During my studies, pursuing education beyond the classroom has been invaluable to experiencing and cultivating teaching relations in philosophy, opening me to the world in which I practice it. Searching for answers beyond our curricula with my peers, I discovered deep teaching relations arise in and as communally rooted and oriented acts of love when we venture together in care beyond our confines. This pursuit seems to suit philosophy’s professed ‘love of wisdom.’ With ‘wisdom’ providing guidance for how to act and be in the world, the attention given in this love situates philosophical practice in attending to, loving, and arising from this care for the world. Philosophers must, when doing philosophy at least, recognise philosophy’s worldly orientation and dependence, and not merely consider the world but remain influentially conscious of this pervasive rooting. When my peers and I found this lacking in our curricula, we found it necessary to consciously make space beyond the classroom to seek more responsible forms of education. The classroom and philosophy do not have to be artificially or accidentally separated from a wider world beyond the interests of any narrowing group of powerful people or epistemically silencing trends.
Our search began as an interdisciplinary Oxford undergraduate and graduate student journal-based group oxford public philosophy (opp). We began learning while curating resources on topics and forms left out of our philosophy curricula. As we developed, we strived to remain rooted in care throughout the pandemic and transformed into an international and interinstitutional learning space which transgresses traditional boundaries. In this context, I recognized certain attitudes towards teaching philosophy which made our project successful, despite very much still feeling like a student in a freshly unfolding universe with urgent messages and expectations for how we ought to learn together. In this post, I discuss these teaching ‘attitudes’ which enable multi-directional ‘teaching relations’. They are practices that themselves teach us how to cultivate open-minded and deeply curious investigative inquiries as acts of love that move us towards understanding and practicing what it means to live wisely.
Our circumstances
Oxford public philosophy (opp) began as a student-run annual online philosophy journal aimed at challenging the forms and content of our philosophical practices as we experience them from our positions in the world by welcoming contributions from academics, students, and institutionally unaffiliated thinkers and by encouraging continued participation and accessible learning through open online discussion groups, podcasts, and learning resources. We sought to curate a space that opened inquiry beyond our eurocentric curricula. We came, originally as Oxford students from different disciplinary and cultural backgrounds at various stages in our learning trajectories, to create a learning space for philosophy where and when no physical space existed for such a learning community at large at Oxford and just before the pandemic drastically changed many learning environments. We came with questions guiding us, not answers; with our own judgments and limits; with our own strengths and experiences.
In opening ourselves repeatedly to transgressing boundaries we found refreshing possibilities in grappling with philosophical and human questions that arosed as enforced boundaries and preconceptions fell or melted away. We faced questions about how to organise, inquire, curate and share resources, and teach without silencing others or cutting off those very peoples and wisdoms we sought to hear from.
Although strategies must cater to specific contexts, I can share some lessons from our time in case they are of use to you in a similar search and as attitudes you may adapt to your circumstances. Hopefully opp’s work and these lessons of attitude can contribute to your finding and cultivating wisdom practices from omitted philosophies and to generating more open teaching relations in and beyond our institutions and classrooms. Extending a caring practice at every stage requires work, but there are many philosophies rooted in care to provide guidance. I extend what I have learned as an act of love and community, and as part of a world-oriented philosophical practice. These detailed attitudes of ‘teachers,’ ‘experimentation,’ and ‘practice’ aim to open up the multi-directionality and abundance of teaching relations available in each moment within and beyond the classroom. Please use them to look to philosophers and traditions with much more wisdom.
Attitudes for cultivating teaching relations
1- Towards teachers
The first attitude of learning that I will introduce involves seeing an abundance of teachers in every moment. We can ground this extensive opening practice in bell hook’s teachings on critical pedagogy. She gave opp student organisers language to articulate, guide, and situate our looking beyond the classroom as the first step in pervasively and progressively opening our receptivity to different types of learning. When we did and saw this, we enhanced our recognition of possible teaching relations. bell hooks called this expanded learning practice ‘teaching to transgress’. We had connected across traditional cultural and instructional demarcations, such as degree stage, discipline, institution, generation, and nationality to seek philosophy neglected from our curricula. Such freeing transgression only continued and enhanced our practice of openness and opening as we communed in free virtual discussion groups, the free journal, and other educational content. I felt and saw how everyone is both a potential teacher and student in learning relations. Possible teaching relations reached back and forward in time, across generations around the world. But the possibility of finding teaching improves with an openness to recognising these teaching relations and a receptivity to broader horizons of learning.
I felt in constant awe of my many teachers, whether they were my undergraduate history student peers, or guests who we invited to speak at groups sessions or on podasts, or contributors to our journal or online classroom, like Sanskrit philosophy specialists in the USA. I was often so inspired by their work that I most often placed myself as a student, simply learning from all rather than also as a teacher, mentor, or guide for others. I held hope for responsible action without fixating or enforcing official or traditionally expected roles. Our non-hierarchical organisation was only a tool for the lived practice, which can feel uncomfortable when your norms have been taught through a hierarchical lens. However, actively curating relationships where we interact in learning enterprises alongside many forms of teachers, promises revised understandings of education and community. When we actively seek to create learning partnerships where we can challenge conceptions together, our learning becomes more perception shifting and farther reaching in worldly action. We cultivate a transformative learning environment.
Learning communities can recognise, however, that some expertise might be more developed and some wisdom more profound. Our virtual medium enabled us to learn from teachers around the world across disciplines and generations. Broad exposure afforded us perspective to craft distinctions and analyses that we could not have done within a narrower philosophy. We engaged in discussions initiated by our inspiring advisor Alice Crary, journal contributors takaharu oda and vassilis galanos as well as the Acorn editors), and experts like Parimal Patil on Sanskrit philosophy and Jane Anna Gordon on creolisation. We also engaged with teachings on diverse older traditions (Roy Tzohar, Chike Jeffers, and Samuel Imbo) as well as today’s analyses (Tommy Curry, Joy James, Lee A. McBride III) which helped us further confront in thought and action the strictures of our institutions.
