Higher Education in the Making - Pragmatism, Whitehead, and the Canon

Informationen zum Autor George Allan is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Dickinson College. He is the author of many books, including The Importances of the Past: A Meditation on the Authority of Tradition ; The Realizations of the Future: An Inquiry into the Authority of Praxis ; The Patterns of the Present: Interpreting the Authority of Form ; and Higher Education in the Making: Pragmatism, Whitehead, and the Canon , all also published by SUNY Press. Klappentext George Allan argues that the so-called "culture wars" inhigher education are the result of the dogmatic and unyielding certainty that both canonists and anticanonists bring to any discussion of how best to organize an undergraduate curriculum. He then proposes a middle way. Drawing from William James, John Dewey, and Alfred North Whitehead, he contrasts the absolutist claims of both canonists and anti-canonists with a fallibilist approach andargues for a more pragmatic canon that is normative and always in need of renovation. A wide variety of voices are heard in Allan's conversation about the nature and meaning of an education canon, including philosophers Aristotle, Descartes, Arthur Lovejoy, Hannah Arendt, Spengler, Emerson, Lyotard, and Rorty. Contemporary voices include Eva Brann, Charles Anderson, Francis Oakley, Martha Nussbaum, Gerald Graff, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Bill Readings.

Product details

• Authors: George Allan
• Assisted by: David Ray Griffin (Editor)
• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.02.2004
• EAN: 9780791459898
• ISBN: 978-0-7914-5989-8
• No. of pages: 256
• Dimensions: 159 mm x 229 mm x 19 mm
• Series: Suny Series in Constructive Po; Suny Constructive Postmodern T
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Education > Education system; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Philosophy: antiquity to present day