Various authors see human flourishing as the overarching aim to which education should contribute. We ask whether fostering "wonder" can help education attain this aim. We discuss two possibilities: firstly, it may be that having a sense of wonder as adults (possibly fostered by and/or refined due to education) contributes to flourishing…

The concept of Tao occupies a core position in Taoism and even the entire Chinese classical philosophy. For philosophical Taoism, 'Tao' is the ultimate reality. Therefore, exploring Taoist epistemology, its role in governance, education and self-cultivation is necessary. The only way that can be approached beyond human ability to fathom 'Tao' is…

Digital technologies are changing our understanding of ethical emulation. In this article, Matthew Dennis proposes that some social media technologies have given rise to a strikingly new set of ethical ideals, often concerned with the ideal of self-cultivation. While there is relatively little philosophical discussion of these kinds of ideals,…

This article critically discusses the concept of future-ready learning by drawing on the educational thought of Confucius as recorded in the "Analects." Two main arguments are made in this paper. First, Confucius views future-readiness as the preparedness to broaden "dao" (Way), which is a vision of human excellence. Secondly,…

In this article, Ilya Zrudlo unpacks the educationally limiting effects of conflicting visions of the good embedded in Western modernity and offers a developmental vision of modernity for education that is more coherent and productive of student agency. Drawing on Charles Taylor's work, Zrudlo disarticulates four aspects of Western modernity --…

The essay represents teaching as the coming to be of the human individual. In order to do so, it reflects on the character of human life by which it is knowledge of itself. Being knowledge of itself, human life is self-determining or free. Therefore generality and particularity come together in the human being in a distinctive way: a human being…

This article is an exploration of whether education can be considered a beast-like being, developed by utilising Heidegger's philosophy to consider education from an ontotheolgical perspective. Education is a hypernym for its constituent elements; this article is exploring this hypernym as a being, whilst arguing that the growing importance of…

In a system that increasingly stakes all on measuring success for students, teachers, and institutions against a common testable standard, we risk losing sight of the person at the foundation of our work. Patricia Carini offered a meaningful counternarrative through systematic, evidence-based documentation from observations, interviews,…

Although modern education is expected to solve social problems, it has brought about new problems. While theoretical critiques of education have not always been successful, with the transition to a data-driven society, education as a historical product is actually losing its efficacy. However, this does not mean that acquisition of knowledge and…

The work of Hardt and Negri offers the field of education important theoretical resources for reconceptualizing subjectivity as a site of politics. Yet recent shifts on the Left toward more articulated mobilizations, along with the emergence of new decolonizing movements that interrogate the undifferentiated character of the common, partly affirm…

This classic essay by Eduard Spranger (1882-1963) is here published for the first time in English, in a translation by Stephanie Wilde. In this contribution Spranger discusses and advocates the need for a vocational school that addresses the civic and individual needs of students as well as the vocational requirements of the nation. He emphasises…

In recent years, there has been a marked shift in concern among some philosophers of education from political transformation to personal transformation. In the past, critics of liberalism, both egalitarian and communitarian, promoted political, social, economic and educational reform--but always subscribed to the freedom of the individual, the…

In this article we defend the claim that theory on education for flourishing should also include nonideal theory. We observe that recent theory on education for flourishing takes the ideal of flourishing as a starting and central point of the theory, and should be seen as ideal theory. While this serves a purpose, the practical value of ideal…

The article examines what Dewey means by 'growth,' why it is significant and why it should concern us as educators. A metric use of 'growth' is current, as in economic discourse as Gross National Product (GNP), or audited reporting on examination results to produce international achievement data. Dewey's principle of growth focuses on the…

This article aims at expanding transformation theory through the work of the philosopher Richard Rorty. His concept of redescription allows us to distinguish between good learning and transformative learning and to counteract the critique of conceptional looseness. In addition, Rorty's thesis of contingency and his notion of irony are going to be…