Vrijeme, slobodno od čega i za što? Polić, Milan; Polić, Rajka
Filozofska istraživanja,
07/2009, Letnik:
29, Številka:
2/114
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
With the development of capitalism free time is more and more the subject of spoken and written
word, and with its commercialization three profitable economy branches have developed:
“entertainment ...industry”, tourism and sport. Capital, meanwhile, identifies free time as time
free from work, or idleness, and only in recent time – when it learnt to make profit out of free
time- time free for learning and creativeness, or as leisure. Difference between idleness, which leans towards consumption, and leisure, which fulfils itself with self-activity, to a great many is still obscure. And that difference is often and purposely concealed meaning to, on one side, commercialize free time more easily and, on the other hand, to quash its socially revolutionary surge. For that purpose is also the concealing of difference between work and self-activity, and the question is asked: are the sport competitions a game or a work? Or precisely: “Does one play football, or does one do football?”
Except for intuitive cognitions by which (self)consciousness is immediately aware of itself as
existing, all other cognitions are mediated in multiple ways. To make this possible in the first
place ...they need to be based on the belief from which even the most modest hypotheses can stem.
Although firm faith or at least some kind of similar belief in the validity of the hypotheses is
the necessary origin of every mental-rational cognition, doubt is the only thing that can lead to
knowledge from those hypotheses. Faith which is not open to doubt and verification is cognitively
futile. Furthermore, it is truth-evasive. Bearing that in mind doubt is that what makes thinking critical and draws the boundary between philosophy as philo-sophia and arrogant dogmatism, pure-sense limitation and ideological falseness. So if mental-rational cognition without faith or at least belief is not possible, the faith which does not respect or which even negates mental-rational cognition is unworthy of living.
Čovjek i kultura Polić, Milan
Filozofska istraživanja,
2008, Letnik:
28, Številka:
1/109
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
As all other living beings, man is partially genetically predisposed, that is, determined even before it completely develops as a human being. However, the thing that differentiates man from all ...other known living beings is the fact that, compared to them, his predisposition is significantly less natured, and significantly more nurtured. This means that humans compared to other living species are less determined on a genetic, and more on a memetic, cultural level. Cultural, meaning a historically spiritualized environment, children are born into and find with birth, is an important factor of their further development. Thus, humans are not born as humans, but as children that have yet to become human. Namely, unlike the beings that have all the important characteristics of their species at birth, which are thus able to develop through breeding, that is, through encouragement of growth and nurturing of what is biologically given, for human development children need raising that will only introduce them into a specific culture as their spiritual – and truly human – environment. The entire human being, including the physical, grows up in a spirit of a specific culture and springs from it. How and how much culture (pre)determines man is the topic of this discussion.
Odgoj i pluralizam Polić, Milan
Filozofska istraživanja,
2006, Letnik:
26, Številka:
1/101
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Since education, unlike manipulation, is possible only as a co-action in freedom, it occurs, and can occur only at the point where educational co-actors’ (i.e. those in mutual educational coacting) ...personalities are being respected and developed. That implies that the education is an action founded in respecting the Other as different, autonomous and free human being. Furthermore, that figures that the education is essentially always an education for pluralism of values, presuppositions, beliefs, thoughts, ways of life that people develop as their very own and through which they manifest their personalities. But, as the co-action in freedom, that respect has to be mutual. Therefore, educating means developing the Other as different, as one that respects his own personality, but also respects Others’ personalities.
»Workers, peasants and intellectuals of honesty« is a phrase which should be fundamentallv, and critically examined in circumstances of general manipulation with people/humans. Its meaning, apart ...from its speaker’s intentions, is far more complicated than we are used to, i.e. faith in unquestionable honesty of workers and peasants, and suspicion in intellectual’s honesty. Namely, in social events, different factors do not participate equally, i.e., while the intentions and honesty of one social group is totally historically acidental and unimportant, the intentions and honesty of the other can essentially influence social events and the course of history. If honesty is an act of personal commitment, then it is possible only in its freedom, somehow already at work.
The question is, therefore, primarily, who is able and then why he/she should be honest?
Because, it doesn’t matter whether people/humans could or should do what they want, but what they are able to want.
Values and knowledge have always defined and interlaced each other regardless of how much we try to ignore or even conceal this. The value neutrality of knowledge is just as illusory as the cognitive ...neutrality of values is; the will to rule has found a firm foothold for the manipulation of spiritually cloven and (self)alienated people in this illusion of the separation of knowledge and values, which has facilitated their absolutisation for thousands of years.
Even though philosophers have been interested in education almost since the inception of philosophy, no difference between education and manipulation was noted until the beginning of the 20th century; moreover, education was reduced to and identified with manipulation. As a rule, education was considered a means of the realisation of a given ‘higher purpose’, which was defined by theoreticians of education according to their own ideological convictions.
However, independently of their mutual ideological differences, pedagogues imparted values and knowledge – more or less authoritatively and as if the two were detached – to children through ‘moral instruction’ on the one hand, and ‘education’ on the other, thus upholding the already created illusion that getting an education does not make people be better, as well as that it is possible to instruct people to be good although they are uneducated. Such ‘educational’ approaches supported authoritarian and traditional relationships, which originally conditioned the approaches themselves.
The institution of civil society and the philosophy of self-consciousness have finally facilitated both the possibility to reflect on education through the concepts of man’s autonomy and personality, and the differentiation of education from manipulation. The increasing need of society for creative individuals in all the spheres, particularly in commerce, has placed philosophy before the task to reflect on the relationship between education and creativity. As a result, people are becoming increasingly aware of the fact that value and knowledge – as constituent elements of education – are inseparable, that they permeate each other, and that the only way that it is possible to support and encourage the development of the personality of students – i.e., their peculiarities, autonomy, freedoms and creativity – is by respecting the unity of value and knowledge in education.
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