Visits: 3110
R S Peters is an important figure in any account of the progress of Ariadne’s thread throughout the ages, because, firstly, we are a long way away from seeing the sunlight and secondly, because he understood the central importance of Philosophy of Education for the progress of Society toward more enlightened times. The progress of the thread towards the light awaits the events to record that will assist in the naming of this provisionally so-called “Modern- Age”. Neither the Industrial Age nor the Technological age will suffice on philosophical grounds to characterise the Spirit of the time from the Age of Enlightenment because firstly, both are so called “revolutions” and therefore lack the necessary moral references to characterise the event of the progress of civilisation: and secondly, civilisation-constructing activities and culture constituting activities have difficult logical structures. The events of inventing atomic bombs and the landing of a man on the moon are “modern achievements”. The intentions behind both projects were of course very modern but they were not in Kantian terms displays of good will. Neither activity has its sites set upon treating men as ends-in-themselves dwelling in a just and peaceful kingdom of ends that has a Cosmopolitan character.
Reading Peters and Hirst during a time when International Education was being discussed amongst educational experts around the world raises the obvious question as to their Cosmopolitan commitments. This question arises because there are elements in their theorising that suggest a commitment to Philosophy of Education which was obviously present in Ancient Greek and Enlightenment Philosophy. Science obviously played a role in the above revolutions but it is important to point out that “Modern Science” is not the science envisaged by Aristotle, Kant and a number of Post Enlightenment Neo-Aristotelians and Neo-Kantians. The spirit of exploration and discovery dominates modern science to such an extent that the roles of both explanation and justification are significantly diminished. Science differentiated itself out from the realm of philosophical explanation and justification very early on in Ancient Greece (with the exception of the Philosophy of Aristotle). Science since Descartes has continued to lead an independent life, whilst actively criticising Aristotelian science. Science after Hegel also distanced itself from the Philosophy of Science we find in Kant. In these movements there has been a systematic commitment to differentiating particular events from each other by perception and observation and connecting particular events with each other via a Humean concept of causation. Perception and observation are obviously involved in all scientific activity which needs to differentiate things and events from each other, but these forms of consciousness are also used to see something as something. Perception, according to O Shaughnessy(Consciousness and the World) opens a window onto the world. Perception is one of the most important tribunals of justification in the tribunal which examines the question “Why is there Something rather than Nothing?” It is a function of consciousness that allows the things of the world to appear and be experienced. The conscious function of attention can be directed by the rues of concepts to organise manifolds of representations and intuitions and both concepts and intuitions are required in the more complex experience of seeing something as something. These operations can also be situated in a context of awe and wonder: a desire to understand a world that is in turn partly formed by discourse in which we do not merely say something but use subject-predicate constructions to say something about something. This latter activity is one of the building blocks of knowledge and reasoning. According to Heidegger, this activity involves the truth-making synthesis or what he calls the veritative synthesis. The question “Why do you say that Socrates is wise?”, takes a judgement as its object of concern in a context of explanation/justification that supersedes the form of awe and wonder connected with the context of exploration/discovery that is dominated by our perceptual interactions with the world. This reasoning also applies to the actions we perform and the judgements we make about them. Actions do not always carry their character on their sleeve but very often require explanation/justification in terms of intentions and acts of will expressed in discourse. The question “Why did you do X?” is not of the same kind or category as “Why do swallows migrate for the winter?”. This latter question clearly situates itself in a context of exploration/discovery requiring the particular methods of the theoretical science that concerns itself with such events. In this domain there is a relatively well defined realm of investigation in which basic terms organise representations that have relations to other terms in accordance with principles such as noncontradiction and sufficient reason. In such explorative investigations theoretical methods are related to forms of life and powers associated with discourse(e.g. reason) and these are used to ask and answer questions.
Peters, as we have pointed out in earlier essays, is reluctant to entangle himself in metaphysical discussions whether they be of the kind we find in Heidegger or of the kind we find in the works of Aristotle and Kant, but he is prepared to offer transcendental arguments to support his method of conceptual analysis. Analysis of the concept of education is obviously one of his major concerns. Issues of Justification(quaestio juris) are of greater importance than issues of attempting to form a new and competing concept in a context of exploration/discovery. There is, however, in Peters, a reluctance to be guided by the Kantian recommendation that we approach such matters much us a judge in a tribunal would:- in the light of the knowledge of the law.
The Concept of Education, according to Peters, articulates itself in two linguistic categories, firstly, that connected with the processes of education and secondly, that connected with its telos( its different forms of achievement-using different principles from the domains of theoretical science, practical science and productive science). In his essay “Aims of Education– A Conceptual Inquiry” Peters argues that the concept of education functions as a principle for specific kinds of activities in which teaching and learning occur. Peters points to criteria that are different depending upon whether one is discussing the processes or the achievements(outcomes) of education. The most important holistic outcome for Peters was the educated man, but this outcome, of course, presupposed the processes of teaching and learning which in their turn were directed to acquiring knowledge and understanding. Peters, in his essay entitled “The Justification of Education”(Peters,R., S., The Philosophy of Education, Oxford, OUP, 1973) characterises knowledge in terms of belief for which adequate reasons for its truth can be given. Here it is what a language user says or thinks, that is the central concern, and understanding is involved insofar as a general principle is used to explain(particular events, for example). Mysteriously, in Peters’ discussion, the context of action is omitted. It could perhaps be assumed that it is implied that actions have their reasons and principles.
Education also has an important normative aspect, Peters argues in his early work “Ethics and Education”. This aspect has two significant related functions: firstly, the activity of teaching is concerned with intentionally transmitting knowledge that is worthwhile. Secondly, it is a practical contradiction to maintain that someone has been educated but in no way changed for the better. We are clearly dealing here with an intrinsic aim of education. Extrinsic aims of education, such as its use for society(e.g. economically) or its usefulness to the individual insofar as earning a living is concerned, rely on characterisation in terms of the language of causality, which in turn requires the reduction of action to physically observed and measurable/manipulable events. Skills obviously differ from knowledge in that they are more easily characterised in terms of causal networks, and as a consequence given explanations referring to causal relations between events. In Ethics and Education Peters has the following to say:
“For a man to be educated it is insufficient that he should possess a mere know-how or knack. He must have also some body of knowledge and some kind of a conceptual scheme to raise this above the level of a collection of disjointed facts. This implies some understanding of principles for the organisation of facts. We would not call a man who was merely well informed an educated man. He must also have some understanding of the “reason why” of things.”(P.30)
This is interestingly related to different types of learning in the practical sphere of activity. In the skill situation we have to learn (imitate?) what to do when, without necessarily having the understanding of the principles behind the activity(e.g. building a house). These principles can be found, for example in Aristotles canon of the productive sciences. For Aristotle, skills are mainly concerned with the goods of the body and the goods of the external world, and do not necessarily transform the soul of the learner for the better. Some Knowledge connected to the theoretical and practical sciences, on the other hand, are connected with the goods of the soul that transform the learner for the better and in accordance with the aims of education connected to the idea of the educated man. Skill is also relevant in the theoretical sciences if one for example has a good memory of historical facts. Here the learner appears to know what has happened when, but may not know why . Some skills involved in the productive sciences can be expressed by instrumental imperatives and these can be theoretically disconnected from the principles that are operating in these skillful performances. The Greek term areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time) refers to the principle behind the skill rather than the ability of remembering what ought to be done in such circumstances. Areté, in contexts of practical reasoning, refers to what categorically ought to be done as a matter of practical necessity or duty. Areté obviously refers to a concern for standards in a field of knowledge, for example, and it also refers to the Greek philosophical ideal of an educated man. An ideal that would demand firstly,knowledge and an understanding of the principles of theoretical science in a broad sense(including metaphysics) , and secondly, knowledge and understanding of the principles of practical and the productive sciences. The Statesman(Phronimos) and the Philosopher were regarded by Plato and Aristotle as great souled men: lovers of the examined and contemplative life respectively. The principles being referred to, would be connected to essence specifying definitions such as the definition of man(rational animal capable of discourse). These forms of life were manifested in the judgements of objects, events and human deeds, compelling nature to bear testimony in response to questions which were clear an unambiguous and could be judged in accordance with the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason.
The goods of the soul are also intimately connected to the understanding we have of ourselves and the world we dwell in. This power of understanding is part of an architectonic of powers operating in harmony to produce the good of the soul, Kant called the harmony of the faculties. This harmony is particularly manifested in Ethical Practical Reasoning and ethical judgements that possess the same universality and necessity that we encounter in the justification of Newtonian Laws. There is a difference between the forms of universality and necessity found in practical reasoning, compared with that found in theoretical reasoning. In the former, for example, we are not called upon to reduce “what appears” to events that can be observed, manipulated, and measured in a context of exploration that seeks to uncover the effects of causation for the purposes of mathematical description. Practical reasoning is about action which is conceptually and “logically” connected to its effects or telos via intention and mental acts of will. The same movement of my hand, signalling to someone in a cafe detached from its intention, becomes a mere movement, a mere transitory event in the world with no more meaning than any other movement in the world. The intentional activity of signalling, on the other hand, in Aristotelian language, has 4 causes (explanations) in accordance with 3 principles of change which can be of 4 kinds. In describing and explaining this change there will be no application of the scientific method of resolution-composition that begins by dividing wholes of activity into parts that do not have a logical relation to the whole. Just as the principle of the house being built precedes and endures through all actual activity of building the house, so does the intention in general of all activity both precede and endure throughout that activity. This building activity proceeds in accordance with the idea or ideal of a house that is being actualised in the world- an ideal that in the language of Gestalt Psychology is a whole that is more than the sum of the parts. This concept of a system and its parts is discussed problematically by R S Peters in a discussion of understanding or “Verstehen” in the realm of the human sciences:
“I am more interested in “understanding” than in “knowledge” and partly because there is another approach which is likely to be of pertinence in a conference between psychologists and philosophers. I refer to the sort of approach pioneered by William Dilthey who was impressed by the methodological differences between the natural sciences and human studies. He thought that the sciences of man would get nowhere if the methodological paradigm of the natural sciences was copied….Dilthey claimed, first of all, that Psychology is a descriptive science whose principles can be extracted from what is given to the individual in his inner perception. Secondly, he claimed that inner perception reveals not isolated units of mental life such as sensations, feelings, or intentions but a unity of cognition, affect and conation in a total reaction of the whole self to a situation confronting it. This unitary reaction constitutes the general rhythm of mental life, and is called the “structural system”. Psychology is an elaboration of this system which is given to us in “lived experience”. Thirdly, our understanding of others is not, in essence, an inferential process. We are able to understand the expressions of the mental states of others because of the psychological law that expressions have the power, under normal conditions, to evoke corresponding experiences in the minds of observers. We feel in ourselves reverberations of grief, for instance, when we see another human being in a downcast attitude, with his face marked by tears.”( Peters, R. S. Psychology and Ethical Development, London, Allen and Unwin, 1974, P 390)
That Peters regards the above parts in a materialistic spirit is evidenced in the above reference to “structural systems”, “units” and a “grand rhythm”. Unfortunately, a clock would meet the requirements of such a system. This risks conceptualising intentions and thought as internally inaccessible, private events only discoverable in a context of exploration similar to the opening of a clock to examine its inner workings. In a later discussion of Michael Scriven’s views, Peters specifically references a clock and the springs and levers that constitute it. Of course, understanding how a clock works has little to do with, for example, how Newtonian laws explain phenomena, e.g. how the law that every action has an equal and opposite reaction is operating in relation to the workings of the clock. The reason for this discrepancy probably relates to the intentional difference that exists in the contexts of exploration/discovery and the contexts of explanation/justification. In the latter case there is no intention to describe the relation of the parts of the system of the clock to each other. Both kinds of context would be involved in fully explaining why the clock could be a trustworthy device to measure time but the description of the parts of the system of the clock would do nothing to give us an account of time in the way in which Newtons laws do. This mechanical view is the view that Scrivens supports in his account of the psychological account of the understanding of other persons. He uses systems theory, which was originally used to explain changes in fish populations, to explain human personality! Scrivens argues that we “understand” other systems via the system of our own personality. This contradicts both hylomorphic and Kantian theory. Both theories would claim that personality is a complex idea requiring a number of different principles operating in different regions of the mind.
Peters reject Scrivens’ account but not in the above terms. Peter’s argues that our minds are “social products”(P.392). He elaborates upon this by claiming that our understanding is “programmed” by our social experiences but immediately backtracks on the implications of this machine analogy by maintaining that most forms of human learning presuppose consciousness(p.393). He then points to the categories of the understanding which cannot be taught. Piaget, rather than Kant is referred to, but both thinkers would have subscribed to the position that the principle of noncontradiction is not merely a product of social experience. This principle is a principle of reason and is responsible for extending our understanding without any assistance from sensible experience. Peters brings Chomsky into the discussion and refers to the categorical concept of “purpose” and ” means to ends”, as concepts that are not connected to the learning of rules. Peters still, however, uses the unfortunate machine analogy when he claims:
“both our behaviour and our understanding would be programmed in terms of these universal categories.”( P.394)
Peters also fails to embrace the idea of categorical imperatives that are distinct from the instrumental imperatives we find associated with “purpose” and “means to ends”. Moral purposes have a different logical structure in comparison with instrumental utilitarian purposes. Peters also discusses our animal nature and points to the “mechanisms” involved in the empathic transmission of emotions: he claims that the mechanisms involved are more primitive than imitation. The terminology of being programmed is replaced with “being wired”. We see in these meanderings among the language of machines and mechanics, the absence of the role of knowledge that Plato and Aristotle thought was so important in the realm of action where the purpose is to change the world in a known direction. Peters does, however acknowledge the role of knowledge in his essay on “The Justification of Education”, but here too, the emphasis is not on its categorical structure but rather its social utility. He does, however, discuss the non-instrumental attitudes that are involved with the intrinsic values of Education. The pursuit of truth is obviously an important element in the learning process: a truth conceived of non-instrumentally. For Peters, the virtue of truth telling and of justifying moral actions categorically with reasons, are “aims” of education. Truth telling as a value obviously extends over the whole range of the “sciences” in the broadest sense of this term(a term with for Aristotle and Kant would include ethics and metaphysics). Peters points out that an educated man is not a specialist in any of the sciences–he must in a sense master the essential or principles of most areas of knowledge. That is, this great-souled person must know, or be able to, recognise the reasons for many of the truth claims we make about our world. Peters is much concerned , however, with how this state of mind comes about and he focuses on imitation and initiation etc. He draws attention to the fact that, in this process, some principles responsible for the organisation of concepts and facts are acquired and some are not(in line with Aristotles claims that powers are not all acquired and in line with Kant’s a priori forms of knowledge). How one describes these principles that are not acquired is, of course, a key difficulty that Peters does not directly address. Kant would merely say that certain principles are a priori, meaning that they are in some sense independent of experience. Aristotle is more useful in this context because he does address the nature of these a priori principles: they are the result of the exercise of our powers of understanding and reason. They are potentialities or forms, awaiting actualisation. For Kant, we do not learn that objects are in space outside of us or that changes in the external world and in our thought processes are organised in terms of before and after(time). Piaget extends this sensory form of organising the world to objects continuing to exist when no longer in ones visual field, and later in the developmental process to the power of seeing the same object from another point of view. Peters, in the context of this discussion, adds that consciousness is one condition of the form our social experience takes, and perhaps he means to suggest here that the above operation/power of decentring from our own point of view is an important sensory power to be taken into consideration, especially insofar as our social life is concerned. Another sensory power that is a condition of our perception of objects, is that of seeing something as something, a disposition that rests on the Aristotelian capacity and principle of seeing something enduring as something throughout a process of change. Behind this principle lies the psuche principle which, in terms of human Psychology, is the actuality of a body endowed with a set of human organs from which similar powers systematically emerge to produce similar experiences and behaviour. This, then, for Aristotle, is the sensory ground of the agreement there is between the forms of consciousness that belong to the same form of life.
