The gleam of light : moral perfectionism and education in Dewey and Emerson / Naoko Saito.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Saito, Naoko.

Series:

American philosophy series 1073-2764 ; no. 16.

American philosophy series, 1073-2764 ; no. 16

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Dewey, John, 1859-1952.

Dewey, John.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo.

Perfection.

Education--Philosophy.

Education.

Physical Description:

xiv, 210 pages ; 24 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Fordham University Press, 2005.

Summary:

In the name of efficiency, the practice of education has come to be dominated by neoliberal ideology and procedures of standardization and quantification. Such attempts to make all aspects of practice transparent and subject to systematic accounting lack sensitivity to the invisible and the silent, to something in the human condition that cannot readily be expressed in an either-or form. Seeking alternatives to such trends, Naoko Saito reads Dewey's idea of progressive education through the lens of Emersonian moral perfectionism (to borrow a term coined by Stanley Cavell). She elucidates a spiritual and aesthetic dimension to Dewey's notion of growth, one considerably richer than what Dewey alone presents in his typically scientific terminology.

Contents:

1 In Search of Light in Democracy and Education: Deweyan Growth in an Age of Nihilism 1

2 Dewey between Hegel and Darwin 17

3 Emerson's Voice: Dewey beyond Hegel and Darwin 36

4 Emersonian Moral Perfectionism: Gaining from the Closeness between Dewey and Emerson 50

5 Dewey's Emersonian View of Ends 69

6 Growth and the Social Reconstruction of Criteria: Gaining from the Distance between Dewey and Emerson 81

7 The Gleam of Light: Reconstruction toward Holistic Growth 99

8 The Gleam of Light Lost: Transcending the Tragic with Dewey after Emerson 120

9 The Rekindling of the Gleam of Light: Toward Perfectionist Education 139.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 195-204) and index.

ISBN:

0823224627

OCLC:

57730989