Lecture: Denkerinnen der Aufklärung - Ein erweiterter Blick auf die Neuzeit (Women thinkers of the Enlightenment - A broader view of the modern era)

„Every being may become virtuous by the exercise of its own reason“ (Mary Wollstonecraft)
 

The demand for equal rights for women did not prevail anywhere in Europe during the Enlightenment. Rather, during the Enlightenment, the traditional questions were discussed again and again: Can women think? Do women have a soul? What rights should be granted to women? 
In this age of the emancipation of the individual, women were denied any self-determination - even over their own bodies. Their functionalisation as servants of men (J.J. Rousseau) barely allows them to be heard as independent subjects. 
To this day, only a male view of educational postulates is part of the canon of pedagogical theory and practice in modern times. The lecture aims to rethink the Enlightenment period and ask questions such as: Why is J.J. Rousseau a classic of pedagogy today, but Mary Wollstonecraft, a vehement critic of Rousseau, as good as forgotten? 

Seminar and excursion: Frauen und Macht. Bologna (Women and power. Bologna) 

„Wir haben kein Modell für das Erscheinungsbild einer mächtigen Frau, außer dass sie ziemlich männlich aussieht.“ (Mary, Beard 2021, S. 57) 

With Women & Power: A Manifesto, the British classical scholar Mary Beard has produced an extremely erudite and critical book on the relationship between women and power. She illustrates how powerful women have been treated and viewed throughout history, from Medusa and Athena to Angela Merkel. And shows how women have been and continue to be prevented from gaining power. In our seminar, we would like to shed light on the background to the different ways in which men and women deal with power (knowledge, competence, authority), as well as current social developments. We will follow Beard's appeal and take her ideas further in order to bring about comprehensive change.

Colloquium: Theoretical work - BA/MA Colloquium

Lecture: Unsichtbare(s) sichtbar machen – Klassikerinnen der Pädagogik (Making the Invisible Visible - Female Classics of Pedagogy)

"Have you any notion of how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men?" (Virginia Woolf: A Room of One's Own, Eastford; 1929/2012, p. 23)
Virginia Woolf's questions are more relevant than ever. The majority of pedagogical texts in the history of pedagogy have been written by male authors, in the teaching of a clearly defined canon. The underrepresentation of women in the classical canon is not due to a lack of literature. There are a variety of women authors who have written works on pedagogical theory and practice. This lecture presents and classifies the lives and works of selected women from the early modern period to the present. This provides a special look at the history of pedagogy and the history of science in general. In particular, the position of women in research and teaching in the various eras is addressed and placed in historical context. The committed question of the inclusion of women is always also a political statement: female thinkers in pedagogy often defended a concept of generality that encompassed all genders. The lecture addresses the question of how a discipline that can be described as female according to its current personnel line-up and its historical connotation was able to establish an almost exclusively male canon. On the other hand, it is meant to be an impulse to change this by giving a stage to the pedagogical thinking of female authors of the last centuries.

Seminar: Liebe - Grundmotiv menschlicher Existenz (Love - basic motive of human existence)

"Liebe ist nur möglich, wenn sich zwei Menschen aus der Mitte ihrer Existenz heraus miteinander verbinden, wenn also jeder sich selbst aus der Mitte seiner Existenz heraus erlebt." (Fromm, E.: Die Kunst des Liebens, 2006, S. 119)

Thinking about different forms of love is one of the core elements of practical philosophy since antiquity. In different living conditions and versatile contexts love, like nothing else human, means exclusively something good. It expresses itself as happiness, pleasure, wealth, abundance, joy, peace, security, motivation, ecstasy and other deeply positive mediations. 
In everyday language there is a multitude of meanings of the term love, which show the various references of this phenomenon to topics of pedagogy, philosophy, anthropology and theology. The complex theme of love is the basic motif of human existence, but also the source of conflict in human life. Its treatment allows an almost unlimited number of associations and contrasts. When looking at the structural characteristics of love, which is to be analyzed in its very different aspects - sexual love, parental and child love, love of neighbor, love of enemy, love of God - it remains unclear in which sense one can speak of love as a virtue.
This seminar therefore aims to provide an introduction to the treatment of the phenomenon of love on the basis of selected topics.

Lecture: Jaspers` Achsenzeit - Eine Reise durch die Geschichte der Pädagogik (Jaspers` Achsenzeit - A Journey through the History of Pedagogy)

In contemporary historical educational research, the study of antiquity and the Middle Ages occupies a marginal position. This rather reserved research interest is related to the fact that the specialized literature of educational science has its origins primarily in the 17th and 18th centuries.
This should not lead us to the erroneous conclusion that there are no points of contact between modern and pre-modern educational history. It is precisely in pedagogy that modernity preserves traditions of the pre-modern world and reworks them in a new form. This makes it necessary to seek out the precursors of modern educational practices and ideas in order to recognize their original meaning and historical form.
In this lecture we will become acquainted with worlds of life and thought from antiquity to the Middle Ages and focus on stories of impact.
We will be guided by Karl Jasper's assumption (Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte, 1949) that there are definable periods in human history in which basic categories of thought and mindset emerged simultaneously.

