Stefaan E. Cuypers

abstract An appeal to children's authenticity is widespread in major debates in the philosophy of education. However, no evident uniform conception of authenticity informs the dialectic. We begin with examples that confirm this multiplicity. We then uncover a common strand that unifies these seemingly differing conceptions: authenticity is exemplified by motivational elements, such as the agent's desires, when these elements are, in a manner to be explicated, ‘truly the agent's own’. It is this view of authenticity that is the mainstay of a predicament in the philosophy of education: if education entails intentional instilment of certain motivational elements in the child but such intentional moulding, in the absence of the agent's consent, is generally incompatible with authenticity, how is an authentic education possible? We respond by developing a relational account of authenticity that denies that motivational elements are authentic in their own right; they are authentic only relative to ensuring certain ends.

This article points out an internal tension, or even conflict, in the conceptual foundations of Harvey Siegel’s conception of critical thinking. Siegel justifies critical thinking, or critically rational autonomy, as an educational ideal first and foremost by an appeal to the Kantian principle of respect for persons. It is made explicit that this fundamental moral principle is ultimately grounded in the Kantian conception of autonomous practical reason as normatively and motivationally robust. Yet this Kantian conception openly conflicts with Siegel’s own two-component theory of critical thinking, which on close inspection turns out to be a version of the Humean conception of instrumental practical reason as normatively and motivationally powerless. It is concluded that Siegel cannot have it both ways: he cannot appeal both to means-end and to robust rationality. Siegel’s Kantian justification of the critical thinking educational ideal is, therefore, found wanting in terms of his own Humean premises.