deliberation, tradition, and the problem of incommensurability: philosophical reflections on...

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DELIBERATION, TRADITION, AND THE PROBLEM OF INCOMMENSURABILITY: PHILOSOPHICAL

REFLECTIONS ON CURRICULUM DECISION MAKING Jonathan Cohen

School of Education Hebrew University

INTRODUCTION: THE NOTION OF DELIBERATION A most important framework for the legitimation and justification of curricu-

lum decisions was bequeathed to the field of education by Joseph Schwab. This framework, called “deliberation” by Schwab and his school, has formed the basis for ongoing discussion and debate in the area of curriculum theory and practice for close to thirty years - ever since Schwab’s famous series of articles on the ”Practical” made its appearance in the early seventies.’ Broadly speaking, the deliberative orientation to the justification of curriculum decisions is predicated on three foundations .2

First, theory and practice are two discrete modes of human pursuit that can be systematically distinguished and characterized. Theory aspires to knowledge that is “durable and extensive.’’ Theoretical investigation is undertaken ”as if” its subject matter were “constant from instance to instance and impervious to changing circumstance.” Theoretical problems emerge from within the disciplines of knowledge when scientists are confronted by phenomena of which they have not yet been able to give an account in terms of known theoretical principles. Method in theory involves the control of inquiry by diverse types of such principles (such as taxonomy, teleological stage theory, and quantified correlations of changes in variables). Such principles generate research questions, determine what is to be considered “data,” and provide canons for the legitimate systematization of data. Practice, on the other hand, culminates in decisions - selections of courses of action from among

1. The ”practical series” we speak of includes the following essays: Joseph Schwab, The Practical: A Language for Curriculum [Washington D.C.: National Educational Association, 1970); Joseph Schwab, “The Practical: Arts of Eclectic,” in School Review 79 [August 1971 ): 493-5142; and Joseph Schwab, “The Practical 3: Translation into Curriculum,” in School Review 81 (August, 1973): 501-22. Examples of the ongoing discussion of the deliberative framework include both analysis of its character and case stumes of its implementation. Some representativeitems are: Warner Wick, “Knowledge and Action: The Theory and Practice of the Practical,” Curriculum Theory Network 10 (Fall 1972): 37-44; Seymour Fox, “A Practical Image of the Practical,” Curriculum Theory Network 10 [Fall 19723345-57; Thomas Roby, “Problem Situations andcurricular Resources at Central College, AnExemplification of Curricular Arts,” Curriculum Inquiry 8, no. 2 (1978): 95-117; Peter Pereira, “Deliberation and the Arts of Perception,” Journal of Curriculum Studies 16, no. 4 11984): 347-66; Irene Harris, ”Communicating the Character of Deliberation,” Tournnlof Curriculum Sru les 18, no. 2 [ 1986): 115-32; Oded Schremer, ”Breaking Through the Curriculum Theoretical Mode,” Journal of Curriculum Studies 23, no. 4 [1991): 327-39; Jill Sinclair Bell, “Finding the Commonplaces of Literacy,” Curriculum Inquiry 23, no. 2 [ 1993): 131-53; and Jonathan Cohen, “Enacting the Eclectic: The Case of Jewish Philosophy,” Journal of Curriculum Studies30, no. 2 [ 1998).

2. Summary and quotes derived from Schwab, The Practical: A Language for Curriculum, 2-5, 10-14.

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alternatives, not in warranted knowledge. The subject matter of the practical has to do with unique, idiosyncratic configurations of unrecurring circumstances. Practical decisions are justified or legitimated only with reference to the situation under consideration, and are neither “durable or extensive” beyond it. Practical problcms do not have to do with incoherence in our cognition of phenomena, but rather with human desires deemed to have been either satisfied or unfulfilled. Finally, the practical deliberation process - involving the formulation of problems and the proposal and testing of solutions - can never be controlled by abstract principles, lest the uniqueness and complexity of the idiosyncratic situation elude the perception of the deliberators.

Second, curriculum decision making is a practical activity, although it must have recourse to theory in order to carry forth its business: the articulation of educational problems and the advancement of curricular solutions. Ready-to-hand theoretical encasements of information bearing on student learning, teacher thinking, societal trends, and conceptions of subject-matter are indispensable resources for the deliberator. They absolve him/her of the “necessity of obtaining firsthand information” pertinent to the educational situation he/she is confronting.

Finally, the recourse to theory from within the practical can be had through what Schwab calls the “eclectic.” Rather than suborlnating educational practice to the hegemony of a given theory, whether psychoanalytic, neo-Marxist, existentialist, classicist, or whatever, multiple theoretical perspectives (their assumptions and limitations having been uncovered by philosophical analysis) should be accessed in ”reading” problem situations and suggesting solutions only insofar as they are deemed illuminating by the deliberating body concerned with the unique situation at hand. All theories are, by nature, both incomplete and partial. They are incomplete, because they “carve” out only one “cut” of reality for rigorous and disciplined inquiry (the “market,” “personality,” ”society,” or “living matter”). They are partial, because they offer only one perspective on their limited subject matter (”formalist” literature or “psycho-history”). For this reason, no one theory or group of theories should be allowed to slant deliberation on necessarily multifaceted educational situations.

Schwab’s acute awareness of the incompleteness and partiality of theory was evident long before the publication of his famous “Practical” series. His postpositivist understanding of the decisive role of varieties of circumscribed conceptual schemes in mediating between so-called “logic” and so-called “fact” can be discerned in essays published as early as 1949-51.3 Gary Fenstermacher, in an article on the

.

3. See in particular: Joseph Schwab, ”The Nature of Scientific Knowledge as Related to Liberal Education,” lournu1 of General Education 3 (1949): 245-66; Joseph Schwab, “The Three-Year Program in the Natural Sciences” in Science Curriculum and Liberal Education, ed. Joseph Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978),43-67; and Joseph Schwab, ”Dialectical Means vs. Dogmatic Extremes in Relation to Liberal Education,” Hurvurd Educational Review 21, no. 11 1951): 37-64.

JONATHAN COHEN is Lecturer at the School of Education, Hebrew University, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem, Israel. His primary areas of scholarship are philosophy of education, curriculum theory, and Jewish thought.

