Thomas R. Thorp

Jaeger's proposal in his 1933 work, Paideia, that classical Greece should be viewed as the origin and the sustaining source of Westem civilization is likely to be viewed today as, at best, quaint or, at worst, pemicious. But I argue that Jaeger's conception of paideia as acculturation or as the formation of character through culture is superior to current views of human development and education. At the same time, Jaeger accounts for the profundity of the classical Greek conception of education or acculturation by appealing to a relatively late Platonic notion of a universal standard or rational principle. I attempt to show that this late philosophical determination of paideia distorts an older Greek view of human culture, a view that might offer a model for a universalism that need not appeal to the idea of a self-grounding rational principle.

Derrida, deconstruction, and postmodern discourses generally have been repeatedly attacked as politically impotent, or even harmful. Yet the charges rarely rise above the level of polemic. This is because the political critique leveled against deconstruction takes for granted exactly what Derrida challenges. The Modern/postmodern debate will remain fruitless until the received model of political theory opens itself up to an examination of the notion of reason it presupposes. The fundamental notion that reason is legitimate just in case it can account for itself immanently, employing only its own immanent standards and principles, is precisely the notion that needs to be examined. The dissertation investigates this notion of rational immanence as it is played out in the political critique of deconstruction, and as it functions in the work of Jurgen Habermas. I show that Habermas's notion of reason prevents him from achieving the political force he expects from his theory; and I argue that his theory requires a Derridean supplement: a deconstructive appropriation of the history of reason