerging scientific culture as well as the cultural hegemony of the West. In this intellectual climate, it was through cultural hegemony and consent that a general idea was established about who the savage was in relationships to “us” and her place in history as well as her position in society and function in the global division of corporal and intellectual labour; it offered Western culture an unchallenged cognitive, moral and aesthetic certainty about savagery as a state of being inferior to the European way of life and Europe as the aim of lawful freedom. Grounding this view on natural and ontological differences between whites and non-whites, Kant legitimises Western domination scientifically. Simply, in him, the irrational part of humanity can legitimately be dominated by its rational part. The domination of native populations becomes thus both legitimate and a noble mission (Harvey 2009:39). Kant lent colonialism a systematic argumentation not as an isolated person but as a frontal figure of a tradition and mainstream culture. By inventing a natural connection between the ideas of humanity and education, Kant played a central role in the construction of the modern notion of humanity as exclusively European. He constituted a normative notion of the white race as the paradigm of educated humanity, the embodiment of progress through education and morally superior to the rest of the world. If the savages want to enter the path of progress, they must subordinate to the European way of life or rule of reason – of which they are incapable. Kant deprives the “savage” part of humanity from progress toward happiness, as they have not the capacity to educate or discipline themselves. This is, however, paradoxical since, according to Kant, nature has placed the germ of perfection in the human being at a transcendental level – as conditions for the possibility of perfection.This is what I term as transcendental difference. To see in retrospect, Kant has been prophetic regarding the global spread of Western hegemonic culture and its legislative role.7 Kant could probably not know that it has being a wrong heading for humanity as the European way of life has hugely harmed humanity through capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, chattel slavery and consumerism, to name but some, incomparable with those of savagery. But it is not about what Kant knew but about his inaugurative role and the consequences of the ideas he established. Accordingly, to disrupt these

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damages, my focus is on Kant and his establishing Europe, and the white race, a minor part of humanity, as the educational points of reference for the globe and his role in scientific classification of humanity along lines of educable and uneducable and the concomitant colonial domination.

Kant and scientific racism In recent years, some Kant scholars have rightly established him as the founding father of scientific racism. As in the case of scientific colonialism, Kant is not the first racist philosopher. However, his Copernican turn marks a shift from a theological understanding of the human being to a scientific and secular one; his racism is accordingly systematic rather than accidental or episodic. It was done through his pioneering in making education scientific and constitutive of the human being as well as pioneering scientific disciplines like anthropology. I devote this chapter to the major part Kant played in scientific justification of racism. Kant scholars often base his racism on some scattered explicit passages in his minor works rather than connecting it to his philosophical system as a whole or his view of the human being as an acting, knowing and feeling being as mapped in three Critiques.This has led some scholars to claim that Kant’s views on issues of race and colonial exploitation are of minor importance in relation to his critical philosophy as a systematic whole.8 My suggestion is to connect Kant’s pioneering role in modern racial, colonial and gender oppressions to his central question of what the human being is to show that these issues are fundamental to the way Kant constructs the human being and determines his limits and possibilities as well as his faculties of knowing, acting and feeling; most importantly to the capability of cultivating and using these faculties; to the educability of human beings and their capability to govern themselves; to the manner in which character of the human being should be formed. In other words, Kant’s racist views are not accidental or external to his system but are endemic to it. Kant’s scientific racism is based on his alleged discovery of human natural faculties; he bases racism on the very natural predisposition of the human being and invents a hierarchical order concerning the capability of different races to employ their natural faculties of understanding and reason in the organisation of their knowledge and polity. From this, he draws the of supremacy of whites. As the power of judgement and its mediating role is important, let us begin with Kant’s invention of an inherent hierarchical order among races when it comes to aesthetic judgement and feeling for the beautiful and the sublime. For instance, he writes, “The Negroes of Africa have by nature no feeling that rises above the ridiculous” (OFBS 2:253).9 This means that, according to Kant, the black race lacks the capacity to pass universally valid aesthetic judgements; their judgement is limited to sensual and bodily pleasures (to the agreeable). As the power of judgement is the link between understanding’s concept of causality in nature (cognition) and reason’s idea of freedom under moral law (morality), a

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lack of feeling for the beautiful and the sublime means inability to connect the concept of causality with that of freedom (inability to achieve rational cognition as well as become self-legislating subjects establishing their own moral maxims and reaching freedom). This means, in its turn, inability to become a proper human being since black human beings, as Kant invents them, are stocked in a raw state of nature, subject to their contingent bodily pleasure and animal inclinations, without being able to discipline, cultivate and moralise themselves; they remain in the domain of evil since, for Kant, evil is nature undisciplined. Against this background, it is not controversial that Kant questions black people’s cognitive capacity and their educability and ability to govern themselves. As we have already seen, for Kant the human being is a knowing (in accordance with concepts of the understanding), acting (in accordance with principles of pure practical reason) and feeling (in accordance with principles of judgement) being. In the Kantian systematic or scientific manner, every part of the system exists for the sake of other parts. Each element works together with the others. Once a capacity is missing, other capacities also collapse and cannot work. This is one of the implications of Kant’s proposition that black people lack the feeling of the beautiful and the sublime. Scientific classification of humanity in accordance with skin colour and relating it to lack of intellectual capabilities and giving it universal validity were Kantian inventions, as was the concomitant taxonomy and style of thought, which marks a shift from theological to anthropological jargon, from creation to discovery. Kant joins Hume and challenges “anyone to adduce a single example where a Negro has demonstrated talents.” By taking the white persons’ side when it comes to their high capacity for achievements compared with black sub-persons, Kant underpins a dichotomy based on intellectual achievements and sees a “fundamental difference between these two human kinds.” Kant continues: Among the hundreds of thousands of blacks who are transported elsewhere from their countries, although very many of them have even been set free, nevertheless not a single one was ever been found who has accomplished something great in art or science or shown any other praiseworthy quality, while among the whites there are always those who rise up from the lowest rabble and through extraordinary gifts earn respect in the world. So fundamental is the difference between these two human kinds. (OFBS 2:235) Kant establishes an unbridgeable gap between different races by claiming “fundamental” differences in their capacities to achieve things. Quite like exclusion from domains of proper cognition, feeling and acting properly, Kant excludes non-whites from achieving these capabilities by educating themselves since he deems them as uneducable. Importantly, Kant deprives non-whites of features that are important for becoming part of a civil society. For instance,

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he writes: “the race of American cannot be educated. It has no motivating force, for it lacks affect and passion. They are not in love, thus they are also not afraid. They hardly speak, do not care each other, care about nothing and are lazy” (Kant in Etieyibo 2018:18). As we know, in Kant, laziness is the root of not being able to use one’s own reason autonomously, likewise the inability to communicate. Thus, non-white have not the capacity to become enlightened or educated. My intention here is not to catalogue Kant’s racist statements but to show that racism is an inalienable part of the critical project and Kant gives it natural and ontological dimensions. This is to say that the structure of superiority/inferiority between races was not separated from Kant’s major Critiques because his oeuvre built up a systematic unity under a unifying idea, an internal purpose and a single architectonic method. Important to be mentioned is that explicitly formulated racist ideas in Kant demonstrate beliefs that were at the foreground of his time without being considered strange. Kant integrated them in the very notion of the human being, naturalised them and gave them a scientific appearance as if he had discovered them instead of inventing them. As time has gone by, these ideas have withdrawn more and more to the background and have become more and more invisible; they have become part of background beliefs and do their work in the shadow. My claim is that racism is not only an organic part of Kant’s works but continues to work in our time thanks to Kant making it part of education, enlightenment and rationality. As Kantianism has been spread in areas such as politics, aesthetics, anthropology, jurisdiction and others, racist ideas have also become part of background knowledge in all these areas. We need to make up with Kant if we are to get rid of racism. An engagement with Kant means a shift of focus from daily actions to their constitutive background and to the ground they stand on. Given what has been said so far, I agree with Robert Bernasconi that “Kant can legitimately be said to have invented the scientific concept of race” (2001:146–147). Bernasconi contends that Kant’s racism was relevant to his themes like cosmopolitanism. David Harvey endorses this approach and maintains that Kant initiated “the idea (which later had a very unfortunate history) that the question of race should be put upon a purely scientific footing” (2009:25). What is specific with my approach is that, as already mentioned, Kant’s racism is a matter of orientation and style of thought; the perspective from which Kant thinks is racist, and a notion of the human being constituted from this perspective cannot be but racist. And as his oeuvre is written from the perspective of such a human being, racism is a systematic or organic part of his philosophy rather than episodic or accidental to it. To recap, “fundamental differences” between races is an invention of Kant rather than a discovery, as he wants us to believe.The question is why Kant insists so much on racism. References to Arendt can help us outline an answer to this question. In her Origin of Totalitarianism, Arendt sees racism as an ideology. For her, an ideology is a “system based upon a single opinion that proved strong

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enough to attract and persuade a majority of people and broad enough to lead them through the various experiences and situations of an average modern life” (2009:159). She sees racism not only as an ideology but also as “a political weapon.” Most importantly, she sees racism as “the main ideological weapon of imperialistic policies” (2009:160). She does not mention the Kantian paradigm as such a policy but refers to the “general framework of liberalism” as the political and discursive context within which racism arose, however. Furthermore, Arendt links ideologies’ persuasive power to “immediate political needs.” Her analysis of racism is thus relevant to the way Kant established scientific notions of race and racism and connected them to education as a response to the imperial needs of his time. Regarding the scientific aspect of racism, Arendt sees the scientific aspect of ideologies secondary compared with their relations with politics and writes: “Their scientific aspect is secondary and arises first from desire to provide watertight arguments, and second because their persuasive power also got hold of scientists” (2009:159).10 Thus, scientific and political aspects of ideologies become intertwined. Further and more to the point, she writes: “we owe to this ‘scientific’ preachers rather than to any scientific findings that today no single science is left into whose categorical system racethinking has not deeply penetrated” (2009:160). Generally, as racism has been the powerful ideology of imperialistic policies, there are deep links between racism and colonialism, thereof my common reference to them in this study. Kant provided the rising European capitalism and imperialism “whitewashing” arguments and applied them to the human being. Besides his racism being constitutive of his view of the human being, Kant’s theory of progress does not work without the hierarchical order he establishes between races when it comes to their capacity for progress. As a philosopher who was at the forefront of the science of anthropology that was emerging in Europe, Kant maintained that whites had all the attributes required for progress toward perfection while Africans were predisposed to slavery (Gray 2007:61). He justifies slavery by referring it to nature. Again, a reference to Arendt is helpful: She writes: Slavery’s fundamental offense against human rights was not that it took liberty away (which can happen in many other situations), but that excluded a certain category of people even from the possibility of fighting for freedom- a fight possible under tyranny, and even under the desperate conditions of modern terror (but not under any conditions of concentration camp life). Slavery’s crime against humanity did not begin when one people defeated and enslaved its enemy (though of course this was bad enough), but when slavery became an institution in which some men were “born” free and others slave, when it was forgotten that it was men who had deprived his fellow-men of freedom, and when the sanction for the crime was attributed to nature. (2009:297)

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Seen from Arendt’s perspective, it is criminal to deem people to slavery and ineducability since it strips human beings of their humanity and deprives them of liberty and rights. Arendt is concerned with connections between racism and imperialism and their impact on Nazism and race-thinking as a rival ideology to class-thinking. Another useful conceptual tool to analyse scientific racism is offered by Foucault and his thesis of interconnectedness of power and knowledge. Using Foucault’s notion of discourse, Said has showed that the West has invented the notions of the Orient as its own inferior other. Dussel shows a similar process when it comes to the invention of Latin America by the West. Looking at the work of these thinkers shows that there is a similar mechanism behind Orientalism and Occidentalism – the West creating its inferior other through mechanisms of knowledge/power. Quijano links the genesis of the modern classification of humanity along the racial axis to “the colonial model of domination” (2000:453). He also links it to another axis of classification, namely waged and unwaged labour, as well as to control of labour, its resources and its products. Racial divides thus received economic significance, and racism and capitalism became interlinked. To this we can add educational classification along lines of educable and uneducable people; the distribution of educability also was linked to colonial domination and racial classification. It was the need to legitimate colonial domination and constitute Europe as a new identity (2000). Like Said, Quijano relates “the elaboration of a Eurocentric perspective of knowledge, a theoretical perspective on the idea of race as a naturalization of colonial relations between Europeans America and non-Europeans” (2000:535). Interestingly, Quijano observes that older forms of intersexual domination were incorporated into the structure of racial domination and legitimised by references to nature. Thus, beside geographical or colonial dimensions, domination received a gender aspect as well. Kant reinvented the history of philosophy and thought in a way that his own critical philosophy became the highest ideal of progress. He also reinvented modernity as an exclusively European development. Dussel speaks of “the pseudoscientific periodization of history into Antiquity, the Middle (preparatory) Ages, and finally the Modern (European) Age is an ideological construct which deforms world history” (1995:10). Following Foucault, we can see modernity as an ethos, an attitude and mode of thinking, speaking and acting. Thus, it is more to the point to see modernity as opposed to “countermodernity,” as he suggests. As such, modernity and countermodernity are not exclusively European forces but rather forces at work in all societies. In this way, we can talk of transmodernity, the struggles between modern and countermodern in all societies with distinct local histories instead of a European supermodernity to which all people must subdue. Kant established the European, male, white position as rational and as an a priori condition of possibility for knowledge, moral freedom and aesthetic judgement. From this position, he established a mode of thought, discourse

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and action that has provided philosophical justification to the classification of humanity along racial, geographical and social lines; it justified the domination of non-westerners by the West as the latter was established as the global legislator and the aim of progress in history. Kant becomes instrumental when it comes to progress and making education scientific. He arbitrarily compares different peoples, classifying them as inferior and superior in relation to the predetermined ends of progress without giving any reasonable ground for why nature or providence should prefer one race or nation over the other or why one race should lead the path of progress and others follow.11 By class, colour and gender belonging, he is a proponent of white domination and takes it for granted and justifies it; he releases the white subject from the contextual body and its needs while presenting the other as bodily and contextual and expands this hierarchy to nature itself. Kant is aware of the dependency of the subject to the context, but he releases the white transcendental subject from this dependency as he wishes to make it the lord of nature and the globe while at the same time keeping the other as eternally dependent to corporal needs. As in Kant, the intellectual is superior to the corporal, and the superior Western self is to dominate and control the other as inferior. Scientific education has been used to enforce the condition for possibility of such a domination. Genealogical-critical dialogue highlights continuities and discontinuities between the generative context of scientific education and its actuality today; it reveals not only scientific education’s development but also its entanglement with what Arendt calls “race-thinking,” with which it shares “roots deep in the eighteenth century” (2009:158). As will be elaborated later, there is continuity in some key principles like those of rationality, objectivity, systematicity of science and the transcendental or constitutive notion of the subject (important for Kant’s notion of science and education), despite disruptive paradigm shifts. As we will see, Kant himself has much to say against Kantianism in many respects. Kant is seen as the philosopher of the Enlightenment. Scientific education and white rationality, however, become pillars of white ignorance. Kant may think for himself but fails to think from the perspective of the other as well as fails to think consistently when it comes to application of his own answer to what the human being is outside the domain of white male Europeans, on whose model he shapes his view of the constitutive subject. Accordingly, this field is where we can confront Kant in a radical way and bring him before his own tribunal of reason and demonstrate the hollowness of his view of the other. This will be done in the next part of the book.

Notes 1 Kant refers to an anecdote about a black man and his view on the relationships between men and women. He judges the idea of the black man as true but refutes it immediately because of the colour of his skin: “This fellow was quite black . . . a clear proof that what he said was stupid” (1997:117). Kant also connects the feeling for the sublime,

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an important element when it comes to the self-determination of the subject, to ideas of race and gender. 2 Aesthetic satisfaction is related to inclination, and while the intellectual belongs to the realm of freedom, or acting in accordance with the rules of reason, the former signifies the lack of freedom related to the sensible realm (CPPR 5:117–118). 3 These phases correspond to the human being’s three natural predispositions: technical (the ability to produce objects), pragmatic (to establish relationships with other human beings and use them for his own purpose) and moral (to treat himself and others according to freedom under law) (Anth 322). In order to progress in this predetermined way – and for one generation not to destroy the previous generation’s achievements (although regressions are unavoidable) – education should become a systematic discipline based on a plan and principles or a science (Erziehungswissenschaft) that contributes to develop human nature in such a way that the human vocation or destiny is realised. This notion of progress, however, became a mission for the white race and thus racist and Eurocentric. While preservation is an animal drive and common for all human beings, diminution of educability and governability is uneven. 4 The pseudoscientific periodisation of history into antiquity, the Middle (preparatory) Ages, and finally the modern (European) age is an ideological construct which deforms world history (Dussel 1995:10). 5 Further, Kant maintains that “there is the right of every people to give itself a civil constitution of the kind that it sees fit, without interference from other powers” (Kant, 1970: 182). It seems that Kant does not reckon colonialised people as people with right to give themselves laws. 6 An implicit version of this attitude is still at work in the integration policies of European countries when it comes to non-European migrants. 7 Nearly all international organisations are dominated by the West and are used to preserve the interest of the West, despite their claims to universality; also, modern education is modelled on Western models. 8 Concerning Kant’s views on race, some Kantians suggest that these views are unrelated to his central moral teaching. Kant’s racial theory is intimately related to his main question of the constitutive faculties of the human being. However, to have a feeling for the beautiful and the sublime and a moral feeling are constitutive parts of the human being. Likewise is the ability to produce abstract concepts out of sensations. Kant’s claiming that non-whites lack all or parts of these capabilities is thus to question their humanity. Kant’s racism lies thus not in sporadic and accidental statements here and there but is a constitutive part of his system. Generally, as all parts of Kant’s system are organically connected, he may take it as an offense to see his system an aggregate of disparate ideas. Others argue that Kant was a child of his time. True, Kant was a child of his time, like any other thinker. But to be a child of one’s time does not mean to hold the most ignorant ideas of one’s time. For instance, in our time, nobody can justify racism by reference of this idea being part of our time. As a future-oriented philosopher, Kant could have had more nuanced knowledge on race issues. Indeed, there was such knowledge available for him as well as less racist approaches held by other thinkers. Indeed, his views on race were challenged by his contemporaries. Kant, however, stuck to his own theory of race. In his “On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy,” 1788, Kant disputed Georg Forster’s non-hierarchical view of races.While people like Forster actively fought racism and slavery, Kant, until very late in his life, failed to even condemn the practice of slavery. This demonstrates that Kant’s racism was not accidental. Also, opposition to Kant’s racist ideas is nothing new. 9 In the same text, Kant judges Indians and Chinese and their tastes as grotesque (OFBS 2:253).

Scientific education and human diversity 117 10 As Dewey already stated, “The main directions of science during the past hundred years, increasingly so in the last century, have been set, indirectly or directly, by the requirement of industry carried on for private profit” (1993:49–50). 11 Kant is aware of governance and education being two difficult tasks since humans must be governed and educated by other humans like themselves. He makes whites just superior to non-whites in order to justify their being educators and governors.

Chapter 5

Problematisation of the Kantian paradigm

Up to now, I have spent a great deal of time and effort trying to report on how Kant established white systematic or scientific wholeness of notions like the human being, cognition, morality, aesthetics, civil constitution, international relations and progress as well as rational notions of the relationships between the individuals and the states. In Kant, humanity should and is destined to progress toward such a thoroughly rational world system in order for the global or cosmopolitan community to function properly. It is, indeed, the educational task of the human species to realise these interconnected notions in a systematic manner. And this task is only realisable through education as an introduction to the scientific or rational mode of thinking, acting and feeling. The central claim of this systematic view of the world is that such a thorough, complete and scientific mode of thought is universally valid, although the leading position of realising this universal standard of human life is exclusively assigned to the white race as this race, due to its rationality, can function as the legislator of the globe as well as that of the intelligible world. Kant equates the modern episteme with the Western way of ordering the world and establishes thereby a Eurocentric view of modernity. One of my aims in problematising the Kantian paradigm is to investigate alternative ways to educate the human being out of the predicament into which colonial and racial histories have led her. Initially, I would like to ask how enlightened Kant himself is concerning an enlightened or educated account of the notion of the human being, its extension and its relationships to itself, the other and the world. What is Kant’s role in the “spread of misinformation” and “distribution of errors” among white people, as Goldman and those following him (Mills 2017) would ask? What is his role in white ignorance as linked with white supremacy? What is Kant’s role in systematic misunderstanding of what the human being is? How and through what mechanisms could he establish ignorance as enlightenment? How faithful is Kant to his own categorical imperative, where universalisability is the demarcation test? Why and on what basis does Kant exclude certain racial and cultural groups from the domain of humanity? Is he ready to be treated in the same manner by blacks, Indians and other non-whites as he himself treats them? On what ground does he believe in essential differences between different races and ethnicities regarding

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cognitive, moral and aesthetics capabilities? Even if there are such difference, on what ground does he use them as the ground of the superiority of white male Europeans and the inferiority of women and non-white people? Is he aware of the harms he has imposed on humanity? How we can redeem humanity and him from himself? Further, when the paradigmatic philosopher of the Enlightenment believes in such things, what happens to those educated in it? A further issue is naturalness of these ideas due to their long persistence and becoming part of everyday life in a way that it becomes difficult to show their harmful effects. The basic question, thus, is this: Is humanity doomed to be in such a structure of power forever, or there are ways of liberation? I opt for the latter provided we, in the first instance, accept the existence of implicit colonial and racist patterns of thought and action and try to find tools to overcome them. A first step to do so is to see Kant from a perspective external to his paradigm. My aim is not to primarily investigate Kant, but I will investigate why the “shadow” of Kant is so long. To answer this question and give Kant his “just due,” let us have a look at Nietzsche’s answer to a similar question in Beyond Good and Evil (11). He replaces Kant’s main epistemological question, “How are synthetic judgements a priori possible?” with another one, “Why is the belief in such judgements necessary?” This shift is in line with the point I am trying to make here. In Nietzsche’s reading, synthetic judgements a priori are false judgements. More than this, they are an impossibility since “we have no right to them” (BGE 11). The host of faculties that Kant ascribes to the human being are invented by him rather than being discovered in the human being or implanted in the human being by nature itself and therefore naturally or a priori given. Accordingly, they are not there in any cogniser prior to any cognition. They are a matter of belief rather than a matter of fact.1 Further, it is not about the truth of this question and concomitant faculties but about belief in them. To the question of “Why is the belief in such judgements necessary?” Nietzsche answers, “such judgments must be believed true for the purpose of preserving beings of our type” (BGE 11). Another motivation at the ground of this belief is, according to Nietzsche, “will to power” (BGE 13).2 In my reading, Nietzsche is right about points he makes regarding synthetic judgements a priori when it comes to their being a matter of invention, belief and will to power. However, his basic framework is flawed since Nietzsche philosophises within the Kantian, or Eurocentric, paradigm. He sees these judgements and belief in them as a matter of survival and connects them to “preserving beings of our type” (BGE 11), where he implicitly means the whole of humanity. This is not the right way to see them, however, since Kant is indeed provincial and concerned with beings of the European type, a small and violent tribe within humanity, rather than humanity as such. The same can be said of will to power. Here, as in the synthetic judgements a priori, it is about the will to power of white male Europeans in the first instant. Second, it is about will to domination as, following Foucault, we can say rather than will to power. Distinct from the notion of power and defined as opposed to freedom,

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domination is, as Foucault (1984) sees it, a perverted subspecies of relations of power where a specific group locks power relation to its own benefit and blocks social mobility and fluidity, openness and reversibility of power relations. While power relations are fluid, open and reversible, domination is about locking people within fixed boundaries, resistance against and freedom from which can open for “the possibility of no longer being, doing, or thinking what we are, do, or think” (1984:41).With these clarifications in mind, we can take a step beyond Nietzsche and claim the Kantian paradigm is a philosophical justification and a defence of domination of the world by white male Europeans. Kant grounds this domination on naturally given faculties in the human being. To this we can add that although Kantianism in cognition was originally an invention by Kant, it has now become the historical a priori condition of thought at a global scale, which grants the West cultural and educational hegemony. This domination can, at the same time, stimulate us to imagine the world otherwise. It is important to mention that Kant, methodologically, justifies his beliefs before the court of reason; his arguments must hold with juridical certainty. He also makes a distinction between dogmatism and dogmatic procedures (B xxxv). According to him, critique stands in contrast to dogmatism (rationalism a la Wolff) but in harmony with dogmatic procedures as “that procedure is science (and science must always be dogmatic, i.e., it must always do strict proofs from secure a priori principles” (B xxxv). The question is how dogmatically or faithfully Kant follows his own principles. For instance, he recommends us to become mature, to think for ourselves, to think from the perspective of the other and to think consistently. Does he himself act according to these principles? Does he, for instance, think from the perspective of the non-white others? If not, why? What is at stake here? Is he aware of his truths being group prejudices or white ignorance, as we in retrospect can call them? It is fair to judge Kant by his own standards. We can find plenty of evidences of how Kant pretends to speak of humanity while he speaks only of white male Europeans. For instance, when he speaks of thinking from the perspective of the other, he means the other that the white persons live together with in a civil society (citizens of the same state). It does not include “savages,” or those who live in raw states of nature. In Metaphysics of Morals, he writes that there are certain moral principles “at the basis of morality, as subjective conditions of receptiveness to the concept of duty” that and “every human being has them, and it is by virtue of them that he can be put under moral obligation” (MM 6.399). Further, Kant speaks of all human beings as the domain of universal laws of law-giving reason. Accordingly, humanity includes “the whole species (and so myself as well) in its idea of humanity as such” (MM 6:451). Kant makes this remark in order to highlight that one has the same duties toward oneself as a member of human species as toward others. Educationally, he recommends: Reverence and the respect for the right of human beings must be instilled into the child at a very early age. . . . For example, if a child meets another,