COHEN Deliberation, Tradition. and Incommensurabilitv 73

philosophical significance of Schwab’s work, claims that Schwab anticipated Tho- mas Kuhn’s articulation of “the revolutionary character of science. ’I4 Indeed, it is not difficult to sense the kinship between Schwab’s notion of “substantive” and “syntactic” structures presiding over inquiry a within a discipline and Kuhn’s notion of “paradigms.”j Harvey Siegel, in a comparative study, points to important similari- ties between Schwab’s notions of “stable” and “fluid” inquiry and Kuhn’s conceptions of ”normal” and “extraordinary” science.61n addition (and this will concern us further on), Schwab was independently aware of what Kuhn termed the problem of “incommensurability” in theory, namely that theories often differ radically concerning what they claim to be the very subject matter and canons of verification that are to be the mark of their di~cipline.~

Given the above, it becomes germane to ask what might happen to the Schwabian framework of deliberation if it were exposed to some of the questions raised by further postpositivist thinking on the problems of incommensurability and traditions of inquiry. Might the insights of Alasdair MacIntyre and others necessitate some rethinking of deliberation as a framework for the justification of curricular decisions? By the conclusion of this essay, we hope to have shed some light on this question.

DELIBERATION - A SENSE OF UNEASE One of the features of deliberation as a mode of justifying curricular decisions is

its treatment of the relation between educational means and ends as a reciprocal ”feedback” system. Curriculum planners should, on this view, be prepared to reorient their ends in the light of the success or failure of chosen means (and vice versa). In his famous The Practical: A Language for Curriculum, Schwab says in so many words, “the consideration of means determines ends as much as ends determine the search for means.”8 Elsewhere, Schwab tells us that educational ends, whether formulated imperfectly in the form of objectives, or revealed reflexively to deliberators in the course of the testing of experimental programs, “are specified and projected values of the planning group, values possessed and understood in terms broader than education and much broader than any one concrete bit of educational c~rr iculum.’~~ A change in “ends,” then, in Schwab’s understanding of the term, might not only have to do with the number of vocabulary words a fourth-grade child is to be expected to memorize. It could very well involve a basic shift in the overall educational ideal motivating the curriculum.

4. Gary Fenstermacher, “The Nature of Science and Its Uses for Education: Remarks on the Philosophical Import of Schwab’s Work,” Curriculum Inquiry 10, no. 2 (1980): 191-97. 5. One of the essays in which Schwab explicates his concept of “substantive structure” is “Problems, Topics, Issues” in Education and the Structure of Knowledge, ed. Stanley Elam (Chicago: Rand McNally,

6. Harvey Siegel, “Kuhn and Schwab on Science Texts and the Goals of Science Education,” Educational Theory 28, no. 4 (1978): 302-9. 7. The notions of “incompatibility and “incommensurability” are discussed in Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 97-98, 148-50, 198-204. 8. Schwab, The Practical: A Language, 4 [emphasis mine) 9. Schwab, “The Practical 3,” 506-7.

1964), 4-47.

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From the standpoint of the deliberative framework, then, members of a curriculum group should be ready, if necessary, to either compromise, defer, or perhaps even give up on the realization of some of the values implicit in their view of educational ends, if contact with the problem seems to make the realization of these ends unfeasible or counterproductive. Following Dewey, Schwab believed that decisions taken by groups of people should be judged by their ability to bring about a "satisfying restoration of balance" for those "who are caught up in the problem."'0 Conflicting worldviews, educational visions, and theories must undergo a process of mutual accommodation and collective adaptation to idiosyncratic educational realities since, as we have seen, education is to be regarded as a "practical" activity. Curricular decisions taken on grounds other than these cannot be considered educationally justified, however consistently they be rooted in theories coherent in themselves.

In recalling seminars conducted under the aegis of the deliberative orientation, I remember a distinct type of unease that would almost invariably set in among some of the more concerned and involved Participants." Certain students, by no means dogmatic or fundamentalist in orientation, would express misgivings about the degree of flexibility demanded of the curriculum group with regard to certain views, attitudes, or actions they regarded as cardinal ends of the educational process. Should educational realities lead one to change or revise one's most deeply-held beliefs? How far can and should one go in the revision of ends in the light of the success or failure of means? For some reason it was felt that the deliberative framework didnot address the question of the normative ground of educational visions, that ground that forms the very basis for compromise and accommodation. Suspension or modification of ends would seem to be possible only against the background of an integrated vision that can judge this or that move as a "reconstruction" or a "radical departure." True, the deliberative framework certainly does advise us that motion toward the solution of problems must be informed by an awareness of the values that the participants in deliberation regard as cardinal. The wise curriculum specialist will proceed on the assumption that people do not readily change their values, and are likely to undermine courses of action that they perceive to run contrary to their values. Within the framework of such an approach, however, the values of the participants become one more contingency (albeit a very important one) to be negotiated within the overall constellation of the unique practical situation being addressed by the group. The deliberative process itself cannot generate or sanction norms apart from its own internal norm of the meeting of well-articulated needs and perpetually dynamic problem solving12

10. Joseph Schwab, "The Impossible Role of theTeacher in Progressive Education," in Science, Curriculum, 170, 175. 11. I refer in particular to seminars conducted by Prof. Seymour Fox of the Hebrew University's School of Education, one of Schwab's foremost students and expositors. 12. I am indebted to Prof. Michael Rosenak, also of the School of Education of the Hebrew University, for the crystallization of this insight, which, until1 was exposed to his formulation, subsistedas nothing more than a vague discomfort. In Michael Rosenak's, Commandments and Concerns {Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 198 71,199, he states, "although deliberation exposes alternatives and permits rational analysis of diverse possibilities ... it does not create norms. Norms arise out of a self-understood model [picture of reality] and its Weltanschauung [the systematic articulation of that picture] which guides investigation."

COHEN Deliberation, Tradition, and Incommensurability 75

DELIBERATION AND NORMATMTY Clearly, the justification of curricular decisions does not take place in a

normative vacuum, as Israel Scheffler, in his by now classic essay, has shown.13 Scheffler asks, among other things, how we might understand the difference between the terms “relative” justification and “general,” or “nonrelative” justification of ”moves” (understood as controllable actions chosen by a free agent). “Relative” justification refers to the rationale given for a particular choice of action in light of its conformity with the rules of a certain “game,” such as the legal system of a state or time-honored educational traditions. ”General” justification, however, means that such sets of rules must themselves be justified by determining whether they cohere with “that family of beliefs that as a whole commands our highest degree of confidence. ” l4

For Scheffler, then, unless there is to be an infinite regress, all our sets of rules for the justification of practices in education and elsewhere must receive their final justification in some overarching, normative set of beliefs. This vision becomes “fundamental” for the educator. As such, it is likely to exhibit the kind of durability that no degree of deliberative flexibility can readdy overcome.

