The Hirst-Carr Debate Revisited: Beyond the Theory-Practice Dichotomy

Journal of Philosophy of Education 45 (4):689-702 (2011)
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Abstract

This article examines the benefits and burdens of the debate between Paul Hirst and Wilfred Carr over a set of issues to do with philosophy and education specifically and theory and practice more generally. Hirst and Carr, in different ways, emphasise the importance of Aristotelian practical philosophy as an antidote to the theory-oriented confined method of ‘conceptual analysis’ that has haunted the philosophy of education. Despite their proper recognition of the irreducible character of practice to theory, they fail to provide a satisfying account of their interpenetrating relation. Hirst falls into error by fencing off ‘forms of theoretical knowledge’ from ‘forms of practice’; Carr’s dismissive attitude to theory is saturated with internal tensions in his own discourse. This article contends that what is left unaddressed both in Hirst’s and Carr’s arguments is the most fundamental sense of ‘social’, which is prior to relative differences in the standards of knowledge among societies and which reminds us that theory is not a socially disembodied enterprise. A lively appreciation of this point encourages us to see the prevailing outlook towards the relation between philosophy and education quite differently.

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References found in this work

Mind and World.John Henry McDowell - 1994 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Critique of pure reason.Immanuel Kant - 2007 - In Elizabeth Schmidt Radcliffe, Richard McCarty, Fritz Allhoff & Anand Vaidya (eds.), Late modern philosophy: essential readings with commentary. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 449-451.
Mind and World.John McDowell - 1996 - Philosophical Quarterly 46 (182):99-109.
Critique of Pure Reason.Wolfgang Schwarz - 1966 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 26 (3):449-451.
Pragmatism: an open question.Hilary Putnam - 1995 - Cambridge, Mass., USA: Blackwell.

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