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poor child and haughtily pushes it out the way or away from itself, gives it a blow and so forth, the one must not say: “don’t do that, it hurts the other one.You should have pity! It is a poor child”, and so forth. Rather one must treat it as haughtily and noticeably, because its behaviour was contrary to the right of humanity. (LP 9:489) One of the strongest universalist statements that Kant makes is in Metaphysics of Morals: “I cannot deny all respect to even a vicious man as a human being; I cannot withdraw at least the respect that belongs to him in his quality as a human being, even though by his deeds he makes himself unworthy of it” (MM 6:464). Against the background of these quotes, Kant can be judged as ignorant by his own metrics when excluding some categories of human being from the domain of humanity. However, if we read carefully, we see that Kant means the idea of humanity, or homo noumenon, striped from contingent features like sex, colour and class rather than living human beings, or homo phenomenon. Thus, it is not strange that he can talk of a universal notion of the human being (as an idea) and demonstrate sexist and racist views at the same time since he talks of two different domains: that of women and that of humanity, that of the transcendental subject and that of empirical subjects. For Kant, women and non-whites are outside the domain of proper humanity, and violation against them is not violation against the human being. Kant is dogmatically loyal to his principles, and he has prepared the way for his two-way approach to humanity by seeing the human being as homo noumenon (equal humanity in the realm of freedom) and homo phenomenon (classified in accordance with race and gender in the realm of experience) at the same time. What Kant ascribes to the human being at a noumenal level are not necessarily ascribable to all human beings at phenomenal level. It is for homo phenomenon to make himself worthy of homo noumenon or become enlightened by means of education. Some humans are sadly not educable, Kant would say. Accordingly, Kant can defend himself by saying that savagery or lack of discipline belongs to a raw state of nature rather than humanity. And, as such, savagery is evil, inimical to the human being.3 As Sartre has maintained, humanity was divided between “men” and “natives” (Sartre in Fanon 1963); as part of nature, natives are easier to be considered human capital or raw resources to be exploited. As a remedy to this problem, Foucault suggests freeing history from “transcendental narcissism” through deprivileging Kant’s transcendental subject (Foucault 1969), by which he means “critical investigation and transformation of the particular notion of transcendental subjectivity first formulated by Kant and later taken by phenomenology” (Allen 2013:36). This strategy counteracts the Kantian transcendental perspective by highlighting that human thinking is, contrary to the Kantian paradigm, influenced profoundly and shaped by social and intellectual environments in ways of which we often are not aware. This means that the human being can indeed think for herself but not entirely by

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herself. Human thoughts arise through an interplay between an intellectual environment and the individuals.4 This is what Foucault means by “empiricotranscendental doublet” (Foucault 1989:321). However, the problem with the Kantian paradigm is not its inventing and believing in a transcendental subject but painting this subject white, placing it in a position of domination and making it the master of the world in the first place and legitimising this domination by inventing an image of the human being, his natural faculties and their use in ways that underwrite this domination in the second. In other words, it is a matter of belief, domination and colonial differences, dividing the world population into colonial conquerors and colonised conquered. Kant has not only invented an image of the human being as a transcendental subject but also an image of humanity that fits the Western will to domination. His transcendental perspective is at once that of colonialism – his vision of humanity can be realised given colonialism and racism. His view of humanity also is reductionistic as he excludes black people and native Americans from humanity in his attempt to invent a homogenous notion of the human being limited to white male Europeans as the idea and ideal of humanity and reduce this human type to its reason. By his own standards, Kant is the philosopher who has placed ignorance in the position of enlightenment and has contributed largely to spread disinformation and errors among white males; he has created the white illusion of racial supremacy due to white enlightenment. Accordingly, Western culture cannot get rid of its ignorance without getting rid of the Kantian paradigm. As Kant occupies the position of intellectual leader of the West, his ignorance has become that of the West. Kant’s ignorance has developed to white ignorance today, his pragmatic to that of white supremist, and he is the source of the interconnectedness of white ignorance and white supremacy, as Mills (2017) rightly highlights. Against this background, in coming chapters, I argue that the Kantian paradigm is entangled with white ignorance and as such linked with colonialism, racism and white supremacy. By entanglement I mean a relationship that is hard to discover but is deep there and at the surface at the same time. It is more present in daily actions than in the consciousness of people; all the time it evades their attention and mocks them. Kant, more than any other philosopher, was the voice of a rising modern Europe and its will to dominate the world for access to its resources; its truth or knowledge of the world become that of exploitation. As such, Europe was not anything more than an expanding military, colonial and racist power; as late as 1914, European colonial domination covered 85% of the surface of the globe, and as late as 1940s the world was “a Western white-dominated world” (Foreign Policy, in Mills 1997:27).5 Such a global power needed legitimacy and a strong narrative as well as leading metaphors to create a colonial ethos and make the colonial world system work properly. More than any other philosopher, Kant provided such narrative and metaphor by establishing the white European standpoint as the standpoint of

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humanity and making the European way of life the ideal and model of progress and the aim of education and the end of history. By pretending to think from the neutral perspective of the human being (devoid of gender, ethnicity, colour and class), Kant provided expanding colonial Europe with colonial notions of knowledge, morality, history, progress, social organisation and international relations that were to be made universally valid beyond European boundaries. Nothing more than these could assist a rising colonial, racist and capitalist power and its ambitions of world conquest. I am not saying that Kant wrote specifically for colonial agents or that any colonial officer or slave trader read Kant, but he inaugurated an orientation of thought, an ethos, an attitude and a mode thinking, that converged and legitimated their thoughts, actions and feelings. My claim is that the convergence of Kant’s liberal standpoint and that of colonialism, capitalism and racism was not coincidence, but there were organic links between them that made the colonial officers and settlers misconceive their position as that of humanity and see themselves as the agents of progress. The liberal Kant, more than any other European thinker, gave voice to the rising modern time and the way it could work; he established modernity as a European phenomenon and made modernising equal to westernising. Indeed, the global expansion of Europeans needed a thinker of Kant’s calibre, with his comprehensiveness and thoroughness and deep connections with a tradition and openness toward future. Kant entered the philosophical stage in the right moment, Kairos, to achieve the accomplishment of becoming the mouthpiece of a growing and imperial culture. Here, I must add that Kant’s influence received global spread through Kantianism rather than Kant himself. Kant defended the basic principles of capitalism like property rights and rational choice; colonial ideas of supremacy of Europe; and racist ideas of the supremacy of white male Europeans. This means that the spread of Kantianism and colonialism presupposed each other.

Problematisation of scientific education’s actuality As I proceeded in my research, I became more and more clear of the fact that my study is not about Kant and his educational theory. Neither is it about the history of education and its alleged progress for the better. It is rather about education of today and its problems and their genesis, how ideas that once emerged and later were refuted continue to work in our time beyond our awareness and how this problem can be grasped through understanding the educational orientation of today. My attention to the Kantian paradigm and concomitant educational ideas aims at unveiling and understanding the historical rootedness of current educational problems. I am trying to bring clearness to the entanglement of scientific education and colonial and racial domination as well as sexism as they emerged from the same economic, intellectual and cultural context for the advantage of their inventors and for the systematic

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disadvantage of their others. Through genealogical analyses of complex formations of educational ideas and their relations with power and knowledge configurations, we can now reveal that today, neoliberalism has brought about new notions of educability and governmentality while at the same time provides a genealogical continuation of classical liberalism, or the Kantian paradigm, as a general framework of intelligibility. As a paradigm is a “constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by the members of a given community” (Kuhn 1970:175), I focus on general principles of thought and values rather than details without diminishing the value of the latter. Further, paradigms work often in the gap between daily practices and practitioners’ conscious reflection upon them and affect both without making themselves known. The difficult task of this chapter is to carefully identify those principles of educational thoughts, ideas, discourses and postulates that are to be problematised, re-examined, abandoned or reconstructed and transformed. It tries to discern genealogical continuities and discontinuities between educational assumptions in the generative context of scientific education and that of its actuality today in order to transform its current and future developments. Certainly these discourses have changed form and function, and we need to trace them in new shapes and in unexpected places. Besides, Kant’s influence is comprehensive, invisible, multidimensional and metastatic; it is part of the givens of education. Accordingly, it is a demanding task to make it manifest. His influence on racist and colonial ideas is mostly latent. Furthermore, it is about embryonic ideas that can develop in different directions and in unexpected ways and influence the present in an unexpected manner. In this context, the central questions to be asked are: Are Kantian postulates of racist and colonial domination, constitutive elements of scientific education, disrupted, or do they continue to work invisibly? How can we release the present and the future of education from the burden of the past? It is about not only identifying racist and colonial heritages but also finding strategies of resistance to counteract and change them. Rather than aiming at an exhaustive account of similarities and dissimilarities between the Kantian educational paradigm and our time’s dominant educational ideology, that of neoliberalism, I focus on two kinds of investigations relevant to my study: Partly I investigate genealogical continuities of general principles of educational thought; more exactly, I focus on continuity of the scientific or rational style of thought, orientation, grounding and corresponding thought community6 as their locus. Partly, I investigate continuity of general notions like that of the human being and its transformation into human capital. In previous chapters, I tried to bring in some knowledge about Kant and his liberal orientation of thought, its educational ideology and its hegemonic notion of the human being. It was an attempt to pave the way for understanding neoliberalism as the dominant ideology of our own time since, as Foucault maintains, liberalism is still “the general framework” and the very “condition of intelligibility” (2007:327–328) of our time’s biopolitics. If we ask the question

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of educational and political actuality, interconnections between politics and education would be part of the answer. However, we cannot answer the question of neoliberalisation, marketisation and economisation of education just by focusing on neoliberalism as a sudden event.We need to investigate how liberal principles were forming the general framework of capitalist and colonial values. We can then, together with Foucault, maintain that “only when we know what this governmental regime called liberalism was” (2008) will we be able to grasp neoliberalism and its educational ideology. Let me start with cognitivism (Kant’s focus on epistemology and knowing subject) as a result of Kant’s Copernican turn – Kant’s focus on the transcendental subject and universal principles of reason as the starting point of cognition and education instead of specific contexts of knowledge production and dissemination. In this respect, the rise of homo economicus and the shift from classical liberalism to neoliberalism are genealogically continuous with the epistemic dimension of the Kantian paradigm and its all-encompassing rationalisation of life. We observe it in an unexpected quarter, however, in the notion of an extended market and impositions of its abstract principles on the society, as suggested already by Hayek. Hayek sees society as a market and assigns a cognitive role to the market. For him, scientific or rational ordering of social reality is the source of truth and objective knowledge. Like Kant, Hayek was concerned with “division of knowledge,” epistemology and “the problem of knowledge” (1948:51) and saw the problem of objective knowledge as that of modernity. However, he replaced the structure of the human mind with that of the market; for him the market was not limited to trade in commodities but the place and process through which truth were revealed and established. In this context, the price system, like Kantian public use of reason, plays a decisive role since it reveals whether people bring right ideas to the marketplace or not. Seeing the market as a point of intersections, Hayek writes: The problem which we pretend to solve is how the spontaneous interaction of a number of people, each possessing only bits of knowledge, brings about results which, if they were to be brought about deliberately, would require a knowledge on the part of the directing mind which no single person can possess? (1948:50) Here, it is not the structure of the individual mind but market mechanisms through which fragmentary knowledge becomes a systematic whole or a science in the Kantian sense. This is, at the same time, to reinvent the status of the human being. In Kant, it was the a priori principle of the purposiveness of nature that eventually led to the realisation of talents and germs that nature had implanted in the human being. It seems like Hayek makes this principle contingent and assigns it to the market; both notions are rational and have a supra-individual function, however. Accordingly, for Hayek, to disturb the

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laws of the market is like disturbing the laws of nature and reason. Instead of the purposiveness of nature and cunning of reason, the market determines the principles that lead accidental actions toward a single plan and reveal the truth. According to Hayek, the market is the right ground to start with: To show that in this sense the spontaneous actions of individuals will, under conditions which we can define, bring about a distribution of resources which can be understood as if it were made according to a single plan, although nobody has planned it, seems to me indeed an answer to the problem which has sometimes been metaphorically described as that of the “social mind”. But we must not be surprised that such claims have usually been rejected, since we have not based them on the right grounds. (1948:50) Cunning of the market is the ground that brings about “a single plan” as if there is a “social mind.” I cite this passage to not focus on similarities between Hayek and Kant but rather their obvious differences; however, there are genealogical and ancestral links at work here, like the idea of systematic unity and wholeness in accordance with abstract principles, a plan and a ground. To reveal genealogical links between racial, colonial, sexist biases of classical liberalism and neoliberalism is my other aim here. For this study, the following formulation of categorical imperative is of most importance:“Act in accordance with maxims of a universally legislative member for a merely possible realm of ends’’ (GWMM 4:439). In such a universal realm, each individual obeys the common rational laws due to inner compulsion or duty (although he is free from natural compulsions) while at the same time rules herself in the capacity of being a self-legislating being; as persons, individuals have protected rights and freedoms. This is the basis of modern universalism and egalitarianism. While Kant saw this as an ideal, mainstream political and educational philosophy have established it as the basis for equality in liberal democracies. Kantian rationalities and biases, however, are part and parcel of this basis. As will be shown in greater detail later, feminist philosophers, postcolonial thinkers and thinkers within critical race studies have questioned egalitarianism and universalism as limited to white males and racially normed, far from being “egalitarian and universalist” (Mills 2017:93). In neoliberal societies, maxims of the self-legislative individuals’ moral action are transformed into the self-legislator actors’ behaviour in the market place to acquire the right amount of relevant knowledge needed to make rational decisions – to make rational choices and carry out their plans. A priori knowledge is replaced by “knowledge which people will acquire in the course of their economic activity” (Hayek 1948:55). However, individualism, the rule of objective laws and the decisive role of a trans-individual totality are common between the two as well as the decisive role of reason and rational choices in bringing unity to human knowledge and actions; it is about bringing about a totality by “combination of fragments of knowledge existing in different minds” (1948:54).

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My attempt to reveal ancestry links between Kant and neoliberalism aims at showing genealogical continuity between notions of the human being that Kant inaugurated and the hegemonic notions of education, knowledge and the human being today. Indeed, basic principles of the Kantian style of thought are discernible in the neoliberal orientation toward education, humanity and life, although there are genealogical transformations. The most important principle here is universalism, or “primacy of the abstract,” as Hayek (1948) puts it.7 It is about bringing all spheres of human life under the same set of objective rules; these rules not only are independent of the individuals, but the individuals must abstain from their contingent desires in the present in order to pave the path for their realisation in the future. In Kant, this realisation is possible through education as a science, where, through application of objective principles, the human being as a natural being is transformed into an intelligible being; this is a development from contingency of individual will to a common will that links “force with freedom and law,” as Kant maintains in his Anthropology (Anth 7:331);8 it is about an ethical commonwealth in which rational beings are connected by a system of rational laws. Kant’s focus was the whole of humanity – a humanity submitted to a white will to domination. To foster the subject of this domination, he aims at formation of a specific human type in accordance with formal rules rather individual happiness. In neoliberal societies, in a Kantian manner and through the imposition of market principles on all spheres of society, an organic or systematic whole of practices and discourse has been established where educational, economic and political institutions, discourses and practices exist for the sake of each other at a global scale and in such a way that makes scientific education the only alternative available and destroys oppositions and challenges to it. At the same time, this educational system aims at fostering a rational human type. By revealing this human type’s historicity and its being invented to serve specific group interests, genealogical analysis contributes to open new possibilities for opposition and alternative educational orientations. Construction of homo economicus

As Kant’s focus was the question of what the human being is, here I choose to discuss the human type neoliberal education aims at and the principles and concepts that surround this human type, namely economic man, or homo economicus. To show genealogical links between Kantian paradigm’s educational ideas and neoliberalism is one of my aims here. This is to show a genealogical development in the West, related to the systematisation, bureaucratisation, marketisation and institutionalisation of educational ideas that emerged in the context of Western modernity as well as their global spread through colonial expansion. This globalisation has developed in tandem with marketisation of the notion of the human being that has worked as the basis for the construction of homo economicus. In this respect, education has been developed into “soft power,” as Brown (2015) would say, or ideological state apparatus, as Althusser

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(2001) maintains, to enforce Western capitalist values at home. Another aspect of this same process has been maintaining cultural, political and economic domination of the West over the rest of the world by soft power as well as hard power or naked violence. Primarily, I will discuss homo economicus as a specific form of subjectivity whose genesis can be traced back to traditional liberalism and Kantianism as a system of thought. More clearly, it is about genealogical continuity within liberalism as the general intellectual framework of and condition for the possibility of intelligibility, encompassing different nuances of liberalism and rendering them intelligible and legitimate. Against this background and inspired by Foucault, the genealogical-critical shift here must be from the question of what the human being is to who we are today.9 It is to read the genesis in terms of consequences and vice versa. Another aspect of the same question is: Who is the human being today? This question concerns the established extension of humanity or politics of inclusion and exclusion and is relevant regarding the relationships between the Western self and its other, as will be discussed in the next section. More precisely, we can ask: What is the human type the educational apparatus of today has produced and continues to produce? Are we to disrupt this productive apparatus or let it do its work undisturbed? The answer to the question of the normative type of the human being the educational apparatus produces is clear; economic man, or homo economic.10 This human type signifies a form of subjectivity that has its historical ancestry within the biopolitics of liberalism. There are also values in this contemporary form of subjectivity that are exclusively neoliberal, like entrepreneurial atomism, where the individuals are preoccupied with investment in their own human capital. The questions are now these: What has happened to us as products of such an educational system? What has happened to our relationships with each other and with the world? Joseph Persky sees the use of homo economicus as a reaction of Mills’s critics to his works rather than a concept dubbed or used by Mills himself (Persky 1995:222). This line of ancestry is important from the perspective of economists and the historical development of their discipline. However, I see, through genealogical lines of inquiry, ancestry links between homo economicus and the Kantian notion of homo criticus11 (as related to the Kantian question of what the human being is and what he can and should make of himself through education).12 To my mind, they are two aspects of the same human type, the rational or modern human being (as the locus of a modern attitude and ethos), one seen from an economic perspective, the other from a philosophical one; they are supposed to invest in education as the way to rationality and autonomous choice – rational organisation of cognition, life and society. In a different context, different aspects of this human type have been recognised and emphasised. From the perspective of Kant’s critical project, the mature and autonomous human being reflects upon conditions of possibility of different phenomena; accordingly, critique or understanding boundaries of the possible becomes

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important while, from the perspective of neoliberal thinkers and economists, the functioning of the human being in an all-encompassing market becomes important; as such, rational economic choices become central. Important to keep in mind is that I am not saying that homo criticus is the same as homo economicus, but it is about their being different features of the modern human being, on the one hand, and being connected by genealogical links, on the other.13 Given Kant’s premises about the importance of formal or objective principles in human choices, his trans-individual notion of reason and rational actions and so forth, the current human type becomes a possible posterity. Again, it is important to keep in mind that it is not about the necessity or inevitability of the hegemonic human type of today as there are no such links between historical events; they open for a variety of possibilities out of which some become realized, which is true of homo economicus as just one alternative among many. My point is that rather than being abandoned, Kantian ideas are now intertwined with notions of homo economicus; there are similarities as well as dissimilarities between these two notions due to the historical links between them. One basic similarity is that homo economicus, like homo criticus, is “identified . . . with rationality itself ” (Persky 1995:223). They act similarly in using “rational methods for making choice” (1995:223). My emphasis on homo economicus as being just one alternative among many opens the path for resistance, struggle, transformation and finding alternative notions of humanity. Besides homo economicus being a form of subjectivity with clear genesis in Kantian liberalism, there are Kantian genealogical traces in rational choice theory and notions of human capital, economic competition and entrepreneurship as discursive tools of the neoliberal regimes of practice and knowledge/power. A reference to Foucault, where he sees modernity as an attitude, may bring clarity to what I mean. By attitude he means “a mode of relating to contemporary reality” rather than a period. Besides, it is about consequences of historical events: “a voluntary choice made by certain people.” More importantly, it is about “a way of thinking and feeling; a way, too, of acting and behaving that at one and the same time marks a relation of belonging and presents itself as a task. A bit, no doubt, like what the Greeks called an ethos” (Foucault 2007:105).This Foucauldian view is significant in many ways. It shows that genealogy is not about unilinear chronologies but about similarities in manner of being, connecting to reality, acting, talking and thinking; about a style of thought and life; about the way one relates to oneself, the other and the world. These are axes of ethics, power and truth seen from a Foucauldian (2007) – or, indeed, Kantian – point of view as Foucault is influenced by Kant in making these distinctions.14 A further point regards the Kantian notion of progress and the relationships between Europe as modern and the rest of the world as pre-modern, while in reality modernity and countermodernity exist simultaneity in all societies; European and non-European alike. The complexity of the issue at hand lies in neoliberalism being a variation on liberalism while it has brought new forms of governmentality or “conduct of conduct” and subjectivity, as Foucault terms it.

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Accordingly, we need new analytical tools, forms of resistance and opposition as well as the reinvention and reuse of classical forms to bring in a “self-conscious global subject” as Adorno (1998) says, and establish a true notion of humanity beyond racism, sexism and neo-colonialism. Kant invented scientific education to secure the upbringing of a rational human type, homo criticus. This notion of the human being is related to reason’s idea of freedom, where a self-legislative being makes rational choices and acts morally; although Kant recognises the importance of feeling of pleasure and displeasure, he reduces the human being to a rational being and suppresses his other dimensions, such as emotions, inclinations and passions. For Kant, the realm of ends is an ideal. In this realm all individuals are governed by reason to the exclusion of passions, inclinations and emotions. The basic genealogical continuity consists of both notions being signified by methodological rational choice and their scientific orientation toward themselves, the others and the world and toward life as well as a focus on calculation and achievement as a means for making oneself worthy of happiness. For Kant, individuals must qualify themselves to humanity and happiness, and he sees education as a systematic way through which individuals qualify themselves to humanity. In other words, individuals are malleable in accordance with predetermined rational forms. To provide education with a predetermined idea and ideal of humanity is an attempt from Kant’s side to release the human being and his destiny from external or natural causality and bring him under the inner compulsion of the moral law. True education, as Gary Becker (1993) would say, is now an investment in human capital; it is a way to qualify oneself to economic independence or active citizenry.The core of this view can be discerned in Kant’s seeing freedom, equality and economic independence as the conditions of active citizenry. His understanding of freedom as rational or objective choice (choices in accordance with rational rules) takes a twist here, however. For Kant, the free will is the absolute good, and the autonomy “of the will is the sole principle of all mora law” (Friedrich 1994:225). Being released from natural contingencies, such rational beings are interconnected by common laws in a larger intelligible totality, the kingdom of ends. As Foucault maintains, homo economicus is to be made an “entrepreneur of himself ” (2008:226). In a similar manner, Brown sees mechanisms of power at work to make of homo economicus an exclusively “market actor” and “financialized human capital” whose “project is to selfinvest in ways that enhance its value or to attract investors through constant attention to its actual or figurative credit rating, and to do this across every sphere of its existence” (2015:33). This means that all spheres of life are now brought under the reign of an economic reason, on the one hand. On the other hand, neoliberalism is not limited to the imposition of market rationality to all domains of life; it also has the ambition to invent homo economicus, a new human type – an economically calculative animal. Accordingly, homo economicus can be conceived as a reduction of homo criticus as it reduces the use of reason to economic rationality as an all-embracing notion

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of rationality. However, they are both subspecies of modern man, as outlined by Kant, a rational being with a modern ethos who is deemed to use his reason to produce and reproduce himself. In an educational respect, as Brown maintains, “Neoliberalism is a specific and normative mode of reason.” It is related to “the production of the subject” (2015:48) and a peculiar form of subjectivity and reason that configures all aspects of existence in economic terms (2015:17).15 Due to this domination, education has become an economic good related to neoliberal reason and rational choice. It qualifies for a successful life in neoliberal societies, where all spheres of society have been brought under the logic of the market. Among other principal features of homo economicus is competition as the leading principle of neoliberal capitalism. According to Foucault, the neoliberal shift has been a shift from exchange as the basis of society (as classical liberals like Adam Smith considered) to competition (2008:12). As a result, “The model neoliberal citizen is one who strategizes for her or himself among various social, political, and economic options, not one who strives with others to alter or organise these options” (Foucault 1978:101). This shift means a basic change in the mode of actions through which human beings are made and make themselves subjects of and subject to truths. As mentioned, Kant saw the natural drive of “unsociable sociability” (an external or natural compulsion) or competition for power and property as a gradual way toward a law-governed or rational order. This was a movement from freedom under external law toward freedom under duty – inner maxims and commands of reason. While the former was realisable in the phenomenal realm, the latter was a matter of the noumenal world; Kant thus encouraged competition rather than demoting it. Although we can see that competition has taken exaggerated dimension in neoliberal societies, we can discern its embryonic seeds in Kant. Brown (2015) has observed the illusive character of notions of equality and free choice in neoliberal societies; people are equal in not being equal, and their choices are limited to options offered by neoliberalism. People are made responsible for things that are beyond their choice and power – for instance, their unemployment or bankruptcy due to financial crises. This illusiveness is not unpresented. Many of the faculties that Kant ascribes to the human being that must function as the basis of moral freedom are illusive or ideal, as are his views of white males’ superiority over non-whites and the transcendental subject being constitutive of all knowledge or independency of universal ideas of context of their production and use. To become an entrepreneur of themselves in neoliberal societies, individuals are to apply market values in their judgements, choices and practices to accumulate human capital. They are supposed to be free and autonomous atoms of self-interest. As such, they are responsible for orientating the social realm through rational choice and cost-benefit calculation to the exclusion of other values and interests. Individuals who fail to prosper have themselves to blame; the neoliberal system refuses any responsibility. Seen through neoliberal eyes,

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the individuals do not sell their labour power in the market; they earn their income by investment or expenditure of human capital, which consists of “an individual’s innate genetic qualities and acquired skills and knowledge” (Brown 2015:176). This accumulated “human capital” is the result of prior and current investments in goods like education, nutrition and training, as well as love and affection. Besides or due to construction of the human being exclusively as homo economicus (2015:176), education itself has become an investment in human capital (Becker 1993). As mentioned earlier, Becker (1993) maintains that education is one of homo economicus’ main investments as it qualifies him for higher income and higher social positions, which are preconditions of happiness. Once again, this leads us to another common trait between neoliberal and liberal rationality: the importance of economic independence as the precondition for qualifying oneself for membership in the actual public state. According to Kant, only economically independent citizens were capable of making politically qualified judgement. In such a condition, “Democracies are conceived as requiring technically skilled human capital, not educated participants in public life and common rule” (Brown 2015:177). Global spread of neoliberalism and scientific education

As was mentioned in the previous chapter, as part of the global capitalist system, scientific education is now a means to produce homo economicus at a global level. Having this competing, calculative and self-interested being as the main target of education is to use education for the enhancement of capital rather human qualities outside the domain of the market. Using this tool, neoliberalism has reshaped the modern ethos in such a way that the difference among the economic, the political and the social has been eroded. In retrospect, without reading end products of historical processes in their beginnings, we can discern genealogical similarities and contextual dissimilarities between notions of the educability of white males and the ineducability of the rest of humanity as well as the West as the legislator of the globe as inaugurated by Kant and as used presently. As the progenitor of scientific education, Kant outlined this notion of education as way toward a larger totality (Goldmann 1971) – a liberal global system based on abstract rational principles in which individuals act freely, namely in accordance with the rules of a universal reason. Kant’s notion of progress is related to a teleological notion of history. History for him can be “predicative” and “prognosticative or prophetic” with ends given beforehand. Kant writes: “the prophet himself occasions and produces the events he predicts” (WOT 177). Although Kant could not produce the events he predicted, he paved the path for those events to happen16 by being the philosophical pioneer of a specific style of thought and orientation toward life and education and classifying world populations accordingly. To be clear about genealogical continuities as well as transformations, colonialism is not the same as it was in Kant’s time or in 19th century; colonialism as a

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historical period is now mainly over, but not coloniality or the ethos of colonialism, likewise Eurocentrism or rational justification of colonialism. Coloniality and Eurocentrism have become parts of the hidden background of culture and education.There are genealogical relationships between coloniality and colonialism; coloniality is the ethos created by colonialism that has survived it. While colonialism “denotes a political and economic relation in which the sovereignty of a nation or a people rests on the power of another nation, which makes such nation an empire,” coloniality “refers to long-standing patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism, but that define culture, labour, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations” (Maldonad-Torres 2007:243). Coloniality denotes the genealogical consequences of colonialism and “allows us to understand the continuity of colonial forms of domination” (Grosfoguel 2009:22). Coloniality signifies long-lived values and norms inaugurated by colonial power structures at work without colonial officers being their direct agents anymore; they work through well-intended people. This is signified by coloniality of power that structures the world in terms of periphery and core regions and establishes an imbalance of power relations between them. If Kant articulated a colonial difference between “savages” and white male Europeans in terms of educability and the ability to govern themselves as explicit demarking criteria, we now confront the same difference and its consequences in an invisible shape. We are to rearticulate and render them visible to counteract them. The colonial pattern of power is now part and parcel of the hidden background of education and culture; it is a colonial orientation toward cognition, aesthetics and education, using the West as the norm. The same can be said of racism and sexism. Colonialism, racism and sexism have been refuted as manifest phenomena but continue to work as latent forces imbedded in the Western view of the division of cognitive and aesthetic labour, progress and history – the layer of cultural and educational assumptions and biases between people’s everyday behaviour and conscious reflections upon them. Colonialism was a configuration of colonial practices, an ethos and a way of thinking, acting and talking. It had its own style of thought, language, patterns of behaviour and matrix of pawer. While the epoch is over, its educational thought is still at work as part of unequal political, economic and cultural relationships between former colonial powers and former colonies, as well as the division of labour along racial and colonial lines. This systematic whole is still constitutive of the relationships between the Global South and the Global North (Quijano & Wallerstein 1992). In this context, it is important to understand the Eurocentric and colonialist discourses that still shape the world and to reflect critically on how Kantianism has contributed to these discourses, to identify continuities and discontinuities between the generative context of scientific education and its neoliberal actuality. As Mills maintains, “Liberalism . . . has historically been predominantly a racial liberalism” (2017:29). The same can be said of liberalism and colonialism.

