A New Vision of Liberal Education

The good of the unexamined life

Alistair Miller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317410850
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

'This is an extremely important book. Wonderfully well researched and written, it develops a powerful argument about how we should conceive of the aims of education and design curricula. It should define the field for a very considerable period of time.' - Professor Michael J Reiss, Institute of Education, University of London, UK

Many philosophers of education believe that the main aim of education is to endow students with personal autonomy, producing citizens who are reflective, make rational choices, and submit their values and beliefs to critical scrutiny. This book argues that the 'good life' need not be the life of the philosopher, politician or critical thinker, but that an ordinary 'unexamined' life is also worth living. Central to this ethical life is the engagement in worthwhile activities or 'practices', and the best way to prepare pupils for their engagement in these practices is to cultivate a range of moral and intellectual virtues. In this book, Alistair Miller brings together a range of philosophical and historical perspectives to argue for a new vision of liberal education: liberal in the sense that it forms a moral and cultural inheritance, new in the sense that it would enable all pupils to lead flourishing lives. Divided into two sections, the first part of the book seeks to establish the justified aims of education in a liberal democratic society; the second part explores the nature of the school curriculum that might realise these aims. A New Vision of Liberal Education will appeal to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the fields of philosophy of education, moral and values education, liberal education, and curriculum studies.

Part I

The justified aims of
education

1 Enlightenment rationality

The problem of integrating
reason and desire

A concern with discovering the truth through the exercise of reason, with seeking rational justifications for our knowledge, values and beliefs, lies at the heart of philosophy and has done so since Socrates pronounced that the unexamined life is not worth living. But with the advent of Cartesian rationalism and the Baconian (scientific) method in the seventeenth century, the nature of this concern took on a new form. Man was elevated to the status of rational autonomous actor endowed with certain inalienable human rights and the relation of the individual citizen to the state was conceived not as that of parts to an organic whole but in terms of a social contract (a notion originally formulated by Locke and Rousseau and finding its most notable recent expression in Rawls’ Theory of Justice). In the West, we are very much the inheritors of this tradition of Enlightenment rationality, believing as we do in universal human rights, in liberal democracy as the political vehicle for the expression of these rights, and in the triumph of reason over prejudice, superstition and oppression. In philosophy of education, Enlightenment rationality takes the form of a pervasive concern with ‘autonomy’ as a pivotal educational aim. The autonomous person is the one ‘who makes his own choices and subjects them to rational assessment and criticism’ as opposed to the person who lives in accordance with ‘inarticulate custom and habit, suffocating ideology or religious taboo’ (Cuypers, 2004, p. 79).

However, with the advent of Enlightenment rationality and the displacement of Aristotelianism (which had up till then been the accepted form of exercising reason in search of the truth), with the elevation of logic above rhetoric, something was inevitably lost, and man was detached from his social, cultural and historical roots. As Stephen Toulmin notes in Cosmopolis, ‘the oral, the particular, the local, the timely and the concrete’ were devalued in favour of ‘a formally “rational” theory grounded on abstract, universal, timeless concepts’ (Toulmin, 1992, p. 75). It is only in the past half century that there has been a reaction in mainstream philosophy against this Enlightenment enthronement of pure reason as neutral arbiter (whether in its rationalist, empiricist or Kantian modes) and that there has been an attempt to recover earlier traditions. This reaction has taken the form of the humanism variously proposed by Hans-Georg Gadamer, Michael Oakeshott, John McDowell, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor and Iris Murdoch among others, with Collingwood, Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Dewey in their different ways breaking the mould earlier in the twentieth century; by those working in the Aristotelian tradition of moral philosophy that has come to be known as ‘virtue ethics’, perhaps most notably Alasdair MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum and Philippa Foot; by communitarians such as Michael Walzer, Michael Sandel (most notably in his critique of Rawls) and, again, MacIntyre; and by those working broadly in the Marxist and critical theory traditions, for example, Habermas, Foucault and Bourdieu. In philosophy of education, a movement to recover the Aristotelian tradition of practical philosophy and emphasise the importance of ‘practical reason’ has been led by David Carr, Wilfred Carr and Joseph Dunne.

Critics of Enlightenment rationality belonging to this broad humanist-communitarian-Aristotelian revival¹ generally share the view that deliberative or practical rationality – the rationality that issues in action – is not a property that arises (merely) by virtue of an actor being autonomous or self-determining, or possessing ‘free will’ in the libertarian sense; but rather is a term that describes the behaviour of a person habituated into certain social, cultural and linguistic practices or traditions to whose public norms he adheres and according to which his behaviour is assessed or judged. Perhaps Charles Taylor encapsulates the root deficiency of Enlightenment rationality according to this view when he argues that Kantians, utilitarians and contractarians (like Rawls) all share a procedural rather than a substantive conception of ethics. Instead of centring ethics on a shared conception of the good set independently of our will, argues Taylor, primacy is given to the agent’s ‘own desires or his will’ and to some procedure for practical reasoning. The consequence is that most modern moral philosophy has ‘a gaping hole’ and is rendered powerless to show why it is in anyone’s interest to be moral in the first place (Taylor, 1992, pp. 85–7).