Further, it has been noted that even the “problem situations” and the subsequently formulated “problems” confronted within the framework of deliberation often arise within the context of a normative tradit i~n.’~ A certain tradition, say the liberal-democratic or social-democratic tradition, no longer commands the allegiance of certain segments of the population (due to immigration from countries with no democratic tradition or a resurgence of fundamentalism, among other things). Educators representing a given religious tradition find that their canonical texts no longer ”speak” to increasing numbers of young people (due in part to recognizable secularization processes or the overall crisis of the humanities in a specialized society.)

At this juncture, it might be worthwhile to pose the following question: How might a given tradition continue to provide a normative point of departure for the justification of curricular decisions so that education will not be directed only by a discourse of “needs” and “problems” that have no ground in a fundamental, nonnegotiable vision? In order to serve in such a role, must a tradition necessarily forfeit one of the main deliberative virtues mentioned above, namely the possibility of viewing and evaluating educational situations from more than one theoretical perspective? Can a tradition absorb insights from ever-changing thought-systems and theories while retaining its identity and integrity? Does this not present US with the seemingly insoluble problem of the radical “incommensurability” of conceptual frameworks? In what follows we will not claim that the problem of incommensurability can be fully overcome or solved. We suggest a more circumscribed, yet

13. See Israel Scheffler, “Justifying Curriculum Decisions,” in Readings in Philosophy of Education: A Study of Curriculum, ed. Jane Roland Martin (Boston, Allyn, and Bacon, 1970),23-31.

14. Scheffler, “Justdying Curriculum Decisions,” 26.

15. Rosenak, Commandments and Concerns, 22-23.


nonetheless significant, possibility. In our view, some recent philosophical develop- ments would appear to offer resources for the location of a dimension of substantive continuity between seemingly irreducible, normative world-views. At the end of the essay, we hope to be able to briefly indicate the relevance of such theoretical continuity between incommensurable thought-systems as ground for the justification of curriculum decisions.

THE PHENOMENON OF INCOMMENSURABILITY

The phenomenon of incommensurability, as understood by Kuhn and Schwab, derives from the situation that theories differ not only in their interpretation of supposedly fixed “facts” or ”truths,” but in the determination of what is to be considered a “fact” or “truth” andin the criteria they propose for so dignifying agiven datum or statement.I6 Kuhn and Schwab could not characterize the growth of knowledge as a simple accretion of “facts.” The assumption of logical positivism, that “objective facts” continue to accumulate under the aegis of successive theories that are logically subsumable one to the other, was no longer viable for them. For them, the growth of knowledge was understood in terms of continuous creative generation of often mutually contradictory conceptual schema that heuristically serve to provide more comprehensive and consistent “pictures’’ of the properties of and the relations obtaining between the so-called “data” of experience.

A brief account of some of the features of incommensurability in theory, as understood by Kuhn and Schwab, might serve to clarify the notion more fully. First of all, different theories in the sciences “populate” the universe with different kinds of entities that maintain different kinds of interactions. These types of entities and types of interactions arenot logically reconcilable one to the other, and for this reason they are termed “incommensurable.” For example, light cannot be both corpuscular and wave-like at the same time. Gravity cannot be seen both as a universal attraction operative between bodies anywhere in space (Newton] and as the “essential nature” of bodies to move toward the “center“ (Aristotle’s “earth”). Second, incommensurable “paradigms” do not only differ in what Schwab calls “substantive structure,” namely, the characterization of the entities and interactions that are to constitute the subject matter of a discipline. Kuhn’s notion of a discrete and integral “paradigm” of scientific research, irreconcilable with others, includes also Schwab’s notion of “syntactic structure,” or the approved “pathways toward verification” by which the scientific community moves from what is conceived to be a legitimate problem to what is conceived to be a legitimate solution.“ Within a Freudian paradigm, behavioral aberrations are mere “symptoms” of disturbances whose origin and peculiar dynamics lie in the unconscious. It would not be “scientific” to seek an “explanation” for epiphenomena within the realm of those very epiphenomena (behavior). Within a Skinnerian paradigm, the only legitimate medium within which patterns can be detected and intervention implemented is a medium available to

16. See note 7.

17. Schwab, “Problems, Topics, Issues,” 10-1 1


sense-experience. Work in another realm would be considered “occult” and “unsci- entific.” These two orientations to psychological research cannot be made logically continuous, since the differences between them have to do with what MacIntyre calls ”presuppositions” regarding the nature of the legitimate field of investigation, the locus of relevant data, and “standards” as to how research procedures are to be judged.I8

Any characterization of the phenomenon of incommensurability must include reference to the manner in which conflicts between incommensurable theories are adjudicated within the scientific community. Once more, such conflicts, based as they are on logical contradictions regarding fundamental patternings of reality, cannot be solved by mere subsumption. It is not a matter of simply assimilatingmore and more “facts” within one overarching logical scheme, or extending a given logical scheme so that it might include another such scheme related to a different realm of experience. Since competing theories are irreconcilable, other considerations must come into play. For example, Kuhn refers to the ability of a given paradigm to solve problems that have been on the agenda of a scientific community for a long time. Further, if the new paradigm surprisingly solves problems that its originator did not even claim to be able to solve, the paradigm’s credibility is significantly enhanced. Quantitative exactitude and aesthetic ”elegance” are also inf1~ential.l~ Although complete logical subsumption in science is not to be expected, a theory that allows for what Schwab calls “interconnectivity” - or explanation of material that had previously been accounted for by multiple theories under one theoretical rubric - is to be preferred. So too are theories termed “adequate,” the kind that account for the full variety of phenomena as well as the complexity of their interaction within a more circumscribed subject matter. New theories should also be ”feasible”; in other words, they should allow for the adaptation of familiar techniques and instruments to the new research orientation.20

Kuhn and Schwab take pains to point out that these criteria are far from arbitrary, and that theory-adoption is not simply “relative” to historical, cultural, or individual idiosyncrasy. Yet taken together they do not lead to the conclusion that, with the adoption of a new paradigm, a closer approximation to ’/reality” has been achieved.21 As MacIntyre explains, since the claims of competing paradigms are embedded in such radically diverse contexts, there can be no appeal to purportedly “neutral and independent data afforded by observation.”22 Paradigms come “bearing their own conceptualizations of the observable reality of which they give an account.” There- fore, there can be no appeal “away from the body of theory to the (as it were)

18. Alasdair MacIntyre, ”The Relationship of Philosophy to its Past,” in Philosophyin History: Essays on the Historiography o f Philosophy, ed. Richard Rorty, Jerome B. Schneewind, and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 34. 19. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 153-56. 20. Joseph Schwab, “What Do Scientists Do? in Schwab, Science Curriculum and Liberal Education, 206- 12.

21. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 152-53, 205-7. 22. MacIntyre, “The Relationshp of Philosophy to its Past,” 41.

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independently and neutrally observable character of reality.” As Kuhn points out, there is no neutral observation-language that could serve as a test for the adequacy of one theory as compared to another. Before the emergence of the hermeneutic movement in North America, Kuhn was already speaking of scientists working under different paradigms as belonging to different “language communities” beset by problems of “translation” (an issue taken up more fully by MacIntyre, as we shall

THE PHENOMENON OF INCOMMENSURABILITY AND SCHWABIAN DELIBERATION: MITIGATING INCOMMENSURABILITY THROUGH THE PRACTICAL

We have seen that Schwab, while he never explicitly made use of Kuhn’s term “incommensurability,” nonetheless assumed a similar perspective regarding the mutual irreducibility of competing substantive and syntactical structures in the disciplines. For reasons that should now be clear, Schwab believed that the phenomenon of incommensurability could not be addressed within the realm of theory. Theory, with its demands for logical consistency and its abhorrence of internal contradiction, cannot spread its net over mutually exclusive substantive and meth- odological presuppositions and force them into some kind of intellectual Procrustean bed. For Schwab, it was not to be considered surprising that we do not find ourselves at the threshold of some new “super-theory” that is about to reconcile all the reigning theories of ”personhood” in philosophy, theology, anthropology, psychology, and sociology into one internally consistent “picture.” All theories are partial, perspec- tival, and in principle subject to replacement and ~ h a n g e . ~ ~ A thoroughgoing version of the deliberative scheme would have to include all types of theories within the purview of this claim, theological and philosophical as well as scientific. Indeed, Schwabprefers, at one point, to speakof philosophynot as a totalway of life dedicated to the pursuit of truth, but rather as a ”branch of scholarly inquiry” that has ”problems of its own which it investigates much as science

The problem of incommensurability would seem to make any intelligible interchange between theoretical standpoints virtually impossible. One way that Schwabian deliberation attempts to deal with this difficulty is by positing the concept of “commonplaces,” namely common foci of reference that the different theories may interpret in often radically different ways but that they cannot ignore if they want to remain within their discipline [like motion and energy for the physicist or composition and characterization for the literary analyst).26 This, typically, is a functional solution - indicating terms communities of inquiry may find useful, aposteriori, for the specification of areas of controversy. Commonplaces, however, cannot foster long-term theoretical alliances or coalitions, since they have

23. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 202-4. 24. See Joseph Schwab, ”On the Corruption of Education by Psychology,” School Review 66 11958): 183 as well as Schwab, “The Practical: Arts of Eclectic,” 502.

25. Schwab, ”The Nature of Scientific Knowledge,” 249-51. 26. For Schwab’s understanding of the concept of “commonplace,” see Schwab, “Problems, Topics, Issues,” 56 as well as Schwab, “The Practical: Arts of Eclectic,” 513. The n posteriori character of commonplace construction is eminently revealed in Bell, “Finding the Commonplaces of Literacy.”


nothing intrinsically durable about them, being the result of conventional agreement rather than the attainment of some measure of truth about the abiding components of objectively distinguished areas of reality.

The incommensurability of perspectives makes communication drfficult to say the least, and yet we must engage in collective problem solving. Decisions have to be made on the basis of tentative truths. Since incommensurability cannot be theoretically dissipated, the deliberative framework proposes that it be practically mitigated. It is this impetus that lies behind Schwab’s concept of the “eclectic.” The preferability of a given theory, or group of theories, is to be determined by consensus on its adequacy in the solution of an unrepeatable practical problem.27

What would be the case, however, if the problem of incommensurability could be addressed, i f only partially, in the realm of theory itself? Then there might not necessarily be a need to ”export” the solution to the territory of practice and decision making. What if long-standing traditions or overarching human orientations have found ways to appropriate incommensurable conceptual frameworks, without thereby blunting the incommensurability that obtains between these frameworks and without undermining their own fundamental telos? If this were so, the existence of theoretical alternatives might not necessarily have to be perceived as subversive of the integrity of such tradrtions or orientations. Such an understanding of the tradition-process suggests that curricular decisions could be validated from within philosophical or theological traditions that are significantly multivoiced yet funda- mentally normative. This would make it unnecessary for the locus of normativity to be transferred to “the problem” and its satisfactory solution.

THEORETICAL CONTINUITY DESPITE INCOMMENSURABILITY “POST-POSTPOSITMST” PERSPECTIVES

Any attempt to assert the possibility of theoretical continuity between ”paradigms” or “substantive and syntactic structures” must first take note of the fact that incommensurabilities between theories can emerge at different levels of generality. MacIntyre has distinguished between two overall levels of generality at which incommensurabilities can present themselves.2s The first level of theoretical conflict might appear within the framework of a given natural science, say, physics. Within this level, if we stick to the example that MacIntyre himself brings, we might encounter an incommensurability between the concepts of weight and mass as defined by Sir Isaac Newton and that of mass as defined within quantum theory. Nonetheless, at a higher level of generality, the level that MacIntyre calls Weltanschauung, these contending rivals can be seen as providing incompatible accounts of “one and the same subject matter” and offering us rival means of achieving “one and the same set of theoretical goals.” Both partake of the worldview

27. In ”The Practical: Arts of Eclectic,” 502, Schwab puts it this way: “We cannot hope for an early theoretical healing of these ruptures of subjects and of knowledges about them. New principles of enquiry which knit together what earlier principles cut asunder only occasionally and in the long course of enquiry. What is required is a practical healing, a recourse to temporary and tentative bridges budt between parts of knowledge in the course of their application tu practical problems.” [emphasis mine). 28. The following discussion of Machtyre‘s position along with quotations, is taken from “The Relation- ship of Philosophy to its Past,” 42-46.

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underlying the very tradition of inquiry into physics, namely that the attempt to “achieve as general and complete as possible an account of moving bodies” is an internally worthwhile practice and that investigation will not go unrewarded.

