AMBIDEXTROUS SCHOLARSHIP: A REVIEW ESSAY

Abstract

Mackler reviews Heidegger, Education, and Modernity edited by Michael Peters, Aristotle on the Necessity of Public Education by Randall Curren, and Hannah Arendt and Education edited by Mordechai Gordon.

AMBIDEXTROUS SCHOLARSHIP: A REVIEW ESSAY

"[T]heory is ever only an abstraction from life and must always be referred back to it for meaning."

- Martin Heidegger, "Heidegger on the Art of Teaching"1

Being a philosopher of education at a time when theory and practice - the life of the mind and the life of the body, thinking and action, philosophy and education - are divided by grand canyons can be a difficult and confusing task. On the one hand, there is one's commitment to philosophy, which often requires severe estrangement from the physical world in order to contemplate principles, ideas, and logical structures that have no appearance in the everyday world. On the other hand, there is one's commitment to education, which entails engagement with actual people and societies that are growing. Philosophers of education are ambidextrous; we are adept with and committed to both these hands, being concerned equally with the development of ideas and humans and, further, unable to conceive of the growth of one in isolation from the other.

Unfortunately, this is a peculiar stance in a culture that polarizes theory and practice, making us rare and even unwelcome characters in the academy. Philosophers condescend to our concern with the everyday, while educators accuse us of living in an ivory tower. Although it has become trendy recently for academics to proclaim the interconnectedness of theory and practice, the zealousness of this trend suggests that precisely the opposite is the case: if we already had genuine understanding of the connection between theory and practice, then we would not have to force them together through academic slogans and awkward curricular requirements. Perhaps we ambidextrous philosophers of education can lead academia in its search for an organic union of thought and action.

It seems, in fact, that we have already begun to do so. Three recent works in philosophy of education show an exemplary ability to bridge the theory-practice divide in order to show the interrelation of philosophical and educational concerns: Heidegger, Education, and Modernity, edited by Michael Peters; Aristotle on the Necessity of Public Education, by Randall Curren; and Hannah Arendt and Education, edited by Mordechai Gordon. As their titles suggest, each book brings the works of a major philosophical thinker to bear on contemporary topics within education, exploring how education today can be better understood through the philosophical lenses offered by Aristotle, Arendt, and Heidegger. Moreover, these works share a concern with questions pertinent to late modernity; for instance, Peters's volume takes on modern technology, Gordon's looks at contemporary challenges posed by pluralism, and Curren is concerned with liberal philosophical thought.

By emphasizing the connection between a major philosophical thinker and education, these books suggest that educational questions are to be understood in relation to the wide range of each of these major philosopher's ideas, including their political, social, and ethical philosophy. That is, education is not treated as an isolated field that is connected to philosophy only through a concerted effort; rather, it is understood as a presence within the broad constellation of philosophical questions.

MICHAEL PETERS'S HEIDEGGER, EDUCATION. AND MODERNITY

In the introduction to this edited volume, Peters states the book's purpose as follows: "This collection of essays has the modest aim of introducing Heidegger's work to educationalists, highlighting the educational content of his thinking, and signaling aspects of his work that impinge on an analysis of 'modern education.' "2 The essays, written by philosophers of education around the world, live up to this aim, offering clear, skillful and insightful textual exegesis of Heidegger's philosophy and explaining its significance for education. Although each author's contribution is unique, several overarching themes emerge so that each piece sheds light on the others, enlarging the reader's view of the questions at hand. Together, the authors put forth a rigorous analysis of Heidegger's philosophy, showing how his work naturally connects with educational questions.

Heidegger's concept of the relations among thinking, acting, and education naturally lend themselves to scholarship that brings together theory and practice. Michael Bonnctt observes, for instance.

As a kind of homccoming amid humankind's thrownness in a world, thinking, as Heidegger elucidates it, lies among the first of humankind's responsibilities. Embracing this responsibility moreover is not a matter of a "theoretical representation uf Being and of man," nor a theoretical undertaking of any kind. It is an accomplishment, a "leading forth into fullness," that is properly called action As action, this thinking is neither theoretical nor practical. It occurs before this distinction can be made. It is an attempted bringing to-langujge of "the unspoken word of Being." There is in such action, then, from the start something reverential, or even sacred. Insofar as it engages in confrontation, this is not in order to make confrontation itself a virtue Rather, it is with a view to a safeguarding, a sheltering, of the kind of engagement that can properly, or worthily, be called educational.'

As Heidegger himself framed this point, "In my time, I came to realize that the first, faltering step forward must be to release the stranglehold that reason in the form of theory has exercised over higher education since the founding of the Academy by Plato."4 As the book's contributors explore Heidegger's ideas, they also follow the path that Heidegger laid out, loosening the "stranglehold" of reason and searching to understand the innate connection between philosophy and education. In this way, they exceed the "modest aim" identified by Peters.

