An influential view of education is that it prepares young people for adult life, usually in the areas of civic engagement, leisure and contemplation. Employment may be a locus for learning some worthwhile skills and knowledge, but it is not itself the possible locus or one of the possible loci of a worthwhile life. This article disputes that view by drawing attention to those aspects of employment that make it potentially an aspect of a worthwhile life. The exercise and development (...) of one's abilities, co-operation with others, self-discovery and the pursuit of excellence are all identified as potential components of a worthwhile life. If such an aspect of life is worth striving for then education should prepare one for it. Objections to this argument are reviewed and ultimately rejected. (shrink)

What is analytical philosophy of education (APE)? And what has been its place in the history of the subject over the last fifty years? In a recent essay in Ethics and Education (Vol 2, No 2 October 2007) on ‘Rival conceptions of the philosophy of education’, Paul Standish described a number of features of APE. Relying on both historical and philosophical argument, the present paper critically assesses these eight points, as well as another five points delineating APE in the Introduction (...) to The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Education. (shrink)

Physical education is often justified within the curriculum as academic study, as a worthwhile activity on a par with other academic subjects on offer and easy to assess. Part of the problem has been that movement studies in physical education are looked upon as disembodied and disconnected from its central concerns which are associated with employing physical means to develop the whole person. But this, Merleau-Ponty would say, is to ignore the nature of experience and to consider the cognitive aspects (...) of our perceptual experience in isolation from the personal meaning gained when looked at from the ?inside? or participatory perspective of the moving agent. In this sense, physical education has lost meaning for some students because our embodied relationship with the world is not an external or contemplative one. Phenomenology, according to Merleau-Ponty, is significant for physical education because it highlights what it is like to be embodied and recognises the role corporeal movement and embodiment plays in learning, in, by and through physical education. What makes this account educationally significant for physical education is that the whole person should benefit by the experience, as it includes an emphasis on all three educational domains (the psychomotor, the cognitive and the affective), rather than as separate physical and mental qualities that bear no relation to each other. (shrink)

This article argues that assessment is a central feature of teaching, particularly as a means to determine whether what has been taught has been learnt. However, I take issue with the current trend in education which places a significant amount of emphasis upon large-scale public testing, which in turn has exacerbated the ‘teaching-to-the-test’ syndrome, not to mention distorting teaching decisions that are detrimental to the overall development of student knowledge and understanding. Part of the problem with assessment in education seems (...) to revolve around the nature of knowledge and how best to assess human knowledge and understanding. Although much philosophical uncertainty and disagreement exists surrounding the nature of knowledge, I argue that coming to know something is a sine qua non of any education. In saying this, I highlight the limits of assessment by demonstrating how certain activities are resistant to large-scale public testing because they are not easily reducible to facts which can be tested for, or at least in the same way as propositional forms of knowledge. Consequently, my argument is a philosophical one to the effect that assessment, particularly large-scale public testing is incapable of assessing all forms of learning, or even the quality of student understanding because the instruments available are both too blunt and tend to capture a certain kind of knowledge that privileges theory over practice, and mental skills over physical skills. (shrink)

I argue that, after Dewey, Peters was the first modern philosopher of education to write material (in English) that was both philosophically respectable and relevant to the day-to-day concerns of teachers. Since then, some philosophers of education have remained (more or less) relevant but not really respectable while others have ?taken off into the skies? learning acclaim from the philosophical community but ceasing to produce anything which would be of any relevance to teachers in their work. I suggest that Peters (...) might again point the way towards a form of academic philosophy of education that is both relevant and reasonably respectable. (shrink)

In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s influential novel Notes from underground, we find one of the most memorable characters in nineteenth century literature. The Underground Man, around whom everything else in this book revolves, is in some respects utterly repugnant: he is self-centred, obsessive and cruel. Yet he is also highly intelligent, honest and reflective, and he has suffered significantly at the hands of others. Reading Notes from underground can be a harrowing experience but also an educative one, for in an encounter with (...) what at first seems unfamiliar and disorienting we can awaken the ‘stranger within’. Dostoevsky’s work, if we are ready for it, can shake us from our slumbers and allow us to see that what appears to be strange may in fact be deeply familiar to us. (shrink)

