Self-reliance, care and moral education : Research on moral perfectionism in Emerson, Dewey and Cavell

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This research aims to reconstruct democracy and education in Japan, the U.S., and the U.K. as one that involves our persona ways of living and that can contribute to the formation of the public in solidarity. To achieve this, I reexamine the implications of "moral perfectionism" for a new paradigm of moral education-perfectionism as a line of thinking that runs through American philosophies of Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Dewey and Stanley Cavell. In terms of a research method, I adopt an approach that is based upon a cross-cultural dialogue in philosophy and education.In the research period from 2002 to 2004, I accomplished the series of research activities in the following three areas : (1)The publication of research both in Japanese and English ; (2)Presentations at academic meetings abroad ; and (3)Cross-cultural communication in philosophy and education. Based upon these achievements, I drew a contract for the publication of a book in English with Fordham University Press in the U. S … More . I also visited Professor Cavell at Harvard. It facilitated the project of translating into Japanese his book, The Senses of Walden. In the last year, I invited Professor Paul Standish, a foreign research collaborator in this project, to Kyoto University for a month, and organized seminars and lectures related to the research topic. This enhanced the cross-cultural network of communication between the U.K. and Japan in philosophy and education. It also offered a chance to conclude the research project.As a result of the three-year research, the philosophical bases of moral perfectionism in Dewey, Emerson and Cavell have been clarified. The implications of their American philosophies have also been shown for moral education in a broad sense, one that is based upon the ethic of self-reliance and care. It has also opened the possibilities of their ideas as standpoints from which to address the common problems that Japan, the U.K, and the U.S. face today in moral and citizenship education. Furthermore the network of communication among researchers in Japan, the U.S., and U.K. and other European countries have been developed. Especially in the field of education for global citizenship, further tasks have been indicated to which the moral perfectionism of those American philosophers can contribute, and a further need for east-west dialogue in the field has been indicated. Less