Philosophy as a "Method" and/or the Ethics of Relational Ontologies

• In Event: Ontology and Becoming: The Challenge of New Theory to Educational Research and Practice

Abstract

Objectives
This conceptual paper discusses relational ontologies that shape the enactment and production of philosophy and method. Philosophy as a method functions as an ontological, relational, and ethical relationship with thought, self, and the other (Koro-Ljungberg et al., 2014). Relational ontologies bring theories to work and practices to theory; thus functioning as a continuously shifting process, transforming ‘method’ and thought in the act (see also Manning & Massumi, 2014). Such a destabilizing ‘method’ up-roots established humanistic epistemologies and fixed antropocentric ontologies covering a vast territory of thinking, relating, caring, and doing. We consider how theories enter practice of care, how thought in the act functions, how methodologies gain their relational traction, and how ‘thinking,’ and ‘doing’ philosophy as a method shape and is being shaped by relational ontologies, then and now, and what role post humanism and new empiricisms play in these relations.
Theoretical framework and perspectives
Many exciting contemporary research projects reflect how qualitative inquiry (or post-qualitative inquiry) has embraced philosophy as a method through methodological thinking and doing (Lather & St. Pierre, 2013). Post-qualitative scholars have also introduced concept as a method (Lenz Taguchi, 2016), practices of thinking with theory (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012), and post-human scholars (Braidotti, 2013; Barad, 2007) have critiqued anthropocentric ethics and ontologies. Furthermore, Foucault’s work, despite a proliferation of articles and the use of his framework in the past decades, has been less utilized in discussions related to philosophy as a method. Extending Foucault’s later work, which pays more attention to the disciplinarity and self in relation to its historico-social contexts (see Besley & Peters, 2007) we bring Foucault’s (1986) care of self to its relational boundary, and wonder what happens to power/knowledge and method when care of self becomes plural, material, and relational. For Foucault, subject forms constitute themselves as ethical subjects with respect to social and civic activities (relations), and thus it could be proposed that the gaze of examination toward ourselves includes both self and relational forms.
Modes of Inquiry
Philosophy as a method has diverse epistemological and ontological commitments, which can be compatible with each other. We trace these non-linear approaches in this paper through histories and practices of philosophy as a method and question how this method offers possibilities to deterritorialize ontologies of the self and other. Philosophy as a method also enables working within education to analyse educational concerns through the creation of concepts (see Deleuze & Guattari, 1994). Influenced by Massumi (2015) for whom ethics is about “how we inhabit uncertainty, together” (p. 11) we live our immersion in the world and describe our experiences of belonging to the (educational) world.
Scholarly Significance
The scholarly significance of this paper identifies philosophy as a method as a relational ethical relationship with thought and thinking beyond the immediate self and the human. With this method and through thought of the act and matter alike, we describe and practice philosophy as as method that functions as a creative and self structuring process, which needs to be continually reinvented

Authors

• Marek Tesar, The University of Auckland

• Mirka E. Koro-Ljungberg, Arizona State University