I wish to continue my little journey what hopefully takes us to Conductive Education at the end. I mentioned Plessner.
Helmuth Plessner known as a representative of philosophical anthropology in addition to Arnold Gehlen and Max Scheler – who actually was his opponent. Plessner distinguished the three forms of organization of life.
Plants: are openly organized, they have no central institutions. Animals: are centrally organized, they live from a heart out. Humans: are eccentric, they have reflexive relationship to their life, reflexive self awareness. He analyzes the organization of humans as a double aspect: body and bodyguard.
Why Plessner? Because I believe that his philosophy helped, led us (the thinkers of the 19th and 20th century) to find the way towards to the basis of modern thinking of human and thereby, the basis of modern thinking of education. He understood as a philosophical anthropologist the unity of inner and outer of human, he initiated phenomenology and he introduced - opposite to Scheler - that the person is not “value determined” being but a “value neutral” being which is going to be something (!) else during his/her actions, confrontation with the world. He explained that our self-interpretation as human being should be taken as “tabula rasa”, thus “open question”.
Additionally, I wish to draw attention to two other thinkers because they were contemporary, because they both were personal anthropologists and because I have personal attachment to them. In fact, I find very important Martin Buber’s interpreted thoughts in his “Ich und Du” ( I and Thou) where we can learn about the synthetic thesis of dialogical existence what is also basis of the transformative thinking. The other transformer is Victor Frankl, who as a Holocaust survivor introduced logotherapy which is a form of existential analysis, expresses positive thinking and changing for the patients.
Of course, I can not mention everybody who I should here (because it is still a blog), but we must understand the “Zietgeist” (German), the spirit of the time that also prevailed Andras Peto alongside many others to think towards “holism”.
This time was characterized by “an explosive development of science and technology. The era of automation and cybernetics had begun. The rise of nuclear and quantum physics led to radical revolutionary change. Biology, chemistry and medicine also began to make rapid progress. Revolutionary elements emerged in political thinking. Socialism, Marxism and also anarchism grew into sizeable movements. In a similar manner to the changes in science, a search also began in arts and literature for new forms of expression. Expressionism at this time represented a reaction to the old, outdated bourgeois norms and the naive belief in progress. The catastrophes brought about by the First World War, the destruction of humanity, were only too evident and too recent. Expressionists (for example painters/artists Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Munch and Otto Dix) were trying to create a new vision of the human being, one determined by social responsibility and compassion for others. Creative art was seen as evolving out of immediate inner experiencing and emotional dynamics.” (R. Wulf 1996)
Helmuth Plessner known as a representative of philosophical anthropology in addition to Arnold Gehlen and Max Scheler – who actually was his opponent. Plessner distinguished the three forms of organization of life.
Plants: are openly organized, they have no central institutions. Animals: are centrally organized, they live from a heart out. Humans: are eccentric, they have reflexive relationship to their life, reflexive self awareness. He analyzes the organization of humans as a double aspect: body and bodyguard.
Why Plessner? Because I believe that his philosophy helped, led us (the thinkers of the 19th and 20th century) to find the way towards to the basis of modern thinking of human and thereby, the basis of modern thinking of education. He understood as a philosophical anthropologist the unity of inner and outer of human, he initiated phenomenology and he introduced - opposite to Scheler - that the person is not “value determined” being but a “value neutral” being which is going to be something (!) else during his/her actions, confrontation with the world. He explained that our self-interpretation as human being should be taken as “tabula rasa”, thus “open question”.
Additionally, I wish to draw attention to two other thinkers because they were contemporary, because they both were personal anthropologists and because I have personal attachment to them. In fact, I find very important Martin Buber’s interpreted thoughts in his “Ich und Du” ( I and Thou) where we can learn about the synthetic thesis of dialogical existence what is also basis of the transformative thinking. The other transformer is Victor Frankl, who as a Holocaust survivor introduced logotherapy which is a form of existential analysis, expresses positive thinking and changing for the patients.
Of course, I can not mention everybody who I should here (because it is still a blog), but we must understand the “Zietgeist” (German), the spirit of the time that also prevailed Andras Peto alongside many others to think towards “holism”.
This time was characterized by “an explosive development of science and technology. The era of automation and cybernetics had begun. The rise of nuclear and quantum physics led to radical revolutionary change. Biology, chemistry and medicine also began to make rapid progress. Revolutionary elements emerged in political thinking. Socialism, Marxism and also anarchism grew into sizeable movements. In a similar manner to the changes in science, a search also began in arts and literature for new forms of expression. Expressionism at this time represented a reaction to the old, outdated bourgeois norms and the naive belief in progress. The catastrophes brought about by the First World War, the destruction of humanity, were only too evident and too recent. Expressionists (for example painters/artists Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Munch and Otto Dix) were trying to create a new vision of the human being, one determined by social responsibility and compassion for others. Creative art was seen as evolving out of immediate inner experiencing and emotional dynamics.” (R. Wulf 1996)
Franz Brentano’s student Christian von Ehrenfels (1859 – 1932) elucidated the Gestalt philosophy. The whole is more than its parts together. He published “Über die Gestaltqualitaten” already in 1890 and his followers like Max von Wertheimer (1880-1943),Wolfgang Köhler (1887-1967) and Kurt Koffka (1886-1941) expressed that the relation of things is the important. To take things apart is worsen the dynamic sense of the whole. Especially Köhler pointed out that learning is not a passive, mechanic but a dinamic and active process. Furthermore, ’admiting’ plays a very important role of learning. Gestalt philosophy is a phylosophy what coused directly a therapy, namely Gestalt theraphy. Fritz Perls (1893 – 1970) and followers, neuro-psychologists stressed the united, coherent work of the body and underlined that the personality is also coherent. They strongly believed that results of measuring parts of the psyche did not inform us about the whole verity about the measured person.
About Gestalt therapy I shell open a short post later because it seems to have a lot of similarity with CE.
Notes
More information
about Plessner: www.de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmuth_Plessner
about Buber: http://www.mythosandlogos.com/?buber.html
about Frankl: www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wiktor_frankl
about Gestalt: http://www.gestalt.org/
about Plessner: www.de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmuth_Plessner
about Buber: http://www.mythosandlogos.com/?buber.html
about Frankl: www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wiktor_frankl
about Gestalt: http://www.gestalt.org/
and other sources:
Hári M. Összehasonlító Konduktív Pedagógia, MPANNI, Budapest 1998
Schaffhauser F. A nevelés alanyi feltételei, Telosz Kiadó, Budapest, 2000
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