Education: anthropological meaning of the concept

Abstract

This article aims to provide a fundamental understanding of the phenomenon of education in the context of its historical evolution and its correspondence to modern challenges. Based on a historical-philosophical analysis, "Bildung" as the central concept for European thought, is identified and explicated. This concept interprets education as a process of the individual's movement towards a cultural "imagegoal". The author proposes to distinguish between two interconnected, yet non-identical realities: education of an individual as an internal process of self-formation aimed at acquiring "image" and organization of the educational process as an external, socially determined activity aimed at creating conditions for the individual's movement. The focus is on revealing "paideia" and "Bildung", prototypes of education, which implies the transformation of a person through the pursuit of an ideal image. The dialectic of the external (cultural patterns) and the internal (self-formation) is considered to be the most important mechanism of the educational process. The article contains a call for returning to education its anthropological meaning, associated with the embodiment of the ideal image in a person.