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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 December 2014
I am grateful to Kyla Ebels-Duggan, David Schmidtz, Gina Schouten, and an anonymous referee at Social Philosophy and Policy for helpful comments on a previous draft.
1 Of course no one thinks that education should aim only at making students autonomous. I have discussed some of the other aims of autonomy in “Academic Friendship” to appear in a volume edited by Harry Brighouse (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming).
2 See, for example, Macmullen, Ian, Faith in Schools? Autonomy, Citizenship, and Religious Education in the Liberal State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 124.Google Scholar
3 Indeed, in the not-so-distant past it was hoped that education for autonomy would loosen the hold of traditional ways of life thought antithetical to democracy; see McGreevy, John, “Thinking on One's Own: Catholicism in the American Intellectual Imagination, 1928–1960,” The Journal of American History 84, no. 1 (1997): 97–131.Google Scholar
4 Alwin, D. F., “From obedience to autonomy: Changes in traits desired in children, 1924–1978,” Public Opinion Quarterly 52, no. 1 (1988): 33–52.Google Scholar
5 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life/US Religious Landscape Survey, “Chapter 2: Changes in Americans’ Religious Affiliation,” http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report-religious-landscape-study-chapter-2.pdf (accessed October 5, 2013).
6 Arnett, Jeffrey Jensen and Jensen, Leslie Arnett, “A Congregation of One: Individualized Religious Beliefs Among Emerging Adults,” Journal of Adolescent Research 17, no. 5 (2002): 451–67.Google Scholar
7 Christian Smith, “On ‘Moralistic Therapeutic Deism’ as U.S. Teenagers’ Actual, Tacit, De Facto Religious Faith,” p. 50. http://www.ptsem.edu/uploadedFiles/School_of_Christian_Vocation_and_Mission/Institute_for_Youth_Ministry/Princeton_Lectures/Smith-Moralistic.pdf (accessed October 5, 2013).
8 There are very interesting questions to be raised about whether autonomy is an educational ideal in nonpublic schools, including religious schools, but I shall leave those questions aside.
9 See MacMullen, Faith in Schools? 7.
10 See, for example, Johnson-Weiner, Karen, Train Up a Child: Old Order Amish and Mennonite Schools (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).Google Scholar
11 Here and in what follows I shall leave aside the question of how long “long” is.
12 See Sandel, Michael, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13 A page on the website for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival is called “Keeping Traditions Alive.” The text on the page begins “Craft traditions handed down from generation to generation bind people to their past and connect them to their future.” The page can be found at: http://www.festival.si.edu/past_festivals/forestry/passing/keeping.aspx (accessed October 5, 2013).
14 Brennan, Geoffrey and Hamlin, Alan, “Analytic Conservatism,” British Journal of Political Science 34, no. 4 (2004): 675–91.Google Scholar
15 G. A. Cohen, “A Truth in Conservatism,” http://politicalscience.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/workshop-materials/pt_cohen.pdf (accessed June 3, 2013).
16 Chazan, Barry, “Tradition and Autonomy: The Paradox of Contemporary Jewish Education,” Conservative Judaism 35, no.1 (1982): 60.Google Scholar
17 Ibid., 60–61.
18 Ibid., 61.
19 Kamii, Constance, “Autonomy: The Aim of Education Envisioned by Piaget,” The Phi Delta Kappan 65, no. 6 (1984): 410.Google Scholar
20 Corngill, Josh, “An Education for Personal Autonomy in an Era of Standards-Based Reform,” Journal of Educational Controversy, http://www.wce.wwu.edu/Resources/CEP/eJournal/v006n001/a006.shtml (accessed October 8, 2013)Google Scholar. See also Gutmann, Amy, “Civic Education and Social Diversity,” Ethics 105, no. 3 (1995): 572.Google Scholar
21 Maxwell, James Clerk, “On Governors,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 16, no. 100 (1867–68): 270 Google Scholar: “A governor is a part of a machine by means of which the velocity of the machine is kept nearly uniform, notwithstanding variations in the driving-power or the resistance” (emphasis in original).
