Questions 2 and 3 of the Review Stage

Dear Nigel, Two points of connection with your research project and ideas. 
The first is to the life project of Chris Keeble. Chris is currently 
researching a virtues based approach to ethical leadership. Chris is a 
participant in this e-seminar. Chris is approaching the question of the 
virtue of intellectual rigour from the grounds of both a 'thick' 
qualitative story or narrative of his life and Catholic social teaching. I 
know that Chris turns to Aquinas for support. Though I know from my first-
hand experience of Chris's qualities and, in applying practical reason to 
Chris's enquiry about virtue that his day to day life project is 
influenced by Benedict's Rule. An influence that has been profoundly 
nurturant of my practice over nearly twenty years of consulting and 
working in organizational development and transformation with Chris.

Second connection. On the matter of a particular view of social justice 
over a commitment to epistemological rigour. This is a fascinating point. 
I reckon the two can be respectfully addressed with rigour, simultaneously.

I like the way Professor Code is going about this in her research and life 
project, http://www.arts.yorku.ca/phil/faculty/code.html, retrieved 17th 
July 2005, and I am deeply impressed by her enquiry here,

"RESPONSIBLE KNOWING, ECOLOGICAL IMAGINING, AND THE POLITICS OF EPISTEMIC 
LOCATION 

In this project I am developing the potential of ecological thinking as a 
conceptual apparatus and regulative principle for a theory of knowledge - 
an epistemology - capable of addressing feminist, multicultural, and other 
postcolonial issues......My hypothesis is that the transformative 
potential of ecosystem-derived thinking can be realized only by active 
participants who take on the burdens and the blessings of identity, place, 
materiality, and history, to work within the locational possibilities and 
limitations, found and made, of human cognitive-corporeal lives. 
Ecological thinking relocates inquiry "down on the ground" where knowledge 
is made, deliberated, circulated. This project, then, aims to develop 
several lines of thought that are currently disconnected, in ecological 
theory and practice, in naturalised epistemologies, and feminist and post-
colonial theories, and within two "natural" institutions of knowledge-
production - medicine and law - from which I will draw extended examples."

I appreciate the way Code identifies the importance of multiculturalism 
and the post-colonial in her life project. In this I recognise a shared 
affinity with my own social justice interest. I can appreciatively engage 
with the way that Code is placing the 'post' of postcolonial into her 
epistemological representation of ecofeminism. As diaspora Briton, I 
really value and feel respected by Code's phrase, 'the burdens and 
blessings of identity'. For me, given my personal and social history, I 
feel Code emphasizes the inclusional here. Is inclusion a virtue?

Above al, I value the way that Code acknowledges the 'post-colonial' 
condition, and doesn't 'deny' it. Isntead she places it at the epi-
(stemic)-center of the joint and interlinking project that Code is 
undertaking. 

As an educator/teacher I hope that my virtue of intellectual courage is 
demonstrated by my perseverance in inviting Action Researchers and 
practising teachers to consider, think, and problematise the 'vice of  
whiteness' (it cannot be a virtue after all, surely, even if white 
supremacists suggest that it is?) and how they can think about 
emancipating their pedagogic space from this kind of monoculturalism 
(after Ted Lumley, email exchange, 16th July, 2005). 


I would really love to understand how you take account of whiteness in 
your own classrooms, and how you qualitatively 'imagine' its impact on 
your black and brown students, your minority ethnic students, and of 
course, most importantly of al, for your white students. Knowing 
something of your practice, to have an epistemic glimpse into your 
practical reasoning in this matter, as an RE teacher as well, would be 
fabulous.  

I appreciatively engage with the way Code brings her voice of legitimation 
to her chosen social justice focus of multiculturalism and post-colonial 
within her epistemic project. I think this shows rigour, and openness to 
oppression, such as the state violence of racism in the UK. 

In doing this, I believe Code demonstrates three virtues in ways that I 
fiond credible and consistent, yet open to the emergent and tentative in 
human enquiry,

- the virtue of impartiality, the personality trait of openness to the 
ideas of others 
-the virtue of intellectual sobriety, a quality or virtue I lack, 
deplorably, and it is characterised as an opposition to the excitement and 
rashness of being overly enthusiastic
-the virtue of courage, to conceive of and examine alternatives to popular 
ideas, perseverance in the face of opposition, and determination to see an 
inquiry through to the end....

Taken together I think Code provides strong evidence of her virtues of the 
intellect, and of context (i.e. social justice). 

Maybe I'm mistaken in this reading, Nigel? 

Hope you and Chris are able to get into a dialogue.  

Salamaat,

Yaqub