The Education of Humankind: Perfectibility and Discipline in Kant's Lectures Über Pädagogik

Summary

Der Mensch kann nur Mensch werden durch Erziehung. Er ist nichts, als was Erziehung aus ihm macht.

Immanuel Kant, Über Pädagogik

Kant's famous dictum marks an epochal shift in the field of education. Kant expands the function of education far beyond the mere acquisition of practical and social skills into the realm of man-making, putting a tremendous stake on education—and indeed, the Enlightenment itself is at stake when it comes to education. Following Kant, education becomes the tool for humanity to fashion itself. Or more precisely, humanity only exists in as much as it is formed by education. Kant's proclamation is based on an anthropological assertion that both enables and legitimizes the increased emphasis put on education. It presupposes two stages in a person's life: a first, preadulthood, in which a person cannot yet be considered fully human, and a second, adulthood, in which education has fashioned the person into a human being. The emphasis Kant puts on education hinges on the distinction between pre-adulthood and adulthood. Only if pre-adulthood is indeed clearly differentiated from adulthood can the former be thought to determine the latter, can a causal relationship between the two be established. Only if both are truly distinct from each other can pre-adulthood be understood as a developmental period in which the character and identity of the later adult are formed by education. Both axioms, that of educative man-making and that of the differentiation between pre-adulthood and adulthood, inform and structure Kant's lectures on pedagogy and their implicit anthropology.