Central to most forms of liberal social and political philosophy is the idea of the free and equal, self-governing person. And yet we do not come into the world as autonomous and accountable individuals; at best, this is the outcome of a long process of development and education which (in many societies) now extends throughout the first quarter of the average life. During this period of childhood, moreover, we are governed, not by ourselves, but by others. This dissertation examines the paradoxical position of children in liberal theory, who (as Locke put it) though not born in a state of freedom and equality, are born to it. In particular, the dissertation's three parts examine three interrelated questions. First, what is the basis of the paternalistic authority that is exercised over children? Second, what is the moral basis of the special rights of parents over particular children? And third, when, if ever, are inequalities of education and opportunity justified, when these emerge from decentralized authority over children in families and local communities? Part I: On what grounds do we deny children the personal freedom we accord to adults? The standard liberal view is that we are "born free as we are born rational" (Locke). That is, we are only born with the potential for freedom and rationality. Others ought to respect our liberty once we have, with age, become sufficiently reasonable to govern ourselves. On this view, a person's age matters only insofar as it is correlated with reason. I, on the contrary, argue that we should recognize age to have independent moral significance. This is because the educational paternalism at the beginning of a life does not impede our ability to carry out our life plans in the same way as would similar interference in the middle of a life. This explains why it is appropriate for parents and educators to aspire to more than fostering the minimal competence necessary for just getting by in life. Part II: What is the moral basis and extent of parental rights? Typically, liberals assume that governmental authority is only justified insofar as it serves the interests of the governed. Is parental authority the same, or is it partly justified by the interests of the "governors" as well (e.g., the interest parents have in passing on their values to another generation)? While many contemporary philosophers have followed Locke in describing parental authority as a fiduciary power, I suggest that Hegel provides a richer account in two respects. First, because Hegel has a more nuanced account of the differences between natural right, personal morality, and social ethics, he has the resources for a more sophisticated philosophy of moral education than Locke. From this we can derive a more detailed account of parental duties, as well as see why, without the help of schools, individual families are not generally well-suited to educate children for the modern world. Second, Hegel's conceptions of love and of social roles help illuminate the interests that adults have in rearing their children. Part III: When, if ever, are inequalities in the provision of education justified? While parents have traditionally been responsible for providing for their children's education, this role has increasingly been taken on by the state. In Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court held that public education must be made available "on equal terms" to all. But how is this to be understood? Does it require that the state spend roughly the same amount on educating every child? Or does it require that the state attempt to compensate children who have fewer educational advantages in the home to even out life chances? Or should educational equality be understood in a more modest way: an equal opportunity for a decent or adequate education? I claim that, assuming a rich and multi-faceted conception of adequate outcomes, educational inequalities above the adequacy threshold that emerge from differences in native ability or family background are not necessarily unjust. However, a norm of equal treatment establishes a defeasible presumption of resource equality in the public school system, once the adequacy threshold is met. I allow that inequalities between local communities may be justifiable if communities have chosen to tax themselves at different rates, but not if the school-finance system permits some communities to draw on significantly larger revenue bases than others.

In a democracy, every individual is thought to have the potential to achieve what Matthew Arnold considers the supreme characteristic of intellectual freedom, "the intellectual maturity of man himself; the tendency to observe facts with a critical spirit; to search for their law, not to wander among them at random; to judge by the rule of reason, not by the impulse of prejudice or caprice" (The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, Vol. 1, p. 21). But Arnold finds a critical opposition between man's instinctive efforts to develop "fully and freely" and the economic forces of the industrial culture of modern democracies, consumed with work and wealth accumulation. He maintains that in the aesthetic experience of literature we behold the being we are capable of. First in his poetry, and later in his critical prose, Arnold confronts the malaise of modernity and the spiritual fragmentation at the heart of contemporary literature. The hope for his project for education is that it can free us to find new critical consciousness and recover the moral authority of aesthetic judgment. In this study I try to explicate Arnold's conviction that collapsing the duality of literature and science expands our knowledge of the world and that cultivating humanity through the experience of ideas in literature affirms the integrity of the individual and reconciles his or her relation to nature and the human community. The aim of this work is twofold. First it recasts Arnold's uncertain legacy among philosophers of education in the perspective of philosophy as a way of life. I hope it also invites further inquiry into his synthesis of intellect and imagination in the aesthetic phenomenon and its capacity to critique conditions of existence.

