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This paper looks at the institutional origins of the Philosophy of Education in Spain through the study of Juan Zaragüeta, first Professor of this discipline in the thirties in the Spanish universities. Zaragüeta was trained in part at the Higher Institute of Philosophy at Louvain. He represented a link of continuity between the two worlds in which the institutionalization of pedagogy took place before and after the gap of the Spanish civil war. Nevertheless, the continuity was early truncated. The paper analyzes the presence of the courses of Philosophy of Education taught by Zaragüeta at the Section of Pedagogical Studies of the University of Madrid, and the conversion of their content into Fundamental Pedagogy. The authors argue that the basis of this identification was the revival of Thomistic philosophy and synthetic view of knowledge promoted by Cardinal Mercier, that Zaragüeta experienced in Leuven and led him to characterize pedagogy as a social science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is based on some works of late Foucault about an affirmative vision of making of Self, what complements the nihilistic and deconstructive perspective of its previous stages. I emphasize the extraordinary importance of these lasts writings, as some recent sources, for pedagogy. From what developed in them, the pedagogy can overcomes the reductionist instrumental reason model of modernity. The paper analyzes and points out aspects of Hellenistic philosophies, especially the Stoics as Foucault notes, which may be updated and serve as guidance today. They advocate an alternative model of education based on ethical rationality, in which the subject engages and educates. This conduces to an epistemological concept in which thinking and philosophizing involves a practical activity or behavior (an ethos), this being an educational process along which the subject is being constituted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

20th Century has finished with some hopeful signals in the national and international context of the Philosophy of Education. A right extension of «practical philosophy» has been taking place in education. In the realm of education, there is any discipline that does not demand for it the category of «praxiología». This paper tries to show the differences between this practical approach and the one trying to maintain the Philosophy of Education. Some current and mistakes lacks are also indicated: the ethical character of practical knowledge, the necessity of the personal commitment of the educator and the importance of the theoretical knowledge on the aims of a human development. The paper proposes to understand Philosophy of Education as an ethical theory for education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present a historical study of the culturalist contributions of Wilhelm Flitner specific processes for the epistemologization of contemporary pedagogy. From a literature review of the author, content analysis and comparison with literature on the subject, we conclude that Flitner proposed rework the epistemological body of pedagogy, following the neo-Kantian, own rationalist tradition of the first half of the century XX. Education is a spiritual activity and pedagogy is a pragmatic human science, whose object is the hermeneutic understanding of education in its historical and cultural context. Flitner ended up confusing the fields of Theory of Education with the Philosophy of Education. Both fields, but equally legitimate, are different. The Philosophy of Education should not replace theoretical studies on education, which correspond to the Theory of Education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a reply to José Luis Gaviria's paper «The Priority of the Philosophy of Education over the Empirical Disciplines in Educational Research. A response to Gil Cantero and Reyero». The main arguments to be discussed are as follows: Education is an action, not an object, nor a closed mechanism made of programmed inputs and outputs which can be probabilistically considered. Education is essentially constituted by value orientations; the complex reality of the human is not limited by what is real, current or empirical. What is possible is relevant too. Hope takes part of educational knowledge; the hope that what is unexpected finally happens. Judgment in education is a kind of unveiling, it is an empathic adequacy, it is the subjective experience of an educational ideal which appears to us as a whole coherent with a particular sense of reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a speculative response to the article published in this journal by Fernando Gil Cantero and David Reyero advocating the priority of philosophy of education on empirical research. This answer is based on four arguments: Contemporary empirical research involves an ontology rather complex than it is assumed in their paper. The relationship between both disciplines takes place at two levels: At the most general level they are interdependent; at the lower level, close to the action, they can not contradict each other. In order to apply knowledge coming from both disciplines to practical problems, an epistemic intermediary is necessary. This intermediary combines principles derived from both disciplines, but also additional assumptions that jointly shape a pedagogical normative. The epistemic intermediary is what we call the 'professional wisdom', whose intertwined components are 'wisdom' and 'technology', both necessary for the professional performance of teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to rehabilitate leisure as one of the fundamental components of educational policy planning. Drawing on an epistemological and longitudinal analysis on leisure, we show how criteria and actions may be used to face educational challenges. This is precisely a very relevant topic nowadays, as democratic societies need, perhaps more than ever, to educate their members are free citizens, able to participate in the decision planning and taking processes. Our main argument is embedded in the first great synthesis of policy, education and classic philosophy, mainly in Aristotle's works, various epistemological and semantic factors and the recent approaches of Russell and Nussbaum who understand leisure as the guarantee of practical rationality of educational policy. Our results emphasize leisure as skholé and show its potential innovative value for humankind in a creative educational policy design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the relationship between empirical educational research and philosophy of education. The authors analyze the arguments against the dominant character of the empirical paradigm and find three types of arguments. The first one, would consist in arguments that criticize the technification of political decisions. The second one, arguments based in educational particularities and the third one, arguments based on relational characteristic of the educational activity and the value of practical moral judgment. The text ends with a reflection on the contributions of that philosophy of education can make to empirical research. These contributions can be grouped into three categories. First, it can help to establish an epistemological approach to research, second, it offers a holistic view of the educational phenomenon that enables to see better the scope and limits of research results and third, it provides particular modes of articulating thought, to assist educators in critical clarification of educational issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a synthesis of Edith Stein's thinking on education. After her conversion to Catholicism, she was a teacher at the German Institute of Scientific Pedagogy in Münster (1932-1933), until she was removed from University teaching as a consequence of the anti-Semitic regulations decreed by National Socialism. Although her educational background was in the positive sciences, she evolved towards the spiritual sciences (Dilthey, Husserl, Scheler) and, ultimately, the science of the cross which connects with the mystic tradition of Saint John of the Cross and Saint Theresa of Jesus. All of this gives a theological and transcendent horizon to her pedagogic vision reminiscent of Master Eckhart's Bildung, although without excluding the contributions of Christian philosophy and the innovations introduced by neo-Hebraic thinking. In general, Edith Stein was called to lay the anthropological and theological foundations of a Catholic pedagogy that, in those years of barbarity, appeared as a major spiritualising force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]