| Abstract: | In this essay Ryan Kemp makes an unlikely case for value stability, arguing that people should almost never aspire to become radically different and that, given this, some people should be reluctant to pursue educational experiences that wildly broaden their life possibilities. His account is developed and structured around two borrowed examples, one literary and the other historical. Wendell Berry, his novel Hannah Coulter in particular, is the source of the first example; Jonathan Lear, specifically the case of Native American resettlement developed in Radical Hope, provides the second. The essay contains three sections structured around three related ideas. The first section explores the rationality of wanting to be a different person. The second section explores the rationality of wanting to be the same person while doing entirely different things. And the third section explores the rationality of desiring an education that teaches you to be suspicious of being anything in particular. |
