Session Information
13 SES 04 A, Reason, Faith, and Philosophy of Education
Long Paper Session
Contribution
In 1996 the European Commission stated quite boldly that the purpose of higher education was to serve the needs of the economy. Serving the needs of the economy is not necessarily the same as serving the needs of democracy. In the contemporary university expressions of commitment, as found in the mission statement and institutional branding, are to values found in a market society. The paper moves beyond both the superficial and transitory nature of contemporary branding and the reinstatement of explicit affiliation: it seeks to examine the relation between commitment and reason in order to ponder how there might be faith in the university. John Henry Newman and Ludwig Wittgenstein both offer insights relevant to this matter, in particular with regard to a thematics of assent. This takes us beyond apparently religious concerns towards a richer account of the nature of reason itself. The final section of the paper considers the kinds of skills and judgement necessary where learning is understood as a social practice and the learner is part of a learning community
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Austin, J.L. (1962) How To Do Things With Words. Harvard, Harvard University Press. Crenshaw, J. (2010) Old Testament Wisdom. Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky. Kober, M. (2006) Wittgenstein and Religion, Grazer Philosophische Studien 71 pp.87-116. MacIntyre, A. (2009) God, Philosophy, Universities Plymouth, Rowman and Littlefield. Melchert, C. F. (1995) Pluralistic Religious Education in a Postmodern World, Religious Education, 90:3-4, pp.346-359. Newman, J.H. (1996; 1852) The Idea of a University (Ed F.M. Turner) New Haven, Yale University Press. Newman, J.H. (1856) Office and Work of Universities, London. Newman, J.H. (1870) An Essay in Aid of A Grammar of Assent. London, Forgotten Books. Taylor, C. (2007) A Secular Age. Belknap Press of Harvard University. Wittgenstein, L. (2001) Philosophical Investigations, trans. E.Anscombe. Oxford, Blackwell. Wittgenstein, L. (1966) Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Pyschology and Religious Belief. Oxford, Blackwell. Wittgenstein, L. (1975) On Certainty, Oxford, Blackwell. Wolfe, A. (2000) The Opening of the Evangelical Mind, The Atlantic Online, October 2000, http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2000/10/wolfe.htm. Accessed 7 March 2011.
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