Anders Schinkel

Conscience and Conscientious Objections

In Western countries conscientious objection is usually accommodated in various ways, at least in certain areas (military conscription, medicine) and to some extent. It appears to be regarded as fundamentally different from other kinds of objection. But why? This study argues that conscientious objection cannot be understood as long as conscience is misunderstood. The author provides a new interpretation of the historical development of expressions of conscience and thought on the subject, and offers a new approach to conscientious objection rooted in the symbol-approach to conscience.

Formal Criteria for the Concept of Human Flourishing: The First Step in Defending Flourishing as an Ideal Aim of Education.

Human flourishing is the topic of an increasing number of books and articles in educational philosophy. Flourishing should be regarded as an ideal aim of education. If this is defended, the first step should be to elucidate what is meant by flourishing, and what exactly the concept entails. Listing formal criteria can facilitate reflection on the ideal of flourishing as an aim of education. We took Aristotelian eudaimonia as a prototype to construct two criteria for the concept of human flourishing: (1) human flourishing is regarded as intrinsically worthwhile and (2) flourishing means ‘actualisation of human potential’. The second criterion has three sub-criteria: (2a) flourishing is about a whole life, (2b) it is a ‘dynamic state’ and (2c) flourishing presupposes there being objective goods.

Causal and Moral Responsibility of Individuals for (the Harmful Consequences of) Climate Change

John Nolt’s purpose in this paper is to criticise the assumption, often made but seldom supported with evidence, that ‘the consequences of a single individual’s greenhouse gas emissions are negligibly small’. He does not aim to establish what moral responsibility on the part of individuals follows from the conclusion he defends, namely that the average American is (causally) responsible for the suffering and/or death of (at least) one future person. Nevertheless, the moral significance of his query is clearly indicated where he defends the notion of harm he uses, and his exclusion of considerations of future benefits of GHG emissions. Moreover, it is plausible that much of the relevance of Nolt’s endeavour lies in its possible implications for individuals’ moral responsibility. If there were to be no such implications, it would no longer be very interesting to know how harmful the average American’s GHG emissions are—as opposed to knowing the harm done collectively. So my purpose here is to see what implications, if any, Nolt’s conclusion has for the ascription of moral responsibility for climate-change related harms to individuals. Very few authors on climate ethics have discussed questions concerning the moral responsibility of individuals. The issue has been most directly addressed by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, in his article ‘It’s not my fault: global warming and individual moral obligations’ (Sinnott-Armstrong, 2010). The assumption Nolt challenges is crucial to Sinnott-Armstrong’s rejection of a range of ethical principles that might ground individual moral obligations with regard to climate change. If Nolt is right, much of Sinnott-Armstrong’s critique of these principles seems to fail. But would this be enough to make the case for individual moral obligations in this area? I will argue that the implications for individual moral responsibility are still far from clear—not for Sinnott-Armstrong’s reasons, but because Nolt, like Sinnott-Armstrong, makes the mistake of attempting to isolate the effects of individuals’ actions from the collectivity in which they occur.

The Educational Importance of Deep Wonder

That wonder is educationally important will strike many people as obvious. And in a way it is obvious, because being capable of experiencing wonder implies an openness to (novel) experience and seems naturally allied to intrinsic educational motivation, an eagerness to inquire, a desire to understand, and also to a willingness to suspend judgement and bracket existing—potentially limiting—ways of thinking, seeing, and categorising. Yet wonder is not a single thing, and it is important to distinguish at least two kinds of wonder: active wonder(ing), which entails a drive to explore, to find out, to explain; and deep or contemplative wonder, which is not inherently inquisitive like active wonder and, as a response to mystery, may leave us lost for words. Claims for wonders importance to education and science often do not distinguish between the two, but whereas for active wonder that importance seems obvious, this is much less so for deep wonder, which by its very nature rather seems to be anti-educational. Yet in this paper I explore exactly the educational importance of deep wonder. This importance is found to lie, not just in its motivational effects—real though they are—but in making us attend to the world for its own sake, and making us aware of the limits of our understanding.

Education and life’s meaning

There are deep connections between education and the question of lifes meaning, which derive, ultimately, from the fact that, for human beings, how to live—and therefore, how to raise ones children—is not a given but a question. One might see the meaning of life as constitutive of the meaning of education, and answers to the question of lifes meaning might be seen as justifying (a particular form of) education. Our focus, however, lies on the contributory relation: our primary purpose is to investigate whether and how education might contribute to childrens ability to find meaning in life or at least deal with the question. This issue is not only theoretically interesting (though relatively neglected)—it also has practical urgency. For people have a need for meaning that, if unfulfilled, leads to personal and potentially social crises—a need that often expresses itself first and strongly in adolescence; and there are reasons to have doubts about the contribution of todays traditional formal education system to the meaningfulness of childrens (and future adults’) lives. We argue for the importance of frameworks of values, as well as for a greater emphasis on the affective dimension of meaning, though we reject pure subjectivism. The underlying purpose of this article, however, is not to argue for a particular comprehensive position, but to persuade philosophers of education of the importance of the issue of lifes meaning in thinking about education today.

