Education, Immunity and Autoimmunity—A Study of Medicalized Philosophy of Education

Abstract

Education has been described as and considered as a remedy or a treatment for the insecurity experienced by many young people today. To recognize mental health problems and to seek treatment is the subject of many of today’s research, analyses and academic debates on education. In this article, however, we will analyze, clarify and discuss how medicalized metaphors contribute to both an understanding and a reinforcing of what we call an “autoimmune reaction”. We explore how the meaning and use of the concepts of “immunity” and “autoimmunity” in the field of philosophy of education present a new understanding of medicalized metaphors, as well as a philosophy of autoimmunity, partly based on Derrida and his analysis of “inflammatory” democracies. We will nuance and offer new perspectives and concepts with which to think, in order to understand the existing dichotomy between normality and abnormal/pathology, health and illness in educational philosophy today.

Keywords

• philosophy of education
• metaphors
• immunity
• autoimmunity
• Derrida
• medicalization