The second level at which incommensurability can emerge is the level of Weltanschauung itself. This is the level explored by MacIntyre in books such as Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry, where he discusses the contradictory presuppositions informing the moral philosophies of Thomism, the Enlightenment, and Nietzs~heanism.~~ Even at this level of Weltanschauung, however, the proper purview of normativephilosophy, MacIntyre claims that “types of discontinuity and difference.. .requireas their counterpart anequally comprehensive catalogueof.. .types of continuity, resemblance, and recurrence.” 30 Discontinuity can be recognized and articulated only against the background of some overarching continuity by way of which it becomes visible. Drawing on his specialty, moral philosophy, MacIntyre illustrates his contention by reference to incompatible understandings of what we might call ”feelings.” Aristotelian “pathe,” seventeenth-century “passions, ” eigh- teenth-century “sentiments, ” and twentieth-century “emotions” are all terms embedded in mutually incompatible moral systems with discrete historical roots. Nonetheless, when we take note of the discontinuities between these terms, “we do so knowing that anger or fear or their equivalents will figure in the catalogue of each of them.” The question then presents itself: How are “anger” and “fear” to be understood within the framework of the rival moral systems? Will not their idiosyncratic meanings within the context of these incommensurable worldviews dissipate whatever continuity MacIntyre would like to attribute to them? To this question, MacIntyre answers: “even if we have reservations about translating, say, ira straightforwardly as anger and timor as fear, our reservations have to be stated in such a way that what the translation achieves as well as what it fails to achieve

In order that theories quallry as incommensurable rivals, they must be possessed of ”logical properties that warrant us in classifying them as rivals. r’ga One of these logical properties is that they be rivals for the understanding of something, some circumscribed [if not fully defined) subject matter that we sense to be continuous throughout its incommensurable articulations. It would seem that MacIntyre is groping here for a kind of tacit, undefined substantive continuity that goes beyond what is suggested in Schwab’s notion of “commonplaces.” He is searching for a continuous substratum that participants in long-standing traditions of inquiry could conceivably recognize in common, rather than mere a posteriori reference points that we might deem convenient for the organized consideration of controversies.

MacIntyre then recommends the compilation of a ”catalogue of types of continuity, recurrence, and resemblance” that might obtain even within the frame-

29. Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry [Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990). 30. MacIntyre, ”The Relationship of Philosophy to its Past,” 46 3 1. Ibid. 32. Ibid., 42.


work of incommensurable Weltanschauung theories. 33 If the “practical” is not to prove the only viable mode of theory-combination under conditions of incommensurability, it might be wise to take up MacIntyre’s challenge. Following his guide- lines, and without presuming to elaborate anything like a catalogue, we would like to call attention to certain modes of continuity between incommensurable worldviews that could be activated in a discussion of the issue of idolatry in the Western tradition. In discussing these modes of continuity, we shall draw on insights from writers intent on creating theoretical (not merely practical-political) bridges between ostensibly disparate thought-worlds. Toward the end of our discussion, we will include some brief remarks on how one of these modes of continuity-in- principle might allow for the kind of substantive agreement between curriculum planners that goes beyond a mere marriage of convenience.

We begin with some thoughts set down by Erich Fromm almost a half-century ago in his well-known book Psychoanalysis and Religion.34 Fromm bemoans the fact that since the Enlightenment, much of the conflict between ”religionists” and “atheists” has been conducted on the level of doctrine andpropositions. On this level alone, it would certainly seem that a person who professes that ”there is a God” and one who professes that ”there is no God” are maintaining two mutually irreducible and incommensurable worldviews. Given this situation, cooperation between religionists and secularists could be instituted only on an instrumental or practical- political basis. Fromm, however, does not remain content with this possibility. He calls for a “shifting of epistemological ground” from doctrinal “religion” to “religiosity” - meaning a certain attitude to the world and state of consciousness. For Fromm, being “religious” involves a capacity for wonder and bewilderment at the phenomenon of life and the mystery of one’s own existence, an ”ultimate concern” with the meaning of life and the fulfillment of a task set by life, and an attitude of oneness with self, fellow human beings, life, and the universe. The religious consciousness, as opposed to the propositional world of doctrine, may not always be governed by the law of contradiction. The religious consciousness may itself actually arise from the paradox of the self seeking its own integrity while also seeking to be at one with the All.

Further on, Fromm writes, “The real conflict is not between God and ’atheism,’ but between a humanistic, religious attitude and an attitude which is equivalent to idolatry regardless of how this attitude is expressed, or disguised, in conscious thought.” The idolatrous attitude, or consciousness, is then generalized by Fromm to mean the deification of partial things and submission to them. Among the “partial things” he mentions as candidates for deification are the State, success, machines, political leaders, power, science, or some supposedly definitive, positive concept of God.

At the very end of the book, Fromm calls for an alliance between proponents of what might be considered incommensurable worldviews: ”those who believe in the

33. Ibid., 46.

34. Erich Frornm, Psychoanalysis and Religion (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1950). The discussion and quotes in the next paragraphs are based on 93-95, 113-19.


necessity for a new religion, or in a religion of no religion, or in the continuation of the Judeo-Christian tradition.” If these believers or unbelievers can make the move from “religion” to “religiosity” in Fromm’s sense, then they cannot only cooperate, but actually agree on an understanding of “faith” and “idolatry.” Joint action to promote the one and oppose the other could be based on a substantive commitment to a common world-orientation. Fromm, then, offers us the option of shifting the epistemological ground as one way of confronting incommensurability. On the ”new ground,” old contradictions may appear secondary and new unities of belief may be created.

More recently, two Israeli philosophers, Moshe Halbertal and Avishai Margalit of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, have published a study devoted entirely to a conceptual analysis of the opposition to idolatry in the Western t r a d i t i ~ n . ~ ~ Without mentioning Fromm by name, they seem to take up and expand upon another model of continuity between incommensurables broached by Fromm at the end of his book. While Halbertal and Margalit are not interested in shifting the ground to some dimension of consciousness understood and recommended as a “religious attitude,” they are interested in tracing the continuity in negation exhibited by various phases of the iconoclastic tradition.

