Education in the Context of European Culture: Rationalism, Pragmatism, and the Outlines of Future Ethics

The article discusses education as a phenomenon of European culture. The author argues that education (having emerged as a product of the Western civilization and representing the deep foundations of the European style of thinking) becomes inalienable component of European culture and largely determines its development trends. Thus, education traditionally was an important component of religious culture, despite that the methodological rationalism of scholasticism came into conflict with the postulation of the fundamental non-objectivity of God. Teaching theology as an academic discipline considered as a form of the comprehension of God. Since education turns out to be one of the basic elements of European culture, that form of education, which dominates in a particular period of history, plays a determinative role in the development of various cultural phenomena. This is demonstrated by the example of ethics and morality. Thus, the interpretation of education as studying leads to the formation of deductive thinking, which, when applied to the sphere of morality, presupposes the submission of specific situations under the learned universal rules of standardized moral code. In contrast, modern moral consciousness understands moral choice as creative modeling of behavior in specific situations, idiographically understood as unique. This is possible only on the basis of the reception of deep general human values, which means the connection between the modern type of morality and education. Therefore, education should include not only studying (which is now understood as training of technologies for obtaining knowledge rather than the accumulation of knowledge itself) but also cultivation of personality, and the latter should be in focus.

transfer of historical experience, training, education, upbringing, values, post-metaphysical thinking, ethics of code, ethics of creativity

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