J. CURRICULUM STUDIES, 2006, VOL. 38, NO.

5, 569–589

Deliberation in national and post-national education

KLAS ROTH

Journal
10.1080/00220270600682879
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klas.roth@lhs.se
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Francis
Professor
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Francis Ltd
KlasRoth
Studies(online)

Education in many countries is used to initiate children and young people into publicly
accepted forms of knowledge and to further a common identity among members and citizens
of the nation-state. This study discusses both an uncritical initiation to such knowledge and
the value of criticality as an educational goal in terms of critical thinking, critical pedagogy,
and revolutionary pedagogy. It contends that global transformation is challenging national
education: such use is untenable in relation to a holistic view of understanding. It argues
further that the holistic view challenges an account of democratic competence in terms of
critical thinking, critical pedagogy, and revolutionary pedagogy. It opens up the possibility
of democratic deliberation in post-national education.

Keywords: critical pedagogy; democratic competence; democratic

deliberation; globalization; post-national education.

… the only legitimate source of objectivity is intersubjectivity (Davidson

2001a: 13).

Since the Second World War, a goal of national education in a democracy

such as Sweden has been to further a common identity among citizens and
members of the nation-state. It is, however, not clear how education should
be understood in this sense. Should it initiate children and young people into
publicly acceptable forms of knowledge critically or uncritically—and within
a specific nation—in order to achieve the goal? Moreover, if they are to be
initiated critically, what is meant by ‘criticality’?
In the first and second parts of this paper, I maintain that global trans-
formation is challenging the idea of furthering a common national identity
directly and through education, and is untenable in relation to the views of
criticality. In the final part, I discuss the possibility of democratic deliberation
in post-national education, and argue that critical thinking, critical pedagogy,
and revolutionary pedagogy do not adequately take into consideration the
necessary conditions for understanding when, through education, educators
are developing children’s and young people’s democratic competence in
pluralistic societies.

Klas Roth is an associate professor of philosophy of education in the Department of Social and
Cultural Studies in Education, Stockholm Institute of Education, PO Box 34 103, S-100 26
Stockholm, Sweden; e-mail: klas.roth@lhs.se. His research interests include philosophy of
education, political theory, democratic education, educational policy, and globalization and
education. He has published Democracy, Education and Citizenship: Towards a Theory on the
Education of Deliberative Democratic Citizens (Stockholm: HLS Förlag) and in the Journal of
Philosophy of Education.
Journal of Curriculum Studies ISSN 0022–0272 print/ISSN 1366–5839 online ©2006 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/00220270600682879
570 K. ROTH

National education in an era of global transformation

Hirst (1972: 391–414) suggests that the education of well-informed

members of a nation should be concerned with the reproduction of, and initi-
ation into, publicly accepted forms of knowledge. However, it is questionable
whether children and young people should be socially integrated and social-
ized into well-informed members of a specific nation by learning such knowl-
edge—legitimized in relation to the majority culture within a specific nation.
It is questionable because it requires identification of the development of
democratic competence with the degree to which children and young people
acquire measurable forms of publicly accepted knowledge through school-
ing. One problem with this identification is that the young do not always
effectively regulate and co-ordinate their action according to such publicly
accepted forms. A more serious problem is that nation-states and education,
with its aim of furthering this common identity, are under tremendous stress
because of global economic, political, and cultural transformations.
Thus, Castells (1997: 1) contends, for example, that ‘[o]ur world, and
our lives, are being shaped by the conflicting trends of globalization and
identity’, and he shows how global economic, cultural, and social move-
ments are challenging and reshaping national efforts to construct national-
ism and national identity:
nationalism had been declared deceased from a triple death: the globalization
of economy and the internationalization of political institutions; the universal-
ism of a largely shared culture, diffused by electronic media, education, liter-
acy, urbanization, and modernization; and the scholarly assault on the very
concept of nations, declared to be ‘imagined communities’ in the mild version
of anti-nationalist theory, or even ‘arbitrary historical inventions’, in Gellner’s
forceful formulation [Gellner 1983: 56], arising from elite-dominated nation-
alist movements in their way to build the modern nation-state. (Castells 1997:
27–28)
Kymlicka (2002: 327) says:
Modern societies are said to be characterized by deep diversity and cultural
pluralism. In the past, this diversity was ignored or stifled by models of the
‘normal’ citizen, which were typically based on the attributes of the able-
bodied, heterosexual white male. Anyone who deviated from this model of
normalcy was subject to exclusion, marginalization, silencing, or assimilation.
Thus non-white groups were often denied entry to Western democracies, or if
admitted were expected to assimilate to become citizens; indigenous peoples
were either shunted into isolated reserves and/or forced to abandon their tradi-
tional lifestyles; homosexuality was often criminalized, and even if legal, gays
were nonetheless expected to stay silent about their sexuality in public life;
people with disabilities were hidden away in institutions; and so on.
Today, however, minorities or marginalized groups are not willing to be
silenced, excluded, or assimilated. They claim a ‘politics of recognition’ and
a more inclusive concept of citizenship (Taylor 1994, Kymlicka 2002: 327).
Davidson (2001b: 193–204), for example, argues convincingly that the
content of beliefs, interests, and values depends on causal interaction with
the environment and linguistic practices between speakers in specific
DELIBERATION IN NATIONAL AND POST-NATIONAL EDUCATION 571

cultures. Hence, one’s identity and understanding are then affected by, and
dependent on, different linguistic practices of cultures outside the nation
and the minority cultures within it. Therefore, people can no longer hold on
to the idea that the learning of particular values, beliefs, and interests can be
understood as being affected, dependent, or legitimized only by the linguistic
practices of a majority culture in a specific nation.
Habermas (1998b) maintains that a specific culture does not legitimize
beliefs, interests, and values self-sufficiently; they are holistically inter-related,
and should be legitimized cross-culturally. We as educators should, therefore,
not understand the development of democratic competence or democratic
deliberation in terms of how far children and young people acquire measur-
able knowledge, specific beliefs, interests, and values legitimized in relation
to a majority culture within a specific nation in order to become well-informed
members. We should instead understand this development as a ‘higher-level
intersubjectivity of a discursive agreement between citizens who reciprocally
recognize one another as free and equal’ (Habermas 1998b: 135).
The development of democratic competence requires, as I have argued
elsewhere (Roth 2000: 79–83, 2003, 2004), the right to deliberate in
compulsory schooling, deliberative educational practices, and ideas for a
theory of the education of deliberative citizens, which can be used to estab-
lish how far they are educated.1 I have suggested elsewhere (Roth 2000) that
our attitude and the deliberative character of our relation toward our beliefs,
interests, and values depend on how far we as citizens are free and able to
deliberate democratically and argumentatively in order to legitimize the
content of our beliefs, interests, and values. I have also contended (Roth
2000) that a holistic view of understanding and democratic deliberation
acknowledges the degree to which members of a nation acquire measurable
knowledge and required values, and are free and able to deliberate whatever
concerns them on different dimensions of deliberation.
In this paper, I discuss different dimensions of citizenship to show that
global transformation challenges the idea of furthering a common identity
through education. I begin by discussing the ethical dimension: how individ-
uals understand, recognize, and legitimize their interests, beliefs, and
identities.

