DEVELOPMENTAL LIBERALISM

摘要

In this essay, Randall Curren identifies a type of liberalism that incorporates empirical claims about the development of agency and rationality, and responds to the criticism that liberalism rests on an incoherent conception of autonomous agency. He argues that moral agents did indeed "become ghosts" somewhere en route from Aristotle to Kant, but not for the reasons supposed, nor with the consequences for liberalism alleged by its critics. Curren concludes that an Aristotelian form of developmental liberalism, resting on a conception of rational agency as embodied, incremental, and developmentally contingent on social and circumstantial factors, can survive the familiar critiques of the "liberal self" and enable the liberal tradition to further expand the range of educational matters it can fruitfully address.