On the American Founders' Defense of Liberal Education in a Republic
1984; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 46; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1017/s0034670500048762
ISSN1748-6858
Autores Tópico(s)American Constitutional Law and Politics
ResumoAn important strand of the republican tradition warns that liberal education harms republics by promoting aristocracy, breeding an idle and skeptical class of philosophers and undermining the civic virtues on which republics depend. The American Founding generation, in its writings on education, rejected this warning and maintained instead that the open cultivation and wide dissemination of liberal learning is favorable to republican government, if not essential to its very existence. The aristocratic tendencies of liberal education would by mitigated by the diffusion of knowledge. Philosophy would show its usefulness by increasing man's power over nature and multiplying the conveniences of life. The republican virtues would be strengthened by the elucidation of their rational ground.
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