Ideas of Education: Philosophy and Politics from Plato to Dewey

306 Pages·2013·2.747 MB·English

by  Christopher Brooke, Elizabeth Bakker

Ideas of Education

There has always been a strong relationship between education and philosophy –
especially political philosophy. Renewed concern about the importance and effi -
cacy of political education has revived key questions about the connections
between the power to govern and the power to educate. Although these themes
are not always prominent in commentaries, political writings have often been
very deeply concerned with both educational theory and practice. This invalua-
ble book will introduce the reader to key concepts and disputes surrounding
educational themes in the history of political thought.
The book draws together a fascinating range of educational pioneers and think-
ers from the canon of philosophers and philosophical schools, from Plato and
Aristotle to Edward Carpenter and John Dewey, with attention along the way
paid both to individual authors, such as Thomas Hobbes and Mary Wollstonecraft,
as well as to intellectual movements, such as the Scottish Enlightenment and the
Utopian Socialists. Each thinker or group is positioned in their historical context,
and each chapter addresses the structure of the theory and argument, consider-
ing both contemporaneous and current controversies. A number of themes run
through the volume:
• an analysis of pedagogy, socialisation, schooling, and university education, with
particular relation to public and private life, and personal and political power;
• references to the historical and intellectual context;
• an overview of the current reception, understanding, and interpretation of
the thinker in question;
• the educational legacy of the theories or theorists.
This book will be of interest to students, researchers, and scholars of education,
as well as to students and teachers of political theory, the history of political
thought, and social and political philosophy.
Christopher Brooke is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Bristol, UK.
Elizabeth Frazer is Offi cial Fellow and Tutor in Politics at New College,
Oxford, and Lecturer in Politics at the University of Oxford, UK.
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Ideas of Education
Philosophy and politics from
Plato to Dewey
Edited by Christopher Brooke

and Elizabeth Frazer
First published 2013
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2013 C. Brooke and E. Frazer
The right of the editors to be identifi ed as the authors of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been

asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Ideas of education : philosophy and politics from Plato to Dewey /
edited by Christopher Brooke and Elizabeth Frazer.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Education—Philosophy. I. Brooke, Christopher, 1973- editor of
compilation. II. Frazer, Elizabeth, editor of compilation.
III. McPherran, Mark L., 1949- Socrates, Plato, Eros and liberal
education.
LB14.7.I34 2013
370.1—dc23
2012047750
ISBN: 978-0-415-58252-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-81754-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Galliard
by Cenveo Publisher Services
Contents

List of contributors vii
Credit list xi
Introduction: education and political theory 1
CHRISTOPHER BROOKE AND ELIZABETH FRAZER
1 Socrates, Plato, erôs, and liberal education 6
MARK L. MCPHERRAN
2 Aristotle’s educational politics and the Aristotelian
renaissance in philosophy of education 21
RANDALL CURREN
3 Philosophy and education in Stoicism of the
Roman imperial era 38
G. REYDAMS-SCHILS
4 Medieval theories of education: Hugh of
St Victor and John of Salisbury 52
BRIAN D. FITZGERALD
5 Education, Erasmian humanism, and More’s Utopia 66
JOHN M. PARRISH
6 Teaching the Leviathan : Thomas Hobbes on education 83
TERESA M. BEJAN
7 Locke on education and the rights of parents 103
ALEX TUCKNESS
vi Contents
8 Rousseau’s philosophy of transformative,
‘denaturing’ education 115
PATRICK RILEY
9 Educational theory and the social vision of the
Scottish Enlightenment 129
RYAN PATRICK HANLEY
10 Mary Wollstonecraft and Catharine Macaulay
on education 145

ELIZABETH FRAZER
11 Self-cultivation ( Bildung ) and sociability between
mankind and the nation: Fichte and Schleiermacher
on higher education 160
ALEXANDER SCHMIDT
12 Education and utopia: Robert Owen and
Charles Fourier 178
DAVID LEOPOLD
13 Harriet Martineau and the Unitarian tradition
in education 194
RUTH WATTS
14 J. S. Mill on education 209
ALAN RYAN
15 Feminist thinking on education in Victorian England 224
LAURA SCHWARTZ
16 Idealism and education 237
ANDREW VINCENT
17 ‘Affection in Education’: Edward Carpenter,
John Addington Symonds, and the politics of Greek love 252
JOSEPHINE CRAWLEY QUINN AND CHRISTOPHER BROOKE
18 John Dewey: saviour of American education
or worse than Hitler? 267
RICHARD PRING
Index 285
Contributors

