Aristotle’s educational politics and the Aristotelian renaissance in philosophy of education

Abstract

This paper assesses the historical meaning and contemporary significance of Aristotle’s educational ideas. It begins with a broad characterisation of the project of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, which he calls ‘political science’ (hê politikê epistêmê), and the central place of education in his vision of statesmanship. It proceeds through a series of topics fundamental to his educational ideas, culminating in the account of education in Politics VIII. A concluding section appraises the uses to which Aristotelian ideas are currently put in philosophy of education, identifying some confusions in the influential literature of ‘practices’.

Acknowledgements

I owe thanks to the Spencer Foundation for facilitating my work on the larger project of which this essay is a part, and to Deborah Modrak and an anonymous referee for their comments on an earlier draft.

Notes

1. This was indeed my purpose in Aristotle on the necessity of public education (Curren, 2000). The present article relies fundamentally on interpretive arguments developed in detail in that work. For some points of clarification and philosophical expansion, see Curren 2002a, 2002b, 2002c, 2006 and 2009b. The translations quoted in this paper are from the Revised Oxford Translations in Barnes, 1984.

2. For an account of Aristotle’s audience, see Bodéüs, 1993.

3. See Sherman, 1989, for a particularist reading, and compare Reeve, 1992 and 2000, which take Aristotle at his word.

4. For what is known about Aristotle’s school, the Lyceum, see Lynch, 1972.

5. ‘Art’ is a more idiomatic translation of technê in some contexts, and ‘craft’ is more idiomatic in others. Contemporary usage commends medical ‘arts’ but Socrates’ understanding of virtue as a ‘craft’, a form of knowledge resting in definitions of the virtues; politics as soul ‘craft’ but the ‘art’ of governing.

6. For a comprehensive defence of this reading and consideration of the leading alternatives, see Kraut, 1989. Kraut argues that it is the unity of the virtues that makes moral virtue internally (psychically) essential to a happy life.

7. An alternative, ‘inclusive ends’ interpretation of eudaimonia and its dependence on moral virtue attributes to Aristotle the view that a happy human life—unlike a god’s life—essentially involves virtuous participation in a human community. The texts typically cited include NE 1097b11, 1140b7‐11, 1177b27‐28, 1178b5‐8 and 1179a22‐32 (see Depew, 1991; Miller, 1995, pp. 346–357; Roberts, 2009, pp. 9–10), but they are hardly decisive. What seems true is that: (1) virtue is essential to enjoying intimate good friendship, which Aristotle identifies as the greatest ‘external’ good; (2) widespread virtue with respect to others is essential to a city capable of enabling one to live well.

8. ‘Ordinary’ aristocracy is, of course, itself an ideal. Most so‐called aristocracies are actually oligarchies ruled by persons of wealth posing as ‘the best’ or most virtuous.

9. It is important to recognise that one can dismiss the idea that development occurs in stages, with the emergence of reasoning trailing behind the formation of desire, yet still hold that the development of reasonableness is incremental, dependent on factors and efforts beyond the learner’s control, and may remain incomplete (as it is in much of our prison populations; see Curren, 2002a). Stables, 2008 is not the first work to argue in one way or another that Aristotle is wrong because children are already rational and do not require the formative care we imagine. These arguments focus on circumscribed forms of rationality and fail to acknowledge the incremental nature and gradual, socially mediated development of good judgment and capacities of self‐management. See Purdy, 1992, for a powerful, virtue‐centred refutation of such arguments.

10. A great deal of Curren, 2000 is devoted to establishing this.

11. There is of course substantial overlap between my critique and Kristjánsson’s, as well as points of divergence. In the interest of brevity I must leave it to interested readers to consult his splendid book for themselves. It corrects other abuses of Aristotle’s ideas in the moral education literature, which I won’t address.

12. Dunne writes, in a characteristic passage, that ‘the great significance of Aristotle lies in the fact that he … set limits to the sway of techne and, through his novel conception of phronesis, provided a rich analysis of the kind of knowledge that guides … characteristically human—and therefore inescapably ethical—activity (praxis)’ (Dunne & Pendlebury, 2003, p. 200). He asserts a few lines later that phronêsis is irreducible ‘to general propositions’ (p. 201). It being a virtue, this can scarcely be denied, but it does not at all follow that the universal principles that inform good practical judgment will never, in the circumstances discerned, point clearly to a course of action. Dunne’s rejection of ‘technique’ rests on a form of contextualism about judgment that Aristotle did not hold.

13. On intrinsic rewards in learning, the damaging consequences for students of administrative pressures on teachers, and the value of theory in guiding good practice, see Pelletier & Sharp, 2009; Ryan & Niemiec, 2009a, b. The empirically grounded theory in question incorporates a form of eudaimonism broadly inspired by Aristotle’s account of well‐being. Aristotle’s philosophy being a naturalistic one with aspirations to science, it is entirely within the spirit of his project to wed contemporary applications of it with empirical research (see Curren, 2006, pp. 465–468).