Abstract

A preoccupation with technology has helped bury the philosophical question: What is the point of education? I attempt to answer this question. Various answers to the question are surveyed and it is shown that they depend upon different conceptions of the self. For example, the devotional-self of the 12th century (which was about becoming master of the self) gave way to the liberal-self (which was to facilitate social change). Education can only be satisfactorily justified, I argue, by appeal to transcendent values such as mastery of the self, which is incipient in liberal education.