Education and the Good Life

Education and the Good Life

Rating

8.0

The Pequod Review:

In Education and the Good Life, Bertrand Russell argues for a method of education that stresses the sciences, humanities, and a rigorous skepticism. “Passionate beliefs produce either progress or disaster, not stability. Science, even when it attacks traditional beliefs, has beliefs of its own, and can scarcely flourish in an atmosphere of literary skepticism.… Neither acquiescence in skepticism nor acquiescence in dogma is what education should produce. What it should produce is a belief that knowledge is attainable in a measure, though with difficulty; that much of what passes for knowledge at any given time is likely to be more or less mistaken, but that the mistakes can be rectified by care and industry.”