EDUCATION: A COMPULSORY RIGHT? A FUNDAMENTAL TENSION WITHIN A FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT

Author(s):  
José-Luis Gaviria
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Karin Nisenbaum

The concluding chapter draws on the story of Rosenzweig’s near conversion to Christianity and return to Judaism to explain why, for Kant and his heirs, what is at issue in reason’s conflict with itself is our ability to affirm both the value of the world and of human action in the world. The chapter explains why Rosenzweig came to view the conflict of reason as the manifestation of a more fundamental tension between one’s selfhood and one’s worldliness, which could only be dissolved by understanding human action in the world as the means by which God is both cognized and partly realized. To make Rosenzweig’s ideas more accessible, the chapter compares them with contemporary interpretations of Kant’s views on the nature of practical knowledge and (intentional) action. It also shows how the book’s take on the issues that shaped the contours of post-Kantian German Idealism can help us see that the conflict of reason can be regarded as the underlying concern that recent competing interpretations of this period share.


2021 ◽  
pp. 187936652199975
Author(s):  
Richard Sakwa

The end of the Cold War was accompanied by the idea that the fall of the Berlin Wall represented the beginning of the unification of Europe. Mikhail Gorbachev talked in terms of a “Common European Home,” an idea that continues in the guise of the project for a “Greater Europe.” However, right from the start, the transformative idea of Greater Europe was countered by the notion of “Europe whole and free,” whose fundamental dynamic was the enlargement of the existing West European order to encompass the rest of the continent. This was a program for the enlargement of the Atlantic system. After some prevarication, the enlargement agenda proved unacceptable to Moscow, and while it continues to argue in favor of transformation its main efforts are now devoted to creating some sort of “greater Eurasia.” There remains a fundamental tension between Atlanticist and pan-continental version of the post-–Cold War international order in the region. This tension gave rise to conflict and war: in 2008 (the Russo-Georgian War) and again from 2014 (Ukraine), and to what some call the Second Cold War. The continent is once again divided. However, pan-continentalism is far from dead, and although Greater Eurasian ideas have thrived, some sort of Greater European continentalism remains on the agenda. Is this, though, no more than a “sad delusion” or a genuine possibility?


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Beth A. Simmons ◽  
Hein E. Goemans

Abstract The Liberal International Order is in crisis. While the symptoms are clear to many, the deep roots of this crisis remain obscured. We propose that the Liberal International Order is in tension with the older Sovereign Territorial Order, which is founded on territoriality and borders to create group identities, the territorial state, and the modern international system. The Liberal International Order, in contrast, privileges universality at the expense of groups and group rights. A recognition of this fundamental tension makes it possible to see that some crises that were thought to be unconnected have a common cause: the neglect of the coordinating power of borders. We sketch out new research agendas to show how this tension manifests itself in a broad range of phenomena of interest.


2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (73) ◽  
pp. 405-416
Author(s):  
ANDRE PAGLIARINI

ABSTRACT This article surveys the ways that the global COVID-19 pandemic has effected higher education in the United States. After reviewing the effects of this critically important historical episode on colleges, particularly as it pertains to the humanities, I outline potential paths forward in the years to come. The fundamental tension I highlight is that between returning to a pre-COVID status quo or imagining an alternative model that is ultimately more sustainable for students and academics alike.


Author(s):  
Zoltan J. Acs

This chapter describes the system of opportunity creation in the United States, which has been a series of inventions and reinventions of the means by which opportunity has been provided. It begins with a historical background on efforts to suppress opportunity—or at least keep a monopoly hold on it—particularly in Britain. It then considers how opportunity has been embedded in American-style capitalism in two fundamental ways. The first is by equipping individuals with the skills they need to participate in capitalism; the second relates to the functioning of innovation and markets, and to the ability of new industries, firms, and jobs to challenge the status quo—namely, creative destruction. It also highlights the fundamental tension between wealth creation and maintaining economic opportunity. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the role played by schools and education reformers in the history of opportunity and opportunity creation in America.


