This article examines two issues related to essentialist beliefs, autonomy and education. The first issue concerns the conceptualization of the role of essentialist beliefs about selfhood in the development of a continually transformative relationship with oneself. We argue that Carol Dweck's understanding of the regular causality of implicit…

In this paper I contrast conceptions of self from two perspectives: an individualistic orientation and a communitarian approach. In doing so, the philosophical justification is Wittgenstein's idea that individualism is produced and reinforced as a way of being, thinking and interacting in community. With this contextual frame, I argue that we are…