Beyond the neoliberal rationality at work

Abstract

The tendency of neoliberal rationality to economically subordinate every aspect of the existence, and the hypertrophy of an ethically distorted economic dimension, are reflected in a reductive view of the person and his/her development potential, with repercussions on the training level and on the representation of the human fulfilment. Hence the need for a comparison between the economic logic and the pedagogical one, primarily starting from work, since it’s a crucial device for the expansion of the economic “truth”. The paper is dedicated to these issues. At first it briefly dwells on a pedagogical criticism of the human capital theory and then focuses on human capital at work, opposing neoliberal anthropology and teleology with a pedagogical reflection aimed at renewed understanding workplaces as places of significant relationships, oriented to nourish the desire to grow together in humanity at the expense of performance jouissance.