The individual in the context of modern education: a philosophical view

The article focuses on the little-studied interrelationship between the human way of being and education. The goal of the study is twofold. First, it is to reconstruct the image of the individual that lies at the basis of the scholars’ worldview. Secondly, it is to develop a model of philosophy that would correspond to this image and correlate with the problems and challenges of modern education. Drawing attention to the widespread use of information and electronic technologies in education, the author argues that the model of human being as embodied presence (embodiment) is very important for pedagogical activities. The significance of this model is that it enables to distinguish the meaning-making dimension of human consciousness so needed by contemporary education. The author demonstrates that an individual sees and cognizes the world not so much with the organs that are available and ready, but rather with those that are constituted in the acts of reflexing. Meaning, therefore, is the reflexive functional organ that reproduces the substance of the personality of a human being as a student. The author also notes that the perception and comprehension of the world is carried out from the perspectives of both the “pure” and the embodied mind. Thus, one of the main tasks of education is to engage and reveal the mind-body system as a source of the subject’s meaning-making activity. So, orienting education towards the individual as a being who does not possess meanings but searches for them will succeed only if the human being is viewed as an integral whole rather than as separate parts. The author concludes that both philosophy and pedagogy need to develop educational anthropology, an interdisciplinary area that would explore the subject of education in the integrity of their three dimensions - mind, body and language, taken as sources of creating meanings.