The central argument of this paper is that moral perfectionism cannot be understood in its radical philosophical, ethical and political dimensions unless we trace its tradition back to the ancient Greek conception of philosophy as a way of life. Indeed, in ancient Greece, to be a philosopher meant to give importance to everyday life and to pay attention to the details of common language and behaviour, in order to actively transform oneself and one’s relationship to others and to the world. (...) Truth itself was conceived as an event emerging from the agreement among the logoi of different people, or from the harmony established by an individual between his words and his deeds (e.g. Socrates, the Cynics). But this way of conceiving truth and practicing philosophy has been somehow put aside in modern times, and it has been renewed only during the last two centuries, primarily thanks to the transcendental American philosophy of Emerson and Thoreau. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to show how modern perfectionism re-invented ancient perfectionism, through the re-activation of the imperative to pay attention to our ordinary words and everyday life (and to their harmonic relation), linked to a truth always meant as a practice. My conclusion will be that moral perfectionism can be conceived and still practiced, today, as an ethics and politics of responsibility, i.e. of attention to and care for the ordinary. (shrink)

Throughout history, philosophers have reflected on educational questions. Some of their ideas emerged in defense of, or opposition to, skepticism about the possibility of formal teaching and learning. These philosophers include Plato, Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas, Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Together, they comprise a tradition that establishes the impossibility of instruction and the imperative to undertake it. The value of this tradition for contemporary education is that it redirects attention away from performance assessments and learning outcomes to (...) the ethical, aesthetic, and metaphysical dimensions of schooling. I argue that philosophers of education are uniquely responsible for teaching this tradition so that instruction might be undertaken in the right spirit. To this end, my essay is divided into three parts. In the first part, I explain why instructional skepticism has not been prominent in philosophy of education. I follow up, in the second part, by clarifying my choice of the term ‘instruction.’ In the third part, I sketch the instructional philosophies that ‘book-end’ this tradition: those of Plato and Wittgenstein. (shrink)

In this essay, I demonstrate the value of the Bildungsroman for philosophy of education on the grounds that these narratives raise and explore educational questions. I focus on a short story in the Bildungsroman tradition, Thomas Hardy’s “A Mere Interlude”. This story describes the maturation of its heroine by narrating a series of events that transform her understanding of what it means to lead a human life. I connect her conceptual shift with two paradigms for leading a human life. One (...) stresses the exercise of distinct human capacities like agency and autonomy, whereas the other stresses human vulnerability to fate or moral luck. I conclude by offering important reasons for educators to adopt the later paradigm over the former. (shrink)

Although children and parents often feature in philosophical literature on education, the nature of the parent–child relationship remains occluded by the language of rights, duties and entitlements. Likewise, talk of ‘parenting’ in popular literature and culture implies that being a parent is primarily about performing tasks. Drawing on popular literature, moral philosophy and philosophy of education, I make some suggestions towards articulating a richer philosophical conception of this relationship, and outline some of the implications, questions and problems this raises for (...) philosophers of education. (shrink)

Literature and fiction, in various forms, both textual and oral, have an undeniable place in human growth and education: they are a constitutive part of our reality. This raises the question: how and what do we learn from fiction? Even when fiction does not mirror reality directly, can it still, explore, express, and teach us about the world? If so, how? In this special issue education becomes something of a link between the fictional and the real. Approaching fiction to learn (...) from it, or learn with it, enables us to examine our experiences and to transform them in our everyday lives. The special issue, if perhaps for the most part indirectly, testifies to the various ways love of literature often expresses love of truth. Not because all the articles describe or use the notions of "truth," "fiction," "literature," and "learning" in the same way, but because they offer an extension of these concepts. (shrink)

The documentary film is a popular curriculum tool, and the goal of this paper is to expand the educational significance of the documentary genre I argue that current understandings of this genre are limited and limiting, and offer an alternative perspective on the genre. This alternative will be built from Stanley Cavell’s philosophy of education, in particular, his understanding of the role that ‘representativeness’ plays in teaching and learning.

This essay has several related goals. The first is to contribute to the philosophy of education literature on Cora Diamond while introducing the work of her sister, Julie Diamond, to the field. I introduce Julie Diamond’s work by connecting it to the work of John Dewey, and a secondary goal of the paper is to test lines of connection between Dewey and Cora Diamond. Finally, by developing Cora and Julie Diamond’s thinking on teaching and the moral life, I hope to (...) contribute to conversations in teacher education, especially ongoing conversations about the meaning of responsive teaching. The first half of the paper discusses and engages Cora Diamond’s thinking on the moral life drawing on a range of her published work, the middle of the paper builds a bridge from Cora Diamond to Dewey as a way of introducing Julie Diamond, and the final part of the paper offers an engagement with Julie Diamond’s work. I discuss teaching throughout the paper, and my hope is that a vision of responsive teaching, one grounded in the work of Julie and Cora Diamond, emerges that allows teachers to come alive to aspects of their work that can disappear in the rush and whirl of classroom life. The paper begins with a personal story as a way of connecting with the style of Cora and Julie Diamond’s approach to teaching and the moral life. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to establish—and explore—James Baldwin’s significance for educational theory. Through a close reading of ‘Everybody’s Protest Novel’, I show that Baldwin’s thinking is an important precursor to the work of Stanley Cavell and Cora Diamond, and is relevant to a number of problems that are educationally significant, in particular problems of race and racism.

