? As a mirror of modernization transformation, China is facing the great challenge of seeking a new spiritual realm for the new generation. Jaspers, a German existentialist philosopher, pointed out through reflection on the history of our country: "Education is a generation. Education is the education of human soul. Its goal is to cultivate the whole person. " Jaspers believes that education can cultivate and produce a new generation through cultural education, relying on the necessary atmosphere of education and communication, adopting Socratic educational methods, making limited educational plans and improving educational content. He further pointed out that the real condition of education reform is not money, but the return to human education itself. Undoubtedly, his brilliant educational thought has great enlightenment and reference significance for China to further promote educational reform and formulate new educational plans.
Keywords Jaspers? A generation? Freedom? education
First, survival and transcendence: Jaspers' philosophy.
[1] Jaspers, as an existentialist philosopher with the widest vision in the 20th century, constructed his own ontological thought by paying equal attention to reason and existence. His view on education directly reflects his existential philosophy. He first raised and answered the question of what is human. He believes that man is a kind of free existence, a kind of "existence" as a spirit, and a kind of power beyond subject and individual. As the possibility of freedom, life is the process of people's inner experience of "God (the perfect state of people)". In this process, people's mission is constantly generated and surpassed, thus achieving the result of "integration with God". Through continuous "transcendence" and internal and external identification, people connect the individual spirit with the overall spirit of the external world, and finally achieve "all-inclusive, or complete", that is, "existence" itself. Aristotle emphasized the significance of personal freedom and people's free choice to life. In his view, the existence or non-existence of freedom cannot be proved by empirical knowledge and inevitable scientific knowledge, nor can it be formulated in advance as the result of educational plan. Only by transcending "self", engaging in dialogue and communication with "God" and following "actions consistent with God's preset reasonable purpose" can people obtain real freedom. It is based on his philosophical view of "existence, freedom and transcendence" that Aristotle appeals for the significance of people's survival belief and freedom, promotes people's subjective value and initiative, and forms the basis of Aristotle's existential educational thought, which is embodied in his educational book "What is education? [2]
Second, the awakening of soul and the generation of freedom: Jaspers' educational view.
? 1. The essence of education: "Education is generation"
Different scholars have made different explanations on this issue according to different theories. In the field of educational theory, there are two completely different views on the essence of education: "making people" and "adults". Jaspers also answered this question based on his existential philosophy. He believes that man is the subject, and human freedom and transcendence are the basis of human existence. Human existence is an open state presented through self-reflection, and it is generated in history through human existence and communication. Therefore, Jaspers holds the "adult theory".
He said: "The so-called education is nothing more than the spiritual exchange between people (especially between the older generation and the younger generation), including the imparting of knowledge content, the understanding of life connotation and the norms of will and behavior. Through the cultural transmission function, the cultural heritage will be passed on to the younger generation, allowing them to freely generate and enlighten their free nature. " [6] Education is "an activity in which people's spirit is integrated and culture can be transmitted", an art to make the educated "realize" and a way to promote the educated to consciously "generate". Education is a generation. The so-called generation means that every educated person can actively and maximally exert his natural potential, so that his "inner spirituality and possibility" can be fully developed. In a word, education is the education of human soul, not the accumulation of rational knowledge and cognition. [3]
It can be seen that Jaspers pays more attention to "people" and is a subjective person. He criticized the phenomenon of ignoring people (referring to students) and suppressing people in real education, and called for educational reform, claiming that "people can't achieve the goal of educational innovation only by money, and the return of people is the real condition for educational reform." [3]
2. Educational purpose: to cultivate "the whole person"
Existentialism holds that the world is an all-encompassing "Umgreifende". People are open and bright, and people can communicate with others through their own sense of freedom, and in this process, they can realize the unity of themselves and encyclopedias and gain a real sense of existence. The "complete works" referred to by Jaspers is the most perfect pursuit of human self-development and world development, and it is the highest totality in the historical form. [4] A real person is an "Umgreifende", a combination of entity, general consciousness, spirit and life form, and a "complete person" with perfect development in all aspects.