Kant in his work, “The Critique of Judgement” refers to the role of common sense in our sensory transactions with the world. This common sense gives rise to representations that, according to Aristotle, have two aspects, firstly as phenomena with no reference beyond themselves, and second, representations that do refer beyond themselves(representations which are essentially symbolic). It is common sense, according to Kant, that lies behind judgements of taste, in which it is claimed that experienced objects are beautiful. Judgements of taste are not conceptual representations, but rather sensory representations embodying a subjective principle that communicates universally and by necessity, a harmony of the sensory and intellectual faculties. The common sense as a mental faculty also lies behind what displeases us, i.e. whatever diminishes our existence or the quality of our existence. In its connection with the Judgement of Taste, however, it communicates only what pleases us universally and by necessity. Whether the object concerned be a natural object, or an art object that requires aesthetic ideas and genius to produce, the faculties harmonise (though in the latter case both ideas of the beautiful and the good combine in a way that is not the case in the former experience). Aesthetic judgements are therefore based on the Pleasure Principle, and this principle underlies the communication of all knowledge claims, given the fact that knowledge increases the quality of our existence necessarily. Kant also specifically says, in relation to this capacity, that common sense is not learned or acquired by experience, but is rather a condition of experience. The perception of what is beautiful is obviously also connected to to the furtherance of life that gives rise to the pleasure principle. Kant claims that the imagination is involved in the representations we have of the beautiful. In the case of representations relating to the Sublime, however, the intellectual faculty makes its presence felt because, in the presence of a waterfall which represents a superior physical power, the imagination is eclipsed in its function and requires the faculties of understanding and reason to assert their power in order for the feeling of the furtherance of life to reestablish itself. In this transition from anxiety to pleasure, the playfulness and freedom of the imagination is surpassed by a sensory evaluation of life that is more serious. It is not the waterfall that is per se sublime but the emergence of Eros in a mind overwhelmed by forces that indirectly suggest physical destruction(Thanatos). Here, the mind moves from the mode of sensibility, to the mode of the intellectual, into the real mode of ideas of Reason presented in sensible form, presented symbolically. We are not dealing with representations acquired by experience in this latter phase, but rather a priori forms of mentality. When the mind moves away from the perception of the waterfall and towards the idea in us of our moral power there is “an awakening of a feeling of a supersensible faculty within us “(P.97 C of J) Kant calls this a supersensible intuition.
The issue of modernism lies behind our reflections upon the work of Peters which so often suggests a classical intent only to return to more modernist concerns when attempts at justification are made. Stanley Cavell in a work entitled “Must We Mean What We Say?” characterises Modernism in the following way:
“The essential fact of(what I refer to as) the modern lies in the relation between the present practice of an enterprise and the history of that enterprise, is the fact that this relation has become problematic.”(Foreword xix)
We shall in a later chapter take up this issue of the disruption of continuity between historical reasoning and practices by modern and contemporary attitudes and experiences. Cavell’s position, however is very relevant to the theorising of Peters because, especially in his reflections upon the Philosophy of Education, Peters oscillates between modernist attachments to anti-rational and anti-metaphysical sentiments and a concern for classical ideas and arguments. Peters in his later work became aware of the ambiguity of his earlier positions in relation to Ethics and Education. R Barrow in his essay entitled “Was Peters nearly right about Education? writes:
“he feels his earlier work(particularly in the seminal “Ethics and Education”, 1966) was flawed by two major mistakes: firstly. a too specific concept of “education” was used which concentrated upon its connection with “understanding”…..while the second flaw was a failure to give ” a convincing transcendental justification of worthwhile activities”. He goes on to say that the concept of education is “more indeterminate than I used to think. The end or ends towards which processes of learning are seen as developing, e.g. the development of reason which was stressed so much are aims of education, not part of the concept of “education” itself and will depend on acceptance or rejection of the values of the society in which its takes place” “(P.14)
The above quote rings true especially when considered in the light of Peters’ own words in his Introduction to Ethics and Education:
“For during the twentieth century philosophy has been undergoing a revolution, which has consisted largely in an increasing awareness of what philosophy is and is not. Few professional philosophers would think it is their function to provide such high level directives for education or for life: indeed one of their main preoccupations has been to lay bare such aristocratic pronouncements under the analytic guillotine. They cast themselves in the more mundane Lockian role of under-labourers in the garden of knowledge. The disciplined demarcation of concepts, the patient explanation of the grounds of knowledge and of the presuppositions of different forms of discourse has become the stock in trade. There is as a matter of fact, not much new in this. Socrates, Kant and Aristotle did much the same. What is new is an increased awareness of the nature of the enterprise.”(P.15)
Whereas we wish to maintain that that the thread of continuity from the philosophers mentioned has been bifurcated unnecessarily in the name of modernism. In relation to the modernist spirit Cavell claimed that there is, in the realm of Modern Art, the impulse to shout “fraud!” and walk out. Examine the language that Peters uses: “revolution”, “aristocratic”, “guillotine”, and one can see that the spirit of Peters’s criticism is to create an academic environment in which metaphysical ideas and transcendental deductions of the kind we find in Kant’s Critique of Judgement(and elsewhere) are not welcome in the garden of knowledge where analytical underlabourers are at work. Underlying these reflections of Cavell is the academic spirit of Freud which does not imply a rejection of what is metaphysical or transcendental, but perhaps questions the value of working in the calm retreat of the English garden of science.
The Peters of 1983 does not fully embrace metaphysical or transcendental logic but his “Justification of Education” does go a long way in the right direction. In this essay Peters claims that the educated man distinguishes himself from the skilled man in that he possesses a considerable body of knowledge which presumably includes not just understanding of the principles of the productive sciences, but also the principles of the theoretical(including metaphysics) and the practical sciences(including ethics and politics). The understanding of these principles transform the way in which the world is seen through organised and systematic conceptual networks. All such theoretical and practical knowledge and understanding have not been acquired in an instrumental spirit, but instead in the spirit of viewing knowledge as an end-in.itself: in the spirit of Plato’s Republic where knowledge of the good was the end of the whole Platonic system. This categorical view of knowledge encouraged a pursuit of knowledge independent of any benefit it may bring to the knower. The processes of learning the educated man has participated in, have contained conceptual and logical links between the means of acquisition of the knowledge and the ends. Peters discusses in connection with this point the Aristotelian paradox of moral education, namely, that:
“in order to develop the dispositions of a just man the individual has to perform acts that are just but the acts which contribute to the formation of the dispositions of the just man are not conceived of in the same way as the acts which finally flow from his character once he has become just…..doing science or poetry at school contribute to a person being educated. But later on, as an educated person he may conceive of them very differently.” ( The Philosophy of Education,P.242)
The underlying Aristotelian justification of the above paradox is not at all paradoxical, involving as it does the metaphysics and epistemology of hylomorphic theory. In this theory certain kinds of explanation pertaining to how something comes to be something is distinguished analytically from formal explanations of the principles relating to something being something. All of these explanations, however, are required in the name of the principle of sufficient reason, and are also important in tribunals of explanation/justification. Causation of different kinds will be essential elements to consider in these tribunals. Both the Aristotelian and Kantian accounts of Knowledge, defined as “Justified True Belief”, will be involved in epistemological investigations relating to both what we believe and why, and what we do and why. Reasons for believing will not necessarily be observationally based, but rather related to the principles that guide our observations, and also our experiments with reality. In the process of acquiring knowledge, and understanding principles, the educated man transforms his powers or capacities into ordered dispositions in domains of belief and action. Reasons for doing what one is doing are also grounded in moral dispositions embedded in the concept of justice. Moral dispositions include moral imperatives as part of their justification, as well as the idea of Freedom. Here, concepts such as “right”, “good”, and “ought” determine both how we view actions as well as their teleological results. Even the irrational uneducated man has his reasons for acting, argues Peters(P.254), and these will not fall into the category of “events that happen to him” but rather into the category of what was in his power to do. Peters here contrasts falling off a cliff with jumping off a cliff. In his criticism of Peters, Barrow claims to find a “confession” of insufficient justification in relation to the work “Ethics and Education”. He finds this confession very “odd” but Peters explains his “mistakes” himself when he maintains that he relied too heavily on the method of conceptual analysis which he criticises thus:
“criteria for a concept are sought in usage of a term without enough attention being paid to the historical or social background and view of human nature which it presupposes.”(P.43-44).
