The subject of education in Jaspers’ thought

Abstract

The subject who the German philosopher refers to must be educated in order to be an active citizen in democratic life, on the basis of the conviction that politics requires a formation with a strong communicative characterization. Our aim is to re-propose in formative terms three central themes of his thought: shipwreck, check and paradigm. It is through these factors characterizing the experience of life, in fact, that the subject encounters the abysmal foundation of being, never reducible to a sum of objective entities. In this going further, man encounters transcendence, an element with which we must deal, in our opinion, even on educational grounds. The Jaspersian image of a horizon that deludes us of its reassuring stability if we are still, but tends to become unattainable if we set off on the road, is an incisive metaphor of our condition to which we must learn to confer existential dignity. The epistemological background is hermeneutical and refers to an interpretative pedagogy; the survey methodology is qualitative.