Ethical dimension

Since the birth of nation-states, countries have followed a traditional model

of citizenship rights to promote the idea of common identity in terms of
ethnicity, religion, or culture (Kymlicka 2002: 327). In such states, educa-
tion furthers this identity. Habermas (1998b: 130) says:
The ‘we-consciousness’, founded on an imagined blood relation or on cultural
identity, of people who share a belief in a common origin, identify one another
as ‘members’ of the same community and thereby set themselves apart from
their environment, is supposed to constitute the common core of ethnic and of
national social formations.
However, such an idea is questionable, as is the instrumental role of educa-
tion in furthering this common identity. It begs the empirical question of
572 K. ROTH

how far collections of people have a common identity—or, indeed, should

have one—and in what terms: ethnic, social, religious, or cultural. A serious
problem with the idea of furthering a common identity through education is
that a nation is compound of individuals and groups with different beliefs,
values, and interests who conduct their lives differently and understand
themselves and others differently. In most or even perhaps all countries,
people do not embrace the same identity in ethnic, religious, and cultural
terms. Many people were born and raised in countries other than those in
which they live. They do not have the same opinions of what values to strive
for, and what interests to recognize; nor do they agree that all, or even most,
should morally accept every value that they themselves find worthy of
endeavour. Furthermore, individual citizens have differing opinions about
what principles ought to guide them when distributing resources to other
people to enable them to satisfy their interests and strive for the values they
find worthy. They also differ in their opinions of the source and legitimate
force of principles for a fair distribution of justice. Another serious problem
is that individuals or groups, such as minorities, that do not embrace the
ethnic, cultural, or religious self-understanding of the majority are not neces-
sarily free to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to what is promoted as the substantial identity
of common beliefs, interests, and values. It does not give them the necessary
opportunity to understand, question, reconstruct, and legitimize different
identities. It disadvantages individuals and minorities who do not come to
embrace the common identity (Kymlicka 2002: 327).
The furthering of a common identity pre-supposes a view of education
as an instrument to reproduce common interests, values, and beliefs.
Members have been forcefully socialized within such supposed commonal-
ity. However, in modern pluralistic societies, norms of action can derive
their validity only from reason, not from beliefs, interests, or values consti-
tuted or regulated by a nation’s specific traditions, conventions, and linguis-
tic practices. Were the latter the case, Habermas (1998a) reasons, we as
citizens would be faced with strategic solutions of contradictable or different
world-views, or solutions motivated by force, money, violence, brutality, or
manipulation. We would then probably not solve conflicts as deliberative
democrats in deliberative procedures through reason based on understand-
ing of each other, through the legitimization of norms of action motivated by
the force of the better argument. Such reasoning would have to recognize the
‘individual’s uninfringeable freedom to respond with a “yes” or “no” to crit-
icizable validity claims … [and] without empathetic sensitivity by each
person to everyone else, no solution deserving universal consent will result
from the deliberation’ (Habermas 1990: 202). From the foregoing, then, it
is questionable whether it remains reasonable to believe that education could
be used to further a common identity in specific ethnic, cultural, or religious
terms.

Social and cultural dimension

I now turn to a discussion of the social and cultural dimension of citizenship,

which takes into account how people actualize, recognize, and legitimize
DELIBERATION IN NATIONAL AND POST-NATIONAL EDUCATION 573

social integration, socialization, and cultural reproduction. First, some

comments on the relation between the individual and society, focusing on
the character of this oft-discussed relation, and continuing with what affects
the furthering of children’s and young people’s identities today and their
possibilities to deliberate the furthering of their different identities.
It may, for example, seem obvious from the above comments that ‘[t]he
individual in his isolation is nothing’, and that the individual attains true
personality ‘only in and through an absorption of the aims and meaning of
organized institutions’ (Dewey 1916: 94). Later, Habermas (1990, 1998a,
c), MacIntyre (1984, 1988), and Taylor (1985a, b, c, 1994) pursue a social
thesis similar to that of Dewey, claiming that individuals are social per se, and
that they understand themselves foremost as social creatures attaining iden-
tity through social relations affected by traditions and practices within a
nation and the ideals they inherit.2 Dewey (1916: 1–9) suggests, however,
that a nation’s traditions and practices do not affect only the young. Social
groups and communities exist and sustain themselves through educational
processes, i.e. by initiating individuals into reproduced public forms of
knowledge, which include values, norms of action, and attitudes.
Children and young people from different countries, with different
ethnic and religious affiliations, meet each other in many schools in a specific
national education. This means that practices and traditions of local,
national, and global culture(s) affect and regulate their relations and identi-
ties. It also means that specific ways of understanding ethnic, religious, and
gender identities in different social groups regulate their identities. These are
affected by power relations, as well as by the ways the young are able to
understand, explicate, analyse, criticize, and evaluate relations on their own
or together with others. They watch films shown all over the world, such as
‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’. They eat hamburgers at McDonald’s
and Big Burger, drink Coca-Cola, Pepsi, or Sprite, wear shoes from Nike,
trousers from Levi’s, listen to Eminem, Madonna, and Shakira, watch foot-
ball on television worldwide, and play with the same or similar toys. They
watch television serials shown in many countries, such as ‘Friends’ and
‘Survivor’, that also affect how they understand the character of relations
and the conditions for establishing and developing them. In other words, not
only local or national cultures, but also global cultural phenomena, affect
children’s and young people’s knowledge, values, and norms of action.
However, these cultures, practices, and traditions not only affect children’s
and young people’s ways of understanding their relations to the world,
others, and themselves. The character of these relations also regulates how
they understand identities and their possibilities to deliberate identities in
any elaborated sense. Globally, for example, few are free and able to partic-
ipate in deliberative activities in supranational institutions, while few
adults—and even fewer children and young people—are free and able to
participate in national and public arenas such as television, newspapers,
radio, literature, and politics. Furthermore, not even the majority, adults
and youth alike, are free and able to participate in deliberative activities in
local arenas such as education.
However, institutionalized education in a local, national, and global
culture can encompass an ideal of democratic deliberation. Such an ideal
574 K. ROTH