This criticism is not rooted in either Kantian or Aristotelian philosophy both of which would have referred to the principles implied by Peters’ own account of the educated man. Reference to historical and social background may or may not suggest illicit reference to causes that bring about the educated state of mind:causes that are not logically related to that state of mind. Peters may be using here a Wittgensteinian appeal to the natural history of linguistic practices to explain the mastery of the techniques of language and may also thereby be violating his own insistence upon non instrumental forms of justification of what is occurring in the name of education. There is, of course, an Aristotelian interpretation of Wittgenstein’s appeal which suggests that the principles of causation that are instrumental in bringing about a state of affairs can be relevant in a context of exploration/discovery, but they are nevertheless not identical to the principles which explain what a thing essentially is.
Barrow’s argument dos not proceed along the above lines but instead curiously adopts the anti-metaphysical and anti-transcendental attitudes of analytical Philosophy, Barrow paradoxically claims in this context that there are no assumptions behind analytical philosophy. He agrees that Philosophy is defined by its questions which he claims are :
“generally imaginative and reflective rather than technical and calculative”(P.17)
Barrow curiously also claims that these philosophical questions are “hermeneutical” but it is not clear that this means to include the kind of aporetic question we find, for example, in Aristotle’s “Metaphysics”(First Philosophy or First Principles). Barrow notes with regret the decline of the influence of the analytical school of Philosophy in relation to issues that arise in the realm of Philosophy of Education, and again paradoxically claims that analytical philosophy is not just another “school of thought”. Barrows argument here is that we have failed to do the necessary conceptual work needed to provide the philosophical foundation needed for the Philosophy of Education. He suggests further that we lack the necessary cultural background but it is not clear how analytical philosophy with its commitment to science and causality, method and observation, can provide us with what is culturally needed.
M J Laverty, in an essay entitled “Learning our Concepts” raises the relevant question as to whether Peters’ principles were too like Wittgensteinian rules to function adequately in our explanatory frameworks. This criticism bites deep, especially when we note that Peters does appear most of the time to be working at the level of the Concept rather than the level of the Judgement(which Kant defines as a categorical combination of concepts). Laverty has this to say about Peters on the issue:
“Since the experience of grasping a principle is so subjective he feels justified in not giving it any sustained serious attention.”(P.29)
The above criticism does gain traction when one considers Peters’ emphasis upon the privileged role of the spectator observing any proceedings(irrespective of whether the spectators intentions are to explore or to judge). This prejudice against the first person form of the use of language in favour of a third person anthropological reporting of ones observations, obscures many philosophical nuances. Laverty also notes the decline of the influence of analytical philosophy and he too wishes more attention be paid to the definition of concepts. He appeals not to Aristotle and Kant but to Nietzsche and Foucault.
Peters uses the pragmatic/anthropological concept of “initiation” very much in the way in which an anthropologist would, in a context of exploration/discovery of the unknown habits and rituals of a primitive tribe. Initiation may well transform the initiate but the philosophical issue is not the scientific problem of discovering the cause that brought about the transformation, but rather an investigation into the principles constituting the resultant state brought about by the transformation. Here Peters himself is not paying sufficient attention to his own key distinction between the processes of education and the achievement aspects of education. We should also recall that Peters has written an article on the role of ritual in education. In this 1966 article he defines ritual as:
“a relatively rigid pattern of acts specific to a situation which constructs a framework of meaning over and beyond the specific situation meanings.”
Rituals when they are socially sanctioned serve the “sociological function” of unifying the community, even a community as small as a school. This reference to this strange concept of justification is probably a consequence of the anthropological emphasis we encountered in the early theorising of Peters: a period of theorising in which he abandoned transcendental deductions, metaphysical reflections and rationality. in favour of the spectator equipped with a power of imagination capable of varying the object of his investigation hypothetically. One of the more interesting aspects of Peters’ investigations contains a reference to one of the principles of imaginative activity, namely the psychoanalytical concept of identification. This principle, Peters argues, explains what is happening in the learning-teaching transaction between the learner and the teacher. Freud taught us that identification only occurs in very unique emotional contexts, involving wishing to be like someone, or identifying with the aggressor, and whilst this might sometimes be happening in education it certainly does not happen universally or necessarily. It is also difficult to equate the educational content of a lesson or a course with the kind of limited conceptual content that is transmitted in a ritual, but this is nevertheless what Peters is inviting us to consider.
Aristotle would have conceded that in the initial phases of education, during the earlier years, imitation plays a central role in the process, but it is doubtful whether he would have insisted that identification is necessary for imitation to occur. Imitation also plays less of a role in the later phases of education where the point of the whole process for Aristotle would have been a self sufficient thinker, an autonomous thinker equipped with knowledge of the principles of all three kinds of science including metaphysics which contains hylomorphic theory. Critics such S. Warnick in his essay “Ritual, Imitation and Education” points out that appeals to ritual violates one of the key requisites for a liberal education ( Reading R S Peters Today, P.63)
Rituals assuredly emotionally transform participants if they are initiates, but the required intellectual actualisation of rational understanding necessary for understanding the world intellectually, does not seem to be present. Emotions may transform us, in the sense of changing our state of mind, but the mere experiencing of emotion does not necessarily possess any normative value: that is we are not transformed for the better into a more worthwhile person( the achievement aspect of education). The role of reason, knowledge and understanding must be, for the later theorising of Peters, an important aspect of the dispositions of the educated man. It is difficult to see the positive role of ritual in the pursuit of the goals of forming worthwhile persons and worthwhile societies. It is in this region of the discussion that Kantian Philosophy becomes important, because it examines this issue in the right context, namely the context of philosophical explanation/justification. Reason, knowledge and understanding are all involved in transcendental arguments. The context of such arguments is the context of “right”–e.g. with what right is this or that judgement made. This kind of argument is at a higher level than the kind of argument we find in relation to the method of conceptual analysis. Knowledge and understanding are certainly involved at the conceptual level in the early stages of learning, but when we approach the later stages of what Piaget called the stage of abstract operations, the teacher is assessing not knowledge of concepts, but rather what judgments are made, and how they are justified. This tribunal of justification is very like that of legal proceedings. In such proceedings the judge is less interested in the justification of the legal concept of murder, and more interested in firstly, the facts of whether the accused did murder the victim, secondly, whether he intended to murder the victim, thirdly, the reasons the accused murderer had for his actions, and subsequently the judgment of guilt in accordance with the law, The questions involved in such a tribunal are both factual and normative, to do with both truth and right. Rights, however, are related to Laws that ensure the reality of rights by giving responsibility to an authority to actualise them. Subsequently both the murderer and the victim have rights under this system, even if, in the latter case of the murder-victim, these rights are only experienced by family and concerned parties. At issue in the tribunal prosecuting the case against the accused, is his/her freedom or in extreme cases in extreme systems his/her life. The entire proceedings rest upon the truthfulness of the parties involved and various oaths are administered and agreed to in order to ensure both the reliability and the validity of the proceedings and the judgements made in these proceedings. The Principles of Practical Reasoning are assumed , including the law of the categorical imperative in all three formulations. (including the third formulation where ideals of a kingdom of ends , rational lawgivers and rational citizens abide by the laws unconditionally). The ideal of a kingdom of ends for Kant, we know, included a peaceful cosmopolitan world that only emerges once rationality actualises itself in the human species. In Kant’s opinion the crooked timbre of humanity would ensure that this ideal end was at least one hundred thousand years in the future.
