The study analyzes the theoretical basis of the Philosophy for Children (P4C) program elaborated by Matthew Lipman. The aim is, firstly, to identify the main philosophical and pedagogical principles of P4C based on American pragmatism, and to locate their pedagogization and possible problems in Lipman’s thinking. Here the discussion is especially targeted to the thinking of John Dewey and George H. Mead as well as Lev Vygotsky, whom Lipman himself names as the most pivotal sources for his own thinking. On (...) the other hand, the study aims at opening up new perspectives and thematizations on P4C from the viewpoint of the continental tradition of thought. The essential principles of P4C connected with reasonableness and judgment are ultimately interpreted as a neo-Aristotelian effort to contextualize philosophy by tracing it back to moderation, the man’s ability to consider and solve problems that he meets in practical life kata ton orthon logon — by doing right things in the right place at the right time in the right way. This phronetic idea of ‘humanizing modernity’ combined with the evolution of the adult-child concept is argued to be one of the conditions for the possibility of P4C, yet leaving unsolved the basic problems involving pedagogical action as such. John Dewey’s ideas arising from the critique of the modern philosophy of consciousness, focusing on the significance of philosophy in practical human life and linked to the basic nature of human knowing and intellectual growth and, further, to the ideal of a democratic community, are shown to form the main intellectual sources of P4C. Dewey’s philosophy as a general theory of education means a solid linking of the concepts of experience and inquiry to the practice of education. This is based on the naturalistic conception of man according to which man is built in dynamic transaction with his environment, experiencing the true meanings of his ideas in the consequences of his actions as he tries to solve problematic situations. So, inquiry as a method of reflective thinking forms the basis for education based on intellectual growth. A condition for it is a context meaningful for the child in which the paradigm of inquiry can be realized authentically. It is therefore important in education to provide circumstances that stimulate the child’s curiosity, initiating a process of inquiry that further enables, through the formation of reflective habits, the development of a democratic community. The purpose of the pedagogical interaction taking place in the process of inquiry is to produce educative experiences for the child, making the pedagogical relationship vanish at the same time. The idea is that in pedagogical action the child’s subjectivity, his desire and impulses are adapted to the tradition, yet generating at the same time a prospective, reflective habit, thus freeing the educatee to think intelligently for himself. The study shows the articulation of these principles in Lipman’s practical effort to convert the classroom into a community of inquiry, but it also argues that the above-mentioned Bildung theoretical core problem of pedagogical action, related to its paradoxical special characteristics to produce autonomous subjectivity, is not thematized. In connection with this issue, the educational thinking of Kant and Hegel is discussed especially from the viewpoint of philosophy teaching. To provide a new perspective for the discussion, the study outlines the community of inquiry as an ‘educative space’ from the viewpoints of the pedagogical relationship typical of hermeneutic pedagogy and of non-reflective functional structures and phenomena based on pedagogical intuition that are linked to it. (shrink)

This article delves into the examination of the similarities and disparities between education and enhancement, with a particular focus on enhancement within the realm of NBIC (Nano-Bio-Information Technology, Cognitive Science). After scrutinizing how proponents of enhancement have delineated the concept of education, our investigation unfolds along two primary dimensions: the anthropological underpinnings of education and enhancement discourse and their respective objectives. Through this analysis, we assert that education and enhancement exhibit distinct characteristics and objectives, defying easy comparison for determining which (...) approach is more conducive to human improvement, notwithstanding their superficially analogous theoretical frameworks and objectives. Furthermore, we aim to highlight the perceptual illusions that blur the demarcation lines between education and enhancement, in order to establish a clear and distinctive role for education amid the plethora of enhancement discourses. (shrink)

