Philosophy of education is regarded as an art of hermeneutics that integrates a theory of mimesis in its understanding of the educational transmission. The idea of the master is reconsidered in this perspective in order to overcome the old opposition between classicism and romanticism. In that way the author attempts to respond to the question: What is the secret to pedagogically sound education?

Wollstonecraft's early works express a coherent view of moral psychology, moral education and moral philosophy which guides the construction of her early fiction and educational works. It includes a valuable account of the relation between reason and feeling in moral development. Failure to recognize the complexity and coherence of the view and unhistorical readings have led to mistaken criticisms of Wollstonecraft's position. Part I answers these criticisms; Part II describes and textually supports her view.

Rousseau's Savoyard Vicar makes creative use of Descartes's meditative method by applying it to practical life. This ?misuse? of the Cartesian method highlights the limits of the thinking thing as a ground for morality. Taking practical philosophy as first philosophy, the Vicar finds bedrock certainty of the self as an agent in the world and of moral truths while distancing himself from Cartesian positions on the distinction, union and interaction of mind and body. Rousseau's Moral Letters harmonize with the Vicar's (...) view. Descartes would reject the Vicar's appropriation, as real-life problems cannot wait on meditation to answer them. (shrink)

No Ensaio sobre a origem das línguas, texto publicado postumamente, em 1781, Rousseau reflete sobre certos aspectos da conformação antropológica e social, tendo em vista as diferentes configurações climáticas e geográficas nas quais os homens se encontram. O objetivo do artigo será examinar a importância das noções de trabalho e preguiça sobre elementos que, no Ensaio, constituem a antropologia desenvolvida por Rousseau. Para isso, buscaremos demonstrar como as diferentes dificuldades impostas pela natureza exigem variadas respostas aos obstáculos do meio ambiente.

Résumé Cet article aborde les questions soulevées par la circulation des textes des Lumières en Albanie à l’époque où le réalisme socialiste régnait en maître. Après un rappel du contexte politique, l’analyse porte sur les difficultés pour un traducteur de Rousseau de se montrer fidèle aux principes idéologiques d’un État dont l’ambition fut de construire un « homme nouveau ». Si la traduction n’échappe pas à ces impératifs, elle ne peut éviter non plus certains des éléments de la culture albanaise (...) traditionnelle héritée de siècles de domination ottomane. (shrink)

O texto salienta a importância das regras da arte de governar no pensamento político de Rousseau, em especial as regras que mantêm a máquina administrativa funcionando.

RESUMO É certamente hegemônica na recepção do pensamento político rousseauniano, de seus primeiros momentos à exegese contemporânea, a tese segundo a qual o contrato social seria incompatível com a negação do direito natural. A convicção comum a esses intérpretes, herdada da tradição jusnaturalista moderna, é a de que, na ausência de uma obrigação moral prévia - a lei natural - e, portanto, de uma sanção que confira força vinculante à promessa daqueles que se engajam no ato de contratar, o pacto (...) fundamental não passaria de um formulário vão, cujos termos seus celebrantes dificilmente cumpririam. As teorias contratualistas da origem do corpo político encontrar-se-iam, assim, necessariamente atreladas ao jusnaturalismo. Na contramão desse viés de leitura, pretendemos neste artigo desenvolver e sustentar a hipótese de que o contrato social concebido por Jean-Jacques Rousseau, distinto da forma contratual clássica em aspectos cruciais, dispensa a sanção da lei de natureza. Será o caso, para tanto, de esmiuçar a estrutura sui generis do pacto rousseauniano, revelando, finalmente, de onde emana seu poder coercitivo. ABSTRACT The conception according to which the social contract would not be compatible with the refusal of natural right is widely hegemonic in the reception of the Rousseaunian political thought, from its beginnings to the present day exegesis. The common contention of these interpreters, inherited from the modern jusnaturalistic tradition, is that, in the absence of a previous moral obligation - the natural law - and therefore of a sanction able to procure binding force to the promise of those who engage in the act of contracting, the fundamental pact would be but a vain form, whose terms its celebrants would hardly keep. Thusly, the contratualist theories of the origin of the political body would necessarily find themselves linked to jusnaturalism. As a counterpoint to this interpretative bias, we intend in the present article to develop and sustain the hypothesis that the social contract conceived by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, distinct from the classical contractual form in some crucial aspects, dismisses the sanction from the law of nature. To that end, it will be relevant to unravel the sui generis structure of the Rousseaunian pact, elucidating, lastly, the source of its coercive power. (shrink)

Research Articles Paul A. Rahe, Social Philosophy and Policy, FirstView Article.

