In his book The Formation of Reason (2011), David Bakhurst asserts that the end of education is autonomy, which he explains is the power to determine what to do and think in the light of what there is reason to do and think. I want to ask how we must conceive education, if this is its end. As a change in the broadest sense, education has not only an end, but also a beginning, not only a whither, but also a whence. But not any two things can be joined as the whence and the whither of a change. I want to ask where education begins, if autonomy is where it ends. This requires that I consider an idea that is prominent in Bakhurst's book, which concerns the whence of education: a human being is born an animal and changed into a person, education effecting the change. This idea figures in Bakhurst's argument for the claim that reason is a social and historical reality. The child is born with a first nature, which is biological and individual; it equips the child with animal powers: feeling, desire, perception. Receiving education, the child acquires a second nature, which is social and historical; it equips the child with personal powers: thought and reasoning, intellect and will.
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