Of interest to several contributors is Heidegger's critique of modern rationality and the ways of relating to Truth and Being that emerged in modernity. For instance, both Pádraig Hogan and David Cooper consider Heidegger's critique of the modern rendering of truth as correspondence to objective reality. They follow Heidegger in suggesting that an education dominated by this scientific notion of truth is deeply troubling, as it loses sight of mystery. Cooper described the problem as follows:

Modern "distress" [lack of meaning] fuels a mania for utility and expensive diversions that only technology and its bedmate, natural science, can quell. The consequent dominance of science, made central to modern systems of education, serves to drive out other forms of inquiry from educational institutions.5

Closely related to the question of Truth in Heidegger's work is the question of Being. According to Heidegger, under the condition of modernity, all human life - and several of the authors in Peters's volume argue that education is no exception - is subject to utilitarian thinking in which everything is seen as existing for another purpose (a state of being Heidegger called "standing reserve"). As Patrick Fitzsimons admonishes, "the real problem, according to Heidegger, is that we are destined to understand things - including education (and ourselves) primarily as exploitable objects. Contrary to liberal humanist Enlightenment traditions, we cannot liberate ourselves from this Will to Power."6 lain Thomson likewise explains:

Unfortunately, as this historical transformation of subjects into resources becomes more pervasive, it further eludes our critical gaze; indeed, we come to treat ourselves in the very terms which underlie our technological refashioning of the world: no longer as conscious Cartesian subjects taking control of an objective world, but rather as one more resource to be optimized, ordered, and enhanced with maximal efficiency - whether cosmetically, psychopharmacologically, or educationally.7

Several authors also take up the question of technology, which Heidegger claimed is emblematic of the way we relate to Being. As Bert Lambeir asserts, "Heidegger's profound analysis concerning the relationship between technology and Being illuminates the way in which the ongoing technological evolution strikes us at our innermost life."8 While several authors discuss in general terms connections between Heidegger's writings about technology and education, some contributors use Heidegger's analysis to raise specific questions about the use of technology in education.

Although all of Heidegger's work can be shown to pertain to education, Heidegger also explicitly criticized university education. The first chapter in Heidegger, Education, and Modernity, "Heidegger on the Art of Teaching," is an edited and excerpted translation by Valeric Alien and Ares D. Axiotis of the original transcript of Heidegger's testimony before the Committee on De-Nazification in July 1945.9 Unfortunately, Alien and Axiotis do not address the dubiousness of lauding the pedagogical content of something written specifically as a defense of Nazism. In his introduction to the volume, however. Peters does discuss Heidegger and Nazism, explaining that he follows Hans Sluga in trying to find a balanced approach to Heidegger's philosophy and politics - neither dismissing his philosophical work outright on account of his affiliation with the Nazi party nor ignoring this affiliation and its ideological implications.10 If one follows Sluga and Peters in adopting this more ambiguous, and consequently more difficult, approach to Heidegger's work, then the "apology" offered by Alien and Axiotis is worth reading.

Heidegger articulated a scathing and pointed critique of university education in his testimony, asserting, for instance, that

In a system of higher education in the thrall of theory, we find pedagogy confined within the coordinates set by certain fundamental distinctions, among them the distinction between teacher and student, head and hand, knowledge and opinion, disinterest and interest, earnest and game [Ernst und Spiel], and the liberal and the vocational. Through these and other derivative distinctions, the set of priorities definitive of the life of the mind are affirmed, while the values associated with more concrete and integral modes of human expression are denied.11

Thus, Heidegger criticized not only the effects of the university's emphasis on theory detached from actual life, but also the way a concept of thinking as purely detached from the world grossly ignores other elements of human life:

The university has always focused on the theoretical over the practical, implying that the detached, contemplative point of view is prior to and independent of the background practices of involvement and concern with people and things. Human actions - excluding our involuntary actions - such as blinking and the beating of the heart - cannot count as the stuff of practical vinue unless at every step they apply and are informed by consciousness and intention.12

Including this text in his collection was an excellent, though potentially risky, decision by Peters. Heidegger's powerful remarks about the corroded relation between philosophy and education are compelling and provocative on their own, and they shed light on the other essays in the volume. Moreover, the experience of considering whether it is possible to reconcile (and, if so, how) such moving philosophy with such jarring politics, though challenging, is important for anyone trying to understand the relation between theory and practice, regardless of how he or she ultimately passes judgment on the worthiness of Heidegger's philosophy of education.

Heidegger's critique of modernity contains within it a positive assertion about how things should be otherwise. As Thomson asserts, Heidegger's critique is "invariably in the service of the positive moment, in which something long concealed is recovered."13 Taking up this point, several authors in Peters's volume explore a Heideggerian ideal of education, drawing largely on Heidegger's "Plato's Teachings on Truth." Three predominant themes emerge.

First, Heidegger's reconsideration of Plato's cave parable offers a fundamentally hermeneutic vision of education, according to Thomson:

Drawing on the allegory of the cave - which "illustrates the essence of 'education' [paidcia]" (as Plato claims at the beginning of Book VlI of the Republic) - Heidegger seeks to effect nothing less than a re-ontologizing revolution in our understanding of education....The goal of this educational odyssey is simple but literally revolutionary: to bring us full circle back to ourselves, first by turning us away from the world in which we are most immediately immersed, then by turning us back to this world in a more reflective way.14

Although much of educational practice and philosophy pivots around epistemological questions, if we want to engage Heidegger and the analyses of him in Peters's book seriously, then we must consider hermeneutic dimensions of education.

second, as Thomson, Hogan, Bonnett, Paul Standish, and Paul Smeyers point out, Heidegger suggested that we must all become teachers, as represented by the inevitable moment of return to the cave. Such teaching involves a kind of receptiveness and responsiveness to students. For instance, Standish writes,

What is new in Heidegger's reading of the allegory of the cave is its emphasis on the return of the one who has ascended toward the light. Is it possible to read this pattern as something other than the return of the bearer of tidings with the message of destiny? The teacher cannot come back to the darkness simply pre-armed with truth, for its bright light will blind him to the "overwhelming power of the kind of truth that is normative" there, the common "reality" of the cave. The teacher would be lost in the face of the illusions that make up the students' world. Can the pattern be read then as the repeated return that the teacher must make finding new words, finding as founding, to return only to start again? The receptivity and responsibility that this implies might retrieve, or wrest, from Heidegger a fitting response for our condition, a poetics for education otherwise.15

In other words, Heidegger offers a rereading of the cave allegory that understands it in hermeneutic rather than epistemological terms.

