Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: 2 Formen der Philosophie im 3. Sinn: in d. englisch-sprachigen Welt u. in Deutschland: naturwissenschaftliche Orientierung u. Historizismus

Kurzinhalt: Unterschied in der säkularistischen Tradition zwischen Frankreich, England u. USA und Deutschland; säkularistische Philosophie führt zu einer säkularistischen Erziehung

Textausschnitt: 20/1 Philosophy in this third sense has taken two main forms: naturalism in the English-speaking world and to a large extent in France, and historicism in Germany. For the naturalists, the model of science and of all human knowledge is natural science. Specifically at the time of the Enlightenment, it was Newton's mechanics. Later the evolutionary doctrine of Darwin would replace this model. But historicism differs fundamentally from both. Here the human spirit is to be distinguished from nature. The basic category is not mechanical nor evolutionary law, but meaning. Meaning is the vehicle that brings men together, that guides their enterprises, that provides the field in which the human spirit develops and human freedom is exercised. There is a radical difference, then, between secularist thought in the German tradition and secularist thought in France, England, and the United States.
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21/1 Secularist philosophy, of course, led spontaneously to a secularist education. If the basis of human life is human reason and human freedom and nothing else, if we are to have in 'Western man' a fundamental affirmation of human dignity as the basis of the whole of human life and society, then education simply has to be secularist. It is not quite consistent, of course, that it also be state-controlled. After all, state control is just the opposite of human freedom, since it sets up a machine. State control seems