A new social contract, a new social criticism
Paul Standish (UCL IOE)

24^th January, 2024
5:30-7:15 pm
Room C3.15, UCL Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way, WC1H 0AL

Books by Minouche Shafik and Michael Sandel have revived ideas of the social contract. Both emphasise the importance of education but in ways that are sketchy and sometimes ill-informed. Following connections from contract to consent and constitution, I consider different ideas of criticism and their relevance to the social contract. These include critical thinking, student agency, and the post-critical approaches developed by Alison Brady (seminar, 17 January) and colleagues. Contrasting ideas derived in part from John Anderson lay the way for an elaboration of a different economy of living, raising questions regarding the content of the curriculum and the humanities.

Paul Standish is Professor and Head of the Centre for Philosophy of Education at UCL IOE. He has extensive teaching experience in schools, colleges and universities, and is the author or editor of some twenty books. Recent work includes Wittgenstein and Education: On not sparing others the trouble of thinking (Wiley, 2023), co-edited with Adrian Skilbeck, and the special issue Walden in Tokyo: Stanley Cavell and the Thought of Other Cultures (JOPE, 2024), co-edited with Naoko Saito. He is President of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain and Co-Editor of the Journal of Philosophy of Education.

A paper is attached here.

For further inquiries: Yuxin Su (yuxin.su.16@ucl.ac.uk).