Third, and on a related note, Heidegger's recovery of the ancient Greek notion of poiesis stands as an alternative to the type of truth emblematic of the modern world and suggests a way of conceiving of education in poetic terms. According to Standish,

Heidegger's work is to be celebrated in education for its power to reveal the totalizing effects of technology on our practice....But the valuable negative critique that this supplies needs to be seen in relation to the immense richness of Heidegger's affirmation of value, realized in the account of the poetic. The restoring of ihc sense of truth as lied to the intrinsic worth, the reality, of the objects of knowledge, as opposed to the understanding of truth as a property of propositions, should be at the bean of overcoming nihilism."

Bonnet similarly explains,

So, how does a concern for the poetic translate into education and, in particular, learning and the teacher-pupil relationship' Basically it seems to me that it invites us to view education, in its essence, as an ever-evolving triadic interplay between teacher, learning, and that which calls to be learned. It thus locates the teacher-pupil relationship at the very heart of education - indeed, as maintaining the space in which education succeeds or fails. Furthermore, it implies a relationship thai is radically non-instrumental in the sense that it evolves according to its own norms and is destroyed if made subservient to any set of external norms that attempt to pmpecify what it is to achieve and how it is to proceed.17

Thus, many contributors to this book follow Heidegger in describing the poetic as a counterforce to the instrumental rationality of modernity. As Fitzsimons concludes, "Only the sense of the world as awesome as in a poetic understanding makes that world sacred, never able to be mastered, and therefore an object of reverence."18

Finally, as they draw upon Heidegger to reflect on educational questions, the authors in Peters's volume envision and demonstrate a new way to undertake philosophy of education in which philosophy and education are innately intertwined. Thomson maintains that

Our very "bcmg-in-the-world" is shaped by the knowledge we pursue, uncover, and embody. When Heidegger claims that existence is fundamentally shaped by knowledge, he is not thinking of a professoriate shifting in the winds of academic trends, nor simply arguing for a kind of pedagogical or performative consistency, according to which we should practice what we know; his intent, rather, is to emphasize a troubling sense in which it seems that we cannot help practicing what we know, since we are "always-already" implicitly shaped by our guiding metaphysical presuppositions. Heidegger's question thus becomes: What is the ontological impact of our unquestioned reliance on the particular metaphysical presuppositions which tacitly dominate the Academy'"

Here Thomson seems to be challenging us to follow Heidegger in understanding the connection between our understanding of the world and the way we live in it.

As the authors explore Heidegger's insistence that our theories about the world inevitably already shape our acting in the world, they begin to close the gap between theory and practice and help us to reconceptualize the relation between philosophy and education. This clement of Peters's book presents what is, in Heidegger's words, "unthought" in the authors' thinking. It is particularly noteworthy as a perspective on the changing field of philosophy of education.

In particular, we see how a rigorous exploration of such traditional philosophical concepts as the nature of truth, knowledge, and being is not a purely academic exercise. It is, in fact, already tied to the way we live in the world and, as the authors show here, the way we educate. For instance, as Thomson explains, "Our understanding of education is 'made possible' by the history of being, then, since when our understanding of what beings aie changes historically, our understanding of what education is transforms as well."20 In other words, turning to philosophy is not turning away from education; rather, education is enmeshed in the theoretical understanding of what is, and thus we cannot educate well unless we are aware of the ontological assumptions that guide our era. Standish explains the point this way:

My own inclination is to see the best implications of that thought, not only in its exposure (negatively) of technology, as indicated above, but in its revealing (positively) of the following truth: that the kind of language we use is critical for the kind of education we have. Why do we lack a sensible and rich language to talk about education? Why don't educated people ask this question more? However much Heidegger's account of the poetic may ultimately be compromised, it has the potential to reveal the nature of the contemporary frustration of education and the possibility of a way beyond this.21

The contributors to Peters's volume write with an appreciation of the importance of finding a rich language to use in talking about education. Their analyses rest on the assumption that our understanding of philosophical concepts will inevitably mold our educational practices and that, therefore, exploring the wide universe of thought of a philosopher such as Heidegger will affect our practice as educators. Thus, they do not restrict themselves to what Heidegger wrote explicitly about education, nor do they offer "applications" of his "philosophy" to "practice." Rather, immersed in the Heideggerian language in which thought and action are inseparable, they engage in a kind of thinking that is already action, trusting that deep immersion into philosophical concepts will inevitably connect with and transform the way we live and educate in the world.

RANDALL CURREN'S ARISTOTLE ON THE NECESSITY OF PUBLIC EDUCATION12

With his emphasis on the interrelation of contemplation and practical action (specifically, phionesis), Aristotle, like Heidegger, is a suitable figure for work that brings practical and theoretical inquiry closer together and subtly undermines the idea that educational philosophy exists apart from other philosophical questions. However, although Aristotle occupies a substantial place in philosophy proper, his place in educational theory is more ambiguous. Unlike Plato, he did not produce a work concerned explicitly with education, leaving philosophers of education either to explore how an Aristotelian concept pertains to an educational topic (consider, for example, Aristotle's writings on moral education in the Nichomachean Ethics] or to derive a philosophical view of education from the references to education scattered throughout his work. While each of these approaches has merits, neither directly takes on the whole of Aristotle's thought, leaving us at risk of grasping at parts but missing the whole.

