The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy

The business sector increasingly subsidizes financially challenged institutions. Representative examples would include health care, major sports arenas, and penal facilities. Among the recent beneficiaries of corporate largesse are schools. Such assistance blurs social roles and raises serious moral concerns, especially those of moral agency. Education, more so than other social institutions, determines the kind of citizen and moral character a person can become. Put differently, education operates on virtue development that may override the fiscal logic of profit-maximization practiced by corporations. In this paper I argue that whatever benefit received by struggling schools is short-lived by comparison to the long range influence achieved by a corporation via advertisements that affect the psychological preferences of children. I contend that this makes the exchange unfair insofar as it violates the autonomy of the student. Education should provide a free and open atmosphere in which critical points of view are discussed. If corporations are permitted untrammeled access to schools, social views may become one-dimensional. Economic salvation would effectively trade on the moral failure of schools.

I argue that humanity is initiating a new historical era: the Technological Era. While this mutation opens to man extraordinary possibilities of spiritual and material progress, it is irreversible and threatens to destroy him. The eminent danger can be relieved only by adequately preparing the younger generation. In what follows, the principles which guide this preparation are enunciated and justified. The nuclear importance which should be given to moral education is emphasized, and the cultural and sociological obstacles opposed to it are analyzed. Finally, the means to overcome these obstacles are indicated.

The present global political situation is serious and desperately invites public awareness and concern. Global problems cannot be solved locally; they must be studied locally with an eye towards a mass-movement that would raise awareness of the severity of the problems as well as the absence of viable solutions. A comprehensive view should evolve through critical discussions regarding both problems and possible solutions. The movement must seek to create minimal scientific literacy (that is, attention to factual reports plus a critical attitude toward them). The movement must be educational and democratic; it must encourage individual autonomy. It must freely confess ignorance and slowly develop ideas in a combination of broad propaganda and proper research. Philosophy can contribute by developing a comprehensive view of the situation. Academic research should attend to practical problems. Ideally, the movement will offer grassroots education that will enable graduates to compel appropriate institutions to enact legislation directed toward the alleviation of global problems.

Conceptualizations of critical thinking framed in terms of mental processes have been highly influential in contemporary education. Such conceptualizations have, however, been criticized by philosophers of education both because of the problematic nature of the notion of mental processes and because of their lack of a normative dimension. I argue, however, that the reliance on the notion of skills in the accounts of some of these same philosophers renders their accounts potentially subject to some of the same criticisms which they level against process conceptualizations. This problem becomes particularly salient in the debate over the generalizability of critical thinking where the introduction of the concept of skills frames the issue in terms of the transfer of an inner process or ability. I argue that critical thinking is better conceptualized in terms of the achievement of certain understanding or intellectual resources. The problem of generalizability then becomes one of determining the range of use and application of the principles and criteria which constitute our public traditions of inquiry rather than one of determining the transference of some putative mental ability.

Education, an action, is a process, a development of the imperfect human being intentionally directed at achieving the ideal of human plenitude in the best possible manner. This is a description of the educational process based on the human being who travels toward plenitude, a point of arrival; the human being who achieves his or her own perfection in the best possible manner; and a method: intentional guidance towards plenitude in the harmonious formation of humanity. It is not enough to say what education is or what it is like. It is necessary to clarify what education is for. The harmonious development of essential, integral and vocational abilities makes the student more perfect and causes his or her cosmic and social circumstance to be more perfect. In this integral philosophy of education, I offer a new "Paideia." It is necessary to seek the student's point of balance between the sciences of empirical verification and humanistic duties. Otherwise, we will march toward the disintegration of the human being, to the anti-knowledge of a very powerful technocracy. Integral personal and community education is education which promotes the person in a changing society susceptible to progress. That student perfectibility which is anxious to satisfy demands can only be fulfilled with love. The contemporary world has not rehearsed on a large scale an education for love. If we do not found education on love, the world will not be inhabited by humans.

From its first appearance in western culture, philosophy has been considered able to build up reality, to educate people, and to disclose truth. Plato proposed philosophers as governors in life-long pursuit of philosophical learning. Socrates was the ideal paradigm of an educating philosopher: he tried to wake up human minds so that they could be aware of themselves and of the world, criticizing tradition and prejudices in a logically consistent perspective. A critical and dialogic approach—not by mere chance defined as "Socratic"—to problems has been considered until now the most profitable method of teaching. Socrates is a pioneer in discussing the question of a philosophical (paideia), as he defined his method "maieutic." He was not an authoritarian teacher, but a sparring partner in the process of self-education. Moreover, he considered himself as the most learned and, at the same time, the wisest in Greece, just because he was conscious of his ignorance. Therefore, he understood for the first time in our cultural tradition that knowledge is an endless process rather than a product, within marked bounds.