supports deliberative practices in educational settings. It affirms children’s

and young people’s possibilities and right to deliberate whatever affects
them, and contains ideas that we as scholars can use to evaluate how far they
are deliberating citizens. We can investigate how far they are empowered to
become aware how culturally-reproduced knowledge, values, and norms of
action socially integrate and socialize them. We can also investigate how far
they are enabled to reflect upon and question ways in which people co-
ordinate their actions and understand themselves and others, as well as the
reasons given for how they actually co-ordinate or should co-ordinate their
actions. It is also possible to evaluate the degree to which they can be
enabled to reconstruct how they understand ‘interpersonal relations, indi-
vidual and collective identities, and of different ways of interpreting
phenomena’ (Roth 2000: 71). By acknowledging this, we grow to under-
stand how far the young individuate themselves and affirm their autonomy
as deliberative democratic members of an educational community, and how
far they co-operate in understanding and argumentatively legitimizing their
social integration and culturally-reproduced public forms of knowledge.
Dewey (1954: 24) claimed that ‘Individuals still do the thinking, desiring
and purposing, but what they think of is the consequences of their behavior
upon that of others and that of others upon themselves’.
It is, however, not only what individuals think that is a consequence of
what is mentioned, but also how they think and how they legitimize what
they think. Dewey (1954: 25) was aware of this: ‘What [man] believes, hopes
for and aims at is the outcome of association and intercourse’. However,
social and cultural conditions for education differ at the present time. The
Internet society and global transformation challenge people today. The
changed character of work, multinational companies, economic restructur-
ing in terms of the increased market economy, and ‘the implementation of
neoliberal policies in many nations’ (Burbules and Torres 2000: 5), the
erosion of nations, and the building of supranational institutions also affect
people, and they have to cope with these phenomena.

Political dimension

The political dimension of citizenship recognizes the norms and rules that
regulate the co-ordination of children and young people through different
ideologies. Seen from above, global transformation affects the furthering of
their identities, and the absence of deliberation in educational practice can
be explained by the fact that the general political culture of a specific nation
was, and still is in many societies, largely interwoven with its specific reli-
gious and/or ethnic culture, not necessarily promoting deliberation. Witness
here the Communist regime in China, the Nazi regime in Germany, and the
more or less liberal democracies in modern Western societies such as the
USA, the UK, and Sweden. The construction of national identity in such a
nation was and still is interwoven with its general political culture, and seen
as a task for the state. However, the state’s effort to construct a national iden-
tity in terms of a common religious, cultural, or ethnic identity through
education did not and does not necessarily generate an elaborated critical
DELIBERATION IN NATIONAL AND POST-NATIONAL EDUCATION 575

and deliberative approach to initiation processes or reproduced public forms

of knowledge in educational practices (Roth 2004).
Because of changed economic, social, and cultural conditions in a post-
national society, a change that includes the recognition of multiple identities
and global transformation, it is no longer justifiable to seek to construct such
a common identity; indeed, any such construction would disfavour those
who did not fit in. The general political culture in a post-national society
should, therefore, be uncoupled from its intertwined religious or ethnic
cultures. Habermas (1996) contends that it should relate more strongly to
moral and legal discourses, maintenance of which requires positive laws and
statutes to provide conditions for individuals as members of different
communities to form their identities and to pursue their own interests in a
pluralist society. On the other hand, these laws stem from deliberative
processes enabling those concerned to understand and rationally justify
them by the force of the better argument. This, in turn, requires that solidar-
ity also relates to the constitution and discursive law-giving processes, and
not just to personal acquaintance, family, or other ethnic or religious
communities, or to the nation’s majority culture. A constitution of this
nature, and its sustained discursive processes, legitimize a deliberative and
critical approach to multiple identities and global transformation in society
in general and in education in particular.
Global transformation, such as the rise and overwhelming impact of neo-
liberal policies, global economies, multinational companies, and communi-
cation technologies such as the Internet and media, no doubt shape people’s
understanding. Hence, such transformation influences national policy-
making and national education systems as well as the ways in which people
come to understand themselves. The emergence of supranational institu-
tions and organizations also shapes and affects conditions for national
policy-making, jurisdiction, and economy. The European Union, the
General Agreements on Trade in Services, the Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development, the UN and UNESCO, the World Trade
Organization, and the World Bank influence national educational policy-
making and jurisdiction.
The National Agency for Education (NAE) (2000: 1) in Sweden partly
met the changed conditions for the modern state in its support of the
‘efforts being made in Swedish childcare and schools to promote a common
code of fundamental democratic values’. In its effort to construct a common
identity in terms of such a ‘common code’, NAE (p. 8) focuses on
‘dialogue, interaction and good social relations as a basic prerequisite for …
work with democratic values’. NAE (2000: 8) asserts that the justification
for this is that
[d]ialogue allows differing views and values to confront one another and
develop. Dialogue allows individuals to make their own ethical judgements by
listening, reflecting, finding arguments and appraising, while it also constitutes
an important instrument for developing an understanding of one’s own views
and those of others.
However, I think that it is not enough to create conditions for childcare
and schools in their efforts ‘to promote a common code’ in terms of
576 K. ROTH

‘dialogue, interaction, and good social relations’. It also requires that the
young are entitled to democratic deliberation, and that this right be
contained in the national curriculum. Otherwise, they have to rely only on
the benevolence of teachers to implement such opportunities. It further
requires a holistic theory of democratic deliberation, which we as scholars
can use to test how far children and young people are being educated
as deliberating citizens. We are blind without such a theory.

