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Book Cover
E-book
Author Kronman, Anthony T.

Title Education's end : why our colleges and universities have given up on the meaning of life / Anthony T. Kronman
Published New Haven : Yale University Press, [2007]

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Description 1 online resource (xi, 308 pages)
Contents Contents ; Acknowledgments ; Introduction; 1. What Is Living For? ; 2. Secular Humanism ; 3. The Research Ideal ; 4. Political Correctness ; 5. Spirit in an Age of Science ; Appendix: Yale Directed Studies Program Readings, 2005-2006 ; Notes ; Index
Summary The question of what living is for - of what one should care about and why - is the most important question a person can ask. Yet under the influence of the modern research ideal, our colleges and universities have expelled this question from their classrooms, judging it unfit for organized study. In this eloquent and carefully considered book, Tony Kronman explores why this has happened and calls for the restoration of life's most important question to an honoured place in higher education. The author contrasts an earlier era in American education, when the question of the meaning of life was at the centre of instruction, with our own times, when this question has been largely abandoned by college and university teachers. In particular, teachers of the humanities, who once felt a special responsibility to guide their students in exploring the question of what living is for, have lost confidence in their authority to do so. And they have lost sight of the question itself in the blinding fog of political correctness that has dominated their disciplines for the past forty years. Yet Kronman sees a readiness for change, a longing among teachers as well as students to engage with questions of ultimate meaning. He urges a revival of the humanities' lost tradition of studying the meaning of life through the careful but critical reading of great works of literary and philosophical imagination. And he offers here the charter document of that revival
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-296) and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Humanities -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- United States
Life.
Meaning (Philosophy) -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- United States
Humanities -- Philosophy
REFERENCE -- Questions & Answers.
PHILOSOPHY -- General.
Humanities -- Philosophy
Humanities -- Study and teaching (Higher)
Life
Hochschulbildung
Lebensphilosophie
Lebenssinn
Humanities -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- United States.
Life.
Meaning (Philosophy) -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- United States.
Humanities -- Philosophy.
Éducation humaniste -- États-Unis.
Enseignement supérieur -- Finalités -- États-Unis.
Humaniora -- studier och undervisning -- högskolan.
Humaniora -- forskning.
Mening (filosofi) -- studier och undervisning -- högskolan.
United States
USA
United States.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780300138160
0300138164
9780300122886
0300122888