Professor René Vincente Arcilla is retiring at the end of this semester, after twenty-five years at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University (NYU). Before moving to NYU in 2000, he directed the Philosophy and Education Program,starting in 1991, only a year after being hired as an Assistant Professor—his first position after completing a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago under the supervision of Professor Philip W. Jackson.
Throughout his long and illustrious career, Professor Arcilla published three books that have profoundly shaped the field: For the Love of Perfection: Richard Rorty and Liberal Education (Routledge, 1995); Mediumsim: A Philosophical Reconstruction of Modernism for Existential Learning (SUNY 2009); and, most recently, Wim Wenders's Road Movie Philosophy: Education Without Learning (Bloomsbury, 2020). He has also published extensively in our field's leading academic journals, including Educational Theory, Philosophy of Education, and Studies in Philosophy and Education.
Beyond his scholarly achievements, Professor Arcilla has been a dedicated mentor and educator, inspiring generations of students and colleagues with his intellectual generosity, rigorous inquiry, and commitment to conversation. His doctoral graduates include such luminaries in our field as Chris Higgins (1998), Naoko Saito (2000), Duck-Joo Kwak (2001), and Patricia Rohrer (2003).
More recently, Professor Arcilla has become known for his immensely popular undergraduate course, "Learning and the Meaning of Life," which enrolls over one hundred students from across NYU each spring semester. In this course, he introduces students to classics such as Plato’s Meno, Apology, and Phaedo; Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching; Simone de Beauvoir’s Pyrrhus and Cineas; and John Ashbery’s My Philosophy of Life. Over the years, Professor Arcilla has also provided invaluable mentorship by hiring at least twenty of our program’s doctoral students to assist in teaching the course, further extending his impact on future philosophers of education.
Professor Arcilla's contributions to the academic community, both at NYU and beyond, have left a lasting impact on the field. We wish him all the best as he embarks on this next chapter. In retirement, he plans to continue writing books that showcase his distinctive approach to philosophizing about education.