ABSTRACT
Philosophy has struggled with the problems of human being and cognition for centuries and this continues to be the case today. In general terms, there is contestation between idealist and materialist explanations of what it means to be human and where ideas, concepts and proposals for constancy or change come from. Central to this argument is the primary role given to matter or consciousness, that is whether human life is a function of matter, or arises from something that is extra-material or metaphysical. In addition, there is the role of philosophy in dealing with these issues through analysis of concepts and disagreements that surround the debate, or through considering the contradictions and problems of daily life with which humans must cope. Formal systems of education can however ignore such issues and focus on other categories of society such as skill, information, conventions and the like, all of which are important for the citizenry, or combine such studies with where these ideas and practices fit within broader understandings of what it means to be human. In relation to how to approach these problems, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus (500BC) was an early theoriser of the processes of change. As a materialist, he emphasised the place of fire and the notion that everything ‘flows.’ He described all objects as being ‘are or are not’ and his famous example of not being able to step twice into the same river because the water is constantly flowing and changing. Hegel (1770–1831) was a strong advocate of a dialectical approach to thinking and problems and the movement of idea formation. He wrote on the transition from perception to knowledge, the nature of consciousness and exercised a major influence on the work of later philosophers such as Marx and Dewey. Broadly speaking, these philosophical considerations of materialism and dialectics have been overlooked by education during the neoliberal era and need to be reviewed as the basis of progressive, pragmatic and inquiry approaches to society and knowledge.
