Kants Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1788) steht zu Unrecht oft im Schatten der Kritik der reinen Vernunft und der Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. Tatsächlich sind die Grundelemente der Kantischen Moralphilosophie im Gegensatz zu vielen Thesen der ersten Kritik bis heute weitgehend anerkannt, und erst der Nachweis der zweiten Kritik, dass Freiheit wirklich ist, macht "den Schlussstein von dem ganzen Gebäude eines Systems der reinen, selbst der spekulativen Vernunft aus". Entlang der Stichworte reiner Wille, gesetzgebende Form der Maxime, transzendentale Freiheit, (...) Autonomie und Faktum der Vernunft zeigt Kant in der "Analytik", dass reine Vernunft "für sich" praktisch sein, nämlich den Willen bestimmen kann. Die "Dialektik" sichert den Ideen von der Existenz Gottes und der Unsterblichkeit der Seele objektive Realität und untersucht das Verhältnis von theoretischer und praktischer Vernunft. Die "Methodenlehre" schließlich skizziert eine Theorie moralischer Erziehung, die für den heutigen Ethikunterricht noch aktuell ist. Die zwölf Beiträge dieses kooperativen Kommentars, der anlässlich des 300. Jubiläums Immanuel Kants in einer 3., überarbeiteten Auflage erscheint, rekonstruieren die Argumente eines Schlüsseltextes der Moralphilosophie und prüfen die sachliche Überzeugungskraft. Mit Beiträgen von: Karl Ameriks, Reinhard Brandt, Eckart Förster, Otfried Höffe Allen W. Wood Christoph Horn, G. Felicitas Munzel, Onora O'Neill Annemarie Pieper, Friedo Ricken, Nico Scarano. (shrink)

The concept of natural law is fundamental to political philosophy, ethics, and legal thought. The present article shows that as early as the ancient Greek philosophical tradition, three main ideas of natural law existed, which run in parallel through the philosophical works of many authors in the course of history. The first two approaches are based on the understanding that although equipped with reason, humans are nevertheless still essentially animals subject to biological instincts. The first approach defines natural law as (...) the law of the strongest, which can be observed to hold among all members of the animal kingdom. The second conception presents natural law as the principle of self-preservation, inherent as an instinct in all living beings. The third approach, also developed in antiquity, shifts the focus to our rationality and develops the idea of natural law as the law of reason within us. Some Christian thinkers who consider the origin of reason in us to be divine, identify the law of reason inherent in us with God's will. This paper gives a brief exposition of the development of these three concepts of natural law in philosophy, with emphasis on the intertwining of these three concepts, which we, however, understand as primarily and essentially independent. The paper concludes with an overview of twentieth-century authors who exclusively focus on only one of the three concepts. The aim of this article is to argue against these one-sided interpretations and to uphold the independence and distinctness of the three historical conceptions of natural law. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to provide a philosophical conceptual framework to understand the theoretical roots and political implications of the interpretations of Plato’s work in Jaeger’s Third Humanism and Krieck’s völkisch-racist pedagogy and anthropology. This article will seek to characterize, as figures of localitas, their conceptions of the individual, community, corporeality, identity, and the State that both authors developed departing from Platonic political philosophy. My main hypothesis is that Jaeger’s and Krieck’s interpretations of Platonic paideía shared several core-elements (...) based on a modern conception of State sovereignty and human will, whose fundamental ground is the subjectivist-technical metaphysics. The “production” of a human type (spiritual and/or racial) and a unitary State political community appears in both authors mediated by a theory of political education, that I define as «State typohumanism», that sought its sustenance in Plato’s political philosophy, mainly by means of a distorted understanding of the notions of týpos and ē̂thos, and that, I argue, played a key role in the intellectual legitimization of völkisch-racism. This would be broadly translated into a programmatic and literal understanding of the Platonic Republic which assumes that the inherent function of any State is to produce subjectivities based on national identities grounded on homogeneous characteristics. In these varied characterizations similar appropriations of humanitas have been expressed both in Jaeger and in Krieck. (shrink)

