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Nihilism in youth culture is a threat or a blessing for education, says paul smeyers. He says some popular forms of pleasure may contrarily be reminiscent of a revaluation. Youth may want to shift some boundaries when they skim off country to another disco, he says. Smesyers: educators must realize the unavoidability to offer herself as who she is.
Nihilism in youth culture is a threat or a blessing for education, says paul smeyers. He says some popular forms of pleasure may contrarily be reminiscent of a revaluation. Youth may want to shift some boundaries when they skim off country to another disco, he says. Smesyers: educators must realize the unavoidability to offer herself as who she is.
Nihilism in youth culture is a threat or a blessing for education, says paul smeyers. He says some popular forms of pleasure may contrarily be reminiscent of a revaluation. Youth may want to shift some boundaries when they skim off country to another disco, he says. Smesyers: educators must realize the unavoidability to offer herself as who she is.
Threat or Blessing for Education at the Turn of the Century ABSTRACT. Is the youth culture, or more precisely a particular kind of it, to be charac- terized as nihilistic? And is this a threat or a blessing for education? To deal with this nihilism is rst characterized generally and following particular attention is paid to Niet- zsches own version and revaluation of values. Then Foucaults concept of life as a work of art is brought to the forefront as a particular manner to give shape to ones life. It is argued that some of the more popular forms of pleasure nowadays may contrarily to what is generally believed, be reminiscent of a revaluation thus to overcome nihilism. Implications for education include for the educator to realize the unavoidability to offer herself as who she is, furthermore to be fully aware of the fact that many boundaries in the educational process are arbitrary, and last but not least the acceptance of the need to create the room for the child to develop an image of herself which she can live with. KEY WORDS: Foucault, identity, Nihilism, Nietzsche, pleasure, values education KEEP ON ROCKING IN A FREE WORLD The coachwork glows, the hubcaps glitter, the surround sound system has passed the nal test in just a moment the weekend can start. For many youth this creates the peak of the week, an exquisite opportunity to make ones way, surrounded by companions and a fair amount of decibels. All excited they drive to the weekly oasis to take a dip in a cocktail of drumm n base, alcohol, drugs, dancing and irting. This mix is so much appre- ciated that they may want to drink it for twenty four or even for forty eight hours, perhaps even longer, and such with a steady routine weekend after weekend. Quite a few will even literally shift some boundaries when they skim off the country from one disco to another or when they have a break just to party Ibiza here we come! Have these youngsters found what they were looking for when they return home after sunrise, not quite sober, or were they not really looking for something and is the hangover just physical? They will be there again next Friday. Much more than a pilgrimage, on ones way to a greater truth, this nocturnal mobilization looks like a collective escape from a disappointing reality. Existence has only temporary things on offer which are easy to get and can painlessly exchanged. Life presents a cheerless Studies in Philosophy and Education 22: 183194, 2003. 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 184 BERT LAMBEIR AND PAUL SMEYERS prospect, almost worthless, now that it has lost its grip on certainty and permanence, moreover as the power of institutions and the social control that goes with it have retired. The loss of ultimate values and norms has put its mark almost on every aspect of ones existence: nor a job, neither a rela- tionship is for the rest of ones natural life, it is just one of the alternatives there is nothing more on offer, to hold on than one demands or permits; a succession of temporary, never really satisfactory stops. One practices life shopping, hoping that one will nd what one is looking for on the shelves, in the knowledge that hoping in vain too is of this world. The motor starts, its time to leave and to deal with the frustration of the search, time to forget the meaninglessness of the past few days. They are expelled by the compelling rhythms of the dance-music to stop dancing is only an option when one is sure that what needs to be gone is gone, and even then one may want to continue for another hour or so, accompanied by some amphetamines. The intensity and this surrendering make going out more than a game of seduction, more than just recreation. Is it a case of defying physical limits, looking for peak experiences which lose every signicance after some hours of sleep? Is it an escape as if the basses of the dancing can shout down the resignation, the disinterestedness? Is it a dance around the re of nihilism that now burns ercely? A line of vodka tears inside A shot of boredom helps my mind Staring through a thousand dead eyes I guess my nerves are brutalised . . . Theres nothing I want to see Theres nowhere I wanna go Condemned to rock n roll 1 NIHILISM It is not until the late eighteenth century and thus with the emergence of the Enlightenment, that the term nihilism appears on the philosoph- ical scene (Cf. Carr, 1992), partly as a result of the implicit tendency of transcendental idealism to dissolve the reality of the external world in the nothingness of consciousness, by focusing on