Halbertal and Margalit have located what they consider to be a “conceptual chain” of opposition to idolatry, variously understood, in the history of Western thought. While they make no claims concerning the ubiquity, cultural efficacy, or empirical-historical continuity of the trends they have identified, they seem to regard the anti-idolatry project as a conceptual thrust of sufficient significance to warrant its being cast as a kind of tradition. What makes this ”tradition” of particular interest for our problem - the normative justification of curriculum content - is that while, on the one hand, this anti-idolatrous movement in Western thought is inveterately prescriptive in all its respective manifestations (it does not often take up a conciliatory or “pragmatic” stance with regard to its adversaries), it is also embodied in a series of disparate thought-worlds that seem well-nigh irreconcilable among themselves. Let us, then, first elaborate somewhat on the systematic incommensurabilities as well as on the strands of continuity that obtain between the various trends in this “conceptual chain.”

According to Halbertal and Margalit, the Biblical polemic against idolatry is cast in overtly anthropomorphic terms. Israel’s relation to God is often compared to the relation between a whoring wife and her betrayed husband. Memories of courtship in the desert evaporate rapidly as Israel sells her favors to the highest bidder. In some of the more extreme excoriations of the prophets, the promiscuity of Israel is portrayed as a kind of nymphomania, with Israel running after her lovers, willing to pay them for the privilege of cohabitation. The husband, God, vows to destroy his wayward wife and yet seeks to bring her back. While it is clear that the Bible regards whoring after strange gods as a grievous mistake, for these gods have no substance,

35. Moshe Halbertal and Avishai Margalit, Idolatry {Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), esp. 9- 66, 108-30.


it is not the error per se that exercises the Biblical text. The Bible begins with the accepted social norm that betrayal and adultery are heinous crimes, and then proceeds to represent idolatry as analogous to such disloyalty on a much larger scale.

In the Middle Ages, Maimonides and his counterparts continued the tradition of vigorous opposition to idolatry yet transformed it radically. For Maimonides, a personalistic representation of God detracts from what he regarded as the fundamental principle of divinity: perfection. The attribution of such personalistic vicissitudes as jealousy and reconciliation to the divine life can only be a human projection. Perfection has no needs andundergoes no changes. In fact, according to Maimonides, it is precisely a literal reading of the Bible and imaginative Rabbinic literature that has led the mass of the Jewish community to conceive of God in anthropomorphic terms, In Maimonides’s time, the danger of idolatry was no longer represented by the temptation of a polytheistic paganism. The problem had become the misconception of the one God Himself, the misunderstanding of God as corporeal and compounded of various internal attributes. Maimonides is not fighting a multiplicity of other gods (polytheism), but rather the attribution of internal multiplicity to the one God. In so doing, he had to confront not only the popular imagination, as the Bible did, but certain trends within Jewish tradition itself. On the issue of anthropomorphism, then, the Bible and Maimonides are systematically incommensurable. In the senses described above, God cannot be understood as active ”person” and as self-contained ”perfection” at one and the same time. Nonetheless, in their joint effort to direct the people to the one God alone, and have them focus only on Him (and not on something else taken to be Him), the Bible and Maimonides can be seen as divergent trends within a single tradition.

Maimonides is regarded as a premier representative of what Halbertal and Margalit, borrowing a term from Leo Strauss, call the “religious Enlightenment.”36 The one, perfect God is to be the proper focus of reverential contemplation within the framework of what David Hartman has called a ”philosophic religious sensibil- it^."^' With the arrival of the secular Enlightenment, it is no longer a matter of a philosophic religious elite attempting to redirect a popular folk-religion. All religion is regarded as illusory, and even belief in a supreme Perfection is regarded as the diversion of humans from their true needs and interests. Contemplation of perfection, and a fortoriori all the illusions attendant upon popular religion, alienate human beings from their true end, which is the employment of autonomous reason for the domestication of nature and society. The improvement of the political and social condition of the people through the blessings of natural and social science cannot proceed undisturbed if people are to be focused on the Beyond, however conceived. Here too, then, we have both systematic incommensurability and overarching continuity. The Enlightenment turning from the transcendent God,

36. Leo Strauss, “What is Political Philosophy?” in Leo Strauss, W h a t i s PoLiticalPhilosophy! (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 19591, 9-55, and Leo Strauss, Philosophy and L a w (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1987), 13-15. 37. David Hartman, Maimonides: Torah and Philosophic Quest (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1976), 139-86.


whether Maimonides’s Perfection or the living God of the Bible, cannot be systematically harmonized with the affirmations of earlier, theistic forms of opposition to idolatry. Yet the understanding of religious tradition itself as a kind of idolatry, preventing persons from realizing their true ends, can also be seen as a continuation of the Biblical and medieval struggle against the human penchant for self-subordina- tion to the illusions of imagination and the irrational aspects of tradition.

Finally, Halbertal and Margalit propose that the project of the struggle against idolatry does not even need a conception of God as a focus of opposition in order to sustain its telos. Partly as a result of the secular Enlightenment, the traditional God or gods have been replaced by “imaginary reifications such as ‘race,‘ ’nation,’ ‘class,’ ‘blood,’ and ‘earth‘ and the many other reifications that populate ideologie~.”~~ Taking their cue from Francis Bacon’s construal of “idols” as “great illusions“ resulting from the projection of aggrandized or abstracted human characteristics onto the world, Halbertal and Margalit see these ”reifications” as the new idols of the modem age, and the focus of opposition for the contemporary critique of ideology. Here, too, we have a case of systematic incommensurability within the framework of an overall continuity. The unmasking of Enlightenment “idols” such as the‘ “people” and the “state” means principled opposition to the deification of any of these factors as the exclusive carriers of human redemption. Yet the critical- iconoclastic thrust of the critique of ideology may, from a certain vantage point, be viewed as the legitimate heir of the Bible, the “religious Enlightenment,” and the secular Enlightenment.

Halbertal and Margalit, then, in their discussion of opposition to idolatry, advise us of another possible mode of continuity that might obtain between incommensurable Weltanschauung theories. As mentioned above, they articulate a constellation of orientations that could be said to exhibit continuity-in-negation. The cognitive pattern of continuity here is not occasioned by an epistemological “shifting of ground” to some non-propositional realm. Rather, a continuous intellectual posture of criticism and suspicion of the accepted is disclosed. The tradition of opposition to idolatry is extended ”forward” - from the Bible and Maimonides to the secular Enlightenment and contemporary critique of ideology. The tradition of social and intellectual critique is extended “backward” -from the Enlightenment and critique of ideology to the Bible and Maimonides.

