Aristotle (Continuum Library Of Educational Thought) PDF
Preview Aristotle (Continuum Library Of Educational Thought)
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 •> o 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
Description:The list of books you might like
