Education as Training for Life: Stoic teachers as physicians of the soul

Abstract

This paper is an indirect critique of the practice of American liberal education. I show that the liberal, integrative model that American colleges and universities have adopted, with one key exception, is essentially an approach to education proposed some 2400 years ago by Stoic philosophers. To this end, I focus on a critical sketch of the Stoic model of educationchiefly through the works of Seneca, Epictetus, and Aurelius-that is distinguishable by these features: education as self-knowing, the need of logic and critical thinking for informed decision-making, learning as preparation for life, and knowledge for integration in private, local, and global affairs. Such a critical sketch may not only help institutions instantiate their own similar aims more effectively, but also help them assess those aims with apposite normative force, which today they lack.

Education for the Sustainable Global Citizen: What Can We Learn from Stoic Philosophy and Freirean Environmental Pedagogies?

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Taking on the Traditions in Philosophy of Education: A Symposium

“…A Stoic moral educational analysis of this situation could begin with Mark Holowchak's teacheras-physician concept. 21 Drawing on a number of Stoic philosophers, Seneca among them, he explains that the Stoic teacher is something like a physician for the soul. Since the Stoics view the root of happiness as a particular kind of understanding, embodied in our disposition to the world around us, they view Stoic education as a treatment for poorly formed understandings and dispositions.…”

Cosmopolitan Education in Local Settings: Toward a New Civics Education for the 21st Century

“…From an educational perspective, political cosmopolitanism is usually expressed in civics education that seeks to encourage participation on the local level, while developing awareness of the ramifications on those others who exist beyond that given group (Holowchak, 2009). Scholars have also suggested evoking a broader understanding in students of their ‘national citizenship’, and a sense of responsibility regarding our joint future by integrating in the course of their studies the knowledge, skills and techniques needed to allow them to play key positions in the local and global arenas (Osler and Starkey, 2003).…”