In his view, the purpose of education is not to cultivate people with certain skills, abilities and consciousness, but to cultivate "all-round" people or "all-round" people. He called it a "cultured man". "The so-called educated person is a person who is cultivated according to the ideals of a certain era, where ideology, activities, values, ways of speaking and ability form a whole and become his second nature." [3]
For individuals, "whole person" is a goal to be pursued and a process to be gradually realized. In this limited process of understanding, everyone can transcend infinity and gradually approach "the whole person" through conscious efforts rather than external coercion. In the final analysis, the achievement of the educational goal of "whole person" is the process of individual "self-realization" or "self-transcendence".
3. Educational process: "spiritual exchange"
Communication is the main category of Jaspers' philosophy. He believes that the communication between people is the dialogue and openness between the two sides (you and me), and it is the core and necessary cultural environment of human history and culture. "Any behavior that interrupts the dialogue between me and you will shrink mankind. Therefore, education without communicative spirit will become artificial training and control, which will hinder the development of students' subjectivity and the generation of freedom. From the perspective of communication theory, Jaspers summarized the educational process into three points:
(1) Education is a process of free communication between teachers and students. He believes that everyone is free, but individual freedom can only be realized in the interaction with others and in the free contact with others. With this kind of communication, "people can learn about others and history as well as themselves and reality through education, and will not become tools of others' will". [3] It can be seen that education, as a process of communication, has no authority and center, which reflects the equal relationship between teachers and students.
(2) Education is a comprehensive spiritual growth process. "The education process is first a process of spiritual growth, and then it becomes a part of the process of scientific knowledge". [3] This "spirit is the whole of intellectual thinking, activities and emotions", which Jaspers called "the whole spirit". He believes that realistic education puts students in a passive position and mechanically instills them as containers, which is not conducive to the growth of students' overall spirit. It is only a tool to train others' will and a social machine, but it can't cultivate real people. Education is not only the process of people's all-round spiritual growth, but also the process of people's unified development of knowledge, emotion and meaning.
(3) Education is a process of individual self-education and self-realization. Like all existentialists, Jaspers attaches importance to people as individuals. In education, he attaches great importance to students' self-education. I have always believed that real education is self-education. [3] The mission of educators is to guide the educated to embark on the road of self-education. "The process of education is to let the educated practice, learn in practice and grow themselves ...", [3] "Don't force uniformity". [3] In practice, he asked his students to "don't follow me, follow yourself".
4. The way of education: "Socrates education"
Jaspers' view of educational model is based on his theory of existential communication. As far as education itself is concerned, education can be divided into three basic types: scholastic education, mentoring education and Socrates education. What the three have in common is that students need to be in awe of the absolute truth and the guide to seek truth-the teacher. The difference between the three is that the scholastic education requires that "people should put their thoughts in a conceptual system that can live and annihilate their distinctive personality" [3] that is, they are in awe of the education system; The center of mentoring education is the teacher, who is the symbol of knowledge and authority. Students can only passively obey their teachers and give up their responsibilities. Students are personally afraid of masters. In Socrates' education, students' awe is manifested in their infinite exploration of the spirit. In the process of this exploration, every student should bravely shoulder the responsibility of transcending his own existence, rather than shifting the responsibility to the teacher.
Jaspers highly praised Socrates' educational thought, believing that this kind of education is suitable for the cultivation of "whole person". He actively advocated this form of education. His exposition of Socrates' education can be summarized as four points: ① In the process of education, teachers and students are equal participants, without authority and center; Both teachers and students should think freely, talk and argue sincerely, and there is no phenomenon of submission and attachment; Teachers do not rely on forced indoctrination, but in the form of irony, let students realize their own shortcomings, and then awaken their inherent potential automatic power, so that they can "find themselves in the endless process of exploration." [3] This kind of education is not to impart truth knowledge, but to explore and discover truth. "The knower does not drive away the ignorant casually, but makes teachers and students seek truth together"; [3] (4) For students, because this kind of education relies on their own efforts to gradually understand the truth and explore morality, their education is not only to increase knowledge, but more importantly, the overall spirit of students is growing.
5. Educational content: "Thinking about guiding the origin"
Based on the transcendental theory of existentialism, Jaspers put forward his view of educational content. He pointed out: "The key to all education is to choose the perfect educational content, and strive to make students' thinking not go astray, but to guide the source of things. " [2]
He believes that there are three levels of human spiritual development, namely, the understanding of the world (the universe), the experience of the living self and the understanding of God. If an individual wants to realize himself and become a perfect person, he must realize three transcendences: transcending the phenomenal world, transcending the existential self and transcending the spiritual self. To achieve these three transcendences, we must receive education in three aspects: science education, philosophy education and religion education. Jaspers' holistic education refers to the unity of these three aspects of education, and the choice of school education content should also be based on this.
