The essays in this book reflect on the paradoxical relationship of
liberal education and liberal democracy. Liberal education emphasizes
knowledge for its own sake, detached from all instrumental purposes.
It also aims at liberation from the manifold sources of unfreedom,
including political sources. In this sense, liberal education is
negative, questioning any and all constraints on the activity of mind.
Liberal democracy, devoted to securing individual natural rights,
purports to be the regime of liberty par excellence. Since both
liberal education and liberal democracy aim to set individuals free,
they would seem to be harmonious and mutually reinforcing. But there
are reasons to doubt that liberal education can be the civic education
liberal democracy needs. If liberal education is in tension with all
instrumental purposes, how does it stand toward the goal of preparing
the kind of citizens liberal democracy needs? The book’s
contributors are critical of the way higher education typically
interprets its responsibility for educating citizens, and they link
those failures to academia’s neglect of certain founding principles
of the American political tradition and of the traditional liberal
arts ideal.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781498502474
Publisert
2017
Utgiver
Vendor
Lexington Books
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter