Harmonia, Scientia, Economia - Three Motifs in the Western Philosophy of Education

Abstract

Education is a dynamic matter. Its movement is related to the movement of human thinking. As one thinks, one also acts, even educationally. In this paper we will understand didactics as a discipline that asks ‘how’ and the philosophy of education as a discipline that asks ‘why’. The task of didactics and its related disciplines is to refl ect the methodology of human formation. The philosophy of education forces pedagogy to think about why it does what it does. What is the goal? What is the point? We will focus on three historical ideological movements, respectively meta-narrative shifts that determined (and still determine) the form of contemporary philosophy of education. The purpose of this brief study is to outline the historical and philosophical contexts in order to understand our present pedagogical reality of the Western world. We will compare the ideological starting points of pre-modern, modern, and post-modern times and follow their educational implications. The goal of the paper is to argue for the holistic ‘educatio’ formulated by J. A. Comenius.