Traditional analytical philosophy of education assigns a peripheral place to physical education, partly because orthodox epistemology finds its cognitive claims implausible. An understandable but dubious response to this state of affairs is the attempt to relocate physical education within the academic curriculum, with its characteristic emphasis on theoretical knowledge and formal assessment. Dissatisfaction with this response suggests an analysis of physical activity in terms of practical knowledge or knowing how, but the results of this seem inconclusive. More recently, the development (...) of neurocomputational and embodied-cognition approaches in cognitive science appears to offer alternative ways of understanding motor skill and physical activity, and thus of rescuing physical education from its marginal status. But these strategies are not unproblematic, particularly where questions of personal agency and motor control are concerned. Examination of these issues prompts a radical reconsideration of the traditional problem of physical education, and consequently of some familiar assumptions in the philosophy of education. (shrink)

Education needs to prepare students to have understanding of themselves, of their relationships to others, to have an ability to make good moral and other judgements and to act on these. If education has a role to play in the alleviation of the crises facing the world, then there is some urgency in reflecting on what kind of education is needed in order to prepare young people to tackle these many crises. It is our contention that the major problem with (...) modern education is that it has forgotten that its main task is helping students to learn to be wise. That is, in considering the aims of education, it is proposed that it is wisdom which is the main aim of education. This will be so whatever level of education we are discussing, though much of our discussion refers to higher education. (shrink)

The place of physical education has been contested in recent times and it has been argued that its justification as part of school curricula seems to be marginal at best. Such justifications as have been offered, propose that physical education is justified because of its contribution to moral development or because it is capable of being studied as a theoretical subject. Other justifications have centred on the embodied nature of the human being. In this article we draw on some classical (...) thinkers, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Augustine and Benedict, to argue for a strong, integrated view of the human person. From this it is concluded that physical education is a necessary component of education and that a complete education therefore involves physical education. Physical education is understood in a broad sense as a family resemblance concept which incorporates a wide variety of physical activities. Disciplined physical activity which enables individuals to gain those physical skills required for learning, it is proposed, is essential for intellectual development. Benedictine education, which involves hard physical work, reading, prayer and reflection, illustrates how the physical and mental aspects of a person are to be integrated in order to attain the ends of the committed Benedictine monk. (shrink)

A recurring theme in many places concerns the nurturing and maintenance of a civil society that is committed to justice, to human fulfilment and a community that actively pursues the good of all its members. The creation of a civil society where there is respect for persons and a concern for the good of others is an important social aim and though it is not the sole responsibility of educational institutions, they have a crucial role to play in its development. (...) It also evident that the creation of a civil society includes the family and the wider community and so in order to understand how a civil society is to be fostered, we need to understand relationality, a central concept in both the Western and Eastern understandings of human nature. If we reflect on contemporary education in both the East and the West, an important question to consider is the extent to which education measures up to developing in young people a sense of their responsibilities to one another, their families and to the wider community. In short the question of how well we are developing humane persons who are able to relate to one another and build a civil society. This article argues that there needs to be a rebalancing of the aims of education to include the development of those values and dispositions that will foster a civil society. (shrink)

Practitioners of education in South Africa (SA) struggle painfully between the extremes of its authoritarian and deeply religious roots that prescribe blind obedience to people in authority and their elders, and the demands of open-mindedness, critical thinking and also solidarity required for democratic citizenship. A particular pedagogy was used with some 400 student teachers to investigate philosophically the rights and wrongs of corporal punishment in schools. This article justifies the use of this particular approach to moral education ? despite its (...) ?Western? liberal roots ? in post-apartheid SA as it opens up a non-judgemental space to explore philosophically what students actually believe. Without moralising or slipping into moral relativism, such philosophical teaching increases student participation, autonomy and self-discipline, and at the same time develops moral reasoning and moral knowledge. Hence, it needs to be introduced as a pedagogy in institutions that educate future teachers. (shrink)

This article argues that Buddhist philosophy offers a plausible theory of the education of the emotions. Emotions are analyzed as cognitive feeling events in which the subject is passive. The education of the emotions is possible if and only if it is possible to evaluate one’s emotional life (the normative condition) and it is possible to satisfy the normative condition through learning (the pedagogical condition). Drawing on the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, as well as the concepts of conditioned arising, (...) emptiness and anattā, the article presents a view of the education of the emotions that rejects craving for permanence. (shrink)

This article addresses two main questions: what is excellence and should epistemic excellence be the main purpose of education? Though references to excellence have become increasingly frequent in the UK education policy, these questions are perhaps especially important in Scotland where the curriculum is explicitly for excellence. Following Hirst and Peters, it is hypothesised that if the term ‘education’ implies possession of a certain breadth of general knowledge and understanding, then the term ‘excellence’ may imply a deep grasp of a (...) specific body of knowledge. However, after consideration of Dewey's suggestion that being present in the moment is an excellence of childhood, it is concluded that the development of epistemic excellence should be regarded as an educational purpose rather than the only educational purpose and pupil engagement with public traditions of knowledge provides necessary but not sufficient conditions for education. (shrink)

