The Gleam of Light

Moral Perfectionism and Education in Dewey and Emerson

Naoko Saito

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780823224630
• eBook ISBN:
  9780823283095
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

In the name of efficiency, the practice of education has come to be dominated by neoliberal ideology and
procedures of standardization and quantification. Such attempts to make all aspects of practice transparent and subject to systematic accounting lack sensitivity to the invisible and the silent, to something in the human
condition that cannot readily be expressed in an either-or form. Seeking alternatives to such trends, Saito reads
Dewey's idea of progressive education through the lens of Emersonian moral perfectionism (to borrow a term coined by Stanley Cavell). She elucidates a spiritual and aesthetic dimension to Dewey's notion of growth, one considerably richer than what Dewey alone presents in his typically scientific terminology.The Gleam of Light: Moral Perfectionism and Education in Dewey and Emerson is available from the publisher on an open-access basis.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword by Stanley Cavell
• 1. In Search of Light in Democracy and Education: Deweyan Growth in an Age of Nihilism
• 2. Dewey between Hegel and Darwin
• 3. Emerson’s Voice: Dewey beyond Hegel and Darwin
• 4. Emersonian Moral Perfectionism: Gaining from the Closeness between Dewey and Emerson
• 5. Dewey’s Emersonian View of Ends
• 6. Growth and the Social Reconstruction of Criteria: Gaining from the Distance between Dewey and Emerson
• 7. The Gleam of Light: Reconstruction toward Holistic Growth
• 8. The Gleam of Light Lost: Transcending the Tragic with Dewey after Emerson
• 9. The Rekindling of the Gleam of Light: Toward Perfectionist Education
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Series List