In this chapter I shall follow Taylor in arguing that there are serious deficiencies in the Enlightenment conception of rationality and in the associated liberal ideal of the autonomous actor; and I shall question whether Enlightenment rationality and its politics of liberal individualism, alone, can supply the moral norms and wider ethical values necessary for rational beings to lead flourishing lives. But contra Taylor and MacIntyre, I shall argue that the universal values and moral norms of Enlightenment ethics (I am thinking particularly here of Kant) are of vital importance because they provide a philosophical and ethical justification of liberal democracy and certain pivotal liberal values; and I shall argue that the Moral Law is central to this justification. Few in the West would seriously criticise the Kantian notion that all people are ends in themselves deserving of dignity and endowed with certain rights by virtue of being rational beings; and few would question the achievement of modern liberal democracy in guaranteeing these hard-won rights, particularly in the light of what we have experienced of alternative political systems. There are few in the West who would advocate a return to slavery, the persecution of minorities, the subjugation of women, or torture. But it is all too easy to take these achievements, these rights and freedoms, for granted.

There has been a great deal of critical analysis of Enlightenment rationality and of the ethical theories of Kant and Hume (including by philosophers of the calibre of Bernard Williams, Alasdair MacIntyre, Iris Murdoch and Charles Taylor) and therefore it is unlikely that I shall have anything very original to say on these subjects. However, there is, perhaps inevitably, a marked contrast between the force and general thrust of the criticism, and the disparate, sometimes rather vague nature of the solutions that are offered – if solutions are offered at all. In particular, there is little sense of how the tensions between Humean and Kantian, and between Enlightenment and Aristotelian, conceptions of practical rationality – and hence of ethics – might be resolved. I do not claim to have a solution to the problem of ethics, and it may well be that it is in the very nature of ethics that it does not admit of ‘a solution’, but I think it is worth exploring whether an accommodation or synthesis between the Enlightenment and Aristotelian traditions might not be possible. My specific aim in this book is to explore whether aspects of the two traditions might be synthesised in the concrete form of a liberal-humanist education.²

Christine Korsgaard, the prominent Kantian, argues that the central task of moral philosophy is to find the answer to ‘the normative question’; to explain how the force of the normative claims morality seems to make on us can be justified (or vindicated) and to explain where the sources of this normativity are located (Korsgaard, 1996, p. 13). I agree with Korsgaard here, except that, as we shall see, everything turns on how ‘the normative question’ is framed. I also agree with Kant that a life consisting merely of the blind, slavish satisfaction of sensuous appetites, inclinations and desires produces only a transient series of pleasures, whereas it is a sense of inner worth and contentment that a rational being seeks (Kant, 1996, p. 143; 2005, p. 137);³ and therefore both the source and force of the normative claims morality seems to make on us have their origins in our rational nature. In other words, when people are driven, as they must by their very nature as rational beings, to ask the question ‘what ought I to do?’, they are launched on a quest for higher values and ends – moral, intellectual, aesthetic and spiritual – than the merely appetitive; they are engaged in a quest for the truth. It is in this sense that the desire, not to eliminate (because that is impossible – even the ascetic has to contend with his body) but to transcend one’s instinctive appetites and desires, is intrinsic to rational human nature. Korsgaard goes further and argues that the moral obligations that arise from our rational nature (obligations which are therefore unconditional), from our need to justify our actions with reasons, are fundamental to our personal identity and to our integrity as a person; and that a life in which we failed to live up to these obligations would be, literally, a life not worth living (Korsgaard, 1996, pp. 101–2). I agree that a life not informed by moral values – not informed by some conception of the life one ought to lead – is, literally speaking, not worth living. However, whether our moral values need justifying with reasons is, I think, questionable. I shall return to the question of ‘critical justification’ in later chapters.

On the other hand, it could be argued that morality is rooted in our natural sympathies and feelings – our benevolence, for example – and that these are as much part of our instinctive nature as our selfish desires. But the problem then is to reconcile our conflicting selfish and altruistic inclinations, which suggests that some over-arching rational perspective, some set of general moral principles and guiding values, is needed after all. However, whether these moral norms must have their source in (or find their expression in the form of) the Moral Law, as Kantians argue, is another matter.