the subjective conditions for the possibility of knowledge. The literary realm too had its own version, a poetic nihilism which was attacked as the romantic fascination with the privacy of individual consciousness. In these discussions the term used to signify the loss or dissolution of an independently existing world external 1 James, R. & Wire, N. (1991). Condemned to rock n roll [Manic Street Preachers]. On Generation Terrorists [CD]. Sony Music Entertainment. NIHILISM: BEYOND OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM 185 to consciousness. In the second half of the nineteenth century nihilism tended to be linked to moral, religious, and political anarchism, usually grounded in loss of belief in God. Carr (1992) distinguishes four strands of nihilism. Epistemologically it is characterized by the denial of the possibility of knowledge with the result that All knowledge claims are equal or equally (un)justied and no standards exist for distinguishing warranted from unwarranted belief, or knowledge from error. Alethiological nihilism denies the reality of truth, of an (independently existing) world. In ethical or moral nihilism the reality of these values is disclaimed. It is not denied that people use ethical or moral terms, rather it is claimed that these refer to nothing more than the bias or taste of the agent making the assertion. Finally, existential or axiological nihilism refers to the feeling of emptiness and pointlessness that follows from the judgment Life has no meaning probably this is the most commonplace sense of the word. In practice the various senses tend to overlap and intermingle. They are all related to the last kind, since we describe life as pointless, meaningless, or our existence as without value, precisely because we believe that there is no truth, that knowledge is mere illusion, or that there is no moral fabric in the universe. It is worth pointing to the fact that nihilism which makes a negative assertation about the nature of the world, is different as well from the related position of scepticism as from some forms of relativism. NIETZSCHEAN NIHILISM Indeed, we philosophers and free spirits feel, when we hear the news that the old god is dead, as if a new dawn shone upon us; our heart overows with gratitude, amazement, premonitions, expectation. At long last the horizon appears free to us again, even if it should not be bright; at long last our ships may venture out again, venture out to face any danger; all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; perhaps there has never yet been such an open sea (Nietzsche, 1887, # 343). The author par excellence to whom nihilism is ascribed is of course Friedrich Nietzsche, who violently proclaimed that God is dead, which he calls in the above quoted section the greatest recent event. The nihilist despairs because she longs to value something but in good faith cannot, for she believes that only values believed to be objective can in good faith be professed (and she no longer believes in objective values). The partic- ular form of nihilism in which Nietzsche is interested should however be understood as the state one may be in when nothing truly matters to one. Overcoming this nihilism is not so much a matter of replacing old values with new ones, as it is coming to value something where previously one 186 BERT LAMBEIR AND PAUL SMEYERS valued nothing. Roughly what he means is, that we must take a certain sort of responsibility for what we say about the world and accept that we cannot lean on something else when values are concerned. Sense can no longer be made of the idea that the ways in which we view the world are justied by something standing above, beyond or behind the world itself. Neither nature, nor reason, nor revelation can provide the moral standards for the governance of life. He holds that as there are no objective values, as all values are the creation of human beings, they typically serve the needs of their creators understanding why they were created requires therefore an historical or psychological investigation of these needs. What is most important for us is not in our power. Nietzsche teaches that we are free to adopt the perspective that pro- claims the value of creating subjective value. This creation should not be understood as a kind of subjectivism, as if the subject could create values ex nihilo, could impose upon or project some into the world. What Nietzsche means is that we have to take responsibility for having to take responsi- bility, rather than trying to deny the fact of such responsibility by means of a fantasy of access to the worlds nature that would be wholly independent of our human, all too human interests and aims. His interest lies in the loss of the world more specically how humans create, not nd a world. Rather than claiming that we should take responsibility for the meaning we impose on the world, Nietzsche seems to show us how we can resist the meaning we nd in the world but how we are inclined to hide in the herd. Thus he seeks to replace the Socratic notion of responsibility, with a notion of responsiveness understood in terms of the notion of commitment, a form of passivity, an openness to what matters to us. Nietzsches antipathy toward what he calls moral values is aimed at those ways of life that seek to deny life. To afrm life means to afrm ones membership of a culture, but this is simply to make sense, to speak intelli- gibly; for him it is about afrming those passions, affects, and drives that are condemned by conventional morality. One should be careful, however, not to step outside the achievement of intelligibility; that is to say that