This paper focuses on the connection between play (paidia) and education (paideia) in Plato's Republic. The dialogue presents two opposing pedagogical approaches to the education of political leadership: first, the approach of a Socratic-like lover of wisdom, who seeks to "free" citizens through philosophical play for lives of excellence (arete) and for the application of their leadership skills to the construction of a just society for the public good; and second, the approach of tyrannical sophists who educate and rule in the city by coercive force for private advantage and the enslavement of citizens for a ruler's own personal ends. Plato's Republic aims to show that philosophical "play" is the best pedagogical means to educate a just citizenry and to prepare philosophical leaders to govern.

Although Gadamer's study of Greek paideia has been virtually ignored in the scholarly literature, I argue that it is central to his philosophy of education. Gadamer singles out three kinds of paideia: traditional, sophistic and philosophic. Traditional paideia, grounded in an unaware habit or disposition of the soul, was vulnerable when sophistic paideia brought reasoned argument against it. This 'new' paideia originally supported traditional notions of the just and the good with its conscious art of argumentation and pragmatic enhancement of success. But this paideia also undermined conventional morality by arguing that it is only convention, thereby corrupting the youth of Athens by appealing to the untrammeled desire for power. Philosophical paideia takes its bearings from the sophistic as its deepest opponent and counterimage. It turns out, however, that the two are virtually indistinguishable. Both bring thinking to consciousness; both are rhetorical arts; both create confusion; and both are subject to the 'weakness of the logoi.' In the end, the difference between them rests not on distinctions of reason, but the intent of the reasoner. This conflict of paideias is relevant to the situation of education today. Problems of narrow technical perspective and the broadest ideological manipulation are directly traceable to sophistic paideia. Thus, Gadamer points to hermeneutical praxis as 'the heart of all education that wants to teach how to philosophize.'

The socialization of youth is currently in crisis. Education is in crisis across the world. The correlation between socialization and education is a crucial theoretical as well as a practical problem. Schools are the main institution of socialization. Education possesses two different functions: social reproduction and development. The way of life in any concrete society requires stable forms of socialization.

The later Wittgenstein uses children in his philosophical arguments against the traditional views of language. Describing how they learn language is one of his philosophical methods for setting philosophers free from their views and enabling them to see the world in a different way. The purpose of this paper is to explore what features of children he takes advantage of in his arguments, and to show how we can read Wittgenstein in terms of education. Two children in Philosophical Investigations are discussed. The feature of the first child is the qualitative difference from adults. Wittgenstein uses the feature to criticize Augustinian pictures of language which tell us that children learn language by ostensive definition alone. The referential theory of meaning is so strong that philosophers fail to see the qualitative gap and to explain language-learning. The second child appears in an arithmetical instruction. Although he was understood to master counting numbers, he suddenly shows deviant reactions. Wittgenstein argues against the mentalistic idea of understanding by calling attention to the potential otherness of the child. This could happen anytime the child has not learned counting correctly. The two features show that teaching is unlike telling, an activity toward the other who does not understand our explanations. Since we might not understand learners because of otherness, the justification of teaching is a crucial problem that is not properly answered so long as otherness is unrecognized. As long as we ignore otherness, we would not be aware that we might mistreat learners.

Although much of current neuroscience literature speaks of the mind-brain, most study of the mind-brain generally remains focused on either the mind (psychology, philosophy or sociology) or the brain (physiology). Neuroscientists continue to be hampered by Cartesian dualism and the divisions it creates. Even when we speak of the mind-brain, our attention tends to revert to either the mind or the brain. A similar problem faced physicists earlier this century during the rise of quantum mechanics. I believe that adopting metaphors from quantum physics can help us overcome the tendency to dichotomize our study of the mind-brain. In this paper, I explore some of these metaphors (such as the participant-observer and wave-particle unity) to help establish a set of sustainable metaphors within which we can unify our interpretations of the mind-brain.

The inspiration for this paper comes from the Fiftieth Anniversary of the death of Alfred North Whitehead and the theme of this Congress. In Aims of Education, Whitehead describes the role of freedom and limitation in the educational process. The foundations of these concepts, and important clues to their application, can be found in his general metaphysical framework outlined in Process and Reality. Positive and negative prehensions seem to be the model for freedom and limitation; hence, the latter concept implies the discipline of subjective aim. This analysis supports an interpretation of the mutual complementarity of freedom and discipline, with obvious applications to the educational process.

John Searle opposes multiculturalism because he views it as part of a movement to undermine the concepts of truth and objectivity in the Western tradition. Richard Rorty disagrees with Searle about the relation between philosophical theories of truth and academic practices, but he is neutral on the issue of multiculturalism. Charles Taylor approaches the issue historically, defending multiculturalism as emerging from one branch of liberal political theory. I argue that the debate over epistemological and political issues has tended to obscure the educational benefits of multiculturalism. A multicultural curriculum works very well in fulfilling the traditional goals of education in philosophy. It can assist the teacher as Socratic "midwife" and "gadfly" in delivering students from their narrow and uncritical opinions and awakening them to a world of intellectual diversity. Thus, multiculturalism is not so much a recent movement as a new name for an old method of teaching.

