Putting Ideal and Nonideal Theory in Context for Education

• In Event: Roundtable Session 42
  In Roundtable Session: The Politics of Education in Theory and Practice

Abstract

The thesis of this paper is that the recent turn in educational theorizing to nonideal theory is premature, and will bear little fruit for educational philosophy. My argument proceeds, firstly, through a discussion of the history of nonideal theory in political philosophy, and the particular and unique historical milieu out of which it developed. Second, I argue that educational philosophy has not developed in an even relatively analogous way to political philosophy, and that the distance between the two fields gives us reason to be suspicious of the wholesale appropriation of methods and insights of the one for use in the other. Finally, I issue a call to retain ideal theorizing, and even privilege it, in educational philosophy.

Author

• Gabriel Thomas Keehn, Georgia State University