ones perspective on the things around one cannot be but from the perspective of the culture to which one belongs which is at the same time partly afrmed. Nietzsches revaluation of values is carried out from a naturalistic view- point. Living in accordance with nature is living a life that afrms what nature is in us, without dressing it up through morality. It consists of instincts and inclinations, the body, sexuality and so forth. Consequently, customs, institutions and moralities are natural when they afrm the instincts of what is nature in some group of human beings. At a deeper level living in accordance with nature prescribes an ideal of human perfect- NIHILISM: BEYOND OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM 187 ibility. The return to nature is not a return to an unbridled, instinctual beast of prey, rather it is a rising up to a harmonized existence that focuses on an achievement, afrms what is, and creates the values according to which it operates. The values Nietzsche envisages arise out of the creative process itself, involving an ever renewed engagement with the ux of phenomena, with perpetual birth and death. Thus we look for the ways we overcome nihilism which enable us to afrm this world. The restoration of the integrity of the phenomena is in his opinion only possible through art, which does not harden and solidify the phenomena into new metaphysical determ- inations. Images, symbols, and metaphors can afrm and enhance the presencing of the phenomena in ever new and renewed congurations. Nietzsches concept of self-overcoming is therefore a revision of the traditional concept of autonomy or self-control. The latter is based on the idea that as humans are hybrid, it is their duty to subjugate the rival and opposing powers to the highest (the sublime). For Nietzsche, on the contrary, a human is rst an individual, the essence of which is precisely his uniqueness and singularity. The human has to liberate herself from all that represses her true nature and from what opposes her freedom. This authentic conquering of the wrong idea of autonomy, opposed by the polit- ical and religious establishment, asks for a constant readiness to criticize what is institutionalized. TAKING UP THE NIHILISTIC HERITAGE: FOUCAULTS LIFE AS A WORK OF ART In the same vein Foucault radicalizes the modernist liberation by indic- ating how ethical reection depends on knowledge. His concern is with what knowledge does, what power constructs (rather than represents) and how a relationship of the self to the self is invented rather than discovered. He thought of ethics as that component of morality that concerns the selfs relationship to itself. Histories of morality should not be exclusively focused on the history of codes of moral behaviour. We must also pay careful attention to the history of what Foucault calls the forms of moral subjectivation, of the ways we constitute ourselves as moral subjects of our own actions. His interest in relations to oneself focuses on the government of the self by the self in connection with its relations to others, a relation- ship described in pedagogy, advice for conduct, spiritual direction, and the prescription of models of life, for instance how our culture made sexuality into a moral experience and the moral subject forms itself and is formed by the bodys desires. The Foucauldian position describes an ethos and a self-relation that is constituted by a complex historical inheritance, but 188 BERT LAMBEIR AND PAUL SMEYERS an ethos without a normative core: an ethos based on the observation that one can always detach oneself from oneself, thanks to the fragmentation of the elements that constitute the self. The identities of human beings are unsteady then, not because we repress our true natures, nor because our true natures are repressed by our parents, our leaders, or our culture, but because we do not have true natures. Each of us is a nexus of rela- tions formed in response to ever-shifting problems. A subject will nd freedom in the ability to reverse or to resist a situation. It is because she has no essence that the subject enjoys this freedom, which is a freedom of fragmentation: a freedom that arises in the constellation of differences that constitute a lineage of loose alliances, relations of resistance and mastery, and congurations of uid interests. The result is an ethic of responsibility for the truths one speaks, for the political strategies which these truths inform, and for those ways of relating to ourselves that make us either conformists or dissidents. For Foucault ethics involves under- standing oneself as the subject of a critical practice of freedom which is not outside the games of truth. With such an understanding, we are able to oppose political institutions, states of domination and juridical notions of the subject. Over a long history, the ancient preoccupation with the self became a morality of asceticism whose maxim was that the self is that which one can reject. This asceticism tried to determine what one must sacri- ce of oneself to know what is good or right. Further, the ancient task of taking care of or being concerned with oneself was obscured and replaced by knowing oneself. But to take care of oneself, to regard oneself as a work (of art) to be accomplished could, according to Foucault, sustain an ethics that is no longer supported by either tradition or reason. As creator of itself, the self could enjoy that autonomy that modern man cannot do without a position reminiscent of Nietzsches aesthetics of existence. One result of this conversion is the experience of a pleasure that one takes in oneself. Furthermore, the