ABSTRACT Gert Biesta astutely criticizes thepolitics of learning through which learning has been popularized and exalted. He offers a valuable critical diagnostics of this politics, but, I argue, his conclusions about ‘going beyond learning’ incriminate learning wholesale. Through a close reading of one of Biesta’s related articles, I show that he sweepingly indicts learning per se, and not only its politics in the ‘learning age’. Biesta departs from current theoretical underpinnings of learning but deep down accepts too much of the (...) conventional semantics of learning. His advancing a denaturalization of learning and his dismissing the assumption that learning is omnipresent and inextricable from living make unnecessary and unintended concessions to the hegemonic idiom and politics of learning. Instead of attaching undue weight to ‘beyond learning’ and to ‘refusing the learner identity’, I defend a theorization of learning in plural that complicates both the self-understandings and the critiques of the era. (shrink)

The financial crash of 2008 following the selling of fictitious derivatives was a crisis of both rationality and values whose aftermath has thrown the legitimation of deregulated markets, and governments, into question. This paper critiques the Becker metaphor of human capital and submits that human value is central to and the fulcrum of both economic and social values. It illustrates that Hume and Adam Smith directly countered the Hobbesian hypothesis that human nature is based only on self-interest, distinguishes market values (...) from social values, explicit from implicit values and parallels Sen in adopting an ordinal ranking of what people value rather than a search for cardinality. It draws on cognitive psychology, neural research, revealed preference theory and a principle of implicit verification. It also outlines implications for what Adam Smith centrally valued as concern for the welfare of the whole of society. (shrink)

Rousseau’s thoughts on education are being presented and then put in tension with todays educational conceptions. We aim at highlighting in how far Rousseau’s work can still contribute to conceive teaching and learning, but also how it is in tension with some contemporary educational tenets. We conclude by emphasising the need to reflect all teaching and learning taking into account the objective to allow the development of a human being bestowed with a unique potential, that of being able to become (...) autonomous and free, actively taking part in his and his society’s future. (shrink)

Une clinique des radicalités dans le champ de la prévention et du traitement des extrémismes violents amène l’auteur de cet article à rencontrer de nombreux adolescents et jeunes adultes vulnérables. Ils établissent des liens entre violences et souffrances, historiques et actuelles, non prises en compte par le collectif. Les violences subies par les générations précédentes, notamment lors de la guerre d’Algérie, à défaut d’être clairement reconnues, subsistent de nos jours dans un sentiment d’abandon, voire une détresse psychique, qui amène les (...) adolescents à s’identifier aux jeunes de leur quartier de banlieue victimes de violences contemporaines, notamment lors d’affrontements avec la police. Au risque de la mort, la rupture radicale semble émerger, pour ces adolescents, comme seul remède au sentiment de désubjectivation contemporaine, en miroir avec les expériences passées de domination et d’exclusion. (shrink)

In the literature investigating the long history of appeals to ‘nature’, in its multiple meanings, for rules of conduct or justification of social order, little attention has been paid to a long-standing tradition in which medical and physiological arguments merged into moral and social ones. A host of medical authors, biologists, social writers and philosophers assumed that nature spoke its moral language not only in its general economy, but also within and through the body. This is why, for instance, many (...) critics of Malthus argued that physiological self-regulating mechanisms ensured a spontaneous adaptation of fertility to the circumstances. Beliefs in a beneficent economy of nature persisted when Providence was replaced by evolution. To some, they provided reasons for hope even when others worried about ‘unfit’ members of society increasing at a quicker rate than ‘fit’ ones. The nerves gradually replaced food and blood as moral mediators between society and the body. When faith in bio-social progress was shaken by degeneration theories, and fin de siècle anxiety concerned underpopulation rather than overpopulation, not an insignificant proportion of those who emphasised the bad effects of modern civilisation resorted to ideas and arguments based on a view of the body in which physiology and morality worked together. A common language and common assumptions linked the Kulturpessimisten to their optimistic eighteenth-century colleagues, in spite of their different forecasts. The present paper traces continuities and discontinuities in the operation of a persistent set of interrelated ideas and assumptions on the coalescence of the physiological and the moral across disciplines and contexts. (shrink)