In this essay, which is a response to five papers on Heidegger and education but can also be read independently, I argue that it is only when we introduce the German distinction between ‘Bildung’ and ‘Erziehung’ that it becomes possible to discuss in sufficient detail the possibilities and limitations of a Heideggerian account of and engagement with ‘education’. Central to my argument is the suggestion that whereas Heidegger provides a radical critique of the humanistic foundations of ‘Bildung’, he nonetheless remains (...) caught in the ‘logic’ of ‘Bildung’ by assuming that education ultimately has to do with the becoming of the self. The difference Heidegger seeks to make is that this becoming of the self does not take place through an engagement with the world of beings—the world of things about which we can have positive knowledge—but rather takes place in the encounter with the Being of beings—an encounter in which Being shows itself to us, and we are receivers and custodians of Being. Against this background I show that what is absent in this configuration is an altogether different possibility, not one where we are listening, but one where we are being addressed or, in other educational terms, where we are being taught. Whereas several authors of the papers under discussion seem to have a certain fear of teaching on the assumption that teaching can only appear as an act of power that limits rather than that it enhances freedom, I explore the opposite option—one where the act of teaching and the experience of being taught are precisely aimed at my freedom, albeit that this freedom is not understood as sovereignty but in terms of authority, that is, in relation to working through the difficult challenge as to what legitimately should have power over me. This altogether different educational possibility brings us from the logic of ‘Bildung’ to the logic of ‘Erziehung’. Whereas Heidegger and some of the authors of the papers under discussion did try to ‘move’ education understood as ‘Bildung’ from beings to Being, the shift from ‘Bildung’ to ‘Erziehung’ seems not to have been considered explicitly, although it is addressed and in a sense enacted by some of the essays. I conclude by arguing that it is only when we are able to overcome our fear of teaching that the humanism that troubles ‘Bildung’ can really be addressed. (shrink)

This dissertation is a collection of essays exploring the role of metaphor in Aristotle’s scientific method. Aristotle often appeals to metaphors in his scientific practice; but in the Posterior Analytics, he suggests that their use is inimical to science. Why, then, does he use them in natural science? And what does his use of metaphor in science reveal about the nature of his scientific investigations? I approach these questions by investigating the epistemic status of metaphor in Aristotelian science. In the (...) first essay, I defend an interpretation of metaphor as a type of heuristic reasoning: I claim that Aristotle uses metaphor to express conditions an explanation in natural science must meet if it is to explain regular, ordered change. These conditions specify the kinds of causes—particularly unmoved efficient causes—which the inquirer into nature is seeking. In the second essay, I look to Aristotle’s use of certain endoxa or common beliefs as explanatory principles in science, and show that his use of these principles is similar to his use of metaphor. In the final essay, I present a historical study of the analogy of art and nature, and I suggest that by looking to how the Greeks understood the role of inquiry in the arts, we can shed some light on Aristotle’s views concerning the method of inquiry he thinks the natural scientist should adopt. (shrink)

Fragment B 1 of Parmenides describes a youth's journey to the house of a goddess who enlightens him as to the nature of all things. The task of translating Parmenides' Greek text is beset with many difficulties, most notably the phrase kata pant' atê at B 1.3. There, the neuter accusative plural panta ('all things') combines with the feminine nominative singular atê (heavenly sent blindness') to render translation impossible. Some have proposed emending the text to read a<s>tê ('down to all (...) cities'), understood in connection with the pathway of divine inspiration. Others reject the emendation in so far as the youth is said at B 1.27 to travel 'far from the beaten path of men.' I argue in defense of the reading kata pant' a<s>tê in so far as references to pathways of inspiration and poetic journeys to the cities of men occur frequently in the poetry of Parmenides' era. (shrink)

In the study of education, as in many more travelled regions of Classical scholarship, democratic Athens is something of a special case. The cautions formulation is appropriate: in the case of education, surprisingly few studies have sought to establish quite how special Athens was, and those which have, have often raised more questions than they answered. The subject itself is partly to blame. The history of education invites comparison with the present day, while those planning the future of education rarely (...) fail to invoke the past. The place of Classical Athens in European culture has ensured a place for Athenian education in almost every debate from the relation between education and democracy to the value of educationversustraining, and as the original champion of causes as varied as mass education, co-education, and the national curriculum. Desirable as it is to be in demand, such treatment is not calculated to produce the most circumspect account of the subject. The study of education is further hampered by the fact that our knowledge of Athenian culture is so vibrant and diverse in some ways and so partial in others. Plato and Aristophanes present a vivid fictional picture of education in the late fifth century. If we add a few passages from Xenophon and Aristotle, a large number of vases depicting men, women, and children reading, playing the lyre, and doing athletics, and one or two archaeological finds of an educational appearance, it is tempting to take the result as a clear portrait of a society at school. (shrink)