A models-based approach has been advocated as a means of overcoming the serious limitations of the traditional approach to physical education. One of the difficulties with this approach is that physical educators have sought to use it to achieve diverse and sometimes competing educational benefits, and these wide-ranging aspirations are rarely if ever achieved. Models-based practice offers a possible resolution to these problems by limiting the range of learning outcomes, subject matter and teaching strategies appropriate to each pedagogical model and (...) thus the arguments that can be used for educational value. In this article, two examples are provided to support a case for educational value. This case is built on an examination of one established pedagogical model, Sport Education, which is informed by a perspective on ethics. Next, I consider Physical Literacy which, I suggest, is an existentialist philosophical perspective that could form the basis of a new pedagogical model. It is argued, in conclusion, that a models-based approach along with a reconstructed notion of educational value may offer a possible future for physical education that is well grounded in various philosophical arguments and the means to facilitate a wide range of diverse individual and social educational ?goods? (shrink)

This article is the second of a two-part investigation, the first part of which was published in Ethics and Education, vol. 5, issue 2, 2010, under the title ?Preface to an ethics of education as a practice in its own right?. Although it builds on the arguments of that ?preface?, this second part of the investigation can be read as a stand-alone essay. It begins with a brief review of a new subordination of educational practice achieved by a neo-liberal tenor (...) in international educational reforms in recent decades in Western societies. The practical context for the essay however is that failure of many of these reforms, like the failure of neo-liberal dominance in socio-economic policy, has given rise to emergent opportunities where inspirations for educational debate and policy-making are concerned. Arguing for the uptake of such opportunity, the ethical tenor of education as a practice in its own right is explored under four headings: (1) review and clarification of the inherent purposes of education as a practice; (2) investigation of educationally productive pathways that are characteristic of education as a practice in its own right; (3) elucidation of a recognisable family of virtues that arise from that practice itself; (4) exploration of the kinds of relationships through which these virtues, and their educational fruits, are nourished. (shrink)

Education as a practice in its own right (or sui generis practice) invokes quite a different set of ethical considerations than does education understood as a subordinate activity ? i.e. prescribed and controlled in its essentials by the current powers-that-be in a society. But the idea of education as a vehicle for the ?values? of a particular group or party is so commonplace, from history's legacy as well as from ongoing waves of educational reforms, as to appear a quite natural (...) one. So much is this case that the idea of education as a sui generis practice may seem a bit eccentric at first sight. Some preliminary work is called for then to render intelligible the claim that education is indeed a practice in its own right, and to illustrate the original starting point this gives for an exploration of educational ethics. In undertaking this preliminary work, central themes from two major sources are explored and reviewed: Richard Peters? well-known study Ethics and education and MacIntyre's After virtue. The suggestive merits of both works for advancing a sui generis understanding of education and its conduct are identified. But crucial occlusions are also highlighted in the arguments of both authors, the recognition of which might have enabled their thinking on educational matters to venture onto a different plane. The kind of thinking that emerges from these investigations as most promising for educational ethics is seen to differ in its key features from what the various branches of academic philosophy have to offer by way of ethical theory. (shrink)

Paul Hirst claimed that Richard Peters ?revolutionised philosophy of education?. This does not accord with my experience in the Antipodean periphery. My experience of the work of Wittgenstein, Austin and Kovesi before reading Peters and Dewey, Kuhn and Toulmin subsequently meant that Peters was a major but not revolutionary figure in my understanding of philosophy of education.

This article will begin by examining the extent to which R. S. Peters merited the charge of analytic philosopher. His background in social psychology allowed him to become more pragmatic and grounded in social conventions and ordinary language than the analytic philosophers associated with empiricism, and his gradual shift from requiring internal consistency to developing a notion of ?reasonableness?, in which reason could be tied to passion, grounded him in an idiosyncratic notion of ethics which included compassion and virtue as (...) well as reason. I describe his position on ethics as a systemic one of principled pragmatism. (shrink)

This paper outlines aspects and dimensions of my ‘relationship’ with Richard Peters from 1966 onward. The underlying suggestion is that, while Peters’ contribution to philosophy of education was undeniably of major proportions, both that contribution and his legacy are institutional rather than substantive.

