You said “responsibility”?

As Hans Jonas and others have clearly shown, modern humanity holds the future of the planet in its hands. For the first time in history, the threat of degradation of life on Earth comes not only from natural disasters, but from human action and the reactions it causes in turn to natural processes. The coupling of humanity and its environment has never been stronger, to the point that the dualism of nature and culture seems to be fading in favor of hybrid objects: is the hole in the ozone layer natural or “cultural”? The survival of humanity implies a change in the functional norms of Western societies. In other words, we must transform the way we live, produce, consume, circulate, etc. And we must probably also redirect our values more towards being rather than towards having and still much more than that. We must somehow re-educate ourselves and our children accordingly. The School is a stakeholder in this case, as evidenced in recent years by the proliferation of “education for” (the environment, health, etc.) that challenge the traditional dualisms of education and training, knowledge and values, science and ethics or politics. Education for responsibility comes into play here, not as a new “education for”, but rather as a transversal dimension.

This education has two dimensions: first of all, the internal congruence in the subject, or rather the “coherence” to use the author’s lexicon: it refers to a subject who is lucid about themselves, their desires and thoughts, and who acts in accordance with the values faithfully chosen. Second, responsibility implies the choice of certain moral objectives: caring about others, taking care of them and the environment, although there is no consensus in moral psychology research on the spectrum of values implied by this second element (Hagège 2014). In reality, one may wonder whether the idea of coherence is not, in itself, a carrier of these positive values, as some pragmatists, such as John Dewey, believe, or close to this current, such as Jean-Marie Guyau. For this philosophical optimism, evil is first and foremost a disease of the self or the ego.

Metaphysics and the strawberry tartlet

Such ethics requires an epistemological and even metaphysical detour. Hélène Hagège is not afraid of this term that professional philosophers nowadays use with caution, even if she mitigates the intimidating potential of this term by pleasantly proposing this expression of “metaphysics of the strawberry tartlet” (section 1.4.1).

We must change the world or change our world, we said. But what does the world mean? The history of philosophy here offers a whole range of theories of knowledge.

For Kant, who accepts the realistic hypothesis, there is a world independent of the subject, which is the same for all, supports phenomena, but is unknowable. We do not have access to this world in itself (to the noumena), but only to an interpretation of it, to what appears to us: phenomena. Our intellectual equipment structures our experience: we perceive things in time and space and according to the categories of our understanding. Hegel challenges this distinction of phenomena and noumenon by assimilating reality to the collective experience of humanity (the Mind) and the ultimate reality to absolute knowledge, which today tends to be interpreted as the horizon of experience. It is in this perspective that the phenomenological (Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre) or pragmatist (Peirce, Dewey, James) currents are situated. In relation to all these currents, Hélène Hagège claims to have a “gnoseological” hypothesis, which attempts to reconcile the ontological hypothesis (the belief in a more or less knowable outer world) with the phenomenological hypothesis (the world is our representation or experience, whether individual or collective).

However, the author offers a warning. Individual or collective subjects are often tempted to believe that their worldview reaches the ultimate reality while even scientific research is always carried out within a given economic and social cultural context and therefore presents, in this sense, a certain relativity; hence the phenomenological theory that the world is a reflection of the mind. This logically implies that it would be “futile to change the world without seeking to change the mind” and therefore without changing oneself (section 1.2.3). Thus, to say that ecological threats force us to live differently is to say that we must change our relationship with the world, our vision of the world and select new values-in-action. The necessary political, economic and ecological changes will only be made if we are aware of the relativity of our vision of the world and the possible alternatives to this vision.

