Education of the person in the 3rd millennium Only in education, in real mutual penetration of minds the spirit comes to its self-confidence, that is why education itself is the completion of a world process, it is a cosmic process. Palouš, R. Colloquial lecture, PedF UK Prague, 2008.
Introduction
The word "education" describes a certain intentional action of one person on another, with a clear and predetermined goal to bring - to open the way to the true human form in the possibility of full breadth of life movement in the concreteness of human individuality. Human form means openness to freedom with the possibility of authenticity and originality. By birth, a person emerges from the primal foundation of the universe into existence (appearance) and becomes an individual. Throughout his life, from birth, he has the right to be authentic, to choose between options and to respond to incoming challenges in an appropriate, good way. The basis of education is the escalation of existence, which is also the ability to face the existential anxiety that accompanies a person throughout his life. Existential anxiety belongs to humanity, it is connected with concern for the world, which in the transferred concept is the concern of a specific person about himself. Education as a lifelong process takes care of the person, but also of the polis (community) and the whole world. A person who is educationally "uncared for" surrenders to limitlessness (apeiron) and self-indulgence. On the contrary, the soul - psyche, which is built into PAIDEIA, is preparing for an upward turn, for the possibility of reflection and self-reflection. Current reflections on the meaning and goals of education lead to thinking about the meaning itself in our specific postmodern era. Human existence is in the claim of realization in a unique and unrepeatable way to carry out life's movement, always with a certain risk of uncertainty. Education, a specific and targeted action, with an overlap of only the present, has the goal of opening a person to "praxis" in the Aristotelian sense - it aims at agathon, good. "Paideia as a movement within a person, a turn, a metamorphosis of humanity, which is expressed by the Platonic term metanoia - conversion, awakening of the soul" (Pelcová, 2001: p.29) keeps the human being in contact with the truth, and precisely with the reference and reflection on the current meaning. The way to fulfill this difficult task is to solve the use of philosophy, which allows a view of the unity of the meaning of the world - to know and consider what is the meaning of the world and life in a timeless meaning.
Our life at the beginning of the 21st century is foreshadowed and fully fulfilled by the statement of the philosopher Nietzsche. We bridge the gap, today's performance is sufficient for today's demands, but tomorrow we demand a little more from ourselves. This is precisely why we have become an instrument of will, and the materialization of ourselves is evident in every moment of life. Our thinking is imaginative, based on Cartesian philosophy with a clear demand "clare et distincte" - for clear and defined.
Being in our imaginations, they are thrown in front of us in the form of objects, having their specific shape, with the possibility of grasping with our hands, with the potential of being owned by our minds. Imagination and possession reduce the existential anxiety that naturally accompanies life in everyday life. We unwittingly submit to a certain formula and according to it we plan the world.
The "more geometric" thinking founded by René Descartes is based on the philosophy of the teachings of Thomas Aquinas, who was based on Aristotle, Aristotle is based on Plato, and he is the intellectual continuation of Socrates, who followed on from the pre-Socratics - and how surprising, even Heraclitus of Ephesus is present in the Cartesian thinking of the postmodern world.
So how is it possible to perceive such a great will to power in all areas of our lives?1 And where is ancient thinking lost or rather obscured in our cultural European tradition? The contemporary person, bearing in mind the concern for the general good (Aréte)2, is required to understand the given contexts and to be aware of the gradual deviation from thinking that was typical of the perception of contexts and the understanding of the whole.
And it is precisely in the field of education that opportunities are offered to make two worlds clear to a person - not only the verifiable - materialized, bringing certainty, but also the world of "thought of thought". A person educated in this way understands the technical and mechanical happenings in the world community, but also understands and is in a relationship with the dignity and respectability of being.
The problem of living today is in the prevailing processual thinking, due to the layout of the world, there is often a lack of unity of opinion, which prevents understanding, confusion and inconsistency increases, which can be metaphorically called "chiaroscuro". Postmodern society is characterized by a plurality of values, and even as a result of many truths, the natural world for man - as a unity and a whole hidden in it, of which he is not only an essential part, but which is understood and present by him, is becoming more and more distant.
In the natural world, man is in harmony with nature, with himself in the whole world. According to Hogenová (2008: p. 134): "This connectedness in simplicity is nothing but a feeling of deep happiness that sometimes happens to us in life. At such a moment we are in deep unity with the whole of the world and our existence is purposeful, we feel that the world accepts us, needs that we belong to it, even if we are not successful, beautiful, young and healthy individuals".
