Contents
List of Abbreviations
Preface
Introduction
Part I
Chapter 1. Overload
Chapter 2. Individuality
Chapter 3. Fulfillment
Chapter 4. Citizens
Chapter 5. Moral Development
Chapter 6. A Role for Religion?
Part II
Chapter 7. The Natural Sciences
Chapter 8. The Arts
Chapter 9. Understanding Ourselves
Part III
Chapter 10. Social Change
Chapter 11. Utopia?
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Philip Kitcher was born in 1947 in London (U.K.). He received his
B.A. from Cambridge University and his Ph.D. from Princeton. He has
taught at several American Universities, and is currently John
Dewey Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Columbia. He is the
author of books on topics ranging from the philosophy of
mathematics, the philosophy of biology, the growth of science, the
role of science in society, naturalistic ethics, pragmatism,
Wagner's Ring, Joyce's Finnegans Wake, and Mann's Death in Venice.
In 2019, he was awarded the Rescher Medal for contributions to
systematic philosophy.
A towering achievement, worthy of a place beside the classic works
of John Dewey, J. S. Mill, and Rabindranath Tagore. Kitcher's
radical and compelling idea is that contemporary societies have
been designing education to suit jobs that currently exist, when
instead we should be imagining an education system that serves the
needs of personal fulfillment and interactive democratic
citizenship, and designing other social institutions to support
those goals. This is ideal theory in the very best sense: a
clear-eyed road map of a difficult destination, together with
practical proposals for reaching it, articulated with both clarity
and an inclusive love of human beings.
*Martha C. Nussbaum, University of Chicago*
Philosophy of education, so vital and so neglected, receives a shot
in the arm from Philip Kitcher's foundational, radical, and
absolutely essential The Main Enterprise of the World. It also
invigorates political theory, ethics, and wide range of other
questions, as education—the building of a person—takes its place at
the centre of human life.
*Cheryl Misak, University of Toronto*
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.
*Harvey Siegel, University of Miami*
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