Knowledge is of course one of the key elements of this actualisation process, and this in turn required the presence of an Educational system that is both transcendentally ideal and empirically real. Peters, it can be argued, in his earlier work was more concerned with what for him was empirically real, and this can be clearly seen in his systematic avoidance of the metaphysical questions that naturally arise in relation to the study of Philosophy of Education. His later work attempted to grapple with the transcendental aspects of teaching and learning, and this can be seen in the shift from seeing the achievement aspects of education in terms of the processes, to evaluating the processes in terms of the achievement or telos of these processes: a shift from viewing education in the context of exploration/discovery to viewing education in the context of explanation/justification. Unfortunately the focus is still on Language, rather than reason: language has meaning, is embedded in forms of life and is both variable and “conventional”. There is a manifest commitment to the kind of grammatical investigations we find in the work of Gilbert Ryle, Austin and Wittgenstein, and these investigations are used for the purposes of addressing conceptual confusion of various kinds. Even though these investigations discuss ideas such as freedom and respect for persons, and the “holy ground” of education these discussions do not remind us of the Greek or Enlightenment positions. The term “liberal Education” is presented, but it is Hirst in his essay ,”Liberal Education and the Nature of Knowledge”, that most reminds us of the above positions. Hirst characterises the Greek position as follows:
“The fully developed Greek notion of liberal education was rooted in a number of related philosophical doctrines: first, about the significance of knowledge for the mind, and secondly about the relationship between knowledge and reality. In the first category there was the doctrine that it is the peculiar and distinctive activity of the mind, because of its nature, to pursue knowledge. The achievement of knowledge satisfies and fulfills the mind which thereby attains its own appropriate end. The pursuit of knowledge is thus the pursuit of the good of the mind, and, therefore, an essential element in the good life.”( in Peters, The Philosophy of Education,Oxford, OUP, 1973, P.87)
For Aristotle the good life was the flourishing life(eudaimonia) a state that could only be achieved by living a life constituted by areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time) and sophia. What distinguishes this Greek position from our own modern view is that knowledge of the good, and the desire to know and understand, are intertwined themes. Aristotle’s metaphysics best illustrates this position in his work entitled Metaphysics(a term that Aristotle in fact never uses). Aristotle refers to what he is aiming at in this work as “First Philosophy” or “Wisdom(Sophia). The work opens with these words:
“All men by nature desire to know”
Aristotle then takes us on a tour around the mind, beginning with perception which enables us to know the differences between perceived particulars, continuing with memory which connects perceptions, experience which is of particulars and contains a form of non-explanatory general knowledge, art(universal judgements based on induction, e.g. medicine), science that seeks knowledge as an end in itself, e.g. mathematics and metaphysics. First Philosophy is then used to explain the first principles of things. This latter is what Aristotle regards as Sophia. This is the preferred knowledge of the wise man and it may be that this is the knowledge Peters is evoking in his discussion of “the educated man”. The wisest man, however, for Aristotle is he who teaches First principles or causes. He knows , for example that this kind of knowledge is furthest from the senses, and also that the knowledge of the good is one of the first principles or causes, thus agreeing with his teacher, Plato. Here we see examples of the aporetic questions that concerns the great souled man. It is the awe and wonder in the face of such questions that provoke the activity of Philosophising. This is not to be confused with curiosity that we find involved in the sensory activity of exploration and discovery, which is largely a journey amongst the particulars of experience. Curiosity searches for the what, awe and wonder searches for the why. Aristotle discusses the structure of mathematics in this work and suggests that Pythagorean theory, together with Platonic theory, focuses upon the material and formal causes of phenomena, thus omitting firstly, the efficient cause needed to study all forms of change, and secondly, the final cause or telos that is necessary to study forms of life and action. It is in relation to this discussion that hylomorphic theory is presented to account for the final cause of the Good that is necessary to refute the universality and necessity of Pythagorean and Platonic dualistic theory. Hylomorphic theory, we argue is the nucleus of Liberal Education: a nucleus that was articulated and improved upon by Kantian Critical Theory.
In Kant’s work “On Education”(Kant, I., On Education, New York,Dover publications, 2003) Kant begins with a comparison of the life of man with the life of animals and compares these forms of consciousness with each other. Both forms of consciousness possess instincts, but humans possess law and reason to discipline these instincts. Man desires to know and to lead a flourishing life, and these are the reasons why discipline is needed to transform the consciousness of man. This is done via the instruction of one generation by another. It is in this process of education that man discovers the laws and principles governing all forms of existence. This discipline of submitting instinct and sensibility to organisation by understanding and reason is important early on in life, for it is at this stage that our minds are most formable. No animal needs culture, Kant argues, but man is literally what education makes of him. This observation fits in well with Freudian theory which claims that both consciousness and repression are vicissitudes of instinct. Presumably sublimation is also a vicissitude of the life instinct or a form of Eros. This Kantian idea of discipline meshes well with the Greek notion of areté, which also suggests the important idea of moral discipline or duty. Kant in his work “On Education” goes so far as to suggest that “Neglect of discipline is a greater evil than neglect of culture”_(P.7). Here, we are clearly in the realm of teleological explanation: the form of explanation patented by hylomorphic Philosophy, but systematically rejected by generations of modern scientists. The central duty of man, Kant argues, is to improve himself(P.11) and Kant elaborates upon this theme by claiming that Providence reveals the secret of the nature of man in the following words:
“Go forth in the world! I have equipped thee with every tendency towards the good. Thy part let it be to develop these tendencies. Thy happiness and unhappiness depend upon thyself alone.”
Some philosophers (e.g. Anscombe) have claimed that there is no logical connection between God and his creation, between the theoretical idea of God and the practical idea of human freedom. According to Kant, however, there is an indirect connection between these two ideas, because he who does his duty systematically and possesses a good(holy) will has the right to expect to lead a flourishing life. This diminishes God to an idea in the mind, but as long as the mind is not diminished into a private subjective cauldron of feelings and ideas perhaps this is of no consequence.
The Greeks avoided the obvious problem of conceiving of the relation of God to something as worldly as matter and life, by postulating an intermediary, the Demiurge, that controlled the fate of man and justice in the human sphere of existence. Nevertheless, for Kant, Education is “the greatest and most difficult problem” together with perhaps the problem of “the art of government”. Both education and government require discipline, a good will, and good judgement, exercised in accordance with sound principles. The idea of the humanity of man lies behind the exercise of these arts that both aim at the good, aim, that is, at a better condition of things that will hopefully terminate in a Kingdom of Ends. Kant hints at one of the obstacles standing in the way of reaching such an ideal Kingdom, namely, the fact that “Sovereigns look upon their subjects merely as tools for their own purposes”. This hint takes us back to the classical confrontation between Socrates and Thrasymachus over Justice in book one of the Republic. Aristotle’s concept of justice is clearly reflected in the Kantian idea of a Kingdom of Ends. This idea is a more formal variation of the Socratic claim that justice involves each person getting what they deserve. Roughly, Aristotle’s formal principle of Justice is that we should treat similar people similarly, i.e. we should treat equals equally and people who differ significantly from equals, differently. The key to exactly how, and in what circumstances, to apply this principle requires knowledge of the virtues (areté), which great souled men have acquired. The Phronimos, i.e. acts virtuously(in accordance with areté). Aristotle of course believes that the great souled man is a wise scientist, in the broad sense of the term, and his judgements are in accordance with the principles of political science, the Queen of the practical sciences insofar as Aristotle was concerned. The Queen of the practical sciences for Kant is Ethics. This shift reflects a state of distrust for politicians during the Enlightenment period which we can see reflected in the above judgement relating to Sovereigns using citizens for their own ends. For Kant it is clear that the Kingdom of ends is an ethical Kingdom and sovereigns are not even mentioned.
