Philosophy of Education 1:1
Sku: 19100A0E050
Archival Number: CD/mp3 191
Author: Lonergan, B.
Language(s): English
Decade: 1950
Description:
CD/mp3 191, first half of first Cincinnati lecture on philosohy of education. Corresponds to CWL 10: 3-14. Sponsored by Fr. John Burchat. What is the good of the philosophy of education? There is a negative value: replacing faulty positions with better ones. But to defend only a negative position is not to offer a vision or a principle of integration and judgment, and so it is not to meet the challenge. Still, Lonergan spends most of this portion of the first day's lecture on positions with which he will take issue. Philosophy has meant three things: the medieval symbiosis of faith and reason, the Cartesian prescinding from faith, and the Enlightenment affirmation of reason and freedom as ultimate. Philosophy as the absolute self-affirmation of 'man' has been the inspiration of philosophies of education. This philosophy has taken two main forms: naturalism and historicism. Naturalism's model is natural science: Newton's mechanics, Darwinian evolutionism. Historicism differs fundamentally. The human spirit is distinguished from nature. Its basic category is meaning. Secularist philosophy led spontaneously to a secularist education. The state control of education was not consistent with this, of course. It resulted from nineteenth-century notions on economics, from opposition to traditionalist smaller groups, and from opposition to ecclesiastical control. State control brought to birth the caste of educationalists, and their 'universal wisdom' is 'philosophy of education.' Hutchins challenges this assumption.