A history of western philosophy of education 2 in the middle ages and Renaissance

History of Western Philosophy of Education is a five-volume series that traces the development of philosophy of education through Western culture and history. It seeks to illuminate the philosophical origins of contemporary educational debates, policies, and practices. Focusing on philosophers who have theorized education and its implementation, the series constitutes a fresh, dynamic, and developing view of educational philosophy. It expands our educational possibilities by reinvigorating philosophy's vibrant critical tradition, connecting old and new perspectives, and identifying the continuity of critique and reconstruction. ## AN UNBROKEN CONVERSATION Education and philosophy of education are not historical constants, either as concepts or as practices. Their meaning and enactments transform across space and time. What education meant to a medieval monk differs from how a twentieth-century child-centered educator conceived it, and both differ from the understanding of an ancient Roman. However, the questions that reside at the heart of philosophy of education have a long-standing lineage. These questions can be traced at least as far back as Plato. In Plato's dialogues, ranging from the Laches and Protagoras to the Meno and Republic, Socrates asks: "Can you teach a person to be virtuous (i.e. good)?," "Which of us is truly a teacher of the souls of youth?," and "What is the relation between education and a just society?" In these questions, we see the meeting of philosophy and education: a fusion of the spirit of inquiry into fundamental issues of life characteristic of philosophy, with the necessity of education for human continuity, growth, and renewal. Plato thereby helps inaugurate an open-ended conversation that continues through the present day. It is a conversation, to cite Michael Oakeshott's (1989) THE HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION Roughly speaking, progressive education represents a commitment to fuse values sometimes seen as in tension: genuine student autonomy, alongside a strong, democratic social spirit. The approach pivots around learning by doing. Rather than sitting passively in rows of seats in the classroom while educators "pour" knowledge into them, students should be engaged actively with inquiring, discussing, experimenting, exploring, and more. While the progressive education movement began in the United States with the reception of John Dewey's (1859-1952) philosophy of education, Aristotle (384-322 bce) was one of its earliest precursors. He argued that individuals develop practical wisdom by engaging practically in wise activities rather than by studying theories of wisdom alone. The early modern thinker Michel de Montaigne (1533-92) deployed this Aristotelian insight to argue that education should aim not at filling students with information but rather at cultivating persons holistically from an intellectual, aesthetic, and ethical point of view. From his perspective, young people develop practical wisdom-qualities of tenacity, flexibility, and sound judgment in the face of difficulty-by interacting with a diverse range of social, cultural, and physical environments. Seventeenth-and eighteenthcentury developments were also important. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78), an avid reader of Montaigne, Plato, and other forebears, highlighted the qualities of integrity, decisiveness, and consistency that would, in his view, liberate the student to act autonomously. Rousseau would have the student learn firsthand, through concrete experience as well as in developmentally appropriate ways, about the unpredictability of countless life events, the necessity of work, the values in friendship, family, and mutually dependent, supportive male-female relations such as marriage, and the responsibilities of citizenship. Rousseau cautions traditional educators that their intense preoccupation with mature adulthood leads them to neglect the intervening and formative years. He argues that the core dispositions of humane adulthood, compassion and conscience, only develop if the individual fully experiences infancy, childhood, and adolescence. In his educational treatise, Emile, or on Education (1763), Rousseau-the-tutor attends closely to what Emile perceives, comprehends, needs, and desires, from birth through adolescence. Like Montaigne, Rousseau anticipates Dewey's thesis that the first step in educating children is to observe them in their most natural state. An important philosopher of education influenced by Rousseau's Emile was Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827). Pestalozzi founded several pioneering schools designed to educate the whole child. He promoted caring relationality rather than one-sided, top-down adult authority, as a model for the artful or well-lived life, including in his educational novel Leonard and Gertrude (1781). After visiting Pestalozzi's schools, Friedrich across the volumes in this series. We picture this turn continuing, and suggest it promises an ever-widening, ever-deepening cosmopolitan ethos in the academy, in general, and in philosophy of education, in particular. At the same time, with regards to the question about the origins of ideas, of thinking, of inquiry, and the like, it is well to remind ourselves that our thoughts can have reasons behind them, not causes, whether the latter be cast as cultural or genetic (Oakeshott 1989, p. 20). This truth is both epistemic and ethical. As Richard Eldridge (1997) poetically writes: "[M]y remembrance of my humanity and its expression or repudiation, is not something that happens in me; it is not the effect of mental or physical or social substance acting according to their fixed and given natures. It is something that I, animated through my life with others, do" (p. 290). The