This study examines the challenges of humanism and education in the 21st century as addressed by the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk in his Elmau Speech (1999). In this lecture, titled _Rules for the Human Zoo_, Sloterdijk argues that the traditional notion of humanism, specifically “humanism as a literary society,” has reached its conclusion, necessitating the development of a new humanism appropriate for the contemporary era. However, the new concept of humanism emerging from what Sloterdijk terms the “anthropotechnic turn” appears to (...) align with the discourses surrounding human enhancement that have emerged in the 21st century, thereby influencing the realm of education. The first half of this article reports on the significant concerns and criticisms expressed by the media at that time regarding this new humanism, which seems to be associated with eugenicist ideas. Taking a step further, this study critically examines the nature of the challenges around education implied by Sloterdijk, specifically the conflict between “friend of humans and friend of Übermensch”, and explores the potential roles and responsibilities of education in the latter part of the paper. (shrink)

The article illustrates a particular existential-phenomenological view of the emotion of fear and its connection to self-educative process of grasping the world and gaining self-knowledge. According to this view, originally promoted by Martin Heidegger and in educational philosophy Otto Friedrich Bollnow , fear is closely connected to a specific understanding of 'unconcealment', or 'disclosure' of truths. In the article it is shown, that this understanding sheds special educational insights on the connection between fear and gaining knowledge.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines fulfilment as ‘satisfaction or happiness as a result of fully developing one's potential or realizing one's aspirations; self-fulfillment’. Not only has the idea of fulfilment underpinned ‘approximately twenty centuries of philosophy’ as Lefebvre notes, it plays an indispensable role in both popular and scholarly accounts of education and upbringing. Experiences of education, of upbringing and of ‘life lessons’, however, are so often not about the fulfilment of oneself, about the discovery and actualisation of one's full (...) potential. Such experiences instead involve moments of sometimes irreparable failure and loss—a matter that has not received a great deal of attention in educational research and theory. After briefly examining the way that fulfilment is favourably framed both in humanistic psychology and in neo-humanist Bildungstheorie, this paper considers some of the exceptions to the nearly ubiquitous identification of education with fulfilment: Arthur Schopenhauer's view of the irrationality of human (developmental) experience and Ludwig Wittgenstein's use of the term ‘conditioning’ (Abrichtung) in some of his accounts of learning and socialisation. We then focus on failure and loss in education through an overview of the pedagogical theory of O.F. Bollnow. Bollnow, as is gradually being recognised in English-language scholarship, saw moments of uncertainty, disorientation and above all crisis as indispensable in educational experience—for both student and teacher. In this way, we show that instead of being the pursuit of self-fulfilment, education is unavoidably a matter of difficulty, disruption and also failure. It reshapes us, and this reshaping can be seen as being as much about formation as it is about deformation. (shrink)

Whereas present theories of transformative learning tend to focus on the rational and reflective actor, in this article it is suggested that spontaneous action may play a decisive role in transformative learning too. In the spontaneity of action, novelty finds its way into life, gains momentum, is respected by others and reflected by the actor. Such transformation processes are investigated both with the means of theoretical reflection and of empirical inquiry. Based on nine narrative interviews typical phases of transformative learning (...) processes are identified. Owing to the comparative nature of the study, it was also possible to develop an age‐related typology that overlaps certain phases of the transformation process. These empirical findings constitute the background against which the nexus of spontaneous action and transformative learning is reflected theoretically. Theories drawn upon include John Dewey's Pragmatism and George Herbert Mead's Social Pragmatism. Both scholars provide rich theoretical concepts for reflecting on the nature of that what so often eludes from the control of both educators and learners: the spontaneity of the beginning. (shrink)