Randall Currcn's Aristotle on the Necessity of Public Education offers an alternative approach to drawing upon Aristotle, one that could significantly enrich the depth and breadth of studies focused on Aristotle's educational philosophy. Aristotle's explicit writing about education is relatively sparse, but the content is rich, Curren suggests, if understood as part of a much larger, complex philosophical analysis. The purpose of the book is to explore how Aristotle can contribute to contemporary debates about public schooling. In order to make his argument, however, Curren undertakes a thorough investigation of the whole of Aristotle's thought, exploring the interrelations of education, politics, law, justice, virtue, and friendship. In this undertaking, Curren turns mainly to Aristotle's Politics:

The style and structure of the Politics, its limited, scattered, and apparently "early" account of education, and its distinctness from the ethical works have thus all contributed to the impression that Aristotle has little of importance to say about education, and docs not accord education the central place in politics that Plato docs. The quantity of scholarly attention devoted to the educational aspects of Aristotle's political thought has been commensurate with this impression, and this is unfortunate, for...a good case can be made for the view that Aristotle's educational thought is not only central to his political theory, but also deeply insightful and challenging. Because it is central to his political thought, a good understanding of it is also essential to a full understanding of his accounts of such related topics as friendship, virtue, responsibility, and law. (APE, 4)

As he makes sense of the complex interconnections among Aristotle's arguments, Curren provides a model of how to draw upon the "great philosophers" even when they have not written explicitly about education; he thus expands the range of possibilities for using Aristotle to think about education.

Curren sets the scene for his explanation of Aristotle with an analysis of the Creek concept of paideia. Spartan and Athenian education, and Platonic/Socratic thought. Of significance for Curren's argument is the transition from the Spartan view of education as predominantly military training, to Socrates' idea that the polis should promote what Curren calls "fidelity to reason," to Plato's suggestions that such reasoning should be formally taught by the republic. According to Curren, Aristotle further developed Plato's suggestion and offered the first well-developed argument in favor of public education.

The majority of the book consists of a precise and thorough examination of Aristotle's Politics, with particular attention to what it says about Aristotle's views of education. Specifically, Curren considers (a) why, on Aristotle's view, education merits the attention of the state; (b) why, according to Aristotle, education should be publicly regulated and the same for all; (c) how education is related to justice, and (d) how all of Aristotle's work bears on contemporary questions in education.

Curren identifies within Aristotle's work two overarching arguments about the importance of education from the perspective of the state: the "argument from constitutional requirements," which pertains to the importance of educating citizens to support the constitution of the state, and the "argument from the origins of virtue," which refers to the need to educate citizens in the virtues. Through an analysis of these overlapping arguments, Curren interweaves moral, political, and educational theory, showing how the pursuit of the good life is integrated with political, legal, and educational issues:

Living under good law [eunomos) is a condition for human flourishing or happiness....The order arising from good law [eunomia] is consequently a good or excellence of a state without which a state cannot perform its natural function of promoting human flourishing, but it is also a good that can only come about through education. So if one cares about what is good for human beings or cares about good order as an aspect of constitutional quality on which that good depends, then this argument provides one with reason to also care about education and regard it as important. [APE, 114)

Having asserted the importance of education to the state, Curren goes on to explore in more detail the reasons education should not only be important to the state, but should be regulated by it and available to all its citizens. He calls these reasons the "argument for a common end" and the "argument from inseparability." The former states that, since the city has a common end, there should be education in things of "common interest." Thus, Curren asks, "How will education establish that bond a feeling of friendship among citizens] and why need education be public in order to establish a common end?" (APE, 129). The latter argument claims that the citizens of a city are interdependent and that the well-being of one is inseparable from that of others. In examining these arguments, Curren carefully lays out Aristotle's philosophy of friendship and his discussion of the intellectual and moral virtues that cultivate it, looking specifically at the way education fosters social bonds necessary for living together. Curren surmises,

What the statesman must do...is promote the possession and exercise of the moral and intellectual virtues and use common schooling and other measures to bring citizens together in settings which nurture friendly contact, common desires and character traits, and the formation of networks of substantial friendships spanning the city's disparate social and economic sectors. (APE, 131)

In the book's penultimate chapter, Curren considers the relation between education and corrective justice. He concludes that we can learn from Aristotle that corrective justice necessarily relies on education. Citizens must have the ability to give rational consent to and comply with the law in order to validate the state's jurisdiction to punish the failure to obey the law. Education endows citizens with these abilities, and without it, there could be no grounds for corrective justice.

Curren's passion for public education is equal to his enthrallment with Aristotle. Throughout the book, but especially in the closing chapter, Curren takes on contemporary discourse about public education, offering a defense based on an Aristotelian conception of public schooling. Specifically, he considers how Aristotle's philosophy bears on questions of educational quality, content, and choice. As it draws upon Aristotle in reference to these topics, Curren's work challenges the sovereignty that modern liberal philosophy has had over the discourse on public education:

What we find in [Aristotle's] thought is a concern with the relationships between education, law, and the virtues, the virtue of justice being regarded as both a trait of individuals and a natural measure of the legitimacy of institutions. From these relationships flow several arguments for public education, advanced in the cause of individual virtue, happiness, freedom, and rationality; political excellence and stability; and the promotion of friendship and social solidarity. The most generally compelling of these arguments rests in the idea that without the right kind of public education, the kind of consent and obedience to law that is essential to the legitimacy of the most necessary forms of state power is not possible. This is an argument diametrically at odds with the classical liberal position that consent to a government and its laws that is grounded in publicly controlled education would be suspect, inasmuch as government schools might be inclined to indoctrinate, inhibit individuality and personal freedom, and cultivate blind obedience to bad laws and bad leadership. (APE, 5)