An implicit rationale for ethics in medical schools is that there is a perceived need to teach students how not to think and how not to act, if they are to avoid a lawsuit or being struck off by the GMC. However, the imperative to keep within the law and professional guidance focuses attention on risks to patients that can land a doctor in trouble, rather than what it means to treat a patient humanely or well. In this paper I (...) explore the gap between learning how not to think and act as a doctor, and learning to be reflective and responsive to patients as fellow human beings. This gap is exposed by the difference between a GMC web resource for doctors, and a detailed ethical discussion by Gawande in his book Complications. The latter raises fundamental questions of meaning, and exemplifies an approach to ethical thinking as the appropriate management of doubt that, according to the argument of this paper, is of utmost importance for doctors. (shrink)

A filósofa americana Cora Diamond, especialista em Frege e Wittgenstein, que os lê dando especial atenção à filosofia da linguagem, do pensamento, da lógica e da matemática, tem também coisas importantes a dizer, a partir da maneira wittgensteiniana de ver a filosofia, acerca de filosofia moral. Em particular, ela é fortemente crítica de uma certa forma de conceber a natureza da filosofia moral, muito comum hoje entre os filósofos analíticos, como exclusivamente centrada na acção e na decisão de agentes e (...) em argumentos acerca daquilo que é racional fazer. Foi essa crítica, que podemos considerar feita de um ponto de vista metodológico, que fez Diamond entrar em polémica, há cerca de trinta anos, com autores muito influentes em ética como Peter Singer e Tom Regan, mesmo se partilha com eles muitas intuições. Neste artigo pretendo simplesmente descrever a posição de Diamond acerca da natureza do pensamento moral e do que pensamos que fazemos quando fazemos filosofia moral. Por trás da análise do papel da imaginação moral em ética, está a questão mais geral da natureza do método flosófico. (shrink)

American philosopher Cora Diamond's view of the materials admissible in moral philosophy is bound to strike many analytic philosophers as too broad: they wouldn't dream of thinking of them (namely of literature) as 'part of their job'. This, of course, assumes a conception of the nature of the such job, one in regard to which Diamond expresses doubts of several kinds. In this paper I search for different reasons for those doubts and then try to make the connection clear between (...) Diamond's proposal of a change in 'the way we want to do moral philosophy' and her reading of Wittgenstein on ethical non-sense. Finally, I suggest that although Diamond has a strong case when she defends that the dismissal of literary materials in moral philosophy marks an untenable neutrality ideal, not every aspect of her view of the role of literature in moral philosophy is equally compelling. She recruits literature for two different purposes: countering the prevailing 'blindness to blindness' and countering the lack of awe and the obliviousness to the 'difficulty of reality' in moral thinking. Since these are different purposes, philosophers might be rejecting any of various things when they do not dream of counting literature as part of their job. A concepção dos materiais admissíveis em filosofia moral da filósofa americana Cora Diamond certamente parecerá a muitos filósofos analíticos demasiado lata: muitos são aqueles que nem sonhariam contar materiais literários como 'parte do seu trabalho'. Ora isto presume urna concepção da natureza de tal trabalho, e é quanto a essa concepção que Diamond exprime dúvidas de vários tipos. Neste artigo procuro identificar as diferentes razões para tais dúvidas. Procuro também explicitar a relação da proposta de Diamond de uma alteracão na 'forma como queremos fazer filosofia moral' com a sua leitura de Wittgenstein acerca de nonsense ético. Finalmente, sugiro que se é certo que Diamond tem um caso sólido quando defende que a rejeição de materiais literários na filosofia moral é marca de um indefensável ideal de neutralidade, nem todos os aspectos da sua forma de ver o papel da literatura na filosofia moral são igualmente convincentes. Uma vez que ela recruta a literatura para propósitos distintos - para contrariar a 'cegueira à cegueira' mas também para contrariar a falta de assombro no pensamento moral, que torna este estanque à 'dificuldade da realidade' -, os filósofos que nem sonhariam contar a literatura como parte do seu trabalho podem estar a rejeitar coisas completamente diferentes quando rejeitam o papel da literatura na filosofia moral. (shrink)