Aristotle criticised Platonic Political theory for its artificially imposed uniformity claiming that a principle of pluralism ought to be exercised in the name of phronesis. Kant’s Kingdom of Ends embodied this principle by postulating that the citizen of the Kingdom of Ends is a Cosmopolitan citizen(a respecter of different forms of life in accordance with principles laid down in the Metaphysics of Morals. This implies that the arts of education and government share Cosmopolitan aims or a Cosmopolitan telos.
Religious concepts such as the concept of Evil have motivated Kingdoms of Hell for many theologians. Such a conception would be a practical contradiction for Kant:
“for the rudiments of evil are not to be found in the natural disposition of man. Evil is only the result of nature not being brought under control.”(P.15)
In this context Kant comments upon the poor education of our rulers. Even for rulers, then, it is necessary to subject oneself to the discipline of education. The task of a society is to construct a better civilisation, a culture. A culture which includes moral training as part of the educational system: a state of affairs that was not the case during Kant’s time where moral training was left to the Church. A culture which focuses upon utilitarian goals of wealth and comfort results in material prosperity, but spiritual misery, and Kant, like Freud, asks the uncomfortable question whether all the effort involved in building our culture is worth the effort. This is an evaluation which is only valid if it is in accordance with the idea of the Good.
The nurturing of pupils autonomy or freedom is of course a central element of the culture Kant envisages. The success or failure of the educational and political systems of a society will of course determine how one answers the Freudian question “was the effort worth the result?”. A negative answer to this question obviously produces the discontents of civilisation that Freud is referring to. These reflections enable us to postulate(as Aristotle did not) that there are at least three stages to pass through if one is to actualise a Kingdom of Ends, namely, an animal like state of nature, a civilisation characterised by utilitarian principles, and a deontological state we call Culture with well functioning educational and political systems. A Liberal Education, that is, would be an important part of this process leading to the “achievement” of a Cosmopolitan Kingdom of Ends. Discipline is an important part of such culture-building activity. Discipline is manifest in the culture’s attempts to instill the habit of Work in children. Kant claims that man is the only animal that is obliged to work(P.69) and that although there shall be time for play, the pupil must be made to realise that work is a serious pursuit, and a duty. The sensible faculty of the imagination is obviously critically involved in play but Kant insists that it should be cultivated only together with the cultivation of other intellectual faculties such as understanding and reason. A similar point is made with respect to memory where it is claimed for example , that understanding a word must build upon memorising a word but can never be reduced to the rote production of a word. Also memorising of facts may be necessary for the study of History, but it is not sufficient for understanding and reasoning insofar as these are a part of many Historical Judgements relating to Politics and Ethics.
Schooling, Kant argues, should attempt to construct what he calls an “orbis pictus” via the study of botany, mineralogy, and natural history–modelling and drawing will also be necessary in this process together with some knowledge of mathematics. Geography ought to follow and be gradually extended to political and ancient geography. Ancient History should then follow. In this process the pupil will be taught to understand the difference between knowledge and opinion/belief. This prepares the way for an understanding of principles with full consciousness. This latter will prepare the learner for making judgments with understanding, and in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason. Kant recommends in the context of this discussion the training of reason via the Socratic method as exemplified in the Platonic dialogues containing Socrates.
In the educational process the teacher should seek to transmit ideas of right and wrong by focusing upon maxims of action. Here it is important, Kant claims, to understand that this kind of discipline must not be associated with punishment. The maxims in question must contain an understanding of the nature of man as part of their content. Punishment therefore is conceived of narrowly and merely amounts to a manifestation of dissatisfaction with the conduct of the child. No anger shall be connected with this expression of dissatisfaction. The ultimate aim of this discipline is the development of character:
“if a man makes a promise, he must keep it, however inconvenient it may be to himself ; for a man who makes a resolution and fails to keep it will have no confidence in himself.”(P.99)
Character is constituted by a number of duties toward oneself and others, and these duties such as telling the truth are categorical, i.e. will always to be actualised:
“there is never a single instance in which to lie can be justified.”(P.104)
It is almost as if, for Kant, telling the truth is a duty to God, but young children will not understand fully an idea such as divine law: at least not until they understand the idea of the laws of men. Divine law will include the laws that contribute to the design of the world e,g, the state of equilibrium amongst all life forms, and the regularity/continuity of natural events.
A child’s imagination(before the development of the powers of understanding and reason) can be terrorised by the imagined power of God. The knowledge of God can be problematic even for adults with a developed moral conscience. The more the faculties of rationality and understanding mitigate the power of the imagination the less fear as an emotion is involved, and the associated anthropomorphism of this very theoretical idea will dominate our belief and action systems. The God of our imagination becomes a more particular phenomenon with particular characteristics which detract from the universal characteristics of this very abstract idea. The gravitas of the idea of God obviously increases with its association with principles and laws rather than with individual and emotional characteristics. The idea of a Phronimos might be tied up with this divine gravitas.
Kant asks himself the question “What is Religion?” and he gives himself the following answer:
“Religion is the law in us, insofar as it derives emphasis from a Law-giver and a Judge above us. It is morality applied to the knowledge of God. If religion is not united to morality, it becomes merely an endeavour to win favour and but preparations for good works and not the works themselves: and the only real way in which we may please God is by becoming better men.”(Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason, P.111-112)
Such is the role of education in a Liberal Education that insists upon a Religion within the bounds of mere reason. The limits of Reason obviously prevent us from directly conceiving of the existence of God because as Kant pointed out, existence is not a predicate. This difficulty may lie at the root of the tendency to represent God in our imaginations, but for Kant such representations are in bad faith. We should also be aware that Kant claims that we might not be able to prove the existence of God, but neither can we prove God’s non-existence. This is the logical space in which faith is born: faith in an idea of God grounded in knowledge of the moral law. This kind of philosophical theology belongs then, not to theoretical knowledge(which by definition cannot access the noumenal world or the supersensible substrate of our minds), but rather to practical knowledge that operates in accordance with the practical idea of Freedom. There is, consequently much in traditional Christian Religion that is not in accordance with the above reflections, but perhaps the most radical idea that Kant rejects is that of original sin and original evil: this is the idea that we are to be held responsible for acts committed by other members of the human race. Evil, for Kant, is not actually present in humans, but is, instead, a hylomorphic potentiality that may or may not be actualised. Evil is, when actualised, only an empirical reality and not transcendentally ideal. This latter logical possibility is reserved for actualisation of actions done with good intentions or a good will.
