Session Information
13 SES 08, Long Paper Session
Long Paper Session
Contribution
Education and Republican Liberty
I propose to examine a particular concept of liberty and use this to analyse education primarily in terms of its provision. We are all very familiar with the concepts of negative and positive liberty elaborated by Isaiah Berlin (1969) but I wish take a different concept, that of freedom = being free from domination. Whereas with negative liberty I am free providing I am not being interfered with, the threat of domination or subjugation is sufficient to impair my freedom taken in the non-dominative sense. The paradigm case is that of the slave whose benevolent master affords him a far better life then that led by the impoverished freeman: yet the latter is not subjugated in the way that the slave is even if the master refrains from interfering in the slave’s life. This kind of freedom is often referred to as republican freedom and its historical genesis has been traced by Quentin Skinner (1998, 2008) whilst a more analytical treatment has been undertaken by Phillip Pettit (1997). There are two implications of republican liberty, as I shall refer to it: first, that political authority is such that each person is free from domination and, second, that each has the resources or powers so that domination can be resisted. These two features are not independent of the each other: for though arrangements in civil society and the state must be such that no individual is subjugated yet it is only through conditions established by the state that individuals can develop resources to resist subjugation, whether individually or collectively.
Thus a further implication of the concept of republican liberty is that it cannot be successfully elaborated without addressing the basis of political authority. Historically, the rejection of republican liberty is associated with the rise of rights-based political discourse and the substitution of negative liberty for republican liberty. Thus Skinner (2008) has shown how the concept of negative liberty was developed by Hobbes partly in order to repudiate the idea of republican liberty then gaining ground in England, in order to advance the conception of political obligation elaborated in his Leviathan. The recovery of the concept of republican liberty for contemporary political discourse also implies an elaboration of a non-rights based account of political authority which is Aristotelian to this extent: civil society as logically prior to the individual, the implication being that rights are constituted through the polis and cannot be appealed to as attributes founded outside and against the polis.
I propose to explore the educational implications of republican liberty mainly in respect of educational authority. In particular, it will be suggested that the authority to educate must flow from a political authority if educational liberty is to be sustained. I will also suggest that in order to foster non-dependency and resourcefulness it is not enough for education to have a skills focus: individuals will only preserve their liberties if they are also able to deploy language and concepts – hence the importance of the humanities.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Bibliography Auerbach, Sasha (2009), Some Punishment should be devised: Parents, Children and the State in Victorian London, Historian: Volume 71, Issue 4, pages 757–779 Baron, Hans (1966), The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance (Princeton University Press) Berlin, I (1969), Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford University Press) Grafton,A and Jardine, (1986), From Humanism to the Humanities (Duckworth) Hobbes, Thomas (1651:1996), Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge University Press) Laborde, C & Maynor, J (eds, 2008), Republicanism and Political Theory, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, Marti, L.M and Pettit, P (2010), A Political Philosophy in Public Life (Princeton) Pettit, P (1997), Republicanism: a theory of freedom and government (Oxford University Press) Pettit, Philip N (2008), Republican Freedom: Three Axioms, Four Theorems in Laborde and Maynor Pocock, J.G.A (1975), The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton University Press Simon, Brian (1965), Education and the Labour Movement 1870-1920 (London: Lawrence and Wishart) Skinner, Q (1978), Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Vol. 1 (Cambridge University Press) Skinner, Q (1998), Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge University Press) Skinner, Q (2001), The proper signification of liberty in Visions of Politics, Vol 3, Cambridge University Press Skinner, Q (2008), Hobbes and Republican Liberty (Cambridge University Press) Taylor, C (1985), Philosophical Papers (New York: Cambridge University Press, Tooley, J (2007), From Adam Swift to Adam Smith: How the ‘Invisible Hand’ Overcomes Middle Class Hypocrisy, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 41, No. 4, p. 727-741
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