Conference Program

In the history of Western education, the earliest known institution is the Academy of Athens. Founded by Plato in 387 BCE, he remained its preeminent teacher throughout his life. As the locus of a multifaceted philosophical tradition spanning 916 years, the Academy still comprised disciples and masters when it was forcibly closed by Emperor Justinian in 529 CE. This event marked the final act of a ruthless policy of cultural hegemony that had persisted for over a century and a half, representing the culmination of the Roman Empire's project of enforced Christianization. Before this suppression—and before the study of original Greek philosophical sources was criminalized—it was within this very Academy that the foundational work of our philosophical reflection on language originated: the Cratylus.

This dialogue serves as a testament to the absence of preconceived biases regarding the use of visual-gestural modalities of language. This crucial awareness, established by Plato, remains discernible at least until Augustine’s De Magistro (389 CE). Within a few short decades, however, this entire heritage of knowledge and observations concerning Deaf individuals and visual-gestural communication was effectively erased from history. It would not be until the 18th century that these themes were revisited and systematically addressed.

Furthermore, it was necessary for philosophy to reclaim the autonomy stripped from it by the pervasiveness of religious dogma and theology, eventually asserting itself as properly "enlightened" (Kant 1784). It is no coincidence that this period reflects a worldview in which corporeality and its performances are conceptualized as a disparate apparatus of self-governance—as an act of agency rather than mere mechanical execution (Condillac 1746, 1754). The resulting concept of the subject is of profound interest, as it emphasizes that the subject exists insofar as it "works" toward a conversion of its own naturalness—primarily a bodily one. This naturalness does not, and must not, represent a predestined state or a privilege to be wielded against those (animals, children, disabled individuals, women, non-European populations) who might appear to lack it due to their perceived "distance" from a presumed ideal form.

Moreover, this aligns with the perspective of the compelling socio-political framework known today as Crip Theory (McRuer 2018). Above all, it is the vision that inspired the "pedagogical-linguistic heresy" (Chiricò 2016) expressed by Charles-Michel de L’Épée when he established the first school for the Deaf in history in Paris. This institution was entirely unprecedented for its time. Even by contemporary standards, it remains avant-garde, particularly for its bilingual sign-word character and its advocacy for the education of Deaf people as a public responsibility. In a pre-revolutionary France that would wait until the Constitution of 1793 to affirm that “education is the need of all” (Art. 22), L’Épée realized a democratic school prior to the formal advent of democracy.