The thought systems of this economic liberalism saw politics subsumed into economics and dehumanizing most of the institutions of the earlier liberal tradition to the detriment of freedom and democracy. This inevitably led to reflection on the doctrines of "survival of the fittest" and to the growing realization that beyond neoclassical economic theory, everyone is. The first chapter therefore describes South Africa's transition to democracy and notes that this political transformation can only be understood in the context of the powerful economic and business influences operating inside and outside the country at the time.
It first examines analytical biology and its focus on mapping the human genome as examples of our understanding of ourselves as the predetermined objects of science, comprehensible through rational codes. The second half of the chapter continues to examine the neo-liberal understanding of societies as the simple aggregation of rationally deducible individuals within comparable logically determinable economic whales. TIns Rortyan acceptance of a linear scientific rationality and its denial in the denial of philosophical truths can be seen as compatible with each of the neo-liberal approaches already examined.
I suggest that a useful counterweight to this philosophy can be found in the work of the contemporary pragmatist philosopher Joseph Margolis, whose endorsement of a "strong form of relativism" can encompass both bivalent and multivalent truths, consistent with the acceptance of both disciplinary knowledge and social uncertainty. The research therefore reveals a central tension in that educational theory and practice, which are most popular in the Western world in the current neoliberal era, recommend thinking strategies that are strangely at odds with the theory and practice of the dominant disciplines, the mastery of which must be the target of this same education. .
The South African Transition--------------------·_
Even if we ignore the merits of the economic debate, there is a political reality before us. Politicians responsible for economic policy in New South Africa should, in light of this, contextualize their economic thinking within the framework of their political mandate and of the Constitution (although there were some economically conservative elements written into the Constitution, as well as come up). The advice that the IMF and World Bank gave to South African policymakers before the GNU took power is indicative of the direction of global economic policy thinking.
Another important step taken in late 1993 was the inclusion of a clause in the constitution guaranteeing the independence of the Reserve Bank. This clause states that the 'primary objective of the Reserve Bank is to protect the value of the currency in the interests of balanced and sustainable economic growth'. Equally important for a consideration of the continued advance of South African neoliberalism is Mandela's reasoning.
Therefore, the nature and outcome of the GEAR strategy, as South Africa's 'home-grown' Washington Consensus package, could have been predicted. And the argument that the accumulated wisdom of the powerful is inevitably worth listening to is hardly supported by history.
Education for a Democratic! Globally Competitive South Africa
Prominent among these was the National Education Policy Inquiry (NEPI), established in 1991 by the National Education Crisis COllillittee (NECC) under the auspices of the ANC. The need for additional teachers in the KZN region alone, particularly in light of the AIDS pandemic, is estimated at twelve percent of the CULTent workforce. In the last days of the apartheid regime, the idea of a unified Ministry of Education with a special economic one emerged.
The two versions of the 1997 White Paper on Higher Education are noticeably different in emphasis. In all this there seems to be a clear alignment with the principles of the Economic Policy for Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) introduced in the previous year. There is a danger, they believe, that the report on values, education and democracy, although it restates many of the values in the constitution and the bill of rights, may thereby 'displace' them1xxi.
Deregulation" takes away the "freedom" of the need for conscious thought, just as "information" takes away the "knowledge" of the same. And, as with the present, "the future form of knowledge production must be seen in the context of the changing nature of the global economy, xii. However, it is largely irrelevant now, and in the case of the global economy, it only makes sense in gambling logic.
If a substantial capital gains tax were to be levied on global financial speculation, a large part of the. Namely, as an automatic, random sequence of events, derived from the uncontrollable logic of the markets, teclmology,. This can be seen as an implicit assumption of the liberal democratic parties that supported social welfare programs in the middle decades of the twentieth century.
They do not address the basic incompatibility that I argue exists between Rawls's conception. The contradictions between the logic of the market, which is in the 'survival of the fittest', and the logic of human rights and dignity, which requires consideration of the least privileged (to return to Rawls and Appiah), remain unresolved. 17 Consider Le Pen's victory in the first round of the French presidential election - the vote against Maastricht.
This ambivalence and the problems it potentially creates become acute in the case of the teaching methods suggested and encouraged in our society. Ross seems to be aiming here to embed Castells' 'logic of flows' that control us beyond any social concern.
Respect for authority and the consequent need to reconcile incompatible authorities can be seen as one of the main thrusts behind medieval philosophy. Two events of importance to global society, and both significant to this study, occurred in the second half of the twentieth century. It cannot be imagined that it could have been achieved in any other way than through a modification of the brain and its functions.
It is in the conflation of these two that contemporary thinkers have apparently been led astray by Darwin and Freud, with recent reinforcement by the 'science' of genetic detenninism. But as with genetics, I believe it is the assumptions rather than the logical conclusions derived from them that are at the heart of the current problem9. The influence of Keynes's ideas in the early twentieth century was considerable, but ultimately inconclusive.
A recent survey conducted in the US (completed in December 2000) points to the dominance of the analytic school. Rorty calls the first part of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature 'The Invention of the Mind'. And it is the ability to make meaning that is inherent in the perception of the interrelationships between language (inscriptions), context and people.
But the crux of the matter is again 'only' those parts that we see in a given context. Thus, although Rorty initially recognizes the nature of mind, the analytical tools with which he approaches it ultimately leave it as it was. To be fair, Rorty admits that he is 'painfully aware of the gaps in the story [he has] told', xxi, and goes on to study the problem in other ways.
The essence of Rorty's 'non-philosophical' empiricism is summed up in the argument that: 'The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not. This idea is in fact fundamental, I believe, to any understanding of the nature of Rorty's thinking. The nature of the confusion between 'rational human inquiry' (from Rorty's postmodern position, ultimately impossible) and 'comprehensive rational systems' (the indisputable nature of the world, since reduction and linear analysis are the nature of reason itself) gradually emerges here.
Rationalists by definition, one would suppose, have faith in the power of the individual rational mind, as they have in rational overarching truth. He was also one of the many economists who participated in the ANC's Macro Economic Research Group (MERG) in the early 1990s.
A Mode 2 Critique of Contemporary Philosophy