I shall try to locate the source of our moral norms and of our need to live a life that is fulfilled and worthwhile – ‘a good life’ – in the discussion that follows.

Enlightenment conceptions of practical rationality

The Enlightenment conception of the autonomous actor has its roots in two distinct eighteenth-century conceptions of practical rationality: the Kantian ideal of rational autonomy, particularly influential in justifying our notions of universal human rights, and the Humean conception of instrumental rationality, from which descends our prevailing ethics of utilitarianism.

There are, however, profound problems with both theories.

Hume

For Humeans, normative reasons (the reasons that explain or motivate our actions, and that we recognise as providing a moral justification for our actions) are ‘hypothetical’. In other words, they depend on our arational motivational or psychological states, and our actions are therefore ‘goal-driven’ rather than based on norms that could explain our actions by independently furnishing rational or moral ends (Cullity and Gaut, 1997, pp. 4–6); or as Hume himself famously remarked, ‘Reason is … the slave of the passions’ (Hume, 2003, p. 236). In other words, reasons are merely rationalisations of our innate passions and desires, not a priori principles derived from pure reason. Practical reason is conceived instrumentally as involving the selection of the means by which our ultimate desires, our already given ends, can best be satisfied.

The problem with this conception of practical rationality is that because our needs, interests, desires and ends (or goals) are assumed to come ready-formed, there is nothing to distinguish our instinctive appetites or desires (our natural inclinations) from ‘higher’ interests, commitments, beliefs or values – from the things that might be fostered, or might specially be worth fostering, through education and that might be transmitted via a cultural inheritance. We end up with utilitarianism, an empty, instrumental rationality that merely better equips us to satisfy our appetitive desires.⁴ The problem is that though utilitarianism need not entail the mere hedonistic pursuit of pleasure but can take account in its calculus of a more complex conception or definition of happiness (one that takes account of the public good, that weighs up long-run costs and benefits, and that seeks to make qualitative distinctions between different pleasures – as John Stuart Mill famously did), utilitarianism says nothing about how the higher pleasures and nobler virtues might be cultivated; indeed, it says nothing about whether it is desirable to cultivate them at all. There is, in Aristotelian terms, no conception of what might constitute ‘a good life’. Instead, the standard of morality becomes our freedom to pursue our current ends and thereby maximise (individually and collectively) our level of satisfaction, or utility, or happiness. An ethics of utilitarianism is therefore contingent, even ‘parasitic’, on pre-existing values and moral norms – the ones transmitted as part of a cultural inheritance.

It might be argued that these criticisms apply only to act utilitarianism; that if rule utilitarianism were adopted, a much richer conception of the greatest happiness – one that transcends individuals’ appetitive desires and current preferences – would be possible. R. M. Hare goes so far as to argue that since the greatest happiness is on balance produced, individually and socially, by people who set themselves high moral standards (Hare, 1981, p. 203) and are able to act on them, this justifies the cultivation of ‘firm dispositions of character’ (ibid., p. 197). The ‘prima facie intuitive principles or dispositions’ (ibid., p. 40) that enable us to make practical moral judgements on a day-to-day basis without continually performing complex cost-benefit analyses and ‘existential’ choices in each new situation (a practical impossibility, especially when time is limited) would then be rooted in the moral virtues. But in making this move from social rules that enable us to make day-to-day practical judgements to intuitive principles, from intuitive principles to dispositions, and finally from dispositions to virtues, rule utilitarianism has – in effect – collapsed into virtue ethics. Utilitarian calculations of happiness have given way to an objective conception of the good life – to eudaimonia.

Hume’s theory of the moral sentiments is admirable in so far as it goes, and in its defence of the moral virtues it has, on the face of it, much in common with the Aristotelian approach to ethics that I shall attempt to defend in Chapter 2. But because Hume rules out reason as a motive to action, there is nothing to enable people to transcend their appetites and natural inclinations, to prevent them from acting purely out of self-interest (or pure selfishness), other than their natural ‘sympathy’ for their fellows; and this sympathy is left to compete with all the other appetites and desires, including the selfish ones, that naturally motivate human beings. Hume’s references to the value of education and instruction as means of habituating virtuous behaviour also suggest more in common with Aristotelian ethics than is usually supposed. Hume writes in A Treatise of Human Nature of parents’ need ‘to inculcate on their children, from their earliest infancy, the principles of probity’ such that

the sentiments of honour may take root in their tender minds, and acquire such firmness and solidity, that they may fall little short of those principles, which are the most essential to our natures, and the most deeply radicated in our internal constitution.

(Hume, 2003, p. 282)

But Hume never works these occasional observations up into a theory of moral development ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I The justified aims of education
• Part II A liberal education for all
• Conclusion
• Index