This study investigates the reaction of high school students in an alternative urban secondary school to highly controlling, authoritarian practices. Premised on the published theories, we imagined that students would object to the regime and consider it unduly repressive. Student reactions were elicited through questionnaires and interviews. To our considerable surprise, most respondents approved of the authoritarian regime and disapproved of granting students more self-expression. Most have come to believe that they do not deserve freedom from pervasive rules, for they (...) will indeed abuse it. As one child said approvingly, ?This is a disciplinary school? ? you give up freedom and accept rules. We discuss the implications of such a strong identification with the school's norms and the consequent distrust of personal autonomy. (shrink)

This article was first published in 1982 in Educational Analysis (4, 75–91) and republished in 1998 (Hirst, P. H., & White, P. (Eds.), Philosophy of education: Major themes in the analytic tradition, Vol. 1, Philosophy and education, Part 1, pp. 61–78. London: Routledge). I was then a lecturer in philosophy of education at Sheffield University teaching the subject to Master’s students on both full- and part-time programmes. My first degree was in philosophy, read under D. W. Hamlyn and David Cooper (...) and, given their interests, inevitably emphasized the philosophy of language, in particular the work of Wittgenstein in this field. When I subsequently turned my attention to the philosophy of education it seemed obvious to me that there were serious problems with Professor Peters’ approach to language, and I had particular difficulties with his approach to criteria, meaning theory and what seemed an odd interpretation of a transcendental argument. This article thus set out to show that the then dominant form of philosophy of education seemed not to take account of developments in the philosophy of language that preceded Professor Peters’ early work by at least a decade and which cast serious doubt on the enterprise as it was then understood. As the articles in the 1998 collection indicate, I was not alone in thinking there was something amiss, although at the time I seemed to be ploughing a somewhat lonely furrow. In revisiting this early article some 30 years after it was first published I have found to my surprise that there is little I would now change, although I have been forcibly reminded of the very lively discussions Professor Peters and I had over these issues. The fact that there is little I would now add to, or subtract from, my critique is in itself a telling comment on the enduring and influential legacy of the approach to the philosophy of education that Professor Peters championed so powerfully. (shrink)

Current discussions about education suggest that a transformative pedagogy that goes beyond the acquisition of knowledge and skills is needed. However, there is no agreement as to the inputs needed for a correct development of the educational model. In this sense, we can identify the presence of two different approaches to human and social capital which embody distinct educational worldviews. On the one hand, the ‘Marketable Human Capital’ or ‘Personal Culture’ approach, and on the other hand, the ‘Non-Marketable Human Capital’ (...) or ‘Civic Culture’ approach. The first, which is linked to mainstream economic theory, sees education as any stock of knowledge that contributes to an improvement in the productivity of the worker and individual well-being. The second, which is rooted in the Mediterranean tradition of political thought, highlights the role of civic virtues, reciprocity, and public action within the educational process and its influence on public happiness. In this article, we analyse these connections in order to introduce the eighteenth-century Mediterranean tradition of economic thought into discussions about human and social capital theories and the role of education in them. Focusing on education through these prisms, national and international agendas must be reoriented towards the integral development of people to include broader global debates. (shrink)

In this article I attempt to engage with Charlotte Brontë as both a teacher and a philosopher. In her depiction of two impoverished gentlewomen as teachers Brontë is, as is often pointed out, drawing on her own history, but she is also exploring two conflicting contemporary philosophic notions: the romantic ideal and the ideal of rationality, as they are played out in the lives of women. Brontë uses the plot device of taking her teachers into new environments, from where as (...) strangers they can report to the reader on the conditions they experience. But the teachers are also strangers in the teaching environments of their employment and, moreover, as individuals are stripped of all familial and social support. While her pedagogic strategies may not be appealing to twentieth century tastes, Brontë and her creations still have something to say about the issues, choices and constraints faced by young and inexperienced teachers, and the available subject-positions teachers may construct for themselves as they grapple with their own foreignness in their classrooms or other teaching situations. (shrink)

The 2014 INPE McLaughlin Lecture explores the emergent concept of the ‘postliberal’ and the increasing frequency of its formal and informal uses in the languages of educational theory and practice. It traces the origins of the term ‘postliberal’ to certain strains of modern Christian theology, maps its migration into liberal democratic theory and examines its important role in the discussion of religious schooling as led for a time by Terry McLaughlin himself. Acknowledging the looseness of the concepts ‘liberal’ and ‘postliberal’ (...) in much current educational polemic, the article nonetheless argues that recurrent adoption of the term ‘postliberal’ in Britain especially signifies a change in attitude towards ‘progressive’ versions of liberal education with which philosophers and theorists must engage. (shrink)