This paper aims to explain the very sharp contrast between the portraits of Critias found in Plato and Xenophon. While depicted as a monster in Xenophon'sHellenica, Critias is described with at most mild criticism in Plato's writings. Each of these portraits is eccentric in its own way, and these eccentricities can be explained by considering the apologetic and polemic aims each author pursued. In doing so, I hope to shed light not only on the relations between these portraits and the (...) works that contain them, but also on the personal relations between Plato and Xenophon and their manner of expressing them in literary productions. (shrink)

Homer is universally praised for the clarity of his style. Yet even to sympathetic or perceptive readers, if their critical remarks really express their judgments, his poetical intention has been singularly opaque: invited to leave town by Plato, as if he were a bad ethical philosopher; lauded by Aristotle for his dramatic unity, as if he were a pupil of Sophocles; criticised by Longinus for composing an Odyssey without Iliadic sublimity; abused in more recent times by Scaliger as indecorous, irrational, (...) improper and undisciplined, as if he were seeking to portray the perfect exemplar of a renaissance prince; defended by Dacier as a sublime primitive, innocent of taste and art, who achieved perfection ‘par la seule force de son genie’. Some of these judgments are no more than the stock responses of their age to epic poetry. The critic regards the poems from his own point of view; he discovers what he expects to find; and he passes a judgment that illuminates the workings of his own mind but sheds nothing but darkness upon Homer's. The announcement, therefore, of a new criticism by Notopoulos and Lord, a criticism based on the results of comparative study and free from the old prejudices of Analysts and Unitarians, is an event of importance. It may even be the case that the despised anachronistic ‘singer’, that unwashed, mendicant figure lurking in the coffee houses of the Balkans, has something to say. But whatever he says, it will be applicable to Homer only by analogy, and will require verification. (shrink)

This paper argues that, by allowing recognizable patterns of human action to emerge through the intimidating foreignness of a linguistic medium, narrative deserves a privileged place in language education. To overcome the inhibiting effect of strangeness, and thus facilitate the adoption of a foreign language by new users, it helps if the listeners embark upon a regression toward the narrative origins of their familiarity with the world as articulated in their mother tongue. Harking back to the early childhood comfort of (...) being held conjointly by a story-telling nurse and a linguistic substitute of the amniotic liquid, narrative acts as indispensable companion of our estrangement in general—linguistic, or otherwise. The argument brings into play the Greek notion of paideia, in which disciplined training and childish amusement converge, in an effort to accommodate the conclusion that the intellectual version of self-growth—including acquisition of foreign languages—benefits massively from the good old nurturing of narrative, its time-revered nurse. (shrink)

While post-modernist assaults on modernity correctly expose the pretensions of modernity – including its constructs of meaning in history, its abnegation of mystery, and its lapses into scientism, historicism, and relativism – the philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan discerned progress as well as decline in recent intellectual history. In part this is because under contemporary conditions we can avoid the pretensions of modernity, since – in the wake of modern science and modern historical scholarship – we witness the differentiation of (...) interiority, which, properly understood as the discovery of the self, may be seen as leading to a new integration of the spiritual, the intellectual, the moral, and the historical. (shrink)

The main thesis of this essay is that the practice of Socratic political speaking and the practice of Platonic political writing are intimately interconnected but distinct. The essay focuses on the famous passage from the Gorgias in which Socrates claims to be one of the few Athenians who attempt the political art truly and goes on to articulate the nature of his political practice as a way of speaking toward the best (521d6-e2). It then traces the ways Socrates attempts to (...) use words to turn Gorgias, Polus and Callicles toward the best in the course of the dialogue. What emerges is a picture of a philosophical friendship between Gorgias and Socrates rooted in a common concern for justice. Yet, Socrates’ success with Gorgias is overshadowed by his failure to convince Polus or Callicles to allow a concern for truth, justice and the good to animate the course of their lives. Even so, the political practice of Platonic writing is shown in the essay to be designed to awaken in us, the readers, precisely such a concern to live a life in which words are spoken in ways that uncover the truth and are directed toward the best. (shrink)