22 For an ingenious treatment of virtual self-governance, see Pettit, Philip, “The Virtual Reality of ‘Homo Economicus’,” Monist 78, no. 3 (1995): 308–29.Google Scholar
23 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
24 On this point I am especially grateful to Burtt, Shelly, “Comprehensive Educations and the Liberal Understanding of Autonomy,” Citizenship and Education in Liberal Democratic Societies: Teaching for Cosmopolitan Values and Collective Identities in McDonough, Kevin and Feinberg, Walter, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 179–207.Google Scholar
25 Brighouse, Harry, “Civic Education and Liberal Legitimacy,” Ethics 108, no. 4 (1998): 719–45; p. 728 is especially good on this point.Google Scholar
26 Larmore, Charles, “The Moral Basis of Political Liberalism,” Journal of Philosophy 96, no. 12 (1999): 600.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
27 Ibid., 600.
28 Scanlon, T. M., “Contractualism and Utilitarianism,” in Sen, Amartya and Williams, Bernard, eds., Utilitarianism and Beyond (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 103–28, note 11 and accompanying text.Google Scholar
29 See Kyla Ebels-Duggan, “Autonomy as an Intellectual Virtue,” in Harry Brighouse, ed., (forthcoming).
30 Christian Smith, a sociologist who has extensively studied the spiritual lives of American teenagers, reports: “more than one teenager summarized morality for us [as]: ‘Just don’t be an a-----e, that’s all.’” See Smith, “On ‘Moralistic Therapeutic Deism’,” 47.
31 Michael Perry seems to criticize Scanlon for overlooking the importance of this distinction; see Perry, Michael, Morality, Politics and Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 89.Google Scholar
32 Gaus, Gerald, The Order of Public Reason (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 16–17.Google Scholar
33 For a useful survey, see King, Nathan L., “Religious Diversity and the Challenge to Religious Belief,” Philosophy Compass 3, no. 4 (2008): 830–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
34 On the great reluctance of religious adolescents to pass judgment on those whose faith differs from their own, see Trinitapoli, Jenny, “‘I know this isn’t PC but . . . ’: Religious Exclusivism Among US Adolescents,” The Sociological Quarterly 48, no. 3 (2001): 472.Google Scholar
35 Rawls, Theory of Justice, 379–80.
36 I owe this thought to Russell Hittenger.
37 See Smith, “Moralistic, Therapeutic Deism,” 46.
38 Smith, Christian and Denton, Melina Lundquist, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 133.Google Scholar
39 I think the same is true of nontraditional ways of life, prominently including nontraditional family life. But since my topic is traditional ways of life, I shall leave this aside.
40 The historical and philosophical dimensions of these questions are explored in Kuflick, Arthur, “The Inalienability of Autonomy,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 13, no. 4 (1984): 271–98.Google Scholar
41 See how Rawls contrasts the educational requirements of political and comprehensive liberalisms in Political Liberalism, 199–200.
42 Weithman, Paul, “Education for Political Autonomy,” in Moser, Paul, ed. The Wisdom of the Christian Faith (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).Google Scholar
43 See, for example, Starr, Paul, “Social Categories and Claims in the Liberal State,” Social Research 59, no. 2 (1992): 263–95.Google Scholar
44 Sen, Amartya, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (New York: Penguin, 2008).Google Scholar
45 See Cohen, “Truth in Conservatism,” 29–30.
46 I believe this to be a somewhat more abstract and precise version of the argument attributed to Nomi Stolzenberg at Macmullen, Faith in Schools? 126.
47 See Resnick, David, “Can Autonomy Counteract Extremism in Traditional Education?” Journal of the Philosophy of Education 42, no. 1 (2008): 111.Google Scholar
48 Kraybill, Donald B., Johnson-Weiner, Karen M. and Nolt, Steven, The Amish (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 7–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
49 MacIntyre, Alasdair, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988).Google Scholar
