Friends, Foes, and Nel Noddings on Liberal Education

The author analyzes the debate over liberal education, focusing on critic Nel Noddings, who advocates alternative education. The author cites Noddings\u27 article Conversation as Moral Education, where Noddings identifies traditional education as studying the canon of Great Books, and another article in which Noddings discusses the theory of curricula

American Populism Shouldn’t Have to Embrace Ignorance

Public ignorance is an inherent threat to democracy. It breeds superstition, prejudice, and error; and it prevents both a clear-eyed understanding of the world and the formulation of wise policies to adapt to that world. Plato believed it was more than a threat: He thought it characterized democracies, and would lead them inevitably into anarchy and ultimately tyranny. But the liberal democracies of the modern era, grudgingly extending suffrage, have extended public education in parallel, in the hope of cultivating an informed citizenry. Yet today, given the persistence and severity of public ignorance, the ideal of an enlightened electorate seems a fading wish at best, a cruel folly at worst. (excerpt

The Republic of Ignorance

Ignorance is trending. Despite universal compulsory education; despite new tools for learning and great advances in knowledge; despite breathtaking increases in our ability to store, access, and share a superabundance of information - ignorance flourishes. [excerpt

A New Vision of Liberal Education: The Good of the Unexamined Life

Alistair Miller’s book, A New Vision of Liberal Education, is a dilation of his doctoral thesis, but it is enormously ambitious in aim: “My specific aim in this book is to explore whether aspects of the two traditions [of Enlightenment and Aristotelian ethics] might be synthesised in the concrete form of a liberal-humanist education” (NVLE, 11). Indeed, the arc of Miller’s argument ranges from these contrasting traditions of moral philosophy, through alternate versions of liberal education, to a proposal for curricular content. The book is well researched and proceeds dialectically, as Miller sifts through scholarship on liberal education, moral education, and curricula, oscillating between exploratory analysis and prescription. With an abundance of arguments, Miller’s “new vision” emerges from a series of intellectual hybridizations. The overarching motivation for Miller, however, is to describe an educational vision that is “liberal” and yet embraces the goodness of ordinary experience — “the unexamined life” — and thereby to reject the presump- tion that human flourishing requires a philosophical or intellectual life. Whether his hybrid vision is conceptually stable; whether and how his vision is “new”; whether the exploration succeeds in its ambitions — all issues I will discuss — Miller advances a serious and provocative set of proposals for educational theory and practice. [excerpt

Reflections on Reading Plato and Aristotle at Lancaster

While serving as a Visiting Fellow at Lancaster University, I was asked to lead an informal seminar on Classical Philosophy. It was to be a reading group of postgraduate students and staff, focusing on two foundational texts of Western civilization: Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. I happily accepted. The resulting two-hour, weekly sessions over Michaelmas Term were lively times of philosophical effervescence, full of probative questions, interesting interpretations, diverse evaluations, vigorous debates, and shared insights. Postmodernists engaged in the holy act of Interpreting the Text, we nonetheless strained to grasp the “true meaning” of the texts, to extend our range of charitable understanding across twenty-four centuries of linguistic and cultural difference, and then to examine that meaning in light of our contemporary context and personal perspectives. However successful that collective exercise may have been, it was certainly provocative. [excerpt

The Republic of Ignorance

“When did ignorance become a point of view?” the cartoon character Dilbert once asked. It’s a question that has become increasingly resonant these days—especially in our public life, and especially in our political campaigns in which elected officials and those who seek election seem to assume a startling level of public ignorance. Perhaps that’s smart. [excerpt

Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered: Reflections on Art, Fundamentalism, and Democracy

This philosophical lecture explores the tension between art and morality, beginning with the opposing viewpoints—aestheticism and moralism—that one should trump the other. As exemplary case studies, several controversial art exhibits—works that fueled the culture wars of the 1980’s are examined to identify the concerns of advocates and critics. This leads to deeper reflections on the artistic assumptions of religious fundamentalism, the role of art in a democracy, and the possibility that artistic exploration can be a form of moral action

Adam Smith and the Stages of Moral Development

The writer explores Adam Smith\u27s Theory of Moral Sentiments, where Smith presents a rich and provocative account of morality. The writer offers an explication of Smith\u27s moral psychology as a stage theory of moral development, with the intention of generating critical points on both mattes of detail and larger implications

Moral Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction

Moral Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction is a compact yet comprehensive book offering an explication and critique of the major theories that have shaped philosophical ethics. Engaging with both historical and contemporary figures, this book explores the scope, limits, and requirements of morality. DeNicola traces our various attempts to ground morality: in nature, in religion, in culture, in social contracts, and in aspects of the human person such as reason, emotions, caring, and intuition.https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/books/1147/thumbnail.jp

Daniel DeNicola, Professor of Philosophy

In this issue of Next Page, Professor of Philosophy Daniel DeNicola reveals his appreciation for mysteries, especially those focused on manuscripts or works of art, and how his incessant childhood habit of reading the backs of cereal boxes at breakfast led his parents to buy him a set of Children\u27s Classics and his very own encyclopedia-sold in installments at the supermarket