Education and ultimate meaning

Richard Peters and John White have both argued that education should contribute to the meaning people are able to find in or give to life. Both dismiss the idea of ultimate or profound meaning (‘the meaning of life’) in favour of ordinary meaning, or ‘meaning in life’. Thus they exemplify the trend visible also in the general philosophical literature on life’s meaning. I argue that in their rejection of ultimate meaning and retreat to ordinary meaning they concede too much. There is room for plausible notions of ultimate meaning between the extreme they reject and the alternative they embrace. I propose two such notions, one meta-ethical, one metaphysical (specifically, Whiteheadian). If there are indeed plausible notions of ultimate meaning, and if ultimate or profound meaning is therefore a possibility we cannot dissmiss offhand, then it would be wrong to reject the possibility of ultimate meaning in education. Instead, education should both help people come to terms with doubt in this area of life, and foster their capacity to enjoy experiences of ultimate meaning.

Justice and the Elderly

Analytical philosophy has not shied away from such a big question as what a just society would look like, how it would be organized. Sometimes a particular segment of society, or a specific dimension is singled out—often in response to a perceived lacuna—as in work on gender justice or justice and the family (e.g. Kirp et al. 1986; Robeyns 2007). When it comes to the elderly, however, broad perspectives and wider visions are nowhere to be seen. A thorough search of the academic literature reveals that the conjunction of ‘justice’ and ‘elderly’ has resulted in just a few topics for philosophical and ethical debate.

Threats to autonomy in consumer societies and their implications for education

The development of autonomy in children is a central concern of liberal philosophers of education. We endorse the liberal intuition that autonomy matters and that it is an appropriate aim of education. However, we divert from autonomy liberals, who defend a rather limited and demanding conception of autonomy that is closely connected with skills of critical thinking and reflection. As a consequence of this conception, they believe that (orthodox) religious education poses one of the severest threats to the development of autonomy. We do not deny the value of their conception of autonomy. Our point, however, is that the inhibition of the development of this kind of autonomy is not by far as serious a problem as the frustration of a more basic form of autonomy that the majority of people are expected to achieve. Focusing on this kind of autonomy, we argue that it is not religious education, but rather certain ingrained features of consumer societies that pose the greatest threats to the development of autonomy. We conclude by offering some suggestions regarding how education can counter these threats.

On the Justification of Compulsory Schooling

Most countries in the world have some system of compulsory schooling. Such systems constitute a huge intervention in people’s (most obviously the children’s) lives, and therefore require justification. My main purpose in this chapter is to develop an idea of what such a justification would have to look like, to have a chance of being successful. I will argue that it must be concrete and contextual, rather than abstract, and that it must be both pragmatic and principled. I will also argue that, apart from such a theoretical justification, there is another kind of justification in play, a ‘historical justification’—justification seen as a process of ‘proving itself’ (or failing to do so) in the course of time. The theoretical justification must refer to the historical justification, and vice versa. I will end the main body of the chapter, in the section ‘On the Grounds of a Justification of Compulsory Schooling’, with some further suggestions as to the grounds on which a justification of compulsory schooling must be based, with special attention to the general aim of education. In the course of this chapter I develop (in outline) a view of the (general) aim of education and its relations to education’s extrinsic and overarching ends. In the context of the present text this serves the main purpose of showing what a justification of compulsory schooling entails, but it is also a secondary purpose of the chapter in its own right. I conclude by looking at a few possible objections and further questions.

What attitude should parents have towards their children’s future flourishing?

This article explores how parents should relate to a particular (ideal) aim of education, namely, their children’s future flourishing lives. The article asks three (sub)questions: (1) What does ‘aiming for flourishing’ mean? (2) In what sense should parents have expectations? (3) Is hope an appropriate attitude for parents with regard to their children’s flourishing lives? It is argued that although there is also a place for expectations, an attitude of hope best captures how parents should relate to the educational aim of flourishing. Hope not only refers to the commitment and desire of realizing the object of one’s hope but also implies a recognition of the limitations of human powers and of the uncertainties inherent in striving for an ultimate aim.