We are born into the space-time of our life - into existence, we perceive the actuality of our life, the presence of time, but at the same time we know about retentions (living past, what was) and also about protension (future, what will be). However, our perception is not punctual, we exist in temporality - a living temporality that functions essentially and also essentially resonates (Hogenová 2011).
I time, thereby we develop our own movement, in the sense of dasein (a phenomenological term), which is not just the development of our own time, it is about the living of appearing beings in the community of the world. Dasein is access to the deepest source of life for every person.
In Heidegger's way, this idea can be approximated by the simile of a tree, which is integrated into the world as a contact of the "quadruple" - a place between Gods and people, a place between heaven (Uranos) and earth (Gaia) - with the possibility of staying in the center of the great cross, where the fiery clash of the world is as described by Heraclitus of Ephesus. With this, man is endowed with a cosmic function, he unites and reconciles the Earth, the world, the gods with himself.**
A poet has a different view of a tree, a mathematician has another, but home is different for everyone. Otherness as a whole without a border, a boundary enables the same, uniform, unifies. It enables Agathon - the good that is realized in the vocation to join the community of the world, binds us and invites us to stay and to move on our life path from birth to the horizon of life, to death.
A person like Homo educandus has responsibility for the overall events in the line of individual - society - the world as a whole because, as the only creature, he knows about his finitude, about the finitude of the time of his life. The time of everything that exists has a beginning, a direction and an end, and thanks to the logo, man understands the responsibility for direction, understands his essential purpose and meaning. The vocation to join the community of the world, the vocation to be human, binds us and invites us to stay on our life's path towards goodness - Agathon. Realization of life itself is in coexistence with other people, things, nature in openness. Accumulation, accumulation, over-measurement and weighing of one's being binds a person and prevents his soul from being at the appropriate level, it is always a question of being in a situation, because human life is a movement, a constant self-creation with the possibility of otherness - otherness for the next time, the age of the world.
And it is Jinost that is closely connected with the issue of education as such. The goal is an open soul, with the possibility of interaction, with the ability to be in the world, to appear in the community of the world - in front of others and with others, in their individual form.
Communicative education allows a person to respond to a being on the level of being - which means being together, not closed in on oneself. In symbolism, it is possible to talk about coming out of the darkness of the cave into the light. According to Palouš (2010: p. 38): "A person born on the threshold of the Platonic cave plunges into darkness or emerges into openness with this very movement." The claim on the "born" is great, the space and actions are enlightening, the responsibility for doing and not doing is binding. However, the whole situation is accompanied by absolute insecurity and existential anxiety, which demands bravery.
The impossibility of a guarantee stems from the uncertainty of every situation in a person's life with a claim to bravery, which is well expressed by the Platonic metaphor of a chariot pulled by two horses, representing lust - epithymia3 and courage - thymos4, which is controlled by the rational component of the soul - logistikon5. If the charioteer is weak, the horses drive the chariot by themselves and the soul cannot get close to the highest idea – to the good, which has the form of fire.
Hogenová (1997: p. 90) adds to this: "For today's fast-paced world, the demand for harmony is a demand for balance, which we can concretize by postulating a peaceful relationship between nations, a friendly relationship between people, justice between people and nature, between people and Gaia - the Earth, the demand for balance touches Buber's reciprocal duality between I and You, Levinas's relationship between us and the heterogeneous, between being and being, between body and soul, between science and art, between reason and faith, between politics and morality".
The goal not only for pedagogues, but also for others in caring professions, is the person and their care. An individual whom we do not perceive dualistically, but in the unity of body and soul, thrown into life by his birth, on his life's journey with an original, unique story of his life. The Cartesian, Galilean paradigm of science anchored in the thinking "more geometrico" created the certainty that the whole world is only here for us, for our use, calculation, control and abuse. We have a feeling of omnipotence to arrange and secure almost everything, only the finitude of our life with its authenticity is terrifying for us. We styled ourselves in the role of the highest decision-maker and we didn't even notice that we were gradually becoming craftsmen. Not by those in the ancient sense of the word techne, but by those that produce "images of images" without essential meaning - without meaning.
The task of pedagogy in the 21st century is the care and life-long stimulation of the movement of the human soul, connected with the unadulterated joy of knowledge, and with true knowledge in the sense of praxis6. The goal is a person, capable in the sense of epimelei7, to take into account the diverse and changing contexts of observed and investigated phenomena. Only then, when education and knowledge become the complexity of preparation for life, is it possible to talk about bringing out the souls of the educated, is it possible to talk about education as such.
The socialization of a person receives a new task and goal - to lead the person being educated on a path where he will not be in captivity of images, where he will return to essential questioning, to the depth and subsurface, will enable the uncovering and emergence of the essential and will find a way to himself and to other people in true essence.