In the literature investigating the long history of appeals to ‘nature’, in its multiple meanings, for rules of conduct or justification of social order, little attention has been paid to a long-standing tradition in which medical and physiological arguments merged into moral and social ones. A host of medical authors, biologists, social writers and philosophers assumed that nature spoke its moral language not only in its general economy, but also within and through the body. This is why, for instance, many (...) critics of Malthus argued that physiological self-regulating mechanisms ensured a spontaneous adaptation of fertility to the circumstances. Beliefs in a beneficent economy of nature persisted when Providence was replaced by evolution. To some, they provided reasons for hope even when others worried about ‘unfit’ members of society increasing at a quicker rate than ‘fit’ ones. The nerves gradually replaced food and blood as moral mediators between society and the body. When faith in bio-social progress was shaken by degeneration theories, and fin de siècle anxiety concerned underpopulation rather than overpopulation, not an insignificant proportion of those who emphasised the bad effects of modern civilisation resorted to ideas and arguments based on a view of the body in which physiology and morality worked together. A common language and common assumptions linked the Kulturpessimisten to their optimistic eighteenth-century colleagues, in spite of their different forecasts. The present paper traces continuities and discontinuities in the operation of a persistent set of interrelated ideas and assumptions on the coalescence of the physiological and the moral across disciplines and contexts. (shrink)

In the literature investigating the long history of appeals to ‘nature’, in its multiple meanings, for rules of conduct or justification of social order, little attention has been paid to a long-standing tradition in which medical and physiological arguments merged into moral and social ones. A host of medical authors, biologists, social writers and philosophers assumed that nature spoke its moral language not only in its general economy, but also within and through the body. This is why, for instance, many (...) critics of Malthus argued that physiological self-regulating mechanisms ensured a spontaneous adaptation of fertility to the circumstances. Beliefs in a beneficent economy of nature persisted when Providence was replaced by evolution. To some, they provided reasons for hope even when others worried about ‘unfit’ members of society increasing at a quicker rate than ‘fit’ ones. The nerves gradually replaced food and blood as moral mediators between society and the body. When faith in bio-social progress was shaken by degeneration theories, and fin de siècle anxiety concerned underpopulation rather than overpopulation, not an insignificant proportion of those who emphasised the bad effects of modern civilisation resorted to ideas and arguments based on a view of the body in which physiology and morality worked together. A common language and common assumptions linked the Kulturpessimisten to their optimistic eighteenth-century colleagues, in spite of their different forecasts. The present paper traces continuities and discontinuities in the operation of a persistent set of interrelated ideas and assumptions on the coalescence of the physiological and the moral across disciplines and contexts. (shrink)

European theorists of childhood still tend to locate the first positive acknowledgements of childhood as a human developmental period in its own positive right between the 16th and 18th century in Europe. Even though the findings of Ariès have been constantly challenged, it still remains a commonplace, especially within the history of education, to refer to Jean-Jacques Rousseau of the 18th century as one of the earliest and most prominent conceptualisers of childhood as a positive period that must not be (...) evaluated in the light of its distance to adulthood but for its inherent value as an important and unmissable period of human life. Such a view is as unhistorical as it is biased and eurocentred. This article endeavours to shed at least a small light on the history of education and of childhood outwith the usual focus. The central objects of examination are the theoretical treatises of Zeami Motokiyo regarding the Noh theatre which have long been recognised as one of the great cultural achievements of humankind. Despite their acknowledged importance, theorists of education have hardly engaged with these treatises even though they present us with a whole theory of education that also embraces a very original and positive theory of childhood. Given that the treatises originate from the 14th-early 15th century, they pre-date everything the typical Western History of Education would bring forth as the beginning of a positive childhood and a pedagogy that acts accordingly. (shrink)