Moral dimension

The moral dimension of citizenship recognizes the possibilities and condi-

tions for the development of children’s and young people’s capacity to
understand, apply, and deliberate whatever concerns them. It requires a
holistic view of deliberation and an acknowledgement of the character of
interpersonal relations, the degree to which people reconcile differences,
promote empathy and solidarity, and sustain a more critical approach
towards judgements. The rights mentioned above entitle children and young
people to become aware of and understand whatever concerns them when
deliberating on issues that affect them. These rights also legitimize investi-
gation of how free participation in the deliberation process is, and whether
the outcome is motivated by the better argument or by force, manipulation,
threat, or money.
A holistic view of democratic deliberation takes account of the plural-
ism of a nation, and emphasizes respect for differences among, and the
integrity of, cultural practices and traditions. A clearly natural response to
‘the other’ can include a tolerant attitude towards various cultural
attributes. It can also include an effort to understand their meaning and
value to the other. However, a holistic view of understanding does not treat
cultural attributes such as clothes, foods, or festivals within education as
exotic, leave them unquestioned, or view them as freed from challenge or
change; nor does it support standardization and cultural homogeneity. It
takes the moral capacity of each individual into account when deliberating
on knowledge, values, and norms of action. This means that people can
allow themselves to become aware of their capacity to understand and
reflect upon conventional uses of language—which are context-dependent
and used within specific contexts—be they ethnic, religious, national,
global, scientific, philosophical, or other. Even the multiple uses of
language are something they can become aware of, as well as how implicit
ways of understanding reason, knowledge, and specific ways of legitimizing
values govern them.
A post-conventional use of language is characterized by a holistic view of
understanding and deliberation. It reconstructs the everyday use of utter-
ances, argumentation, processes of legitimization, and the implicit claims to
validity inherited within them. It admits fallibility; that is, what people
legitimize in specific actual historical contexts is ‘always in principle open to
revision in the light of new evidence and insight’ (Cooke 1994: 3). It is non-
functionalistic and communicative. It requires post-rational action, which
allows a questioning approach to the traditional normative contexts used
DELIBERATION IN NATIONAL AND POST-NATIONAL EDUCATION 577

to legitimize the co-ordination of actions between people. It also admits

different discourses such as ethical, moral, and pragmatic, as well as the
possibility of restructuring traditions, norms, conventions, and conceptions
of personal identity. Furthermore, it opens up the possibility of understand-
ing and legitimizing whatever concerns people in relation to the force of the
better argument.
A post-conventional use of language, as opposed to a conventional one,
distances individuals from the normative and historical contexts within
which they live as well as from the culture-dependent identities which they
embrace or come to embrace, and allows them to reflect upon them
together. It requires tolerance and solidarity between speakers of different
languages, who use language differently when deliberating on different
issues of interest. It focuses on the specific ways in which children and
young people are integrated into public forms of reproduced knowledge
used, for example, in schools, and the degree to which different individuals
are allowed to deliberate on such knowledge. Examination of the co-
ordinating power of conventional language use is then a starting point in a
mode of language use that is post-conventional, and not something that
happens occasionally or never. Cooke (1994: 55), for example, draws atten-
tion to whether linguistic usage functions ‘(a) to express the speaker’s
intentions or experiences, (b) to represent states of affairs (or something in
the world that confronts the speaker), and (c) to enter into a relationship
with a hearer’.

Pragmatic dimension

The pragmatic dimension of citizenship acknowledges the consequences

of furthering a common identity, and especially the problems related to
the furthering of children’s and young people’s identities. The construc-
tion of a common identity within the nation—in terms of initiating
children and young people into reproduced public forms of knowledge,
which structure thought and regulate the conditions for developing
knowledgeable members of a nation—does not meet the conditions of
global transformation. It does not relocate and reinforce a deliberating
subject in educational practices. Hence, educational practice does not
seem to generate a critical awareness of the consequences of constructing
a common identity within national education in relation to global trans-
formation.
As argued above, global transformation questions the implications of the
construction of a common identity in ethnic, religious, or any other substan-
tial sense. It seems, then, that national education and the construction of a
common identity have to be viewed differently. I suggest that a national
education has to restructure itself in terms of post-national education, an
education that considers global transformation.
I argue below that an unreflective furthering of children and young
people’s identities and an uncritical initiation into publicly-accepted forms
of knowledge are untenable in relation to critical thinking, critical pedagogy,
and revolutionary pedagogy.
578 K. ROTH

No initiation without criticality

Criticality is a valuable educational goal furthered by modern theoretical

views of educational practice (Burbules and Berk 1999: 45). Advocates of
critical thinking, critical pedagogy, and revolutionary pedagogy assert that
education should not initiate children and young people uncritically into
publicly-accepted forms of knowledge or to the values embraced in a specific
community or culture. If education does not embrace criticality as a valuable
goal, the young are deceived; they do not become autonomous and self-
sufficient (critical thinking). They do not realize that power is intrinsically
related to knowledge, that elites use education to reproduce and maintain
existing social, economic, and political conditions favourable to themselves
(critical pedagogy), and they do not develop an emancipatory ignorance of
matters which cannot be foreseen and predictable (revolutionary pedagogy).
Hence, teachers should teach and train the necessary critical and reflexive
capacities, intellectual or moral. Furthermore, the national curriculum
should sustain the necessary development of criticality within educational
practice as a valuable educational goal.

Critical thinking

Burbules and Berk (1999: 48) say that:

critical thinking in education, in the broad sense of teaching students the rules
of logic or how to assess evidence, is hardly new: it is woven throughout the
Western tradition of education, from the Greeks to the Scholastics to the
present day. … [T]he purpose of education generally is to foster critical think-
ing; and … the skills and dispositions of critical thinking can and should infuse
teaching and learning at all levels of schooling.
Burbules and Berk say that an educational goal embraced by critical think-
ers is that children and young people should become critical consumers of
information. They content that teachers should develop the necessary crit-
ical skills among children and young people or arrange for the necessary
conditions in schools for the development of the dispositions and abilities
needed to assess the information at hand critically. This suggests that the
young should not come to believe in any proposition or judgement without
assessing its truth conditions. It also suggests that they should concern
themselves primarily with epistemic adequacy such as valid or invalid
inferences, reliable arguments, whether reliable arguments exist for state-
ments claimed to be true, and whether concepts are obscure or sufficiently
clear. The young should also learn to be critical of hasty generalizations,
obscure concepts, and information, irrespective of whether from textbook,
teacher, or the Internet that does not include argument and that relies on
unreliable authority. The focus is, or should be, on epistemological reflec-
tion, that is, logic, conceptual clarity, and coherence. Proponents of criti-
cal thinking believe that by revealing the truth—discerning whether
statements claimed to be true are valid inferences from true premises,
whether people base them upon reliable arguments or cohere them with
DELIBERATION IN NATIONAL AND POST-NATIONAL EDUCATION 579