philosophers and intellectual movements featured in this series, and which have given the long conversation its texture and openended trajectory, are not reducible to expressions of the cultural assumptions prevalent in their respective eras. Quite on the contrary. In many cases, ranging from Plato, to Montaigne, to Karl Marx, to Dewey, and to Hannah Arendt, they have been among the most critical thinkers the world in its totality has ever seen: critical of society, critical of prejudice and moral blindness, critical of themselves. To spotlight one specific example among others, in Immanuel Kant's essay Perpetual Peace-a document that deeply informs the intellectual background to many peacemaking projects, including the creation of the United Nations-the author eclipsed his own prejudices in arguing against European imperialism and colonial exploitation. It bears adding that many thinkers in the long conversation have not even been "Western," at least in a narrow intellectual sense of the term. In many cases, ranging again from the likes of Plato through Ralph Waldo Emerson, they have been mindful of ideas from the world over, and have embraced this influence. The central point in these remarks is that the history of Western philosophy, and specifically of philosophy of education, is not marked by a preset, linear progression, any more than it is marked by a single cultural, social, or political voice. People rediscover and reconstruct philosophy of education in each new encounter with the tradition, with each new retelling of how previous thought and present concerns intermingle. This five-volume series comes at a time when the horizons of Western philosophy of education are expanding to incorporate the insights of post-anthropocentric, postcolonial, and indigenous and Eastern philosophies. A vital starting point of these new and inspiring theoretical developments is to acknowledge misunderstandings and blind spots, across space and time, and then attempt to correct them. And yet, if we fail to examine closely the intellectual movements that have shaped these misunderstandings and fueled their transcendence, we risk narrowing our thinking, constraining our possibilities, and reducing our potential for improvement (Carr 2004;Mintz 2017; Ruitenberg 2010). Leading scholars 1. Antiquity (Ancient Greece to Early Christian) (500 bce-500 ce) 2. The Medieval and Renaissance Period (500-1600) 3. The Age of Enlightenment (1600Enlightenment ( -1850) ) 4. The Modern Era 5. The Contemporary Landscape (1914-present) Each volume covers a recognizable period in the Western tradition because we want to contextualize emergent and abiding philosophical and educational ideas within a relevant historical and cultural context. To this end, we conclude Volume 1 and commence Volume 2 at 500 ce, which demarcates the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Middle Ages. In these two volumes, we see the emergence of the Sophists, Cynics, and Stoics, and their later eclipse by the rise of the Judeo-Christian tradition that would prove so definitive of later thought. We end Volume 2 and begin Volume 3 with the start of the seventeenth century given its inextricable association with the Enlightenment and its emergent embrace of science, human rights, and liberal democracy. We conclude Volume 4 and commence Volume 5 with 1914, the year that saw the beginning of the First World War. This conflagration, unprecedented in its destruction and magnitude, would generate the conditions for the Second World War and the Holocaust, as well as spur the creation of the United Nations and innumerable other movements to foster peace, social justice, improved health and nutrition, and expanded educational provision the world over. While the dates that begin and end each volume serve to pivot us from one historical period to another-with each of these characterized by defining social, cultural, political, and economic events, unique and influential thinkers, and diverse schools of thought-they do not represent fixed, impermeable boundaries. The philosophical survey and analysis of education presented by this series transcends easy capture by historical dates. The discussion is wideranging and ever-dynamic, moving back and forth into the past and the future. The dates should be seen as porous membranes that allow for the easy flow of ideas across the different historical periods. Readers will see that the authors make connections between thinkers and lines of thought and practice from different eras, all of which shows the play of tradition across geographical and historical markers. While the volume dates are valuable to note, our focus in the series is on the thematic conversations that are woven throughout the history of Western philosophy of education. xx SERIES INTRODUCTION Chapters in the series are intended to be useful both in a retrospective sense, helping readers grasp the importance of previous thinkers and movements, and in a prospective sense, pointing out areas of inquiry for scholars and students to pursue. Part of what makes this retrospective and prospective approach possible is that many of the contributing authors work to correct stereotypical readings of seminal thinkers in the tradition. They work hard to explain why it behooves us to resist and move beyond canned views about the past. Readers will not find everything there is to know about Western philosophy of education in this series. While comprehensive in scope, the series does not attempt to be encyclopedic or exhaustive. Each volume comprises up to ten chapters and a wide-ranging introduction penned by the volume editor. With few exceptions, chapters were researched and written by professional philosophers of education. These philosophers of education were invited to draw upon, but not to repeat or rely on, their preexisting scholarly oeuvre. They were asked to reengage