Education in democratic South Africa has been saddled with the extraordinary task of sanitising a once dehumanising and splintered education system into a singular narrative of social justice and creative, problem-solving individuals. This extraordinary effort has witnessed a pendulum swing from the openness of outcomes-based education, to a less flexible National Curriculum Statement, and recently, to what has been criticised as a too restrictive Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement. In its narrow focus on ‘assessment for learning’, CAPS appears to be trapped (...) in a particular understanding of teaching and learning that can be understood only in terms of measurement, thereby discounting education as happening outside that which can be measured. In this article, I contend, firstly, that while education is not averse to measurement, it cannot be allowed to dominate the educative process. Instead, it is possible to reconcile measurement, as expressed through a ‘language of needs’ with a language of ‘coming into presence’, which recognises that learners enter the education arena with their own ideas of what is known and yet to be known. Secondly, I argue, that if a post-apartheid education system hopes to re-humanise its citizens and society, then this will only be possible through cultivating a curriculum, which is understood as a process of socially just encounters—one which is always in becoming, and therefore not necessarily measurable. (shrink)

In his 1973 paper ?The Justification of Education? R.S. Peters aspired to give a non-instrumental justification of education. Ever since, his so-called ?transcendental argument? has been under attack and most critics conclude that it does not work. They have, however, thrown the baby away with the bathwater, when they furthermore concluded that Peters? justificatory project itself is futile. This article takes another look at Peters? justificatory project. As against a Kantian interpretation, it proposes an axiological-perfectionist interpretation to bring out the (...) permanent importance of this project and suggests some possible strategies for its successful execution. (shrink)

Richard Stanley Peters was one of the founding fathers of analytic philosophy of education in the twentieth century. After reviewing Peters’ disentanglement of the ambiguities of liberal education, I reconstruct his view on the status and the existential foundations of the humanities. What emerges from my reconstruction is an original justificatory argument for the value of liberal education as general education in the sense of initiation into the heritage of the humanities. To close, I evaluate the scope and power of (...) this argument from the existential concern of the humanities. (shrink)

In 1964, Richard Peters examined the place of philosophy in the training of teachers. He considered three things: Why should philosophy of education be included in the training of teachers; What portion of philosophy of education should be included; How should philosophy be taught to those training to be teachers. This article explores the context of the time when Peters set out his views, describes philosophy of education at the London Institute of Education at one period in Peters? time there, (...) and then discusses the current state of philosophy of education, using New Zealand as an example of opportunities and challenges. Finally, asking whether Peters was nearly right about the place of philosophy in the training of teachers, it is concluded that he was right about its importance but got it wrong about his conception of philosophy. (shrink)

Current discussions about education suggest that a transformative pedagogy that goes beyond the acquisition of knowledge and skills is needed. However, there is no agreement as to the inputs needed for a correct development of the educational model. In this sense, we can identify the presence of two different approaches to human and social capital which embody distinct educational worldviews. On the one hand, the ‘Marketable Human Capital’ or ‘Personal Culture’ approach, and on the other hand, the ‘Non-Marketable Human Capital’ (...) or ‘Civic Culture’ approach. The first, which is linked to mainstream economic theory, sees education as any stock of knowledge that contributes to an improvement in the productivity of the worker and individual well-being. The second, which is rooted in the Mediterranean tradition of political thought, highlights the role of civic virtues, reciprocity, and public action within the educational process and its influence on public happiness. In this article, we analyse these... (shrink)

In this article, I argue that Paulo Freire’s liberatory conception of education is interesting, challenging, even transforming because central to it are important aspects of education which other philosophers marginalise. I also argue that Freire’s critics are right when they claim that he paid insufficient attention to another important aspect of education. Finally, I argue for a conception of education which takes account of the strengths and at the same time overcomes the limitations of Freire’s liberatory conception.

