Overview
- Makes a significant contribution to contemporary theorizations of the university
- Beneficial to scholars and practitioners in academia, policy and civil society domains who are concerned with the university's ethical and political project of self-definition
- Includes Irish and UK, as well as global perspectives from established and emerging scholars
Part of the book series: Debating Higher Education: Philosophical Perspectives (DHEP, volume 10)
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Table of contents (17 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Facing Darkness
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Front Matter
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Dispelling Shadow
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Front Matter
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Regaining Light
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Front Matter
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Keywords
About this book
This book offers philosophical readings of the contemporary university and is motivated by a series of pressing challenges in the global context of Higher Education. It argues that the university is a place for community, for refuge, for enlightenment and the careful questioning of knowledge, but it is also a place for visceral ambition and for intellectual cowardice, for blinkered individualism and professional competitiveness.
In the context of a highly competitive post-crash global economy, contemporary students are placed under increasing pressure to distinguish themselves from their peers via a portfolio of learning excellence and extracurricular achievement. Growing numbers undertake part or full-time employment in order to cover registration fees and the basic costs of living. University staff take on very different forms of pressure that operate across the life-course of an academic career – from early-career anxieties to the worries of moreprivileged and permanent faculty who fear they do not meet ever-changing structures, assumptions and demands of the university itself.
This book argues that these interlinked agendas demand consideration from philosophers of education in Ireland, Europe and further afield. It proposes that we must embody a very careful balancing act: one where we remember the romantic ideals and promises of the university while still acknowledging the very real and pressing challenges faced by our staff and students. The book will be of interest to academics, graduate students, and advanced-level undergraduates in Philosophy, Education, Mental Health, and Organizational Psychology in both North America and Europe.
Editors and Affiliations
About the editor
Áine Mahon is Assistant Professor in the School of Education at University College Dublin. Her primary research areas are Philosophy of Education and Philosophy of Literature. Áine’s first monograph, The Ironist and the Romantic: Reading Richard Rorty and Stanley Cavell, was published by Bloomsbury in 2014. With Andrew Taylor of the University of Edinburgh, she has co-edited Stanley Cavell, Literature and Film: The Idea of America (London and New York: Routledge, 2013); and with Clara Fischer of Queen’s University Belfast, she has co-edited Philosophical Perspectives on Contemporary Ireland (London and New York: Routledge, 2020).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Promise of the University
Book Subtitle: Reclaiming Humanity, Humility, and Hope
Editors: Áine Mahon
Series Title: Debating Higher Education: Philosophical Perspectives
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5277-6
Publisher: Springer Singapore
eBook Packages: Education, Education (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-981-16-5276-9Published: 10 January 2022
Softcover ISBN: 978-981-16-5279-0Published: 11 January 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-981-16-5277-6Published: 09 January 2022
Series ISSN: 2366-2573
Series E-ISSN: 2366-2581
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VII, 213
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Higher Education, Educational Philosophy, Educational Policy and Politics