Such teachers not only continued to open our minds but also impressed upon us the ethical import of transgressing boundaries to make way for philosophies of transformation in thought and practice. Insightful teachers and resources on areas neglected from mainstream eurocentric curricula abound. A little searching and space-opening from those with access and privilege form only one step towards exploring and practicing embedded and critical philosophising. World-oriented teaching relations arise in every moment when we root our learning communities in care, including and vitally for philosophy.
2- Towards experimentation
This consciously world-oriented practice not only opened up new teachers and materials but also involved actively incorporating more forms and aspects of our experience, bringing new dimensions to teaching relations in philosophy. The transgression of boundaries —topical, disciplinary, media, form— offered new opportunities for learning in creative experimentation: we explored new conceptual frameworks, intersected what we learned about different traditions, revisited narratives and assumptions, tested varying methodologies, and entertained differing styles while incorporating art, music, and virtual media into our presentations. We found and created new tools of analysis and reflection from across traditions and forms. The possibilities of what we and philosophy could be and do opened up. Challenging the form and content of practiced philosophy appeared to be fundamental to philosophising itself.
There are few guidelines for publishing philosophy that challenge traditional form and content. In our learning endeavours, we could not claim a ‘right’ way to do philosophy less than continually open this for reflection. We could curate a questioning space with the help of words and visuals, and the thought of daring, incisive thinkers. We could use our toolkits and artistic palettes to aid reasoning. With varied exposure contrasting hegemonic norms, we could also come to distinguish for ourselves insightful practices and beneficial skills relative to chosen and articulated goals across forms, content, and topics. We could distinguish strategies of exclusion from preference and from critical engagement.
Opening a new arena of play, such as with how to present and make more accessible our artistically curated online journals, can be stimulating and fun, but as our global teachers and world-oriented reflection impressed upon us, suffering and lives make this transgression all the more important. This sort of value fuels our mission to look beyond the confines of our institutions without forgetting our ties to them. University students have in common limits of workload and exposure, but limits placed on many others are much more stifling. Philosophers must grapple with the oppressive limits of their philosophical institutions,with philosophical justifications of oppressive acts, and with practices that silence objections and alternative ways of doing philosophy, in order to uphold the more considered and consciously caring philosophy that arises from truly embracing wider rigorous investigations and contemplations. Philosophy should not be separated from its practice but rather recognised as world-arisen, world-embedded, and world-enacted. Philosophical practice is influential, and philosophers must take responsibility for its —our—effects.
3- Towards practice
The opportunity to take responsibility also arises in every moment and involves being open to becoming more conscious of the world we affect and effect. This attitude is a lifelong practice and involves learning to open up and take responsibility, all bundled in care and attention. It extends to and beyond philosophising but can also be supported by it. I learned about this in pursuing Buddhist philosophies, among others, and began to understand its power and refinement through my work with opp. As a start, we can call this letting go of attachment to self-centred intentions (and its consequences).
I, like others, was keenly aware that I understood myself to be a student and not an expert. I specialised in Buddhist philosophy and social philosophy more than some around me but in pushing beyond our institutional confines, I was emotively confronted with how much more I had to learn. Older than others, an instigator of the group, a central organizer, and, later, one of the longest remaining participants, I could easily be located as a source of authority despite our group’s commitment to maintaining a nonhierarchical structure. Early on, despite this belief, I found difficulty in practicing letting others speak and question decisions, whether driven by my own opinion, anxieties, concerns about misunderstandings or the group’s wellbeing. I began to practice letting go so others could curate the space. I began to welcome the unease of letting go of my inclination to do more than suggest or support, and to note this feeling as a sign of when to practice letting go even more. I found this blossomed into unexpected, wonderful creations. This meant letting go of some of my own paths and projects or putting them on the back burner so that those fueled by the energy of the group could blossom according to the needs, energy, and love available. This was a beautiful practice although sometimes sad as we had to meet the realities of high workloads and exams with human care and acceptance. However, this lifelong practice brought new depth and dimensions to learning and cultivating caring philosophy as rooted in and embracing the world and its living beings. The practice blooms from and supports the care in and for the world fuels philosophy, and we have the chance to practice this letting go –opening up to loving, learning, and uncountable teaching relations– every moment.
As a graduate student recognising my position and seeking more responsible learning, I have necessarily transgressed boundaries beyond the classroom in a communal questioning. Broadening our horizons gives us the choice, with more perspective and investigation of the extent of our effects, to take greater responsibility for our actions in the world. This philosophy is oriented to public care, welcomes participation and group learning, and becomes transgressive by overstepping parts of the world and our experience that we have fragmented. Considering more diverse philosophies demands we question our cultural beliefs and categorisations, including the nature of philosophy itself. But perhaps through an extensively care-rooted, loving learning community informed by the sorts of attentions I have described, we can explore limits and tensions with a practice of love
alicehank winham
alicehank winham studied BA Philosophy and Theology at Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford, where ze is now pursuing an MPhil Buddhist Studies at Lady Margaret Hall through the Faculty of Oriental Studies soon to be renamed the ‘Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.’ Ze focuses on philosophy of logic and language and social epistemology across traditions, including classical Buddhist philosophy and its modern interpreters, feminist philosophy, and the Black Radical Tradition. alicehank is also dedicated to critical pedagogy, philosophies of transformation and liberation, and social and environmental activism, such as through mentoring programmes, publishing journals, and direct action.
