Integrating Traditional-Religious Knowledge in Higher Education. Human Agency as Philosophical Norm

Abstract

Education systems focus on the means for achieving our aims, through science and technology, while there is a general neglect of subjecting those aims themselves to rational scrutiny. The project of humanizing higher education will make these aims and purposes central to teaching and learning. This will necessitate a revision of the standard questions in the dominant stream of anglophone philosophy on the grounds of a critically based understanding of human agency and with the aim of its proper appropriation. Furthermore, in the context of a global multicultural context what is needed is a method for introducing all traditional-religious understandings into the heart of the public debate. Secular liberal democracies have a hands-off policy toward those traditions as anomalous in modernity, but this threatens to lead to the formation of cultural ghettos. Gauchet (1997), however, sees liberal humanism as arising out of religion. This chapter puts forward the idea that these person-focused narratives, when re-framed, and alongside other disciplines in the humanities, can provide a corrective to what is currently neglected.

Citation

Giddy, P. (2021), "Integrating Traditional-Religious Knowledge in Higher Education. Human Agency as Philosophical Norm", Sengupta, E., Blessinger, P. and Makhanya, M. (Ed.) Humanizing Higher Education through Innovative Approaches for Teaching and Learning (Innovations in Higher Education Teaching and Learning, Vol. 35), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 117-129. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2055-364120200000035012