Philosophy and Religion, Part 8c
Who
decides?
This is Part 8 of a course on Philosophy and Religion. In this part, so
far, we have looked at three chapters of Paulo Freire’s “The Pedagogy of the
Oppressed”, with Chapter 1 of that book being taken as the default discussion
text for study-circle purposes.
Although “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed” is on the face of it a book
about education, yet what we have found is that the author has felt himself
compelled to reach down to the very foundations of philosophy so as to find a
firm ground upon which to rest his educational theories.
In the process, Freire enriches the literature of philosophy, as well as
that of education, by re-stating the dialectics of the Subject and the Object,
using it to illuminate education, and as a return gift to philosophy, providing
an object lesson in the meaning of philosophy and making a good illustration of
what philosophy is for.
Similarly, in the world of urbanism and housing, philosophy is an
absolutely practical necessity, and although the fields are different, yet the
philosophy applied remains much the same.
John Turner, author of “Housing by People” (see the linked chapters
below), was preoccupied with the same foundational problem (subjectivity;
agency; freedom) as Freire. Turner problematised it as a relationship of
“paternalism and filialism” (father-ism and child-ism), which is immediately
recognisable as the very opposite of the “co-intent Subjects” proposed as a
solution by Freire.
Turner writes:
“Paternalism and filialism, the modern descendents of
attitudes more generally associated by Europeans with the Middle Ages, are
still very common attitudes in Britain. These are especially evident in the
common assumption that the 'ordinary' citizen or 'layman', is utterly dependent
on the 'extraordinary' citizen or the 'professional', who cultivates the
mystery of his or her activity in order to increase dependency and professional
fees.”
Paternalism means fatherliness while Filialism means taking the posture
of the child. Turner means that professionals, as well as the State, take a
parental role, while the people are infantilised.
Turner’s diagram
The diagram above is from Turner’s “Housing by People”. It shows “who
decides” in two different kinds of housing project: the locally self-governing
or autonomous one on the left; and
the centrally-administered-from-above or heteronomous
type, on the right.
Turner says that it is not necessary for people to be so extremely
autonomous that they must do everything for themselves, like land-owning
peasants. Such a life is very hard, cruel, backward, limited and unsocialised.
Yet, if all decisions are taken out of the hands of individuals, they cease, to
that extent, to have “agency”; they cease to be Subjects; they cease to be
free; they cease to be human.
In South Africa, with its “RDP Houses”, it is easy to see that nearly
all the decisions that affect the people in the area of “Housing” are taken far
above their heads. The right-hand part of the above diagram applies, in full.
The possibilities for leaving decisive power in the hands of the popular
masses, like in the left-hand part of the diagram, have been closed.
Such decisions include the location, demarcation and distribution of
houses, their design and quality of building, and the provision of amenities
and services. The people who must then live in these houses do so without any
of their autonomous culture, except to the extent that it is contained in their
living persons.
Karl Marx, in the Manifesto, wrote that “the free development of each is
the condition for the free development of all.” By application of that
philosophy to the field of housing, we can see that what South Africa has
executed in this field is in general something far less than freedom. Even such
freedom as could have been available, has mostly been over-run by “heteronomy”
(decision by others).
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: Housing by People, C1
and 6, Who decides?, 1976, Turner.