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Despite a shift from liberalism to neoliberalism, the logics and ethos of colonialism and racism have not been dismantled. Although former colonies are now governed by nation states, these state are modelled after the Western pattern of nation states, and as such they are a heritage of the colonial past (Arendt 2009) and incorporated in a Eurocentric narrative of history and politics; they are incorporated in the process of the neoliberalisation of world markets and economy, a process in favour of the economic and cultural hegemony of former colonial powers. As Wendy Brown shows, colonial tactics changed shape rather than nature. She writes: “since the early 1970s” there has been ongoing “IMF-and-USimposed neoliberal experiments in the Global South” (Brown 2015:47). Brown shows the boomerang effects of neoliberal experiments by continuing to write: “followed by the surprise ascendency of neoliberal policy, reason, and governance in the Global North almost two decades later” (2015:47). However, the colonial difference shows itself in what Brown calls “soft” and “hard” power,17 where hard power means military violence and deregulation and privatisation by force while soft power means “transformations of discourse, law, and the subject that comport more closely with Foucault’s notion of governmentality” (2015:47).18 Neoliberalism, however, is not less harmful in the Global North; rather, it is the other way around. It has corrupted humanity and undone democracy, as Brown indicates. Indeed, it “has met with greater resistance in, say, Latin America over the past several decades than in the United States or Britain” (2015:48). This neoliberal totality can become the basis of new strategies for resistance and struggle, the basis of a new conscious global political subject where thinkers in the Global North recognise the value of struggles in the Global South and ally themselves with these anti-colonial and anti-racism struggles.19 However, neoliberal manipulative discourses are successful in blaming the harms of neoliberalism on the Global South in forms of anti-migration racism and populist tendencies in the EU and the United States. Through the Kantian paradigm, the notion of reason has been colonialised as the mere property of the West; reason in history became a Western reason and history became the story of this reason’s progress toward abstract thinking. Further, world history is described in terms of pre-modern, modern and postmodern eras, with the West in the leading position. As the notion of reason is colonialised and Eurocentric, scientific education also is Eurocentric since it is part of a thought system that endorses and justifies the hierarchies established by colonialism; the international order of education remains deeply influenced by the pattern of domination established under colonialism so much so that this order can be described as neo-colonial or as continuing to exhibit a coloniality of power (Quijano 2000). Concerning the coloniality of the Western mindset, Quijano writes: “All non-Europeans” are “considered as pre-European and at the same time displaced on a certain chain from the primitive to the civilized, from the rational to irrational, from traditional to modern, from the magicalmythical to the scientific. In other words, from the non-European/pre-European

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to something that in time will be Europeanized or modernized” (Quijano in Allen 2016:21). Accordingly, education through history functions as an ideological justification for ongoing neoliberalisation or the gradual assimilation of other cultures into the Western economic system and corresponding culture. This narrative veiled the fact that Europe has been the source of colonialism, systematic slavery, scientific racism, the Holocaust and neo-colonial injustices. In this view of progress, the West has taken on an educational mission instead of an outmoded civilising mission in a way that underwrites neo-colonialism and imperialism. This is a logic of coloniality where the right to be divergent or different in equality is denied. Through the global spread of neoliberalism, scientific education nowadays enjoys global domination alongside the neoliberal division of epistemic labour between the Global South and North. Education is now scientific and unified by a purpose and a conformist neoliberal idea of human happiness; instead of human beings belonging to a common world and loving it, they are now ruled by an omnipresent market rationality. The apparatus of education is driven by economic and market norms like calculability, employability and rational choice. Through the global expansion of neoliberalism, free market values have become naturalised as educational goods worldwide. Implicitly, educability and westernisation20 are confused nowadays while education works as the basis of entitlement to rights. As a result, white males are the norm; as such, they are seen as superior to non-whites who remain in the sphere of nature or ineducability. Important to be mentioned is that educability here means practical and full equality between whites and non-whites as human beings. In this perspective, to be subject to colonial education does not mean equal educability since it works within a lingered pattern of superiority-inferiority. Although it may produce non-white individuals more skilled than white individuals, they are still not equal since it is assumed that non-whites are acting due to natural or external causalities (western style of education, for instance) rather than by their inner compulsion or duty; they remain in the realm of phenomena while whites become rational being released from corporal inclinations. Accordingly, classification of humanity into inferior and superior is preserved. Distribution of educability and recognition of capabilities to achieve human perfection, autonomy and happiness are still taking place along racial and colonial divides. Through these processes, scientific education is used for subordination and homogenisation of the world’s population in accordance with imperatives of hegemonic European reason. It contributes to the suppression of manifold ways of life through the global spread of the Western way of life.This is not surprising as scientific education emerged as a response to the needs of expanding Europe and was entangled with strategies for racial and colonial domination and the exclusion of non-whites. From the very outset, educability (the precondition of personhood) and concomitant entitlements were racially determined. Thus, a basis for inferior treatment of non-whites was established by calling them uneducable; de-humanising of non-whites has thus been an intrinsic

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part of politics of inclusion and exclusion in scientific education, where whites have defined themselves as educable persons as opposed to uneducable “subpersons,” as Mills (2017) would say. In a Foucauldian sense, neoliberalism is a global form of governmentality, subjectification and subjectivation, where the individuals subjectify others, subjectivate themselves and are governed,21 all for the benefit of a small group of financiers at the top of the Global North. For Foucault, neoliberalism as governmentality signifies the apparatus of administrative power; it “has the population as its target, political economy as its major form of knowledge, and apparatuses of security as its essential technical instrument” (2007:108–109). Arendt (1958) sees another reduction at work where modernity and science are hegemonic; she sees a dehumanising process at work that reduces human activities to labour for the exclusion of action and political participation. Humanity becomes alienated to the world and incorporated in the market. Foucault’s focus is on mechanisms of governmentality and subjectivity in Western societies and sees these issues within the boundaries of these societies. However, neoliberalism operates through coloniality of power at a global level, with different educational strategies in the Global North and the Global South but with the same aims and consequences. Seen in this perspective, Eurocentrism, colonial heritages and racism come into the picture and demand explanation. In this concern, world-system theory, introduced by Immanuel Wallerstein and Fernand Braudel, offers helpful analytical tools. This theory is about expansion of capitalism at a global scale. Faithful to the Marxist tradition of historiography, this theory makes a historical overview of the genesis and development of modern capitalism from its earliest days in Renaissance Europe to today and asserts that capitalism has now brought the entire globe into a single economic system. Imperial expansion of capitalism has been a modernisation – or, more correctly, a westernisation – process through which capitalism has become a world system. According to Wallerstein (1974), this system has divided the world into two categories of countries; “core” countries in the Global North and “periphery” countries in the Global South, whose relations are based on inequalities and tensions.22 Neoliberalism pushes for global uniformity; universalism is perverted into uniformity.While discourses of autonomy, freedom of choice and individualism may permeate education, individuals are subject to unpredictable demands of market forces and concomitant crises at a global scale. Indeed, principles such as cost-benefit calculations, productivity and efficiency, basic components of neoliberal discourse, cannot protect individuals against alienation, floating fear and widespread insecurity in neoliberal societies. Important to be mentioned is that I am not arguing for a return to a time before Kant or the purity of native and local paradigms, as they are impossible. It is not about blind hostility to the West but resistance against colonialism, racism and sexism everywhere; my aim is to make racism and colonialism, as well as gender inequality, the common issues of humanity through finding alternative

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discourses and practices. I do not argue for nation states in former colonies since these states are indeed a heritage of the colonial past. Their sporadic opposition against the West or de-westernisation (as the case is in Iran, for instance) has shown itself not to be genuine resistance since they wish to share domination with former colonial powers instead of defying oppression, domination and coloniality of power; they operate within the hegemonic political paradigm. Such conflict of interest does not transform the current orientation toward education as the local neoliberals’ needs are intertwined with those of former colonial powers; there is a reciprocity at work.23 It is thus not accidental that education is nowadays uniformly modelled in accordance with Western standards at a global level; universalisation of the neoliberal perspective reinforces its educational hegemony through nation states regulating educational apparatuses accordingly. Education has become the inscription of hegemonic neoliberal forms of experience and marginalising inclusive knowledge perspectives – perspectives that are either non-Western or polyphonic and general in the sense of including all relevant perspectives. This is to strip non-westerners of rational capacities and personhood and the ability to think for and govern themselves; it also is to prevent the formation of general perspectives of humanity.Through universalising Western particularism, capitalist domination is amplified by local domination.24 There is, of course, a process of perversion at work here. Neoliberalism pushes Kantian and liberal principles to the extreme, but this does not place it outside the Kantian paradigm. Besides, my assertion relates to genealogical principles and invisible historical continuities rather than apparent similarities. Kant was realistic enough to realise that his own time was not an enlightened epoch but that humanity was in progress toward such an epoch, thereof the centrality of the notion of progress through education as well as the teleological notions of history in his philosophy. The human type, the educational ideal and the rational organisation of society and knowledge prefigured by Kant have reached their climax first in our time.25 This is not to say that they are copies of what Kant believed, or Kant would have endorsed them. Rather, their genealogy goes back to Kantianism. I read Kant in light of our time’s global political and educational order. This means not only critical dialogue with Kant himself but also interpreting Kant in light of Kantianism. Reading his philosophy in light of its consequences. This is a genealogical as well as archaeological reading; reading him as the genesis of some central ideas at work in our time and analysing our time in light of Kant. To conclude, free market capitalism and its rationality have become pervasive and global as the only mode of production and distribution of goods in a worldwide market and concomitant notion of hegemonic rationality. It has taken education in its service to produce the human type (entrepreneurs) it needs. Eurocentrism and coloniality have become more sophisticated and hidden in figurative and discursive regimes of knowledge/power production, dissemination and educational practice. The same can be said of sexism and

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racism as racial differences have become ontologised and racialised bodies have become disposable and unworthy of being grieved, as Butler (2016) would say. These phenomena form basic aspects of the neoliberal world system. Scientific education is now a part of this global system and works in tandem with the neoliberal cognitive division of labour.

Notes 1 Together with Nietzsche, we can say that Kant’s images of the human being, science and progress are also just inventions and beliefs rather than truths; they are in the service of white supremacy. 2 Nietzsche “takes it to its most radical conclusions – ones that Kant certainly couldn’t have thought of and yet were implicit in his position” (Carol Gentili 2017:179). Hans Vaihinger also sees “the spirit of Kant, of the real Kant” (2009:842), in Nietzsche, despite the latter’s furious rejection of Kant. 3 The way Western democracies deal with immigrants, refugees and the poor part of their own populations is a testimony of their hypocrisy and not being true to the principles of universality of human rights. 4 Social epistemology, standpoint epistemology, feminist epistemology . . . each in its own way highlights the dependency of cognition on social background. 5 Zimbabwe (1980), Antigua and Barbuda (1981), Belize (1981) and Brunei (1984) gained independence. 6 In Ludwik Fleck (1979), a thought collective (Denkkollektiv) or thought community is a community or collective of scholars and researchers of the same interests who collaborate collectively for the production and elaboration of knowledge using a shared paradigm or framework of cultural customs and knowledge acquisition. Fleck saw knowledge production as a social practice conditioned by researchers’ cultural and historical background. 7 “Primacy of the abstract” in Hayek refers to the theory-ladenness of sensation. 8 For the influential role of these two notions in contemporary moral and political philosophy, see Ripstein (2009). 9 As will be clear later, I refer to a “we” beyond the hegemonic Western “we” common in mainstream research and education. 10 Joseph Persky (1995) and, following him, Hamann (2009) see Mills as the creator of homo econmicus, although Mills himself never used the term. 11 This notion is a Foucauldian invention rather than one used by Kant. 12 My emphasis on genealogical similarities does not mean there are no dissimilarities. 13 Another way to highlight the same point is family resemblances as introduced and used by Wittgenstein. 14 See also Johanna Oksala (2007). 15 In defending democracy, or the “demo” in democracy, Brown (2015:87) highlights the importance of homo politicus as a subject of politics and a kind of subject being since Aristotle. She laments: “in intellectual and practical life, homo oeconomicus has displaced homo politicus” (2015:92). 16 We can obtain a prophetic historical narrative of things to come by depicting those events whose a priori possibility suggests they will in fact happen. 17 Although this distinction is useful, there is not a clear-cut boundary between the use of soft and hard power; neoliberals use soft power of education even in the Global South as well. 18 This is what I call the tacit infrastructure of culture. 19 Ongoing popular protests in Iraq, Iran and Lebanon are indeed against neoliberalism.

Problematisation of the Kantian paradigm 139 20 There is a huge difference between westernisation and cultural interactions between different parts of the world. While the former is a part of the coloniality of power and cultural hegemony, the latter is a process of translation of cultural values into each other. The former is signified by domination, the latter by equality. The former establishes an imperial universalism while the latter is related to a translational one. 21 Alan Milchman and Alan Rosenberg (2008) distinguish between subjectification and subjectivation. Subjectification is the manner in which others are governed (the axis of power) – the way they, through processes of power/knowledge and education, among others, are objectified into subjects. It means subjugation and subjection. A subject can resist or reverse power relations, however. Subjectivation (subjectivation) is related to the self (the axis of ethics). It denotes the ways an individual governs and fashions herself into a subject. It is to make oneself subject of and subject to the truth. Subjectivation can take either the form of self-objectification in accordance with processes of subjectification or the form of a subjectivation of a true discourse produced through practices of freedom in resistance to prevailing apparatuses of power/knowledge. 22 Some educational scholars have connected world-system theory with Gramsci’s idea of hegemony, where the latter signifies the role of ruling ideas in oppression through consent. The notion of hegemony can be used to study educational relationships between core countries and periphery. Related to the Kantian paradigm’s global spread, this notion has explanatory capacities. Indeed, Kantian liberal cosmopolitanism and his idea of Europe as the global legislator are now part of our social reality, and schools are venues for dissemination of Eurocentrism and its production and reproduction. Through his theory of cultural reproduction, French sociologist Bourdieu, in his earlier works, analysed the role of the educational system in the reproduction of French society. In this context, his analysis of neoliberalism and its ideology of development, globalisation and different forms of violence is interesting. This constellation of notions functions for the “continuation of the power and influence of a small number of the dominant nations” (Bourdieu 1998:43). 23 It is not accidental that military coups in the Global South have generally been supported by the West (Iran 1953; Chile 1973). 24 This misconception shows itself in the violent reaction of Islamic fundamentalists against westerners. They counteract Western domination by violent and local domination. 25 Indeed, Hayek sees the free market economy as the context that has fulfilled Kant’s rational aspirations. There is, of course, some perversion at work here, as Habermas points out. Hayek and Kant are not identical. Hayek is inspired by Kant, and their similarities are of genealogical character, where the posterity is not a copy of the anteriority but the former is a continuation and a heir of the latter and administers the heritage in accordance with his own needs, values and wishes. John Gray (1984:8) characterises Hayek as a “sceptical Kantian.”

Chapter 6

Beyond Kant Toward a polyphonic strategy of resistance

My hope is that I have made one thing clear by now: We need to go beyond the Kantian paradigm and its vision of the human being and education since it carries germs of the coloniality of power, racism and sexism within itself and functions as an impediment in the way of freedom, equality and social justice, despite its promise of emancipation. There are different strategies to deal with Kantian heritages: Roughly, there are strategies within the Western tradition and outside this tradition as well as those based on a combination of the two. When it comes to the first strand, I focus on those strategies that try to transform Kant from within, like Foucault, rather than those that will keep him more or less intact, like Habermas. Thinkers outside the Western tradition are more difficult to classify. However, there are tendencies that want to delink from Kant, like liberation philosophy. The aim here is to find alternative bibliographies. Decolonial project is among this group. There are also tendencies that want to transform Kant and make him useable in new contexts. Provincialising Kant (subaltern studies) and deracialising him (critical race theory a la Charles Mills) are such strategies. My attempt is to link together these strategies and construct multifunctional tools for resistance and a multidimensional framework of thought away from racism, colonialism and sexism and toward multiplicity and equality of interplaying perspectives. Given the complexity of the task at hand, we have few possibilities to know with certainty what the next paradigm will be like and how exactly we can get there. However, we can assume some basic features with clarity. One is to start from where we are now. This may seem tautological, but it implies a proper understanding of our own time, our possibilities for a new educational paradigm and the impediments that stand in its way and the way we can connect our resources to impediments to overcome them. Through analysing who we are today, we can know a good deal about the main traits of a future paradigm, as it has connections with the present as well as how we reconstruct the past and the way we identify problems handed down to us by the past. The other is the need for a genealogical way of thinking to see things that we do not see within the current intellectual framework. It is about a new style of thought rather than improving some details in the current one. Against this

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background, the benefits of revealing the fact that white European philosophers are operating within a racist intellectual framework or paradigm become obvious. They are among the obstacles of a new grounding and orientation toward education and knowledge dissemination rather than a resource as far as they do not engage with the latent racial and colonial content of the ground of Western culture. The same can be said of the use of showing that scientific education is based on racism; the current educational paradigm is a problem rather than a resource since it reproduces racism and colonial patterns of power. Therefore, it is important to reveal the imperial nature of knowledge production and universalism to replace them with translative ones. Such an aim brings in the difficult tasks of decolonialising and deracialising notions of reason, education and the human being. The key to decolonising and deracialising the intellect and education is to delink knowledge production and dissemination from the neoliberal division of cognitive labour and its needs and connect it to the need of human multiple struggles for freedom from colonial, racist and sexist oppression. A first step in this direction is what Nietzsche suggests in the following passage from his Beyond Good and Evil: Perhaps the time is very near when we will realize again and again just what actually served as the cornerstone of those sublime and unconditional philosophical edifices that the dogmatists used to build – some piece of folk superstition from time immemorial (like the soul-superstition that still causes trouble as the superstition of the subject or I), some word-play perhaps, a seduction of grammar or an over-eager generalization from facts that are really very local, very personal, very human-all-too-human. Let us hope that the dogmatists’ philosophy was only a promise over the millennia, as was the case even earlier with astrology, in whose service perhaps more labor, money, ingenuity, and patience was expended than for any real science so far. We owe the great style of architecture in Asia and Egypt to astrology and its “supernatural” claims. It seems that all great things, in order to inscribe eternal demands in the heart of humanity, must first wander the earth under monstrous and terrifying masks; dogmatic philosophy was this sort of a mask: the Vedanta doctrine in Asia, for example, or Platonism in Europe. (BGE, Preface) I quote this passage in length since it gives me a sigh of relief. I have many times thought of the following Shakespearean verse while reading Kant: “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” (Macbeth). Is the magnificent façade that Kant has built not based on illusions? Have colonisers, racists and sexists, not gained all too much power on the basis of these illusions? Have they not built a world system on these illusions? Have they not made life more complicated and troublesome for us by giving a wrong image of humanity and life? Is not legitimation of racial and colonial hierarchies an intellectual

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crime against humanity? Does Kant not spent all too much time creating a complicated illusion of humanity? I have no answer to these questions. However, I am sure that we, through multiple struggles, can free ourselves from racist and colonial heritages.This freedom is not like Kant’s kingdom of ends, Hegel’s absolute knowledge or the like. It is just freedom from big historical lies and their lasting effects on us – a liberation from the neoliberal web of consumerism and its making all of us animal laborans, as Arendt (herself operating within a Kantian framework) would say, taking from us our humanity as homo politicus, politically acting beings participating in processes that shape a life worth living – a participation that demands a new framework to function properly as part of a solution to the problem of scientific education. As was mentioned, strategies for freedom from the Kantian paradigm can be discussed from perspectives within the Kantian paradigm or perspectives external to it. In the first respect, it is a matter of Western auto-criticism, where Western thinkers criticise different aspects of Kant, especially his metaphysics and epistemology; white feminism is one of the main adversaries of Kant within this camp. In the second respect, criticism is practiced from anti-colonial and anti-racist perspectives. Kant established a scientific or modern metaphysics as the ground for the construction of the human being that is constitutive of the image of the human being today. Through his Copernican turn, he established a notion of transcendental subject, a constitutive subject as the precondition of all experience, independent of the context of life; Western criticism is mainly concerned with the rejection of this notion of the subject and concomitant notion of knowledge independent of the knowers’ context of life. Kant also implanted racial and colonial discrimination into the very architectonic of the human mind and provided a natural justification for these phenomena as he considered white Europeans as rational and excluded non-whites from the domain of rationality; the difference lies in rational beings being able to legislate their own universal maxims of conduct while natural beings being are enclosed in contingencies of inclinations and instincts. Basically, in the first Critique (CPR A27), Kant talks of other thinking beings. However, for him, if there are such beings, they are outside humanity; they are another species. He never investigates the possibility of other human beings having other frames of mind and forms of rationality than himself. He rather excludes them from proper humanity using his own conceptual scheme as a demarcation criterion for being human beings or animals. Even if we agree that human faculties are those invented by Kant, we can ask if these faculties are culturally conditioned. What about categories of the understanding and ideas of reason? Are different systems of intuition, concepts and ideas possible, or Kant is the only possibility? One problem is how forms of intuition can be universally valid. How can the 18th century’s forms of intuition be valid universally? In the following chapter, I investigate these issues considering different strategies of delinking from Kant. As Kant has established a comprehensive system, we need a multiplicity of strategies, Western and non-Western,

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for different ends. I am aware of my distinction between Western and nonWestern strategies of struggle being problematic. However, this distinction refers to communities and styles of thought and general issues preoccupying mainstream scholarship in the West as a community of thought – its preferences and priorities. Further, this distinction is intellectual rather than geographical. Thinkers can be member of communities of thought outside their own geographical boundaries. For instance, African American thinkers and black feminists are criticising Kant from a paradigm outside the West as the domain of Kantianism while there are westernised thinkers in other parts of the world; it is about collective resistance against the West as the source of scientific colonialism and racism. A further point to be mentioned is that there are problems that emerge due to education being scientific. Some of these problems are intrinsic to science itself and some to the way Kant uses the notion of science. In this respect, it is not enough to refuse Kant; we need to engage with science as the hegemonic form of knowledge of our time as well. There are problems intrinsic to the Western way of thinking about others – the problem of Eurocentrism. There are also problems related to local domination and problems related to the intersection of the two. In the former respect, we need to struggle against Kantianism, in the latter, against local oppressors, and in the third case, against the two together. There are problems that are specific to the West and those specific to the Global South as well as problems common to humanity. Beside educational problems, there are wider cognitive, cultural and political problems. We need to take into consideration all of these if we are to find ways to free ourselves from their oppressive effects.