with a philosopher of education or school of educational philosophy that they knew well, in the spirit of contextualizing that thinker or school of thought in the broader sweep of educational history. Many took it as an occasion to ask new questions and read more broadly than they would have otherwise done. Some authors familiar with a given philosopher's educational corpus chose to read other texts, including memoirs, plays, novels, and letters. Others familiar with the oeuvre of a particular philosopher of education chose to read texts by the individual's contemporaries and critics. Still others familiar with one intellectual tradition choose to articulate it with another. Along the way, the contributors engaged in their own liberal learning as authors of the chapters-an experience not that dissimilar from our own, as general editors and readers of the chapters. We hope that future readers of the series will have a comparable experience. To study philosophy of education is to participate directly in one's own ongoing education. This volume traces the history of Western philosophy of education from the Medieval through the Renaissance period (500-1550). This vast expanse of time includes the rise of Christian monasticism (one of the most enduring and revolutionary models of education in the history of the West), the birth of Islam (with its advances in mathematical, scientific, and philosophical reasoning), the rise of the university (as an emerging force distinct from ecclesiastical and state control), and the dawn of the Enlightenment. It includes chapters on the educational thought of Benedict, Abelard, Heloise, Aquinas, Maimonides, the prophet Mohammaed, Hrosvitha of Ganderscheim, Hildegard of Bingen, among others. It also considers the educational impact of Reformation thinkers like Erasmus and Luther, and Renaissance thinkers such as Montaigne. About A History of Western Philosophy of Education: An essential resource for researchers, scholars, and students of education, this five-volume set that traces the development of philosophy of education through Western culture and history. Focusing on philosophers who have theorized education and its implementation, the series constitutes a fresh, dynamic, and developing view of educational philosophy. It expands our educational possibilities by reinvigorating philosophy's vibrant critical tradition, connecting old and new perspectives, and identifying the continuity of critique and reconstruction. It also includes a timeline showing major historical events, including educational initiatives and the publication of noteworthy philosophical works. This volume traces the history of Western philosophy of education in Antiquity. Between the fifth century BCE and the fifth century CE, Plato, Isocrates, Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, and others raised questions about the nature of teaching and learning, the relationship of education and politics, and the elements of a distinctively philosophical education. Their arguments on these topics launched a conversation that occupied philosophers over the millennia and continues today. About A History of Western Philosophy of Education: An essential resource for researchers, scholars, and students of education, this five-volume set that traces the development of philosophy of education through Western culture and history. Focusing on philosophers who have theorized education and its implementation, the series constitutes a fresh, dynamic, and developing view of educational philosophy. It expands our educational possibilities by reinvigorating philosophy’s vibrant critical tradition, connecting old and new perspectives, and identifying the continuity of critique and reconstruction. It also includes a timeline showing major historical events, including educational initiatives and the publication of noteworthy philosophical works. 'A History of Western philosophy of Education' is the first comprehensive overview of philosophy of education from ancient times to the present day. With five volumes covering 2500 years of history, this is the definitive reference work on the subject, comprising: Volume 1. A History of Western philosophy of Education in Antiquity (500BCE-500CE). Volume 2. A History of Western philosophy of Education in The Medieval and Renaissance Period (500-1550). Volume 3. A History of Western philosophy of Education in The Age of Enlightenment (1550-1850). Volume 4. A History of Western philosophy of Education in The Modern Era (1850-1914). Volume 5. A History of Western philosophy of Education in The Contemporary Landscape (1914-present). Each volume covers the major thinkers and schools of thought for each historical period and pays particular attention to the following themes: philosophical anthropology; ethics; social and political philosophy; epistemology; aesthetics; pedagogy, schooling and education; philosophy of psychology and the social sciences. The volumes also include timelines showing the major historical events of the period including educational initiatives and the publication of noteworthy philosophical works Cover Contents List of Figures Series Introduction Megan Jane Laverty and David T. Hansen General Editors’ Acknowledgments Volume Editor’s Acknowledgments Timeline Introduction: Historical Vision and Philosophy of Education in the Middle Ages and Renaissance Kevin Gary 1 The Monastic Turn: 400–1150 Brett Bertucio 2 Religion, Reason, and Educational Thought in the Twelfth Century Constant J. Mews 3 Jewish and Muslim Voices Gad Marcus and Yusef Waghid 4 Thomas Aquinas and Education Stein M. Wivestad 5 Humanism and Education Laura DeSisto 6 Women Writers and Education Cristina Cammarano 7 Religious Reformers and Education in the Sixteenth Century Carrie Euler 8 Michel de Montaigne and the Bridge to Enlightenment and Modernity Darryl M. De Marzio Notes on Contributors Index