La preocupación social y política por el comportamiento de los individuos en sus relaciones sociales ha suscitado en el ámbito educativo internacional un interés creciente. Se han desarrollado programas de formación que reciben denominaciones diferentes: educación del carácter, educación moral, educación cívica, educación en valores, educación social, y los otros. Resulta necesario para reflexionar sobre esta temática conocer qué han expuesto algunos autores del pasado que han influido más notablemente en el desarrollo del pensamiento pedagógico. Aristóteles y Rousseau son autores excelentes para este propósito comparando de paso etapas diversas como son la clásica y la moderna. Las nociones y denominaciones que utilizan para referirse a la dimensión moral de la educación son: educación del carácter en Aristóteles, y educación moral en Rousseau. Desde el punto de vista aristotélico, la educación del carácter es siempre moral porque hacer del individuo un ser humano pleno es hacerle bueno. Viendo el tema desde la perspectiva de Rousseau, la educación moral busca que el individuo conserve su carácter "natural' aun viviendo en sociedad. Rousseau dividiría la educación del carácter que promueve Aristóteles en dos etapas, la educación del individuo, que es formación de su carácter-educación negativa-para después pasar a una educación propiamente moral. En la raíz de la distinción entre educación moral y del carácter encontramos las diversas bases antropológicas que sustentan Aristóteles y Rousseau por las que establecen cuál es la relación entre sociabilidad e individualidad. El Estagirita destaca la posible armonía entre estas dimensiones humanas planteando la educación cívica como una continuación de la del carácter, en cambio, a Rousseau le resulta difícil coordinar ambos aspectos aunque lo pretende añorando el estilo de vida de las polis griegas. Tanto Aristóteles como Rousseau insisten en que uno de los procedimientos básicos de la educación moral y cívica es el ejercicio y la habituación en los comportamientos que se quieren suscitar.

For the sake of humanity, outward compulsion must change into inward check. This is possible with the help of "paideia." I use "paideia" instead of the equivocal German word "Bildung," which comprises the meanings of "education," "formation," and "cultivation." The core of my recently developed concept of "paideia" is that the educating individual does what has to be done in a certain situation. He or she works alone or together with the other. In doing a work the educated individual tries to avoid any disadvantage for the other. The finished work represents the realization of both, the individual as well as the other in a step toward self-realization. This philosophy of education integrates into one single concept the two main traces of theories of education in European countries, namely the theories of "self-being" and those of "selflessness." The concept of "paideia" is a possible answer to actual problems such as the gap between the rich and the poor, the increase of violence, existing political radicalism, exploitation of natural resources and so on. According to this situation, not all people are educated very well. I claim that the expounded philosophy of education is able to contribute to the education of humanity. The combination of "self-being" and "selflessness" guarantees the optimal realization of sense in a given situation. This ensures that the common work of the individual and the other can develop very well, so that both are intertwined in the result.

Committed to the metaphysical thesis that Person is first, working within the Liberal Protestant Consensus, and believing that our minds are capable of grasping reality (to some degree), Boston Personalists have followed two roads in developing their thought: ratio and poeisis. The former is represented by Bowne and Brightman with their emphasis on reason (empirical coherence, for Brightman), and the latter by Bertocci with his emphasis on creativity. Though Bowne and Brightman were deeply concerned with education, it was Bertocci who wrote on the subject, and his focus was on moral education. My interest, however, is not in developing Bertocci's position. Rather I shall state the essentials of a Personalist view of moral education within the poeisis tradition. To do that I shall address this question: "Must one know to be good?" I shall discuss that question by examining the life of the developing moral person and the place of knowledge in that life. As this discussion unfolds, we shall see the educational ideal of Boston Personalism.

Despite the historical recognition of the importance of the development of individual human potentialities for the group, gifted individuals have not been treated equally. Three reasons are analyzed: (a) the primacy given to institutions over the individual, except those particular cases in which the individual is identified with the institution itself, or invested with the power of one institution; (b) the lack of recognition of the particular needs of gifted individuals; and (c) the assumption of egalitarian ideals inside specific societies. Despite arguments to the contrary, gifted education will be defended. Gifted individuals have special needs. I assume that Hope and Good Will provide enough justification for this public human task.