other true sentences—you not only develop the necessary abilities for
being a free human being, but you also ‘enlarge the scope of human possi-
bilities’ (Burbules and Berk 1999: 46). Proponents of critical thinking also
believe that students gain control over their own lives in relation to social,
economic, and political circumstances.
Thus, the measurement of educational success within a nation cannot,
and should not, be concerned only with how far the young come to embrace
the reproduced knowledge with which the nation, through education, has
provided them. It should also be concerned with how far they actually
develop the necessary critical skills, abilities, and dispositions to develop
their democratic competence, and thereby become free persons. Moreover,
it should be concerned about whether schools and teachers arrange the
necessary conditions for this task. An advocate of critical thinking could then
be concerned with the truth conditions of such sentences as ‘Citizens in a
nation have a common identity in ethnic, religious or cultural terms’,
‘Education furthers a common identity in ethnic, religious or cultural terms’,
or ‘Global transformation challenges the idea of a common identity within a
nation’. However, as noted above, citizens within a nation lack a common
identity in the terms mentioned, and compulsory education within a nation,
such as Sweden, does not further such an identity for every child and young
person. Global transformation challenges the ideas of a common identity
within a nation and the use of education to further such an identity in
religious, ethnic, or cultural terms.

Critical pedagogy

Advocates of critical pedagogy contend, as those of critical thinking do, that

the young should not be initiated into reproduced public forms of knowledge
within a specific nation without being able to asses them critically. However,
criticality and democratic competence usually mean something different for
critical pedagogues than for advocates of critical thinking. Critical peda-
gogues are more concerned with the inter-subjectivity of social relations, espe-
cially the unjust asymmetrical power inherited in them. They claim that
economic, social, and cultural institutional settings regulate social relations.
They concern themselves with analysing the instrumental role and function-
ing of education in initiating children and young people into reproduced
economic, social, and cultural patterns upholding alienating and oppressive
institutional practices and disenfranchized social relations. They desire to
transform and reconstruct unjust relationships formed by what they allege is
the economic restructuring of individuals as consumers in liberal democratic
and capitalist nations, and especially the global restructuring of capital by
multinational companies. McLaren (1998: 450) says, for example, that ‘crit-
ical pedagogy must include strategies of addressing and redressing economic
distribution’, such as how the ‘globalization of capital has unleashed new
practices of social control and forms of internationalized class domination’
(p. 449). Globalization in economic terms, for McLaren, is a new form of
imperialism managed by transnational corporations. As Burbules and Berk
(1999: 50) put it:
580 K. ROTH

One obvious example would be in the growth of advertising as both a spur to

rising consumption and as a means of creating the image of industries driven
only by a desire to serve the needs of their customers. As consumers, as work-
ers, and as winners or losers in the marketplace of employment, citizens in a
capitalist society need both to know their ‘rightful’ place in the order of things
and to be reconciled to that destiny. Systems of education are among the insti-
tutions that foster and reinforce such beliefs, through the rhetoric of meritoc-
racy, through testing, through tracking, through vocational training or college
preparatory curricula, and so forth.

Advocates of critical pedagogy claim that the goal of the educator is to

foster a critical capacity in children and young people, one which will enable
them to resist the reproduction of oppressive identities regulating social rela-
tions. The training of this capacity, and thereby democratic competence,
means teaching the young how to unmask propositions of knowledge and
values as parts of systems of beliefs and action that in turn are claimed to be
the generative effect of structural and hegemonic, ideological, and economic
domination by the elite over the disadvantaged, the unfortunate, and the
marginalized.
Multiculturalists and feminists have concerned themselves with unjust
identities regulating social relations. They assert that globalization in social
and cultural terms challenge the formation of identity in any hegemonic
sense in any democratic nation. They have analysed and criticized the
domination of oppressive identities in ethnic, racial, and sexual terms,
forcefully criticizing ethnocentrism, racism, sexism, and homophobic strat-
egies. The multiculturalist critique has created a tension between efforts to
further one common identity in a nation in terms of standardization and
cultural homogeneity and the recognition of multiple identities in moral
and political terms. It is clear that the erosion of national autonomy and
self-sufficiency in deciding a common identity is no longer tenable. The
notion of a citizen as an exclusive or unifying concept is no longer defensi-
ble epistemologically. Individuals understand themselves as members of
different communities and understand their identities in multiple ways.
The notion is even questionable in moral terms because such a concept
would be exclusive, and:

previously excluded groups are no longer willing to be silenced or marginal-

ized, or to be defined as ‘deviant’ simply because they differ in race, culture,
gender, ability or sexual orientation from the so-called ‘normal’ citizen. They
demand a more inclusive conception of citizenship which recognizes (rather
than stigmatizes) their identities, and which accommodates (rather than
excludes) their differences. (Kymlicka 2002: 327)

The initiation, furthered by education, into a common identity within a

nation is manifestly considered reputable by advocates of critical pedagogy,
whether neo-Marxist or multiculturalist. They contend that educational
practice requires a more critical approach to the hegemonic indoctrination
of oppressive ideologies managed by multinational companies and to the
unjust, silencing, and oppressive strategies of the marginalized, furthered
through education.
DELIBERATION IN NATIONAL AND POST-NATIONAL EDUCATION 581

Revolutionary pedagogy

A post-modern revolutionary pedagogy as an impossible criticality has

emerged as a reaction to the idea of furthering a common identity through
education, and especially to the critical pedagogy described above.
Revolutionary pedagogy claims that the desire to find the Archimedean
ground of education, the ultimate technique with which education can be
controlled, foreseen, and calculated, or the end towards which education
and educators should strive is epistemically illusionary. Biesta (1998: 503)
argues that the current state of crisis consists in an untenable epistemic
belief: ‘[Education] cannot be conceived as a technique … its outcome
cannot be predicted. … [and it] can never be understood as a process where
the teacher simply moulds the student’. For Biesta (2001: 385), criticality as
a valuable technological educational goal, i.e. ‘the idea that education is a
means that can be used to bring about certain ends. … that [for example]
schools can build a new social order’, is therefore impossible. Hence, the
position of furthering a common identity in terms of criticality is untenable.
Biesta (1998: 500) suggests instead:
a particular point of view—which focuses on the importance of the recognition
of the impossibility of critical education (which is not what is not possible but
what cannot be foreseen and calculated as a possibility but literally takes us by
surprise).