This paper focuses on the central theme of this conference and discusses how higher education can help us in accomplishing our humanization. It looks at the critical educational theory of Herbert Marcuse, and examines his notion of the dis-alienating power of the aesthetic imagination. In his view, aesthetic education can become the foundation of a re-humanizing critical theory. I question the epistemological underpinnings of Marcuse's educational philosophy and suggest an alternative intellectual framework for interpreting and releasing the emancipatory power of education.

The lofty ideals of the classical notion of paideia, and the restatement of those principles in 1982 by Mortimer Adler and the 'paideia group' remain an unfulfilled promise in terms of the actualities of public education in the United States. The notion of an educational system for all students built upon a rigorous curriculum manifesting a framework of values to be acted out in the public and democratic forum continues to have great attraction for educators. Indeed, the notion of paideia continues to carry a sense of urgency as it should. However, the actual task of creating systems devoted to these ideals has run headlong into a political labyrinth generated by the conflict between conservative (technical/authoritative) political thought and liberal (teaching/learning theory) application. The political seductiveness of the trend towards 'standardization' currently in vogue throughout the United States (both locally and nationally) works counter to the classroomcentered/teacher-student encounter needed to educate students capable of interacting meaningfully in their social and political world. The use of the 'standard' to teach and to measure students carries the authority of the technical and reinforces the stereotype of intellectual elitism. To bring balance to this conflict and create an apolitical design requires attention to the meditative role of the teacher and the nature of learning.

In Man and his Circumstances: Ortega as Educator, Robert McClintock says that American educators have forgotten about the influence of Natorp. This essay proposes to discuss Natorp's Platonic and Neo-Kantian view of the human being and of knowledge as a foundation to all education. It will examine the influence of Friedrich Schleiermacher, the distinguished German philosopher, and of the great Swiss educator, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, on Natorp's ideas. In Natorp's view of Socialpadagogik (Social Education), it is not possible to have any positive social or political change without great alterations in educational philosophy. The work of the American educator, Robert Hutchins, will be discussed and defended as an exemplary attempt in the practice of higher education of these ideals. Although Hutchin's programs were adapted for only a short time by the University of Chicago and by a few small liberal arts colleges, his influence, as well as that of American disciples of Natorp and Pestalozzi, still has lasting value, since it is based on the idea that we are all souls in development.

Drawing on a distinction between 'primary' and 'secondary' experience derived from J. J. Gibson's ecological psychology, Edward S. Reed argues that our 'psychosocial ills' result from rampant 'degradation of opportunities for primary experience.' That Reed slides easily from 'experience' to 'information' is less due to Gibson's psychology than to the spirit of the time in which he writes: it is a truism that we live in an age of information, where every experience is an act of communication. But, as Reed notes, progress in information technology has been matched by regress in communication. We spend billions on a 'superhighway' that carries every kind of information except the ecological information 'that allows us to experience things for ourselves.' In a pattern familiar from cities shaped by automobiles, the line of this highway traces a virtually impermeable wall. While (sometimes) increasing access to 'processed' information, it (almost always) decreases access to 'ecological' information. This is a 'pedagogical' as well as a 'perceptual' problem; my intent in this paper is to pose the problem clearly as a first step toward addressing it adequately.

An education for Cosmopolis is a kind of mediation between a cultural matrix and the meaning and value it confers on personal and communal self-appropriation, as genuine human beings, through history. The main strategy for a cosmopolitan educative integrates, around the notion of Cosmopolis, the tasks of an education conceived as a personal achievement and an education conceived as a legacy one generation shares with another. Cosmopolis, as a higher viewpoint of a culture, is based on the power of detachment and disinterestedness of human spirit; it is not an utopia nor an imaginative synthesis. A cosmopolitan education is radically emancipative. It involves a dialectical self-appropriation of the dynamic unit of human consciousness in the variables of development. Self-appropriation involves a fourfold conversion: psycho-affective, intellectual, moral, and religious. A cosmopolitan education also teaches us to think historically, to reach a world-cultural community, and to withdraw from practicality to save practicality. These thoughts are developed from the work of Bernard J. F. Lonergan.