John Dewey adopted a child-centered point of view to illuminate aspects of education he believed teacher-centered educators were neglecting, but he did so self-consciously and self-critically, because he also believed that ‘a new order of conceptions leading to new modes of practice’ was needed. Dewey introduced his new conceptions in The Child and the Curriculum and later and more fully in Democracy and Education. Teachers at his Laboratory School in Chicago developed the new modes of practice. In this article, I (...) explore Dewey’s new conception of education and compare it with the apparently opposed views of R. S. Peters and Paulo Freire. In doing so, I show that, despite their criticisms of Dewey, whether explicit or implicit, these influential philosophers, representing quite different traditions in philosophy of education were in substantial agreement with him. I also show that, despite our own differences, as important as they are, seeing teachers and learners at work in a rapidly changing society, now on a global scale, in classrooms which are also changing, driven largely by new technologies, the conception of education Dewey, Peters, and Freire developed can provide us with the foundation we need to understand the changing teacher–learner relationship and the purposes their shared activities serve. (shrink)

In this article I describe the analytic approach adopted by Peters, his colleagues and followers of the ?London line? in the 1960s and 1970s and argue that, even in those times, other approaches to philosophy of education were being valued and practised. I show that Peters and his colleagues later became aware of the need for philosophy of education to become aware of and take in hand a new set of agendas and address the list of substantive issues inherent in (...) the contexts and political considerations beginning to impinge on education in the 1980s and beyond. I argue that there is much to be said for adopting a postempiricist problem-solving approach and point to the ways in which an evolutionary epistemology may be usefully applied to many of the problems of modern educational discourse. But I also seek to show how the abiding axiological concerns of Peters may still serve as the substantive background and definition of the value emphasis of the aims and directions in which philosophers of education are currently still working. (shrink)

Resumo (200 palavras) Podem-se encontrar diferentes conceitos na história da Ética. Esse artigo lida com a ideia que se deve identificar um conceito de Ética para se discutir sobre sua relação com Educação. Moral é um conceito que aparece quando se pensa sobre Ética. Por isso uma discussão sobre o conceito de Moral e sua relação com Ética é apresentado. Discutir Ética significa entender o conceito na sociedade porque Ética não pode acontecer a uma pessoa sozinha. Pessoas se relacionam na (...) sociedade e Ética é o fundamento básico da vida social. Antes que se possa observar Ética na sociedade como um conjunto, é possível descobrir que Ética começa na vida da família. A escola é o lugar específico na sociedade que ajuda a família a construir a relação entre Ética e Educação. Filósofos e educadores concordam sobre a importância de educar crianças para serem cidadãos éticos, mas os conceitos de Ética que eles possam usar são de algum modo diferente. Ética Relativa e Ética Universal são os principais grupos de conceitos encontrados na literatura. Concluímos que para se tornar inteiramente um ser humano, cada pessoa precisa se sentir integrada à humanidade e isto somente é possível por meio de conceitos universais de ética. Palavras chaves – ética – educação – moral – família - escola - sociedade (200 words) We can find different concepts in history of Ethics. This article deals with the idea that it is necessary to identify a concept of Ethics in order to discuss about its relation to Education. Moral is a concept that comes to mind when we think about Ethics. Because of this a discussion about this concept and its relation to Ethics is presented. To discuss Ethics means to understand it in society because it can’t happen to a person alone. People relate themselves in society and Ethics is the basic foundation to social life. Before we can observe Ethics in society as a whole it is possible to discover that Ethics begins in family life. School is the specific place in society that helps family to build the relation between Ethics and Education. Philosophers and educators agree about the importance of educating children to be ethical citizens but concepts of Ethics they may use are somehow different. Relative Ethics and Universal Ethics are the major groups of concepts that we can find in literature. We conclude that to become a whole human being each person needs to feel integrated to humankind and this is only possible through universal concepts of Ethics. Keywords – ethics – education – moral – family – school - society  . (shrink)

Liberal education is a value-loaded notion which raises questions regarding the conditions and limits of promoting self-fulfilment within a broader conception of justice. The communitarian critique of rights-based liberalism reveals a tension between, on one hand, the maximizing, normative conception of liberal education and, on the other, the limited mandate of social and political institutions to foster its achievement. The aim of this paper is to argue against a minimalist conception of liberal education, as it seems to derive from rights-based (...) liberalism, especially political liberalism. Drawing on the writings of John Rawls and Michael Oakeshott, some insights into the purposes of liberal education are identified and discussed. Nevertheless, although both authors suggest that self-fulfilment, as it could be promoted by liberal education, is an ideal worth cultivating, their vantage points do not help clarify the conceptual framework in which self-fulfilment could be coherently addressed. The last section of the paper attempts to argue in favour of interpreting liberal education within the conceptual framework of aspiration-fulfilment and capacity-fulfilment, as it was developed by Alan Gewirth. (shrink)