This ‘particular point of view’ is dressed up theoretically in the following way:

a fundamental ignorance. Such ignorance is neither naiveté nor skepticism. It
is just an ignorance that does not claim to know how the future will be or will
have to be. It is an ignorance that does not show the way, but only issues an
invitation to set out on the journey. It is an ignorance that does not say what
to think of if, but only asks, ‘What do you think about it?’ In short, it is an igno-
rance that makes room for the possibility of disclosure. It is, therefore, an
emancipatory ignorance. (Biesta 1998: 505)

Because a demystifying approach, according to Biesta (1998: 507, 506),

‘only reveals one other possible power/knowledge constellation’, ‘knowledge
can no longer be used to combat power’, and therefore cannot be used as an
instrument of critique. Biesta claims, however, that education can function
as counter-practice, by revealing the impossibility of education, by urging
educators to reveal this epistemic conditioning of education, and by recog-
nizing the uniqueness of human action and interaction. This uniqueness
allegedly means, ‘to take an initiative, to begin’ (Biesta 1998: 503), and that
this initiative and this beginning are new and unpredictable. Biesta (2001:
392) concludes that interaction between at least two people is ‘inherently
unpredictable’ in this sense, and that the world consists of beginning, begin-
ners always beginning something new, while also having ‘to rely on the
actions of other beginners’. This predicament or condition of the plurality of
life then constitutes, for him, the impossibility of the possibility of education.
In other words, people depend on each other, and cannot foresee or predict
the outcomes of interaction between them. Biesta (1998: 510) suggests that
on the level of educational practice this insight means that:
582 K. ROTH

The only thing [critical pedagogy] can do—and to my mind must do—is to
invite a judgement by asking, ‘What do you think about it?’. This question …
is nonrepressive in that it does not prescribe how to judge, but ‘simply’ opens
up the possibility for one’s own judgement. … [and he concludes] that this
question is in the most profound sense a violent question. … [and that the
only future of critical pedagogy is] an impossible future. That will be the real
revolution.
It seems then that the technological goal is untenable, that is it seems
impossible to use education to further a common identity and in this sense
develop democratic competence. Education cannot be used to control, fore-
see, or predict outcomes in terms of a common identity because a necessary
condition of education is its impossibility—in the sense that education
cannot be used to control the beginning of an action in itself. Hence, educa-
tors cannot control, foresee, or predict the furthering of a common identity
through education. The development of democratic competence through
education has, then, to consider the above-mentioned condition, and to
initiate a revolutionary counter-practice by invoking the question: ‘What do
you think about it?’

The possibility of democratic deliberation

I have noted above that an uncritical initiation into reproduced forms of

knowledge is not only challenged by global transformations, but is also
untenable; and that critical thinking, critical pedagogy, and revolutionary
pedagogy suggest different interpretations of criticality and democratic
competence. Proponents of critical pedagogy charge advocates of critical
thinking with focusing too narrowly on single propositions and their
epistemic adequacy. They claim that the latter do not take into account
systems of belief, nor do they identify the people in control of power or the
production of power through education or curricula, nor do they take into
account the effects of reproducing unjust hierarchical relations through
education whether in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, or class. Proponents
of revolutionary pedagogy and Foucault-inspired analysts charge advocates
of critical pedagogy on the other hand with focusing too strongly on the tech-
nological or instrumental character of education, creating a dichotomy
between oppressed/oppressor, and on identifying the actors who control
and in whose benefit existing arrangements work. These actors are often
identified in critical traditions as belonging categorically to class, bureau-
cracy, race, and/or gender. The inherent principle is that if one can change
the actors who rule, a more equitable and just society will be produced
(Popkewitz 1999: 5). For Biesta (1998) such understanding does not take
into account the necessary condition of education as impossible in the revo-
lutionary sense.
Foucault-inspired analysts such as Popkewitz (1999: 6) charge both
advocates of critical thinking and critical pedagogy with losing sight:
of the productive qualities of power, that is, how systems of knowledge gener-
ate principles through which action and participation are constructed. … how
DELIBERATION IN NATIONAL AND POST-NATIONAL EDUCATION 583

power operates to construct a subjectivity through the rules of knowledge per

se, thus pointing to a changing project of politics embodied in educational
practices.
These analysts claim to have shifted their attention from single propositions
and their epistemic adequacy, identifying those in control and the effects of
unjust hierarchical structures promoted through education, to the governing
principles constructing the subjectivity of the subject used to control the
intent and purpose of action, and not just behaviour. Democratic compe-
tence then seems to include this ability to analyse, or to become aware of,
these governing principles.
Popkewitz (1999: 6), as a Foucault-inspired analyst, focuses on describ-
ing governing principles that structure and regulate thought, intention,
desire, and disposition. He claims that such principles affect the institutional
practice and everyday practice of every individual in the productive sense of
controlling the subject, or rather the subject’s subjectivity. Popkewitz
suggests that, because power is disciplinary and a relational concept, and
because knowledge is power, knowledge is disciplinary and relational.
Hence, governing principles, such as knowledge and discipline, structure
each person’s subjectivity. However, even though a Foucault-inspired
analyst conceptualizes the power/knowledge relation differently and gives
attention to the productive character of knowledge rather than its revolu-
tionary or negative and repressive character, the argument is problematic. In
fact, the views of criticality and democratic competence I have been discuss-
ing are problematic. They fail to give an adequate account of how under-
standing is possible. Foucault-inspired analysts reveal understanding in
terms of control of intention or behaviour, whether through those in control
according to governing principles regulating everyday practices, or through
an impossible control of understanding and legitimization. As Habermas
(1987: 276) puts it:
the understanding of meaning by interpreters participating in discourses is
reduced to the explanation of discourses; validity claims are functionalistically
reduced to the effects of power; the ‘ought’ is naturalistically reduced to the
‘is’. I am speaking of reductions because the internal aspects of meaning, of
truth-validity, and of evaluating do not go without remainder into the externally
grasped aspects of practices of power.
Advocates of critical pedagogy and Foucault-inspired analysts seem to
be putting forward a thesis of social externalism, which maintains that under-
standing and legitimization are structured and regulated in interaction with
other thinkers: that is, a correct use of a statement is determined by the use
of others in relevantly similar situations. The thesis seemingly posited here
is that utterance-meaning is either controlled or determined by those in
power (posited by neo-Marxists) or by governing principles (Foucault-
inspired analysts). However, such a thesis is untenable. We cannot explain
meaning and understanding by analysing who is in power, and claim that our
usage is correct if, and only if, it agrees with the usage of those in power.
Moreover, we cannot just lay bare the governing principles that are supposed
to regulate or discipline our desires, intentions, dispositions, or behaviour,
and then claim that our usage is correct or legitimate when it tallies with
584 K. ROTH