Nothing reveals the differences between an internal (i.e., inherently pedagogical) reflection on educational processes and an external (i.e., derived from a philosophical, sociological, psychological, theological or other perspective) more clearly than the differing attitudes towards alienation. Looked at from outside a pedagogical context, alienation appears only negative, deserving nothing but contempt and rejection; examined from inside a pedagogical framework, it proves to be a conditio sine qua non, the process through which transformative education is possible. This article juxtaposes both perspectives (...) in order to defend the conviction that within educational reflections, only an inherently pedagogical, i.e., positive, understanding of alienation is persuasive, whereas other approaches by definition either are outside of pedagogical reflections or belong to a kind of metaphysical thinking that nowadays seems rather outdated. This paper forms part of a Special Issue titled ‘Beyond Virtue and Vice: Education for a Darker Age’, in which the editors invited authors to engage in exercises of ‘transvaluation’. Certain apparently settled educational concepts (from agency and fulfilment to alienation and ignorance) can be radically reinterpreted such that virtues can be seen as vices, and vices as virtues. The editors encouraged authors to employ polemics and some occasional exaggeration to revalue the educational values that are too readily accepted within contemporary educational discourses. (shrink)

Towards the end of eighteenth century in France, the newly acquired rights of people as citizens needed assuring. This article traces the principles through which Condorcet tried to realise this on an institutional level. Condorcet did not view the Enlightenment ideas of progress as primarily referring to the state. Rather, he focused on the rights of individuals, particularly on their right to develop their own potential. He bound this perception with the unconditional demand for recognition of the rights of all (...) people, in particular also for a clear renunciation of any gender-specific interpretation of this fundamental idea. Evidence for this is found in Condorcet’s writings on Instruction Publique. In contrast to other educational programmes of the revolutionary period, these evince a discriminating interpretation of freedom and equality, and recognise the numerous threats to a self-determined human existence. (shrink)

Baron d’Holbach was a critic of established religion, or a philosophe, in late 18 th -century France. His work is often perceived as less inventive than the work of other materialist philosophes, such as Helvétius and Diderot. However, I claim that d’Holbach makes an original, unjustly overlooked move in the criticism of religious moral teaching. According to the materialist philosophes, this teaching claims that true happiness is only possible in the afterlife. As an alternative, Helvétius and Diderot offer theories according (...) to which the experience of pleasure constitutes happiness, the end of all human desire. In contemporary terms, these theories would represent psychological hedonism. But, as Diderot himself admits, they have a problem in accounting for why people seem to naturally regard some pleasures as preferable to others. I argue that in response to this challenge, instead of accepting the psychological hedonism of his fellow materialists, d’Holbach shows how one can abstain from reducing happiness to pleasure and yet remain a materialist. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper invites us to reconsider our usual understanding of infancy, no longer as something that passes but as infantia. The Latin word infantia, which is not easy to translate, means a lack of speech, a lack of eloquence, and also infancy, babyhood, and dumbness. Drawing on Barbara Cassin’s works on the untranslatables, I propose to translate infantia, starting by not-understanding, and then by taking detours by different texts, in-between languages. Exercising translation allows us to expose ourselves to the (...) differences between languages. The exercise in translation that unfolds will help to challenge some familiar distinctions such as infant/adult and uneducated/educated. (shrink)

The two main goals of this paper are to question the possibility of the existence of moral emotions and to decipher the notion of moral emotion. I start with a brief critical analysis of various philosophical understandings of moral emotions before setting out an evolutionary line of approach that seems promising at first glance: according to the functional evolutionary approach, moral emotions have the evolutionary function of sustaining cooperation. It turns out ultimately that this approach has its own drawbacks. I (...) finally propose to give up the idea of moral property intrinsic to some emotions; “moral” seems instead merely to label emotions when they occur in morally relevant contexts. (shrink)