Teresa M. Bejan is a Mellon Research Fellow in the Society of Fellows in the
Humanities and a visiting lecturer in the Department of Political Science at
Columbia University. She holds a Ph.D. from Yale University and an M.Phil.
from Cambridge. Her principal research interests lie in early modern Anglo-
American political thought, particularly concerning issues of toleration, educa-
tion, and civility. Her article on Roger Williams recently appeared in H istory of
European Ideas . In 2014, she will join the Department of Political Science at
the University of Toronto Mississauga as an Assistant Professor.
Christopher Brooke is Lecturer in Politics in the School of Sociology, Politics
and International Studies at the University of Bristol and the author of
Philosophic pride: Stoicism and political thought from Lipsius to Rousseau
(Princeton, 2012).
Randall Curren is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Rochester, in
New York, Chair of Moral Education at the University of Birmingham, and
Professor at the Royal Institute of Philosophy, London. He is author of
Aristotle on the necessity of public education (2000) and editor of The Blackwell
companion to the philosophy of education (2003) and the journal Theory and
Research in Education .
Brian D. FitzGerald is a D.Phil. candidate in Medieval History at Lincoln
College, Oxford. His doctorate is on scholastic and humanist debates about
prophecy and divine inspiration, and recent publications include articles on
Hugh of St Victor’s theory of history and on Franciscan mysticism. Among his
research interests are medieval intellectual history, medieval literary theory,
and the classical tradition.
Elizabeth Frazer is Offi cial Fellow and Tutor in Politics at New College,
Oxford, and Lecturer in Politics at the University of Oxford. Her research
interests include the problems of political education, and normative theories
of politics.
viii Contributors
Ryan Patrick Hanley is Associate Professor of Political Science at Marquette
University. His research in the history of political philosophy focuses on the
Scottish Enlightenment. He is the author of A dam Smith and the character of
virtue (Cambridge, 2009) and editor of the Penguin Classics edition of Adam
Smith’s Theory of moral sentiments (2010) and the forthcoming P rinceton
guide to Adam Smith .
David Leopold is University Lecturer in Political Theory at the University of
Oxford, and a Fellow of Mansfi eld College, Oxford. He has interests in both
contemporary political philosophy and the history of political thought. His
publications include an edited volume (co-edited with Marc Stears), P olitical
theory: methods and approaches (Oxford, 2008), and a monograph, T he young
Karl Marx. German philosophy, modern politics, and human fl ourishing
(Cambridge, 2007).
Mark L. McPherran is Professor of Philosophy at Simon Fraser University.
He is the author of The religion of Socrates (Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1996), and numerous articles, including: ‘Socratic religion’ in T he
Cambridge companion to Socrates (forthcoming); ‘Medicine, magic, and reli-
gion in Plato’s Symposium’ in Plato’s Symposium: issues in interpretation and
reception (CHS/Harvard, 2006); ‘Platonic religion’ in A companion to Plato
(Blackwell, 2006); and ‘The piety and gods of Plato’s Republic ’ in The
Blackwell guide to Plato’s Republic (Blackwell, 2006). He is currently the
Director of the Annual Arizona Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy.
John M. Parrish is Associate Professor of Political Science at Loyola Marymount
University and studies political theory, political ethics, and the history of
political thought. He is the author of P aradoxes of political ethics: from dirty
hands to the invisible hand (Cambridge, 2007). He is currently engaged (with
co-author Alex Tuckness) in a book-length study of the historical development
of mercy as a political concept.
Richard Pring was Director and Professor of Educational Studies at the
University of Oxford, 1989–2003, and Lead Director of the Nuffi eld Review
of Education and Training for England and Wales, 2003–9. His most recent
book was recently published by Routledge, T he life and death of secondary
education for all .
Josephine Crawley Quinn is University Lecturer in Ancient History in the
Classics Faculty of the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Worcester
College. Her current work concentrates mainly on the Phoenician world and
the cultural history of North Africa, and she co-directs the Tunisian-British
excavations at Utica.
Contributors ix
G. Reydams-Schils is Professor in the Program of Liberal Studies at the
University of Notre Dame, USA, and holds concurrent appointments in
philosophy and theology. She specialises in the traditions of Platonism and
Stoicism. She is the author of D emiurge and providence: Stoic and Platonist
readings of Plato’s ‘Timaeus’ (Brepols, 1999) and T he Roman Stoics: self,
responsibility, and affection (Chicago, 2005). She is the editor of P lato’s
‘Timaeus’ as cultural icon (Notre Dame, 2003), and of a collection of essays
on Stobaeus (Brepols, 2011). She also directs the Notre Dame Workshop on
Ancient Philosophy.
Patrick Riley is Oakeshott Professor of Political Philosophy Emeritus at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison and Lecturer in the Department of
Government at Harvard University. He is the author of several books on
modern political thought, including W ill and political legitimacy (Harvard,
1982), T he general will before Rousseau (Princeton, 1986), and L eibniz’
universal jurisprudence (Harvard, 1996), and editor of The Cambridge
companion to Rousseau (Cambridge, 2001).
Alan Ryan teaches at Princeton and is Emeritus Professor of Political Theory at
the University of Oxford. He has written extensively on J. S. Mill, Bertrand
Russell, and John Dewey, and is the author of L iberal anxieties and liberal
education (1998) and, most recently, T he making of modern liberalism and
On politics (both 2012).
Alexander Schmidt is a Junior-Professor of Intellectual History at Friedrich
Schiller University, Jena. He is the author of Vaterlandsliebe und
Religionskonfl ikt: politische Diskurse im Alten Reich 1555–1648 (Brill, 2007).
His articles have appeared in The Historical Journal, History of Political
Thought , M odern Intellectual History, F rancia , and elsewhere. He is currently
writing a book about Enlightenment debates concerning the promotion of
sciences and letters.
Laura Schwartz is Assistant Professor of Modern British History at the
University of Warwick. She is the author of A serious endeavour: gender,
education and community at St Hugh’s 1886–2011 (Profi le, 2011) and Infi del
feminism: secularism, religion and women’s emancipation in England, 1830–
1914 (Manchester, 2013). She is currently working on a history of ‘Feminism
and the Servant Problem’.
Alex Tuckness is Professor of Political Science at Iowa State University. He is
the author of Locke and the legislative point of view (Princeton, 2002). His
articles have appeared in a variety of journals including the A merican Political
Science Review, Journal of Political Philosophy , American Journal of Political
Science , J ournal of the History of Philosophy, J ournal of Politics, and Journal of