Nothing reveals the differences between an internal (i.e., inherently pedagogical) reflection on educational processes and an external (i.e., derived from a philosophical, sociological, psychological, theological or other perspective) more clearly than the differing attitudes towards alienation. Looked at from outside a pedagogical context, alienation appears only negative, deserving nothing but contempt and rejection; examined from inside a pedagogical framework, it proves to be a conditio sine qua non, the process through which transformative education is possible. This article juxtaposes both perspectives (...) in order to defend the conviction that within educational reflections, only an inherently pedagogical, i.e., positive, understanding of alienation is persuasive, whereas other approaches by definition either are outside of pedagogical reflections or belong to a kind of metaphysical thinking that nowadays seems rather outdated. This paper forms part of a Special Issue titled ‘Beyond Virtue and Vice: Education for a Darker Age’, in which the editors invited authors to engage in exercises of ‘transvaluation’. Certain apparently settled educational concepts (from agency and fulfilment to alienation and ignorance) can be radically reinterpreted such that virtues can be seen as vices, and vices as virtues. The editors encouraged authors to employ polemics and some occasional exaggeration to revalue the educational values that are too readily accepted within contemporary educational discourses. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

This study examines German educational philosopher Otto Friedrich Bollnow’s (1903–1991) existential-hermeneutic theory of discontinuous forms of education, unstetige formen der Erziehung. At the core of this theory is a view of human being subjected to education that appears disruptive and critical, influencing the development of disclosing the true powers of a person and unfolding of truths about oneself that could not be uncovered otherwise. Typically, this theory has been interpreted on the continuum of hermeneutic philosophy, as hermeneutic pedagogy with an (...) extension of Martin Heidegger’s fundamental ontology, antisubjectivism and especially his theory of truth as unconcealment. According to this line of interpretation, Bollnow’s project brings an existential addition to classical pedagogical theories, as a level of appealing pedagogy. According to this existentialist view, education in a strict sense cannot really take place: it could not affect the true core of a person, nor this person could be subjected under any pedagogical influence in any meaningful way. The only task left for education is to appeal to the conscience of an already autonomous person. However, in this study it is claimed that this line of interpretation falls short to the fact that Bollnow’s philosophy of education builds heavily on his overall philosophical-anthropological project, which springs from Kant’s first critique and especially, as shown in this work, from Edmund Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. The study shows, that Bollnow’s discontinuous forms of education are not resulted from hermeneutic educational reality, with an extension of existential potentiality to authenticity of a person. In fact, one could not derive such a view from mere hermeneutics. Instead, what Bollnow’s structural view of educational reality indicates, is that it should be understood as a phenomenological description of a priori categorical structures. It is claimed in the work, that the discontinuous forms are the products of phenomenological reduction. They are derived from the direct experience within consciousness, from the essence of what is experienced, from the very nature of what is it like to be in a process of becoming human. From this perspective, from the subject-point, education cannot be described as a paradox of freedom and restriction between educator and educatee, nor transmission of culture between generations, but instead could be described as the subjective experience of being educated or educating oneself, disclosing oneself to oneself, which is constituted only by the necessary conditions of these subjective experiences of discontinuity. (shrink)

This paper considers the issue of alterity in education, first defining the question of the "other" or the "foreign" as it appears in a number of educational discourses and contexts. The paper then presents two different, historically-localizable aspects of the pedagogical encounter with foreignness or otherness. Both of these are associated with periods that have an important place in German cultural and intellectual history. The first is the transition from the middle ages to the early-modern period, the time of John (...) Amos Comenius' Orbis Sensualium Pictus. Despite the achievements of this particular work as an encyclopedic and pedagogical introduction to the "visible world," it presents a rather deleterious treatment of the foreign in its contemporaneous manifestation in Northern Europe. The second historical period is the 19th century, and what is of principle concern here is the treatment of the foreign in grand, synthetic neo-humanistic theories of time. While the processes of dialectical assimilation and integration to which the foreign or other was subjected in these theories were not as explicit or overt as in preceding periods, they are still comparable in terms of their ultimate effect. This paper concludes by considering two 20th century articulations of education or Bildung in which the irreducible presence of the foreign or other in human development is explicitly acknowledged and affirmed, and the issue of its respect and recouperation is directly addressed, sometimes with significant and valuable consequences for pedagogy. (shrink)