SELF-KNOWLEDGEMENT IN EDUCATION: THE ETHICAL DIMENSION

Abstract

The article reveals the ethical dimension of self-knowledge in the educational process, while the concept of «self-knowledge» is taken as an important category of philosophical and educational discourse. The means of achieving the set goal is theoretical dialectics in its classical version, expressed through the necessary categorical connections. Thus, it is understood as logic and theory of knowledge, brought to ethics, aesthetics, and thereby to thinking pedagogy. The article substantiates the idea that within the framework of new pedagogical thinking, all education can be revealed as a process of self-knowledge of both participants in pedagogical interaction. Self-knowledge is then interpreted not as some kind of introspection, not as poking around in oneself. Self-knowledge then appears as recognition of oneself in the world, which, in turn, is revealed as culture, as something that is addressed to us. The world of man, of human relations becomes a mirror of myself, and such a mirror is not clouded by my desire for self-affirmation, nor by my arrogance, conceit. The main thing in self-knowledge is not to “know oneself”, but to recognize oneself. In the article, education is understood as the real nourishment of the soul with the spirit, while contrasting the usual concept of “socialization”, which, in our opinion, misleads both theoretical and practical pedagogy, with the successful and profound concept of “co-existential educational community”, within which education as such takes place, since it is here that communication as co-existence simultaneously acts as an event in itself, and not something abstract, indifferent, functional. At the same time, the ethical dimension is interpreted not simply as a «component part» or «direction of education», as it is usually interpreted within the framework of old, traditional pedagogical thinking, but as the very essence of education of the spirit, education in truth, which is especially clearly revealed when considering the philosophical and educational content of the phenomenon of conscience. In order to develop the educational process precisely as self-knowledge, it is necessary to reorganize it on the principles of new pedagogical thinking, accordingly, a completely different pedagogy. And then the moral tasks of education can be adequately fulfilled.