Bildung As Transition From Potentiality To Actuality And The Discovery Of What Blocks Human Flourishing.

Author(s):

Cristian Simoni(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

13. Philosophy of Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

13 SES 05 B, Education and Transition

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-09

11:00-12:30

Room:

330. [Main]

Chair:

Gonzalo Jover

Contribution

The starting questions of my present research, concerning the anthropological implications in education, are twofold: first, is it possible to rethink education as involving the promotion of inner forces, Bildungskräfte, according to a Martin’s Buber expression, in order to let the young person pass from a potentiality to the actuality in his proper human praxis (in the Aristotelian sense). The other question linked to the former one is the following: can we intercept within today’s mentality, strongly influenced by economical competition and technical thinking, approaches that block instead of allowing the young generation to transition to better, genuine human conditions? The general thesis that I propose is that if we trespass the boundaries imposed by an education oriented to the societal-economical requests, if we no longer take into educational account the adaptation of the young person to market competition, we will able to reach once again a concept of Bildung deriving primary from the urgency to promote the precultural human forces, as Buber says. These, I have recognized in my research after reading Aristotle, Edith Stein and Paul Ricouer, are primarily the intellect, the will, the imagination and the power-to-act. These forces are seen as the sort of basement for the flourishing of human nature and predisposition to a moral education, not only to a professional one. Therefore, responding to the second part of my question-research, I think that the anthropological theoretical framework is indispensable but not the last thing to do: discovering the so called human forces that are manifested in some human actualities as the power to think more complexly, to speak, create and act responsibly implies the connection to the preoccupation whether in our educational actions it is really possible to promote them or not. Are they blocked as an electrical shielding paralyses the electromagnetic force? It follows that a philosophy of education with critical intention needs first, in my opinion, to continue researching what is genuinely human in order to distinguish it from the economical, the technical and the societal but secondly needs to analyse whether inside the diverse educational processes these actualizing forces are respected. This double theoretical exertion is really a sort of conceiving educating a person as a transition: from what she can express, humanly speaking, to the real actualization that passes through the unblocking action of the educators.

I synthesized this way to conceive the theoretical duty in first discovering the pure human characteristics concerning education and, then, in telling how this is blocked or shielded (in order to be unblocked and unshielded): antropocritica, reporting the Italian word that I chose. I try to transliterate it -not to translate yet- in English in: ‘anthropocritic’. That is: the critic of educational processes, actions, institutional choices through the acknowledgement of the given or not given possibility of flourishing of personal actualization of the young generation. Young people that do not think, speak, create, and act responsibly are considered not actualized, in other terms, blocked or shielded, not in transition from potentiality to actuality. Consequently, to the starting anthropological framework, that is, the ancient discussion over potentially and actuality, I need to add strong arguments against the widespread current cultural perspective. In intercepting what blocks, rather than lets flourish, I can really steer myself towards for example the classical analysis by Horkheimer and Adorno about consumer society, the overwhelming technical mentality exposed by Anders, through the false imaginaries create by mass media as Baudrillard argued, without forgetting, at the end, Chomsky’s lessons about the condition of our free thinking.

Method

I have mentioned ancient Aristotelian categories, even if I have read and accepted some echoes of them in phenomenology-influenced philosophers, such as Edith Stein and Paul Ricouer, I try to restart thinking from the anthropological suggestions of the Greek philosopher. In both contemporary philosopher I appreciated the preference to start arguing from the question of actuality, as key-element in order to justify the concept of potentiality too. This conception involves the fundamental perception of being alive, from which both thinkers assume the faculty of a person, who, as a human being, is thereby considered an agent, able to say to himself: “I can”, in the sense that I can do something not only in the poietic but in the sense of praxis of the Nicomachean Ethics. To be alive means to actualize, and every potentiality Stein says is “phenomenically maintained by actuality”. There are some kinds of truth that are to be recognized immediately such as this one, she argues, but this evidence is not empirical, rather it has to do with a particular kind of experience. Ricoeur too speaks of this initial recognition of my existence, following “I am” we have “I think” or “I can”, for example, be the agent of my responsible action. At the end of his masterwork “Oneself as Another” he relaunches the question of ontology with the same Aristotelian argument of potency and actuality but in a new sense: now the act is correlated to an ontology based on the agency of the self, which is polysemous and the discourse over potentiality can justify the fact of the changing of a human being’s praxis. I therefore listened to Ricoeur’s phenomenology-hermeneutical lesson and I considered Stein’s arguments too when she appears to me not so far from Ricouer’s arguments or when I think she offers deeper explications about some topics. Stein says that human powers are intellect and will too. But, at the end, I return to reconsider the whole classical Aristotelian metaphysics and ethics as a complete paradigm to start and to launch my critical arguments. So, starting from an expression by Buber (I assume only one term not his theoretical framework) I arrive at a better comprehension of the concept of Bildungskraft as the innate power to give birth to what Ricouer and Stein call human actualities. Educating is therefore to let the pupil become an actualizer of his potentialities.

