488 pp. March 2008
cloth, ISBN 978-0-8248-3160-8, $59.00
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Educations and Their Purposes: A Conversation among Cultures
ed. by Roger T. Ames; Peter D. Hershock
Published in association with the East-West Philosophers Conference
“Educations and Their Purposes is a great teaching text. Many of the essays are accessible to those, even undergraduates, who want to engage the meaning of their education.” —Teaching Theology and Religion (summer 2009)
Education is the point of departure for the cultivation of human culture in all of its different forms. Although there are many contested conceptions of what is meant by a good education, there are few people who would challenge the premise that education is a good thing in which we should heavily invest. In this volume, representatives of different cultures and with alternative conceptions of human realization explore themes at the intersection of a changing world, the values we would choose to promote and embody, and the ways in which we educate the next generation.
Chapters included in Part I, “Education, Relationality, and Diversity,” examine the growing intellectual awareness of a pervasive interdependence amid diversity in all aspects of the human experience brought on by the unrelenting processes of globalization. Although the discipline of philosophy has moved over recent years to reconsider the important role of affect in the project of philosophizing, this long-neglected aspect of human experience has taken on new life within philosophies of education. One of the most distinguished voices in the philosophy of emotions offers a sustained reflection in the opening chapter to Part II, “Educating Emotions: The Phenomenology of Feelings.” Like emotions, human somaticity has been an overlooked area of philosophical reflection in the important business of education. In Part III, East Asian traditions of thought that have never committed to the familiar mind-body dualism are appealed to as a resource for rethinking the body in education. The tension between personal authenticity and indoctrination in the role that education plays in preparing a person for a successful life is the subject of Part IV, “Creativity and Habilitation,” followed by chapters on the mutual accommodation of different approaches to education. The final essays discuss the role of aesthetic sensibilities in moral development with the theme of “education and the aesthetics of moral cultivation.”
Contributors: Roger T. Ames, Nikki Bado-Fralick, Brian J. Bruya, Fred Dallmayr, Gwen Griffith-Dickson, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Peter D. Hershock, Yong Huang, Jiang Tao, Thomas P. Kasulis, Workineh Kelbessa, Joel Krueger, Joel Kupperman, Tze-wan Kwan, Chen Lai, Lee Seung-Hwan, John Hope Mason, Nel Noddings, Daniel Raveh, Gay Garland Reed, Richard Rorty, Geir Sigurdsson, Robert C. Solomon, Scott R. Stroud, Sor-hoon Tan, John J. Thatamanil, Hoyt Clevland Tillman.
Roger T. Ames is professor of philosophy at the University of Hawai‘i and editor of Philosophy East & West. Peter D. Hershock is educational specialist and coordinator of the Asian Studies Development Program at the East-West Center, Honolulu.
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