Overview

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.

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Reviews

A fresh and fascinating new study of two old masters. - Nel Noddings, Stanford University Thoughtful, provocative, and perceptive, The Gleam of Light is a book that challenges the common reception of Dewey. Naoko Saito has imaginatively engaged Emerson and Cavell to reveal aspects of Dewey that transcend what some have seen as the limits of American pragmatism. Her reading achieves a sense of the renewed significance of Deweyan democracy and of Emersonian moral perfectionism for education in a globalized world. - Paul Standish, University of Dundee

Saito's elegantly written book is a meditation on what she regards as a crisis of nihilism affecting modern democratic life, especially education. -Educational Studies in Japan: International Yearbook ... Exemplifies a vision of education as cooperative inquiry in which heterogenous voices resound yet experiential authority in its full force operates. -Journal of Philosophy of Education Saito has written an important book with a remarkable educational implication: We should educate every individual to grow by recognizing their unique gleam of light in self-transcendent relation with others different from ourselves while recognizing the Over-Soul sustains us all. -Teachers College Record A provocative book that will be of value to all who care about Emerson, Dewey, and what they have to say about education. -- -David Hansen Philosophy of Education Society [A] spirited inquiry ... -Studies in Philosophy and Education

... Exemplifies a vision of education as cooperative inquiry in which heterogenous voices resound yet experiential authority in its full force operates. -Journal of Philosophy of Education

... Exemplifies a vision of education as cooperative inquiry in which heterogenous voices resound yet experiential authority in its full force operates. GCoJournal of Philosophy of Education

[A] spirited inquiry . . . * -Studies in Philosophy and Education * A provocative book that will be of value to all who care about Emerson, Dewey, and what they have to say about education. -- -David Hansen * Philosophy of Education Society * Saito has written an important book with a remarkable educational implication: We should educate every individual to grow by recognizing their unique gleam of light in self-transcendent relation with others different from ourselves while recognizing the Over-Soul sustains us all. * -Teachers College Record * . . . Exemplifies a vision of education as cooperative inquiry in which heterogenous voices resound yet experiential authority in its full force operates. * -Journal of Philosophy of Education * Saito's elegantly written book is a meditation on what she regards as a crisis of nihilism affecting modern democratic life, especially education. * -Educational Studies in Japan: International Yearbook *

Author Information

Stanley Cavell is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Harvard University. His recent publications include A Pitch of Philosophy: Autobiographical Exercises; Philosophical Passages: Wittgenstein, Emerson, Austin, and Derrida; Cities of Words: Pedagogical Letters on a Register of the Moral Life and Emerson's Transcendental Etudes.

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