Autonomie und Erziehung. Eine ethische Studie

• Within a modern legitimacy paradigm of moral education, autonomy has traditionally been ascribed a legitimating function in relation to moral education. Moral education is thought to be legitimate as long as it is conceptualized and practised as aiming towards autonomy. The normative relation arising between autonomy and moral education is thereby expressed in the pedagogical paradox, based on a pedagogical principle which assumes that freedom restraining pedagogical actions can facilitate autonomy as an aspect of moral maturity. Ethically, the pedagogical paradox is expressed by an understanding of temporal restrictions of freedom as justified by an overarching goal of autonomy. Hence, beyond the assumption of a causal pedagogical relation, there is also a statement of a normative relation between autonomy and moral education. This dissertation investigates the normative relation between autonomy and moral education, as it is established within the modern legitimacy paradigm of moral education, but challenged by concepts of autonomy which understand autonomy, not as opposed to dependence, but within dependencies of various kinds. This task contains two interrelated questions: Can the legitimacy of moral education be based on autonomy as an educational goal? And in what sense is autonomy a legitimate educational goal? A clarification of the premises of the modern legitimacy paradigm of moral education renders its basic assumption of compensating opposition as problematic. Following a characterisation of autonomy as an extensive and blurred pedagogical goal and a description of moral education as situations characterized by mutual dependencies, a coherence oriented justification model is suggested. It advocates legitimacy as constituted in an orientation towards a coherent relation between pedagogically articulated claims and philosophically articulated ideals of moral education. Moral education is described from an ethical perspective in terms of two constituting claims: asymmetry and direction. These two claims are, based on findings from childhood research, further identified as adequate claims, insofar as they are understood, in turn, as dialectic and risky. The claims of dialectic asymmetry and risky direction are then related to various concepts of autonomy. This results in a concept of autonomy as a competent way of dealing with inter-subjective and intra-subjective dependence. Aspects, such as mutual respect and cooperation, search for meaning and trust, and a balance between slowness and spontaneity, are identified as essential for a concept of autonomy coherent with adequate claims of moral education. The application of a coherence oriented justification model turns autonomy as an educational goal into an ideal within which moral education is taking place, rather than a remote goal towards which education is striving. While the pedagogical paradox is depicted as an irrelevant basis for a legitimate normative relation between autonomy and moral education, any pedagogical claims concerning autonomy as an educational ideal must be very modest.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Filosofi, etik och religion (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Philosophy, Ethics and Religion (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Moral Education

Autonomy

Relational Autonomy

Childhood

Inter-Subjectivity

Dependence

Ethics

Pedagogical Paradox

Authenticity

Generation

autonomy

Ethics

Publikations- och innehållstyp

dok (ämneskategori)

vet (ämneskategori)