Philosophical Essay of

C. W. Bingham

Who are the Philosopher of

Education?
Kieran Egan Thesis:

Educational aims is full of

incompatibles.
 ble)
(incompati
Educational Aims:
1. to follow the natural inclinations of
the student (aims of nature)
2. to acculturate the student
(aims of culture)

3. to equip student with a certain

foundation of knowledge
(aims of epistemology)
 Basis:

Rousseau’s idea that one should be

educated according to one’s natural
inclinations.

Traditionalist that education should pass

on tried and true cultural goods.

Plato’s idea that there are certain pure

forms of knowledge to be learned.
These incompatibilities are
wrong to embrace.
Would you
believe?
What if these incompatible
educational aims were part and parcel
of the inconsistencies of living a
human life per se?

Wouldn’t, then, the educational

philosophers par excellence be those
who could negotiate such obstinate
ends?
Who might these
philosophers be?
 PHILOSOPHERS
OF SELF-
Michel de Montaigne
FASHIONING Friedrich Nietzsche

Michel Foucault
 Philosophers of self-fashioning
deserved to be considered
philosophers of education par
excellence because, both in the
writing that they dedicate specifically
to education and in their other more
general philosophical texts.

and they offer ways that one might

negotiate nature, culture, and
knowledge in order to enhance the
living of one’s life.
Self-fashioning: A Nietzschean
Perspective

CONCEPT OF SELF: The self is not

self-same from one period of time to
the next.
NATURAL SELF:
Has a taste only for what is good for
him
One can be many things and in many
places in order to be able to become
one thing – to be able to attain one
thing.
The self is always “in his own
company”
CULTURAL SELF:

Culture is to be used as a mirror held

before the self.

The benefit of education will never be

realized until such time when
education can contribute to the
greatness of great individual.
Culture instead of being at odds with
nature, is that which increases the
potential of the natural.
EPISTEMOLOGICAL SELF:

Knowledge can be dangerous to one’s

health.

To escape from harm – the strategy

of forgetting.
Self-fashioning, a term introduced by
Stephen Greenblatt, is used to describe
the process of constructing one's
identity and public persona according
to a set of socially acceptable
standards.
 An Educational Strategy
of Self-Fashioning
NATURAL STRATEGY: Make a
judgment of one’s natural capacity.
Natural inclination.
CULTURAL STRATEGY:

Identify aspects of education that are

cultural, and parcel of the student’s
educational experience

Take an active stance toward things

cultural.
EPISTEMOLOGICAL STRATEGY:

Knowledge is only beneficial to the

extent to which it gets put to good
use in one’s life. Learning itself is not
good use. Good use comes when
learning enhances one’s life.
Knowledge can be dangerous as it is
beneficial, when not in sync with what
one needs to increase one’s human
capacity.
A Stance Toward Self: Learning
Self-fashioning from Michel
Foucault
Self-fashioning is best facilitated in
those educational situations that are
to encourage thinking.
Schools have to shape the self, to
make students into “docile bodies”
The main interest in life and work is
to become someone else that you
were not in the beginning.
Conclusion:

The philosophers of self-fashioning

are the philosophers of education.
They give us tools to make our life
beautiful.

La vita bella.