Education for Self-transformation

Exemplifying what it advocates, this book is an innovative attempt to retrieve the essay form from its degenerate condition in academic writing. Its purpose is to create pedagogical space in which the inner struggle of 'lived experience' can articulate itself in the first person. Working through essays, the modern, 'post-secular' self can guide, understand, and express its own transformation. This is not merely a book about writing methods: it has a sharp existential edge.

Preface; Paul Standish.- 1. Introduction: Education as Self-transformation and the Essayist Form of Writing: Education for a Post-secular Age.- PART I - George Lukács: Practice of Philosophy for Existential Fulfillment.- 2. A Reflection on the Relation between Philosophy and Life; through Hans Blumenberg's Work.- 3. A Response to Modernity Between Reason and Faith: Kierkegaard's Ideas of Ethical Self and Subjectivity.- 4. Practicing Philosophy, the Practice of Education: Exploring the Essayist Form through Lukács' Soul and Form.- PART II - Stanley Cavell: Practice of Education in the Essay-Form.- 5. Stanley Cavell's Ordinary Language Philosophy as an Example of Practicing Philosophy in the Essay-form: In Search of a Humanistic Approach to Teacher Education.- 6. Philosophy as the Essayist Form of Writing: Cavell's Concepts of Voice, Method, and Text.- 7. Cavell's Essayist as the Political Self: Implication for Citizenship Education.- 8. Conclusion: The Essayist Form of Writing for a Tragic Form of Subjectivity.- Index.