Demands on white Western thinkers In this chapter, I suggest that Western thinkers, as a community of thought, have an extra task when it comes to resist and combat the dominant style of thought in the West. They need to 1) reveal and overcome different nuances of white ignorance (explicit and implicit) in order to 2) be able to see racism and heritages of colonial past as a main intellectual and political challenge of our time, and they need 3) to work for a new style of thought beyond racism and colonialism. Further, they need to 1) practically mobilise against racism and coloniality and become part of solution to these problems and 2) invent new analytic and conceptual tools for these ends. More clearly, it is not just about theoretical awareness of white ignorance but also taking practical steps in the right direction to overcome it. And this is not possible once and for all but needs continuity. I use white ignorance as an umbrella concept covering different kinds of white misconceptions concerning the non-white part of the world; misconceptions that emerged, developed and continue to work in Western intellectual and practical contexts.1 In this sense, it covers white males’ racist and colonial

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misconceptions of their own position and their relationships with the oppressed others and the world we live in. In all these connections, there are untruths about the superiority of the white race that have been misconceived as truths and work explicitly or implicitly for the disadvantage of non-white people. To my view, white ignorance and its concomitant white domination have become the historical a priori of the Western style of thought, the very historical conditions for the possibility of current Western cognitive, educational and cultural hegemony, without which this style of thought would collapse. Indeed, this style of thought is a genealogical consequence of Kant’s establishing the human being as a white male European, a provincial being whose parochial interests have, since modernity, been enforced as universal. Through different knowledge/power techniques, the provincial perspective of this human type has been justified and made globally valid. This intellectual framework is at work today in ways that are beyond the interest of mainstream philosophical scholarship to observe. As Charles Mills maintains regarding racial and colonial legacies, mainstream Western philosophy suffers from “a disturbing provincialism and an ahistoricity profoundly at odd with the radically foundational questions on which philosophy prides” (1997:31), on the one hand, and “a complicity with the terms of Racial Contract itself ” on the other. He also observes “the white misunderstanding, misrepresentation, evasion and self-deception on matters related to race” (1997:19) as well as an inability in whites to understand “the world they themselves have made” (1997:18). Or more to the point, they refuse to understand it. To overcome white ignorance means not only overcoming personal ignorance but also a transformation of what Mills (2017) calls the “doxastic environment,” which includes both manifest and implicit or structural “racialised causality.” The latter signifies kinds of ignorance “which may be operative even if the cognizer in question is not racist” (2017:57). In my context, this is more important than explicit manifestation of racist and coloniality since to be white in the world of today means not only privileges and high status, it also means ignorance, taking these privileges for granting or not seeing and recognising them. It also means lack of freedom in the sense of white people being confined within the limits of the Western intellectual framework and seeing it as self-sufficient; they are within its discourse of progress and modernity as the hegemonic world-historical narrative for the exclusion of equal interactions with the others. Mainstream Western thinkers have been brought up by scientific education, operating within its boundaries as well as operating with notions of history, science and philosophy of history based on the Kantian paradigm and seeing the world from a Eurocentric perspective. Indeed, the Kantian paradigm bargains specific intellectual resources, permits certain kind of perception and certain kind of discourse and determines their kind and direction. It encompasses its proponents as well as its critics. Concerning the latter, it has made metaphysical purification of Kant the main philosophical preoccupation – a necessary step in

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right direction but not enough since the Kantian paradigm also contains racial and colonial biases, placing itself between mainstream philosophers’ intellectual preferences and their conscious view of them. Basically, the Kantian Eurocentric notion of rationality is hegemonic so much so that its rejection is seen as irrationality. As it will be explained, Western thinkers need the insight that the Kantian or Western modern paradigm is one among endless possible frameworks of perception of the world. It is in need of dialogue with other frameworks on an equal basis to reach a true understanding of the world we live in today. This is indeed my perception of objectivity: to see the world from multiple interacting and relevant perspectives. In this perspective, there are endless possibilities of understanding of the common world we live in. When I talk of our common world, I mean a world not being reduced to a global market and its rationality as the general frame of life but rather the framework of human relationships in all their diversity. This world offers endless configurations of things on the one hand, and we can perceive it in endless way on the other. Thus, we need intellectual frameworks which enable us to grasp these possibilities, to structure them in ways that encompass the relevant experiences of any and all, otherwise we end up either in tyranny of authoritarian tendencies who mark their own perspective as universal or are lost in the limitless streams of confused feelings and perceptions. Humanity has had different structural frameworks. While the Kantian intellectual framework allows for certain things to be seen, heard and felt, other frameworks offer other possibilities, other ways of perceiving the world – alternative ways to establish our relationships with the other and ourselves. Each framework has different educational implications and imperatives. Kant established an architecture of the human mind, a strict and hierarchical division of cognitive labour between different faculties (intuition, understanding and reason), with unsurpassable boundaries between them, where the lower divisions deliver row material to the higher ones. The higher we ascend, the more formal things become, and at the end we have just forms, ideas of reason that regulate human moral actions under universal laws – the final cause of education. The ability of abstract thinking has been established by the Kantian paradigm as a higher capability and as something European. It is now up to Western thinkers to go beyond the Kantian paradigm and up to non-Western thinkers to create alternative frames of mind. This may seem very naïve to have such an expectation of Western thinkers since the issue of knowledge is interwoven with that of power and domination. The problems of who is the subject of knowledge can be solved by reshaping the power imbalance between different parts of the globe and humanity since the subject of cognitions is at once the subject of politics. While the one is related to critique of the knowledge paradigm, the other is involved in deconstructing discriminatory social structures. They demand transformation of the past in the present. As scientific education shares genesis with capitalist, colonialist and racist domination, we need to resist and reshape this domination.

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Western self-criticism: transforming Kant from within Kant left a huge legacy for his posterity to deal with.2 This legacy emerged as an answer to the intellectual and political needs of his time – a time of the emerging liberal and imperial West. Intellectually, he needed a systematic set of universal and abstract principles or a metaphysics upon which he could base universal and necessary truths for the best of the white human being. He invented such a system of principles by replacing the old philosophical framework with a new metaphysical system. Within this new framework, he established a host of new notions and new questions; he redefined the very notion of the human being. By making this notion of the human being the master of nature (as objects of knowledge and as uneducated human beings), he prefigured a colonial and racial social order at a global level; he was a defender of a liberal cosmopolitan order, a world system with white males as legislators. Kant scholarship in the West has been preoccupied with separating Kant’s metaphysics from his science in order to make him useable in post-Kantian or neo-Kantian worlds. From a Western perspective, this metaphysical purification of Kant has been enough to make him useable since the problematic aspect of transcendental philosophy has been considered limited to its metaphysical aspects rather than encompassing its racist and colonial dimensions as well. For instance, Foucault will shift from a Kantian notion of constitutive subject (metaphysics of the subject) to that of empirical or constituted subject. This is his heralding of the end of man whom he considers “an invention of recent date” (Foucault 1989:387) (and the beginning of the overman by which he concludes his The Order of Things). This strategy is the transformation of the Kantian paradigm “from within” and has already been started and performed by Foucault’s “continuation-through-transformation” of Kantian critical thought (Allen 2008:44).3 However, Foucault pseudonymously writes of himself: “If Foucault is perfectly at home in the philosophical tradition, it is within the critical tradition of Kant” (Foucault in Koopman 2013:13). Thus, it is not about going beyond or abandoning Kant but reusing and recycling him. It provincialises the universal or transcendental notion of the subject so central to the Kantian paradigm by making it dependent on the context of life; the racial and colonial dimensions of this subject, however, is left intact. This strategy is a necessary step but limited in scope as it brackets Kant’s racism and colonialism. In other words, it is provincial snice it excludes interests and issues of the non-Western world and humanity. Further, in Kant, science and metaphysics are the same system of universal truths. So it is not easy purifying him from one without doing the same concerning the other at the same time. Kant’s Copernican turn had the comprehensive ambitions of resolving reason’s misunderstandings and bringing human affairs – among others, religion and education – within the boundaries of science or reason, a frame of mind that prefigured the all-encompassing market in the neoliberal era. It was an

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adjustment of the human being and the world in accordance with the requirements of modern Europe in which rationality was established as an exclusive feature of white Western minds – a legitimate ground for its superiority as well as that of its ignorance depending on the perspective from which we look upon it. It seems like domination and ignorance protect each other. Even if we suppose that Kant’s metaphysics is separable from his scientific style of thought, keeping Kant’s notions of science is problematic in itself, as Bernasconi (2001) and Eze (1997) maintain. At stake here is Kant’s making racism scientific that characterises him rather than racism as such. Thus, to put Kant on scientific footing may purge him from metaphysics but not from racism and colonialism. A truly universal view (universality defined as inclusion of all perspectives relevant to the issue under consideration based on the will of different actors to participate and agree on the term of participation) needs all relevant perspectives. Criticising Kant is nothing new. However, although within a generation of Kant’s death, his philosophy was questioned, and alternative philosophical systems, like that of Hegel, were erected, basic themes of Kant’s style of thought stayed steady, and, as Foucault maintains in his essay on “Preface to Transgression” (Foucault 1977), modern Europe thinks within the style of thought that Kant established. One basic principle of this framework is the importance of science as a reliable body of knowledge on which organisation of society, cognition and education can be grounded. Based on the former, a further principle is the supremacy of European culture due to its scientificity or rationality (Said 2003);with contempt “the disaster that lies hidden in the idiotic guilelessness and credulity of “modern ideas” (BGE 203). Indeed, Nietzsche speaks of the decadent influence of Europe outside its own border as well, heralding of “coming philosophers” who “suffer from an unparalleled sense of alarm” while they “in a single glance . . . will comprehend everything that could be bred from humanity, given a favorable accumulation and intensification of forces and tasks.” This accumulation and intensification of forces and tasks are based on understanding of “how humanity has still not exhausted its greatest possibilities” (BGE 203). Seen in this perspective, Kant’s view of the possibilities of the human being and their cultivating is the wrong way to go; the need is rather a new philosophy. Nietzsche sees his own Beyond Good and Evil, as the subtitle suggests, “a prelude of the philosophy of the future” and heralds of approaching “new philosophers.” He speaks of “coming philosophers” as a “temptation” and an “attempt” (BGE 42). Contrary to Kantian philosophers, one important trait of these philosophers is their not being “dogmatists” in the sense of imposing their own truths and judgements on others. This can be understood as an affirmation of the diversity of ways of life and a move away from hegemony and uniformity.4 This point is important if we read it against the background of not only Kantian imperatives of a single notion of reason but also that of neoliberal uniformity; its human type, homo economicus; and style of thought dominated by all-encompassing market values. Most importantly, Nietzsche opposes Kant’s

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notion of the philosopher as “the specialist,” “the scholar, “the average man of science” and sees the latter “somewhat like an old maid.” He asks, “What is the scientific man?” (BGE 206) and describes him as a scholarly ideal characterised by “the scientific instinct” and “mediocrity.” Generally, Nietzsche is against any predefined notion of humanity and writes, “How naïve it is altogether to say: ‘Man ought to be such and such!’ Reality shows us an enchanting wealth of types” (TI 6). This is contrary to the human type that scientific education produces and its prefigured scientific man – a rational animal who acts in accordance with objective rules. Generally, Nietzsche prefigures homo economicus when he writes of “a man without substance or content, a ‘selfless’ man” (BGE 207).5 Nietzsche also moves away from the Kantian notion of critique when he writes that his own (Nietzsche’s) types of philosopher “do not want to be called critics” (BGE 210); they also differ from “philosophical laborers and scientific men” (BGE 211), like Kant and Hegel. Coming philosophers do not bring new universal forms or abstract principles but a new way of life and a new style of thought. Seen in this perspective, the image of the human being, knowledge and education given by Kant become dogmatic and authoritarian since Kant excludes the non-rational, or savages, from being educable while the Nietzschean philosopher locates “the greatness of humanity” in the very “scope and variety of humanity, in its unity in multiplicity” (BGE 212). Such a person is not an idea known in advance, like in Kant; rather, “you have to know” her by “experience, – or you should be proud that you do not know it at all” (BGE 213). Instead of universal uniformity, Nietzsche proclaims: Greatest of all is the one who can be the most solitary, the most hidden, the most different, the person beyond good and evil, the master of his virtues, the one with an abundance of will. Only this should be called greatness: the ability to be just as multiple as whole, just as wide as full. (BGE 212) While to be master of one’s virtue may be common between Kant and Nietzsche, the latter sees no clear and distinct boundaries between good and evil; for the former, these boundaries are clear and go between nature and morality, and education is a transformation of the evil, of multiplicity into uniformity. Given the similarities between the human “disaster” that Nietzsche speaks of and homo economicus’ situation in neoliberal societies, the question now is: How can education transform homo economicus? What is the new human type to come? Within the neoliberal mindset, this question is not an educational since one cannot invest in unpredictable human capital. To become a new human type is not a skill or knowledge that can add value or improve the economic position of homo economicus. Nietzsche explores possibilities that go beyond modern or Kantian conceptions of the human being by bringing a new teaching and corresponding human type as the aim of education: “I teach you the overman,” he writes in his Zarathustra. Through the teaching of the overman,

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he wants to “overcome” the modern human being since this average man of science is something that must be overcome, Nietzsche maintains. Unlike Kant, in Nietzsche, the overman is not given as an idea in advance. He comes into existence through human endeavours. Overman must be realised through the process of overcoming modern man. Accordingly, Nietzsche asks: “What have you done to overcome him [man]?” (Z 5). For Nietzsche, “Mankind is a rope fastened between animal and overman – a rope over an abyss” (Z 7). We can recognise some Kantian ideas here. As shown by authors in three volumes working on the complicated relationships between Kant and Nietzsche, despite all sound and fury, Nietzsche himself thinks within a Kantian framework, broadly conceived (see, for instance, Richardson 2017:31).6 However, as we will see, there are aspects of the Nietzschean concept of the human being that are in line with my position where the human being cannot be reduced to one dimension and the human being is a process rather than a being or a product. Accordingly, to reduce her to any concept of the human being just indicates one aspect of the human being and not all of her. In agreement with Nietzsche, we can say: Perhaps the philosopher has had to be a critic and a skeptic and a dogmatist and historian and, moreover, a poet and collector and traveler and guesser of riddles and moralist and seer and “free spirit” and practically everything, in order to run through the range of human values and value feelings and be able to gaze with many eyes and consciences from the heights into every distance, from the depths up to every height, from the corner onto every expanse. But all these are only preconditions for his task: the task itself has another will, – it calls for him to create values. (BGE 21) This multidimensional view of the human being is in contrast with Kant’s scientific image of rational man. In line with Nietzsche, Foucault sees overman as the end of man and a new beginning. As mentioned prior, Foucault feels at home in the Kantian paradigm. He discerns a source of transformation of Kant’s philosophy in the very tension between the transcendental subject (the constitutive subject) and the empirical notion of the subject (the constituted subject). Foucault sees this tension as the “polemic of contemporary philosophy” (2008:105) and suggests “the whole history of post-Kantian and contemporary philosophy will have to be envisaged from the point of view of the perpetuation of this confusion – a revised history which would start out by denouncing it” (2008:107). His project is thus to transform Kant’s system from within and make it useable for his own ends. At the heart of this transformation is the replacement of the transcendental subject (constitutive of all knowledge) with the empirical or a constituted subject, always situated in linguistic, cultural, social and political situations. Foucault deprives Kant’s transcendental subject of its privileged position as a universal and transhistorical condition of possibility of cognition, – of its inner

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a priori categories of thought as presupposition of cognition – and shifts the focus to how we, subject to contingent and “hazardous play of dominations” (1984:83), “constitute ourselves as subjects of knowledge” (Foucault 1983:237). He also focuses on modes of subjectivity and sees his own works as “history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subject” (1982:777). Thus, rather than being given by nature, humans are made and make themselves subject, and this happens differently within different cultures and paradigms. In other words, contrary to Kant, Foucault relates systems of knowledge and action to structures of power relations within local contexts. This means that knowledge becomes part of power structures instead of being produced within the head of transcendental subjects or within subject independent of contingencies like history, gender, class and so on, as Kant would have us believe. Foucault brings in contingency and historicity to the subject itself, its cognition, action and feeling. He writes: “One has to dispense with the constitutive subject.” What is important for Foucault is “to arrive at an analysis which can account for the constitution of the subject within a historical framework” (1980:117).To achieve this, he uses genealogy as method: that is, “a form of history which can account for the constitution of knowledge, discourses, domains of object, etc., without having to make reference to a subject which is either transcendental in relation to the field of events or run in its empty sameness throughout the course of history” (1980:117). As the subject is not a constitutive one and accordingly there is no fixed human nature, but rather the subject is historical and constituted by the context of life, we need to work on sorting out how it is constituted in order to resist domination and work for new constellations of power. Nietzsche and Foucault play the key roles when it comes to transformation of Kant’s metaphysics of the human being.When it comes to criticism of Kant’s notion of science, I turn to analytic tradition and Quine. Quine directs a radical criticism against Kant’s transcendental argument and synthetic judgements a priori. In his essay “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1953), Quine starts from a holistic view of cognition and questions the very distinction between synthetic and analytic judgements. The core of his argument against Kant is the impossibility of timeless knowledge. According to Quine, knowledge changes in a holistic manner. Further, he expands the logic of change to logical or a priori laws of cognition as Kant sees them. Quine famously writes: The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a manmade fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience. A conflict with experience at the periphery occasions readjustments in the interior of the field. Truth values have to be redistributed over some of our statements. Re-evaluation of some statements entails re-evaluation

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of others, because of their logical interconnections – the logical laws being in turn simply certain further statements of the system, certain further elements of the field. Having re-evaluated one statement we must re-evaluate some others, whether they be statements logically connected with the first or whether they be the statements of logical connections themselves. (1953:42) The ever-changing image of how experiences are connected to statements and logical rules determining these connections that Quine illustrates rejects Kant’s strictly formal understanding of the same connections as well as his distinction between analytic and synthetic judgements, cornerstones of Kant’s epistemology. Despite Quine’s influential revaluation of the Kantian model of a priori claims, it was the Kuhnian notion of paradigm shift that became one of the most influential theories in the field of philosophy of science in the last century. Contrary to Kant’s understanding, Kuhn claims that science is not a homogenous cognition and does not develop accumulatively. In his famous essay The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, he distinguishes between periods of ordinary scientific research or normal science (puzzle-solving activities in accordance with a paradigm that preoccupies most scientists) and sudden shifts that disrupt normal scientific activities for extraordinary or revolutionary science, so-called scientific revolutions that bring about paradigm shifts. According to Kuhn, a paradigm among other things is “constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by the members of a given community” (Kuhn 1970:175). By introducing the notion of paradigm shift (shifts in the basic presuppositions of doing science that precede experience and make them theory-laden) as a shift in the pregiven frames of mind, Kuhn brings scientific research close to the way scientists work in the experiential world. This not only give a more accurate image of contingent historical circumstances’ impact on cognition but also historicises Kant’s Copernican turn; paradigms are pregiven but historical.They structure the human being’s experiences and condition cognition, but they are not ahistorical, formal and universal like Kantian concepts of the understanding or forms of intuition. New paradigms bring new priorities, new ways of looking at the world, new criteria for interpreting data and appraising cognition. The same set of data can be interpreted differently within different paradigms; it is like proponents of different paradigms live and act in different worlds. This disruptive way of understanding the history of science has implications for the Kantian notion of progress; progress makes sense only during periods of normal science, which is to provincialise the metaphysical or Kantian foundation of science.7 Ludwik Fleck (1979), a source of inspiration for Kuhn, brings in the role of the notion of pedagogical science. For Fleck, a paradigm shift triggers struggles for cognitive power. For him, shifts in style of thought start with journal science or specialist science and develop to handbook science and pedagogical science.8 He sees that as part of the struggles between paradigms: the new

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paradigm makes claims for a place in curriculum and with time replaces the old since it fits the new historical conditions better. What we can add to this story is that educational paradigm shifts are dependent of scientific revolutions; the former is a function of the latter. New paradigms introduce new conceptions and methods of application. They need the field of education to provide themselves with trained proponents who work for establishing favourable conditions for their operating properly; rejection of the old paradigm and the entrance of new pedagogical science into curriculum mean a shift in educational paradigm. This means that educational revolutions are actual in the same manner as scientific revolutions.9 And education, contrary to Kant, cannot be accumulative. Rather, each epoch has its own educational ends, interests and preferences that can be disruptive in relationship to their predecessors. Indeed, Kant himself was aware of his bringing about an educational revolution10 that fitted new historical circumstances better than the educational paradigm of the Middle Ages or that of humanism. Kant himself argues for such revolutions. In sum, we can speak of periods of normal education during which educators do education in a puzzle-solving manner. Elaborative activities in accordance with a paradigm preoccupy most educators. During revolutionary periods, educators question the foundation of the old paradigm and a new paradigm replaces the old one, and educators are converted accordingly. Of course, paradigm shifts are not smooth and tidy process but are characterised by struggles and resistances; they signify intellectual wars between opponents of old and new paradigms. This questions Kant’s grand narrative of education as a linear narrative from animality to human perfection. Given our historical circumstances, the need for a paradigm shift in education is obvious. To reiterate, Nietzsche questions the very ground on which Kant establishes his definition of the human being together with Kant’s notion of the human being while Foucault questions Kant’s notion of the transcendental subject and replaces it with an empirical notion of the subject. Quine and Kuhn question Kant’s notion of science as a set of ahistorical truths and replace it with a historical image of science. A more radical transformation of Kant from within is done by Walter Benjamin, who questions Kantian notion of experience by introducing an alternative concept of experience. He reinterprets experience by questioning the division of cognitive labour among faculties (reason, understanding and intuition) and the boundaries of the transcendental; he rejects the notion that the absolute is limited to the rule of reason. For Benjamin, intuition and categories are intertwined. Recasting the strict distinction between faculties and their cognitive function leads to the notion that intuition also can be the locus of the absolute (categorical universality). This means that the absolute is not only formal (a dialectical or rational totality) but takes other shapes as well. Benjamin changes the very framework within which Kant frames his notions of cognition and postulates a new frame for understanding experience, where the notion of reading plays a central role.

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In his essay “On Perception in Itself,” Benjamin starts from considering the perception as an act of reading. He brings a double sense of infinity into it. He does not limit himself to a transcendental account of perception as the only way of enframing perception. Starting with reading as a way of perceiving the world, he considers the transcendental account, conditions of legibility afforded by a surface, as one way of accounting for reading, among many others. In addition, he adds to this a more speculative than formal approach. The speculative refers to the set of possible surfaces of legibility. More clearly, it is about infinity of surfaces. In Benjamin, the infinity of sign configurations and the infinity of ways of reading (an active act rather than a passive intuition) are brought together with the infinity of surfaces that host such configurations. Put more clearly, Benjamin’s “transcendental but speculative philosophy” or coming philosophy combines “the transcendental infinity of possible marks on a given surface (or perceptions within a given framework of possible experience) and the speculative infinity of possible bounded but infinite surfaces or frameworks of experience” (Benjamin 1998:4). Reading as perception offers thus a new conceptual apparatus in which configuration is the condition of legibility.To be legible is to conform to conditions of experience or reading; it is to see nonsensuous similarity between different configurations. Benjamin moves away from Kant and his reduction of cognition to just one way of organising human relationships with the world.11 Benjamin’s views also have implications for reinterpretation of time, history and progress. Reinterpretation of time and history leads us to a new understanding of the notion of progress. While the Kantian teleological understanding of history is about how history progresses toward a rational future, new understanding, based on Benjamin, is about discontinuity and catastrophe. The Kantian notion of progress through a scientific mode of thought and education was the basis of a normative white “we” as educable while leaving the others behind as uneducable. This historiography underwrites the notorious civilising mission of the West and its imperial universalism. Inspired by Edward Said, Allen (2016) challenges critical theory of the Frankfurt School (Kantian in essence) from within to decolonise itself through coming to terms with its notion of progress. Allen questions the modern notion of progress (introduced by Kant and connected to his question, What may I hope?). Underpinning critical theory, this notion of progress was considered “as necessary, inevitable, and unified process.” Allen does not abandon the notion of progress but reconceptualises it; it becomes then a notion which is contingent, disaggregated and postmetaphysical (2016:8–9).12 Transformations of Kant from within Western tradition, as discussed prior, are necessary but not sufficient. They are provincial in scope, however, and deal with one side of Kantian illusion – his metaphysics of the human being and cognition – while other side of the same illusion, namely racist and colonial superiority, is left intact.13 It is taken as a given so much so that they do not see it as a problem. Western critics of Kant seldom engage with decolonising and

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deracialising him as these problems do not concern them while to my view they are the core of the problem of education. For instance, Foucault’s reconceptualisation of Kant’s notion of the transcendental subject is an attempt to release Western philosophy form the illusion of a subject insensitive to its life situations. He replaces it with an empirical subject localised in its context of life. There is, however, nothing that says that the latter is less racist than the former or is released from a colonial mindset. The same can be said of the Nietzschean overman. As elaborated, Quine, Kuhn and others have tried to replace Kant’s formal view of cognition with an image of cognition closer to the way science is done. However, a historically conscious science can be as racist as its Kantian counterpart unless it embraces the perspective of the colonialised. Foucauldian empirical subject and Kuhn’s historical notion of science remain Eurocentric unless they are linked to decolonialisation struggles from outside the Western tradition as well as to feminism and critical race studies. This is not to say that there is nothing of value in Western self-criticism. For instance, the Foucauldian reconceptualisation of Kantian notions of critique and of the transcendental subject has been shown to be useful.

