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Higher Education: A Compassion Business or Edifying Experience?

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The Pedagogy of Compassion at the Heart of Higher Education

Abstract

This is an extended introduction to the book on compassion and its place in higher education. It is structured both in chapters and through them into themes. In the thinking and writing of the authors, philosophical aspects of compassion have tended to lead. The range is from the ancients such as Aristotle and Confucius to Rousseau, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and contemporary writers such Nussbaum, Armstrong, Bilias, White and Maxwell (the latter three making contribution to this book). Given the intercultural nature of many of the contributions, the hegemony of Western thought is challenged and a wider appreciation of compassion emerges. Nested in a historical perspective, this chapter considers the institutional issue of compassion for education before introducing the content of the book.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This was made in reference to Arendt’s controversial Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the Banality of Evil.

  2. 2.

    I have substituted compassion for pity in Roberts’ translation of the Rhetoric in the Complete Works of Aristotle , edited by J. Barnes.

  3. 3.

    Although such a thing has been advocated in a recent National Nursing Research Unit (Maben et al. 2012).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Education Research and Scholarship, University of Middlesex, London, UK

    Paul Gibbs

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  1. Paul Gibbs
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Correspondence to Paul Gibbs .

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  1. The Burroughs, Middlesex University, London, United Kingdom

    Paul Gibbs

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Gibbs, P. (2017). Higher Education: A Compassion Business or Edifying Experience?. In: Gibbs, P. (eds) The Pedagogy of Compassion at the Heart of Higher Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57783-8_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57783-8_1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-57782-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-57783-8

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