Curren offers a defense of public education that is different from the one offered by traditional liberal philosophy. Aristotle merits our attention because he offers a new way to consider education that gets us out of our modern liberal assumptions:

The contrast between the modern and ancient versions of the problem of the relationship of morality and law is rooted in different experiences of conflict, but also in rather different accounts of how human beings become rational and good... The problems of the Creeks were different, and no less relevant (than those of the moderns) to our own.. .The postwar economic boom in the United States encouraged the notion, not unlike that of the Athenians, that "expanding the economic pic" could buy domestic tranquility without common schooling, and in the face of deep racial and socioeconomic inequality. But if we are now, in the face of growing disparity between the rich and the poor, descending into a "new civil war," then we could do worse than to take Anstotlc seriously. (APE, 221)

Moreover, Curren asserts that Aristotle's thought exerted an oft-forgotten influence on the founding of the American public school system:

|I|t was largely on the strength of arguments derived directly from classical political theory, and others that were broadly classical and Aristotelian whatever their exact etiology, that the American public school movement was built. Since Aristotle's thought embodied what is arguably the most attractive formulation of the ancient tradition of political and educational theory, a reappraisal of his arguments is a useful approximate to a systematic assessment of the arguments on which our system of free public schools was founded. This would be a useful exercise in any era, if only to remind ourselves of how we have come to the position in which we find ourselves. Today, when the American public school movement has all but collapsed, having been declared dead as early as three decades ago, it has particular importance (APE, 7-8)

Thus, Curren's study represents a return to the ancient roots of the American educational system.

As he delves meticulously into Aristotle's work, Curren broadens the way we can think about public education and therefore opens new possibilities for resolving dilemmas within it. With a love of Aristotle as strong as his concern for public schooling, Curren demonstrates how philosophical inquiry into Aristotle's thought is not a "mere historical curiosity" but, rather, an essential part of solving the practical dilemmas that face us today.

MORDECHAI GORDON'S HANNAH ARENDT AND EDUCATION23

Hannah Arendt, like Heidegger and Aristotle, is not immediately identifiable as having much to say regarding questions of education. However, as Mordechai Gordon points out in his introduction to Hannah Arendt and Education: Renewing Our Common World, that does not make her work irrelevant to education: "Interestingly, although Arendt was not an educator and wrote very little on educational issues, her writings address a wide array of political concepts - such as natality, action, freedom, equality, public space, and plurality - that are particularly relevant for democratic societies."24 Like John Dewey, Arendt did not conceive of politics as being limited to a political system represented by institutions and voting behaviors. She drew upon the Ancient Greek concept of the polis to argue that whenever one speaks or acts among others, one engages in political activity.

The authors in Gordon's edited volume consider the implications of Arendt's work for education, specifically aiming to expand "the perspective from which to interrogate the relationships between politics and education."25 In particular, though the authors come from a wide range of backgrounds (including educational philosophy, psychoanalysis, women's studies, political science, educational policy, American studies, and philosophy), they share a concern with the challenges posed by educating in a contemporary democracy, including questions related to democratic education, multiculturalism, cooperative learning, and higher education. Moreover, like the two books discussed previously, this work is premised on the idea that educational philosophy cannot be understood without also considering other philosophical concerns. As Gordon observes, "Today, when the interrelations of politics and education are becoming increasingly manifest, we can no longer afford to ignore the educational lessons that can be gleaned from one of the twentieth century's leading political theorists....[Arendt] brings a fresh perspective from which contemporary scholars and educators can analyze various political and educational issues, as well as the interconnections of these two fields."26 As they draw upon Arendt, the authors in Gordon's volume highlight the overlapping concerns of educational and other types of philosophy, thereby broadening our understanding of what counts as philosophy of education.

In particular, the book attempts to rectify the polarized approach to the question of democracy and education that dominates the field today. Gordon notes in his introduction that thinkers typically fall into one of two camps: those on the left adopt a critical approach to show how educational institutions take part in social injustices, while those on the right argue that there is and should be nothing political about education. Finding Dewey's philosophy and the current alternative notions of politics and education insufficient, the authors look to "renew" our conceptions of democracy and education. Thus, like Curren and the contributors to the Peters's book, the contributors to Gordon's volume offer alternatives to modern liberal philosophy. In particular, they take on several themes of modernity: the loss of the idea of authority, Utopian political ideology, and the challenges of multiculturalism.

The question of how to educate in a democratic society pulses throughout the book. Aaron Schutz's "Contesting Utopianism: Hannah Arendt and the Tensions of Democratic Education" takes on this question most directly. He offers Arendt's ideas as a remedy to what he calls the '"Utopian impulse' among current educational scholars."17 A return to a Deweyan model of democratic education is no longer possible. Dcwey and those he inspired, Schutz claims, were too Utopian; they failed to take account of the inevitable messiness of pluralistic communities. Schutz argues that too many educational theorists have naively developed Dewey's ideas, imagining "a vision, despite its abstraction, of a kind of shining city on a hill, if you will, that is always to be sought, even if it can never be quite achieved." However, Schutz shows how Arendt's notion of political action "is useful for education in part because it takes the inevitability of (human) limitations and tradeoffs seriously."" He aims to offer a more realistic model of public space that takes seriously both the need for collectivity and cooperation and the inevitability and, in Arendt's view, the value - of difference and unpredictability.