Criticism from an external perspective In the previous section, I engaged with some critical perspectives on the Kantian paradigm. I argued for the necessity of putting some basic demands concerning racist and colonial heritages on white thinkers from the West to make them open, transparent, equal and responsive allies and interlocutors to nonWestern voices in order to establish a global intellectual framework free from Kantian illusions, an intellectual space in which we can address issues of global importance in a manner that benefits humanity as a whole.14 This is not an easy task since Western minds cannot think “without Kant” and racism and coloniality are endemic to the Kantian paradigm. Koopman, for instance, claims that “we need our Kantian inheritance” (2013:16). Although he adds that “we need it differently than did Kant in his days” (2013:16), his notions of “we” and “our inheritance” are characteristically Eurocentric and thus limited in scope – they start from the provincial interests of the West rather than common interest of humanity. Accordingly, they are unable to address issues of race and coloniality of power; these are issues that concern others. In order to address the inadequacy of this perspective, in this section, I will try to bring in some perspectives external to the Kantian paradigm. This does not mean that these perspectives are not influenced by Kant but rather that they are perspectives of those who are being harmed by Kantian illusions of inferiority/superiority hierarchies among social groups rather than being benefitted by these illusions. Accordingly, they have no interest in keeping them alive. Rather, they have a keen eye to see racism and colonial heritages wherever at work and are interested in abolishing them as a way toward freedom. These perspectives from colonialised, racialised people and women are on the rise and

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are claiming their due justice. Seen in this way, research, knowledge production and dissemination can become processes of disillusionment and freedom. I am not going to make comprehensive accounts of non-Western critical voices but will focus on those aspects of these theories and projects that contribute to the global intellectual framework, as I suggest. Critical race studies

As elaborated, scientific racism was not only an innovation of the Kantian paradigm but also has been handed down to Kant’s posterity and is at work in today’s educational paradigm, although in an invisible manner. Here, as everywhere in this study, I am talking of a dominant orientation toward education or educational attitude and ethos when I talk of racism in education – patterns of discourse and behaviour that are taken as a given so much so that they cannot be seen as problem. In his now classical work, The Racial Contract (1997), Charles Mills tries to bring this invisibility into the sight. He investigates the Western contractarian tradition’s inadequacies from an African American perspective and presents an alternative way of looking at this tradition. To compensate for a social contract’s shortcoming in not being able to account for non-whites’ political, social, cognitive and moral status, he uses the notion of a racial contract to descriptively explain “the actual genesis of the society and the state, the way society is structured, the way the government functions, and people’s moral psychology” (1997:5). The emphasis here is on “the actual” in the sense of how racial relations are actually organised and work. His aim is indeed to bring into vision that “white supremacy is the unnamed political system that has made the modern world what it is today” (1997:1). What is helpful for my purpose is Mills’s observation of the “naturalised” mindset of white people, “who take their racial privilege so much for granted that they do not even see it as political, as a form of domination” (1997:1). This is in line with the invisible racialised background of education that I have been talking of all along. Mills rightly talks of two worlds; one that of the white establishment insensible to the issues of humanity outside the domain of its interests, the other that of the rest of humanity, whose experiences do not matter for mainstream white scholarship. I also endorse Mills’s insistence on the need for a “a global theoretical framework” for racial issues; my attempt is, like Mills, to challenge the hidden assumptions of the white style of thought, defying the primacy of white interests and bringing in issues concerning the rest of humanity. In this respect, I also am interested in a wider context than that of racism and will pay the same amount of attention to issue of colonial and sexist legacies of the hegemonic West; my hope is new modes of cognition, volition and feeling that liberate humanity from white domination and liberate white supremacists themselves as well. My approach to issues at hand here is deconstructing to reconstruct, abolishing to rebuild, denying to affirm new alternatives. Also, in this respect Mills is

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inspiring. In his recent book, Black Rights/White Wrongs The Critique of Racial Liberation (2017), Mills focuses on Kantianism as a political-theosophical project and as the foundation of current liberal democracies. He sees liberalism and race as part of a “pernicious symbiotic system” (2017:48). Mills’s project is to redeem liberalism and establish a non-racial liberalism. Regarding Kant’s project, Mills suggests an agenda for purging liberalism and then recycling it in a new shape – the shape of “black radical Kantianism” (2018). He wants to construct “an emancipatory liberalism,” a self-conscious deracialised form of liberalism. He emphasises “the necessity for purging contemporary liberal theory of its racist ancestry,” which must be done “through a color-conscious investigative genealogy and reconstruction” (2017:xvii). Mills’s liberalism is the opposite of a Eurocentric and imperial form of liberalism as the latter establishes and maintains “imperial and colonial rule abroad, and non-white racial subordination at home” (2017:xv). Mills is pragmatic and practical and opts for this strategy as he sees it as the common dominator for a clear majority in the Western world. Thus, he can interact and commence a dialogue with Western self-criticism to add a racial purification to the metaphysical purification of Kantianism. Certainly, Mills’s project concerning the racial purification of liberalism and introducing racially aware forms of liberalism is necessary, but not enough. It is limited to the Kantian paradigm in its opposition and suggested solutions. He is right in considering “purging” liberalism of its “racist ancestry” as a common dominator in the West. But what about all those people outside the West who have been oppressed, colonialised and looted by imperial forms of liberalism? Do they share liberal values, when these people have never been owed to these rights and values?15 The question is why we must have the West as a normative perspective here. Why not establish a global denominator encompassing perspectives outside the Kantian liberal paradigm? Why not opt for a strategy that shifts the way people think, as did Kant? But this time the shift is about Kant himself. An important issue is here the question, Who is the subject of politics, cognition, aesthetics and morality?16 The Western consensus in this respect is the liberal individual, leaving others outside. Is this subject a sufficient ground for establishing a racially aware form of liberalism in the future? Are we confined within the Kantian paradigm or can we transgress it, reach outside it and free ourselves from its racial and colonial effects? As Mills (2017) rightly observes, the Western or Kantian epistemology has been one of ignorance since it from inception has been preoccupied with white illusions about non-white inferiority concerning cognition, morality and aesthetics. Non-whites have been considered as sub-persons. We need thus to go beyond liberalism and establish a new epistemology or, rather, abandon cognitivism and opt for practical approaches that do not have the primacy of the abstract as their demarking criteria. One possible common dominator can be the universal, the common ground of Kant’s metaphysics, colonialism and racism; whereas in the former universal principles are applied to realm of nature (the axis of knowledge and truth), in the latter they are applied to diversity of ways of life and human

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diversity (the axis of relation of power). Western thinkers have shown an interest in defying the former, while thinkers outside the West are trying to combat the latter. To join hands for these two strands of thought is to make defying Kantianism a common cause and combating it a broad front. We need to reinterpret the cognitive, political and educational foundation of Kantianism, whose impact is much wider than liberalism.17 The interest of colonialised and racialised people converges in many ways. In the next section, I will try to bridge critical race theory and the decolonial project in search of a new common dominator that is not limited to the West. Decolonial strategy

The Western subject can certainly, as Allen (2008, 2016) maintains, create a critical distance to its own constitutive power structures and heritages. The question is whether it is responsive enough to the interests and perspectives outside the West and those of humanity if it does not open itself for insights and voices from outside. Seen in a global perspective and in light of different forms of oppression the West has imposed on humanity (at home and elsewhere), we need a polyphonic global framework, beyond a Eurocentric frame of reference, that brings together voices beyond divides of the West and the rest of the world in order to rupture Western domination. Seen in this perspective,Western self-criticism remains Eurocentric and insufficient. For instance, as mentioned prior, Foucault’s demystification of the notion of the transcendental subject and its replacement with a contextual and constituted subject cannot be a globally valid norm since, given his background, intellectual context and interests, these efforts remain attached to the norms, power relations, patterns of behaviour and practices valued by the West. Taking this notion as a norm, we keep Western normativity alive in a latent form – this time in the form of criticism of the West. Generally, Western criticism of the Kantian paradigm is formed within boundaries the Kantian paradigm allows. To make it useable, a dialogic state of mind is needed that brings Western self-critique into dialogue with non-Western struggles against imperialism, racism and neo-colonialism and builds up a global community of thought and struggle. Such a dialogue would transform the West and its notions of normality, rationality, autonomy and identity, as well as the notion of the other, and make education dialogical and intercultural. Emancipation is then “co-authored” in a way that sets free oppressors and oppressed alike. This is a process of universalisation, where education, knowledge, struggles and freedom become universal through their being adapted by perspectives outside and within the West. This is a translational transgression of boundaries as opposed to imperial aggressions through which all engaged parts empower themselves on an equal basis. I have termed this process as translational universalisation as opposed to imperial universalism (Nejadmehr 2009). This notion of the universal is open, a process of perpetually ongoing reciprocal translations, negotiations and re-negotiations through

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which common zones of understanding are established, instead of a priori or necessary in virtue of its form or dogmatic concepts of reason imposed on any and all, as in Kant. In this respect, I am close to the decolonial camp, which will frame nonEurocentric or alternative notions of modernity and offer an alternative discourse that is not structured in terms of pre-modernity, modernity and postmodernity. Enrique Dussel terms this strategy “transmodernity” (2012). The notion of transmodernity is a way to challenge the white notion of progress. It tries to go beyond Eurocentrism and its narrative of modernity and rejects the European structure of superiority-inferiority established during the last five hundred years. It also tries to provide for transversal, intercultural and multicultural dialogue through which marginalised histories and philosophies can attain a voice of their own and alternative narratives can become strengthened. It is anti-hegemonic as it acknowledges that all philosophies are products of a certain civilisation and as such provincial. One of its main targets is to dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery. In this respect, a point that I would like to highlight is the impossibility of undoing European heritages and reaching a ground zero of any kind, partly because damages and wounds caused by the West and their effects on people cannot be undone totally; we need to overcome them without being able to totally forget them. Further, there always may be people who will protect and preserve these heritages for their own benefit. My idea, rather, is to defy them through ongoing struggles and pave the way for new mindsets through these struggles. My idea of dialogic relationships (negation and affirmation) between the West and its cultural others, instead of pure negation, is based on the impossibility of a decolonial point zero, one unaffected by the burden of European modernity and colonialism. We always start in the middle of ongoing historical events and processes and have to disrupt, reinterpret and reshape them while we ourselves are part of their flux and shaped and reshaped by them.There is no pure or absolute beginning; racial and colonial heritages are also part of global heritage. Revolutions and paradigm shifts appropriate and reinterpret history instead of nullifying it. Nowadays, the globe has become a single arena for knowledge, theories and other commodities; our time is signified by transnational cultural streams. The majority of decolonial intellectuals are themselves educated and employed by the modern university system. Thus, at stake is self-transformation as part of the change of the world through the transformation of colonial heritage. The main contribution of the decolonial project to these transformations is to delink from Kantianism and go beyond it, to have the self-confidence of turning to nonWestern bibliographies as alternative intellectual sources of inspiration. Provincialising Europe

It must be considered an intellectual scandal that a small provincial perspective, Europe, has violently established itself as that of the universe and mainstream

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scholarship has implicitly or explicitly endorsed it as being normative. Mills talks of a complex whole of interconnected contracts, racial, colonial and slavery contracts, that have made racism, colonialism and slavery endemic to European modernity and Enlightenment humanism. Accordingly, “European humanism meant that only Europeans were human” (Mills 1997:27). Further,“the modern world was thus expressly created a racially hierarchical polity, globally dominated by Europeans” (1997:27). Against this background, it is liberating to establish a provincialising strategy, where no provincial perspective can silence others and establish itself as universal. As such a strategy, Depish Chakrabarty (2007), from a postcolonial and subaltern position, suggests a strategy of provincialising or decentring Europe18: making the provincial perspective of Europe manifest, by which he means “to find out how and in what sense European ideas that were universal were also, at one and the same time, drawn from very particular intellectual and historical tradition that could not claim any universal validity” (Chakrabarty 2007:xiii).19 He bases his idea on insights on the “unstable relation between abstract ideas” and their “concrete instantiation.” Based on historical experiences from different parts of the world, especially India, Chakrabarty questions the existence of something like the “cunning of reason” leading all nations toward the same end, as Kant and, following him, Hegel established. To provincialise Kantian paradigm and the Enlightenment educational ideology is to see them as one alternative among many rather than the only possible one. It is not universally given that all parts of the world have to follow the same path as Europe so that Europe must always be the global lawgiver, as Kant established, or always be seen as the avant-garde of development and progress with a mission to lead other continents into the same direction as Europe herself. Europe is thus detached from the privileged position “as the site of the first occurrence of capitalism, modernity, or Enlightenment . . . explained mainly with respect to ‘events’ within the geographical confines of Europe” (Chakrabarty 2007:7). Like transmodernity and planetary modernity, to provincialise Europe is to affirm alternative notions of modernity, diversity in ways of historical developments and ways of life, happiness, rationality and humanity; it is a move away from Eurocentrism and its reinforcing “the ideological construction of ‘the West’ and ‘Western society and culture’ as the defining center of world history” (Friedman 2015:85). Accordingly, when it comes to a plural notion of modernity, Dussel’s notions of transmodernity and Chakrabarty’s decentring Europe are close to each other and can support each other mutually when it comes to alternative world-historical narratives. As a scholar who affirms his belonging to subaltern studies, Chakrabarty talks of Indian modernity with its distinct features as distinct from those of European modernity; he voices a different line of development than Europe. Dussle, Quijano and other thinkers within the decolonial project establish a similar view regarding South America. Thinkers in the West thus must be responsive to two distinct anti-hegemonic

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voices from different parts of the world but with the same kind of experience of European imperialism. They are both critical of the construction of historical time in a way that affirms the Western ideology of Eurocentric progress and nationalism, which, in Chakrabarty’s words, endorses the temporal structure of the statement “first in the West, and then elsewhere” (2007:6) and see modernity as a European phenomenon that became global “over time” (2007:7).20 The colonised part of the world and people of colour were to wait. For these people, history is a “waiting room,” with the ever-present voice of “not yet” of historicism as opposed to? “a ‘now’ as the temporal horizon of action” (2007:8). Like Mills, Chakrabarty sees European thought “at the once both indispensable and inadequate” (2007:16). He sees European heritage as that of everybody in need of being “renewed from and for margins” (2007:16). I am not comfortable with language of core/periphery here as well as with the indispensability of European thought, as it leads to an intellectual impasse, a predicament in which there is no way out. In a latent manner, it accepts Western hegemony and the indispensability of its heritage. To my view, we can speak of a new global intellectual framework that defies coloniality of power relations – a framework that disrupts the one-way flow of power and domination from the West and establishes a polylogical relation of power between the West, as just a provincial voice, and voices from the decolonial project, subaltern studies, postcolonial scholarships, feminism and many others. We can speak of the indispensability of such a mode of thinking rather than European thought. Indeed, from such a position, we can put demands on Western thought and give it its due justice. Further, provincialising Europe can give the impression that Europe has not been a province in the world and now is to become one while in reality Europe has always been a province and is going to be one despite white ignorance that has misconceived its economic and military domination as universally valid truths. The indispensability of Kantian universalism is at the same the indispensability of the formal or a priori, which leads to transcendental pretense, as Solomon maintains, while at the same time keeps alive transcendental difference as I would say, since these demises are endemic to it. Indeed, Chakrabarty talks of “lingering” impacts of the context of emergence of ideas on them.The impacts accompany them beyond their genesis, which means these ideas serve the interest of their creators in new contexts.They convey the hegemony of these interests to other contexts than that of their genesis. Chakrabarty operates within the Kantian paradigm and sees “no easy way of dispensing with . . . universals in the condition of political modernity” (2007:5) since they are necessary for addressing issues such as social justice. He also rightly sees the “European intellectual tradition” as “the only one alive in the social science departments of most, if not all, modern universities” (2007:5). Academic domination is not an argument for its truth or legitimacy and our submission to it, however.21 No doubt Western culture is hegemonic.The best way to defy this hegemony, however, is not to submit to it but to resist it. To my mind, Chakrabarty’s position

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is, implicitly, an acceptance and confirmation of the Kantian paradigm since he sees “the very critique of colonialism itself ” as a legacy of the Enlightenment (2007:4). As will be elaborated, my attempt is to transgress Kant rather than be limited by the boundaries of his thought. Contrary to Chakrabarty, Edward Said (1993:277) sees Western “blithe universalism” as the basis for the philosophical justification of European imperialism and the link between European culture and imperialism. According to him, the assumption of “the inequality of races” and “the subordination of inferior cultures” is incorporated in this universalism. It thus needs to be renegotiated, reconstructed and reconceptualised. Generally, Said (1979) defines Orientalism by illuminating its function as a technology of domination, where, through strategies of knowledge/power, the West has constructed the other as its inferiors. This brings in another line of resistance presented by Fanon. Fanon considers European thought and its notion of the human being flawed and inadequate and suggests that we should start “a new history of Man” (Fanon 1963:315). He defies Western understanding of the human being and demands creativity and imagination from the side of the oppressed in the struggle over the meaning of humanity. The struggle is to “reconsider the question of mankind” (1963:314). To my mind Fanon’s strategy is in line with demands of our time to rethink the notion of humanity through taking the step beyond Europe and its modern frame of reference. Fanon writes: “if we want humanity to advance a step further, if we want to bring it up to a different level than that which Europe has shown it, then we must invent and we must make discoveries” (1963:316). Thus, instead of surrendering to the majesty and inevitability of European thought, we need to transgress it. To overcome Eurocentrism “we must turn over a new leaf, we must work out new concepts, and try to set afoot a new man” (1963:315–316). In this struggle, maybe we need, as another interesting strategy from the subaltern area of pronouncement, to “abuse” the Enlightenment and affirmatively deconstruct or sabotage it as a tool of the colonial masters (Spivak 2012). This is to encourage the oppressed to use the tools of the masters for their own ends. Indeed, there are no natural links between tools and users; conceptual tools invented in one place can be used in other places and for their own ends, provided that the new users have the selfconfidence and courage to use them in their own ways; these tools need to be reinvented and rethought.22 It is far beyond the ability of this study to fully cover all strategies mentioned here. My point, rather, is to indicate intellectual positions, possibilities and resources available to the ongoing struggle. Thus, instead of focusing on their details, I focus on their common insights and main principles. One important insight of these strategies of resistance is their awareness of Europe not being a construction of Europeans alone. Colonialism has worked through force, as well as hegemony and consent. Education, knowledge production and dissemination in a colonial perspective have been powerful means for establishing a hegemonic notion of Europe. An increasing part of the world population

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is already educated by scientific education and westernised through cultural hegemony, movement of knowledge/power and consent. Defying the colonial notion of Europe must also be a common endeavour and polyphonic. To recap, the Kantian paradigm is that of just one “province,” Europe. It is now challenged from within and from without.The attempts from within are aimed at cleansing it from metaphysical illusions, from outside to defy its oppressive racial and colonial traits, both grounded on the universal as understood by Kant. Stripped from these two aspects, questions remain:What is left of it? Do we need to keep it or go beyond it? While answers to these questions may be a matter of challenging dialogues and negotiations, one thing is obvious:Voices from all parts of the world are needed to establish a common ground for educational actions, a new global style of thought, a global collective of thought and action. While the West needs to get rid of the white ignorance of taking itself for the whole humanity, other parts of the world need the self-confidence and courage to trust their own voices and perspectives, and this will be the birthplace of a new global state of mind.The west needs not only to become provincialised, purged from metaphysical residues, decolonialised and deracialised in order to regain its humanity; it also needs to join hands with other parts of the world in their struggle against racism and coloniality. Other parts of the world have been participating in struggles, empowering themselves and attaining a voice for themselves and are trying to make their stories valid in their own terms. For them to provincialise and decolonise Europe is to achieve the strength, courage, skills and competencies to rethink modernity, progress, humanity and education. In the next chapter of the book, I concentrate on conditions for possibilities of such a state of mind.

Notes 1 This is a kind of ignorance that, in Charles Mills’s words, is “indeed presenting itself unblushingly as knowledge” (2017:49). 2 It is about: “The Kantian heritage and the shadow that it throws over modernity” (Han 2002:36). 3 See also Koopman (2013). 4 Important to be mentioned is that this cannot be understood as relativism; philosophers of the future are friends of truth (BGE 43). 5 Against the background of the neoliberal notion of homo economicus, Nietzsche has been prophetic in prefiguring some basic features of this human type such as uniformity and lack of individuality and the autonomy common to the consumerist world of today; human beings are tools in the service of the capitalist totality. The objective person is a tool, an expensive measuring instrument and piece of mirror art that is easily injured and spoiled and should be honored and protected; but he is not a goal, not a departure or a fresh start, he is not the sort of complementary person in which the rest of existence justifies itself. He is not a conclusion – and still less a beginning, begetter or first cause; there is nothing tough, powerful or selfsupporting that wants to dominate. Rather, he is only a gentle, brushed-off, refined, agile pot of forms, who first has to wait for some sort of content or substance in order “to shape” himself accordingly, – he is generally a man without substance or content, a “selfless” man. (BGE 207)

Beyond Kant 163 This passage can also be read in connection with Kant’s formalism (both the spirit and the letter of Kant) in education, where the regulative idea of the human being is used as a pregiven form to which any individual must comply. 6 A similar view on the relationship between Kant and Nietzsche is formulated in Babette A. Babich (1994), Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Science: Reflecting Science on the Ground of Art and Life.This says something about the influence of Kant and Kantianism in unexpected places and thinkers. Lee Braver (2007) means that Heidegger has brought about a new paradigm distinct from the Kantian paradigm. Further, he means that Foucault operates within the Heideggerian paradigm. These two points are to be questioned. Foucault himself give us a clue by emphatically confirming his belonging to the Kantian paradigm in several instances. 7 Dewey and, following him, Rorty have suggested a new Copernican revolution, where the knowing subject is replaced by the acting subject, to put Kant on his feet and reverse the relationships between theory and practice. Nietzsche’s attempt to make art a perspective on science, pragmatism’s (Dewey’s) attempts to put the acting subject at centre stage and Foucault’s attempt to reinterpret Kant’s idea of criticism are all attempts to reverse Kant. However, they have been limited in scope since they have not taken the colonial and racial aspects of Kant into consideration. My suggestion is to stimulate critical dialogues between Western internal critical voices and those of postcolonial, decolonial project and subaltern studies. 8 He also is aware of the role of popular science, or science for the broader public. 9 In this perspective, educational revolutions take place within scientific style of thought, however. As will be explained, my suggestion is a shift in style of thought. 10 Kant’s relationship to revolutions is rather ambiguous. While he suggests revolution in ways of thinking and educating people, he writes of political revolutions (the French Revolution and the misery and atrocities attached to it): “that no right-thinking man would ever decide to make the same experiment again at such a price, even if he could hope to carry it out successfully at the second attempt” (Kant 1970:182). 11 Carl Mannheim (1991) offers ideology critique as a strategy. The gist of his method is that our experience of space is ideologically encoded. To this we can add that time can be experienced differently. If experiences of space and time can be different, Kant’s experience is valid for Kant, not for everybody. Human beings can have different forms of intuition, evolved historically, related to different historical contexts. 12 As mentioned earlier, this is a strategy of reinterpreting modern culture that goes back to Nietzsche and, following him, to Heidegger. The main concern here is to dismantle metaphysics rather than abolish colonialism and racism based on it. Starting from such intentions, Heidegger talks of the end of philosophy as the queen of sciences. There are also strategies inspired by Levinas, where the other is recognised and included. These strategies often start from the West as the norm and demand to be recognised by the West. They measure others by the Western yardstick. The leading metaphor is the unification of Athens and Jerusalem, an attempt to come to terms with Western metaphysical heritage. The task this study sets itself, however, is transformation from a perspective outside the West. It is to abolish the boundaries of educable self and the uneducable others. 13 The pragmatist shift from the knowing subject to the acting subject and the shift from necessary notion of progress to a contingent one is another strategy. It is necessary but not sufficient. Actions can be as colonial and racist as theories. The same can be said of the contingent notion of progress. The shift should be much more radical and should change racist and colonial preconditions of knowledge and action. Such discussions show, however, that there is an self-critique occurring in the West.Yet it is a monologue, a conversation by the West with the West and about the others. Such an approach is itself an exercise in power and silencing the others by speaking for them. The West still places itself in the driving seat of progress. These self-critical discourses must be investigated sufficiently and made responsive to the call of the oppressed others.

164  Beyond Kant 14 There certainly will be disputes on what is the common interest of humanity. To settle this, we can use a combination of Habermas’s deliberative method of rational dialogue (influenced by Kant) and Mouff and Laclau’s agonistic dialogue method, with an emphasis on the latter, as it is anti-hegemonic. 15 I am thinking of how liberal democracies in the EU and the United States treat refugees, immigrants and undocumented people today. 16 Arendt, Agamben and Rancière discuss the issue of leaving the liberal citizen as the subject of politics for that of refugee or other shapes of precariat. 17 In this respect, Mills will reach “genuine knowledge” by “mapping an epistemology of ignorance” (Mills 2017:16). 18 For Chakrabarty, Europe is “an imaginary figure that remains deeply embedded in clichéd and shorthand forms in some everyday habits of thought that invariably subtend attempts in the social science to address questions of political modernity in South Asia” (2007:4). 19 Chakrabarty: “I too write from within this inheritance. Postcolonial scholarship is committed, almost by definition, to engaging the universals- such as the abstract figure of the human or that of Reason- that were forged in eighteenth-century Europe and that underlies the human science” (2007:5). 20 Marx is Eurocentric when he writes: “The country that is more developed industrially only show, to the less developed, the image of its own future” (Marx 1982:7). 21 Methodological nationalism, a modern intellectual orientation, where division of the surface of the globe into nation-states is considered as given by nature and nation-states’ interests are confused with those of societies, is a consequence of this hegemony, we can say. 22 In an attempt to go beyond his own intellectual framework and reach that of the Chinese, Julien, on the other hand, strives for a transformation of the universal to the general or common.

