Neoliberal epistemology: From the impossibility of knowing to human capital

pages: 63-83

Apstrakt

Today’s discussions on education policy mostly consist of uncritical shuffling of allegedly neutral and merely technical or practical notions such as life-long learning, learning to learn or problem-solving and are based on similarly uncritical acceptance of socio-economic theories of the knowledge society, which is supposed to present an objective framework of education reforms. The aim of this article is to sketch the history of mentioned notions and to present a critique of theories of the knowledge society through an analysis of its tacit political content. To this aim, we took upon early neoliberal epistemology (Hayek and Polanyi) as well as its transition towards theories of human capital (Drucker and Machlup). Keywords: knowledge, neoliberalism, epistemology, human capital, knowledge society