My dissertation investigates teachers' thinking within that "oscillating place of difference" that is the classroom. I propose that teachers think and see differently in the classroom because they have practiced, like travelers, the dynamic thinking which makes them open to novelty, attentive to difference, reflective wayfarers on the paths of the world. I offer a threefold articulation of teaching into thinking, traveling and philosophizing . My guiding figure is that of teacher as traveler. I focus on the teacher's way of seeing the familiar and the unfamiliar in the classroom. Reliance on teaching routines is considered as a sign of the need for the teacher to feel at home in the classroom, and as a response to the inherent uncertainty of the educational experience. Dewey's conception of reflective thinking is put at work to explain teachers thinking in the classroom: reflection is a twofold movement of the mind that at first focuses on the given particular of the experience, and that also expands and opens up the given to new possible interpretations. The third chapter proposes to historicize the metaphor of teacher as traveler by considering Graeco-Roman thinking about travel and movement in relation to knowledge and wisdom. I consider the thesis that traveling is conducive to learning and wisdom. Herodotus explicitly connects travel to knowledge. The presence of itinerant teachers in Ancient Greece seems to reinforce this connection, as does the mythological representation of the ideal teacher as the centaur Chiron. I then posit an antithetical idea: that traveling be counterproductive because in travel the person is exposed to distraction, loss of focus, fragmentation. This antithesis is endorsed by Seneca's Epistles to Lucilius. The dissertation moves to a re-examination of the figure of teacher as traveler in relation to the idea of home. The traveler reaches out and explores novelty and alterity in a meaning-making relation to where she is from. Similarly, the teacher thinks in the classroom by being attentive to newness and difference while keeping in mind the home or familiar: her routines, her curriculum, her tradition Montaigne's humanistic philosophizing is considered in its constitutive dynamism. The way to the knowledge of home-- and the wisdom deriving from it-- passes through the encounter with the Other, be it the indigenous inhabitant of the new world, or the neighboring country, or a different language. Like a traveler, a teacher retains her freedom to move and to chose the direction to her steps, and carries the necessary provisions and supplies: enough to get around, but not too many to weigh her down. The teacher as traveler can read the world of experience, can read her discipline, and can read her students by paying attention and knowing their pace. The encounters that are at the heart of the educational experience, between teachers, students, works and things of the world, all concur to exercise the mind of a traveler: a mind that finds itself " at home" in the world.

The aspects of educational institutions and the systemic practice of education are the product of 2 distinct features of education. The first is the institutional practice of a chosen philosophy of education. The second is the technologies that have afforded the facilitation of information production, consumption and distribution essential processes of education. Taking advantage of major reform opportunities in educational practice, made possible by an emerging digital information system the current trend in education tends to relinquish the long tradition of philosophy of education and embraces the cultivation of a reflective and productive citizenry through education. However, by looking at the ways in which the technologies of their time constrained or enabled the imaginations of our most influential philosophers of education (Plato, Rousseau and Dewey), we will better understand how real technologies and ideal philosophies are necessarily related. With such knowledge, we may inform our educational reform alternatives with the goal of developing a democratic citizenry through education. In no way, is this dissertation meant to provide specific recommendations for educational reform though the Digital Dante case study illustrates some possible reform alternatives. Rather, it is meant to demonstrate the ways in which technology and philosophy, educational institutions and industry and K-12 and higher education are all necessary players in the goal of creating a new form of civic education.

The concern of this study is the loss of the meaning or purpose of education and the instrumental view of education as its corollary. Today, education is largely conceived of as a means to gain social and economic privilege. The overemphasis on school children's test scores and the accountability of teachers and schools is evidence that education has lost its proper meaning. In such a climate, we observe general unhappiness among teachers, school children, and their parents. Society as a whole seems to have given up on education, not only school education but also the very idea of educated human beings. There is an urgent need to reconsider what education is and what its purpose is. However, these questions—once being the primary concerns of philosophers of education—are barely discussed today. I intend to energize the discourse of the aims of education by examining Simone Weil's thesis that the sole purpose of education is to nurture attention. It is very hard, however, to agree with Weil's thesis that the sole purpose of education is attention. Is there a single definite purpose to education? Weil suggests that the purpose is attention, but her notion of attention involves religious language and takes essentialist formulation. How can we take her thesis seriously? By addressing such difficulties and potential problems, I argue that her thesis is still compelling if we adequately emphasize her realistic approach to philosophy. Attention is the disposition of the subject that is open and available to the reality of other people, ourselves, objects (natural and artificial), customs and traditions, ideas, and words such as good, truth, beauty, and God. Attention is also synonymous with love. As the disposition takes various objects, love is also inclusively discussed. The purpose of education, then, is to learn to love. This study discusses two important aspects of love: the love of other people, which for Weil is nothing but justice, and the love of God. Justice for Weil is not about enforcement of rights as typically understood today. It is equivalent to love in that it involves the recognition of others for themselves, not as a means for our satisfaction. We tend to see other people from our self-centered perspective, but we must stop doing so to partake in justice and love. This detachment from the self-centered perspective is crucial not only in attending to other people, but in attending to everything. Weil proposes the imitation of the divine perspective—or quasi-perspective, to be precise—from which everything, including the most abhorrent human misery, is capable of being loved because it is the result of God's love. By changing our perspective, we learn to love God. Although it is perhaps inappropriate to include the love of God in the purpose of education (especially school education), the claim that we need to learn to change our perspective and read (in Weil's language) reality better is still compelling. To learn to love is to change how we read. Through proper apprenticeship, we learn to create a comprehensive reading and read reality better. This is achieved through the contemplation of contradictions. Thus, education is apprenticeship in reading and the learning of the method of contemplation. I conceive of Weil's thesis as a comprehensive response to the question in Plato's Meno: "Can Virtue be Taught?" Replacing the term "virtue" with "attention," Weil responds that it can be taught and it should be the sole purpose of education. Like Plato, Weil considers education to be the conversion of the soul to the Good, while attention is the orientation of the soul to the Good (or God). As we turn to see the contradictions between the transcendent Good and the reality in this world, we need to contemplate the without losing the love of the Good in life's bitterness and confusion. By learning to contemplate, reading better, and changing perspectives, one could learn to love better. Weil claims that this should be the sole purpose of education. This grand vision of education may re-kindle the meaning of education and suggests a compelling alternative to the now dominating instrumental view of education. It might then save the downcast situation of education observed in teachers, school- children, their parents, college professors, and our society as a whole.