Chapter 7

Delinking from the Kantian paradigm A new educational orientation

In the previous chapters, I introduced scientific education as the central educational problem of our time. I also tried to identify strategies by which we can construct useful tools for making changes in this constitutive background of education and paving the path for a new educational orientation. As my concern is educational orientation, foundation and principles, my analyses as well as my solutions concern this level of scrutiny. Indeed, the distinction between scientific education and science education was an attempt to connect adequate tools to relevant problems and address them at the right level. The problem of scientific education was introduced as an umbrella conception for a cluster of problems like those of coloniality of education and educational racism. A solution proper to this problem demands that we delink from the Kantian paradigm instead of reusing it. For this end, I suggest some practical shifts of focus in how we address educational problems in new manners and replace old principles with new ones. Being practical for my approach means freedom from resentment; it aims to bring about solutions to problems of the past rather than revenge. Making the constitutive role of the colonial past in education clear and problematising its actuality are necessary but not sufficient steps for a new orientation to education. We cannot stop at this stage and blame modernity and its major thinkers like Kant for the educational problems of our time and free ourselves from responsibility. This would be a passive or reactive nihilism, as Nietzsche would put it. To make something meaningful of genealogical criticism, we need to take a step further and come up with educational alternatives and a new educational heading.This is to step into an active or positive nihilism. This approach is enabling and moves beyond slavish repetition of the past or subordination to limits of the present. It sees possibilities embedded in the present and becomes future oriented.This is, as Nietzsche suggests, to philosophise with a hammer as a tuning fork in the “great declaration of war” (TI Foreword) against old idols. Genealogical critique is a diagnostic analysis and needs to be linked with forward-looking solutions, which demand deliberate collective efforts. Briefly, the diagnostic analysis revealed the authoritative and nondialogic character of scientific education and identified it as an impediment

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to an education proper. It also challenges the dominant narrative of education that presents current Eurocentric education as the pinnacle of progress and covers racist and colonial heritages endemic to scientific education. Taking this diagnostic step, we now need to take a second step and go beyond this deconstructive stage by designing discursive and practical tools through which we can remove impediments in the way of a better educational paradigm. All these are practical steps toward an education that sets us free from limits imposed upon us by the inequalities, racism and coloniality of education. My attempts to introduce a multifunctional methodological framework to shed light on the genealogical nature of educational problems was linked with a variety of liberative strategies and discourses in the present. Now, we need to link educational problems as identified in previous chapters with our multifunctional toolkit if we are to remove hindrances in the way of a new educational paradigm. For this to work, we need a new orientation or frame of mind. Basically, the shift in educational orientation should be away from rationally calculable self-interests toward “the common” as the global space of participation and solidarity rather than transcendental uniformity.This, in its turn, means a move away from homo economicus as the hegemonic and homogenous human type and its hegemonic notion of rationality. Further, we need to move away from the primacy of the abstract toward the practical, which means a rethinking of science as the exclusive ground of education.1 We need a new educational organisation accordingly. To understand what I mean by the common, a reference to François Julien is helpful; he defines the common as “what we are part of or in which we take part, which is shared out and in which we participate” (Julien 2014:16). He distinguishes the common from the universal (formal and a priori imperatives as we saw in Kant) and the uniform (perverted universalism into a neoliberal imperative of conformity in production of human capital). There is a concretion and a common rationality in this frame of mind that take into consideration the common interests of humanity and the conditions of human survival in a sustainable environment: it is a move away from the division of the human being into natural and intelligible parts and the superiority of the one over the other. It also is a move away from methodological nationalism so characteristic of social science, since it takes division of the globe into nation-states as natural. This new orientation is participatory and thus resists the global uniformity staged by neoliberal hegemony; it liberates itself from pregiven, abstract and formal Eurocentric imperatives and instead focuses on global solidarity and justice; it means to create space of participation where any and all are able to become part of a global community of action – as the subject of politics, cognition and education. Education becomes then a transformative force that creates new values instead of reproducing old ones. Such an intellectual framework challenges the neoliberal competitive mode of subjectivity by appealing to values such as the diversity of human relationships, openness, creativity, participation, peace, love and divergence. To this end intercultural dialogue is a useful tool. It

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makes different cultures and divergent knowledge perspectives translatable to each other and can create common spheres of co-orientation, co-creation and collective action.This is a transformation of basic principles of scientific education from conformity in accordance with Eurocentric forms; it challenges cultural hegemony, the exclusive domination of science in education, and moves toward diversity of human experiences. Education for the common is an artistic education since it is a work in progress, with no absolute beginning or end but always in the middle of inventing and reinventing itself and the human being at individual, collective, local and global levels. My concern is to find points of intersection, where different transformative forces can join, strengthen each other and overcome the hegemonic West and decolonial education. Such an intersectional approach enables us to take into consideration both colonial differences and internal diversities within each camp and problems specific to each social group as well as problems common to humanity. The starting point for such a strategy is transfertilising different traditions beyond the boundaries of West and East, North and South, not in order to compromise with oppressors, and neglect structures of cultural and racial hegemony, but to truly and on a broad front challenge them and become subversive toward technologies of colonial and neo-colonial oppression. We need a polyphonic notion of resistance to overcome centuries of oppression. In the following sections, I am going to suggest some shifts or turns in perspective that can create transformative spaces concerning educational actions and thoughts.

From an authoritarian to a dialogic notion of criticism The notion of critique is central to the Kantian paradigm. It is about the limits and possibilities of human faculties. In the transformative process we are engaged in, however, what is needed is not just criticism in the sense of identifying limits of thought, although it is necessary. What is needed is expanding human practical capabilities through overcoming structures of old racial, colonial and gender domination. To achieve this, as a turn or first shift of focus, following Foucault, I suggest an alteration from the Kantian notion of criticism to a practical and transgressive one. This shift partly concerns the subject of criticism. Here, the main question is:Who conducts criticism? Another concern regards the style of criticism. Here, the main concern is a shift from uniformity and purity to diversity, from an authoritative to a polyphonic notion of criticism. The Kantian notion of critique is concerned with pure reason itself; it is white, theoretical, formal, scientific and concerned with the limits of the Western male reason while imperialistically generalising this local reason to humanity as such. Starting from a white perspective, it educates to recognise the boundaries and limits of this perspective as transcendental conditions for the possibility of knowledge and truth. This mode of critique is not of much

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help when it comes to transformation of the oppressive preconditions of the current paradigm of education. It safeguards limits and boundaries, but we need to go beyond Western educational hegemony and make educational paradigm participatory, intercultural and intersectional. The need is then a practical, multidimensional and multimodal criticism as recognition of mutually translatable notions of rationality and reason – to delink from Kant and see him as a provincial thinker, informed by experiences of living in colonial Europe, whose racial views can be seen as the genealogical cause of white ignorance today. Foucault has reappropriated Kant’s notion of criticism from within the Kantian paradigm. However, this transformation is in a manner that makes it a useful tool for my purpose. Foucault suggests “to transform the critique conducted in the form of necessary limitation into a practical critique that takes the form of a possible transgression” (1984:46). The main concern of such a notion of critique is not the limits of ahistorical formal principles of pure reason but opening the field of critical thought for plurality of contextual reasons. As we have seen, Foucault replaces the Kantian notion of the transcendental subject with an empirical one influenced by its conditions of life as the subject of criticism. Beside this shift from transcendental empirical subject, the Foucauldian notion of criticism is useful since it is genealogical and concerns the self ’s relationships with itself; it is a transformative force aimed at critically responding to one’s own historical situation in the present with a view to genesis of things, as well as critically working on oneself. In an educational context, the focal point is issues such as “what the subject must be, to what condition he is subject, what status he must have, what position he must occupy in reality or in the imaginary, in order to become a legitimate subject of this or that form of knowledge” (Foucault 2003:1). This kind of criticism reveals the process of subjectivation as an interplay between individuals and their conditions of life; it is the positionality of individuals in a structure of relations of power and contingency of their status. To become the subject of certain truth is not formal or pregiven, but it depends on the historical circumstance and the position and status of the individuals and social groups. In this perspective, ontological and epistemological processes become entangled and processual; the one becomes dependent on the other, and both become dependent on history, relations of power and technologies of governance. Instead of being a priori given, it is an affirmation of fluidity of situations and contingencies of truths and subjectivities. This fluidity, however, does not lead to arbitrariness of thought and truth claims.There are always styles of thought that set the boundaries for arbitrariness of thought, as Fleck (1979) maintains. The difference is the awareness of the historical and changeable nature of styles of thought. They are not based on natural or a priori principles but emerge as the result of relations of power and individuals working on themselves and on their relationships with the world. Besides, styles of thought function within and bring together communities of thought, like the scientific community; thought styles stand for thought communities’ relative stability through different conventions and historical principles of thought. As will be

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elaborated, the style of thought and education I suggest is artistic-philosophical as distinct from the dominant and hegemonic scholarly culture of today. One issue is the style of criticism; the other issue is the subject of criticism since it is relevant for the aim of criticism. Generally, who conducts criticism and who participates in struggles on the meaning of criticism are important as different bodies are the loci of different histories, experiences and knowledge. This, however, does not mean that ideas, criticisms and actions are true or untrue by their origin. We are to look to the style, subject of and things subjected to criticism as well as diversity of the subject of criticism. Traditionally, criticism has been conducted from a Eurocentric perspective since Western knowledge and perspective have been normative. By introducing strategies of resistance outside the West, my intention was to show that we can conduct criticism of colonialism and racism from perspectives outside the Western Enlightenment. This is a critique from the perspective of oppressed people; it is practical and conducted by oppressed bodies rather than being speculation on the boundaries of pure reason conducted by pure reason itself. Practically, here, I aim at a “self-conscious global subject” as Adorno (1998:144) maintains.To establish this subject is an educational task.This notion of the subject concerns bringing together Western and non-Western modes of resistance, resistance from within and from the outside the West, and establishing an intersectional mode of resistance in order to prepare the ground for a new kind of resistance beyond the two – one that is dialogic and embraces the best aspects of both, bringing together global and local struggles. It is participatory, dialogic, translational, transgressive in nature and orientated toward the notion of the common.Through such a synthetic notion of resistance, we can make education the site of criticism.Western internal struggle can be connected to non-Western struggles, and they can be made translatable to each other. We can work with connecting and disconnecting, excluding and including, where we challenge imperialistic universalism through establishing a universalism that goes beyond nationalism and is based on participation and membership in communities of thought and action at global and local levels and brings together local and global struggles. This means a critical approach to the self and the other. I argue for a notion of criticism that is polyphonic since criticism from a single perspective can never cover all aspects of oppression. We need this mode of practical cross-cultural critique to counteract the domination, closeness and totalising tendencies of scientific education, as well as those of neoliberalism. This critique is enabling and leads to redistribution of epistemic authority. It is necessary for overcoming the limits of different traditions and cultures;2 it stimulates dialogues between them, offering them opportunities to learn from each other instead of about each other, as Levinas would say, and makes them translatable to each other. Transgressive critique is transcultural and creates spaces of common meaning. It recognises differences at the same time as it transgresses boundaries. It puts forward a translational notion of universalism as an alternative to colonial universalism and its oppressive border crossing.

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From cognitivism to the diversity of daily practices Connected to the first shift, a second shift of focus is from a cognitivist to an ontological or practical view of education and knowledge. If the first shift enables us to transcend boundaries of oppressive contexts, reach out and become engaged with the different other, this shift paves the way for equal participation in cognitive, political and educational processes. Here, contrary to the Kantian paradigm, anybody can become the subject of these processes rather than participation being conditioned by skin colour and geography. The cognitivist approach occludes and oppresses human participation in cognitive processes (or makes it a privilege of white people). It pretends to be a contemplative and neutral standpoint just contemplating on the world and the other. As we have seen, however, modern cognition occurs in accordance with abstract universal rules and principles that were invented from the perspective of white male Europeans. Rather than being naturally given, as in the Kantian paradigm, they are human invention and theory-laden. The cognitivist approach transfers a world reduced to propositional knowledge as correspondence between propositions and objects of the world. It is formal and confines education to acquisition of propositional knowledge as absolutely true. As was discussed, scientific education was not neutral in origin; it bears discriminatory, racist and colonial footprints. Kant discredited non-white people’s cognitive capability and aesthetic judgements as well as educability. Further, educability of non-whites was equated to submission to the Western way of life; this submission was considered as the only way of being included in humanity, but then as sub-persons, as Mills maintains. As such, non-white people have been considered the object of education and science rather than their subject. Besides, science itself has been misused as a means of the racial classification of humanity and objectifying oppressed bodies as objects of exploitation as well as that of scientific studies. Science has been used as part of the hegemonic power of the West, excluding the others from participating in knowledge production. Thus, a gap between the Eurocentric knowledge and lived experiences of the colonialised world has emerged. This disparity is essential and can be overcome through delinking science from the epistemic hegemony of the colonial West and the Kantian paradigm. Such a delinking would be a decolonialisation of science and education, a move away from imperial science as the totalising perspective, where knowledge perspectives of marginalised people are excluded. The result of this process will be a participatory frame of mind and reconceptualisation of the subject of science for the inclusion of the perspectives and experiences of colonialised and racialised people. In this view, objectivity of cognition means participation of all relevant perspectives in the production of knowledge. For non-whites, there has been an oppressive alliance among education, science, racism and colonialism. Colonial expansion has been an epistemic expansion, and colonial violence has been epistemic violence. Spivak (1988) uses the

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notion of epistemic violence to bring into the fore silencing of the epistemic perspective of oppressed people. This oppression has led to what Mills (2017) speaks of as “doxastic environment,” where white ignorance has proudly present itself as knowledge. We can talk of the common ground of epistemic violence and white ignorance, phenomena that work as the basis of a structure of superiority and inferiority of people in accordance with skin colour and geography. The best strategy to defy these phenomena is to counteract them as interconnected. As they genealogically emerged for the oppression of epistemic diversity, to work for cognitive participation and making non-white people the subject of cognition is to counteract white ignorance, coloniality of education and epistemic violence. Against this background, the lived experiences of non-white people become important as a source of knowledge sensitive to the contexts of life and its diversity. This reveals the folly of disqualifying the diversity of perspectives and homogenising dispersed peoples and perspectives and bringing them all under totalising ideas such as “coloured people” and “blacks” while, in reality, they are diverse in terms of epistemic interests and perspective. While totalising efforts have been an attempt to control and oppress, affirmation of diversity is to resist oppression and set free human potentials beyond oppressive boundaries of white/non-white; it is to expand the realm of human action rather than putting humanity under abstract principles. This shift of focus is in line with our basic experience of the world and education, which occurs primarily through our practical participation in it together with others. Consciousness, detached observation and conceptual ordering are secondary. Instead of cognitive grasping, we practically participate in activities and relate to the world through our bodies. Human beings are not reducible to architecture of isolated minds or to one set of their activities, like economics or abstract thinking. To exclude human being from participating in cognitive processes by reference to their lack of capability for abstract thinking, as per Kant and, following him, Hegel, is not only a sign of white ignorance but also epistemic violence. In this respect, I am in agreement with Marcuse in his claim that “praxis” is our “decisive attitude” (1987:33). Putting together my concerns so far, I suggest a shift from the Kantian transcendental subject to a globally aware empirical subject, oriented toward the common, with praxis as its decisive attitude, and in perpetually expanding its boundaries of genealogical awareness regarding hidden racial and colonial biases through using critique as a transgressive notion. This is to delink from Kant and move toward a global intellectual framework, within which we can ask new questions and in a new manner.

From metaphysical to ontological notions of freedom One consequence of these shifts of perspective is a reinterpretation of the formal notion of freedom, the central concept of the Enlightenment. The

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metaphysical or Kantian – and, inheriting from him, the neoliberal – notion of freedom is an exercise of rational choice, and the rules are pregiven and independent of the individual. The notion of a subject with a free will is taken for granted as well as that of free will as absolute good to put all responsibilities on the individuals rather than unjust social structures.3 As an act of free will, the subject must admit or reject economic alternatives (existing principles), which are there in the free market and at a distance. This choice occurs in accordance with uniform or universal principles. With all these givens in the background, the task is to establish a rational relationship to the alternatives available and find ways of appropriating or rejecting them. The acting subject is detached from its own actions. Since this notion of freedom is “formal freedom of subject” (Adorno 1998:148), it is independent of individuals’ situations. To achieve free choice, Kant invented principles to be communicated by virtue of their form. The manifold nature of human situations, access to resources and their impact on human choices is ignored. Contrary to this, the ontological notion of freedom is contextual and sensitive to the diversity of human relationships to the world; it is a way of life in a historical world. It is not a formal characteristic to be attached or detached from the subject but rather a way of being in the world and, as such, unalienable from subjects. This notion of freedom not only recognises freedom of the others – the otherness of the others – by recognising them and letting them be the beings they are in their own terms but also invites them to participate in common actions aimed at common interests. It is consistent with the diversity of ways of being and life. It is consistent with the transgressive notion and artistic style of criticism and life. Kant alienated the human being from nature since he pushed for the supremacy of the intelligible subject, supremacy of homo noumena over homo phenomenon – the former a white rational male subject as normative notion of subjectivity and the latter a savage subject. Neoliberalism has destroyed the oppositional subject by objectifying human beings as competitors in accordance with a single global form, that of homo economicus. Consequently, human beings are made alien from themselves, their world and each other since they have been made entrepreneurs of the self, in competition with each other, without taking care of the common. I have already spoken of the globally conscious subject as the subject of an artistic style of thought and conduct. The style of life of this subject is related to ontological freedom as the style of its being in the world. As a free being, participating in knowledge production, this subject is one with itself, its knowledge and its world rather than alienated. At the same time, there is an ontological and epistemological indeterminacy as opposed to dogmatism which brings to the fore the mode of potentiality immanent in each moment and everyone and that affirms becoming, change and transformation. Neither the world nor knowledge of it is fixed; they always can be otherwise. Kant connected education with moral freedom. Kantian freedom, however, is just an assumption, a teleological and metaphysical freedom related to a predetermined purpose of nature. However, human beings are actual beings and practically

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engaged in the field of their daily life. The process of historical changes occurs, contrary to Kant, through the practical engagement of human beings in concrete historical conditions. The acting, feeling and knowing subjects are constituted subjects rather than transcendental and change societies while at the same time producing and reproducing themselves. It is through processes of subjectification and subjectivation that educational and other social institutions are reproduced in individuals. Through these ongoing processes, subjects act upon themselves, others and their social environment. This is a process of construction, reconstruction, adoption and transformation in order to highlight the temporal horizon of knowledge and the historical ontology of the self, as well as the temporality of cultivation and knowledge acquisition. Contrary to Kant, such approaches have diversity of action and praxis as their starting point rather than abstract ideas and principles. As we saw in Benjamin, universality is not limited to the abstract; human beings can reach freedom in the concrete, which is also the core of transgressive criticism.

From imperial universalism to translational universalism These shifts of focus aim at a polymodal style of thought (in the sense of experiencing the world through many modalities like art, science and philosophy), freedom as a way of being in the world and praxis as the practical attitude of the human being, all of which bring to the fore the impact of contexts of life on all human affairs as well as that of human body, instead of the Kantian transcendental notion of the human being. In light of these shifts, we can now reinterpret the notion of the universal central to the Kantian paradigm. This transformation moves from imperial universalism to a participatory one based on diversity of modes of experiencing the world and translatability of different knowledge and aesthetic regimes (sensuous regimes) into each other. It grows out of critique as transgression of cultural boundaries (instead of military, colonial and capitalist transgressions) and free and common action of the selves and the others; the free selves let the others be the beings they are in their own terms instead of dogmatically imposing their own values on the others; it is a life in truth and freedom. As we already saw in Nietzsche, everyone is aware and proud of the uniqueness of his values instead of being common, unlike uniformity in neoliberal societies. Kantian universalism postulates a transcendental subject who has a single-trucked way of experiencing the world. Although imagination4 is spontaneous and independent – a mental power which enlivens and sets free – it combines things, recombines sense data in new forms, as the source of poetry that can turn imagination into a social power, Kant lets reason and the understanding (moral and scientific determinations) interfere with the work of imagination and take control and harmonise with feelings of the beautiful and the awe inspiring and overwhelming sublime. Reason comes into free play with imagination through the feeling of the sublime, and the

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understanding does the same regarding the feeling of the beautiful. This means that, in the final analysis, it is the abstract powers of the mind, or scientific and moral determinations, that are authoritative sources of deciding what is good, beautiful and true;5 they make human feelings of the sublime and the beautiful communicable. Accordingly, they determine what can be seen, said and communicated. They build what Rancière calls an aesthetic regime that determines the kind of knowledge that is to be transferred. For Rancière, aesthetics “permits us to identify what pertains to art, i. e. its objects, modes of experience, and forms of thought” (Rancière 2013:4). He uses the notion of aesthetic regimes as frameworks within which things can be heard, seen and felt. A change in aesthetic regime means we can see new things. As Rancière (2013) maintains, art, as historically conditioned practices, enables us to change the “distribution of the sensible,” shifting what can be heard, seen and understood in our educational institutions and practices. It is a “horizontal distribution” and contributes to intellectual equality and constitution of a common world based on equality. Kant limits the human being to science and conceptual knowledge as an authoritative form of cognition superior to other modes of experiencing the world, like art. What sensations provide (content) are formed by a hierarchy of faculties; categories of the understanding and power of aesthetic judgement mediates between understanding and reason. Based on this strict way of experiencing the phenomenal world and the strict architecture of the mind, a white, male and European reason, a self-sufficient global subject, is established who speaks, thinks and acts for humanity and dictates universal truths and forms of thought from a Eurocentric perspective. Kant’s notion of universality, in other words, is monophonic and false since it silences the others in the name of truth and by so doing remains enclosed within its own perspective and thus provincial. A translational notion of universality is participatory; it is at the same a transgressive mode of critique since it transcends boundaries instead of being limited by them. It is a never-ending conversation across different cultures, contexts and texts, where different perspectives are in perpetual interchanges. It brings together critical perspectives of oppressed peoples; it pushes aside the veil of illusion and reveals the narrow-mindedness of Eurocentrism and its true identity as a minority perspective that has imposed itself as the universal perspective. My notion of universalism is indeed the perspective of humanity against that of white ignorance since the latter structures cognition in accordance with Western domination. Accordingly, translational universalism tries to reframe cognition and release it from this domination. Generally, as Benjamin maintained, we can communicate human feelings beyond concepts, through visual expressions or otherwise. To reduce communication to rational forms, as Kant does, is to impoverish human communication. Whereas Kantian universality is logical and abstract and works through the imposition of uniform imperatives, ontological or practical universalism works through participation in the shared world of collectives of action. Unlike logical prescriptions, participation is based on decisions: one decides to encounter the

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other in a dialogic manner. To engage in a dialogic encounter with the others and be responsive to her brings in many possibilities for the self and the other. It offers possibilities of participating or not or of withdrawing from participations already established. It is thus contingent and entangled with specific strategies of power. It is not imposed on the individual from outside and by formal principles, but rather it is a matter of exercising power on equal basis within specific communities. To summarise, the notion of the universal suggested here is based on practical memberships in the common that can go beyond boundaries such as culture, gender, race and geography of birth. Participants take part in communities of thought and action as the subject of politics and cognition.

From science of education to art-science of education The shifts in the notion of the universal, critique, cognition, freedom and the universal are part of a larger shift in the kind of general intellectual framework through which education can be seen and our orientation toward it can be formed. As discussed prior, cognitivism, the imperial notion of the universal and the formal notion of freedom were organic parts of the Kantian system of thought and as such bear metaphysical and hidden colonial and racial codes. The omnipresent influence of Kant depends on his concern with an overall idea of the world where the sky above his head (casual realm of nature)6 and the moral feeling within him (realm of moral freedom) were bridged by the faculty of judgement (the god, the beautiful/sublime and the true become interconnected). However, this totalising thought system is oppressive. It determines the meaning of humanity and nature. It is reductionist since it brings all ways of experiencing under the rational authority of a self-legislative reason (science). Accordingly, nature becomes casually structured while freedom is placed in the noumenal world. Nature becomes a realm of causal manipulations, as understanding (legislator of nature) needs such an idea of nature and establishes it by imposing its laws on nature. In such a nature, a self-legislative agent or person finds its proper place. Roughly understood, education is to subjectify the subject to such a system of thought. In order to resist this totalising paradigm, we need the perspective of art. Kant started the transformation of the art of education into a science just to pave the path for the man of science and scholarly culture. I am not interested in reversing this process but rather seek to prepare the stage for a polymodal turn – ways of experiencing the world away from anthropomorphic manipulation of the natural and social world. Here some references to Nietzsche may be useful. He moves away from the Kantian scientific world image and sees it as a whole and asserts that “the existence of the world justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon” (BT 5). Here, the turn, or shift, is from a scientific justification toward the world, as in Kant, to an aesthetic phenomenon justified artistically – a shift from rational uniformity to aesthetic creativity. This orientation unifies the whole field of human experience with the world.