Women philosophers of the past, because they tended not to engage with each other much, are often perceived as isolated from ongoing philosophical dialogues. This has led—directly and indirectly—to their exclusion from courses in the history of philosophy. This article explores three ways in which we could solve this problem. The first is to create a course in early modern philosophy that focuses solely or mostly on female philosophers, using conceptual and thematic ties such as a concern for education and (...) a focus on ethics and politics. The second is to introduce women authors as dialoguing with the usual canonical suspects: Cavendish with Hobbes, Elisabeth of Bohemia with Descartes, Masham and Astell with Locke, Conway with Leibniz, and so on. The article argues that both methods have significant shortcomings, and it suggests a third, consisting in widening the traditional approach to structuring courses in early modern philosophy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: This article analyzes the relation between Godwin (1756-1836), Republican and author of Politcal lustice (1793), and French philosophers, particularly Helvetius. Both Godwin and Helvetius were in favour of a political understanding of the theory of knowledge as opposed to an intellectual treatment of policy. They continually questioned the links between policy, history of the human understanding, and moral science from the perspective of the question of education. After the September Massacres (1792), Godwin’s thought changed radically and began to revolve (...) around the notion of perfectibility. The final disagreement marked a distinction between French reformers, who advocated state control, and English writers, influenced by dissent and reformation, who held the idea of perfectibility.RÉSUMÉ: Cet article examine le rapport de Godwin (1756-1836), écrivain anglais «jacobin», auteur de Political Justice (1793), aux philosophes français, Helvétius en particulier. Partisans d’une politisation de la théorie de la connaissance plutôt que d’une intellectualisation de la politique, ils interrogent sans cesse, via la question de l’education, les liens du pouvoir politique, de l’histoire de l’entendement humain etde la science morale. Après les massacres de septembre (1792), la position de Godwin évolue considérablement et met en scène la perfectibilité. Le différend final marque la distinction entre un courant des Lumières françaises, réformatrices et étatistes, et un courant des Lumières anglaises, aux sources religieuses dissidentes ou réformées, porteuses, elles, de l’idée de perfectibilité. (shrink)

A interpretação de Cassirer da dívida intelectual de Kant para com Rousseau é conhecida e estabeleceu um marco real na crítica especializada de ambos os filósofos. No entanto, o exame desta dívida no interior do projeto cassireriano de constituição de uma Antropologia filosófica não foi ainda realizado, devido à rejeição de Cassirer das notáveis antropologias de Kant e Rousseau, que resultou na omissão deste tópico em An Essay on Man. Os manuscritos de Cassirer que testemunham a preparação dessa obra nos (...) ajudam a formar uma outra imagem, que posiciona Rousseau e Kant no centro do álbum de família da Antropologia filosófica. A compreensão da negligência de Cassirer a respeito dos projetos antropológicos de Kant e de Rousseau, bem como das causas possíveis da ausência deles na foto oficial constituem o objetivo do presente artigo. (shrink)

The late 19th-century Ignorabimus controversy over the limits of scientific knowledge has often been characterized as proclaiming the end of intellectual progress, and by implication, as plunging Germany into a crisis of pessimism from which Liberalism never recovered. My research supports the opposite interpretation. The initiator of the Ignorabimus controversy, Emil du Bois-Reymond, was a physiologist who worked his whole life against the forces of obscurantism, whether they came from the Catholic and Conservative Right or the scientistic and millenarian Left. (...) Du Bois-Reymond’s doubt that scientists would ever elucidate consciousness must therefore be seen as an endorsement, and not a rejection, of his faith in reason. (shrink)

This article presents some issues about the relations between epistemology and education. From an analysis of The formation of the scientific spirit, by Bachelard, The structure of the scientific revolutions, by Kuhn and A discourse upon the Sciences, by Boaventura de Sousa Santos, we try to understand how the scientific procedures can determinate some educational aspects. We study, thought, in which measure the epistemological concepts of formalization, paradigm and social construction of science are pertinent to understand the educational processes and (...) to orient the pedagogical practices. We cans see then how science can be considered, in its procedures and in its historicity, as a fecund reference to education. We hope by this investigation to reveal some interesting characteristics of education as a preparation to the scientific activity and as an exercise of approach to the reality through the participation of the new generations in the world’s conceptions which came before their arising. (shrink)