Several essays in Hannah Arendt and Education deal with Arendt's concern over the demise of authority and tradition in the modern world. Her view of education is simultaneously both conservative and radical: Education, she claimed, is the means by which we introduce students to the already existing world. She also believed, however, that educators should teach students about the existing world so that they can take part in its renewal. Thus, Arendt resisted the paradigmatically modern Utopian impulse to create a new world from scratch without giving up the possibility of radical change. Instead, she argued that we must revitalize and change what is. This view is provocative for several of the authors in this collection.

For instance, in "Hannah Arendt and Authority: Conservativism in Education Reconsidered," Cordon considers whether it is possible to hold on to the values of radical social change without rejecting the authoritative role of the teacher and of cultural tradition altogether:

The import of Arendt's approach is...[partly] in her ability to help us understand...thai children will not be able to be revolutionary and creative unless educators first introduce them to the values and ideas of the past. Recognizing that these two responsibilities are mutually dependent is significant because it enables us to break the impasse between the mainstream conservatives' emphasis on preserving tradition and the progressives' focus on critical citizenry and social justice."

The fact that Arendt shares many views with conservatives allows Gordon to draw the conservative viewpoint into the discussion of pluralistic education and to seek a balance within the tension between tradition and revolution.

Natasha Lcvinson's "The Paradox of Natality: Teaching in the Midst of Belatedness" considers the challenge of educating for social justice through an Arendtian lens. On the one hand, Arendt's philosophy shows us that students are "belated." They are newcomers to a world that existed before them, and this means they are saddled with responsibilities, guilt, identities, and relationships that they never jasked for but that nevertheless condition their lives. Ignoring this fact can lead to naïve action in the world, but dwelling on it can render one hopeless. Preparing students to change the world requires teaching them about it so that they can accept the fact that they are constituted by what came before them and feel empowered to change the world:

To preserve newness is to teach in such a way that students acquire an understanding of themselves in relation to the world without regarding either the world or their positioning in it as fixed, determined, and unchangeable... .The point of this exposure to the world as it is is not to fix the world, but to motivate our students to imagine new possibilities for the future.'30

Levinson's understanding of the belatedness of students is keen and subtle, giving us refreshingly new language with which to connect social-political action with education.

Other essays take on the question of yet another hallmark of modernity: the Enlightenment call to "think for oneself" in order to rule oneself and participate in a democracy. For instance, in "Education for Judgment: An Arendtian Oxymoron?" Stacy Smith explores Arendt's concept of judgment. Arendt suggested that action is more likely to be informed by judgment if the actor has encountered a broad range of perspectives - something she called "going visiting" with others. She further claimed, however, that judgment cannot be taught. Smith challenges Arendt's claim and explores ways that educating for judgment is possible in an Arendtian framework:

Insofar as judgment allows us to live in and share a common world with others, opportunity to cultivate this faculty seems vital, in Arendtian terms, to "becoming" complete human beings...."[E]ducation for judgment" is a pivotal component of Arendt's self-proclaimed educational project of preparing young people "for the task of renewing a common world.""

Smith offers a complex and compelling proposal for an education in judgment that would teach students to engage with multiple perspectives in order to ready them for the pluralistic public sphere.

Eduardo Duarte's "The Eclipse of Thinking: An Arendtian Critique of Cooperative Learning" also takes up the question of learning to think in a democracy. Duarte argues that recent emphasis on cooperative learning in educational discourse, though seemingly in the service of democratic aims, actually does a disservice to such aims: "I am contending that the need to withdraw, in order to stop and think, is being repressed or ignored by many educational theories and practices, specifically those that are emphasizing the ethico-political potential of schooling."32 Learning to think independently, he points out, is as important to participating in a common world as is working with others. Duarte offers a unique and compelling analysis of Arendt's concept of thinking as a solitary activity. He warns that "cooperative learning models may be creating conditions of 'nonthinking.' "u If thinking is a solitary activity, and if thinking is a goal of democratic education, then, Duarte asserts, we must consider how to balance peer learning with opportunities for students to, in Arendt's words, "stop and think."

Finally, Arendt's stance on diversity, or what she referred to as plurality, is essential to her notion of politics and has obvious connections with multicultural education. Advocates of multiculturalism and identity politics often accuse Arendt of being blind to, and even scornful of, the way cultural, class, gender, and sexual differences shape human lives. And, yet, Arendt cherished plurality, perhaps above all else. In specifically addressing this tension, several contributors show that Arendt's peculiar and seemingly contradictory stance on diversity can help redirect the way we think about multicultural education.

Ann Lane's "Is Hannah Arendt a Multiculturalist?" responds to claims that Arendt's Eurocentric focus and her disparaging attitude toward identity politics make her texts unsuitable for university courses intended to help students explore their ethnic, racial, class, gender, and sexual identities. In contrast, Lane argues that Arendt's philosophy is profoundly relevant to such courses and draws from her own classroom experience to show how."

Kimberley Curtis is equally eager to bring Arendt into the discourse on multiculturalism but at times finds Arendt's "decisive divorce between education and politics unacceptable in its unqualified form."" Whereas advocates of multicultural education almost always argue that education is necessarily political, Arendt segregated the two. Curtis still believes that Arendt can contribute to our understanding of multicultural education. She argues that Arendt's emphasis on a common world - one that derives from the coming together of different perspectives - is at the heart of multicultural education: "Arendt's educational conservativism both illuminates and underscores the significance of multiculturalism's deepest impulse. Advocates of multicultural education are not only partisans of identity groups...they are partisans of the world in an Arcndtian sense."36

Peter Euben considers the implications of Arendt's thought on the culture wars in higher education. Although Arendt viewed primary and secondary education as nonpolitical, Euben says that higher education stands at the "end point of education and the beginning of politics."17 Treating Arendt's depiction of Socrates as emblematic, he argues that all higher education is necessarily political insofar as it challenges ordinary modes of thought. Here we see yet again that theory and practice - the books we read and how they affect our actions - are innately connected. Euben argues that a text is "great," and possibly political as well, if it challenges our perspectives and encourages us to join the company of others:

Such company includes the examples of persons living or dead, real and fictional, who come to mind as we face decisions and choices that constitute who we are and the lives we have chosen but are also chosen for us. The pedagogic questions and general curricular implications are clear. What ways of teaching and reading texts cultivate the political and moral imaginations of our students so that they are able to see the world from other points of view?38

To ask and begin to answer this question, Euben suggests, could help us find constructive ways to move beyond the culture wars.

