Many authors in the volume examine the paradoxes that surround both Kant's writings on education and contemporary theories of pedagogy. Due to restrictions of space I will not be able to discuss each essay individually. Surprenant, have done an admirable job.īelow I will discuss three of the volume's unifying themes.

Add to this the relative shortness of each essay (ten to fifteen pages), and one is left with an accessible introduction to a fascinating, but often neglected, topic of Kant's ethical theory. Kant's contribution to contemporary theories of education is central, as well as Kant's intellectual debt to Rousseau, the role of education in Kant's normative theories, and the impact of Kant's ideas on subsequent generations. The range of topics covered in the anthology is impressive. Kant and Education brings together sixteen essays by an international group of scholars. Only a few, however, need bother with the 'subtle investigations' of its theory. Philosophy is at the 'narrow gate' that leads, through practitioners of education, to the public at large. Philosophy, he believed, is responsible for guarding this science: the science that should serve educators 'as a guide to prepare well and clearly the path to wisdom which everyone should travel, and to secure others against taking the wrong way' (KpV 5:163). One exception was his view of educational theory. Kant was often ambivalent about the power of philosophy to affect the world.

Immanuel kant ethics