Personal Virtue, Public Happiness : Rehumanizing Education Through Early Modern Philosophy

When higher education recenters philosophy, students can become more than skilled workers: they can be virtuous people who promote the flourishing of those around them.

When higher education recenters philosophy, students can become more than skilled workers: they can be virtuous people who promote the flourishing of those around them. Narratives surrounding higher education, particularly in the United States, tend to reduce the value of post-secondary education to vocational or economic goods. As a consequence, STEM and pre-professional programs thrive, while programs in the arts and humanities continue to be diminished, at least in part due to their perceived “impracticality” and lack of obvious alignment with labor markets. Kristopher G. Phillips argues that reducing the value and aims of higher education to narrowly prescribed vocational or economic ends dehumanizes students, robs them of the opportunity to be transformed—personally, epistemically, and civically—by their education, and leaves them ill-prepared to address the distinctly human aspects of their lives. The solution, he argues, is to reconceptualize both academic philosophy and higher education generally; philosophy should return to its Socratic roots and focus on the cultivation of an excellent character. Phillips articulates a vision of a philosophically-grounded, transformational education that facilitates student flourishing. Drawing parallels between, and teasing out assumptions inherited from, the scientific revolution in 17th and 19th-century -Europe, Phillips demonstrates that education can and should help students become the sort of people who embody personal virtue and promote the flourishing of their communities.