Giambattista Vico and the wisdom of teaching

This paper offers a rehabilitation of the neglected eighteenth-century thinker and philosopher, Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), and defends the contemporary relevance of his construction of the wisdom of teaching. Reinventing the ancient traditions of European rhetoric, and reacting with great critical hostility to the pervasive educational influence of the thought and methods of Rene Descartes and his followers in the Jansenist movement, Vico’s major writings and public lectures sought to articulate a complete philosophy of education quite at variance with the styles of rationality and pedagogy favoured in the European Enlightenment. In his insistence on the key function of poetics, narrative, myth, religion, shared common sense, emotion, belonging and ritual in the formation of the educated person, Vico laid stress upon the role of the imagination and its nurture in the development of a properly enlarged and sympathetic rationality. With the implications for teaching methods, curriculum and the understanding and protection of the unique capacities of childhood, Vico has much to offer the philosophy and practice of modern education as it faces the multiple allures of hyperationality and the attenuated knowledge-economy account of its central aims and purposes

Two Interpretations of "Living Together" in European Human Rights Law

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the Council of Europe have recently recognised “living together” as a legitimate dimension of the rights of others that could justify limitations on various European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) rights, including the rights to freedom of religion and respect for private life. This article argues that the important, yet still unexplored in human rights law, idea of “living together” stems from the republican ideal of fraternity and supplements the distinctive links between democratic principles and rigorous human rights protection. Even so, its justifiability as a limitation ground depends on which conception of the idea is compatible with core values and functions served by human rights under the Convention. This article distinguishes between two main interpretations of “living together”, grounded on responsibility and conformity. It is argued that, in cases touching on our expressive conduct in public, including cases on the wearing of full-face veils, a conformity conception of “living together” sits uneasily both with firmly established case law of the ECtHR and with certain key functions of rights, such as the exclusion of moralistic majoritarian preferences as grounds for coercive prohibitions