Doctor Educationis / Three questions are central to this thesis: First, can the practice of teaching be made safe from luck through the controlling power of knowledge and reason? Second, even if it can be made safe from luck, should it be? Third, if it is neither possible nor desirable to exclude luck from teaching, what knowledge and personal qualities will put practitioners in the strongest position to face the contingencies of luck and, more especially, to face those conflicts which arise as a consequence of circumstances beyond the practitioner's control? Martha Nussbaum's account of luck and ethics in Greek philosophy and tragedy prompts the questions and provides, with Aristotle, many of the conceptual tools for answering them; Thomas Nagel's work on moral luck provides the categories for a more refined account of luck and its place in teaching. With respect to the first two questions, I argue that as a human practice teaching is open to the vicissitudes of fortune and cannot be made safe from luck, except at the expense of its vitality. Like other human practices, teaching is mutable, indeterminate and particular. Both its primary and secondary agents (teachers and pupils) and the practice itself are vulnerable to luck in four categories: constitutive, circumstantial, causal and consequential. But teaching is not just a matter of luck; it is a public practice in which some people are put into the hands of others for specific purposes, usually at public expense. If we have no way of holding practitioners accountable for their actions, the practice loses credibility. Any money or trust put into it is simply a gamble. For these and other reasons, the drive to exclude luck from practice is strong. Yet strong luck-diminishment projects are themselves a threat to the vitality of the practice. During the twentieth century two strong luck-diminishment projects have been especially detrimental to teaching: one rooted in the science of management, the other in the empirical sciences. Both have resulted in a proliferation of unfruitful and often trivial research projects, to misconceived programmes of teacher education, to distorted notions of knowledge and excellence in teaching, and to self-defeating and impoverished practice. Luck-diminishment projects rooted in logic are more or less threatening to vital practice, depending on how far they are committed to instrumental reasoning and a science of measurement. These are blunt and controversial claims. A central task of the thesis is to refine and defend them. The refinement proceeds by way of a contrastive analysis of strong luck-diminishment projects and others which are more responsive to the indeterminacy of practice. With respect to the final question, I argue that there are at least three sets of necessary conditions for a flourishing practice in the face of luck. One concerns what Aristotle calls the virtues of intellect and character. Central among these are practical rationality (conceived non-instrumentally), situational appreciation, and the knowledge required for an intelligent pursuit of the definitive ends of teaching. A second set concerns enabling institutions. A third concerns the kind of community best able to nurture those qualities necessary for vital and excellent practice. All three sets are themselves vulnerable to reversal. Keeping the practice of teaching alive and ensuring that it remains true to its definitive ends is thus a matter of sustained struggle.

Christians, Gnostics, and Platonists attempts to characterize the ethos of late antiquity (100–500 CE) as one that despised matter and the body. It operates within the assumption that there are four criteria which establish this characterization, namely an emphasis on the evil of life, a distrust of the sociopolitical world, asceticism, and an interest in the supernatural. These four criteria are evident in the Platonists, Christians, and Gnostics of the period. As Chapter Two reveals the dissertation understands the concept of ethos in the context of R. C. Trench's discussion of aion: "all the thoughts, opinions, maxims, speculations, impulses, and aspirations present in the world at any given time." In Chapter Three Plato and the Middle Platonists are viewed as bequeathing to late antiquity its world–denying philosophy which the Gnostics preached more incessantly than the Platonists and the Christians practiced more conscientiously than the Gnostics. The Neoplatonists were the Platonists of late antiquity. In the writings of such figures as Plotinus and Porphyry the hatred of matter and the body is boldly expressed, and it is only slightly less apparent in later philosophers like Iamblichus and Proclus. In Plotinus we discern a profound distrust of the sociopolitical world and in Proclus a thoroughgoing asceticism paired with an interest in the supernatural. In Chapter Four it is shown that Gnosticism was more unyielding than either Platonism or Christianity in its insistence that matter and the body were evil, and it followed the late antique distrust of the social world both in its elitism and in its view of martyrdom as an act of casting pearls before swine. Gnosticism tended to accept the asceticism of late antiquity though some of its adherents practiced an extreme licentiousness that was the counterpart of asceticism in that it approached the body as worthless. The late antique emphasis on the supernatural is evidenced by such Gnostic figures as Simon Magus, Carpocrates, and Valentinus. Chapter Five demonstrates that the hatred of matter and the body is also expressed by the Christians albeit with less consistency to their worldview. It can be glimpsed in the ante– Nicene, post–Nicene, and desert fathers as well as in the Arians. It is most notable in the attempts of Justin Martyr, Origen, and Arius to place the Son at a lower ontological level than the Father in order to protect God from the evil entity of matter. The late antique distrust of the sociopolitical world is manifested in the Christian view of martyrdom as a way of scorning a corrupt world, a view unlike that of the Gnostics. No one possessed this distrust more strongly than the Donatists with whom the later Augustine had some kinship. Many of the Christians tended to practice asceticism and the miraculous, the form in which the supernatural took in their case. The desert fathers can be said to be the most sincere representatives of late antiquity with their intense practice of both of these expressions of the ethos. / Thesis (M.A. (Church and Dogma history))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.

Christians, Gnostics, and Platonists attempts to characterize the ethos of late antiquity (100–500 CE) as one that despised matter and the body. It operates within the assumption that there are four criteria which establish this characterization, namely an emphasis on the evil of life, a distrust of the sociopolitical world, asceticism, and an interest in the supernatural. These four criteria are evident in the Platonists, Christians, and Gnostics of the period. As Chapter Two reveals the dissertation understands the concept of ethos in the context of R. C. Trench's discussion of aion: "all the thoughts, opinions, maxims, speculations, impulses, and aspirations present in the world at any given time." In Chapter Three Plato and the Middle Platonists are viewed as bequeathing to late antiquity its world–denying philosophy which the Gnostics preached more incessantly than the Platonists and the Christians practiced more conscientiously than the Gnostics. The Neoplatonists were the Platonists of late antiquity. In the writings of such figures as Plotinus and Porphyry the hatred of matter and the body is boldly expressed, and it is only slightly less apparent in later philosophers like Iamblichus and Proclus. In Plotinus we discern a profound distrust of the sociopolitical world and in Proclus a thoroughgoing asceticism paired with an interest in the supernatural. In Chapter Four it is shown that Gnosticism was more unyielding than either Platonism or Christianity in its insistence that matter and the body were evil, and it followed the late antique distrust of the social world both in its elitism and in its view of martyrdom as an act of casting pearls before swine. Gnosticism tended to accept the asceticism of late antiquity though some of its adherents practiced an extreme licentiousness that was the counterpart of asceticism in that it approached the body as worthless. The late antique emphasis on the supernatural is evidenced by such Gnostic figures as Simon Magus, Carpocrates, and Valentinus. Chapter Five demonstrates that the hatred of matter and the body is also expressed by the Christians albeit with less consistency to their worldview. It can be glimpsed in the ante– Nicene, post–Nicene, and desert fathers as well as in the Arians. It is most notable in the attempts of Justin Martyr, Origen, and Arius to place the Son at a lower ontological level than the Father in order to protect God from the evil entity of matter. The late antique distrust of the sociopolitical world is manifested in the Christian view of martyrdom as a way of scorning a corrupt world, a view unlike that of the Gnostics. No one possessed this distrust more strongly than the Donatists with whom the later Augustine had some kinship. Many of the Christians tended to practice asceticism and the miraculous, the form in which the supernatural took in their case. The desert fathers can be said to be the most sincere representatives of late antiquity with their intense practice of both of these expressions of the ethos. / Thesis (M.A. (Church and Dogma history))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.