La philosophie s'est présentée au cours des siècles comme un domaine de recherche et d'enseignement. Mais tout d'abord il faut définir la philosophie ou le discours philosophique. Celui-ci entreprend d'analyser les rapports entre le monde extérieur, le monde mental et le monde linguistique. Par ailleurs, le discours philosophique permet d'universaliser les situations singulières par les concepts et les mots; les êtres humains peuvent ainsi se construire un champ commun. Là, il s'agit des relations culturelles verticales et horizontales. Le discours philosophique général, d'une part, est domaine d'éducation et d'enseignement et d'autre part, les observations et les évaluations montrent que la philosophie et l'éducation font ensemble un tout. Car chaque philosophe imagine de créer un homme nouveau et une société nouvelle pour l'avenir. Les personnes, les institutions et les organisations qui comprennent la force de la philosophie, doivent en trouver des solutions rationnelles pour créer un milieu pacifique. La philosophie ne peut qu'unir les différentes cultures dans notre époque. Par conséquent, les quelques organisations culturelles ont vu l'importance de la philosophie pour pouvoir analyser er résoudre les problèmes humains. Par exemple L'UNESCO a redécouvert la force de l'enseignement de la philosophie qui ne s'appuie qu'à la raison humaine.

Contemporary scientific investigation, mainly through psychoanalysis and sociology, has shown that homo violens is a dimension of homo sapiens. At the same time, violence has emerged as a threat to humankind's survival. Freedom itself was, for Kant, the anthropological basis of human rationality. Rationality moves human beings toward self-fulfillment. This paper, based on the critical thought of E. Weil, defends the proposal of an education which, in assessing violence philosophically, attempts to oppose it.

I argue that the contemporary crisis in education — that nothing appears valid as a discipline unless it has a utilitarian value — may be challenged from the perspective of the Platonist tradition. The ascent through philosophy to the vision of Beauty in itself in Plato's Symposium affirms the perception of beauty or nobility as the ultimate end and value of all knowledge. Marsilio Ficino's adaption of Plato in the Renaissance articulates a more metaphysical ascent which broadens the objects of knowledge in order to include the cosmos and the arts as well as philosophy. Together, these two accounts provide a foundation for understanding the ordering of all knowledge toward the end of the perception of beauty or nobility. There is no dichotomy between the sciences and the humanities: there is only a hierarchy of disciplines according to a scale of metaphysical nobility. The sciences, the arts, history, and philosophy are the steps toward knowledge of Beauty in itself. They constitute a vision of liberal education that is not utilitarian, but whose value must be understood precisely through the moral concept of nobility that is the end of such an education. In embracing the concept of beauty or nobility, liberal education affirms the value of life itself.

Vico's concept of the Heroic Mind forms the pedagogical basis for his view of the liberal arts in university education. It is also the key to understanding his humanist critique of Cartesian epistemology. This essay studies Vico's Heroic Mind concept as revealed in his 1732 De mente heroica Oration, discusses the nature of Vico's challenge to Descartes' view of the human person and of knowledge, and points out the development of Vico's ideas on mind, education, and knowledge from his earlier works. Vico's writings not only offer a portrait of eighteenth century European intellectual and cultural thought, but also prophesy the change, disruption, and dehumanization that result from the exaggerated emphases on rationality as the end of all knowledge divorced from other physical, emotional, natural, or historical contingencies and from a neglect of the de mente heroica concept at the foundation of the humanistic world view. His understanding of the state of learning, wisdom, and culture in his own age as well as his exposure to the aversion of the Cartesian mathematical paradigm which discounted the Heroic Mind issues forth in an understanding of the forces driving modern technological society and the problems plaguing contemporary consciousness and life. He has influenced and inspired much modern thinking in sociology, politics, anthropology, language, pedagogy, literature, psychology, and even science. It is the concept of the historical and cultural evolution of the Heroic Mind which Vico passionately pursued in his monumentally creative The New Science.

I justify the humanities by sketching four views of knowledge in which the idea of an academy or an integration of disciplines might be understood. I assume that every system of higher education inevitably appeals to concepts of knowledge. Such concepts cannot be isolated from political and civic dimensions of life as well as from personal cultivation and character. Nonetheless, older views based on these aspects are open to serious criticism. The four views considered are Aristotelian-Thomistic, Cartesian-positivist, Kantian, and "traditionalist" (in a liberal and hermeneutic sense). The paper describes key elements in each of these views and notes several objections, with a marked preference for Kantian and "traditionalist" views. Kant provides for rehabilitation of the humanities, especially ethics and literature (the moral and aesthetic), within a framework in which modern science displaces ancient teleological nature. "Tradition" is justified on practical grounds--by the need to appropriate for oneself the knowledge and experience of past generations (without which human life loses continuity and meaning). Further, the humanities save the great texts from oblivion to which "progress" would otherwise consign them. The humanities counteract the tendency of science to undermine the conditions of its own possibility, as well as the discipline, knowledge, and virtue required for its own origin.

