| Education is in a state of crisis. Owing to the ethical dimension of this crisis, theorists and educators have turned to the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas in recent decades. His philosophy, which prioritizes ethics, and in which the teaching relation plays a prominent role, seems to lend itself naturally to thinking through the problems facing us in education. While Anna Strhan and Sharon Todd have engaged Levinas in important ways in their respective projects to find solutions to the problems facing education, I argue that Levinas's account of teaching must be understood within its proper context -- namely, as a challenge to philosophers to remain faithful to our responsibility for others. Approached in this way, we see that Levinas, with his account of "difficult freedom," provides philosophers with an answer to the crisis of higher education that offers a third alternative to our competing Enlightenment and Romantic heritage. |