But at the same time, he believes that the truth consciousness and spiritual tradition contained in educational content will not simply exist in the directness of individual life, but more is to re-train and grow people in a certain era. This requires a return to the edifying world. But he further pointed out that it was the beginning of his bad luck to transform the classical era into edifying the world, because it conveyed the seriousness and humanitarian passion that that era should bear; If edification is not for people to acquire the ability of self-realization, but only for superficial understanding or knowledge learning, this edification will not become the light source of its own possibilities. Therefore, we should look at the classical world with a critical eye and throw away the wrong edifying world, so as not to fall into the predicament of edifying.
6. The role of education: huge and limited.
Jaspers attaches great importance to the role of education. From the perspective of personal contact with society, he believes that "education becomes the hope of all mankind in the mind of a single individual, and the development of all people is based on the development of personal education", and "every premise of social progress requires everyone to be educated, so that they can educate themselves. ..... an upright person, he will also be an upright citizen. " [3] From a social point of view, "education determines the future survival of mankind, and the decline of education means the decline of mankind". "Educational failure is the beginning of the influence on the future". Therefore, "in the long run, ignoring education has a greater response than any other factor." So "whoever wins young people will have a future".
However, because education is an extremely serious and complicated activity, it is influenced by many problems such as the limitations of planning and the transmission of truth, and it has become a human activity that cannot clearly grasp the results. And from the individual's point of view, "it is impossible for a completely ignorant and uneducated person to clearly show him what he knows." "A person must receive strict training step by step, and after decades of growth, he can become a person." [3] Therefore, the role of education is limited.
Therefore, Jaspers called on the state to attach great importance to the development of education. He said, "If a wise politician is essentially a great educator, if he tries his best to act according to his educational ability and is willing to spend several times more money at present, then he may rely on the revival of a new generation, or he may lay the foundation for the future in this era of destruction." The country should "spend money on a future that is 1000 times more important than national defense education". [3] Jaspers' understanding of the role of education and his idea of attaching importance to education have certain enlightening significance.
Third, the book "What is Education"
What is education is one of the representative works of Jaspers' existentialist educational thought, which has a wide influence. Based on existential epistemology, this book points out that education is the education of human soul, and the essence of educational activities is the inheritance of culture and the free exchange of spirit from the existential philosophical concepts of "survival, encyclopedia, freedom, communication, history and transcendence". The purpose of education is to realize self-generation. In order to achieve this goal, Jaspers advocated cultural education, put forward his own curriculum thought that emphasized tradition but combined with modernity, and expressed his main views on teachers, thus giving concrete content to existential education thought.
However, it is not difficult to find that its existentialism is very strong. The irrational characteristics of existentialism philosophy, the mystery of idealism and the tendency of individualism are all highlighted in its main educational views. This is not only the limitation of his own educational thought, but also the limitation of the educational thought of the whole existentialist school. In addition, his educational thought has obvious elitism tendency, showing a certain degree of contempt for popular culture and criticizing the student union organization for being too extreme.
But in any case, Jaspers discussed the most basic question of "what is education" from the question of where the human spirit should go in the social and historical transformation. He always regards the unity of the whole human spirit and individual existence as his educational pursuit, and there is a deep humanistic feeling between the lines. His series of important educational thoughts have important enlightenment and reference significance for promoting China's current educational reform and formulating new educational plans.
? References:
1, by [Germany] Jaspers, Autobiography of Jaspers (translated by Wang Liquan). Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 1989: 1 18.
2, Hu Bingxian. Education is Generation —— Interpretation of Jaspers' What is Education [J]. Coal Higher Education, 2007 (1): 4
3. [Germany] Jaspers. What is education (translated by Zou Jin) [M]. Shanghai: Sanlian Bookstore, 199 1: 2 ~ 4, 7, 9, 1 1, 30, 34, 47, 565438.
4, week,. Anthropological Interpretation of Jaspers' Outlook on Existence [J]. Academic Exchange, 2006( 1)
5.[ Germany] Herbart, General Education (translated by Li Qilong) [M]. Beijing: People's Education Press,1989.3, 190.