Philosophy is a special way of signifying the world. If philosophy is the place where the question is radical, then the task of the philosophy of education is to turn education into a problem through the practice of criticism. With this in mind we ask, Is teaching possible? What can really be transmitted? If man, as psychoanalysis indicates, is constituted as a desirous being, learning is possible only if desire is present. This interweaving of philosophy and psychoanalysis leads us to consider the impossibility of education in terms of three questions. (1) Is it possible or desirable to transmit the culture in its entirety? (2) Is learning possible without desire? (3) Could any pedagogical syllabus cover for lack in the other?

Kant's argument that autonomy is the basis of human dignity complements the experiential truth that students have the ultimate agency with regard to their learning. Students must see themselves as objects with workable content objectively subject to evaluation — "objects being events-with-meanings" (Dewey), that can be more appreciated personally, socially, and intellectually. To do so sustains and broadens the conditions in which paideia can flourish for its own sake as well as for human ends.

I am concerned to accomplish five things. First, I attempt to say something about the nature and purpose of education both in and through spirituality. Second, I contend that spiritual discourse and practice have become so fragmented that they are virtually meaningless; therefore, spirituality is an area ripe for, even if neglected by, philosophical inquiry. My argument here is similar in structure to MacIntyre's historical thesis in relation to morality. Additionally, I argue, following Hadot, that spiritual exercises were once the province of philosophy but, after Suarez, spiritual matters were assigned solely to religion and theology. Third, I begin to discuss the primary importance to philosophy of such matters; I do so by way of a brief analysis of the competing meanings attached to pneuma and psyche, and the ways in which these relate to an account of a human telos. Fourth, I suggest that, by rediscovering the kinds of spiritual exercises favoured by the four philosophical schools of Antiquity, it is possible to say something meaningful about human teleology, which I take to be essentially Aristotelian in that it is to do with cultivating the virtues of both mind and character. Finally, I mention the authoritarian and uncritical approaches to spiritual and moral matters adopted in education in the U.K.

Este trabajo sobre Filosofía de la Docencia está instrumentado desde categorías epistemológicas que incorporan a la historia como ingrediente constitutivo de las unidades de análisis del cambio y elección entre teorías. Una de esas unidades de análisis son los programas de investigacíon de Lakatos y la consecuente afirmación lakatosiana de que el carácter histórico del devenir de la ciencia exige la comprensión de la racionalidad como no instantánea. Nuestro interés desde la Filosofía de la Docencia por los programas de investigación es que desde su análisis de la dinámica de la ciencia las tesis se mantienen en el devenir, sujetas a cambios progresivos o degenerativos mutuamente intercambiables. La argumentación requiere, en consecuencia, de un recurso formal que posibilite nuevas condiciones de afirmación, negación o exclusión sobre tesis ya sostenidas pero sujetas a una dialéctica con diferentes presentes históricos. Ese recurso, ese instrumento que inaugura un verdadero pensar, una 'nueva' modalidad de la paideia es para nosotros el diálogo. Evidentemente, desde esta ponencia, la caverna pareciera tener una nueva, por su contextualización histórica, pero única modalidad de salida: la modificación por la palabra, a saber, la argumentación dialógica.

In this essay, I sketch five complementary arenas of concern are set forth as candidates for a cogent contemporary theory of paideia. First, a searching, goal setting form of reflection is central to paideia today even as it was in Hellenistic times. A second contributor to paideia is critical reflection. But, third, reasoning is also connected to embodied activity through feeling. Thus, sensitivity to existential meaning helps people determine what they really want and believe, and it also joins them to the persons, things, and events that matter most to them. Fourth, use of the moral point of view safeguards individuals against wallowing in mere self-indulgence heedless of the welfare of others or of the world as a whole. Finally, only by being open to the complex challenges of the world can a person be receptive to the mysterious dimension of life and discern ultimate priorities. I claim that persons guiding themselves by the five-leveled notion of paideia articulated here will again experience the power of philosophy to confer well-being upon themselves and the world.