Blackwell Reference Online

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Three passages from Kant's lectures on pedagogy are repeatedly cited in the literature (especially European) on the nature and status of education, both as an institution and as a discipline: his call to transform the mechanism in the art of education into a science, his assertion that human beings can only become human beings through education, and his exhortation to educate, not for a present state of affairs, but for a future possible improved human condition, in accordance with the idea of humanity and its entire destiny ( Ak , 9, pp. 447, 443). Yet the same literature, to this date, frequently expresses skepticism not only about the successful establishment thus far of such a “science of education” ( Erziehungswissenschaft ), but in general as to whether and in what sense pedagogy can even be understood as a science. Moreover, when one turns to the writings of Kant and Hegel, beyond the publication of Kant's lecture notes (On Pedagogy ) just one year before his death, neither produced a philosophical treatise devoted explicitly to the topic of pedagogical science. The first problematic, then, in exploring their relevance for the “rise of pedagogical science,” is to locate Kant (1724–1804) and Hegel (1770–1831), both as historical figures and as philosophical thinkers making significant contributions to this subject, in relation to the emergence of a call for such a science ... log in or subscribe to read full text