Original scientific paper

ETHICAL ESTABLISHMENT OF LIBERALISM AND LIBERAL EDUCATION

Vladimir Vujčić ; Faculty of Political Sciences, Zagreb

Abstract

This paper discusses the need for establishing in terms of ethics
the liberal concept of education and Iiberalism. The work enters
the mutually opposed debates about the possibility of combining
(reconciling) liberalism and universalia (the concept of common
good). Thus, for example, while J. Rawls maintains that the liberal
state concept cannot be ethically established, due to the fact that
justice cannot be explained by any universal moral structure, J.Raz
emphasises exactly the opposite, that the objective of all political
activity is to enable individuals to follow proper concepts of good.
A lack of the ethical concept of freedom of will, without which the
autonomy of the individual cannot be realized - namely, the liberal
concept of society, produces nothing but the testing of freedom,
which usually results in all kinds of arbitrariness and violence over
others. The same can be said of the the liberal concept of
education. Without being founded on values, the liberal education
only puts to test the possibilities of "genetic determinism". The
latter is a biologistic approach to education, which reduces the
goal of education to the mere growth of an individual, to
development as simply an instinctual self-actualization. Such a
concept of education is losing sight of the possibility of educating
an individual as a citizen. In the term citizen, rnan's individual and
social essence have been brought together. The environmental
crisis has revealed the importance of the citizen and the need for
educating the individual as such. Whereas, one cannot even
imagine the education of the citizen without universalia or the
concept of common good.

Keywords

Hrčak ID:

32785

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/32785

Publication date:

1.1.1993.

Article data in other languages: croatian german

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