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Correspondingly, we can speak of a shift from a scientific human type to an artistic one. As will be shown, it is not about “a consensual ‘human nature’ ” but rather about a human type whose sensations, contrary to Kant, are “breaking free from any inherent hierarchy of faculties or meaning” (Nietzsche in Pawelski and Moores 2013) and can be interpreted in a variety of ways, as we saw in Benjamin. Accordingly, creativity challenges the organisation of sensations in universal rational forms or categories of the understanding. From this artistic position, Nietzsche places emphasis on the notion of creativity and invention. For him, the human being has always done things mythologically. For him, rather than being inherent to nature, causation is an invention. He maintains: We should not erroneously objectify “cause” and “effect” like the natural scientists do (and whoever else thinks naturalistically these days –) in accordance with the dominant mechanistic stupidity which would have the cause push and shove until it “effects” something; we should use “cause” and “effect” only as pure concepts, which is to say as conventional fictions for the purpose of description and communication, not explanation. (BGE 21) Here, Nietzsche introduces a fictional notion of causality different from that of Kant and science and puts description and communication in opposition to explanation. We then have two different modes of relating to the world; one establishes logical and a priori relations between events while the other is a useful tool for description and communication. Robert Guay (2017) maintains that, in Nietzsche, cause and effect are concepts that make one’s actions available to others – to communicate or present one’s actions discursively. In a practical or aesthetic orientation, however, communication is not limited to discursive communication, especially when it comes to things such as the meaning and purpose of life. In these connections, words can show their shortcomings, and aesthetic modes of communication like visualisation or disclosing are needed. In Charles Altieri’s reading of Nietzsche, “separating human life into domains like ethics and aesthetics is an aspect of nihilism” (2013:75); thus, we cannot talk of art as a mode of thinking, he continues. While this may be true of rational thinking and Kantian separations of different realms of life, Nietzsche talks of different modes of interpretation (BGE 22) and sees art as a perspective distinct from those of science and philosophy. It is not only causality as regard to the knowing subject that is challenged; the same can be said of the free will and the acting subject. For Kant, “a free will” was identical to “a will under moral law” (GMM 4:447). Nietzsche rejects the free will as an “error” and asserts that “the whole of morality is a brave and lengthy falsification” (BGE 29). What is interesting in this context is not the erroneous nature of the free will or the falsity of morality but their connection with art. Nietzsche suggests a reinterpretation of the notion of art toward “a much broader conception of ‘art’ than people are used to” (BGE 29). I connect

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this broad notion of art with that of the world as an aesthetic phenomenon on the one hand. Here, art opens an aesthetic vista toward the world and help us justify our existence from an aesthetic perspective beyond the rational calculations, efficiency and the like so central to neoliberalism. On the other hand, I use the Nietzschean invention of two heuristic opposing forces, Apollonian and Dionysian (BT 2), in the world and life to understand the relationships between the surface of life and that of its substratum – the abyss – in order to understand life and the world in all their profundity. This is to go beyond the will “to appearances, to simplification, to masks, to cloaks, in short, to surfaces,” and reach a deeper understanding of and treat “things in a profound, multiple, thorough manner” (BGE 230). This also is to reverse Kant’s alienation of the human being from nature and from the other. Nietzsche tries “to translate humanity back into nature” and “gain control of the many vain and fanciful interpretations and incidental meanings that have been scribbled and drawn over that eternal basic text of homo natura so far” (BGE 230). It is thus a struggle for the meaning of the human being and its relationship to nature and the other by going beyond interpretations (Apollonian) and reaching the text itself (Dionysian).This can be done on the basis of the broad sense of art.We not only can reach a deep understanding of existence as a phenomenon aesthetically justified and the two opposing drives in life and the world, but this can be a transformative learning process that can transform us to a new human type that can resist the neoliberal reduction of humanity, homo economicus; Nietzsche gives us the key when he talk of the “Protean arts” of the spirit (the commanding element) that “protect and conceal it the best!” (BGE 230). I postponed discussions about how such a human type as the aim of education can protect us in front of the alienating forces of neoliberal market capitalism for a while. For the moment, I focus on the view of the world, humanity and art and their relationships I am arguing for. I do not use art for “description and communication” but as a transformative force as regard to the dominant scientific paradigm. My genealogical critique manifests the historical formation of scientific orientation toward life and education. This orientation is based on subject-object division. Nature is constructed as the object of the subject’s cognition and manipulation. To resist this worldview, I move away from subjectobject division (the basis of alienation) toward an aesthetic view of the world and an aesthetic orientation toward education and life. This view is based on the broad sense of art as the “highest task and the true metaphysical activity of life” (BT 2).7 This means that art is not a profession, that of creating beautiful artefacts and entertaining, but an alternative orientation toward the world and life. More importantly, I move away from scientific orientation toward the world and the world reducible to object of manipulation. Apprehension of the world and life can then happen along the axis of surface and substratum or interplays along Apollonian and Dionysian lines that lead us beyond morality of good and evil, beyond formal truths and imperial universalism, beyond science’s hegemony and its alienation of life. A reference to the description of

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Dionysus as a god-philosopher in Beyond Good and Evil (§295) may help us grasp how apprehension of the world and life can be a movement between the surface and the substratum instead of a relationship between the subject and the object. The Dionysian turn brings together perspectives and styles of a god and a philosopher, a genius of the heart “whose voice knows how to descend into the underworld of every soul.” At the same time, it is not just about voicing the underworld but also about listening and silence as Dionysus “makes everything loud and complacent fall silent and learn to listen.” He educates and “smoothes out rough souls and gives them the taste of a new desire.” This new desire is indeed “to lie still, like a mirror that the deep sky can mirror itself upon” (BGE 295); thus, skies are mirrored and connected to the underworld. Inspired by such a style of thought and being, those who come in touch with such an inspiration source are transformed. They “are made richer in themselves, newer than before, broken open, blown on, and sounded out by a thawing wind, perhaps less certain, more gentle, fragile, and broken, but full of hopes that do not have names yet, full of new wills and currents, full of new indignations and countercurrents” (BGE 295). This is about a new profound comprehension of the world beyond subject–object dichotomy, a kind of understanding that transgress boundaries and transforms; it covers the whole range of being human and contains pain and suffering as well as joy and pleasure, harmony and disharmony, voice and silence without being divided into different realms or putting demand on absolute obedience. Through such a frame of mind, life itself becomes creative; it becomes the educator that brings about a new mode of education and production, a mode in which the very structure of the world is manifest in the single production of human mind and hand. Life is thus the utmost perspective concerning art and education instead of the Kantian court of reason. There is no pre-planned destination for education, nature or history, as God is dead and there is no God’s eye perspective that can see the whole course of history. Education is a work in progress and always unfinished. Its aim is a new human type, as will be shown in the next section. For now, it is necessary to say some words about the other side of the general intellectual framework at stake here: the surface or the Apollonian. What is interesting for my purpose is that Nietzsche opens up new channels for thinking about the surface or the mask as, for him, “Everything profound loves masks” and “Every profound spirit needs a mask” (BGE 40). However, he uses the notion of mask as opposed to shallowness; a mask can hide “much goodness” (BGE 40). Thus, the Apollonian can be the mask that hides the abyss.8 This view brings together the individual and the collective since the Apollonian is the principle of individuation while the Dionysian stays for the collective, as interacting in classical Greek tragedies. Further, will to power can be seen as the unity of these two drives, encompassing both and seen from a verity of perspectives. Given the aforementioned turns or shifts of focus, we need to question anew the relationships among philosophy, education and science as hegemonic forms of knowledge. Kant’s Copernican revolution has extensive impact on the

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relationship between science and philosophy, as the Kantian turn was reductionistic and made not only philosophy scientific but made the scientific style of thought valid for all spheres of life.9 According to Habermas, “Since Kant, science has no longer been seriously comprehended by philosophy” (1972:4). Yet due to Kant’s influence, acquisition of scientific knowledge and its method of inquiry have been the main task of scientific education. At the same time, as Nietzsche observed, philosophy has become a profession (professorship), limited to academe and resigned from its critical position, while science developed an excessive faith in its truth as the exclusive way of knowledge of the world. My notion of the problem of scientific education can be seen as secondary to the problem of science. The Kantian paradigm has caused the problem of science, as it sees science as the single path toward the truth and tries to understand science from the perspective of science itself – a self-preferentiality that Nietzsche sees as problematic. Addressed in the general intellectual framework prior, the perspective of science is not the only perspective in which science can be considered; art offers an alternative perspective, as Nietzsche suggests. It is not enough, however, to have only art as an alternative perspective. Depending on different situations, we also can use different intersectional perspectives, where different perspectives intersect and offer a polymodal way of seeing at science. Primarily, the new orientation is a move away from primacy of science due to its one-sided rationality and its admixture with neoliberal market rationality. I have already introduced the polymodal way of experiencing the world.This is needed in order to establish an adequate notion of truth that corresponds to the transgressive notion of critique, the experience-based notion of the universal and a practical approach to freedom and the world on the one hand. On the other hand, it should respond to the complexity of the world, as comprehension of the world demands more than just one perspective or mode of comprehension. Concerning the hidden background of education, within this general frame of mind, art and philosophy can intersect and strengthen each other; while art functions as a disclosive force, philosophy offers us a genealogicalcritical mode of understanding. Philosophy enables us to distance ourselves from the silent background of education and realise the constitutive role of this background. This mode of philosophising concerns the relationships between surface and substratum. As the substratum, or silent background, of education can be preverbal and works beyond our consciousness, the discursive mode may come short of manifesting it; we need the perspective of art to manifest and grasp it. Art can make this tacit background manifest by showing it rather than through words and propositions; art can disclose it. Art becomes thus a perspective on education and brings into it a participatory style of creating, thinking and acting. Philosophy concerns the surface and substratum relationship; it is genealogically concerned with demasking the abyss. Because of the shift at stake here, philosophy becomes a tool for genealogical truths. By creating genealogical-critical distance, it enables us to examine heritages that have over time become “naturalised.”To render current practices of knowledge generation

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and dissemination problematic and changeable is to disrupt their oppressive effects and think differently and act freely. To summarise, the Kantian educational paradigm was a shift from the art of education to the science of education, to move away from the concrete reality of the sensible world and subordinate it to systematisation under the abstract ideas of reason. The shift at stake here will make education artistic. It is not to reverse the relation of hegemony and bring science under the domination of art but to bring about a creative interplay between the two – to manifest the value of artistic disclosure and make science stay away from the will to domination as well as to bring education closer to the practical way educators are engaged in their everyday world. This means to foster capacities to make daily practices transparent to educators. It also is to consider art as a creative perspective on education rather than a profession, which means to make people more aware of their creative potentialities. Through such a polymodal approach to education, we can release educators from constraints of colonialism and racism. Colonial conquerors oppressed colonialised parts of the world in the name of science, truth and faith.The shift at stake here is a move away from this imposed uniformity by scientific notion of truth toward recognition of the equal value of different forms of knowledge and life; it is recognition of artistic or practical notions of truth as a way of being in the world, coinciding with freedom. Our perspectives and descriptions are always partial and can never cover all aspects of objects of the world. To be objective is to see things from as many perspectives as possible, instead of from a single dominant perspective, be it that of science, philosophy, art, the West or the East. Following this logic, my suggestion is to see scientific education from a multiplicity of perspectives, including those of art, philosophy and science. Accordingly, the science of education can become an art-science of education engaged with the problem of life in its diversity. The Enlightenment made a universal notion of progress valid based on epistemological and moral-political aspects (Koselleck, in Allen 2016:8) for the uniformity of the world. In its epistemological sense, progress was considered as the global epistemic hegemony of later generations in the white West since progress was assumed to lead to accumulation of knowledge for the benefit of these generations. We have already seen that, as Kuhn (1970),10 among others, demonstrated, the history of science and education is disruptive. Another assumption of the progressivist sense of cognition is its being independent of the cultural and linguistic contexts. However, interconnected developments of culture, knowledge, capital and imperialism have been established by Said (1993). Through the work of Gramsci, we have seen that cultural hegemony has been part of imperial domination. Bringing together science and technology studies and postcolonial studies, Sandra Harding (1998) reveals that knowledge is inevitably historically and culturally situated. Helen Longino (1998) has argued for a science that is less androcentric and Eurocentric.11 However, in this section my focus is not on these developments but on the human type fostered through education and processes of subjectification and subjectivation. In this

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regard, despite the claim of progress, there has been an actual degeneration of humanity into homo economicus, whose epistemic, moral and aesthetic have been reduced to economic rationality.

From homo economicus to homo polytropos The transgressive notion of critique, the practical mode of being in the world, translative universalism and polymodal education based on art-science are interconnected elements of a turn away from educational heritages based on abstract principles of an imperial notion of rationality toward an education in tune with the free or practical mode of human beings in the world. It is an attempt to resist global oppressions staged by neoliberalism and its educational ideology through a new educational orientation and intellectual framework. Such a general framework needs in its turn a human type capable of working with these qualities of life, not as abstract principles but as practical elements of a way of life. Consistent with this demand, the shift I suggest in this section deals with human types. Indeed, education is about making the individual subject of and subject to specific truths; it is about the type of human being that each epoch will foster, their main characteristics and their style of being, thinking and acting; it is also about the kind of world to which we want to belong. From a colonial and racist position, Kant authoritatively invented the idea of the human being and her perfection and classified humanity in educable and uneducable categories accordingly. This was to betray human resourcefulness – not seeing any human being as an ambiguous potentiality irreducible to just good or evil. Starting from this point, the realisation of Kant’s ideas in experiential life ended up in superior and inferior human beings in a global system of power relations. It implanted seeds of racism and colonialism in education as a field. As all of these were based on abstract rational principles, they resulted in a rational calculative human type, homo economicus, organising his life according to rational calculation and choices. Further, as in neoliberal societies, competition is the rule of the game, the economic man is in a perpetual competition with the others. This development has been more one of the Eurocentric “average man of science” than that of the whole individual. As individuals have become calculative beings in competition with each others, humanity has become divided into categories of winners and losers while life has been brought under the abstract rules of the market.Thus, progress has been made in sophistication of modes of exploitation and manipulation of humanity by market forces instead of reaching enlightenment and autonomy. Homo economicus is a reduction and reification of humanity. It is a reduction since it reduces humanity just to its capacity of rational calculation; it is an alienation (estrangement) since the human being cannot be at home in a world dominated by principles of economic calculability and competition: Neoliberalism has not only reduced the human being to homo economicus as a response to needs of free market but also has prevented the human being from becoming what

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he ought to and could be (Fromm 1961).Thus, we need to shift the focus from the actuality of the human being in neoliberal societies toward potentialities within the human being as the ground for re-educating the human being into a new human type away from alienation. The question is now: What are the characteristics of this new human type? I have already given hints of a polydimensional notion of humanity – a human type that is not limited to one feature of humanity or one mode of cognition, feeling and acting. We can see humanity as a wide range of potentialities. Which potentialities become actual depends on historical circumstance: Homo sapiens, animal politicus, animal laborans, homo faber and so on are among the potentialities of the human being; each of them focuses on just one human potentially, however.To reduce humanity to any one of these features is to limit the human being; this causes an imbalance between human capabilities and a one-sidedness that leads to nihilism as it impoverishes life and empties it from its richness in meaning and significance. Basically, to avoid reductionism and nihilism, we need to release life from the tyranny of abstract principles and move toward an artistic orientation toward life and education based on creativity, freedom, health, inclusion and communities of practice and action, where the constitutive role of diversity of situations and power relations for human action, feeling and cognition is recognised. Human beings participate in these activities as subject of politics, education, actions and discourses and identify with them. I use the notion of creativity as the human ability to act, do and make things in accordance with an artistic orientation and styles of thought;12 it is not only to bring about works of art and artefacts but also ideas and cultures. As such, these activities are collective rather than individual since the human being lives in society and acts accordingly. Accordingly, for individuals to take part in common endeavours to build community and culture means a sense of active belonging and a move away from alienation. Seen in this perspective, the proper notion of creativity means creating in accordance with a distinct style that allows human resourcefulness to become manifest. Such a style of creating signifies the individuality of the individual as well the individuals belonging to a community of thought and action.13 Instead of education starting with homo economicus, homo faber, homo politicus and so on in isolation, it does better if it starts with the human being as a complicated whole – indeed unnameable. In this perspective, the human being can be seen as a historical being that manifests differently depending on conditions of life. In line with this orientation to education and life, we can talk of a polytropos human being as the aim of education. This is an epithet that Homer attributes to Odysseus as a resourceful wanderer in a time of peace; he is artful and a man of many turns. Deliberately, I chose an ambiguous and complicated notion of the human being since humanity encompasses many talents and unknown potentialities and possibilities rather than being limited to just one. Neither is the human being an actuality determined in advance, herein the importance of an open or artistic orientation toward education – an open

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notion of education for an active and creative notion of humanity and way of life, aimed at the artfulness of individuals. Contrary to the homo economicus, the polytropos’ way of thinking, being and acting in the world is aesthetic or creative. To cope with the world of today, we need such a multifaceted notion of the individual – a nomadic attitude signified by movement, flux, uniqueness and transformations. It needs to embrace potentialities embedded in notions like homo politicus and homo faber and go beyond them. Like homo politicus, homo polytropos is aimed at political participation in order to contribute to the common and belong to it rather than being alienated from it. Seen in light of political action, “Plurality is the condition of human action because we are all the same, that is, human, in such a way that nobody is ever the same as anyone else who ever lived, lives, or will live” (Arendt 1958:8). This is a life in truth and freedom since the other is recognised as the being she is and can participate and belong to the polity on her own terms. However, homo polytropos is not limited to be a political animal. Like homo faber, homo polytropos creates conditions of her life. Arendt is critical of homo faber as a working being preoccupied with making artefacts. She sees it as a deviation from political action. However, as I see here, creativity and plurality are part of human work as free manifestations of human potentialities for culture and community building in various social contexts. While, for Arendt, work belongs to the sphere of the social and not to that of politics, Marx considers work as the basic feature of humanity and the basis of the human being’s relationships with nature; for Marx, freedom is related to work as a social activity performed by social beings, which means freedom of work from the immediate needs of external circumstance and from exploitation. More precisely, work, for Marx, is the source of wealth and production as well as that of alienation. Human intellectual and physical work creates a human world out of nature; it is through work that the object of labour becomes the “objectification of man’s species-life” (Marx 1992:329).14 This is, of course, the free and conscious work. As such, the human being “produces when he is free from physical need.” In such a condition, the human being produces “in accordance with the laws of beauty” (1992:329). My concern here is to not reduce the human being to just one capacity since such a reduction leads to alienation. Marx prefigures part of this problem when he laments that the human being is reduced to worker and work to “a most miserable commodity” (1992:238). Such a being is alienated from himself, his world and humanity. In such a situation, work does not express the human being’s free and conscious creativity but is done for the sake of a wage for sustaining life, like other animals. As such, work is alien to the worker. As a result of this corrupted human relationship with nature, human relationships become corrupted as well. In this respect Arendt and Marx are close to each other. To my mind, we do better if we focus on the quality and conditions of work rather than work in the abstract. As Fromm maintains, for Marx, “alienation (or “estrangement”) means, that man does not experience himself as the

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acting agent in his grasp of the world, but that the world (nature, others, and he himself) remain alien to him” (Fromm 1966:44). Taking this rift between the human being, his world, himself and the others as demarking line, we can talk of non-alienated human beings as active and creative participants in all spheres of life (in community building and culture creation), where the individuals together create a world of their own. Objects and systems of their own creation do not stand above and against them, as it is now in neoliberal conditions. Such work is done in accordance with contingent practical demands of action in different human conditions and in accordance with an artistic orientation and style of thought that brings people together.15 Regardless of the characteristic of the human being that becomes dominant, whatever becomes actualised is just one alternative among many, instead of being the only one actualised with logical necessity; like the world itself, the human being can manifest in endless many ways. As was mentioned earlier, this style of life and being in the world is a life in freedom and truth and in perpetual giving and taking with the others; human beings are at one with their labour, work and action and world – not as objects of contemplation but as manifestations of their own creative deeds and thoughts. The rift between human beings and their world can thus disappear. The human beings love their world, Amor mundi, as Arendt would say. This love is belonging as well as sensitivity and responsiveness of homo polytropos to conditions of life; all forms of life on the earth with their shifting character. It is to turn away from ownership toward care and sharing.These also are features of homo nomadicus as a main feature of the notion of humanity I am defending here. Nomadism is transgressive. However, as opposed to imperial orientation, the nomadic orientation toward the world, the self and the other is not based on imposing one’s own values on all others. One excels by being unique, generous and in solidarity and love with his world and his way of life – being a gift giver and gift receiver. It is not about boundaries and territorial domination. As we saw, a legacy of colonialism, the division of the surface of the globe in nation states, is an obstacle in the way of universal human rights, freedom, global equality and solidarity. Homo nomadicus is a wanderer in thoughts, actions and feelings, beyond national territories and skin colour and in line with the translational notion of universality and transgressive notion of critique I am defending here. Homo polytropos signifies an active attitude, rather than ascetism or neutral observation of the world. Such a view of humanity is not only enabling but also moves away from alienation of the individuals from their work, action and themselves. An education inspired by this understanding of humanity lets human creativity thrive instead of imposing abstract principles. Here, creativity means creating oneself, one’s world and one’s work and being at one with them – to meaningfully contribute to the common world one dwells in. Such a view of humanity can function as the basis for a new educational paradigm where reflection (critique), creativity and systematicity interact, corresponding to philosophy, art and science. My aim is not to account for all aspects of the

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human type I suggest; it is neither needed nor possible since the human being is an open-ended process, a potentiality that can be actualised in endless ways without being reducible to just one aspect of herself.16 Kant inaugurated a fierce struggle over the meaning, position, possibilities and limits of the human being that is not over. His system of thought was the intellectual framework through which humanity was classify into those capable and those incapable of cognition, morality and aesthetics. For Kant, scientific education was the exclusive path toward his ideal of humanity; the human being and science were interconnected ideas to be implemented and ideals to be reached. Rather, concerning humanity, these ideas and ideals were a matter of white male Europeans. To counteract these ideas, we need a new notion of the human being which embraces human complexity and all humanity on an equal basis. For this to happen, we need to reinterpret notions of the human being, science and education; rearrange them; resist their oppressive effects; and set ourselves free.

Conclusion I started this book by commencing a dialogue with Kant – a dialogue that started with some basic questions concerning the constitutive background of education, its contents, its ruling principles, the impact of this content on daily educational thoughts and practices and the way we can bring light to it and release education from its oppressive effects. It was an attempt to analyse and understand central educational problems in terms of their genesis. Using archaeology, genealogy and problematisation as tools, I established that the constitutive background of current education contains racist, colonial and sexist biases at work beyond educators’ awareness.This hiddenness, it was established, depends on their embeddedness in the scientific orientation toward and grounding of education. I traced the emergence of this orientation and grounding in the works of Kant, as the major philosopher of modernity, and suggested him as the grounding father of scientific racism, scientific colonialism and scientific education. Accordingly, I devoted much effort to Kant’s view of the human being’s faculties and limits as well as the way the human being can be educated from a natural being into an intelligible being. While these claims might seem harmless, I made two main observations as regard to Kant’s view of education that make it problematic. One is science’s constitutive role as regard to the human being. In Kant, education is constitutive of the human being and science is constitutive of proper education. The other and related point is scientific classification of the world’s population into categories of educable – those who can become mature enough to think for themselves and organise their polity rationally – and uneducable – those who are incapable of doing so. Using his scientific outlook, Kant sees this incapability as given by nature itself. Thus, some people were not capable of doing science or rational activities due to their natural predispositions. As this classification was established along racial

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and colonial lines, racism and colonial mindsets became part of education as a science or a systematic whole. As time went by, Kantianism became part of the tacit intellectual infrastructure in the West so much so that its racial and colonial dimensions are not considered as problematic but as natural. I called this the problem of scientific education to bring attention to a problem that makes racists of well-intended educators. Scientific education is an analytical tool to study education along the axis of surface–substratum. I established this axis of investigation because of the multilayered nature of culture, education and language. This field of study is where we can find the answer to the question: How can well-intended people act contrary to their intention? To investigate the possibilities of such an answer, I focused on the lingering effects of centuries of racist, colonial, Eurocentric and sexist domination that have divided humanity into oppressed and oppressors. Once explicit and on the surface, these phenomena have now submerged into the substratum and become subterranean – taken for granted as part of a global structure of subordination. As the major philosopher of the Enlightenment, Kant was successful in giving ignorance an appearance of science and enlightenment and making racial and colonial classification of humanity appear natural. He was clear in his division of humanity into educable whites and uneducable non-whites on the one hand and using this structure for legitimating racism and colonialism on the other. The directness of Kant’s language has now disappeared as his dividing lines have become covered by an emancipatory narrative – a narrative that aims at a white emancipation for the instrumental use of non-whites in the service of such an imagined emancipation. As racial and colonial ideas have withdrawn from surface to substratum and become invisible through time, I used the archaeology of Kant’s systems of thought, the genealogies of his ideas and the problematisation of education today to make us attentive to unwanted effects of the hidden background of education.This simple intention, however, took many turns and twists as it was revealed to be much more complicated than it was seen at first sight. This complexity depends partly on Kant’s philosophical authority as the philosopher of the Enlightenment and the systematicity of his thought. I chose Kant as the inaugurator of scientific education since he stood at “a historical threshold” where tradition and modernity met, became entangled and built up a new “complex configuration” within his critical philosophy and made understanding him key to understanding our time’s educational problems. The general intellectual framework that was established in the wake of Kant’s Copernican revolution and questions that he asked within this framework brought to the surface some issues whose understanding helps us resolve the paradoxes of our time. Apparently, Kant used education and morality in the service of constitutionalism and cosmopolitanism. However, he was the whitewashing spokesman of the German bourgeoisie, as Marx (1970:99) saw him, although Kant spoke for the Western bourgeoisie, through which we can understand his constitutionalism and cosmopolitanism. Kant not only

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contributed to the imperial expansion of white bourgeois male Europeans but also contributed vastly to the scientific grounding of their worldview since he himself was one of them and saw the world from their perspective and could not see otherwise; his philosophy was a self-biography, as Nietzsche would say. One paradox in Kant is that he establishes the universal principle of all individuals being treated as ends in themselves and never as the means to someone else’s ends, on the one hand. On the other hand, he arbitrarily refused to treat some individuals as ends in themselves as such and exiled them to the realm of homo phenomenon due to their skin colour. He designed the notion of humanity in such a way that the white bourgeoise male Europeans became the normative notion of human rational personhood, with the right to establish economic and military might. Progress and modernity were constructed as a justification of the domination of the West as the legislator of the world. These discrepancies in power relations still have educational significance and place the colonial way of life, colonial languages and knowledge perspective above and against the diversity of human conditions. Throughout of this book, my concern has been to construct counternarratives and a counter-education, to rethink and delink whiteness from privileges and to establish a new foundation for education, democracy, morality and their relations. I introduced the notion of homo polytropos to view non-whites’ experiences as part of a new global intellectual alliance, where Western selfcriticism is united with criticisms from the perspectives of oppressed people. This alliance is needed since oppressors are not going to accept voluntarily a counter-education that will end their hegemony, privileges and domination. It should be the outcome of educational struggles on a broad front and resistance against protected processes of subjugation in neoliberal societies. These struggles counteract current white and colonial hegemony and ignorance in education and lead to education as paideia as a tool to overcome racism and neo-colonialism. Education becomes then truly enlightening, a means for the oppressed to emerge from their position as oppressed and regain the self-confidence to stand up for themselves, inscribe themselves in history in their own terms and challenge colonial differences by delinking from the logics of colonialism, racism and sexism. Rather than being motivated by revenge or reacting to what oppressors do, the oppressed distance themselves from oppression by refusing to be oppressed. They distance themselves from oppression instead of aspiring to take over the position of oppressors. Such a struggle also liberates oppressors, as the aim is a human type beyond the divides of the oppressed and the oppressors. What is negated is oppression. This style of action is free from vengeance and from what Nietzsche calls resentment. As a result of taking part in struggles and resistance, the oppressed become political agents of transformation and redistribution of power and authority. In such a state of mind, the constitutive background and the constituted foreground of education converge toward truth, justice and freedom and let the uniqueness of any human being become manifest in her action and speech. Correspondingly, objectivity

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and truth are interpreted as the diversity of perspectives in which we consider things and truth as acting out of one’s own creative capacities and being one with one’s deeds and knowledge. As the outcome of such struggles, we will be able to establish a polydimensional mode of being in the world, to make space for diversity of narratives and ways of life and interpret this way of life as one in truth and freedom. My conversation with Kant is not over yet. I entered this conversation without predetermined results in sight. However, this conversation resulted in insights into colonial, racial and sexist imperatives of the Kantian world, insights that led me to the conclusion that I do not want to be included in the Kantian world since such a will means subjugation to these imperatives. My hopes rather go beyond the logic of inclusion and exclusion by triggering a disruptive process through which all participants can transform – a transformation that brings about freedom.

