Human Existence and Education: The Contemporary Value of Marx's Educational Thought

Author: Shu Zhi Ding
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: This neglect makes educational activities an abstracted activity. The term "abstract" means that the value of educational activities is positioned outside of humans, such as Plato seeking ideals and Aristotle discussing goodness and the order of things. Education merely proves the spiritual essence of individuals, proving the role of the highest "truth" factor that transcends human experience essence in human experience essence, thereby defining a supernatural and transcendent spiritual essence for both humans and education. Therefore, the value goals of education should be sought in the mutual relationship between humans and truth. However, in terms of the essence of educational value, it is for human development, as humans are the purpose of humans, and human development is also the essence of educational value goals. Humans are the foundation of the meaning and value world, and meaning and value exist because of humans. Without humans, there is no meaning or value. Humans are not the origin of the objective material world, but they are the origin of the meaning and value world. However, human value and meaning are not concepts described in language; they are formed through social interaction and collective practice. Ancient Greek educational thought did not emphasize this, and the root of this lies in separating humans from knowledge, believing that humans are limited beings, and that limitation is unreal, merely an illusion. Knowledge is what helps humans overcome their limitations and reach infinity. Plato believed that the role of education is not to develop human potential but to impart virtue to humans, because virtue is not inherent in humans. He said there are at least four virtues: The first virtue is wisdom and knowledge, but this is not specific, individual, or pluralistic knowledge; it is rather the universal exploration of the knowledge of ideas. The second virtue is courage, which is the persistence of just and reasonable opinions and the fear of powerful and great things. The third virtue is temperance, which is the control of emotions and desires, becoming one's own master. The fourth virtue is justice, where different types of people can be content with doing what suits them best. Among the four virtues of humans, Plato was most interested in the virtue of justice, but where does the virtue of justice come from? In Plato's concept, justice is clearly not in the objective real world of life; the real world of life is merely a projection that follows the virtue of justice. Therefore, humans need to grasp the virtue of justice through this "projection," and education is to teach the virtue of justice to the people, making them citizens with the virtue of justice. This educational concept, although it appears to value humans very much, in reality, individuals are constrained by the national idea and unified ethics, meaning that only individuals who accept national ethics are citizens and freemen. Individuals must obey the state, and the state is the second nature, habits, and ethics of individuals. There is no higher purpose or interest than the purpose and interest of the state and society. Therefore, through education, the system of collective life, measures, and laws, the freedom and individuality of individuals must be restricted and suppressed. Only through common education can the commonality, common will, common purpose, common ethics, and spirit of dedication of humans be cultivated. Aristotle did not agree with Plato's view on this point. He divided humans into soul and body, with the former further divided into rational and irrational parts. The rational factor in the soul is the higher part, while the irrational is the lower part of the soul, which is the non-rational factor in the soul, i.e., desires and instincts. Therefore, pursuing the nobility of the soul is very reasonable; the goodness of the soul is very reasonable. Aristotle also discussed the relationship between soul and body from the perspective of the relationship between form and matter, believing that the soul is higher than the body and that the body is merely the form of the soul's existence. "According to one view, for example, 'anger' might be recognized as a desire for revenge or something similar; according to another view, anger might be seen as an increase in human blood or heat, the former being the rational view of anger, and the latter being its material view. Just as one person defines a house as something that protects against wind and rain or something else, another person recognizes it as something made of wood and stone; one points out the definition and form (purpose) of the object, while the other points out its material and necessity." Aristotle opposed Plato's abstraction of ideas and the inseparability of soul and body, showing a relatively objective materialist viewpoint. However, he only used the abstract concept of the body as the basis for the soul and did not conclude that matter is the foundation of the soul, so his view that the soul is a form of activity is, compared to Plato's theory of ideas, merely a change in the line of discussion and did not change the nature of the problem being addressed, making it easier to lead to idealism that separates the soul from matter. In summary, the purpose of education depends on the pursuit of the essence of the world, and the essence of the world is defined as a mysterious factor, so the method derived from this is rational abstraction. From this perspective, education has been "deified" as the "god" of human real social existence, deified by universal concepts, making education constrained by the factors of ontological essence, and abstracting the moral mission of education to push the value goals of education to a higher and closer level to "god." Therefore, to break the boundaries of ancient Greek rational educational views, there must be two aspects of reduction: first, reducing the educational process to the real life world of humans; second, reducing the abstract individual to a vivid "existing individual" (Marx's term), i.e., the individual's activities are oriented toward nature, are a real historical process, and are not an abstract or spiritual evolution process. A brief review of the concept of the comprehensive development of humans points out that when studying the comprehensive development of humans, three issues must be addressed: , it is necessary to clarify the cognitive approach that guides the comprehensive development of humans. Education is intended to promote human development, but why should it promote human development? Why can education promote human development? This is the cognitive premise for studying the relationship between education and the comprehensive development of humans. Without solving this cognitive approach, it is impossible to grasp the essence of the issue of the relationship between education and human