Kant on Moral Education, or "Enlightenment" and the Liberal Arts

Abstract

THE ONLY THING NECESSARY IS NOT THEORETICAL LEARNING, but Bildung of human beings, both in regard to their talents and their character. Kant's epigrammatic observation in his 1778 letter to Christian Wolke, director of Philanthropin, (1) adumbrates not only his mature sense of enlightenment but also pedagogical role of his critical philosophy and his own life's work. Over a decade earlier, his reading of Rousseau's Emile: or, On Education had set him straight about what constitutes true dignity of namely, that it did not consist in advance of knowledge by scholarly inquiry as he had believed. The primary thing was, instead, restoration of rights of humanity, an objective articulated in Kant's mature moral thought as that pedagogical method which facilitates self-consciousness and efficacy of moral law in individual. In another 1778 letter, this time to his former student, Marcus Herz, Kant states that main purpose of his academic life, which he all times keeps before him, is to cultivate good characters. In both his lectures on anthropology and on pedagogy, Kant repeatedly emphasizes need for education and, by extension, for attending to education of educator. Human beings are nothing save what education makes of them, but they can only be educated by other human beings who themselves first be (2) As early as his 1775/ 76 anthropology lectures, Kant observes that teachers and priests were educated, if concepts of pure morality would prevail among them, then ... whole could afterwards be educated. (3) The resulting task is clear: it is incumbent on every generation to work on plan of a more purposive education, a task Kant describes as greatest and most difficult problem that can be assigned to humankind. (4) That Kant understood his critical philosophy to be in service to that task may be gleaned from statements he makes within it. In Doctrine of Method of Critique of Pure Reason, Kant expresses concern about the youth entrusted to academic as being central to critical challenge to dogmatism, stating that exactly opposite to usual dogmatic procedure must take place in academic training, but of course only on presupposition of a thorough instruction in critique of pure reason. (5) In Doctrine of Method of Critique of Practical Reason--a text whose own purpose is to point out most general maxims of doctrine of method of a moral education (Bildung) and exercise (6)--Kant makes one of his most explicit claims for pedagogical function of critical philosophy as such, declaring remedy for error of still crude, unpracticed judgment to be critical philosophy as required for cultivation of reason, a to be mastered precisely by those who would take upon themselves a pedagogical role in relation to others: a science (critically sought and methodically instituted), a narrow gate leading to a doctrine of wisdom, when by this is understood not merely what one ought to do, but what ought to serve teachers as a guideline in order that they may clearly and capably pave path to wisdom which everyone should follow and keep others from going astray. Philosophy at all times preserve this science. (7) Not only has pedagogical role and character of critical philosophy gone widely unnoticed; to extent Kant's concern with education (and moral education in particular) is recognized, it is held to be in conflict with his formal moral philosophy. (8) Moreover, however lamentable editors of Philosophen als Padagogen find it to be, Kant is commonly accorded no place among classical pedagogical thinkers. (9) The purpose of this essay is to argue for systematic incorporation of a pedagogical role in critical philosophy, namely, in form of Doctrines of Method (Methodenlehren, literally ways of instruction, from roots methodus and doctrina) with which Kant concludes each of his major works: Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, Critique of Judgment--both reflective aesthetic and teleological judgments--and Metaphysics of Morals: Metaphysical Principles of Virtue. …