In recent decades, the idea of cosmopolitanism has enjoyed renewed interest and rapid development across disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences. Theoretical developments in the foundations of cosmopolitan education, however, remain in their nascent stages. In this investigation, I address the question of the nature and dynamics of values in cosmopolitan perspective and develop a philosophical account of value creation as central to cosmopolitan education. The conclusion of this investigation is that in a world increasingly interconnected and intensely impermanent, in societies pluralistic and marked by political tension, shifting cultural practices, and emerging technologies, we need more than an education that fosters openness, tolerance, and global perspectives. We need to cultivate the capacity to transform the self and the normative terrains we inhabit in light of the constraints of actual conditions and the demands of ideals.

Mindfulness, meditation, and other contemplative practices are being incorporated into educational settings at increasing rates, and while there is a substantial body of empirical research in psychology and the cognitive sciences attesting to the mental and physical benefits of mindfulness and meditation, relatively little has been written about their educational value. In this dissertation, I offer an account of the educational value of contemplative practices. I focus on the claims that contemplative practices have a positive impact on attention, metacognition, stress levels, and empathy, all of which are important in the context of teaching and learning. The fact that there is empirical and theoretical evidence to support these claims justifies the employment of contemplative practices and contemplative pedagogy in education.

It is well understood that a concept of temporality is central to Dewey’s later work, finding its culmination in his essay “Time and Individuality” (1938). What has not been either acknowledged or established is the fact that a detailed and sophisticated concept of temporality, one which is fully in accord with his later work, was already present in Dewey’s early work, particularly in his essay “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology” (1896). This thesis therefore seeks to demonstrate not only that such a concept of temporality exists in Dewey’s early work, but also the nuanced nature of that concept of temporality, particularly in its function as a central, grounding component of the preconditions required for Dewey’s concept of experience. The nature of Dewey’s concept of temporality will be explicated through close analysis of Dewey’s texts, particularly his Reflex Arc essay, his central statements on education contained in Democracy and Education (1916), and the comprehensive statement of his mature philosophy found in Experience and Nature (1925). With the nature of Dewey’s early concept of temporality established, this thesis argues that it in fact constitutes a key contribution to a tradition of philosophy of temporality which starts with the work of Henri Bergson, continues with the philosophy of Martin Heidegger (most saliently with Being and Time), and finds its full contemporary statement in Gilles Deleuze’s work on time, based on his concept of ‘the virtual.’ The fact that Dewey’s concept of temporality, as with that of Deleuze, is based on a sophisticated understanding of contemporary scientific findings is also explored, with the argument made that possessing such a foundation in scientific thought allows Dewey’s concept of temporality to become fully compatible to current research in psychology, particularly as it concerns educational psychology.

The purpose of this dissertation is to propose a Weberian philosophy of education. I understand philosophy of education to be a field dedicated to reflection upon the educator’s practice. My project arises from the contention that too many contemporary philosophers of education have, in the name of realism, exchanged reflection on educational practice for reflection on the political dimensions of educational institutions, thereby engaging in some variety of applied political philosophy. Treating philosophy of education as applied political philosophy demotes the significance of educational practice and thus the significance of the field itself. The central question this dissertation takes up is how philosophers of education might lend significance and priority to educational practice in a manner that does not ignore the realities of educational institutions. My argument is that a Weberian philosophy of education – a philosophy based on social theorist Max Weber’s conception of education – can provoke reflection upon the ideal qualities of educational practice amidst a non-ideal and pluralistic society. A Weberian philosophy of education revives a vision of students as particular persons, prioritizes calling as an educational aim, galvanizes the dignity of the educator’s cause, and points towards the responsible re-enchantment of society.

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