The final chapter in Gordon's collection, an epistolary exchange between two of Arendt's former students, Jerome Kohn (director of the Hannah Arendt Center and Archive at New School University and a trustee of the Hannah Arendt Bluecher Literary Trust) and Elisabeth Young-Bruehl (Arendt's biographer), provides insights on the interrelation of Arendt's philosophy and her practice as an educator. For instance, they discuss the way that Arendt understood the life of a person as being intertwined with - indeed, an embodiment of - the ideas and principles of a particular historical era. Kohn adds that Arendt herself united her philosophical life with her being among others. He proclaims that Arendt is, "if ever there was one, a teacher who embodied the spirit of Socrates. Like him, she never forgot that she was a human being among a plurality of human beings who share a common world."39 Thus, Kohn characterizes Arendt as one who lived her philosophy among others, uniting the life of her mind with her activities in the world with others.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION

The approach taken in the recent works by Peters, Curren, and Gordon - and their many contributors - can be seen as representative of a shift in the field of philosophy of education. Until recently, philosophers of education generally took one of three main approaches:

1. They dealt with philosophers who wrote explicitly and predominantly about education, such as Dewey, Rousseau, and Plato.

2. They drew upon the educational writings of "great" philosophical thinkers who dabbled in educational thinking and produced works such as Kant's "On Education."

3. They applied philosophical concepts and approaches to educational questions - for instance, applying Aristotle's concept of the virtues or applying the "isms" model (empiricism, pragmatism, and so on) to educational questions.

What, then, is the significance and distinction of this recent fourth trend? Why the "and" between each major philosopher's name and the word "education"? The significance, I want to suggest, lies in the premise behind these approaches.

To begin with, each of the three traditional approaches shares a common premise: that education and philosophy are separate fields that would have little or nothing to do with each other without our explicitly connecting them. In each case, the philosopher of education is seen as one who applies philosophical concepts or methodology to educational questions (as in approach 3), or who studies others who have already done so (as in approaches 1 and 2).

The clearest distinctions exist between the recently developed approach and the first and second ones just outlined. A philosopher who writes explicitly about education is seen as a philosopher of education, or, as in the second approach, as having a philosophy of education. In these cases, what a philosopher writes is seen as relevant to education because it explicitly addresses educational matters. Of course, philosophers like Dewcy and Rousseau saw education as innately connected to a wide array of philosophical questions,- likewise, those who read Dewey or Rousseau often look to understand their educational thought within the context of their political thought. However, the reasoning behind our turning to these thinkers as philosophers of education is that they write specifically about education; we clearly see the connection between the two hands in their work because they told us to look for it. By contrast, this fourth approach takes any philosopher and any philosophical piece as a valid candidate for study.

To a certain extent, this aspect of the fourth approach resembles the third. Both analyze philosophical ideas rigorously and consider any philosopher to be potentially relevant for education. However, in the third approach, philosophy is treated first as a separate endeavor and then it is applied to educational questions, whereas in the fourth approach the connection between philosophy and education seems more subtle and organic.

Unlike any of the other approaches, the fourth approach operates from the assumption that educational concerns are always already wrapped up in philosophical ones, and so there is no need to build a bridge connecting the two. The philosopher of education must, as in the third approach, show the connections between philosophy and education, but when one works from the fourth approach, those connections are not made in as straightforward a manner and thus they tend to yield richer and less formulaic analyses. That is to say that the authors described here do not look for explicit application of philosophical ideas to education, nor do they appeal solely to the educational writing of the authors. Instead, their work seems to be an answer to the question, How can we understand education differently in light of the philosophical ideas of Arendt, Aristotle, and Heidegger?

The chief distinction of the recent approach is that it considers the broad philosophical worldview of an author in order to sec how a complex array of philosophical ideas sheds light on educational matters. Moreover, this approach assumes that education is already embedded within philosophical thought. This is not to say that philosophy and education are posited as identical; rather, the assumption is that when we look at philosophical questions, we are often already also looking at educational questions. The role of the philosopher of education, then, is to elucidate the complex overlap of the educational and other elements of a philosopher's thought.

Scholarly ambidexterity - in this case, a dual commitment to philosophy and education - can take more than one form. Certainly, philosophers of education must turn to and gain inspiration from those philosophers who write specifically about education, be it their central focus (as with Dewey) or an occasional piece (as with Kant). Likewise, it makes good sense to apply philosophical approaches to educational questions because an idea worked out in philosophical abstraction can add important perspective to real-world problems. As the books under review here suggest, however, this new approach potentially contributes to a richer understanding of the connection between philosophy and education - and, more generally, between theory and practice - because it begins from an assumption that they are already involved with each other.

CONCLUSION

It is, of course, difficult to characterize the analyses in three books, with more than twenty authors, under one thematic umbrella. Each of these books, and each of the essays within them, offers a distinct contribution to educational scholarship. seen together, however, the books are representative of a turn in the path of philosophy of education.