characterization of how one lives, ones style of life, indicates what aspect of oneself one puts under judgment, how one relates oneself to moral obligations, what one does to transform oneself into an ethical subject and what mode of being one aims to realize. And as the selfs relationship to itself undergoes modication in every historical period, as the way in which one cares for oneself changes, so too will ones style of life change. The ethical in relation to others, that kind which shows the highest virtues and which elicits from the subject the attitude which generates a maximum of self-realization, Foucault nds in (intimate) friendship. There the other becomes part of oneself: the dreams, aspirations, desires and interests are treated as ones own far from manipulation or exploit- NIHILISM: BEYOND OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM 189 ation. Here is a whole area of (power) relations, hardly conscated by a scientic game of truth and institutionalized rules and where pleasure (as different from desire) plays an important role. The actual regime of power and knowledge has primordially emphasized desire through which sexual identity has become an element of a political exercise of power. Foucault himself gives two examples where the play of rules and iden- tities can deal creatively with shaping the self in her relation to others: the sadomasochistic game and good drugs. For Foucault, to reinvent ethical thought is to ask again the ancient question of how to speak truly of our lives. In stressing subjectivity he does not intend to abandon a social or collective ethic in favour of an individual or private one. He wanted to rethink the great questions of community: how and why people bond together, the question of passion, and of the eros of our identity. Foucaults subject is therefore not an individuality, an indivisible unit in which we locate our identity, neither is it a particularity, the exemplication of a common nature. It is not a single thing. Rather, there are as many subjectivities as there are accepted forms of self-relation. Human beings each have more than one kind of subjectivity, more than one kind of social being. Individual and society are not opposed to one another as absolute entities; they are instead linked together in a common history, the forms of one being able to survive a change in the forms of the other. In a critical community the self-sufciency of its taken-for-granted is problematized. Freedom is not a state one achieves once and for all, but a condition of undened work of thought, action and self-invention. Is the present experience of existence which has been illustrated in the opening section similar to what has been put forward by Nietzsche and Foucault? In some sense the answer to this question is yes. Nietzsche wants to stress the positive nothing should hinder us. In our over-regulated society his criticism surely still hits the right tone. So does Foucaults reaction against rusted patterns of behaviour. We will look at two examples to place their critique in the present-day lived experiences. POPULAR FORMS OF PLEASURE NOWADAYS: LOSING ONESELF? Since the second half of the twentieth century other stimulants than alcohol and tobacco, have become more and more popular. Soft drugs 2 seem to 2 The case of amphetamines is different. Extasy ts rather well in the present climate of performativity. Though it may underscore and intensify particular experiences, by pushing the boundaries of ones limits it foremost creates a kick and increases ones endurance. 190 BERT LAMBEIR AND PAUL SMEYERS answer particular needs: they offer new kinds of (physical) pleasure and may intensify other experiences; they help people coping with the demands of life, i.e., being high pushes ones daily worries at least for a while to the background; they make it possible to throw away ones inhibitions, encourage to do things one would normally not do (because one does not dare, or deeply wanting them one fears to be ashamed afterwards); it can also be an expression of making fun of society and what is seen by most to be necessary to keep it going. The sixties utterance peace man, expresses the attitude to be tolerated for what one is, does, wants. Above all one wants to enjoy life, instead of being preoccupied with output and perfor- mance to gain a place on the social ladder, or doing, even against ones better judgment, just what one is expected to do. Seen like this drugs carry the germs for criticism, for new modes of relationships and behaviour. Indeed, it is not impossible that having said something (even perhaps a well kept secret) or acted in particular ways in this heightened state of consciousness, one truly nds oneself in this new dimension, values this new aspect one has come to terms with now. Discussions nowadays about the legalisation of soft drugs in some countries, put indeed the bourgeois often hypocritical morality of many in the picture. Accepting that cannabis for instance does not lead to physical dependency (and thus cannot be banned on this basis), some point now to a psychical dependency (and addiction) that may be the result of being a user. Perhaps their reaction rationalizes their fear that people at another conscience level might want to question what they are supposed to do, how to live, what kind of life is worthwhile, what kind of society is desirable, so that their option is only to defend what they have, thus abusing the law to prevent its change. The self-creating subject looking for new, for different dimensions of her identity, for unconstrained pleasure, has got an unexplored play- ground where she can be herself