The Education of Autonomous Man

This new study of modern educational thought relates the selected thinkers and theories to a profound change in the way in which men have come to understand themselves and the world. The theories of Rousseau, Kant, Froebel, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche contemporary English-speaking philosophers and schemes of education, Sartre, Helvetius and B.F. Skinner, are shown, in separate studies, to be variations upon the theme of man as a self-defining and self-legislating subject in a world that does nothing to present him with any Law or Way. Education therefore becomes a problem, a matter of arbitrary selection of what the young are to be taught and to do. For there is no authoritative pattern for adults to follow and to pass on to them. The selected theories each provide a different attempt to avoid or to resolve this problem. The book ends with a critical comparison of the theories and concludes that there can be no rational selection of what the young should be taught while we adhere to the assumptions behind these theories.