Umberto Margiotta and the study of Kant: Between history, morality and education

Abstract

Umberto Margiotta published his extensive research on the famous German thinker (more than 300 pages) in 1974, highlighting not only a profound knowledge of the subject but also, more generally, of the German culture of the time. The most interesting thing, however, is the originality of the treatment that identifies the human being at the center of a dialectic nature-culture in which history marks the evolutionary passages of education. Education that does not offer certainty, but rather involves risky choices. More generally, the focus on the theme of history in relation to education is the core of an investigation project that identifies in the philosophy of education the symbolic interpretation of individual feeling within the horizon of history. Hence, the conviction in the German philosopher that in the universal historical process there is a single end worthy of our specific nature. Kant is a philosopher of the Enlightenment, but, Margiotta points out, in some way he transcends its perspective precisely in pedagogical reflections. Thus, emerges an idea of education that, by its moral, religious and political implications, connotes a restless Modernity, between development needs and conservative resistance. This article wants to highlight the specific analysis that a young Umberto Margiotta offers us of Kant’s work. In this very refined analysis we see the first vital ferments of his pedagogical theory.