On Education (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

By Immanuel Kant and Sarah Cunningham

"[T]he rule of education is the chief end whereby man is formed under civilization." - Immanuel Kant

On Education (1803) is a collection of Kants lectures on physical and practical education, pedagogy, and moral culture, and it is the only work in which Kants views on education are presented comprehensively. On Education introduces us to the practical implications of Kants theoretical philosophy and instructs us on how to tame and cultivate the excellence in human nature. Fast-moving and engaging, On Education is highly readable and reminds us that Kants pedagogical mission included his interest in "teaching [his students] how to live, by recommending a certain way of life."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Sep 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781411431058

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher and is known as one of the foremost thinkers of Enlightenment. He is widely recognized for his contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW EDITION

IMMANUEL Kant (1724-1804) may be the most revolutionary philosophical figure of modern philosophy. This new edition of On Education (1803) is a collection of Kant’s lectures on physical and practical education, pedagogy, and moral culture, and it is the only work in which Kant’s views on education are presented comprehensively. While Kant’s Critiques are probably his most influential works, On Education introduces us to the practical implications of his theoretical philosophy. This primer instructs us on how to tame and cultivate the excellence in human nature, while simultaneously providing a glimpse into the sophisticated theories detailed in Kant’s scientific, religious, and philosophical works. In a 1784-5 lecture on ethics, Kant explains the rule of education is the chief end whereby man is formed under civilization. On Education presents Kant’s rules of education, depicting how a person should be formed so that he or she might maintain a balance between discipline and freedom. And, while Kant’s writings on philosophy of mind, ethics, and aesthetics can be slow and arduous reading, On Education captures the sense of Kant’s public lectures: like an entertaining conversation. Fast-moving and engaging, On Education is highly readable and reminds us that Kant’s pedagogical mission included his interest in teaching [his students] how to live, by recommending a certain way of life.

Immanuel Kant was born on April 22, 1724, in Königsberg, where he spent the entirety of his life, passing away on February 12, 1804. Following a stint as a tutor, Kant began teaching in Königsberg in 1755. He attracted a number of students who would go on to become significant authors in their own right. While changing worldviews sometimes challenged these friendships, Kant’s students were indebted to his model: as a teacher, philosopher, and generous human being. After Kant finished his lectures, he would invite his students on walks where they would continue to discuss numerous topics. As Manfred Kuehn documents in Kant: A Biography, Kant’s most enthusiastic student, J. G. Herder (1744-1803), provides an elaborate explanation of the thirty-eight year old lecturer:

[Kant] had the most cheerful sprightliness of a youth . . . his open brow, made for thinking, was the seat of clarity; and the most profound and pleasant speech came from his eloquent mouth. Jest, wit, and caprice were in his command - but always at the right time so that everyone laughed. . . . He spoke about his author, thought on his own, and often beyond the author. During the three years I listened daily to his lectures I never noticed the smallest trace of arrogance.

More objectively, Hamann notes, Kant is a man who loves the truth as much as the tactfulness of good society. According to his students, Kant remained an endearing, sociable figure with an elegantly powerful yet humble intellect. Kant’s Berlin readers explain: Kant has here [in Berlin] uncommon credit . . . [he] has the gift to present the most abstract philosophical truths in the simplest way and to make them distinct for everyone. . . . Thus, Kant’s knack for communication distinguishes him from the stereotype of the dry, antisocial philosopher solely absorbed in texts and arguments. Indeed, he urged his students to contemplate beauty in addition to engaging in philosophical debate.

As Kant grew older, it was more and more difficult for him to continue the publication schedule he enjoyed in his younger years, during his critical period. Between 1781 and 1798, Kant produced forty-one works including several revised editions of his more influential works. This is remarkable for, in 1789, Kant’s associates began to remark on the diminishing capacity for his intellectual endeavors. The most famous works, a series of studies about understanding, morality, and beauty and theology, are presented as three critiques. They are The Critique of Pure Reason, The Critique of Practical Reason, and The Critique of Judgment. Respectively, they deal with the concept of nature, the concept of freedom, and the mediation of both, in and through judgment. Kant’s last major publication, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, returns to the subjects of the earlier critiques: the cognitive power, the feeling of pleasure and displeasure and the power of desire, by examining the empirical manifestation of these human characteristics. And while Kant was loathe to be labeled a psychologist in relation to his critiques, this later work is often considered an empirical psychology as it addresses reason’s distorted states, such as madness.

The later work, On Education (1803), was published as Kant’s own faculties were rapidly failing. During this period, Kant no longer exclusively constructed his published writings. Instead, his work was comprised of collected papers and lectures that he had passed on to trusted colleagues. Friedrich Theodor Rink, a former student of Kant’s, came to edit two works, On Education (1803) and Physical Geography (1802). In an earlier work, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime (1764), Kant spoke mysteriously about education. A fan of Rousseau (1712-1778), Kant wrote Observations soon after reading Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile — a work depicting the proper education of a young man. Kant’s early work on aesthetics concludes by beginning to project his view of education: a tool to dissuade us from false glitter and deception while instilling us with lively sensitivity. Kant writes:

Nothing now is more to be desired than that the false glitter, which so easily deceives, should not remove us unawares from noble simplicity; but especially that the as yet undiscovered secret of education be rescued from the old illusions, in order early to elevate the moral feeling in the breast of every young world-citizen to a lively sensitivity, so that all delicacy of feeling may not amount to merely the fleeting and idle enjoyment of judging, with more or less taste, what goes on around us.

Such passages reflect Kant’s rather idealistic desire to see the active intellect heightened by a moral responsiveness and a finely tuned perception of the elegance and order within both the natural world and the world of human creation. Later, Kant’s more developed ideas on education emerged in his lectures on ethics and, occasionally, in his work on aesthetics. The notes of Georg Ludwig Collins, a student of Kant’s 1784-5 ethics lectures, allow us to see that Kant’s views on education are intrinsically bound to ideas of ethics and theology. He documents: Education and religion should therefore be set out to instill an immediate abhorrence of evil in actions, and an immediate delight in their morality.

In his writings Kant sought, as depicted in Logic , to respond to four questions concerning human existence. Kant’s desire to address these questions separately, in distinct works, reflects a highly systematic style and a will to explore every detail of each question before moving on to the next. The questions Kant posed were:

1. ) What can I know?

2. ) What ought I to do?

3. ) What may I hope?

4. ) What is man?

While these questions reflect Kant’s ability to engage with multiple disciplines of inquiry (not excluding his studies in physics and geography), his interrogatory approach also sheds light on his critical method. With the critical method, Kant demanded that philosophers examine the limitations of reason’s activities while keeping these questions in mind. Philosophy, especially metaphysics, had long been burdened with unanswerable questions. However, Kant explains, instead of recognizing the impossibility of answering certain questions, our reason has urged us to provide answers which overstep all possible empirical employment, and which yet seem so unobjectionable that even ordinary consciousness readily accepts them. As a result, however, Kant explains human reason precipitates itself into darkness and contradictions. So begins The Critique of Pure Reason:

Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions that, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer.

This singular observation would lead Kant to discover new, original answers to the four questions of human existence.

As the spirit of the Enlightenment swept