A History of Western Philosophy of Education in the Age of Enlightenment (vol. 3), ed. Tal Gilead, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021

R: Hey, M. Why so glum? M: It’s tough reviewing the volume on Enlightenment philosophy of education in Megan Laverty and David Hansen’s five-volume history. R: Why’s that? M: There’s much to admire – an informative introduction by Tal Gilead and seven essays on big thinkers and important developments. They deal with so much: Locke by Lisa McNulty; Rousseau by Amos Hofman; Condillac, Helvétius, and Condorcet by Grace Roosevelt; religion, rationalism, philanthropinism, and Bildung by Rebekka Horlacher; Pestalozzi, Herbart, and Fröbel by Jürgen Oelkers; Wollstonecraft and Harriet Taylor Mill by Katy Dineen; and Emerson, Thoreau, and Fuller by Naoko Saito. And yet they leave out so much as well. I’m stumped acknowledging that and raising a concern I have in 1,250 words. R: As I see it, five impressive volumes in print attest to substance and value. Concentrate on your question. What’s on your mind? M: Remember the commercial with a little old lady, bug-eyed at a big bun with a tiny burger, yelling, “Where’s the beef?” I’m yelling, “Where’s the history?” Let’s see the historicity of life from which Western philosophy of education has emerged! R: That’s a vivid image but explain your question. You just said the Enlightenment volume deals with big thinkers and important developments. Isn’t that giving us the history? M: In a way. Philosophers, and philosophers of education, often abstract away the historical setting of past texts, concepts, and questions. Too often it leads to expanding waves of exegesis around a shrinking patty of historical experience. R: Okay. Exegesis isn’t history. What would make it history? M: Of the essays, I most admire Naoko Saito’s on the historical voice of American transcendentalism. She does not ignore the textual basis but interprets its intended meaning through the circumstances in which it was voiced. She suggests that Emerson, Thoreau, and Fuller’s exhortations in their time should speak to us too, for outward pressures now confine self-transcendence even more strongly. The historical context, then and now, sets the locus of interpretation. R: And you think the other essays don’t do that as well. They take past texts as a given, each not an advent. Without accounting for the text’s coming to be, interpretative discussion largely ignores the context of it and subjects selected passages and points from primary and secondary sources to exegesis. To you, that’s too much bun. But to others, the given text is the burger. Why is that wrong? M: Because today the philosophy of education generates lots of exegesis weakly rooted in our current lifeworld. Does the philosophy of education now help persons form themselves in their historical circumstances? R: Well, contributors talk about important issues. M: Of course. There are circumstantial foci – feminism, critical pedagogy, decolonization, Indigenous peoples, climate and environment, social justice, and many variants of critical theory. But we do it primarily by discussing a few generative texts tangential to the historical lives that most people are living. R: Perhaps, but you’re vague. What do the essays miss from the Enlightenment lifeworld? Out with it! M: Okay. Take how Amos Hofman boils Rousseau’s philosophy of education down to child development and the formation of citizens, concluding in the first that Rousseau usefully raised consciousness, leading to child-centred pedagogies, and in the second that he chased down dead ends and then gave up on them. R: Well, subsequent literature on both education and Rousseau features those topics. M: Some. But were they central to Rousseau or his lifeworld? Child development and the formation of citizens have been other people’s issues projected onto Rousseau’s work and experience. R: Let’s not debate that. …