Notes 1 I am aware of education being part of a larger totality; it operates within a larger constitutive context. The aim here, however, is to counteract hegemony or reproduction of domination through consent, where education and its hidden background play the major part. 2 As Wittgenstein makes clear, borders are not natural; they are drawn. He asks, “Can you give a boundary?” and answers no since he believes “You can draw” them (2009:33). Borders are immanent in discourses and ways of life, rather than being given by nature. 3 For Hayek, “There is no other way toward an understanding of social phenomena but through our understanding of individual actions directed toward other people and guided by their expected behavior” (1948:6). 4 Imagination is the spontaneous independent mental power which is enlivened and set free by aesthetic ideas; it combines things anew. It recombines sense data into new forms and new associations. 5 At first, experience of sublime gives a sense of displeasure and disharmony. Displeasure turns into pleasure when the human being realises that reason or cognitions is superior over sensation or imagination – we are supra-sensible creatures tied to reason rather tied to the earth. Reason as a faculty within us is greater than nature and surpasses the majesty and might of nature. We not only are rational beings, but we also are spiritual, endowed with the ability to endure and, surpass pain, more than animals, beyond nature; we have purpose, something great in us, purpose that separates us from nature. 6 “Connection of appearances . . . according to necessary laws” (CPR A216/B263). 7 It is a notion of art common to nature (BT 2) and humanity – artistic drives in nature and the human being; concerning the latter it is about people becoming “strong enough, hard enough, artistic enough” (BGE 59). 8 For David Puche Diaze (2017), the Apollonian is in Kantian terms the phenomenal. 9 Richard Rorty (2009:132) sees Kant’s influence as deleterious to philosophy. According to him, in Kant’s hands, philosophy became a scientific discipline, although “the most basic discipline.” 10 Yet the colonial aspect of epistemic superiority of the West did not concern Kuhn since he could not create a genealogical-critical distance to scientific progress. 11 Ludwik Fleck (1979) is also a pioneer in arguing for the diversity of scientific traditions in European cultures.

Delinking from the Kantian paradigm 189 12 In accordance with aesthetic rules, as Marx would say. 13 This is in line with Arendt’s view of political participation as the main feature of humanity; Nietzsche and Arendt emphasise the weight of promising. Nietzsche writes, “The real problem regarding man is to breed an animal with the right to make promises” (GM II,2), and Arendt quotes him approvingly and sees promising as constitutive of the acting subject. For Arendt, it distinguishes the human subject’s humanity as opposed to animality. 14 “A being which treats the species as its own essential being or itself as a species-being” (Marx 1992:329). 15 It is important to mention that, according to Marx, the human being has some natural needs like hunger satisfaction that can take different shapes; this is culturally conditioned as different cultures and social system organise differently for their satisfaction. 16 Arendt distinguishes three modes of the human being; animal laborans labours to survive, like all animals, and is constrained by the needs of the body. To become free, animal laborans needs to move beyond slave labour to creative work. Homo faber is a step above animal laborans and is distinguished from the purely animal since she makes instruments (knows how to use tools to control the environment, has know-how) that persist and are part of a world of human design and a truly human lifeworld. Zoon politikon is distinguished not by labour or work but by acting in the public sphere based on and for freedom. Following Aristotle, for Arendt, zoon politikon, the purpose of truly human action, must be the freedom to act as a human in the public realm. We can say that it is in Zoon politikon that the human being is one with itself or non-alienated. To my mind this view of the division of human activities retains a kind of progressivism or developmentalism, where the aim of development is given in advance and every stage is higher than its anteriority. While I do not deny that there are such characteristics in the human being and the fact that the human being due to circumstance can be reduced to one or the other, I suggest that these characteristics can exist simultaneously in the same individual and in the same society; at one level they are necessary. It is not about denying them but about balancing and not reducing the human being to any one of them since none of them manifests in pure form, but together with others, thereof my emphasis on homo polytropos.

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Index

acting being, human being as 52 – 56 action, political 183 active nihilism 165 Adorno, Theodor 31, 130, 169 aesthetic judgements 58 – 59, 61; and Kant 3, 46, 170, 174 Africa 26, 105, 110, 113 aggregate of educational actions 96 – 97 Allen, Amy 153, 157 Altieri, Charles 176 Amor mundi 184 animality 17 animal laborans 189n16 anthropology 47, 77n3; racism and 113, as discipline 47 Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View 48, 87, 127 apodictic certainty 67 – 68 Apollo, 177 – 178 Apollonian, as the surface, and Dionysian 177 – 178 apparatus: of education 25, 87 – 91, 135; and modern education 19, 23, 27, 103 a priori ideas 96 a priori knowledge 32, 126 a priori principles 50, 61, 83, 93, 96, 120, 168 archaeology: as method 5, 12, 185 – 186; of modern education 8; Foucault and 27; of science 29; of systems of thought 21 – 22animality 17, 32, 35 61, 66, 82, 83 152; of the other 107 – 108 Arendt, Hannah 112 – 113, 114, 183, 189n13, 189n16 art, of education 39, 47, 64, 68, 74, 86, 175, 180 art-science of education 175 – 181 Athusser, Louis 127 – 128 autonomy of human beings 47, 94

Becker, Gary 130, 132 Benjamin, Walter 152 – 153 Bernasconi, Robert 112 Beyond Good and Evil 119, 141, 147, 178 Bildung, and education 49, 62, 89 Black Rights/White Wrongs the Critique of Racial Liberation 156 Bourdieu, Pierre 139n23 Bowie, Andrew 92 Braudel, Fernand 136 Braver, Lee 34 Brown, Wendy 127, 131, 134 Butler, Judith 138 capacity of reason 89 – 90 capitalism and markets 125 – 128, 131, 136 – 137, 139n26, 162 – 163n5 causality 27 – 28, 53 – 56, 144; compatible with freedom 53 – 54; freedom and 5, 27, 52 – 54; in morality 55; in nature 8, 48, 53, 176 Chakrabarty, Depish 159 – 161 character of human beings 48 – 49; education and 39, 50, 72, 74 – 75, 110; society/polity and 48, 87 civil constitution 38, 77, 86, 105, 118; society 81 cognition 150 – 151, 174; flow of 66 – 68, 78n16; scientific organisation of 64, 66, 95, 128; specific kinds of 88 cognitivism 125, 170 – 171 colonial contract, the 105 colonial differences 40, 103, 105 – 106, 122, 133 – 134, 167, 187 colonialism 139n21; in Kantian paradigm 122 – 123; persistence of 133; scientific 104 – 110 (see also racism); transcendental perspective and 122

198 Index coloniality: of power 106, 133 – 134, 136 – 137, 140, 154, 160; colonialism and 133 common, the 30, 89, 166; education and 184 community of thought 143, 157, 182 competition as main feature of homo economicus 131, 172, 181 constitutionalism 91 – 94, 186 Copernican revolution in philosophy 3, 33 – 35, 49 – 51, 62, 74, 77n10, 93, 125, 142, 146, 163n7 cosmopolitanism 85 – 87, 107, 112, 139n23, 186 critical race studies 155 – 157 Critique of Practical Reason 11n8 Critique of Pure Reason 3, 5, 11n8, 13, 18, 33, 50, 66, 142 Critique of the Power of Judgment 11n8, 57 critique: Foucault and 32; Kant and 18, 51; practical notion of 180; transcendental notion of 10; transgressive notion of 171 – 172, 179, 181, 184 Dasgupta, Shamic 21 decolonial project 140, 157 – 158 delinking from Kantian paradigm 165 – 167; from authoritarian to dialogic notion of criticism 167 – 169; cognitivism to diversity of daily practices 170 – 171; homo economicus to homo polytropos 181 – 185; imperial universalism to translational universalism 173 – 175; metaphysical to ontological notions of freedom and 171 – 173; science of education to art– science of education 175 – 181; see also polyphonic strategy of resistance Descartes, Rene 42n3, 48, 91 dialogic notion of criticism 167 – 169 Diaz, David Puche 61 Dionysian forces 177 – 178 dispositif 22; of education 23 diversity, human 100 – 101, 170 – 171; freedom and 101 Doctrine of Discovery 158 dogmatism 32 – 33, 42n1, 120, 172 doxastic environment 144 Dussel, Enrique 103 – 104, 114, 158 duty, rules of 62, 91, 94 educability 82 – 84, 89 – 91; scientific colonialism and 104 – 110 education: art–science of 175 – 181; constitutionalism and 91 – 94, 186; as

constitutive of the human being 95 – 96, 102, 110, 124; cosmopolitanism and 85 – 87, 186; discipline and 107 – 108; Eurocentric 107 – 108; good 67 – 73; human progress through 81 – 82, 101 – 102; modern notion of 15, 63, 109, 153, as a priori principle 82, 107; question of grounding and 73 – 77; racism and (see racism); rational apparatus of 87 – 91; rational orientation of 68, 76, 95; secure path of science and 3, 5, 15 – 16, 22, 36 – 37, 85 – 86, 90, 96, 101; universality of 39; see also science education; scientific education emancipatory education 2 emancipatory liberalism 156 entrepreneur of the self 130 – 131 ethics, axis of 136 ethos of modernity 93 – 94, 114, 129, 186 Eurocentrism 25 – 26, 29, 107 – 109, 114, 159, 180 – 181; in Kantian paradigm 122 – 123; persistence of 133 European Enlightenment, the 2, 19, 28, 32 – 33, 89, 100, 119, 159, 180 – 181, 186 evil: education and 104 – 105; in the human being 37, 71, 75, 86, 90, 108, 121, 141, 148, 177 – 178; nature and 80 – 81, 91, 97, 111 feeling being, human being as 56 – 63 feminism and Kant 154, 160 Fleck, Ludwik 5, 41, 138n7, 151 – 152, 168 formative power, as educational principle 72, 83 Foucault, Michel 22 – 23, 27, 29, 32, 48, 93, 114, 120, 129, 146; on freeing history from transcendental narcissism 121 – 122; on homo economicus 130; on liberalism 124 – 125; on neoliberal shift 131; notion of governmentality of 134; on polemic of contemporary philosophy 149 – 150; on transcendental and empirical notions of the subject 146; transformation to dialogic notion of criticism and 167 – 169 Frankfurt School 153 free conformity to law of imagination 58 freedom and free will 27, 53 – 55, 77n9, 100; diversity and 101; from metaphysical to ontological notions of 171 – 173; morality of 176 – 177; will to power and 119 – 120

Index 199 genealogy, as critique 29 genealogy of scientific education 29 – 30, 115 Geography 87 gestell 22, 23 – 24 Global South/Global North relations 134 – 136, 143 Goldman, Lucien 118 good education 68 – 73 goodness 35, 75, 90, 178 governance 38 – 39, 56, 7677, 82, 87, 109, 134, 168 governmentality 124, 129, 134, 136 Gramsci, Antonio 139n23 ground: of education 4 – 7; meaning of 3 Guess, Raymond 43n19 Habermas, Jurgen 179 happiness: education and 17, 69 – 70, 73; general 75: individual 70, 73, 127 Harding, Sandra 180 Harvey, David 112 Hayek, Friedrich 125 – 127, 139n26 Hegel, George W. F. 148 hegemony of the West 19, 32, 109 Heidegger, Martin 3 – 4, 21, 22 history: of education 3, 18, 27, 123; prophetic notion of 38; teleological notion of 76, 132, 137 holistic system, scientific education as 38 homo criticus 36, 128 – 129, 130 homo economicus 125, 127 – 132, 148, 172; competition and 131, 172, 181; education and 127 – 128, 132; as entrepreneur of the self 130 – 131; investment in self-interest and 128, 130, 132; rational calculation and 177, 181; transition to homo polytropos from 181 – 185 homo faber 182 – 183, 189n16 homo noumenon 17, 62, 121, 172 homo phenomenon 17, 62, 121, 172 homo politicus 138n16 homo polytropos 181 – 185 human being, the 39 – 40, 45 – 46; as acting being 52 – 56; autonomy of 47, 94; character of 48 – 49; construction of the constitutive subject and 91 – 94; diversity of (see diversity, human); educability of 82 – 84, 89 – 91; as feeling being 56 – 63; freedom of 27, 53 – 55, 100; good education and 68 – 73; knowledge of the world and 46; natural predispositions of 116n3; need for education of 47 – 48; as

object of knowledge 56; perfection of 17, 35, 38, 69, 72, 86, 108; philosophical definition of 46 – 47; scientific construction of 94 – 97; self–incurred immaturity in 15, 51 – 52, 64; totalising idea of 99; universality and 39, 100 – 101; see also racism human capital 132 humanity: diversity of 99 – 115; happiness of 17, 70 – 73, 127, 130, 132, 135, 159; progress of 80 – 97; as a system 4, 15 – 16, 32, 35, 38 humanism, European 43n23, 159 human progress: racism and 113; through education 81 – 82, 101 – 102 Hume, David 18, 27, 111 ideas: abstract 14, 38, 95, 107, 159, 173; constitutive 93; of reason 180; regulative 51 imagination, the role of 58, 60, 161, 173 imperial universalism 173 – 175 improper versus proper science 64 – 68 inclinations: education and 95, 130; natural 9, 32, 49, 69, 73, 76, 142; role of 62, 101, 104 – 105 judgment 58 – 61; as a faculty 8, 175 mediating role of 59, 110; reflective/ aesthetic 17, 46, 58, 61 – 62, 77, 92, 110, 114, 174; of taste 8, 58 – 61; teleological 58 Kant, Immanuel: on construction of the constitutive subject 91 – 94; Copernican revolution in philosophy and 3, 33 – 34, 35, 49 – 51, 62, 74, 77n10, 93, 125, 142, 146, 163n7; on education (see education); educational principle of universality of 39; as epochal thinker 16, 32; on free will and causality 27 – 28, 53 – 56; as generative context of scientific education 31 – 41; on good education 68 – 73; on homo criticus 32; on human beings (see human beings); on human progress through education 81 – 82; influence on modern culture of 34 – 35; interpretive strategy for reading 12 – 18; long shadow of 34; as major thinker of the Enlightenment 2 – 3, 4 – 5, 32 – 33, 119, 186; major works of 11n8; naturalised educational ideas of 35; notion of science of 63 – 68; philanthropinismus movement and 43n22;

200 Index Plato and 32, 35; on proper versus improper science 66 – 68; on reason 18; scientific colonialism and 104 – 110; as scientific education’s founding father 24 – 25, 28, 31, 77n11; scientific racism and 110 – 115, 116n8; on secure path of science 22, 36, 37 – 38, 86, 96; on self–incurred immaturity 15, 51 – 52; spreading of misinformation by 118 – 119; on standard of comparison 44n28; on systematicity 36 – 37, 42n9, 65 – 66, 76 – 77, 81 – 82, 84 – 85; as threshold of modernity 33; transcendental principles and 3, 16 – 17, 46, 48, 82 – 83, 93, 102, 121 – 122, 149 – 150; on universality 39, 100 – 101; as whitewashing spokesman of the German bourgeoisie 113, 186 Kantian paradigm/Kantianism 4 – 5, 22, 33; colonialism, racism and white supremacy in 122 – 123; construction of homo economicus and 127 – 132; criticism of, from external perspective 154 – 162; delinking from (see delinking from Kantian paradigm); division of humanity in 42n8; freeing history from transcendental narcissism and 121 – 122; global spread of neoliberalism and scientific education and 132 – 138; judged by Kant’s own standards 120 – 121; market functioning and 125 – 126; moving beyond (see polyphonic strategy of resistance); neoliberalism and 126 – 127; Nietzsche and 119 – 120; problematisation of 118, 123 – 138 knowledge: of the other 115; power and 114, 124; of the self 17 – 18, 65; of the world 46, 53 Koopman, Colin 154 Kuehn, Manfred 34 – 35 Kuhn, Thomas S. 152, 154, 180 law: of duty 62, 91, 94, 104; of morality 51, 55; and lawfulness of nature 57, 61; laws of reason 32, 49, 76, 80, 104 Lectures on Pedagogy 33, 84 liberalism 124 – 125, 128, 133 – 134; emancipatory 156 Longino, Helen 180 Louden, Robert 106 Marcuse, Herbert 171 market, the: as criteria of truth 9; society and 125 – 126, 131 Marx, Karl 183

Marxism 136, 183, 186 maxim: of free will 52, 73, 75, 101, 111; as policy of action 37, 105; of pure reason 51, 70, 126, 131 Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science 64, 78n25 metaphysics 36, 47, 48, 55, 147, 163n12; from metaphysical to ontological notions of freedom and 171 – 173 Metaphysics of Morals 120 – 121 Mills, Charles 105 – 106, 122, 128, 133, 136, 140, 155 – 156, 170 modernity 123, 127, 144, 158 – 160, 185; education and 125; as ethos 93 – 94, 114, 129, 186; science and 136, morality 47, 59, 78n17, 78n21, 97, 120 – 121; of free will 176 – 177; human obligation and 52 – 53 nature and reason 80, 97 – 98n8, 97n6; construction of 3, 8; education and 97; as object of human knowledge 3, 14, 91, 94; transformation of 39, 61 – 62, 84; within the human being 27, 39, 106, 182 Nazism 114 neoliberalism 28 – 29, 106, 124 – 125, 126 – 127, 131; global spread of 132 – 138 Newtonian science 34, 41, 55 Nietzsche, Friedrich 105, 119, 141, 152, 154, 162 – 163n5, 187, 189n13; delinking from Kantian paradigm and 173 – 179; on global influence of Western thought 147 – 150; on notion of creativity and invention 176; on synthetic a priori judgments 8, 53 nihilism 176; active 165; negative 165 nomad/nomadism 18, 183 – 184 Occidentalism 114 “On Perception in Itself ” 153 Order of Things,The 146 Orientialism 103 – 104, 114 Origin of Totalitarianism 112 – 113 overman: concept of 146, 154; education and 148 – 149 participation 100, 136, 142, 146, 166, 169, 174 – 175, 183; in the common 175; in cognition 170 – 171 Persky, Joseph 128 philanthropinismus movement 43n22 philosophy: coming 147 – 148; history of 43n19, 114; as perspective 2 – 4; reflections in 19 – 20

Index 201 philosophers, coming of future 147 – 148 Pippin, Robert B. 33 Plato 32, 35, 78n13 pleasure, feeling of 60 polity 8, 15, 37, 62, 76 – 77, 87, 95, 104 – 105, 107, 110, 183, 185; racially hierarchical 67, 85, 102, 159 polydimensional notion of humanity 182 polyphonic strategy of resistance 140 – 143; critical race studies in 155 – 157; criticism from external perspective and 154 – 162; decolonial strategy in 157 – 158; demands on white Western thinkers and 143 – 145; provincialising of Europe in 158 – 162; Western self– criticism in 146 – 154; see also delinking from Kantian paradigm populism 134 power relations 119 – 120, 187; axis of 136; colonial pattern of 133; knowledge and 23, 71, 150; subjectivity and 128 – 129, 139n22 practical reason 51, 69, 83, 86, 111 pragmatic point of view 46, 48 progress through education 81 – 82, 101 – 102 proper versus improper science 64 – 68 provincialising of Europe 158 – 162 purposiveness of nature: as a priori principle 45 – 46, 57 – 60, 85 – 86, 92, 125; education and 36, 73, 82 – 83, 126 pure reason: ideas of 18, 72, 88, 167 – 168; rules of 36, 66; as lawgiving 37, 107 Putnam, Hilary 33 Quijano, Anibal 40, 103 – 104, 106, 114, 134 Quine, Willard van Orman 150 – 151, 152, 154 Racial Contract,The 144, 155 racism 25 – 26, 27, 29, 40 – 41, 102, 106, 170; anti-migration 134; critical race studies and 155 – 157; as ideology 112 – 113; imperialism and 114; in Kantian paradigm 122 – 123; scientific 110 – 115, 155 – 157; spreading of misinformation by Kant and 118 – 119; see also polyphonic strategy of resistance Rancière, Jacque 174 rational apparatus of education 87 – 91 rationalism/rationalisation process 42n1, 64, 66, 96, 120, 126, 130

rationality: history and 29, 157, 159; market 9, 130, 135, 179; polity and 85, 95, 102, 104 – 105, 185 rational choice theory 25, 129 race thinking 114 – 115 reason 18, 78n15, 94, 97n3; cognition and 66 – 68; cultivation of 69; Descartes on 91; ends of 69, 80, 115; general problem of pure 53; human capacity of 89 – 90; ideas of 35, 76, 95, 97, 108, 142, 145, 180; law giving 32, 49, 76, 80, 104; nature and 80; neoliberal 131; striving independently of all experience 51; universal laws of 80; use of 54 – 55 reflective judgments 58 – 59 regulative principles 3, 10n3 religion 47 revolutions: educational 14, 68, 152; philosophical 3, 33 – 35, 49 – 51, 62, 74, 77n10, 93, 125, 142, 146, 163n7; scientific 16, 28, 33, 75; within the human being 51 Rousseau, Jean–Jacques 81, 101 Said, Edward 103 – 104, 114, 153, 161, 180 Sartre, Jean–Paul 121 savage, nations, other 107 – 108 savagery 71, 108 – 109, 121 schema 65 science, comprehensiveness of 8, 36, 76, 84 123, Kantian notion of 63 – 68, 88 – 89; method and 16, 63, 152, 179; normal 151; revolutionary 151; as style of thought 151 – 152; systematicity of 77, 115 science education 1, 6 – 7, 19; reasons for distinction between scientific education and 26 – 31; see also education scientific colonialism 104 – 110 scientific construction of human beings 94 – 97 scientific education: aggregate of actions in 96 – 97; as analytical tool 24, 130, 136, 186; apparatus of 22 – 24; biases in 21; citizenship and 20; conclusions on Kant and 185 – 188; Copernican revolution and 3, 33 – 34, 35, 49 – 51; as emancipatory education 2; Eurocentric education and 25 – 26; genealogy of 29 – 30, 115; gestell and 22, 23 – 24; global spread of 132 – 138; good 68 – 73; grounding and 73 – 77; as hidden background of education 21 – 22; as historical a priori of contemporary education 24; as

202 Index holistic system 38; humanism in 43n23; introduction to 1 – 10; Kant as generative context of 31 – 41; neoliberalism and 28 – 29; notion of 18 – 20; as orientation toward education and humanity 22 – 23; principle of universality in 39; problematisation of 123 – 138; as rational orientation toward human beings 76; reasons for distinction between science education and 26 – 31; riverbed metaphor for 20 – 21; science education versus 1, 6 – 7, 19, 26 – 31; secure path of science and 22, 36, 37 – 38, 86, 96; systematicity of 36 – 37, 42n9, 65 – 66, 76 – 77; as tacit infrastructure of education 25; see also education scientific racism 110 – 115, 155 – 157 secure path of science 22, 36, 37 – 38, 86, 96 self-criticism, Western 146 – 154, 157, 163n13 self-incurred immaturity 15, 51 – 52, 64 self-knowledge 18, 65 sexism 137 – 138, 186 Shakespeare, William 141 Simmons, A. John 106 slavery 113, 159 Smith, Adam 131 Socrates 18 Solomon, Robert C. 33, 102 space, as the pure form of intuition 51 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty 170 – 171 standard of comparison 44n28 style of thought 19, 64 – 66, 76, 111 – 112, 124, 132 – 133, 140, 169, 178 – 179, 184; Foucauldian 129; Kant’s 5 – 6, 13 – 17, 32, 38 – 41, 50, 127, 147 – 148, 151; Orientalism 103; Western 143 – 144, 155 subject: action and 174 – 175; cognition and 177; empirical 31, 92, 99, 121, 154, 168, 171; self-conscious global 174; transcendental 3, 8, 34, 49, 86, 92 – 94, 102, 115, 121 – 122, 125, 131, 142, 149 – 150,152, 154, 157, 168, 171, 173 subjectification 136, 173, 175 subjectivation 25, 30, 71, 73, 87, 136, 168, 173, 180 subjectivity/subjectivation 92, 97n4, 128 – 129, 139n22, 180 – 181

synthetic a priori judgements, and Kant, and Nietzsche 8, 53 systematicity 36 – 37, 42n9, 43 – 44n26, 65 – 66, 76 – 77, 81 – 82, 84 – 85; of education 130, 186; of the market 125; of science 77, 115, 186; of society 127 tacit infrastructure of education 25 teleology 80, 81 time, as the pure form of intuition 51 Toward Perpetual Peace 86 transcendental philosophy 3, 16 – 17, 46, 48, 82 – 83, 93, 102, 121 – 122, 149 – 150 transcendental pretense 102 – 103 translational universalism 173 – 175 transmodernity 158, 159 truth 9, 20; axis of 156; beauty and 58, formal 71, 177; freedom and 184; genealogical 179;, understanding: concept of 82 – 83; as a faculty 8; as law giver in realm of nature 8, 53, 56, 156, 175; role of 16, 20, 65, 151 uneducables and the uneducable other 9, 28, 40, 62, 83, 90, 104 – 110, 114, 153; as basis for inferior treatment of others 135 – 136; scientific colonialism and 181, 185 – 186 universalism, from imperial to translational 173 – 175 universality, principle of 39, 100 – 101, 142; as uniformity 136, 148, 173 Wallerstein, Immanuel 136 “What is Orientation in Thinking?” 92 – 93 white supremacy 118, 122, 155 white privilege 144, 155, 159, 170, 187 white ignorance 115, 118, 120, 122, 143144, 160, 162, 168, 171, 174 whiteness 106, 187 will to power 119 – 120; to domination, free 105 – 106 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 20 world system theory 93, 104, 118, 122, 136, 138, 141, 146 Zarathustra 148