Paideiarefers to a particular sort of education which has historically been concerned with learning for the sake of learning, i.e., for the development of mind. As such, paideia is distinguished from specialized learning, training and learning for extrinsic purposes. Paideia is embodied in the traditional notion of Liberal Education which holds that such an education is the development of mind through the achievement of worthwhile knowledge and understanding. A contemporary trend in the literature of philosophy of mind and epistemology is a concern with cognitive functions of the human mind and the role of these functions in the acquisition of knowledge. The functional conception of the mind emphasizes learning (cognitive development) through cognitive training to monitor and control one's own mental processes. The uncritical incorporation of cognitive theories of mind and knowledge acquisition into current educational theory and practice suggests that paideia can be combined with, if not enhanced by, cognitive training. This paper takes the position that such an assumption is misguided and that the 'matter' of mind is an issue which requires clarification for advocates of paideia. The paper contrasts the cognitive approach to a 'conventionalist' conception of mind which, arguably, is the concept of mind assumed by advocates of paideia.

One of the anticipations of this Congress, namely, that of all the world's philosophical traditions address the 'problems of human life, civilization, and residence on earth,' cannot be accomplished by insisting upon the means and prescriptions of any one tradition. In this paper I address the theme of the Congress by considering the views of Johann Gottfried Herder and Hans-Georg Gadamer on education and history. In spite of attacks on his religious loyalties, Herder supported what may today be called pluralism. Having studied history and having watched history in the making of one of its darkest moments, Gadamer also saw the future of the humanities in the global conversation. To educate humanity, I conclude, philosophy should first attempt to understand the existential conditions of human life.

The transition from 'classical' to 'modern' culture has meant the disappearance of any normative, universal, and absolute culture in which all humanity is to be educated. But that, in itself, does not mean that there is now nothing 'transcending' culture that philosophy can teach humanity. I argue that Bernard Lonergan's analysis of the rational, self-conscious subject, as constituted by the conscious operations of experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding, provides a 'fixed base, an invariant pattern' as the condition for the possibility of educating humanity.

If the educator is characterized by a willingness to stand for something and simultaneously willing to care for someone, then the philosophy of authenticity should help the educator out of the problems that the Enlightenment project and some of its critics have created. While our integrative authenticity should rescue us from despair, it should also correct the possible immobilism occasioned by the interpretation of some postmodernist authors. Here, what we take as somehow fulfilling us, to a certain extent also conceived in a naturalistic way, binds us to the ways of structuring our concerns so that others can participate in a common framework. But such a philosophical perspective is confronted with two objections. First, one asks whether it is still ethics given the importance it gives to the empirical level. Second, it is questioned whether there really is a place for the other, whether it in fact transcends subjectivism. This paper deals with some of Nietzsche's central ideas and argues that the reproach of extreme relativism and scepticism is not justified. It concludes that one may find on the contrary an interesting way of dealing with the necessarily individualistic nature of education as well for the educator as for the educandus.

In what follows, I focus on the partiality and fallibility of each of us as individuals, and explore what that means for us as epistemic agents. When we examine the tradition of Western European thought, we note that most epistemological theories assume individuals can know the answer, and are able to critique what is passed down to others as socially constructed knowledge. Many have made the argument that while humanity can be deceived, one individual can know, and therefore teach the others about their deceptions and false beliefs. I argue that because we are embedded and embodied social beings who do not have transcendental, objective, "God's eye views" of the world in which we live, we need each other to help us be potential knowers able to make knowledge claims. Others help us become aware of our own situatedness and help us develop enlarged views. Rather than thinking that individual philosophers, credentialed experts in their field of study, know more and therefore have knowledge they can teach humanity, I argue that all of us, as members of humanity, have much that we can teach each other. My position is that it is only with the help of others that we are able to know anything.

What follows considers the problem of technical improvement as one of the main problems in the philosophy of education. I consider technology in connection with transferring from substantial comprehension to comprehension of the process itself. The creation of educational technologies is the expansion of educational freedom, from freedom inside action to freedom inside reflection. The connection between education and technology ensures creating and modifying a particular, non-formal, and humane pedagogy.

In pre-democratic South Africa, people never learned to listen to the stories of their fellow human beings because that was seen as a threat rather than a challenge. With the long-awaited political and constitutional changes taking place, a different societal structure is being established and a new democratic value system formally and officially being embraced. It would, however, be naive to imagine that policy changes would transform deeply-rooted attitudes, practices and existing structures overnight. The change into a democratic society does not mean, unfortunately, that a political, social and educational utopia is being created instantly. All learners will have to develop the skills, knowledge competence and attitudes to function effectively in a culturally diverse society. It will require a major paradigm shift from most educators, philosophers of education, and teacher trainers, as well as parents. I will argue for a pluralistic, problem-centered approach to teacher education and training that would be helpful in educating students to respect others and diversity.

This paper discusses certain aspects of the philosophy of education developed by the second century Christian writer Clement of Alexandria. Special attention is given to the place of his philosophy in the context of both pagan and Christian philosophical and theological movements as they relate to the Neopythagorean tradition that was revived in the first century.