Plato’s philosophy of paideia concerns the life-long growth toward areté, excellence, in body, mind, and spirit. Implementation of this philosophy in modern times is challenged by many societal conditions, especially relativism, plurality, and secularity. This paper discusses an approach that advocates individualized paideia. In its most simple and direct manifestation, individualized paideia can be supported and developed by the person’s participation in a class of games exemplified by the Tibetan game Rebirth. An analysis of their structure and dynamics indicates that (...) these ‘R-type’ games promote embodied areté across a variety of paths. They meet the challenges of relativism, pluralism, and secularism, to provide scalable and transferable games of individualized paideia. (shrink)

Everybody acknowledges the importance of Socrates’ role and influence on the history of philosophy, as well as on the culture of humanity. He is also considered to be the first martyr of virtue and wisdom in human history. In spite of this, even though most Western commentators recognize the elevated meanings and high level of Socratic wisdom, they refuse to consider it to have a supra-human source and to be divine prophecy. In this article and through the analysis of Socrates’ (...) words and speeches, which can be found in authentic sources such as some of Plato’s writings, the author aims to prove the truth of Socrates’ claim according to which he had the gift of prophecy. By putting together rational proofs and historical clues from his life, we will underline the veracity of such a claim. A part of the article will be dedicated to underlining the fact that our reasoning is based on authentic and historical references of Socrates’ speeches, which are mainly mentioned in Plato’s Apology. By quoting the main and most important commentators’ views in this field, we will therefore endeavor to show that there is a sort of general consensus among most commentators to consider this treatise to be an historical document. The importance as well as main outcome of this article is that if we accept this theory, the general outlook of the history of philosophy will change radically. In addition, the claim that wisdom has a divine source, which is mentioned repeatedly in the content of divine wise men’s words and in some Islamic traditions, will be confirmed. Moreover, the link between spiritual truths and human reasoning will be corroborated and underlined. (shrink)

:This article outlines three possible ethical injunctions underlying three different educational projects related to the self: “become what you are”, “be what you are”, and “be what you become”. While differing on many levels, these three injunctions all assume connections between self, education, and some form of determinism and/or developmentalism. Although relatively autonomous, determinism and developmentalism are often linked together in the sense that they both presuppose that function precedes form, determining in advance how something ought to develop, mature, or (...) change. As an alternative, the essay concludes with a parodic fourth injunction which suspends the relationship between self, education, and determinism and/or developmentalism: an injunction to be “less than you are.”. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Werner Jaeger (1888–1961) was at his time the most brilliant and the most influential German classicist. His most important project was a tripartite study that he finally published under the title of Paideia. Die Formung des griechischen Menschen (1933–1947). Paideia was much more than a detailed scholarly book on pedagogy in the ancient world. It was an attempt to interpret the history of ancient thought—from Homeric epics to Attic tragedy and Platonic philosophy—as rooted in the intention to educate (or rather (...) to ‘form’) human beings. And it was the attempt to contribute to a contemporary German movement called ‘Third Humanism’. In this article, I give a critical overview of this work, its strengths and its shortcomings. (shrink)

This paper develops an interpretation and analysis of the arguments for public education which open Book VIII of Aristotle's Politics , drawing on both the wider Aristotelian corpus and on examination of continuities with Plato's Laws . Part III : Sections VIII-XI examine the two arguments which Aristotle adduces in support of the claim that education should be provided through a public system. The first of these arguments concerns the need to unify society through education for friendship and the sharing (...) of a common end. Several versions of his second argument are considered, and the most promising of them is elaborated in connection with an examination of the links between instruction and legislation in the Laws . This yields what is probably the most compelling argument there is for the claim that public supervision of education is a necessary condition for a just society. (shrink)