Within the framework of this overall, critical, continuity-in-negation, a number of subsidiary strands of cognitive continuity can also be discerned. First, so claim Halbertal and Margalit, a “continuity of intellectual moves” presents itself. Succes- sive links in the conceptual chain take up the intellectual posture of the previous links, further extending and radicalizing the earlier critique. From critique of the external multiplicity of gods in the Bible, we reach a critique of the attribution of internal multiplicity to the one God in Maimonides. The “religious Enlightenment” views tradition as the source of both truth (a personalistic conception of God as Perfection hidden between the lines of the Biblical text), and error [a preconception of God forming the external shell of the Biblical text). The secular Enlightenment, 38. Halbertal and Margalit, Idolatry, 114.


however, views all of tradition as a source of error. While the secular Enlightenment focuses its critique on religious tradition, the critique of ideology spreads its critical net over “reifications” spawned by the Enlightenment itself.

Second, there is continuity in diagnostic analysis of the cognitive sources of illusion. Both the religious and secular Enlightenment, for example, highlight the role of imagination and tradition as sources of error. Maimonides, Spinoza, and David Hume all implicate vivid imagination as amajor source of illusion, rootedin the need to turn to imagined entities for sustenance in a situation of existential uncertainty. Maimonides isolated text-centered tradition as responsible for the preservation of corporeal understandings of God, this as a result of repeated readings of the superficial meaning of Biblical and Rabbinic texts by the multitude lacking adequate powers of abstraction. The Enlightenment then furthered the critique of tradition by identifying just about all ancient belief with superstition.

The role of projection and the distortions wrought by language are also cited by both the religious and secular Enlightenment as sources of illusion. BothXenophanes in the ancient world and Maimonides in the Middle Ages relate to the widespread tendency to project human characteristics upon God and to create God in a man’s image. Maimonides focuses on the structure of predication in language as responsible for the attribution of multiple, relative properties to God. Bacon’s phrase “idols of the marketplace” refers, among other things, to systematic illusions resulting from the uncritical use of language.

Finally, in surveying the Western iconoclastic tradition, Halbertal and Margalit conclude that the religious Enlightenment, the secular Enlightenment, and the critique of ideology, despite their incommensurable presuppositions regarding the true and the good, are cognitively united regarding one of the chief roles delegated to reason. For Maimonides as, say, for Immanuel Kant or Sigmund Freud, ”the intellect is a tool for the critique of religious errors and illusions, especially those that we call idolatrous illusions, and not so much a source for the grasping of positive truths about the deity. The intellect serves to control the power of the imagination, which is the source of religious illusion.”39

In sum, when viewed positively, or as constructive Weltanschauung, the incommensurabilities obtaining between personalistic Biblical religion, ”philosophic religious sensibility,” the secular Enlightenment, and the critique of ideology can never really be dissipated or neutralized. Viewed as a critical orientation, however, the components of the iconoclastic tradition are linked by a number of kindred cognitive strands. The emergence of a dimension of continuity amid incommensurability would, in the case of Halbertal and Margalit, seem to be the result not so much of a “shift in ground” as of a “shift in perspective’’ from apositive- constructive to a negative-critical orientation.

THEORETICAL CONTINUITY IN NEGATION: CURRICULAR IMPLICATIONS It remains for us to comment briefly on the curricular significance of some of the

insights we have arrived at. To this end we will confine ourselves to the type of

39. Ibid., 274-75, note 4.


continuity between incommensurabilities we havecalled continuity in negation, as unfolded in the discussion of Halbertal and Margalit, as distinguished from the type generated by the kind of “ground-shifting” exemplified by Fromm. In an article that could perhaps be said to have set the tone for certain features of Halbertal and Margalit’s study of idolatry, as well as to have foretold its educational significance, Hartman has written,

If we assume that it is possible for individuals to agree on what they reject (emphasis mine), without acknowledging what they affirm, we may be able to create a shared theology of the repudiation of idolatry, without demanding a clearly defined commitment to belief in God. The believer can share common aspirations with the atheist and agnostic, if all three strive to reject idolat ry.... The idolatry of absolute power has not been destroyed. The urge for political power and control present in the twentieth century is a flagrant rejection of the sovereignty of God. The demand for total and uncritical allegiance to a political state is idolatrous. Any political figure or party which considers itself beyondcriticism has, in avery important sense, denied the reality of God. Insisting on criticism, demanding accountability, limiting the dangerous hunger for power, building political structures that create balances of power, may be important ways to implement the halakhic (Jewish legal) struggle against idolatry.“”

The above remarks, made by Hartman in 1976, call attention to the theological significance of democratic government. In recent years, and with increased urgency since the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin in November 1995, education for democracy has acquired a higher profile in Israeli public discourse and in the concerns of the Israeli Ministry of Ed~cat ion .~~ In keeping with this trend, a small group formed in May of 1996, within the framework of a Jerusalem center for advanced Jewish studies named ”Beit Morasha,” (or ”Heritage House”), and began working with the Ministry‘s Department of Religious Education, and subsequently with its newly-formed Values Education Administration, on a “project for the enhancement of education for democracy in the Orthodox Zionist sector of Israeli society.” In a position paper, this group, drawn largely from within Orthodox Zionist circles, attempted to give a preliminary account of the reasons for ”the problematic nature of the adherence of the Orthodox Zionist community to the democratic fabric of the State of Israel.”42 Although few formal studies of this phenomenon have been undertaken, the Beit Morasha group suggested that underlying feelings of alienation from the democratic regime of Israel among certain sectors of the religious community could result from:

[the] perception of a fundamental contradiction between the basic premises of the Torah and the observant lifestyle that goes with it, and the basic premises of democracy. They see a necessary [though often latent) conflict betwween religious authority, the Halachah (Jewish Law) and its representatives and the duly elected authorities of the State of Israel.4d

40. David Hartman, ”Halakhah as a Ground for Creating a Shared Spiritual Language,” in Tradition 16, no.

41. Testimony to this enhanced concern can be found in two documents: Civics: Syllabus for the Upper Grades of lew’sh (General and Religious), Arab and Druze Schools (Jerusalem, Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport, 1994) (Hebrew) and the Kremnitzer Commission, To Be Citizens: Citizenship Education for a11 Israeli Students (Jerusalem, Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport, 1996) (Hebrew). 42. Beit Morasha, Position Paper: The Center for Clarification oflssues of Torah and Civic Life (Jerusalem, Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport, 1997). I am indebted to my colleague Shlomo Fisher for acquainting me with the deliberations and activities of the Beit Morasha group. 43. The position paper mentions the Shield Commission Report and the Circular of the Director of the Department of Religious Education (March 1997), both of which draw attention to dangerous levels of support by school children for acts of violence against Arabs and against the Oslo Peace Process by religious extremists.