Kant would, in the name of rationality reject the religion of revelation but there is nevertheless a role for what he refers to as the “true church” and “ecclesiastical faith” in religious belief systems. Basically anything that does not contradict the tenets of reason and thereby contributes to the actualisation of the ethical kingdom of ends is a part of the “true church” and “ecclesiastical faith”. Historically-based rituals that do not meet the above criteria should be abandoned, in Kant’s view. Historical faith is subordinate to philosophical faith, but both are necessary, and historical faith plays the role of an empirical motivator striving for the same rational telos via the empirical installation of the “judge within”, or the religious conscience that judges not merely the rationality of the action but also the worthiness or the justification of the person. In this context religious belief relies on historical facts relating to the lives and judgments of the prophets(including Jesus).The judge within, operating in relation to empirical feelings of guilt, attaching holistically to both particular actions and the agent or personality is fundamentally important to Kant, irrespective of the answer to the question pertaining to the existence of God. This is clearly an anti-utilitarian position. On this account, the good will is an intrinsic first person good. The feeling of guilt, however, is not a consequence of ones self-love, but rather a consequence of the objectivity of the inner judge, who does not judge in accordance with any utilitarian happiness principle(the principle of self-love in disguise), but rather on the grounds of a moral law that relies on a principle of practical noncontradiction. Forgiveness for what has already been done, also has a role in this system, but only if there is progress toward worthiness. Here we have the shift from the ethical question “What ought I to do?” to the religious question “what can I hope for?”–a shift from knowledge of the good, to faith in the good. In this connection Kant speaks of a feeling of awe and wonder rather than dread. This is a feeling related to the voice of conscience within, which in turn:
“rouses a feeling of sublimity”(Religion, P.48)
It is this constellation of awe and wonder and the feeling of sublimity that perhaps defines the state of Grace that we encounter also in Greek contexts, e.g., the response of Socrates to his impending death. Here the noumenal self emerges in all its dignity and freedom.
Kant in his first Critique criticised Pure Reason for its pretensions to soar in a stratosphere disconnected with our knowledge. Sceptical metaphysics, Kant claimed, brought the Queen of the Sciences down to earth where it belongs, but in doing so compromised the tribunal of reason needed to provide the difficult to achieve self knowledge that metaphysics was striving for. Reason, and its pure thinking, in accordance with the principles of logic(principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason). Through the continued use of reason we are enabled to enumerate all the acts of reason completely and systematically(Critique of Pure Reason, P.10). In this type of categorical investigation, hypothetical thinking is contraband–absolute necessity is the only acceptable philosophical standard. Reason requires the deduction of the categories of the understanding if the above result is to be achieved. It also requires a methodological commitment toward the Kantian Copernican revolution in which:
“Hitherto it has been assumed that all knowledge must conform to objects. But all attempts to extend our knowledge of objects by establishing something in regard to them a priori, by means of concepts, have, on this assumption, ended in failure. We must therefore make trial whether we may not have mire success in the tasks of metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge. This would agree better with what is desired, namely, that it should be possible to have knowledge of objects a priori determining something in regard to them prior to them being given.”(P.22, First Critique)
Here we are presented with a justification for metaphysics and its possibility, as well as the kind of reasoning we must encounter in the tribunals of explanation/justification: tribunals that feature a judge putting questions to Nature in accordance with the understanding that principles and laws lie behind all change in Nature. This is not the context for the student of nature aiming to conduct his observations and experiments or futile attempts to “discover” these principles and laws (that inevitably go beyond the information given). One should not forget, however, that in the above quote the focus is upon objects and not the powers of the mind.
P H Hirst, after discussing Greek Liberal Education, refers to the relatively modern Harvard Report on Education(1946). He notes that there is a shift in focus to regarding knowledge as necessary to develop the mind in various desirable ways. He points out that such an approach requires the ability to state these desirable qualities of mind. Kant stated above that concentration upon faculties of mind, independent of objects of experience, leads only to subjective justifications that can become problematic if one uses a cause-effect schema in the analysis of this experience. Hirst comments upon the Harvard report as follows:
“The report attempts the definition of a liberal education in two distinct ways: in terms of the qualities of mind it ought to produce and the forms of knowledge with which it ought to be concerned. What the precise relationship is between the two is not clear. It is asserted that they are “images of each other”, yet there is no escape from “describing general education at one tie as looking to the good man in a society and at another time as dictated by the nature of knowledge itself” “(Peters, The Philosophy of Education, P.91)
Hirst points out that is is clear that the focus of the report is on the characteristics of mind that general education values. The dualistic character of the above quote is clearly manifested in the term “image”: forms of knowledge are characterised in terms of “image” rather than the categories of the understanding and principles of reason contained in Knowledge claims. Three phases of “effective” thinking(cause-effect schema?) are identified by the Harvard Report: logical, relational, and imaginative, and these in turn are linked to three arenas of learning, namely natural science, social studies, and the humanities. Hirst responds in Kantian spirit to the Harvard proposals, and argues that characterising mental abilities independently of specifying the forms of knowledge involved is false. Effective thinking must carry with it an achievement criterion that is not confined to consciousness of different kinds of mental processes. The achievement criteria of these different forms of “effective” thinking are Hirst argues, logically connected with what he calls the public features of forms of knowledge: public features that must include truth conditions and be in conformity with the essence specifying definitions we find in forms of knowledge. These essence specifying definitions further meet the Platonic and Aristotelian definition of knowledge in terms of justified true belief. These essence specifying definitions are also an acknowledgement that there are different kinds of explanation/justification that belong to different areas of knowledge. The Harvard committee dogmatically claim that logical thinking is only developed by the natural sciences, relational thinking only by social studies and imaginative thinking by the humanities. Hirst correctly points out that all three forms of thinking are present in most examples of thinking. One could add to this criticism that there are logical relations between different natural sciences and also between different areas of study outside of the natural sciences. The above classification system merely obscures these obvious facts. Hirst correctly concludes from his criticisms that liberal education requires a more logical characterisation f forms of knowledge. His attempt at characterising them, however, is questionable:
“Each form of knowledge if it is to be acquired beyond a general and superficial level, involves the development of imagination, judgement, thinking, communicative skills etc, in ways that are peculiar to itself as a way of understanding experience.”(P.96)
We see no reference here to either laws of nature, laws of logic, other principles or essence specifying definitions of the kind one would expect to see in Aristotelian and Kantian accounts. Hirst refers to the “rational mind” in his appreciation of Alex Peterson’s “Art and Science Sides in the Sixth Form” which he claims comes closer to meeting his criterion for Liberal Education, but again we see in the quote below only a very vague reference to the role of rationality :
“Whatever else is implied in the phrase, to have ” a rational mind” certainly implies experience structured under some form of conceptual scheme. The various manifestations of consciousness in, for instance, different sense perceptions, different emotions, or different elements of intellectual understanding, are intelligible only by virtue of the conceptual appearances by which they are articulated.”(P.97)
Principles are not mentioned in the above, but perhaps they are implied in the expression “elements of intellectual understanding”. Principles, as we noted earlier, were an important part of what it is that the educated man understands, insofar as R S peters was concerned. Hirst appears in the above to be more concerned with consciousness and the privacy issues that arise in relation to characterisations of the various forms of consciousness. This tendency is emphasised later in the essay when Hirst claims:
“To acquire knowledge is to learn to see, to experience the world in a way otherwise unknown and thereby come to have a mind in a fuller sense.”(P.98)
For Hirst it appears as if he is seeking to restore the earlier Greek condition of a Liberal Education, namely the relation of knowledge to reality, which he claims is a conceptual matter. Categories of the understanding and principles of logic may be involved in this reasoning, but it is not clear that this is the case. Hirst in the context of this discussion has a curious argument against transcendental justification, e.g.:
“To ask for the justification of any activity is significant only if one is in fact committed already to seeking rational knowledge. To ask for the justification of rational knowledge itself, therefore, presupposes some form of commitment to what one is seeking to justify.”_(P.100)