This article presents a detailed study of an early section of the actual works and days of Hesiod's Works and Days. The treatment consistently eschews obsolete assumptions about this poem, in particular that it reduces to a didactic presentation to the early Greek farmer. A key principle of the method followed is to pay closer attention to the text's relation to epic forms than has been typical among the poem's commentators. The result is to find that a certain literary figure (...) gradually develops in the section discussed. Namely, the plowing nominally covered there stands for the section's portion on the human condition, a condition implicitly compared with that associated with traditional epic. The figure evokes a well-rounded person, aware of the divine and of the world's uncertainties, with a long-term sense of purpose involving good organization of one's life, as opposed to someone engaged in helter-skelter pursuit of transitory activities, perhaps war specifically. With this identification of virtual protagonist established by the end of the section, the ground is prepared for any further development of the figure as that entity's undertakings or adventures in the remainder of the poem. (shrink)

David Hernández Castro ABSTRACT: Scholars have generally analysed Empedocles’ criticism of sacrifices through a Pythagorean interpretation context. However, Empedocles’ doctrinal affiliation with this school is problematic and also not needed to explain his rejection of the ‘unspeakable slaughter of bulls.’ His position is consistent with the wisdom tradition that emanated from the Sanctuary of Apollo ….

The history of the continuous inclusion of mathematics in liberal education in the West, from ancient times through the modern period, is sketched in the first two sections of this chapter. Next, the heart of this essay (Sects. 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7) delineates the central role mathematics has played throughout the history of Western civilization: not just a tool for science and technology, mathematics continually illuminates, interacts with, and sometimes challenges fields like art, music, literature, and philosophy – (...) subjects now universally considered to be liberal arts. Section 8 adds an international perspective to the contemporary liberal arts story by describing some instructive mathematical achievements from many cultures and societies. Finally, Sect. 9 addresses how contemporary mathematics teaching can use the history of mathematics viewed as a liberal art to enhance the appreciation and understanding of mathematics for all students. (shrink)

Commentators of Plato’s Symposium rarely recognize the importance of traditional Greek conceptions of Eros, paideia and arête in understanding Plato’s critique of the various educational models presented in the dialogue. I will show how Plato contests these models by proposing that education should consist of philosophy. On this interpretation, ancient Greek pedagogy culminates in a philosophical education. For this new form of education, the dialogical model supplants the traditional practices of kléos and poetic mimēsis, inextricably bound to archaia paideia and (...) traditional forms of education. Plato’s Socrates is searching for knowledge and immortality through an application of the philosophical method, one that relies on a conception of Eros and propagation. For Plato’s Socrates, it is through Eros that ancient Greek paideia educates in matters of arête, but eros is not a passion for kléos or for a beautiful young man. Rather, eros is the passion for Beauty itself, a passion that is pursued through philosophical conversation with another, a life of arête. Thus, our investigation serves to define and criticize the various educational models and defend the claim that philosophy is best suited for educating the citizens of Athens. (shrink)

As a practicing physician (psychiatrist), scientist (neurologist) and philosopher, Erwin Straus developed a body of writing which, falling within the phenomenological tradition, is highly original and insightful. His unusual combination of work from these three areas constitutes one of the most important attempts to provide what has been called a new Paideia. Regarding this unique blend of perspectives and concerns as quite natural, he conceived his work variously as a medical anthropologyrdquo; or phenomenological psychology. In the end, he was both (...) a pioneer and a rebel: starting from psychiatry, he proceeded boldly straight into phenomenological philosophy, illuminating significant aspects of human life: if we would understand the norm, we must begin with the disruptions, as failures of existential projects; that is, as forms of human life - which was ultimately at the heart of his life-long epistemic and therapeutic concerns. (shrink)

There are three approaches to the Kuhn-Polanyi relationship: their ideas are the same, can be reconciled, or profoundly diverge. This article seeks to show that both share a tradition of paideia. Kuhn espouses scientific revolutions while Polanyi stresses reform and continuity within a Platonic worldview.

