Karl Jaspers

Karl Jaspers brings the existentialist commitment to education in a particularly clear form. A German psychiatrist who moved to philosophy, banned from teaching under the Nazis, he wrote some of the twentieth century’s most serious work on what education actually is and what schools and universities are for. The chapter works through his account of education as helping the individual come into their own, the three recurrent forms of education from scholastic drill to Socratic dialogue, his picture of the school and the university, and his commitment to education as the foundation of democratic life.

Who Jaspers Was

From medicine to psychology to philosophy, the Nazi banishment, and the existentialist commitment to freedom that shaped his work

Defining Education

Helping the individual come into their own in a spirit of freedom, the place of love and authority, and the role of moral content

Three Recurrent Forms of Education

Scholastic education, education by a master, and Socratic education, the three patterns that recur across history with different consequences

Aims of Education and the Total Human Being

The three modes of man, the integration of individuality with social structure, and the maieutic method of bringing latent ideas into clear consciousness

Teachers and Schools

The guiding hand of the educator, lifelong self-education, why only researchers can really teach, and the primary school’s foundational role

The University and Democracy

The university as the intellectual conscience of an era, the indivisible whole of research and teaching, and education as the foundation of democratic freedom