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The Forum > Article Comments > Where does the west begin and end in education? > Comments

Where does the west begin and end in education? : Comments

By Fotis Kapetopoulos, published 13/1/2014

Too often under the guise of multi-faith values or traditional values, secularism, rationalism, individual liberty, academic enquiry and science, take second place.

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It may seem unfair to say that the thrust of the author's argument is summarized in the penultimate sentence, but the idea of examining the beginnings of the West and how it "impacted on the east" as a means of understanding the world seems to suggest a "history of the west" course as the solution to our problems.
I don't want to be unfair since there are some pieces of Mr Kapetopoulos's article which are useful.
Civilisation is a term that is often used very loosely. It was explained by one of the 20th Century's best minds as the "conscious cultivation of human reason". Only the West, therefore, could lay claim to being a civilisation since only the West could boast of a heritage of political philosophy from the time of Socrates until the present; the thought of each of those rare birds (perhaps only one in a century) being examined, corrected, amended or endorsed by the next.
The Western philosophical tradition, the power of unaided human reason, was challenged by the revealed religions which claimed that only obedience to God could man be truly happy.
Fotis Kapetopoulos is correct to ask for a return to the Western tradition, but that is a return to the great books of the Western tradition; not a history of the West as he suggests. The great books would allow today's students to engage in a discussion with the greatest minds of that tradition through the works they committed to writing. Niezsche, I believe has already examined the works of the east and found them to be less than many thought. The east has been characterised by the development of the arts of every kind; but they have not consciously cultivated human reason.
Posted by David Long, Monday, 13 January 2014 2:38:59 PM
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Where does the west begin and end in education?
Fotis wheelbarrow,
in education.
Posted by individual, Monday, 13 January 2014 3:19:57 PM
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What's taught in schools is not philosophy, I'm at a loss for an adequate term which does accurately describe the national curriculum but it at present it has no philosophical basis.
One egregious example is the use of novels and fictional films to teach history rather than textbooks, that's completely unreasonable.
Posted by Jay Of Melbourne, Monday, 13 January 2014 3:42:22 PM
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This essay describes the potentially devastating now universally dramatized scape-goat drive/mechanism at the root of the entire Western tradition (in particular)
http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/Aletheon/there_is_a_way_EDIT.html
All of the so called "great books" of the Western tradition contribute to and reinforce this scape goat drive.

But what about the tradition of actually Realizing Reality It-Self instead of gaining power-and-control over everyone and everything?
http://global.adidam.org/books/ancient-teachings
Posted by Daffy Duck, Monday, 13 January 2014 4:47:22 PM
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The values and the reasoning that we have employed to construct them began in Greece. An epistemology that that the great philosophers who followed them developed. Reaching it's peak with Hegel and Marx

But this chain of knowledge was interrupted by Augustine who buried it by reinstating his version of the gods whom the Greeks had replaced with reason. This resulted in the 'Dark Ages'. The Pyne agenda, supported by the postmodernists, will reinstate the Augustine agenda and lead to another dark age. " Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it"
Posted by Gun Boat, Monday, 13 January 2014 6:03:57 PM
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Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it"
Gun Boat,
You should have put that to K Rudd & Enterprise.
Posted by individual, Monday, 13 January 2014 6:23:40 PM
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