The Idea of Free Will and the Self in Education

Abstract

The chapter discuss how selected theories on free will can help us understand and take a critical perspective on conceptions of self in education today. The chapter is a contribution to a philosophical anthropology for education and a contribution to a metaphysics of education, in the sense that it gives an answer to the question “What is man?” Both Kant and Sartre’s assumption of the existence of a free will, as well as Skinner’s denial of the causal reality of free will, has had consequences for pedagogical theorising. Among the conceptions of self in present day educational policy and curriculum, the self-regulated learner is a familiar figure. The chapter discuss how the empirical-psychological picture of the self-regulated learner within present-day education can be seen as both a continuation of and a break with the traditions from both Kant and Sartre, on the one hand, and Skinner, on the other. Frankfurt’s understanding of freedom and individual humanity have not been as prominent in pedagogical theorising as these other figures and may provide resources for a new take on the debate about the self in education.