Lecture: Pädagogik - (k)eine Wissenschaft? Repetitorium zu Grundfragen der Pädagogik (Pedagogy - (not) a science? Repetitorium on basic questions of pedagogy)

The life-world phenomenon of "pedagogy" is probably as old as humanity itself. Humans are not only learners, but they are also able to pass on learned knowledge in a special way. These abilities explain the prominent position of humans compared to other living beings.
Pedagogy as a science is a rather young discipline. If we look at its development over the past 400 years, we can see that it has always strived for independence and differentiation from other disciplines. For a long time, pedagogical questions were regarded as a sub-discipline of philosophy and theology. In contrast, today empirical sciences such as neuroscience and psychology are also trying to clarify how learning and human development work through experimental research.
But how can pedagogy today be understood as a science guided by educational ideals and their principles?
Committed to these basic ideas, we travel through the history of pedagogy. A profound understanding of this history helps us to understand the current reality of education in the context of the humanities.

Seminar: Kritische Pädagogik und ihre Theorie (Critical pedagogy and its theory)

"It was barbarism against which all education goes. One speaks of the threatening relapse into barbarism. But it is not threatening, but Auschwitz was it; barbarism persists as long as the conditions that brought about that relapse essentially continue. That is the whole horror." - Theodor W. Adorno: Education after Auschwitz
The conditions that made Auschwitz possible were economic and political as well as social and individually psychological. In the seminar we want to focus on the individually psychological ones. For "the fact that there are people who at the bottom, precisely as servants, do that by which they perpetuate their own servitude and degrade themselves [...], against this a little can be done by education and enlightenment." (ibid.) Text passages from the transcripts of the Nuremberg trials, which provide insights into the deeds and psyche of the perpetrators, will help to make the incomprehensible scale of what happened more tangible. With Sigmund Freud's mass psychology and ego analysis and Alice Miller's In the Beginning was Education, the inexplicable is confronted with initial attempts at explanation.
In the further course of the seminar we will deal with approaches that try to rethink pedagogy and psychology under these auspices. We will read texts by Theodor Adorno, Klaus Holzkamp and Ute Osterkamp, Frigga Haug and news from the journal Pädagogische Korrespondenz, which is committed to the tradition of critical theory. If necessary, we will come to texts by Paulo Freire and Erica Burman, or by authors brought in by participants of the seminar. 

Seminar: Freundschaft eine ethische Notwendigkeit (Friendship an ethical necessity)

"Friendship in the first and proper sense is friendship between good people [...]" Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics; 1157a 30 
 
In Aristotle as well as in other great thinkers, friendship plays a prominent role in ethics. In Aristotle's case, it is hard to miss; about one-fifth of his major ethical work deals with it. Friendship, we know, is desirable for every human being and friendship is somehow necessary for human life. Friendship, we think, is something self-evident, something natural and without any ethical clarification. But how does it look if we think of the case of bad company that can spoil a good person. At this point ethical considerations intervene; for there seem to be good and bad friends - or not? What is a good friend and what is a bad one? What role does friendship have in the good life, do I still need friends? How can another person be valuable without serving only as an instrument for one's own happiness (contrast pair egoism/altruism)? And finally the question of all questions: What distinguishes friendship from love?
Our today's, modern concept of friendship, is rather limited to the private, connected with our thinking that friendship in the public-political area only causes mischief. In our seminar we want to rethink friendship (not only politically!). We will read and present reflections and theories on friendship and discuss them together.      

Colloquium: Theoretical work - BA/MA Colloquium       

Lecture: Schön und gut - kalos kai agathos! Bildungsideale, Strukturen und Verortungen antiker und mittelalterlicher Pädagogik (Beautiful and good - kalos kai agathos! Educational Ideals, Structures and Localizations of Ancient and Medieval Pedagogy)

If pedagogy wants to do justice to its self-image associated with the idea of education and to its social task, it is important to bear in mind that education implies more than simply looking at facets of the levels of education: Rather, education requires becoming aware of the roots and structures of one's own patterns of thought and action and being able to view larger contexts from broader horizons. Knowing how and why one thinks the way one does, how and why one acts the way one does, i.e., thinking historically, is also essential to being able to encounter other cultures adequately. Only when one's own glasses are taken off, i.e. when one has become aware of one's own ethnocentrism, is it possible to perceive the other in his otherness and not merely to absolutize one's own. In the lecture, in which the worlds of life and thought of antiquity and the Middle Ages together with their impact histories extending to the present day are in the foreground, it should be made clear through the consideration of the roots and structures of one's own patterns of thought and action that historical learning is per se multi-perspective and interdisciplinary and aims at recognizing and acknowledging difference and diversity in living conditions and value concepts.

