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Love in education : a philosophical examination with special reference to the phenomenology of Max Scheler

My two main purposes in this thesis are to clarify the essential meanings of love and to understand how central it is in educational activities aimed at the cultivation of the person. This thesis consists of three main parts and has nine chapters. Attention in Part I is focused on the exposition of Plato's eros, Aristotle's philia, Christian agape, Confucian love, Hume's indirect passion of love, Butler's self-love and Kant's practical love. It is shown that the significance of love in human life includes the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, the unfolding of human nature, the establishment of friendship in human relationships, and openness to transcendental objects. In Part II, referring to the phenomenology of Max Scheler, it is pointed out that the person-as-lover is the one with his own unique ordo amoris, the order or ordering of love. Meanwhile, it is in the continuous movement of heart that the individual's ordo amoris determines whether he/she becomes a genuine lover in manifesting pre-reflective life as well as reflective life, forming second-order desires and volition as well as first-order desires, establishing subject-subject relations as well as subject-object relations with others, being an intentional self rather than an ecstatically immersed self, performing social acts as well as singularizing acts, possessing situation-intuiting capacity as well as means-end calculating capacity, all of which are highly relevant to the formation of the ethos in a given historical period. In Part III, the central position of love in education is indicated in terms of the investigation of love and autonomy, the education of the emotions, and the pedagogical relationship and pedagogical love. It is suggested that fundamentally educational activities should be based on pedagogical love; on this basis the pedagogical relationship can prevent authority in education from becoming the pure use of power and make possible the development of ordo amoris in pupils.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:630757
Date January 1997
CreatorsLin, Chien-Fu
PublisherUniversity College London (University of London)
Source SetsEthos UK
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Sourcehttp://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10019763/

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