The Empty Chair: Education in an Ethic of Hospitality

This essay examines the gap between the dominant ethical frameworks for education and ideas about subjectivity, and proposes an ethic of hospitality as a framework that assumes a decentered subjectivity. First, I provide a brief overview of the ethics of autonomy, virtue, and care and highlight the conception of the subject that informs each of them. Second, I outline some philosophical critiques of the subject, as well as misunderstandings about the “death” of the subject. It should then be clear that there is a tension between new ideas about subjectivity and the ethical frameworks of autonomy, virtue, and care. Finally, I propose an ethic of hospitality and make suggestions for how this ethic might inform educational practice.