Abstract
This paper is both a response to the four reviewers in a special symposium on my book Adam Smith’s Pluralism and a substantive discussion of philosophy of education. In it, I introduce what I call “the educative critique,” a mode of analysis similar to Marxist, feminist, or postcolonial critiques, but focusing on the educative role of a text. I argue that choosing education as a theme is itself a solution to interpretive difficulties, not an add-on that only concerns pedagogues and policy-makers.
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Notes
Weinstein (2013, 269).
Ibid., 2.
Especially ibid., 4–5.
Ibid., 65–66.
Noddings (2013).
Weinstein (2004a: 101).
Weinstein (2014, 152).
Weinstein, Adam Smith’s Pluralism, 131.
Ibid.; Skinner (1996, 37).
Weinstein (2002, chap. 6).
Weinstein, “What My Dog Can Do: On the Effects of WN I.ii.2.”
Weinstein, Adam Smith’s Pluralism, 8; Macintyre (1989, 4).
Weinstein, Adam Smith’s Pluralism, 11–12.
Weinstein (2004b).
For an elaboration of ASP’s account of justice see: Weinstein (2015).
As MacIntyre writes: “There is nothing paradoxical at all in asserting that from within particular traditions assertions of universal import may be and are made, assertions formulated within the limits set by the conceptual, linguistic and argumentative possibilities of that tradition, but assertions which involve the explicit rejection of any incompatible claim, advanced in any terms whatsoever from any rival standpoint. So within every major cultural and social tradition we find some distinctive conception of the human good presented as – true. And although these claims to truth are supported within different traditions by appeal to rival and often de facto incommensurable standards of rational justifications, no such tradition is or can be relativistic about the truth of its own assertions or about truth” (MacIntyre (1995, 296); Weinstein 2002, chap 6).
References
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Skinner, Andrew Stewart. 1996. A system of social science papers relating to Adam Smith, 2nd ed. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press.
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Weinstein, Jack Russell. 2004a. Aliens, traitors, and elitists: University values and the faculty. Thought and Action 19(2): 95–106.
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Weinstein, Jack Russell. 2015 “The political hypotheses of Adam Smith’s pluralism: A response to my commentators.” Cosmos and Taxis 2(3), forthcoming.
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Weinstein, J.R. Adam Smith and the Educative Critique: A response to my commentators. Stud Philos Educ 34, 541–550 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-015-9478-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-015-9478-z