Session 1: Philosophical Reflections: Pushing the Boundaries, 1

3rd Global Conference

Thursday 3rd November – Saturday 5th November 2011
Prague, Czech Republic

The Fluid Space Between Us
Jan MacLean
Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, Canada

Bullying in our schools, communities and workplaces begins with the belief that we can harm another person with little or no consequences to ourselves. Most of us are acutely aware of how we are affected by others, but are less conscious of how we effect. As educators, what can we do to encourage our students to gain a deeper sense of how our thoughts, words and actions affect ourselves, others and the environment? Martin Buber (1966) tells us that we can only grow and develop, once we have learned to live in relation to others; to recognize the possibilities of the space between us. According to Buber, the primary means to accomplish this is through dialogue. For me, dialogue includes not only the words we use to communicate our thoughts, ideas and feelings, but also expression of our physical and emotional energy. For once we come to see our emotional “states” as active and interactive, we are better able to choose how to express and direct them. Therefore, in terms of education, it is vital that students be provided with opportunities to engage in dialogue and the expressive arts in order to critically and creatively explore how they imagine the “fluid space” between themselves and others. The purpose of this paper is to look honestly at ways that dialogue and the imaginative arts can be engaged to encourage a sense of caring, agency and responsibility in our students and ourselves.

Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)

Bullying, Empathy and Good Will
Gavin Fairbairn
Leeds Metropolitan University, United Kingdom

Empathy is often described as the ability to see the world from another person’s shoes, but I think it is more than this. It is about the attempt imaginatively to inhabit the other’s world – to understand, to experience, and to feel things as another human person might feel them, rather than about the attempt to imagine what one’s own experiences – one’s own perceptions and feelings would be, in that situation. We can empathise with others in their joy and in their sadness, in their excitement and in their misery and distress.

It is because empathy can allow us to imagine how bad a bullied person can feel; how downtrodden; weary; afraid; lonely and lacking in hope, that some people believe that we can tackle at least some bullying by helping identified bullies to develop this most human of traits. Against this I shall argue that far from helping to prevent bullying, the development of empathy can actually help bullies to become better at what they do, because in the absence of good will and caring intentions, empathy can be used for bad as well as good purposes. It is empathic skill that allows a skilled salesperson to sell you something you didn’t know you needed, with money you didn’t know you had. It is empathy that allows those who wish to subjugate others to decide the best tactics to adopt in order to do so, and that allows the best torturers to practice their art so well. And in the absence of good will and caring intentions empathy can enable bullies to bully more effectively.

The paper will end with some reflection on the nature of caring intentions and on ways in which we might develop them.