to her hearts content. Foucault argues for bending the corroded patterns of experiencing ones body and ones sexuality. There is more pleasure on offer than what can be found in the common and tolerated practices. We have to transgress our limits and ques- tion our deviant hesitations though the latter will inhibit us less as a new space announces itself where traditions until now not yet frustrate; cyberspace. Many of our wants, desires, and kinks stem from early exper- iences. When it comes to cyber sex, a whole arena opens up. We can act out the sexual fantasies wed never consider doing in real life, the fantasies we wouldnt want to do in real life. We can switch gender and switch gender preferences. Everything is possible . . . (Odzer, 1997, p. 11). The new communications technology offer the subject the possibility to experiment with her multiple identities, with modes of sexuality, with NIHILISM: BEYOND OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM 191 forms of pleasure, just because cybersex is only to some extent submitted to explicit rules and conventions. Together with its less regulated and moralising character, cybersex is in each of its capacities safe sex (prob- ably one of the reasons why it is practised at such a large scale): who connects for cybersex does not have to admit to a particular sex which she accepts in cyberspace nor to a particular sexual preference; not even to the actual practices. This refers as well to the anonymity (cyberspace as a masked orgy) as to the possibility to withdraw at each moment from the affair (to log out). The habit to terminate a particular relationship frequented in cyberspace by many persons reminds one of the role of the sadist in the sado-masochistic game (a game that incidentally any way in itself is often virtually materialized). Nothing restrains the freedom as a condition for the development of oneself (in the way Foucault speaks of it), as far as cybersex goes as is clear from the following testimony: With the freedom to be and do anything, I had sex with three men at once. I had sex with a woman. I had sex with three men and a woman at once. Posing as a man, I had sex with a woman. Posing as a gay man, I had sex with a man. Posing as a man, I had sex with a man who was posing as a woman. I learned all about S&M, as the sadist and as the masochist. I had all sorts of sex in every new way I could think of (Odzer, 1997, p. 43). What does being responsible for ones own work of art (or life), for the pleasure of creating oneself, for the fragmented subject, mean when the educational relationship is at stake? AND FOR EDUCATION: POINTING TO THE BEYOND According to standard educational theory, children grow up by the grace of the care of others. Their parents and teachers carry the responsibility for instilling the difference between right and wrong. The power and violence which is implied by this initiation, is justied by the necessity to raise the ignorance of the child, as the subjugation to what is objectively good is the only true way to freedom. The experience of human existence that is presupposed by this way of becoming human is however no longer ours. Being human is a project in which man has to give shape to his own exist- ence. Since Nietzsches radical criticism concerning values, elaborated by him as a self-overcoming Beyond good and evil, man will no longer ignore himself, but takes full responsibility for his life. All philosophy, he holds furthermore, originated and was carried out in the service of education and all education in the end should pass into self-education. What does this mean for the educator? Can one still educate and to what end? 192 BERT LAMBEIR AND PAUL SMEYERS One cannot not educate: the care for oneself, the way in which one lives, in which one afrms oneself and is afrmed by the other, in which one walks upon new paths and explores the pleasant sides of life, bears witness by what one does and, by speaking about ones personal exper- iences, of what life can be. Moreover, it entices one to live in such a way too, to accept what is evident only provisionally, to make questioning and exploring a way of life. Indeed, there are always more, unreclaimed areas which still may be experienced, because the point is to enjoy life for oneself. Evidently there is initiation in what we, together with others, nd worthwhile thus the educator cannot avoid reprimanding and prescribing what has to be done; of course one will have to learn to earn ones place, accept challenges in order to realise something that is worthwhile. But in the end what it comes down to is to experience the way life is shaped as an answer to the question about existence itself. The child has to be able to say yes to what she does as a mode of what she really wants to be, to what permits her to undergo existence and to enjoy thoroughly and really experience life. Examples of this are for instance, the choice for a particular kind of education or training which is not self-evident one can think of a 15 year old girl trained to become a construction worker, to decide suddenly to become a vegetarian, or to express ones political opinions if those happen to be of the extreme right. One has to be who one is. The good educator is rstly therefore a real human, a person of esh and blood, with nice and tiresome aspects, with particular qualities and rough edges. She who sets her own aspirations aside confers upon the child a bad service. Thus the educator should not feel guilty for the fact that she enjoys her life. This enjoyment is of course no alibi for whimsical behaviour that takes no one into account, but instead is a realistic way