Through philosophical analysis of Montessori’s critiques of psychology, I aim to show the enduring relevance of those critiques. Maria Montessori sees experimental psychology as fundamental to ...philosophy and pedagogy, but she objects to the experimental psychology of her day in four ways: as disconnected from practice, as myopic, as based excessively on methods from physical sciences, and—most fundamentally—as offering detailed examinations of human beings (particularly children) under abnormal conditions. In place of these prevailing norms, Montessori suggests a model of the teacher-scientist in a specially prepared environment, who can engage in sustained and impassioned observation of “normalized” children. Drawing from a variety of texts and recently published lectures, this article lays out Montessori’s philosophy of experimental psychology and briefly discusses its relevance today.
: As J. Baird Callicott has argued, Adam Smith's moral theory is a philosophical ancestor of recent work in environmental ethics. However, Smith's “all important emotion of sympathy” (Callicott, ...2001, p. 209) seems incapable of extension to entities that lack emotions with which one can sympathize. Drawing on the distinctive account of sympathy developed in Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, as well as his account of anthropomorphizing nature in “History of Astronomy and Physics,” I show that sympathy with non‐sentient nature is possible within a Smithian ethics. This provides the possibility of extending sympathy, and thereby benevolence and justice, to nature.
This volume collects Kant's most important ethical and anthropological writings from the 1760s, before he developed his critical philosophy. The materials presented here range from the Observations, ...one of Kant's most elegantly written and immediately popular texts, to the accompanying Remarks which Kant wrote in his personal copy of the Observations and which are translated here in their entirety for the first time. This edition also includes little-known essays as well as personal notes and fragments that reveal the emergence of Kant's complex philosophical ideas. Those familiar with Kant's later works will discover a Kant interested in the 'beauty' as well as the 'dignity' of humanity, in human diversity as well as the universality of morals, and in practical concerns rather than abstract philosophizing. Readers will be able to see Kant's development from the Observations through the Remarks towards the moral philosophy that eventually made him famous.
PDF