Illusions of the ego

If the world is mad, it is because we are mad, or almost all of us are. But where does our madness come from? From the ego, this illusion takes itself for reality, this tendency of the self that forces us to seek our own interests before anything else, to the point of confusing its relative reality with the ultimate reality. Let us successfully distinguish the individual, the subject and the ego. The individual is our biological entity, which both links us to a species and makes us unique. The subject is not a fixed entity; it is, according to Gilbert Simondon, a psychobiological and sociocultural process of individuation (Hagège 2014). In short, it is society that provides this primitive “soup” of sensations, emotions and volitions, the unity of a permanent self in time and the ability to say “I”. As for ego, it is a way of being for the subject, an attitude which is lived as separate and absolute: both as a social atom and as the center of the world. By separating from the world, projecting preferences and closing off from others, the ego takes its perspective on the world as the ultimate reality.

But how can we evaluate the gap between the perception of the ego and the ultimate reality? Let us say that the ego is an illusion machine. This produces a number of discrepancies between saying and doing, such as when a smoker or heavy drinker makes moral speeches about the importance of health. Being convinced that it is right, the ego can freeze in its prejudices, even in dogmatism. Escaping the madness means above all becoming aware of the relativity of one’s point of view, striving to be coherent in regards to oneself, engaging in dialogue with others and learning from experience. Education for responsibility is only possible if the ego accepts a dialectic of emancipation and limitation by which self-realization renounces the desire of all power, which implies recognition of the point of view of others and social norms. But Hélène Hagège goes further: some subjects would be able to approach the ultimate reality which, on the one hand, would allow us to measure the gap produced by the crazy perspectives and, on the other hand, recall the Bergsonian or Nietzschean notions of intuition or the Schopenhauerian will, capable of tearing the veil of Maya, of representation, in order to achieve something of becoming or being.

Our hypothesis is confirmed. What Hélène Hagège is looking for are the psychological, or rather ethical, conditions of an education for responsibility. Furthermore, we are of course reminded of Spinoza’s or Dewey’s ethics (Fabre 2015): to eliminate sad passions, those that diminish the power to act, to be in harmony with oneself, to harmonize one’s self, to open oneself to others and to connect with the universe. There is no radical evil, or rather, evil is a disease of the self that must be healed rather than punished. In short, education for responsibility would involve bringing about “awareness that relative reality is not the ultimate reality, to train the mind to perceive this, to function in an increasingly coherent way, to promote empathy and affiliation” (Box 2.2). All this supports the critical and especially self-critical mind.

Changing: yes, but how?

“Change yourself and the world changes with you” (section 1.5). The maxim is Stoic in appearance and seems to refer to voluntarism. Certainly, a researcher who comes from a molecular biology background probably knows how to appreciate what depends on us and what does not (heredity, social determinisms). But as the neurosciences show, this dualist division does not resist analysis for long if we consider the subject as a process of psychobiological individuation. This is in other ways in line with the Sartrean intuition that a human is how they react to situations that condition them without determining them. Humanity is therefore responsible for itself and others as well (especially as educators). The maxim is not Stoic, for another reason that is due to the impotence of the will in the change of self. The classic representation of the voluntary act, as the result of a rational deliberation, has already been challenged by Bergson and pragmatism: free will is probably only an illusion, even if, paradoxically, it is better to believe in free will, because this belief has performative values. In reality, everything seems more or less decided in advance, before consciousness, in an unconscious state, which, in order not to be representative of Freud’s, is no less effective. If this is the case, there is no point in fighting head-on against the trends from which we would like to free ourselves, which would only reinforce them. Rather, we are invited to participate in self-knowledge, to have a non-judgmental awareness of our entire subjective life: “being present to what is, without seeking to fight against” (Hagège 2014, author's translation). Hence the call to meditation in a secular spirituality associated with reflexivity.

“Education for”, between emancipation and indoctrination

The education for responsibility defended here therefore relies on “the values of harmonious coherence”. On several occasions, Hélène Hagège insists on the ethical imperative of giving subjects the freedom to choose their own values. In addition, she mentions the performative effect of explaining to subjects the possibility of choosing the values they can have (otherwise they risk acting unconsciously according to the values of their environment without ever questioning them). Admittedly, she emphasizes the educator’s “committed impartiality”, and the educator must not repress their own values (which would amount to letting them influence it unconsciously), but must endeavor to present them as choices, among others. We understand the educator’s concern – a concern I fully share – not to embrace it. One of the dangers of “educating for” would be to update the ideal of the education plans belonging to Robespierre’s friends: to regenerate a population through education; this is what frightened Condorcet. Hannah Arendt and John Dewey, each in their own way, also denounced the danger of making youth education the lever of a revolution whose goals would have been thought of in advance by the adult generation. On the contrary, the authentic meaning of education is undoubtedly to equip young people intellectually, emotionally and morally so that they are able to change the world according to their own objectives.

