Learning to Flourish: A Philosophical Exploration of Liberal Education

by Daniel R. DeNicola

Learning to Flourish offers a lucid, penetrating, philosophical exploration of liberal learning: a still-evolving tradition of theory and practice that has dominated and sustained intellectual life and learning in much of the globe for two millennia.  
 
Daniel R. DeNicola weighs the views of both advocates and critics of the liberal arts, and interprets liberal education as aimed supremely at understanding and living a good life, as a vital tradition generating five competing but complementary paradigms that transcend theories of curriculum and pedagogy and are manifested in particular social contexts.  He examines the transformative power of liberal education and its relation to such values as freedom, autonomy, and democracy, reflecting on the importance of intrinsic value and moral understanding.  Finally, he considers age-old obstacles and current threats to liberal education, ultimately asserting its value for and urgent need in a global, pluralistic, technologically advanced society. Offering a bold yet nuanced theory of liberal education, this study will be of great interest to educators as well as those specializing in Philosophy of Education.   

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Genres: Education, College

281 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 2, 2012

About the author

Daniel DeNicola is a Professor of Philosophy at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. For ten years (1996-2006), he was Provost of Gettysburg College; he then served a year as Vice President for Program Development, leading both the Eisenhower Institute and the Leonard Bernstein Center for Learning. In earlier years, he had been Provost at Rollins College, where he had also chaired the Department of Philosophy and Religion. He has held visiting appointments at Harvard University and at Lancaster University (UK). He has led a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar on John Stuart Mill.

Professor DeNicola focuses on aspects of epistemology, philosophy of education, theories of the emotions, and theoretical and applied ethics. He teaches upper division courses, such as 'Choice, Chance, Luck, and Fate'; 'Emotion'; 'Philosophy of Place'; 'Ethics & Economic Life'; and 'The Philosophy of Color'. He has twice taught the Senior Seminar in Philosophy on the topic of 'Ignorance'. Previously, he taught First-Year Seminars, such as 'Designer Genes' and the 'Ethics of Human Enhancement' and 'Secrets and Lies'. He served as Director of the Gettysburg London Seminar in 2013. Currently, he serves as Chair of the Department of Philosophy.

Reviews

[Gabriela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Look for my review at http://www.edrev.info/

[Mills College Library]

370.112 D394 2012