This essay explores the legacy of the four philosophers now often referred to as 'The Wartime Quartet': G.E.M. Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot and Mary Midgley. The life and work of the four, who studied together in Oxford during the Second World War, is the subject of two recently published books, "The Women Are Up to Something,"…

Much thinking in psychology and related forms of psychotherapy is in the grip of a conception of inner-outer relationships that distorts the reality of our lives and world. In his later work, and in the last years of his life especially, Wittgenstein battled against this. In the course of his criticism, he developed vivid images that challenge…

Responses to the pernicious influences of mainstream pornography on its viewers fall into two main sorts: regulation and education. Pornography has long been a core topic in analytic feminist philosophy, but it has largely focused on issues around regulation, in particular with trying to undermine arguments against regulation on the grounds that…

The concept of the Anthropocene signals both a growing awareness of the negative impact that humans have had on the abiotic and biotic systems of the earth, as well as reflexive opportunity to interrogate how humans might live differently. It is in relation to the reflexive opportunity that the concept of the Anthropocene offers, that I consider…

Anxiety is today increasingly talked about as if it were a condition or illness from which one suffers. This obscures the sense in which it may be said to have a meaning, that meaning being that the self is currently ill-equipped to handle its predicaments. It also obscures the sense in which anxiety's apt 'prevention' and 'treatment' most often…

This article proceeds from a consideration of what John Baldacchino calls 'viable ignorance', attempting to take leave from the critical and pedagogical obligations of certain elements of Barbara Johnson's 'positive ignorance'. It considers Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-François Lyotard and the composer, Karlheinz Stockhausen's reflections on modes of…

In this paper, I aim to reconsider MacIntyre's notion of an educated public. In particular, I aim to do so in light of his recent elucidation of the role of philosophical education in rejecting, or at least challenging, predominant and shared cultural assumptions. I begin by outlining MacIntyre's original case for an educated public as found in…

According to Matthew Lipman, one of the founders of the Philosophy for Children (P4C) programme, critical thinking improves reasonableness and the exercise of good judgement, both of which Lipman takes to be necessary to sustaining a democratic society. Against his view, I argue that although critical thinking can be done well or badly, it does…

This paper asks where Kant stands on the question of the connection between the experience of artistic beauty and moral education, framing this discussion with Batteux's and Schiller's conceptions of this connection. Batteux articulates a cognitivist view of art as engaged with the presentation of morally significant content and draws a direct…

Kant's life shows us that it is possible to be a philosopher who revolutionises our thinking about morality in terms of freedom--in fact, to be the first to propose that treating others morally is to treat them with respect or as having dignity--while simultaneously dehumanising himself and others. It presumably follows from this that we can teach…

Interest in the role of casuistry and casuistical questions in Kant's "Doctrine of Virtue" ("DV"), i.e. the second part of the "Metaphysics of Morals," has grown in recent years. My own position is formulated in Schuessler (2012, in German), the main thesis of which will be retained here in an updated form and with…

In this paper, I defend the viability and relevance of Heidegger's philosophy of technology and consider its emancipatory potential in the field of education. First, I situate Heidegger's philosophy of technology within the broader emancipatory project of his early work--the fundamental ontology of Being and Time--and emphasise the role of…

This paper will evaluate a range of humanist and posthumanist ethical positions as useful bases for environmental education. It will conclude that a range of such positions can be seen as embracing respect for non-human nature. Therefore, environmental education can effectively embrace ethical pluralism to some extent. Embracing a degree of…

Immanuel Kant famously wants us to think for ourselves. However, thinking collaboratively is often preferable to solitary thinking, especially in educational contexts. In this paper, I argue that Kant does not advocate a problematic form of epistemic or pedagogical individualism. For my argument, I focus on the area that, one might suspect, lends…

Character education in schools in England is flourishing. I give many examples of the enthusiasm for it as well as drawing attention to the UK government's new ambivalence towards it. Character education seems largely impervious to the many criticisms to which it has been subjected. I touch on these only briefly as my focus is on a criticism that…