The goal of the education of future teachers is their maximum erudition. However, the educational system, based on the clear requirements of the given and determined correct procedure, solves only part of the whole process. The sign is the sequence of empirically focused processes – a certain and controllable sequence in the spirit of positivist or neo-positivist thinking. Only in this way is the requirement of scientific performance fulfilled, which must be verifiable and also falsifiable. The truth in the form of certainty is confirmed. A calculable probability thus also creates a reality. Reality does not arise, reality is made. In the given concept, however, it was forgotten that a person feels, is under the influence of motivations and emotions, that love and hate cannot be found in any organ of his body as a more precise device, and yet accompanies him throughout his life without the possibility of weighing, measuring, grasping.
In this spirit of measurability, functionality and scientific performance, education is in danger of turning into a company with the goal of competitiveness in business in the sense of "we have to". Is it our goal that a pedagogue goes into practice with his students who, in his great claim to contribute to the good (agathon) of the whole world, will not have the foundational philosophical - transcendental overlaps at his disposal?
The reduction of everything to being is a certain degree of efficiency, the result is overcoming the overcome, i.e. escalating, bridging - thus the value itself is changed, but the responsibility in the true sense of the word remains with the person. Each of us is responsible for ourselves and at the same time for the whole, no one can escape from this asymmetric responsibility.8
Human existence, however, has unrepeatability, which is claimed in specific situations and decisions. Information alone, expertise alone without technical skills in the true sense of the word for these reasonable life decisions, which we are all exposed to in life, is not enough.
The waning of the desire for real knowledge is accompanied by various easy-to-adopt schemes, prefabs that can be replaced by others as needed. Especially in the environment of resocialization pedagogic practices, the pedagogue is confronted with the risk of irreversible changes in his wards and very often discovers downright catastrophic complexities in their temporality (past, here and now, future).
By caring for the student's soul, the teacher also cares for his own soul. The work of a teacher is a great claim to his personality, to authenticity and a claim corresponding to the breadth of life, the spread of human existence in the world. The composure of the soul of the one who provides care to another person is a must. Therefore, you cannot count on repetition of knowledge and skills, you need constant self-education. To set the soul in the right movement and to understand this movement is for the teacher the ability of insight into the essence and self-creation. Only in this way is it possible to rise above its situation and see it as a whole from above. However, a basic requirement must be met here - the soul cannot be embedded in movement and dragged along by it "at the ground". The soul of a person who is able to look over and see the whole is light, creating a circular movement in height. There is a fire in the soul that enlightens the given, and this soul is able to provide enlightenment in the form of fire to the one it cares for.
"The soul always sees itself from the movement that happens to the soul, therefore its capacity for self-knowledge is always false. In order for it to be true, it must emerge from this movement, but again this is possible only through this movement" (Hogenová, 2011: p. 22).
The pedagogical process is the direction of the movement of the soul of the teacher towards the student with the aim of changing the direction of movement of his soul. This requires an impulse, an awakening. In order for the student's soul to be awakened, an activity called investigation must be performed here. Before this act, a self-examining movement of the soul in the teacher is necessary - which does not happen only by accumulating knowledge in the memory, the way to this is in epimeleia - in the care of the soul. Education of this type is based on the conversation of the soul with itself, the impetus for this is the teacher - pedagogue, but often also experience and incalculable coincidence - technical and technical. However, it can never be a test where the answers are pre-checked. The search claim in the true sense of the word is not fulfilled here.
If a teacher takes good care of his soul, he offers this possibility to his students as well. Only such a teacher, equipped with methodology and experience, aware of the contexts of existence and the fact that the overall meaning cannot be calculated, can bring high expertise, humanity and hope to others.
The very phenomenon of hope defies conceptual definitions. Hope manifests itself most in real existential need and despair. Hope also includes disappointment. The profession of pedagogue, especially in the field of resocialization, often reveals the dimension of hope and disappointment at the same time. Hopelessness is intrinsically linked to a person in need, it is indeterminate in direction, but at the same time it has an unchangeable immanent content - the hope of the continued existence of the person-student, but also of the one who gives hope. It is a mutual self-realization in the future, an indefinite, secure renewal. For the student, it is a return to the possibility of realizing his life, his existence to the maximum possible extent in a good way. On the pedagogue's side, it is an offer of dissolution and transformation, empathy is followed by new commitment, self-shaping. Every moment of authentically experiencing their profession shapes the teacher, not only professionally, but also as a person. All this is, among other things, a spiritual level in the concept of education of future pedagogues in the 21st century.
Let's allow ourselves and our students to think thoughtfully.