development in the history of educational thought. Broadly speaking, the history of educational thought has emphasized the significance of education in human development, and three more universal views can be listed: First, education is a means of self-realization. School education should provide knowledge, situations, and means that are helpful for individual development, with the purpose of promoting individual perfection. However, the reason why education becomes a means of individual self-realization is different. Some views establish human development on some mysterious ontological factor, such as water, deities, etc. Other views understand humans from the perspective of moral and aesthetic relationships with society, viewing the moral perfection of humans as the highest goal of comprehensive development. For example, Locke's gentleman ideal is actually based on the image of a virtuous person. In modern technological society, people have seen the distortion and alienation of humans, but they have handed over the weapon to overcome alienation to abstract things like human will, emotions, or ideals, without escaping the limitations of modern naturalistic thinking. Second, the view that education improves cognitive abilities. Advocates of this view believe that education promotes human development, essentially referring to the improvement of human rational abilities and application skills. Moreover, since the educated are young, educational goals can be pre-set and specified, so school educational goals can be decomposed into a complex system composed of various parts, and the mission of the educator lies in controlling these complex processes to ensure that educational activities can achieve predetermined goals. Third, the view that education transforms society. The goal of school education is to promote the socialization of the educated, making them useful members of society rather than those in opposition to society. Therefore, the starting point of educational activities is based on the needs of society, and the task of the educator is to integrate and regulate the needs of society with the individual special needs of the educated. From these views, although the starting points of the views proposed are different, the guiding concept of comprehensive human development has commonalities, and the essence is to pursue the perfection of humans and help the educated achieve the goal of "perfection." Or, these views still believe that "humans are teachable animals." Of course, believing that humans are teachable is not wrong, the problem is the understanding of the "good" goal that education should achieve. It is detached from the real activities of humans and historical conditions, and even leads to abstract standards of good and beauty, which makes it impossible to provide a reasonable explanation for the comprehensive development of humans. Second, the approach to achieving the goal of promoting the comprehensive development of humans insists on the orientation that reason is higher than practice. As mentioned in the discussion above, in ancient Greece, through the Middle Ages to modern times, humans were defined by reason, and the promotion of human development and the realization of the purpose of human perfection depend on reason. In modern thought, the understanding of the role of reason has had breakthroughs. Nietzsche emphasized the will to life; in his thought, the perfection of humans in the early stage was a person intoxicated like a god, in the middle stage was a free person after the death of God, and in the late stage was a superman, and the people in these three periods were unified by the will to power. The will to power determines human development. The will to power has become the driving force for the development of a perfect personality, and the will to power is also different from human instincts, requiring humans to perceive it. It is not difficult to find that Nietzsche's ideal of personality development is subjective and idealistic. After Nietzsche, thinkers have made sharp critiques of the view that humans are rational. In Heidegger's thought, humans are human existence. It can be seen that the discussion of theoretical assumptions about the development and perfection of humans focuses on the essence of humans being rational. Although modern thought criticizes the limitations of this view and indicates human essence as "existence," from the perspective of logical reasoning, it is possible to make human thought free and liberated and to establish human subjectivity by letting humans master knowledge and skills. However, this can only be an ideal and has not seen that human development requires transforming theoretical power into practical power and eliminating the opposition between theory and practice. The views mentioned above only discuss and critique whether humans are rational, but they do not emphasize that humans are real life activities, as Marx said: "A free theoretical spirit becomes practical power." Therefore, "philosophy takes the proletariat as its material weapon, and similarly, the proletariat takes philosophy as its spiritual weapon." Third, precisely because the realistic social basis of the comprehensive development of humans has not been correctly revealed, the reasons for the crisis in human circumstances cannot be correctly explained. The understanding of the modern human situation in modern society, i.e., the understanding of the reasons for the state of alienation between humans and society, is the logical premise for finding ways to overcome alienation. However, the explanation of the formation of the modern human alienated situation often focuses on economic behavior, believing that it is the result of the "commodity logic" (even viewing it as human nature) that humans pursue economic interests. It cannot be denied that commodities and the market economy drive economic interests, but pursuing economic interests does not necessarily mean that humans will become slaves to commodities or money. Marx also used commodities as the object of analysis, revealing the fundamental characteristics of the capitalist social system, pointing out that this social system has led to the disintegration of human subjectivity. "Therefore, after the truth of the other world has disappeared, the task of history is to establish the truth of this world. After the sacred image of human natural alienation has been exposed, the task of history is to establish the truth of this world. After the sacred image of human self-alienation has been exposed, exposing the self-alienation in the non-sacred image has become an urgent task for serving history. Thus, the critique of the heavenly kingdom has become the critique of the earthly world, the critique of religion has become the critique of law, and the critique of theology has become the critique of politics." The problem caused by the lack of a social basis in the thought method revealed by Marx in the "Introduction" advocates and opens up a new thinking space for critiquing the roots of modern society.