1 (1976): 24-25.

COHEN Deliberation, Tradition, and Incommensurability 8 7

In other words, the idea of the sovereignty of the people (through its elected representatives) is somehow seen to be incompatible with the idea of the sovereignty of God (through the Torah and its authorized interpreters). While the bulk of the religious community has agreed to live by the democratic “rules of the game,” many religious leaders, as well as rank-and-file, may not really view democracy as a theologically sanctioned value.

It is in this connection that the notion of theoretical continuity-in-negation, as reflected in the work of Hartman, Halbertal, and Margalit, could conceivably be activated in promoting a normative alliance between Judaism and democracy. Such an alliance may have the effect of muting some of the dissonance felt to obtain between the two seemingly incompatible value-systems in some quarters of the religious community. Religious misgivings about democracy need not be treated by curriculum planners as a mere contingency to be accommodated as they well might within the framework of a purely Schwabian deliberati~n.~~ A curriculum group charged with educating for democracy in Israeli religious schools need not restrict itself to, say, advising religious educational leaders of the utility of acquainting students with the ”rules of thegame” inIsraelinorder toprevent their marginalization. A search might begin for a way that these leaders might cognitively assent to democracy in principle and assimilate it to their own worldview. There could be a quest for a measure of genuine cognitive agreement, and not just for a practical modus viven. If it could be argued, for example, that democracy, viewed as a critical orientation, is not only a system that empowers human beings - that it is also a system that seeks to prevent the absolute sovereignty of human beings - the way might be open for theologically sanctioned education for democracy in the religious sector. In educating for democracy, religious educators might not have to see themselves as making a concession or accommodation to an alien worldview, but as actually enhancing their own beliefs. If religious and non-religious Jews in Israel could both view democracy as a critique of idolatry, and if both were to condemn the self-deification of human beings as a violation of both theism and secularism, this could form the basis for a theoretical continuity in negation that could aid in the creation of a community with certain sharedbeliefs, not a mere coalition of interests.

CONCLUDING REMARKS: CURRICULUM DECISION MAKING AS “CONSTRAINED DELIBERATION”

We return now to the issue that prompted our inquiry: the possibility of grounding curricular decisions in normative standpoints that address the phenomenon of incommensurability on theoretic grounds. It appears to us that the insights of thinkers like MacIntyre, Fromm, Halbertal, and Margalit have opened up philosophic possibilities that pose serious questions for the deliberative mode of justifying curricular decisions. In light of the possibility of critical, theoretical alliances between constructively incompatible views within the framework of a continuous, normative Weltanschauung tradition, the selection, adaptation, and combination of

44. For an indication of the manner in which competing conceptions are accommodated rather than theoretically integrated in the deliberative framework, see Seymour Fox, “A Practical Image of the Practical.”

88 E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y WINTER 1999 1 VOLUME 49 I NUMBER 1

incommensurable theories for the purpose of grounding curricular decisions need not be undertaken only “eclectically,” as an idiosyncratic response to an incorrigibly situated ”problem.” To be sure, the justification of curricular decisions on the basis of a particular normative, though multivoiced, standpoint could not ignore the maxims that the deliberative framework has taught us all so well. With regard to the case described above, a given planning group, seeking to anchor a curriculum on democratic values in the tradition of the negation of idolatry, would do well to deliberate on the ideologies and attitudes of teachers, students, and the community mandating religious education before decidmg on how to proceed, lest one or all of these factors undermine the effort from the very outset. Still, these discussions would proceed from a non-negotiable Archimedean point, and would represent a kind of “constrained deliberati~n.”~~ In the example discussed above, all parties to the curricular effort, whether religious or nonreligious, could, after reaching substantive agreement on the anti-idolatrous character of democracy as a critical orientation, consider themselves bound u priori by a common norm. Should the develop- ment and implementation of the curriculum encounter serious resistance, the group would not be in any way disposed to abandon their efforts. They would legitimately confine their deliberations about revision to the realm of more proximate ends and appropriate means, not willing in any way to cast aside their overall visions of either iconoclasm or democracy.

It is possible, then, that the unease experienced by certain participants in the curriculum seminar we mentioned earlier can be assuaged somewhat. They can be reassured that, at least in some circumstances, they need not depart from their most precious ideals if a particular plan for putting them into practice has met with difficulty. But only somewhat. For in order that normative worldviews remain viable, they may, on occasion, have to open themselves to comprehensive theoretical interchange with other worldviews. Such interchange may lead to the extrapolation of certain aspects of a given worldview that may not have been considered hitherto, as well as to the re-prioritization of others. Believing democrats may agree to take their stand on the basis of what they negate, namely tyranny, in order to ally themselves with traditional religionists in a joint quest for the limitation of human sovereignty. Believing religionists may agree to take their bearings from what they negate, in particular the possibility that a human being, or a humanly constituted political state, be permitted to acquire quasi-divine status. Given this readiness, however, partial theoretical agreement can be attained. Confirmed theists and confirmed atheists may sincerely (in other words, on the level of belief, not just contingency) form a community of the committed in furthering a shared negative norm: insuring that finite beings, or finite things, are not confused with the Infinite. Within these constraints, deliberation on more proximate ends can proceed freely.

45. The inspiration for the expression ”constrained deliberation” comes from MacIntyre‘s term “constrained disagreement.” MacIntyre uses this term in the context of his proposal for areconstruction of the university as a place where shared “initial agreements” are simultaneously “preserved and transformed” and opposing worldviews are confronted as tests of the working order of a tradition. See MacIntyre, Three Rivol Versions, 230-3 1.

COHEN Deliberation. Tradition, and Incommensurability 89

These constraints themselves, however, will be treated by all as inviolable and nonnegotiableinprinciple. The People, the State, or the Regime will not beidentified with the Divine. Such a proposition can serve as an ideational common denominator for religious education and education for democracy, despite continuing incommensurable differences. It can acquire the status of what Scheffler has called a “general” justification for curriculum decisions, and take its place among the “fundamental” beliefs that “command the highest.degree of confidence” of all participants. Adher- ents of such a comprehensive vision need not reconsider it even if the process of its embodiment in a specific educational curriculum should fall on some very hard times.

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