Read more
Philip Kitcher's
The Main Enterprise of the World offers a sweeping vision of the goals of education. Kitcher considers the ways in which educational institutions should advance their goals, explores the social changes required to make high-quality education available to all, and argues that these reforms are economically sustainable. By tying education to the strengthening of both individual lives and the foundations of democracy, he offers a humanistic rethinking of what education should try to achieve. Drawing on those who have written deeply on education, Kitcher offers an extensive reconsideration of how institutions may respond not just to the twenty-first century economy, but to the need for human flourishing.
List of contents
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 PART
- 1. Overload
- 2. Individuals
- 3. Fulfillment
- 4. Citizens
- 5. Moral Development
- 6. A Role for Religion?
- PART II
- 7. The Natural Sciences
- 8. The Arts
- 9. Understanding Ourselves
- PART III
- 10. Social Change
- 11. Utopia?
- Appendix 1
- Appendix 2
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Philip Kitcher is the John Dewey Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Columbia University, and an Honorary Fellow of Christ's College Cambridge. His philosophical work ranges from the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of biology to ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of education and philosophy in literature and music. His books include
The Advancement of Science;
Science, Truth and Democracy;
The Ethical Project;
The Main Enterprise of the World: Rethinking Education; and
What's the Use of Philosophy? The Rich and the Poor will be published in the spring of 2025. He is a Past President of the American Philosophical Association (Pacific Division), a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the British Academy, and a member of the American Philosophical Society. Among his awards are the Prometheus Prize (given by the American Philosophical Association for work expanding the fields of science and philosophy), the
Rescher Medal (for systematic philosophy), and the Hempel Award (for lifetime achievement in the philosophy of science.)
Summary
Philip Kitcher's The Main Enterprise of the World offers a sweeping vision of the goals of education. Kitcher considers the ways in which schools and universities should advance their goals, explores the social changes required to make high-quality education available to all, and argues that these reforms are economically sustainable.
Kitcher build his arguments from three broad goals of education as an institution: career development and professionalization, civic participation, and human fulfilment. He shows that shifts in the workplace provide opportunities to focus on the latter two goals, and to liberate education from supposed economic constraints. By tying education to the strengthening of both individual lives and the foundations of democracy, he offers a humanistic rethinking of what education should try to achieve.
Drawing on figures like Dewey, Mill, Atkinson, and others who have written deeply on education, both in theory and in practice, Kitcher offers an extensive reconsideration of how we might change our educational institutions to respond not just to the twenty-first century economy, but to the deeper need for lifelong human flourishing. The Main Enterprise of the World renews classical Pragmatism: with one eye on the ideal, and the other on the world, it presents a picture of education appropriate for our century.
Additional text
A remarkable achievement that will attract the attention of philosophers of all stripes, including but not limited to philosophers of education, as well as economists, psychologists, and other social scientists and policy experts. Arguing for a radical reconceptualization of both educational practice and its philosophical, economic, and social underpinnings, Kitcher's Deweyan vision insists that educational activities must aim at the improvement of both individual and collective lives, and reconceives educational ideals as tools of diagnosis and improvement rather than utopian goals to be imperfectly approximated. Kitcher defends that vision artfully and brilliantly. His call for serious educational experimentation, and the several proposed experiments, are important and potentially game changing. The Main Enterprise of the World is a masterful book.