This is a puzzling argument which appears to remove the possibility of transcendental and metaphysical justifications/explanations. Later in the essay, Hirst then seems to admit that rational knowledge demands a higher level of justification, as long as it is not backed by what he calls “metaphysical realism”. It is not, however, clear what he means with this expression, or whether he believes that Aristotle and Kant are committed to this form of metaphysics. Having engaged in this inconclusive theoretical discussion, Hirst then asks what the implications are for the concept and conduct of education. He then attempts to outline the different forms of knowledge and the practical consequences for the school curriculum. Forms of knowledge are not defined in terms of the objects of knowledge as is the case with Aristotle and Kant but rather in the following puzzling terms:
“by a form of knowledge is meant a distinct way in which our experience becomes structured round the use of accepted public symbols.”(P.102)
What distinguishes , for example, the science of physics from the practical science of ethics must of course be connected to the concepts of these sciences as Hirst claims, e.g. “gravity”, “acceleration”, “hydrogen”, etc vs “ought”, “right” “god” etc. Kantian forms of knowledge are only partly determined by essentially defined central or basic terms that are formulated and constituted by true judgements about objects and events subsumed under the concepts concerned. It is not only concepts that have logical relations with each other, but also judgements, especially those belonging to the categories of the understanding specified by Kant in his First Critique. Kant would acknowledge the validity of the so called “category mistakes” highlighted by linguistic philosophers like Gilbert Ryle, who were indeed concerned with the public criteria for concepts linguistically presented. These are not exactly the same as categorical mistakes of the kind we encounter in, for example, the confusion of attempting to found the validity of ought judgements upon the truth of is- judgements. This kind of problem is situated at a higher level than that of the conceptual: the level of the logical relation between judgements. The mastery of a language of course requires an understanding of the criteria for concepts(e.g. Ryle’s example of a university being more than a collection of buildings and sites). It also requires an understanding of the principles of logic and the categories of the understanding. Hirst acknowledges this point but does not alter his puzzling definition of a form of knowledge. He adds to the confusion by claiming that scientific forms of knowledge, moral forms of knowledge, and artistic forms of knowledge are all testable against experience, referring again to the criteria for concepts alluded to earlier. The judge uses his knowledge of the laws and principles of procedure to organise the events that are the concern of the court. In a law court both the moral law and the law of the country have a similar logical structure. The inner judge and the external legal judge both use their knowledge of the law in order to judge whether an action such as killing someone is right or wrong(murder). The testing of experience does not occur here as it does in the context of discovery (which might have occurred earlier in relation to the criminal investigation). In the court, the context has changed, and the law is not going to be tested but rather used to make a judgment. the judge will not explore nature in order to discover if there are murders occurring and then and only then formulate a law against murder. If there was no idea of what is right and wrong controlling the experience upon discovering that murders actually do occur why should not the judge argue that murders are happening in the world therefore they ought to be happening in the world? Normative Knowledge is obviously a condition of the testing or organising of experience. The fact that murders occur is expressed in factual language-in is-statements. The judgements that they ought not to occur is expressed in ought-judgements/statements. The observation that murders as a matter of fact occur does not suffice to falsify the universal generalisation that “Murder is wrong”. This is merely a rehearsal of the is-ought debate that was occurring at the time both Peters and Hirst were writing. Is-statements belong in the context of discovery and ought statements belong in the context of explanation/justification. The is-statements involved in action situations divide up the reality of the situation into observable events that have been caused, and in turn may be the causes of other events that are subject to observational and experimental investigation. In the context of explanation/justification where “deeds” are the issue, reality is selected and divided up in accordance with relatively abstract ideas such as the good will and intention, each of which is defining for human deeds: converting action from a mere event into a deed which actualises knowledge in the world. In ethical forms of knowledge change is brought about in the world not experimentally in the context of discovery but rather in a context of explanation/justification: in a spirit of “This is the right thing to do!”
The full difference between scientific forms of knowledge and ethical forms of knowledge will obviously require recourse to metaphysics–of the kind we find in Kant’s writings about the metaphysics of nature and morals. In Kant’s reflections, for example, we will not find any reference to mathematics in the ethical form of knowledge. In Natural Science we will find the claim that a natural science is only fully a science to the extent that it uses Mathematics. Political science and knowledge will obviously be logically related to ethics and not at all to Mathematics. These points are made by Hirst and he elaborates upon them by suggesting a classification system. He claims, that is, that forms of knowlege can be classified in the following way:
“(1)Distinct disciplines or forms of knowledge(subdivisible): mathematics, physical sciences, human sciences, history, religion, literature and the fine arts, philosophy. (11)Fields of knowledge; theoretical, practical(these may not include elements of moral knowledge)”
The obvious hesitation over the issue of whether practical knowledge will include elements of moral knowledge, is puzzling. For both Aristotle and Kant there is no hesitation over the relation between practical reason and moral knowledge. For Kant the human/social sciences could both divide reality up into events in order to explore causal relations as well divide reality into intentions and deeds. Both of these aspects are supported by metaphysics in different ways: a metaphysics that supported the division of ultimate reality into the phenomenal and noumenal world. There is no sign of any acceptance of these lines of reasoning in Hirst’s essay. For Kant the understanding of this underlying metaphysical distinction between the phenomenal and the noumenal is critical for the forming of a program of Liberal Education. We should recall in the context of this discussion that the period during which Hirst wrote this essay was a period of opposition to Hegel which manifested itself in a general academic rejection of metaphysics and transcendental argumentation and a preference for different forms of scientifically based materialistically oriented explanations such as logical positivism and logical atomism. These waves of change brought with them a suspicion of Kantian philosophy. Simultaneously, after the second world war, many educationalists formed part of the wave of globalisation that was gathering to sweep across the world in the name International Education. Alex Peterson was the first Director of an International Organisation(IBO) financed with a start up grant from the Ford Foundation. There are currently ca 900,000 International Baccalaureate students studying around the world. The beginning of this movement , according to Peterson began at a Nato conference around the time of the Harvard Report. The participants were discussing the causes of the two world wars during what Arendt called “this terrible century” and the consensus amongst those connected to education was that the school curriculums of many countries were too insular, too provincial . The interesting question to pose here is whether in the light of Kantian Cosmopolitanism and the implied Cosmopolitanism of Aristotelian Political Philosophy, International Education would firstly meet the criteria of Liberal Education, and secondly, whether it would meet Kantian and Aristotelian criteria. Hirst claims that Liberal Education requires a:
“sufficient immersion in the concepts of logic, and the criteria of a discipline for a person to know the distinctive way in which it works.”(P.106)
Certainly seeing reality in different ways is importantly referred to but the categorical distinctions we find in understanding and judgement are conspicuous by their absence in the above account. Such categorical distinctions are of course critical for correctly describing and explaining agency and action, but they are also important for explanation and justification in the theoretical realm of physical science in which categories will be involved in how we characterise the phenomena of change we encounter in the world of events and causation. Hirst disagrees with the Kantian view of how one ought to introduce Science to young minds. Kant claimed that in the name of constructing an “orbis pictus”, botany should be one of the first subjects. Hirst claims that physics is the better beginning point:
“Many sections of physics are probably more comPrehensive and clear in logical character, more typical of the well developed physical sciences than, say botany. If so, they would, all other things being equal, serve better as an introduction to scientific knowledge.”(P.108)
The concept of a life form which is present in botany but not in physics is, of course an important concept to introduce early on in education, and botany is a discipline dealing with one of the simplest forms of life. Its strategic value lies in the central and basic term of psuche(life) and the manifold forms of its variation.
This is one awesome article post.Thanks Again. Want more.
Appreciate you sharing, great blog. Cool.
Wow, great article post. Really Cool.
Im obliged for the article post.Really looking forward to read more. Really Great.
I cannot thank you enough for the article post.Really thank you! Cool.
I cannot thank you enough for the blog article. Much obliged.
I appreciate you sharing this post.Really thank you! Much obliged.
Say, you got a nice blog article.Really thank you! Really Great.
Thank you for your blog article. Cool.
I cannot thank you enough for the article.Thanks Again. Great.
I cannot thank you enough for the post.Much thanks again. Really Cool.
Thank you for your blog post.Really thank you! Really Cool.
Thanks for the post. Will read on…
Great, thanks for sharing this blog article.Really looking forward to read more. Much obliged.
Thanks so much for the article. Will read on…
Thanks so much for the blog post.Really looking forward to read more. Really Cool.
Really appreciate you sharing this article.Much thanks again. Awesome.