In offering philosophical reflections that are tied to the lived life - in particular, to education as an integral part of the lived life - these contemporary philosophers of education introduce us to exceptional philosophical thinkers who have heretofore not received sufficient attention from philosophers of education. Curren, Peters, and Gordon exemplify an approach to educational theory that weaves rigorous philosophy into an equally rigorous concern for educational questions. The result is an enriched understanding of the body of thought that connects our two scholarly hands and a deeper sense of how we may become skillfully ambidextrous ourselves.

Because this philosophical adroitness represents a turn down a new path, and because we are only at its origin, we cannot know now where it will lead. Inevitably, my suggestions here about the significance and qualitative distinction of these works can only be conjecture. Nonetheless, although we cannot yet understand precisely how philosophy of education is changing, these recent works gesture toward a reuniting of philosophy and education, and, in so doing, they bring us closer to an understanding of what such a union means. In time, we might find ourselves understanding and practicing philosophy and education in new ways. We might find ourselves referring our theoretical abstractions from life back to life itself, giving them meaning. We might find that, without even thinking about it, the left hand knows what the right hand is doing.

MANY THANKS TO Natasha Levinson for her encouragement on an early draft of this essay, and to Laura DeSisto, Suzanne Rosenblith, Shanthi Divakaran, Nicholas Burbules, and the anonymous Educational Theory reviewers for their helpful guidance in Grafting the final piece.

Footnote

1. Martin Heidegger, "Heidegger on the Art of Teaching," eds. and trans. Valerie Alien and Ares D. Axiotis, in Heidegger, Education, and Modernity, ed. Michael A. Peters (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), 35.

2. Michael A. Peters, "Introduction," in Heidegger. Education, and Modernity, ed. Peters, 3.

3. Michael Bonnett, "Education as a Form of the Poetic: A Hcideggenan Approach to Learning and the Teacher-Pupil Relationship," in Heidegger. Education, and Modernity, ed. Peters, 224.

4. Heidegger, "Heidegger on the Art of Teaching," 31.

5. David E. Cooper, "Truth, Science, Thinking, and Distress," in Heidegger, Education, and Modernity, ed. Peters, 53. see also Pádraig Hogan, "Learning as Leavetaking and Homecoming," in Heidegger, Education, and Modernity, ed. Peters, 211-228.

6. Patrick Fitzsimons, "Enframing Education," in Heidegger, Education, and Modernity, ed. Peters, 184.

7. Iain Thomson, "Heidegger on Ontological Education, or How We Become What We Are," in Heidegger, Education, and Modernity, ed. Peters, 130.

8. Bert Lambeir, "Comfortably Numb in the Digital Era: Man's Being as Standing-Reserve or Dwelling Silently," in Heidegger, Education, and Modernity, ed. Peters, 106.

9. This is the first English translation of Heidegger's deposition to be published.

10. Hans Sluga, Heidegger's Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993).

11. Heidegger, "Heidegger on the An of Teaching," 39-40.

12. Ibid., 41-42.

13. Thomson, "Heidegger on Ontological Education," 123.

14. Ibid., 134-135.

15. Paul Standish, "Essential Heidegger: Poetics of the Unsaid," in Heidegger, Education, and Modernity, ed. Peters, 168.

16. Ibid., 158.

17. Bonnett, "Education as a Form of the Poetic," 238-239.

18. Fitzsimons, "Enframing Education," 187.

19. Thomson, "Heidegger on Ontological Education," 130-131.

20. Ibid., 128.

21. Standish, "Essential Heidegger," 165.

22. Randall R. Curren, Aristotle on the Necessity of Public Education (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000). This work will be cited as APE in the text for all subsequent references.

23. Mordechai Gordon, ed. Hannah Arendt and Education: Renewing Our Common World (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2001).

24. Mordechai Gordon, ed., "Introduction," in Hannah Arendt and Education, ed. Gordon, 4.

25. Ibid., 2.

26. Ibid., 9.

27. Aaron Schutz, "Contesting Utopiamsm: Hannah Arendt and the Tensions of Democratic Education," in Hannah Arendt and Education, ed. Cordon, 94.

28. Ibid., 95, 96.

29. Mordcchai Cordon, "Hannah Arcndt and Authonty: Conscrvativism in Education Reconsidered," in Hannah Arendt and Education, ed. gordon, 63

30. Natasha Levinson, "The Paradox of Natality: Teaching in the Midst of Belatedness," in Hannah Aiendt and Education, ed. Gordon, 19-21.

31. Stacy Smith, "Education for Judgment: An Arendtian Oxymoron?" in Hannah Arendt and Education, ed. Gordon, 68-69.

32. Eduardo Duarte, "The Eclipse of Thinking: An Arendtian Critique of Cooperative Learning," in Hannah Arendt and Education, ed. Gordon, 212.

33. Ibid., 202.

34. Ann Lane, "U Hannah Arendt a Multiculturalist?" in Hannah Aiendt and Education, ed. Gordon, 153-174.

35. Kimberly Curt is, "Multicultural Education and Arendtian Conservativism: On Memory, Histoncal Injury, and our Sense of the Common," in Hannah Arendt and Education, ed. Cordon, 144.

36. Ibid., 130.

37. Peter Euben, "Hannah Arendt on Politicizing the University and Other Cliches," in Hannah Arendt and Education, ed. Cordon, 186.

38. Ibid., 193-194.

39. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl and Jerome Kohn, "What and How We Learned from Hannah Arendt: An Exchange of Letters," in Hannah Arendt and Education, ed. Gordon, 231.