Aristotle

245 Pages·2004·6.96 MB·English

by  Moseley, Alexander

Aristotle
Volumes of the Continuum Library of Educational Thought include:
Aristotle Alexander Moseley
St Thomas Aquinas Vivian Boland
Pierre Bourdieu Michael James Grenfell
Jerome Bruner David Olson
John Dewey Richard Pring
Michel Foucault Lynn Fendler
John Holt Roland Meighan
John Locke Alexander Moseley
Maria Montessori Marion O'Donnell
John Henry Newman James Arthur and Guy Nicholls
Plato Robin Barrow
Lev Vygotsky Rene van der Veer
Rudolf Steiner Heiner Ullrich
Jean Piavet Richard Kohler
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jean-Jacques Rousseau Jurgen Oelkers
E. G. West James Tooley
Mary Wollstonecraft Susan Laird
See www.continuumbooks.com for further details.
Members of the Advisory Board
Robin Barrow, Professor of Gary McCulloch, Brian Simon Professor of
Philosophy of Education, and the History of Education, Institute of
formerly Dean of Education, Simon Education, University of London.
Fraser University, Canada.
Jiirgen Oelkers, Professor of Education at
the Institute of Education, University of
Peter Gronn, Professor of Education,
Department of Educational Studies, Zurich.
University of Glasgow, and formerly
of Monash University, Australia. Richard Pring, Lead Director of the
Nuffield Review of 14-19 Education and
Training for England and Wales; Emeritus
Kathy Hall, Professor of Education,
Fellow, Green College Oxford; and formerly
National University of Ireland, Cork.
Professor of Educational Studies and
Director of the Department of Educational
Stephen Heyneman, Professor of Studies, University of Oxford.
International Educational Policy at
the College of Education and Human Harvey Siegel, Professor of Philosophy,
Development, Vanderbilt University, University of Miami.
Nashville.
Richard Smith, Professor of Education and
Yung-Shi Lin, President Emeritus Director of the Combined Degrees in Arts
and Professor, Department of and Social Sciences, University of Durham.
Education and Institute of Graduate
Studies, Taipei Municipal University Zhou Zuoyu, Professor of Education,
of Education. Beijing Normal University.
Aristotle
ALEXANDER MOSELEY
Continuum Library of Educational Thought
Series Editor: Richard Bailey
Volume 21
continuum
Continuum International Publishing Group
The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane
11 York Road Suite 704
London New York
SE1 7NX NY 10038
www.continuumbooks.com
© Alexander Moseley 2010
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or
retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
Alexander Moseley has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 9781847061034 (hardcover)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Moseley, Alexander, 1943-
Aristotle / Alexander Moseley
p. cm. - (Continuum library of educational thought; v. 21)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-84706-103-4 (hardcover)
1. Aristotle. 2. Education—Philosophy. I. Title. II. Series.
LB85.A7M67 2010
370.1-DC22
2009013714
Typeset by BookEns, Royston, Herts.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Contents
Series Editor's Preface vii
Foreword ix
Abbreviations xiii
Part 1 Intellectual Biography 1
1 Heritage and Early Influences 3
2 Antecedents and Contemporaries 30
Part 2 Critical Exposition of Aristotle's Work 55
3 Fundamentals of Philosophy 57
4 Theories on Education 125
Part 3 The Reception and Influence of Aristotle's Work 159
5 Ancient to Modern 161
6 The Ancient World 164
7 The Middle Ages 182
Part 4 The Relevance of Aristotle's Work Today 191
8 Education, Philosophy, and Modern State 193
References 213
Index 222
To my wife Moira and our son Charles
Series Editor's Preface
Education is sometimes presented as an essentially practical activity. It
is, it seems, about teaching and learning, curriculum, and what goes on
in schools. It is about achieving certain ends, using certain methods,
and these ends and methods are often prescribed for teachers, whose
duty it is to deliver them with vigor and fidelity. With such a clear
purpose, what is the value of theory?
Recent years have seen politicians and policy-makers in different
countries explicitly denying any value or need for educational theory. A
clue to why this might be is offered by a remarkable comment by a
British Secretary of State for Education in the 1990s: 'having any ideas
about how children learn, or develop, or feel, should be seen as
subversive activity.' This pithy phrase captures the problem with
theory: it subverts, challenges, and undermines the very assumptions
on which the practice of education is based.
Educational theorists, then, are trouble-makers in the realm of
ideas. They pose a threat to the status quo and lead us to question the
common sense presumptions of educational practices. But this is
precisely what they should do because the seemingly simple language
of schools and schooling hides numerous contestable concepts that in
their different usages reflect fundamental disagreements about the
aims, values, and activities of education.
Implicit within the Continuum Library of Educational Thought is an
assertion that theories and theorizing are vitally important for
education. By gathering together the ideas of some of the most
influential, important, and interesting educational thinkers, from the
Ancient Greeks to contemporary scholars, the series has the ambitious
task of providing an accessible yet authoritative resource for a
generation of students and practitioners. Volumes within the series
are written by acknowledged leaders in the field, who were selected for
viii Series Editor's Preface
both their scholarship and their ability to make often complex ideas
accessible to a diverse audience.
It will always be possible to question the list of key thinkers that are
represented in this series. Some may question the inclusion of certain
thinkers; some may disagree with the exclusion of others. That is
inevitably going to be the case. There is no suggestion that the list of
thinkers represented within the Continuum Library of Educational
Thought is in any way definitive. What is incontestable is that these
thinkers have fascinating ideas about education, and that taken
together, the Library can act as a powerful source of information and
inspiration for those committed to the study of education.
Richard Bailey
University of Birmingham
Foreword
Aristotle was long considered the foremost Western philosopher. For
centuries, and in every area of human investigation, he provided the
template against which scholars, sages, and philosophers measured
themselves. It was only after the rise of modern science challenged his
natural teleology that he was to some extent displaced in the Western
imagination as 'the master of those who know' (sometimes rendered
simply: 'the one who knows').
Today, although he still ranks alongside Plato in the estimation of
philosophers generally, Aristotle receives far less attention than the
latter in the more specific field of philosophy of education. He is not,
generally speaking, to be found listed among the 'Great Educators'; he
does not earn a chapter to himself, as Plato and Isocrates both do, in
H. I. Marrou's standard History of Education in Antiquity. And,
unsurprisingly perhaps, there are relatively few monographs on his
educational thought. All the more reason, then, to welcome Alexander
Moseley's masterly study.
The most obvious reason for the comparative neglect of Aristotle is
that he did not leave any sustained treatise on education. Unlike, say,
Plato's Republic, with its carefully nuanced theory of human
development and prescriptions for the education of the rulers of the
ideal state, Aristotle nowhere in his voluminous writings presents us
with an overall theory of education as such. Instead, his educational
views have to be extracted from a variety of places and woven together
if we are looking for anything like a lucid account of education. This
exacting job of synthesis is further exacerbated by the fact that much of
Aristotle's thought has an indirect rather than a direct relevance to
education. Hence one is compelled to give careful consideration as to
how exactly his various thoughts bear on the educational enterprise.
His views concerning moral education, for example, although