In this book, first published in 1978, Allen Brent sets out to explore some of the questions raised by theorists and philosophers regarding curriculum. He starts by investigating whether all knowledge is the product of social conditions of particular times or places, or whether there is some kind of universal framework implicit in the claims to knowledge which men make. He looks at the work of Plato, Newman, Freire and Hirt and how, each of them in a strikingly different way, they have tried to give us an objective basis for curriculum judgements and how the validity of that basis is attacked by contemporary sociologists of knowledge. This book is aimed primarily at students who are concentrating on the philosophy of education or curriculum theory.

What models in the social sciences underlie existing or proposed patterns of educational practice? What theories of knowledge inform such models and thus arguably sanction such practice? In this book, first published in 1983, the author seeks some tentative answers. Wittgenstein's understanding of 'family resemblance' and Chomsky's 'linguistic universals' are interpreted, contrary to Hamlyn, as reconcilable notions that can both illuminate and refine Hirst's understanding of 'categorical concepts'. In the light of such a reformulated theory, Brent suggest ways in which a unified model of the social sciences could yield a unified curriculum theory. This title will be of interest to students of the philosophy of education and curriculum studies.

In this book, first published in 1978, Allen Brent sets out to explore some of the questions raised by theorists and philosophers regarding curriculum. He starts by investigating whether all knowledge is the product of social conditions of particular times or places, or whether there is some kind of universal framework implicit in the claims to knowledge which men make. He looks at the work of Plato, Newman, Freire and Hirt and how, each of them in a strikingly different way, they have tried to give us an objective basis for curriculum judgements and how the validity of that basis is attacked by contemporary sociologists of knowledge. This book is aimed primarily at students who are concentrating on the philosophy of education or curriculum theory.

What models in the social sciences underlie existing or proposed patterns of educational practice? What theories of knowledge inform such models and thus arguably sanction such practice? In this book, first published in 1983, the author seeks some tentative answers. Wittgenstein's understanding of 'family resemblance' and Chomsky's 'linguistic universals' are interpreted, contrary to Hamlyn, as reconcilable notions that can both illuminate and refine Hirst's understanding of 'categorical concepts'. In the light of such a reformulated theory, Brent suggest ways in which a unified model of the social sciences could yield a unified curriculum theory. This title will be of interest to students of the philosophy of education and curriculum studies.

Thascius Caecilius Cyprianus believed fervently that his conversion experience had been a passage from the darkness of the world of Graeco Roman paganism to his new vision of Christianity. But Cyprian's response as bishop to the Decian persecution was to be informed by the pagan culture that he had rejected so completely. His view of church order also owed much to Roman jurisprudential principles of legitimate authority exercised within a sacred boundary spatially and geographically defined. Given the highly fragmented state of pagan sources for this period, Cyprian is often the only really contemporary primary source for the events through which he lived. In this book, Allen Brent seeks to contribute both to our understanding of Roman history in the mid-third century as well as the enduring model of church order that developed in that period.

Ignatius of Antioch (died c. 115) is one of the Apostolic Fathers of the Christian Church. In his letters to other churches he re-interpreted church order, the Eucharist and martyrdom against the backcloth of the Second Sophistic in Asia minor by using the cultural material of a pagan society. He so formed the idea and theology of the office of a bishop in the Christian church. This book is an account of the circumstances and the cultural context in which Ignatius constructed what became the historic church order of Christendom.
Allen Brent defends the authenticity of the Ignatian letters by showing how the circumstances of Ignatius' condemnation at Antioch and departure for Rome fits well with what we can reconstruct of the internal situation in the Church of Antioch in Syria at the end of the first century. Ignatius is presented as a controversial figure arising in the context of a church at war with itself. Ignatius constructs out of the conflicting models of church order available to him one founded on a single bishop that he commends to Christian communities through which he passes in chains as a condemned martyr prisoner.

Brent focuses on the reformation of republican religion and the exercise of political authority in Augustan society. Augustus' revolution involved a reformation also of republican religion that provided legitimation for the exercise of political authority. The iconography of the Ara Pacis, for example, shows that Augustus as augur was making a metaphysical claim, namely to have secured the peace of the gods not simply throughout the civil organization of the empire but also in nature itself. What republican religion had failed to do, his reformed religion had succeeded in doing. Thus Augustan society had reached a formally similar position to the world of the late twentieth century with its own version of the 'end of history' (Fukuama) in which not simply all other practical political alternatives seem to have been excluded but ideological (or metaphysical) ones as well. How was Christianity, if it were to achieve transformation of contemporary society, to respond to such an apparently unassailable position? How indeed was it to develop both the aim and the strategy for so doing? It needed to shed its original apocalyptic solution in which the certainty of the imminence of the second advent meant that there was no need for actions with political implications in this world. Such a process bears comparison with the way in which Marxists active in Western democracies refused involvement in normal political processes whilst they awaited the 'inevitable' collapse of 'capitalism.' It needed to turn from a perspective of inner soul-culture that had no interest in the transformation of wider society (Gnosticism). Such is paralleled by a kind of charismatic fundamentalism in the present. It needed to produce a 'project' that would be effective in transforming its values into a form that bore convincing parallels to the values of the dominant culture that its was endeavoring to influence in order to secure wide support for its access to power.