Research Seminar: Dr Steven Stolz: MacIntyre, rationality, and education: against education of our age

Abstract: This presentation is based on a book titled, Alasdair MacIntyre, Rationality, and Education: Against Education of Our Age that has been published by Springer. Despite MacIntyre being known as an academic who has made many notable contributions to a range of areas in philosophy, his thinking on education is not as well-known and/or properly understood by most audiences and readerships that predominantly reside in educational contexts. With this in mind, this presentation aims to provide a critique of MacIntyre’s thinking about education, and hence commences with a central theme found in MacIntyre’s extensive corpus concerning the fragmentation and disunification of ideas found in our culture and society that stems both from the rejection of metaphysics and what it means to be a human being living within the context of history. According to MacIntyre, part of the problem why this has occurred is due to educational institutions, particularly universities failing to resist the pressure exerted from industry and the state to conform. Unfortunately, this has resulted in a type of intellectual dissensus where the shared conceptions of rational enquiry and the role of reason have been replaced by pluralistic notions of private and personal choices concerning the good and a disillusionment with reason that is ultimately exhibited as apathy and conformism. In order to overcome this apathy and conformism found in our culture and society, MacIntyre’s educational project is concerned with the cultivation of rationality; however, this is not an easy undertaking because it involves students being confronted with alternative – sometimes rather hostile – rival traditions so they both come to see rival points of view and understand that each tradition, including their own, does not come from a neutral or value-neutral standpoint. To MacIntyre, dialectical encounters between traditions is a crucial starting point of a good education, but for intellectual and academic progress to be made, rational enquiry needs to be grounded in a shared understanding of first principles that aims at truth and rational vindication. It is this shift in thinking that is of interest in the latter part of this presentation, particularly MacIntyre’s views around tradition-orientated communities of practice. Here, MacIntyre is concerned with the praxis of his educational project and the crucial role tradition-orientated communities play in the cultivation of independent reasoners who are capable of seeing the interconnectedness between different forms of knowledge that can lead us to an informed discovery of both the truth, and of the good, but most importantly exhibit virtuous dispositions which are vital to good practical reasoning.

Biography: Steven Stolz, PhD, is an academic from the University of Adelaide, Australia. Due to his background in philosophy and education has led to a diverse array of research interests, which range from: epistemology, phenomenology, embodied cognition, ethics or applied ethics, narrative inquiry, psychology, virtue, and character development, particularly the Bildung tradition. His primary area of scholarship is concerned with the relationship between theory and practice, particularly how theory informs practice, and/or how practice informs theory. He is passionate about philosophy and education, and this explains why he is interested in the area of educational philosophy and theory.

Recent publications of note include: The Body, Embodiment, and Education: An Interdisciplinary Approach (Routledge - September 2021), Measuring Up in Education: Philosophical Explorations for Justice and Democracy Within and Beyond Cultures of Measurement in Educational Systems (with S. Webster & published by Routledge), MacIntyre, Rationality and Education: Against Education of Our Age (Springer), and Theory and Philosophy in Education Research: Methodological Dialogues (with J. Quay, J. Bleazby, M. Toscano, & S. Webster & published by Routledge).

For further information regarding Dr Stolz and his contact details: Click here

Dr Stolz publication referred to in this seminar: Alasdair MacIntyre, Rationality and Education,Against Education of Our Age:, click this link: https://bit.ly/AlasdairMacIntyreRationalityandEducationAgainstEducationofOurAge 

Dr Stolz latest publication:The Body, Embodiment, and Education:An Interdisciplinary Approach, click this link:  https://bit.ly/TheBodyEmbodimentandEducation