Looking for the Ethical Self in Others: Relationality, Self-Knowing, and Education

Abstract

This paper seeks implications of human relationality and ethical subjectivity for education. Embracing relationality as ontologically basic, as well as the basis of self-knowing, has ethical implications for educators' self-knowledge and their communities. Focusing on ethics as relational draws the condition of living in and among a community of others to the foreground and refuses to resolve tensions based on universal and absolute principles. As educators assume responsibility within their communities and for students, they find themselves within an unsolvable predicament of partial self-knowing. However, through engagement with others they press against the limits of self knowledge and risk themselves in caring for others. In the process, they uncover their vulnerability to the "Other" as a resource for an ethic of leadership and education.