Conclusion
"It is necessary to live in a significant relationship with the Whole. And this must be learned. For this we need a lift, an upward impetus. Our circles must not crawl on the ground, looking for pleasure and avoiding sorrow. This is what paideia is for. We easily confuse insight into the essence with the decision of our will. That is why it is necessary to be constantly on the alert, not in front of others, but in front of ourselves. That is why concern for the soul is constant guarding." (Hogenová, 2010: p. 231).
Author: PhDr. Helena Kalábová, Ph.D. Literature:
HEIDEGGER, M., 2006. The end of philosophy and the task of thinking. Prague: Oikumené. ISBN 80-7298-166-8. HOGENOVA, A., 1997. Ethics and sport. Prague: FTVS UK. ISBN 382-193-97-17/99. HOGENOVÁ, A., 2010. Jan Hus – truth – phenomenology. Prague: PedF UK. ISBN 978-80-7290-494-5. HOGENOVÁ, A., 2005. To the philosophy of performance. Prague: Eurolex Bohemia. ISBN 80-86861-35-X. HOGENOVÁ, A., KUKLOVÁ, J., 2011. Medium, movement, reality. Prague: PedF UK. ISBN 978-80-902125-8-9. MATOUŠEK, O., KOLÁČKOVÁ, J., KODYMOVÁ, P. 2010. Social work in practice. Prague: Portal. ISBN 978-80-7367-818-0. PALOUŠ, R., 2010. Philosophical reflection. Prague: UK Karolinum. ISBN 978-80-246-1833-3. PALOUŠ, R., 2008. Heretic school. Prague: Oikumené. ISBN 978-80-7298-302-5. PATOČKA, J., 1996. Care of the soul. Prague: Oikumené. ISBN 80-86005-24-0.
1 Claiming performance, the essence of current existence is the will to power, foreshadowed by the modern prophet F. Nietzsche. Power, applied in all areas of human life, shows itself only when it adores - it grows. The company is performance oriented – performance is respected, highly valued and demanded. 2 The term Areté appears for the first time in the Greek written tradition in the 6th century. ex. n. l., mostly mentioned in connection with justice. However, Socrates began to understand this term in a different way, from the 2nd half of 5th century ex. n. l. Areté is related to the idea of Good and refers to a philosophical life orientation. Areté is always a peculiarity for a specific person, it cannot be understood as a universe, the search for the meaning of life and thus the fulfillment of Areté is an effort to find and clarify one's will. 3 Epithymetikon (Επιθυμητικόν) = the instinctive part of the soul, Triebseele, is directed mainly to the fulfillment of a need. The word Epithymia means an inflamed soul, i.e. instinct, desire and passion. In the dialogue Kratylos, Plato indicates that desire (epithymia) is oriented outward from the human heart, therefore it is related to the exercise of power, while erós goes in the opposite direction (ρέω), so erotic desire comes through the eyes. The word Θυμός (thymos), which is at the root of the word epithymia, is often translated as "soul", or mood, in Greek it is related to sudden violent movements in nature, to the movement of boiling water, gusts of wind, volcanic pressures, it has an explosive character. 4 Thymoeides (Θυμοείδει) = emotional part of the soul, Affectseele, temperament, is the basis of influence, self-assertion, energizes, gives courage. In the concept we again see the basis of the word thymos = passion, anger and eidia = special. Thus, thymos here means readiness to enforce one's decision, special anger, especially righteous anger, i.e. courage, but also justice. 5 Logistikon (Λογιστικόν) = rational part of the soul, Vernunftseele, orientation to reason, rationality. Plato divides the soul into three parts: logistikon, epitihymetikon, thymoeides, which are simply referred to as reason, will and emotion. The concept denoting reason can be divided into 1. nous (νους) = thinking and 2. logistikon = rather rational reason, while the difference and harmony of both (sometimes synonymous) terms can be compared to the characteristics of the predominant activities of the left and right cerebral hemispheres. 6 Praxis does not mean only involvement in the ties necessary to maintain and preserve life, it means - above all - the opening of meaning. 7 An ancient currency, it is not a system or a set to transmit information, it is not a goal to instruct the soul to an external intention. In the tradition of Socrates and Plato, it is a call to self-reflection and investigation with the goal of a unified soul, with the possibility of living "from its own source", it is about the internal formation of the soul itself, formation into a whole, with the goal of the soul in the form of a "crystal with fixed edges", care in the sense of epimelei gives the soul a certain form, the possibility of movement in height, perspective. 8 Levinas's responsibility – what if I caused harm with my decision? The idea of Jan Patočka - historical man lives in relation to what transcends the physical.