A partir de la manipulación mediática propiciada por la dictadura chilena durante los meses previos al avistamiento del cometa Halley en 1986, este artículo lee la ironía presente en el poemario ¡Arre! Halley ¡Arre!, de Elvira Hernández, como una estrategia que, por un lado, pretende confirmar a una comunidad fracturada y que, por otro, critica la pretensión dictatorial de asimilar mesiánicamente el éxito de las incipientes políticas neoliberales con avistamientos astronómicos que se anunciaban como “únicos e irrepetibles”. From the media (...) manipulation prompted by the Chilean dictatorship during the months prior to the sighting of Halley's comet, this article reads the irony present in the poetry collection of Elvira Hernández’s!Arre! Halley! Arre! as a strategy that aims at not only confirming the identity of a fractured community, but also at criticizing the dictatorial intention to assimilate the success of emerging neoliberal policies with “unique and unrepeatable” astronomical sightings. (shrink)

This article enquires into the curriculum advocated in the only ancient Greek treatise concerning education that has survived in its entirety, entitled On the Training of Children. The treatise was highly influential in Europe from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century, and thus exhibits certain assumptions concerning the purpose of curriculum that lie behind the development of western education and may still be influential today. The inquiry is conducted in three stages: the intended recipients of the curriculum are identified; its (...) elements are enumerated and evaluated; and its aims are inferred from the text. I conclude that the curriculum was intended for wealthy, privileged boys, that philosophy (though not independent theorising) was the most valued subject of study and that the aim of the curriculum was to instil in the recipients aristocratic values and modes of behaviour. Finally, some topics are suggested for reflection, in response to these conclusions, upon existing curricula. (shrink)

There is a new myth of the heterogeneous that is reducing the concept of humanity to a sinful enlightenment. In this article I investigate the contribution that a renewed understanding of liberal arts education might offer for the idea of a humanist education and for the concept of humanity; and this at a time when not only the concept of humanity per se, and of a humanist education in particular are suspected of Western imperialism and rational logocentrism, but also, in (...) England at least, when the tuition fees of humanities students have trebled. I argue that within a concept of modern metaphysics first principles are re-formed to have their universality in instability and struggle. This instability and struggle is the modern culture of rational education, and speaks of a non-abstract comprehension of two of modernity’s most contested terms: freedom and humanity. (shrink)

This paper sets out to reimagine education through a cultural perspective and explores education as a performative practice that establishes certain borders of ‘public’ belonging. Wide-spread debates about the public dimension of schools and universities have focused on how economic rationales need to be replaced with alternative visions of education. This paper seeks to contribute to this revisioning of the public in education by reclaiming education as a specifically cultural endeavour, one tied to practices that are at once both performative (...) and aesthetic. To this end, I draw on theoretical notions of publicity that highlight its performative character. I then offer a reading of a socially engaged art project in order to suggest ways in which this performative character of publicity can be seen to be educational. This paper argues that education itself emerges through various cultural enactments that delineate the contours of who counts as a public and who does not. (shrink)

Scholars have long recognized that hypothêkai, or instructional wisdom sayings, served as building blocks for larger structures of Greek wisdom poetry. Yet the mechanism that gets from saying to poem has never been traced in detail. If the transition involves more than piling sayings on top of each other, what intervenes? Focusing on the archaic hexametrical tradition of Homer and Hesiod, the paper develops a repertory of variations and expansions by which the primary genre, the hypothêkê speech-act, is transformed into (...) a secondary genre—the larger-scale wisdom constructions we find in various Homeric speeches and much if not all of the Works and Days. The paper first argues for a precise formal description of the hypothêkê saying in the archaic hexameter; it then develops a toolbox of variations on the saying's basic form. Finally, the toolbox is put to work in order to read a forty-verse excerpt of Hesiod's Almanac. (shrink)

This article introduces the central ideas of G. H. von Wright’s cultural philosophy concerning the techno-scientific form of life. Georg Henrik von Wright (1916-2003) was best known for his achievements in the field of modal logic and for his association with LudwigWittgenstein. However, his work also included a critical analysis of science and technology. von Wright was concerned about ecological problems, human alienation, and the breakdown of traditional value systems. He analyzed the historical roots of modern techno-science. According to him, (...) understanding the conceptual framework of modern natural science can help us in facing the problems produced by the powerful use of technology. As the most troubling feature of techno-science, he considered its manipulative approach toward reality. (shrink)