Taking up the contrast between critique and hope in the title of the symposium, the paper argues against an anti-critical hope but in favour of a post-critical one – in the very precise sense of ‘post’ as ‘after’. In this sense, the proposed form of hope on the one hand acknowledges the necessity of critique for non-naïve hope and on the other hand criticises the critical tradition for being stuck in their critical activities. The paper first illuminates this position with Rorty’s distinctions and relations between systematic and edifying philosophy (Rorty, 1979), facts and fiction (Rorty, 2001), and arguments and poetic practice (Rorty, 2000). Afterwards, the paper makes these Rortyan ideas fruitful for a comment on the recently much discussed “Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy” (Hodgson, Vlieghe, & Zamojski, 2017). This is structured by arguing for “principles” in the form of a shift from X to Y (e.g. “from education for citizenship to love for the world”, Ibid, 19). Whereas it is clear that the authors thoroughly advocate Y, the status of X remains somewhat unclear, or, more precisely, not consistently the same. For example, the authors see “education for citizenship” as a misguided concept that stands in an exclusive contrast to their own view of education. In contrast, they make clear that the “shift from critical pedagogy to post-critical pedagogy” (Ibid, 17) is not an anti-critical one, that they “are not against critical approaches to education. Let the critical inquiries go on; we are just looking for other strategies” (Ibid, 81). According to the authors, critical pedagogy should not be abolished; it is just something different from their own post-critical position. However, the question still remains open whether there is an exclusive contrast between the two (in the sense that one must decide between either X or Y) or whether X can stand in relation to Y. The paper argues for the second position in a very strong sense: that critical pedagogy is not only related to but even a necessary condition for post-critical pedagogy. Understood as the poetic practice of “finding new, better, more interesting, more fruitful ways of speaking” (Rorty, 1979, 360), this post-critical pedagogy is dialectically dependent (in a surprisingly Hegelian sense, Rorty, 2000) upon systematic criticism.

Hodgson, N., Vlieghe, J. & Zamojski, P. (2017). Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy. London: Punctum Books. Rorty, R. (1979). Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton. Rorty, R. (2000). Die Schönheit, die Erhabenheit und die Gemeinschaft der Philosophen. Frankfurt. Rorty, R. (2001). Redemption from Egotism: James and Proust as Spiritual Exercises, Telos 3, 243-63.