戦争と教育
フーコーからプラトンへ
2005 年 2005 巻 92 号 p. 1-21
詳細
2005 年 2005 巻 92 号 p. 1-21
The aim of this article is to show the hidden relationship between war and education in the history of Western thought.
In the first chapter we examine and evaluate a thesis developed by Michel Foucault in his lecture at Collège de France, Il faut défendre la société, originally held in 1976 but first published in 1997. According to this thesis, the idea of the struggle between opposing 'nations' or 'societies' within a country, such as between the Normans and the Saxons in England or between the Francs and the Gauls in France played an important role in the formation of modern political and historical thought including Nazism and Stalinism. This thesis can have strong impact to our understanding of modern education.
In the second chapter we examine the classical theory of education represented by Plato's paideia and show the crucial role played by war in this theory. For it is only by comparing the soul with a state (polis) divided by the strife between different classes, that Plato was capable of developing his theory of the inner self. The result is of special interest, because Foucault himself viewed Plato as the arch-enemy of the 'historicism' which stand on the side of the above-mentioned modern theory of war.
Thus, it is not only in the modern educational thought but also in the classical theory of paideia that war played an important role.
