Bildung und Humanität?

Education and humanity? An argument against belief in progress
Humanistic education and the European enlightenment have set the standards for values for self-determination, liberation from domination and cosmopolitanism that are still valid today. These ideals must be remembered time and again, the author argues, even if they were initially conceived exclusively for men. Above all, the simultaneous development of the modern economic model must be remembered, a model whose goal was emancipation through monetarization, growth and acceleration and whose destructive consequences are apparent today: Quantity (instead of quality, individuality), measurability (statistical violence) and the thought structure of logic (lack of contradictions, logic of subsumption), as the author shows, have become necessary conditions for a productivity that has become successful globally. According to this logic, the individual is more functional than (existing) social constellations. Yet how is self-defence possible for a devalued “complete” human being? How can self-reflection and criticism of the system find their place, their “collective autonomy”? Places and times for opposition and alternatives to the predominant, purely intrinsic belief in progress do not seem to be intended, which is why the author finds that an education that undermines and an enlightenment that reflects its contradictions are even more urgently required. (Ed.)