| This thesis discusses the tradition of liberal education, as concerns the ordinary citizen, in the thought of five political philosophers. This thesis examines the question of the education of the ordinary citizen as treated in the philosophy of Plato, Cicero, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith.; In discussing the education of the ordinary citizen this thesis discerns and describes a distinct thread, stretching across all five philosophers, concerning how best to teach civic virtue to the ordinary citizen. This distinct thread consists of a common contention that an education in civic virtue, one that is distinct from a philosophic education, requires the turning and shaping of character towards virtue. The attempt to shape the character of the ordinary citizen represents a three-fold recognition of the nature of education, politics and philosophy. At its most fundamental pedagogical level it acknowledges the inextricable connection between the nature of the student and the education for which he is suited. On the political level this acknowledgement suggests that a specifically civic education is appropriate, indeed essential, to the education of the ordinary citizen and the more general health of the polity in which he resides. In its own terms this civic education is then recognized as the penultimate education, an education in virtue distinct from the ultimate education. This ultimate education consists of a epistemologically superior and distinct civic and philosophic wisdom suited only to the extraordinary philosophic citizen.; This thesis commences and concludes with a discussion of the current debate surrounding liberal education and advocates a reinvigoration of liberal education directed at civic virtue and in the terms described by the five philosophers countenanced. |