However, it must be recognized that “education for” puts the educator, and especially the teacher, in an uncomfortable position and makes them subject to all kinds of excess. Indeed, teachers must encourage their students to become more reflective and critical of the madness existing in our world (in terms of development, health, etc.). They must be encouraged to change their outlook, but to change it in a certain direction, one that democratically decided public policies indicate: sustainable development rather than productivism, for example. We are probably over analyzing when we consider that taking responsibility is more in line with Nicolas Hulot’s proposals than with Donald Trump’s denial of reality. Plato called education as such, a “conversion” to designate turning away from the shadows of the cave towards the true reality. In addition, Durkheim, analyzing the beginnings of the modern school of thought, used the term to designate the educational goals of Carolingian Christianity, goals which, once secularized, he believed should support school education to this day (Durkheim 1990). The question posed to an ethics of responsibility that emphasizes the coherence of the subject is how to solve tensions between metamorphosis (change that allows the subject to determine his or her own values) and conversion (pre-directed change in a given direction) (Moreau 2014). It is not easy, indeed, to reconcile the vital need to change the world in a given sense if we want to survive, with the educational imperative to equip the freedom of young people who will have to invent their own world. Perhaps the articulation is to be sought in an ethics of prudence, as I propose (Fabre 2014). Certainly “education for” is driven by predetermined goals. But it is in the case studies (should we or should we not have an airport or a dam here or there? Should we or should we not ban a particular drug, such as weedkiller?) that we exercise caution. To problematize these cases is to carefully go around the problem, to elucidate the multiple stakes, to analyze the unavoidable opposition of values and interests that inevitably overdetermine it and finally to prioritize the decision-making criteria for a solution. In the absence of such an education for responsibility, practised concretely in the analysis of cases, as the author suggests, “educating for” risks either being brought back into the fold of academic disciplines, at the risk of being reduced to their scientific aspect, which is considered in a positivist way, or of giving rise, with the best intentions of the world, to a pedagogy of inculcation, by indoctrination or conditioning.

To guide learners and education professionals in an ethical direction, Hélène Hagège uses five psychospiritual competencies (emotional, epistemic, relational, attentional and axiological), which could serve as a curriculum reference for education for responsibility. Thus, these professionals would be equipped to support learners in moving between two forms of ethos (“dialogism between ηθοξ and εθοξ” in the book), that is, to invite them to emancipate themselves in a certain direction, without indoctrinating them, strictly speaking.

“Happy is he who resembles Ulysses…”

We must not be discouraged by the scientific erudition of this work. The gathered literature, with the rigor required in the exercise of the right to supervise research, is always at the service of meaning. Regardless of their original discipline or scientific, ethical or political interests, the reader will find his or her way around, as he or she will easily recognize many of the contemporary concerns of any citizen with any degree of insight.

Personally, by reading this text, dense through erudition, but with a fluid and humorous writing style, I experienced “intellectual hygiene”, something that Bachelard recommended when he advised their reader to know how to leave their world to expose themself to other scientific or cultural worlds. However, by taking me on a trip to unknown countries, Hélène Hagège allowed me to approach islands of knowledge, familiar lands that I was able to revisit with a different perspective, to finally return to Ithaca, to my own questions, especially on “education for”, which have thus been enriched by this reading journey.

I wish the same experience unto the readers of this book.

Michel FABRE

Professor emeritus, University of Nantes

Centre de recherche de l’université de Nantes (CREN)

President of the Société francophone de philosophie de l’éducation (Sofphied)