Education as training for life: Stoic teachers as physicians of the soul
Holowchak M.A.
2009
Educational Philosophy and Theory
5
10.1111/j.1469-5812.2007.00384.x
This paper is an indirect critique of the practice of American liberal education. I show that the liberal, integrative model that American colleges and universities have adopted, with one key exception, is essentially an approach to education proposed some 2400 years ago by Stoic philosophers. To this end, I focus on a critical sketch of the Stoic model of education-chiefly through the works of Seneca, Epictetus, and Aurelius-that is distinguishable by these features: Education as self-knowing, the need of logic and critical thinking for informed decision-making, learning as preparation for life, and knowledge for integration in private, local, and global affairs. Such a critical sketch may not only help institutions instantiate their own similar aims more effectively, but also help them assess those aims with apposite normative force, which today they lack. © Journal compilation © 2009 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia.
Cosmopolitanism; Education as preparation for life; Learning as integration; Self-knowing; Stoics; Virtue ethics
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Blackwell Publishing
Article
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