I set the tutoring I offer across a range of disciplines spanning the humanities and social sciences within a broader concern with “Being and Place”, a radical, creative self-education that develops a living philosophy. I am looking to go beyond the academic and instrumental approach to knowledge to develop the skills, approaches and qualities we are going to need in order to meet the social, moral and ecological challenges we face. I like the word ‘collaborate’, from the Latin, meaning ‘to work together’. We need to learn how to work together, live together, learn together, get to the root of the matter, think, be critical, see life and its living as a collective endeavour. I want people to think through the theory, not just acquire knowledge but apply it, and put the ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions together in a critical, creative, cultural praxis. I seek not just to deliver ‘chunks of knowledge’ in order to get the grades and the certificates, but to transmit the inspiration, the enthusiasm, the sheer intellectual curiosity that drove those who created our immense body of learning. And I seek individuals who are concerned to bring this learning into their lives, networks, and practices so as to develop a rich, engaged, experience. There’s no knowing what this approach could achieve in time, there is no way of measuring its success. It is a qualitative growth outwards into the world, not a table of quantifiable results. I do know that the neoliberal marketization of education, reducing learning to quantity, in terms of money, grades and certificates, is the very antithesis of learning as a change in behaviour, dulling innate curiosity and teaching conformity. And I reject it.
I believe that critical thought and practical activity go together when it comes to changing the world we live in for the better. I don’t believe in some blind activism, but develop an engaged philosophy informed by a critical awareness and understanding. With this in mind, I teach a moral and cultural praxis in relation to the world we live in, emphasising that the world is not an objective datum external to human meaning, purpose and activism, but a ceaselessly creative co-creation subject to human intervention, alteration and change. I affirm the power of human collective endeavour, education as an integral part of creating a public life, in opposition to those who would expropriate, privatise, monopolise and instrumentalise education. We need to reclaim our educational commons, educating each other and our society in bringing learning to the heart of the everyday lifeworld.
I am interested in those who wish to see the world other than it is at the moment, a better, more generous, more public-minded world, a world more at ease with itself, those people who are prepared to act on their knowledge and employ their critical faculties in taking the actions necessary to make that ideal vision a reality. Here, in this critical praxis based approach, the power of words fuses with the power of action. At the core of the “Being and Place” programme are the key issues of power, authority, control, freedom, democracy, responsibility, institutional mechanisms and mediation, social relations, social identity, knowledge, embodiment, conviction, character, commitment, community, meaning, agency, purpose, desire, energy, engagement, hope, fear, despair. How to collaborate in pooling our social, moral and cultural resources in envisaging and building the future society. As a critical programme, I see “Being and Place” as a reflexive thinking space for an engaged philosophy of life, bringing together ways of thinking, learning, doing and being in the everyday social life world. Socrates was celebrated for bringing philosophy down to earth, into the common affairs of human beings. It is time to complete that project by coming out of the specialist institutions separated from society and integrating philosophy in society as the ‘university of life’.
In fine, the services offered here can be ‘discipline’ focused, specific concerns within specific subject areas based on specific considerations with respect to formal education. But my long-term ambitions transcend that limited focus and instead develop “Being and Place” as a project, a collaborative project which seeks to address the needs of the human race in the context of social and environmental crisis. More than ever before, we need learning that enables people to engage with real-world issues, equips them with the vision, imagination, intelligence and determination to get involved in world-changing, world-building projects. Good grades and passing exams may well be important. I had those concerns myself. But a record of straight A’s may promise future career success, but will count for nothing if we continue with the social and ecological activities that will deny us any kind of future except a nightmarish one. Utopian? Possibly. The key to realising any desirable state in society is to raise it as an ideal long before its conditions for attainment are apparent. In pursuing that ideal, we create the conditions for its realisation, in our organisational activities and also in our learning and (self)education. This is the ‘vision thing’ that is central to my approach. I do not know whether this visioning will succeed. I do know that, through our failure to envisage a future that is something other than the projection of current ‘objective’ trends and tendencies, we will sacrifice our subjectivity and perish in short order.
http://petercritchley-e-akademeia.yolasite.com/
