Community versus society: The normative vision of sociality in joint self-education

In this theoretical essay, I argue that the normative sociality – i.e., a normative way of being together – for joint self-education is society based on pluralism and tolerance of culturally and educationally diverse communities and individual educatees, their synergy, voluntary participation, and acceptance of the final sovereignty of their educational decision-making. I rejected a widespread proposal that community (e.g., “community of learners”) should be the vision of this norm for such educational sociality. At the same time, I accept that an empirical community can be a very important part of a normative notion of society as applied to joint self-education. Balancing between communal, often centripetal, and societal, often centrifugal, processes is often necessary for maintaining a successful joint self-education endeavor.