Author(s):  
Hideko Sera ◽  
Andrew F. Wall

Racial justice dialogues in many U.S. higher education spaces have primarily stemmed from a desire to educate the uninformed. Many institutions have failed to attend to their students, faculty, and staff of color while focusing on providing “safe” places for the uninformed. Such efforts seem to have led to an extreme complacency of those who need to change the most to become disillusioned that they have done more than enough to contribute to race dialogues on campus. In the current sociopolitical climate in the United States, the U.S. higher education is facing unprecedented pressure to attend to the fundamental tension between those two worlds. In the Japanese language, ichigo-ichie (一期一会) is a famous saying that embodies the spirit of 'here and now'. Translated as “one time, one meeting,” it symbolizes the critical importance of how one encounter could lead to transformational changes. Contrary to the noble concept of 'trying again' many times before succeeding, ichigo-ichie poses this question: What if all we have is one time, one encounter, and one chance to get it right?


Author(s):  
Roald Hoffmann

There are sound spiritual reasons for the ecological and environmentalist perspective—for minimizing pollution and harm to ourselves, to future generations, to the earth. Are these consistent with the material reality and aspirations of chemistry and chemical industry? One would like to think they are. But what of the realities? I want to take a hard, personal look at this fundamental tension. And also search for what is special about Green or Sustainable Chemistry, facing up to the obstacles confronting the field. And, while reaching for a measure of transformation, a multifaceted Green Index, to come back to a moral perspective on our creative activities. Chemists and chemical engineers are prone to believe that the general public does not recognize the contributions that chemistry has made to our health and our standard of living. And we often cringe at the perception that others blame us (and the great industries that employ us) for fouling our own nest, the infinity of ways we have found of affecting adversely our bodies and the earth by producing on the megaton scale the unnatural. Each of these adverse opinions can be productively discussed—both with the people whose adversarial or anguished arguments chemists react to, and with the chemists’ exaggerated and defensive response to them. The facts remain that the industries that transform matter (to which chemistry is central) have flourished to an extent that is staggering. They’ve played an essential material role in prolonging life, and while not making people any happier, they have provided spiritual value. The value I’m thinking of is not in creating the materials for CDs and books, ancillary tools to spiritual satisfaction, but in providing partial, yet unprecedented knowledge of the world. And the transformative industries are also responsible for an immense quantity of hazardous waste. The scale of their fecund creative enterprise is such that the major cycles of the world are perturbed. More than half the N and S atoms in our bodies have seen the inside of a chemical factory. And C, O, and H atoms too, through agriculture, food preparation, and sewage treatment.


2021 ◽  
pp. 85-182
Author(s):  
Dieter Gosewinkel

The emerging world civil war is the subject of an extensive chapter on the interwar period and the Second World War. This phase was marked by a fundamental tension. On the one hand, there was the systematic codification and substantive expansion of political and social civil rights in the emerging democracies and social welfare states of Europe. Legal inequality between the sexes diminished; a social security net began to spread across all of Europe. On the other hand, these expanding rights were increasingly reserved for a country’s own citizens and thereby nationalized. This restrictive tendency escalated to the extreme with the race and class-based exclusion and extermination policies of the dictatorships in Europe’s “bloodlands” (Timothy Snyder) prior to the Second World War and intensified during its course. Citizenship changed its function and went from being an institution of governmental protection to one of discriminatory selection and extermination policy.


2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (11) ◽  
pp. 700-704 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Camporesi

There is a fundamental tension in many sports: human sex is not binary, but there are only two categories in which people can compete: male and female. Over the past 10 years, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) regulations have been at the centre of two notable legal disputes. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) reached two contradictory rulings: in the first case (Dutee Chand vs Athletics Federation India and IAAF), the IAAF regulations for the eligibility of athletes to compete in the female category were suspended (24 July 2015) on grounds of "discrimination against the female category"; in the latter (Caster Semenya and Athletics South Africa vs IAAF), the regulations were reaffirmed (1 May 2019) on grounds that although discriminatory, they are necessary to maintain a "level playing field" and to “protect” the female category. Although Semenya’s case has paved the way for questioning existing gender norms in sport, a new stable norm has yet to emerge from her case. The pharmacological solution put forward by IAAF to the tension between fairness and inclusivity of bodies non-conforming to two sexes is not, however, the only possible solution/resolution to the case, as I aim to show in this paper. Here I present some reflections on this topic and suggest how CAS should approach the case if it hopes to resolve it.


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