those principles. Such externalism suffers from various defects. Others’

usage in relevantly similar situations does not determine correctness or legit-
imization in use, or the understanding of correctness in use. A Foucault-
inspired account of control and normalization gives, at best, an account of
when two utterances have the same meaning. It may explain how people
recognize the content of utterances as being the same from one occasion to
another. However, as Davidson (2001a: 3) says:
But this, too, seems unsatisfactory. For how can the simple fact that two or
more people have gone on in the same way introduce the distinction between
following a rule and just going on in one way or another? All the sunflowers in
the field turn together to face the sun: are they following a rule? Surely not in
the required sense; they have no concepts and so cannot misapply concepts.
Simply adding further creatures with identical dispositions cannot turn
dispositions into rule-following.
If agreement in usage does not explain error or the difference between
thinking you are following a rule and actually following a rule, then agree-
ment in usage does not answer the question of why others’ behaviour should
be my norm:
It does not answer this question to say that the teacher, or society, tells me.
They can punish me if I fail to toe the line, but fear of punishment can’t, in
itself, give me the idea that there is anything more wrong with my action than
that others don’t like it. What is missing, one might say, is the idea of under-
standing. Introducing more than one creature does add anything basic to the
situation with one creature, for with the possibility that their actions may
diverge we have introduced the gap needed to make sense of the notion of
error. But the mere possibility of divergence, even when combined with sanc-
tions to encourage conformity, does not introduce the sort of norm needed to
explain meaning or conceptualization. However, despite these unanswered
problems, I am persuaded that the basic idea is right: only social interaction
brings with it the space in which the concepts of error, and so of meaning and
of thought, can be given application. A social milieu is necessary, but not suffi-
cient, for objective thought. (Davidson 2001a: 3–4)
It seems that we have to explain how meaning and understanding are
possible when explaining the difference between following a rule and think-
ing you are following a rule. It is, as noted above, not enough to point to the
agreement in usage either between the oppressor and the oppressed or
between governing principles and individuals’ usage of utterances. The
notion of the impossibility of education in the controlling sense does not
even explain understanding. Such a notion only claims that the actor may or
may not believe that he or she begins something new or takes an initiative
that cannot be controlled or foreseen. However, it does not explain the
difference between beginning something new or taking an initiative, and
thinking he or she has begun something new or taken an initiative. Perhaps
it makes sense to say that we cannot control or foresee in every single case
whether and when Isaac, for example, takes an initiative or begins something
new—for example, raises his right hand or says, ‘Your eyes are brown’.
However, this initiative or beginning does not explain whether Isaac under-
stands if or when he has made an error. According to Davidson (2001a: 5,
DELIBERATION IN NATIONAL AND POST-NATIONAL EDUCATION 585

2001b: 205–220), we have to introduce the notion of linguistic communica-

tion and an environment or social milieu in order to give an account of
whether two creatures are following a rule correctly. Davidson argues that
we have to assume that the creatures respond similarly to events and features
in the world, and that they observe each other and correct their behaviour,
intentions, and beliefs intersubjectively.
However, even though this triangular arrangement is a necessary condi-
tion, I believe it is insufficient. It seems to me that it requires deliberation
within linguistic communication. Two interlocutors not only have to partic-
ipate in linguistic communication, they must intersubjectively deliberate
their understanding of the social milieu, their intentions, and their relation
to the physical environment. Otherwise, they would not be able to verbalize
the difference between thinking they are beginning something new and begin-
ning something new. Isaac can express his understanding to Sarah, for exam-
ple, and through deliberation they can come to understand whether Isaac’s
utterance, ‘Your eyes are brown’ means ‘your eyes are brown’ or something
else to Sarah, or whether his utterance is meaningful at all. What is impor-
tant is that the utterance, ‘He or she is beginning something new’, and
understanding of the utterance, ‘Whether he or she takes an initiative cannot
be controlled in every single case’, presuppose regularity. It is obviously
impossible to understand utterances that appear only once and that do not
presuppose an understanding of concepts such as ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘initiative’,
‘controlled’, ‘every single case’, and the combination of such words with
other concepts plus the ability to use them in different situations. It seems to
me that we only understand the beginning of something new and the act of
taking an initiative when we presuppose the triangular situation of at least
two creatures, an environment or social milieu, and deliberating linguistic
communication between them. Such conditions constitute the possibility of
deliberation, and hence education.
While it is a fact that we cannot control or foresee the meaning of utter-
ances between at least two interlocutors, Biesta (1998, 2001) focuses too
strongly on problems related to whether one can foresee and calculate human
action. The problems related to the conditions of possibility of education
concern not only whether one could foresee and calculate human action but
also the conditions for understanding. Foucault-inspired analysts, on the other
hand, seem to focus too strongly on the linguistic-constitutive character of
usage, where others’ usage in relevantly similar situations determines a
person’s use of linguistic utterances. Such an approach is clearly false.
However, this does not suggest that I reject the assertion that ‘the
contents of our thoughts and sayings are partly determined by the history of
causal interactions with the environment’ (Davidson 2001b: 200). We
cannot explain meaning or understanding in terms of what constitutes the
object regulating the subjectivity of the subject or the character of the rela-
tion between subjects. I agree with Davidson that the problem in deciding
what a person means by what he or she says or understands is decided not
only by relying on what others would mean by the same words in similar situ-
ations. A far better explanation seems to be that we interpret a person as he
or she intends, which requires of us that we are clear about the conditions
for understanding.
586 K. ROTH

The triangular situation argument put forward by Davidson (2001b:

206) suggests the following: ‘none of the three forms of knowledge [i.e.
subjectivity, inter-subjectivity, and objectivity] is reducible to one or both of
the others’. It also suggests that the inter-subjective dimension consists of
inter-personal communication; therefore, people have to share a language in
order to understand each other. However, ‘[i]n communication, what a
speaker and the speaker’s interpreter must share is an understanding of what
the speaker means by what he says’ (Davidson 2001b: 210). One assumes in
most cases that a speaker believes what he or she says, and that there is ‘a
degree of logical consistency in the thought of the speaker’ (p. 211). One also
assumes, and has to assume, that the speaker responds ‘to the same features
of the world that he (the interpreter) would be responding to under similar
circumstances’ (p. 211). Davidson calls these principles the principle of
coherence and the principle of correspondence. He subsumes them both
under the principle of charity.
I have argued above that one has to endow a person with a certain degree
of rationality in linguistic communication, and that the source of objectivity
is to be found in the intersubjective relation between at least two interlocu-
tors, because language is essentially social. However, one has to be careful
not to reduce a person’s intentions and beliefs to the standard usage of the
same or similar utterances in relevantly similar situations, or falsely claim
that the supposedly standard usage governs, structures, or regulates them in
a strong sense. Even though communication is the source of objectivity, it
does not follow that similar usage in relevantly similar situations expresses
the same thoughts of each individual in such situations. One also has to be
careful not to focus too strongly on the impossibility of foreseeing or calcu-
lating the meaning of utterances, claiming that the impossibility of predict-
ing with certainty when someone will begin or take an initiative leads to the
impossibility of education in any other sense than the one mentioned.
The triangular situations mentioned above show why one has to understand
the impossibility of education in the context of such situations. This suggests
that the beginning of something new or the taking of an initiative occurs
between interlocutors in a social milieu; and that it is in linguistic commu-
nication that people share their thoughts and can provide a check on linguis-
tic usage. This requires that people share the same or similar ‘reactions to
common stimuli’ (Davidson 2001b: 212), and that they participate in
linguistic communication in order to understand intentions, beliefs, and stan-
dard usage of utterances: ‘the triangulation which is essential to thought
requires that those in communication recognize that they occupy positions
in a shared world’ (Davidson 2001b: 213). As Habermas (1987: 313–314)
says: ‘With any speech act, the speaker takes up a relation to something in
the objective world, something in a common social world, and something in
his own subjective world’.
Habermas’s suggestion that communicative action as a mode of action
co-ordination takes into account the necessary condition of understanding
as a resource for social integration, socialization, and cultural reproduction
is of interest here, as are the dimensions of citizenship discussed above.
Habermas maintains that communicative action, as the primary mode
of reflective societal interaction co-ordination in the lifeworld, refers to
DELIBERATION IN NATIONAL AND POST-NATIONAL EDUCATION 587

linguistic understanding, to Davidson’s ‘holistic externalism’, and to the

process of reaching agreement. It is characterized by the performative atti-
tude, which refers to the subject’s capacity and reflective ability to move
between different formal-world concepts such as the objective world of facts
and states of affairs (objectivity), the social world of normatively-regulated
interaction (intersubjectivity), and the subjective world of inner experience
(subjectivity). Such ability and capacity constitute a pre-condition for a
deliberative transactional attitude to the three formal world-concepts.
These three themes (subjectivity, intersubjectivity and objectivity)
cannot, as has been argued by Habermas (1987: 294–26) and Davidson
(2001b: 193–204, 205–220), be reduced to each other. People cannot gain
an understanding of the world on their own, as has been pointed out by
Davidson. Davidson (2001a: 1–16) argues that a single person cannot differ-
entiate on his or her own between following a rule or thinking he or she is
following a rule. An utterance is understandable, according to Davidson, if
and only if more than one person reacts appropriately to the same objects or
stimuli, and is able to explain what it would mean to be mistaken as well as
to give reason(s) for an appropriate reaction. Such reason giving suggests
that people reach and legitimate intersubjective understanding in delibera-
tive procedures as a legitimate source of objectivity.

Summary

I have argued that the social world cannot be understood without taking into
account different dimensions, the complexity of different lifestyles and
global transformation, and necessary conditions for understanding. I have
also suggested that, by focusing on utterances, people can recognize the
multidimensionality of usage, which includes the relations between the
speaker and the physical world, between speakers, and between the speaker
and his or her inner world. The meaning of an utterance depends, as I have
outlined above, on the meanings of other utterances, as well as the back-
ground of beliefs and practices of speakers. A speaker, then, has to be able
to understand the reason(s) given in support of a claim of validity.
Democratic deliberation between at least two speakers can then be char-
acterized by speakers expressing themselves linguistically in communication,
willing to give reasons for their claims to validity. Speakers can rely heavily
on conventions as shared backgrounds to meanings, which can have a strong
normative force. This can cause clashes between speakers. However, if they
are prepared to give reasons, as well as to let the other try out both the judge-
ments and reasons given for them, then the force of the conventions can be
scrutinized and redeemed. It seems to me that democratic deliberation, as
an investigative, intersubjective, and argumentative procedure, has a decen-
tralizing function in the following senses. First, we can call into question
what people implicitly or explicitly presuppose. Secondly, the limitations of
our understanding of phenomena along different dimensions of deliberation
become apparent. Thirdly, the force and character of legitimization also
become recognizable. Fourthly, we keep apart the themes of subjectivity,
intersubjectivity and objectivity and do not reduce them to each other.
588 K. ROTH

Fifthly, the possibility opens up of understanding, and legitimization in

education through the force of the better argument.
Deliberation in an era of global transformation opens up the possibility
of understanding in education and gives those concerned the opportunity to
understand whatever concerns them on different dimensions. We as educa-
tors have to abandon the idea of furthering a common identity through
education, and view the development of criticality, and hence democratic
competence, differently. Instead of focusing on epistemic aspects only or on
identifying subjects who are in power, or on the objectifying and structuring
economic or governing principles that allegedly regulate social relations, or
on the impossibility of education in the revolutionary sense, we can entertain
the necessary conditions of understanding. This opens up the possibility of
deliberation in (post-)national education, and asking ourselves: ‘How do we
understand this?’, ‘What can or should we do about it?’, and ‘How do we
legitimize our action?’ along different dimensions of citizenship.

Notes

1. See also Englund (2000) for a discussion on education of deliberative citizens.

2. See also Kymlicka (2002: 208–283) for an elaborated discussion of the constitutive char-
acter of the relation between individuals, and the social thesis.

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