of looking at what might be expected from people who, though they have not chosen each other, live together. To fully live up to this implies for education different, more realistic criteria: airy castles keep us in thin air concerning what is out of reach. Educators experience pleasure in educating children, want to risk them- selves in this project, want to shape children, want to live with them, grow up and grow old with them. Good educators are those who like to make time, who do not mind being disturbed, who enjoy passing on some- thing because life itself is fun; who want to make it possible that others too experience what is good, what they nd beautiful; who want to share what they are themselves full of, without forgetting in their enthusiasm that it is not only about themselves. Lacking pleasure in this, it cannot be satisfactory as such, but only a fate, a boring task, a job that must be done the message it then carries with it cannot be but a negative attitude NIHILISM: BEYOND OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM 193 to life which sties the enjoyment in its birth of each young life. Indeed, it is about the child who has to learn to enjoy what announces itself. In xing boundaries thus some modesty is appropriate; in issuing prohib- itions, some standing back; in looking at how to solve conicts, some distance. The educational space can thus be seen as the realm in which all involved may want to explore dimensions of oneself, as exemplied with case of cybersex. The educator will make her presence felt indirectly, ironically, reserved, without being however indifferent. She has to confront the childs wanting something else. She should be fully aware of the fact that many boundaries are arbitrary, marked by a particular societal context, a particular period, that much could have been otherwise and that we do not know what is best, never mind having the right to determine it for someone else. Again this does not mean that the educator should be characterized by a laisser faire attitude, or that she should make things easy for the child. Learning to live should hurt in order to be fully experienced, but all of this conscious of the groundlessness of what we are certain of. As Nietz- sche argued in Beyond Good and Evil, the discipline of suffering and this alone has created every elevation of mankind hitherto (# 225). Instead of solving a problem on behalf of the child (or determining its outcome) the educator will point to the consequences and then rest in her hope. It can only be about appealing, enticing, charming, as in the end what matters is the judgment of the child. In the success of a music performer such as Marilyn Manson one can see a translation of the desire to get the space for such a judgment: the demand of youth that it has to be about them, about what they want to experience, a silent protest against the necessary form that is given to freedom in a particular society. The use of drugs too may exemplify their deep need to experiment with something else that is at present not acceptable to those in power in society human life always and necessarily sets limits. The nihilism is enjoyment for a while, a cry that that is its point. And the educator, for her the message seems to be rst to be herself, and to think of herself less as an educator. To reside less in the illusions she can live with herself, look the child in the eyes and accept her as a locus of desire which does not necessarily coincide with what she had imagined about the child previously. The child must be given the chance to develop an image of herself which she can live with, an image of how she wants to be seen by signi- cant others. She must learn to value herself as a valuable object. Only then can she take on the care for herself as dealt with above, as an emerging work of art. Education will have to give attention to the different aspects outlined: the sensorial, the aesthetical, the others, all can comfort and for a 194 BERT LAMBEIR AND PAUL SMEYERS while counterbalance. Indeed, the person to be educated must learn to deal with a fundamental loneliness and nd in it a source of enjoyment and not of frustration. Though being on ones own can never be lifted, it can be shared and celebrated. The so-called nihilism of youth seems therefore to repair this enjoyment and underscore its importance. It reprimands society and shows that it can be different, kicks it a conscience, celebrates life and makes room for enjoyment beyond optimism and pessimism. 3 But the genuine philosopher as he seems to us, my friends? lives unphilosophically and unwisely, above all imprudently, and feels the burden and the duty of a hundred attempts and temptations of life he risks himself constantly, he plays the wicked game (Nietzsche, 1885, # 205). REFERENCES Blake, N., Smeyers, P., Smith, R. & Standish, P. (1998). Thinking again: Education after postmodernism. New York: Bergin & Garvey. Carr, K.L. (1992). The banalization of nihilism. Twentieth-century responses to meaning- lessness. Albany: Suny. Nietzsche, F. (1966). Beyond good and evil (W. Kaufmann, trans.). New York: Vintage Books. (original publication 1885) Nietzsche, F. (1974). The gay science (W. Kaufmann, trans.). New York: Vintage Books. (original publication 1887) Odzer, C. (1997). Virtual spaces: Sex and the cyber citizen. New York: Berkeley Books. Centre for Philosophy of Education Katholieke Universiteit Leuven B-3000 Leuven Belgium 3 Related aspects are discussed in another jointly written paper: Smeyers, P. &Lambeir, B. (2001). Carpe diem. Tales of desire and the unexpected. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 35, 283299.