Lecture: Der Mensch Zweck oder Mittel? Grundlagen, Ansätze und Problemfelder pädagogischen Denkens in der Neuzeit (The human being: end or means? Foundations, Approaches and Problem Areas of Pedagogical Thought in the Modern Era)

If pedagogy wants to do justice to the fact that the question of education is always connected with it, it is important to consider that it must not be looked at according to aspects of usefulness, but according to what is simply meaning in itself.
Education implies being able to question supposed certainties. This requires, however, to keep one's own perspective in mind and to become aware of and reflect on the structures and roots of one's own patterns of thought and action from a broader horizon, i.e.: to think historically. We can approach historical educational research in a historical or theoretical setting. The first attitude is devoted to carefully recording and reproducing the teachings, schools, and directions that have been handed down. The question here is what each educator has taught. The second attitude examines each teaching for its truth and falsity in comparison with others. The question here is whether their arguments, their problem definitions and solutions lead to true knowledge. The two attitudes are not opposed to each other but complement each other. The theoretical evaluation of any doctrine presupposes that we have studied it historically and absorbed it correctly.
Committed to this basic idea, the lecture explores the question of how cultural, social, political and religious ideas have influenced people's lives and thinking in the period from the Renaissance to the present day, and what approaches, but also problems, have developed in the pedagogical context.

Seminar: Liebe-pädagogische Implikationen einer philosophischen Grundfrage (Love-pedagogical implications of a basic philosophical question)

To love and to be loved belongs to the basic features of human vitality! It is love which binds man to the community, to the cosmos and to the gods. It can embrace the like-minded as well as the enemies. It is able to direct the view away from the own to the other person, but also to the wisdom or to God.
In everyday language there is a multitude of meanings and contexts of the term love, which show the various references of this phenomenon to topics of philosophy, pedagogy, theology and anthropology. The complex theme of love is a basic motif of human existence, but it is also the bearer of conflict in human life. Its treatment allows an almost unlimited number of associations and contrasts. The arc of our seminar therefore spans three of its modes of execution and their aspects:
From Eros as the sensual desire and being caught in the sensual, often narrowed to self-centeredness, the errors and confusions, entanglements and conflicts, further over friendship (Philia) and its ethical content, up to Agape, the draft of an ideal, which is able to give human life a supporting and fulfilling meaning.
This seminar will therefore give an introduction to the philosophical treatment of the phenomenon of love on the basis of selected topics.

Colloquium: BA/MA Colloquium 

Seminar: Zeit und Ewigkeit- pädagogische Implikationen einer philosophischen Grundfrage (Time and Eternity - Pedagogical Implications of a Basic Philosophical Question) 

"So what is time? If no one asks me, I know. But if I want to explain it to someone who asks me, I don't know" (Augustine). Time is mostly only the unconscious background of our life activities. Something that takes place in time captures our attention, but not time itself. Yet it can emerge as a phenomenon itself and become the object of reflection of adults, but also of children and young people. Then we quickly realize: it is not a "sun-clear self-evidence" (Heidegger). We can grasp it only in dialectical terms: 
- Is time endless or finite? 
- Is it cyclical or linear? 
- Do we experience it or do we imagine it? 
- Is it objective or subjective? 
- Does it pass or does it come into being? 
- (Can anything be done about the unchanging past?). 
- Can the temporal man recognize eternity? 
In this seminar, we will use philosophical and literary texts to individually search for traces of our temporality. We will also reflect on how children and young people experience and understand their time. Suggestions for teaching time and eternity will be made. 

Block seminar: In FLORENZ vor Ort: Geschichte neu gesehen-pädagogische Implikationen (In FLORENCE: history seen anew-pedagogical implications)

Together, we will visit places in FLORENCE that are steeped in pedagogical history. There the participants give a presentation (no more than two DIN-A-4 pages) on a topic of historical pedagogy proposed by us. There will be a brief discussion on two to three guiding questions. Afterwards we listen to a literary text that makes us see the place anew both in its past and in its present (there is a short discussion about it).

Seminar: Die praktische Philosophie und die pädagogische Praxis des Aristoteles. Grundzüge der Nikomachischen Ethik (Aristotle's practical philosophy and educational practice. Main features of the Nicomachean Ethics)

The Nicomachean Ethics does not develop an ethics of duty, ought or utility. It does not start from the question of what we should do, but focuses on what we strive for. According to Aristotle, the fundamental goal of all human beings is eudaimonia, a successful life. For him, the primary means of achieving this goal are the virtues, complex rational, emotional and social skills. These form the human being, give him room for self-shaping and self-development, they control his actions and thinking.

Using the Nicomachean Ethics, one of the most important works in the history of philosophy, we will trace in the seminar what exactly the good life consists of, what the virtues are and how they enable us - through education and formation - to live well. The focus will therefore be on the determinations of human happiness (eudaimonia), the conception of ethical traits (virtues), and the notions of choice and practical reason.

Colloquium: Theoretical work - BA/MA colloquium