Expected Outcomes

If the action of the educator helps the pupil to better think, create or acquire a responsible behaviour towards the other, we can say it has respected the anthropological duty of education. If not, we have to suppose and avoid the blocking and shielding processes that comes not only from the educator himself, but also from cultural processes such as the technical-instrumental paradigm that affects schools, educators and education in general. The results expected are supposed to show that education has almost become today production and adaptation, and that the better human characteristics, for example, in a skill or competence based didactics, are not promoted. The final aim is to show that we are not really educating, letting the person grow his form, Bildung. With the intellectual attestation of the existence or not of specific educational actualities, probably, we will be able to see why a competent young person lacks the ability to think autonomously, lacks imagination and lacks a sense of responsibility towards others. The synchronic discovery of anthropological issues and human dimidiating cultural processes could become more powerful arguments in order to justify the changing of our educational actions and educational policies. Last remark: I think that a ‘transitional’ philosophy of education has to do with a meta-reflection over the educational discourse if it respects the unquestionable reality that education is directed to humans and not to the machine, not to the profit of someone else; it is an activity, speaking in Aristotelian words, that has its ends inside itself, not a functionalizing product. The ‘anthopocritic’ investigates theoretically the blocking elements that seek to enter as pitfalls into education, and intercepts the shielding at works in schools, mass media, families and so on.

References

Adorno Theodor W., Minima Moralia.Reflections from Damaged Life, trans. E. F. N. Jephcott, NLB, London 1974 (1951). Adorno Theodor W., Theorie der Halbbildung, Suhrkampf, Berlin 2006. Anscombe G. E. M., Intention, Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge (USA) 2000 (1957). Aristotle, Metaphysics, University Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 1960-2003. Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2009. Aristotle, The Eudemian Ethics, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2011. Baudrillard Jean, Simulacra and Simulation, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 1995. Buber Martin, Reden über Erziehung,Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2000. Chomsky Noam, Problems of Knowledge and Freedom, Pantheon Books, New York 1971. Chomsky Noam, Democracy and Education, Routledge Falmer, New York 2003. Colby Mark, The Epistemological Foundations of Practical Reason, in «Inquiry: An Interdiscipli-nary Journal of Philosophy», vol. 42, No. 1, 2010. Dunne Joseph, Back to the rough ground. Phronesis and Techne in Modern Philosophy and in Aristotle, Notre Dame Press, London 1993. Horkheimer Max, Adorno Theodor W., Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, trans. E. Jephcott,G. Schmid Noerr, Stanford University Press, Stanford 2002 (1947). Horkheimer Max, Eclipse of Reason, Continuum Press, London 2004 (1947). Hoveid Honerød Marit, A space for ‘who’ – a culture of ‘two’:speculations related to an ‘in-between knowledge’, in «Ethics and Education», 2012, Vol. 7, N. 3. Kristjánsson Kristján, There is Something About Aristotle:The Pros and Cons of Aristotelianism in Contemporary Moral Education, in « Journal of Philosophy of Education», Vol. 48, N. 1, 2014. MacIntyre Alasdair, After virtue, Bloomsbury, London 2007. Maritain Jacques, Distinguer pour unir ou Les degrés du savoir, Descleé de Brouwer, Paris 1932-1959. Maritain Jacques, Pour une philosophie de l’éducation, Saint-Paul, Paris 1988. Reid Luis Arnaud, Philosophy and Education, Random House, New York, 1962. Ricouer Paul, Oneself as another, trans. Kathleen Blamey, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1992 (1990). Ricouer Paul, From Text to Action. Essays in Hermeneutics II, trans. Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson, Northwestern University Press, Evanston 1991 (1986). Ricouer Paul, The Course of Recognition, trans. David Pellauer, Harvard University Press, Cambridge 2005 (2004). Ricouer Paul, Être, essense et substance chez Platon et Aristote: cours professé à l'université de Strasbourg en 1953–1954, Paris: Seuil, 2011 Stein Edith, Potency and Act. Studies Toward a Philosophy of Being, ICS, Washington 2009. Stein Edith, La struttura della persona umana, tr. M, D'Ambra, Città Nuova, Roma 2000. [Italian edition of some lectures on education]

Author Information

Cristian Simoni (presenting / submitting)

University of Padua

Fisppa

Ferrara

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