Radical personal and systemic social transformation is urgently needed to address world-wide violence and inequality, pervasive moral confusion and corruption, and the rapid, unprecedented global destruction of our environment. Recent years have seen an embrace of intersubjectivity within discourse on educational transformation within academia and the public sphere. As well, there has been a turn toward contemplative education initiatives within North American schools, colleges and universities. This article contends that these turns might benefit from openness to the ontologies, epistemologies, and (...) ethics of the ‘wisdom traditions’ from which many contemplative practices are drawn. To illustrate this point, we discuss the value of intercultural philosophy of education, and introduce Eastern philosophical ideas, specifically, the Shambhala Buddhist notion of the nondual ground and wisdom of basic goodness and related teachings. We detail how awareness of basic goodness and its holistic expression in the ground, path, and fruition of Shambhala teachings can open vital questions regarding intersubjectivity, challenge and reinvigorate aspects of current engagements with contemplative practices, and provide significant insights and educational paths for transformational endeavours in neoliberal times. Informed by our learning from Shambhala, we conclude with a deepened understanding of intercultural philosophy of education. (shrink)

Alasdair MacIntyre has argued that our modern, post-Enlightenment societies lack the shared standards of moral argument that are prerequisite to productive public debate. He measures our situation against the ideal of an educated public, members of which share enough common ground to resolve disagreements rationally because they have been prepared to participate in disciplined argument by their school and university curricula. This paper identifies questions to be addressed and tasks to be undertaken by philosophers who seek radical school reform in (...) order to help create the intellectual, cultural and institutional conditions for productive public debate. (shrink)

Drawing upon my critical appropriation of Alasdair MacIntyre's account of the rationality of traditions, I undertake to explain and demonstrate how the competing conceptual frameworks of distinct traditions of educational inquiry and practice can be assessed through dialectical argument. To illustrate the 'method' of dialectic, I argue that the set of metaethical commitments I call 'the ethics of transcendent virtue' has important advantages for teaching courses in professional ethics over the 'constructivist-postmodern-moral-pragmatism' informing Robert J. Nash's text 'Real world' Ethics: Frameworks (...) for Educators and Human Service Professionals. I conclude with reflections upon the conditions under which dialectical encounters among proponents of different conceptual schemes are likely to be productive. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introducing Dialectical Argument Nash's ‘Postmodern Moral Pragmatism’ and ‘The Ethics of Transcendent Virtue’ The Ethics of Transcendent Virtue6 ‘Real World’ Ethical Frameworks for Educational and Human Service Professionals Concluding Thoughts on Dialectical Argument Notes References.

This collection of six essays, two by each author, is addressed to people who are committed to democracy both as a set of formal governance procedures and as an.