Scelte schermanti e scelte portanti. Sette tesi di filosofia dell'educazione su agenzialità  e azione fronetico-epimeletica.

The starting questions of my research, concerning anthropological implications in education, are twofold: first, is it possible to rethink education as involving the promotion of inner powers, Bildungskräfte, according to a Martin’s Buber expression, in order to let the young person pass from a potentiality to the actuality in his proper human praxis (in the Aristotelian sense). The other question linked to the former one is the following: can we intercept within today’s mentality, strongly influenced by economical competition and technical thinking, approaches that block instead of allowing the young generation to transition to better, genuine human conditions? The general thesis that I propose is that if we trespass the boundaries imposed by an education oriented to the societal-economical requests, if we no longer take into educational account the adaptation of the young person to market competition, we will able to reach once again a concept of Bildung deriving primary from the urgency to promote the precultural human powers. These, I have recognized in my research after reading Aristotle, Guardini, Edith Stein and Paul Ricouer, are primarily the intellect, the will, the imagination and the power-to-act. These forces are seen as the sort of basement for the flourishing of human nature and predisposition to a moral education, not only to a professional one. Therefore, responding to the second part of my question-research, I think that the anthropological theoretical framework is indispensable but not the last thing to do: discovering the so called human forces that are manifested in some human actualities as the power to think more complexly, to speak, create and act responsibly implies the connection to the preoccupation whether in our educational actions it is really possible to promote them or not. This is the promotion of what I’ve defined the ‘agentiality’ condition of the human being, different form ‘agentivity’. Is this condition blocked as an electrical shielding paralyses the electromagnetic force? It follows that a philosophy of education with critical intention needs first, in my opinion, to continue researching what is genuinely human in order to distinguish it from the economical, the technical and the societal but secondly needs to analyse whether inside the diverse educational processes these actualizing forces are respected. This double theoretical exertion is really a sort of conceiving educating a person as a transition: from what she can express, humanly speaking, to the real actualization that passes through the unblocking action of the educators. I synthesized this way to conceive the theoretical duty in first discovering the pure human characteristics concerning education and, then, in telling how this is blocked or shielded (in order to be unblocked and unshielded): antropocritica, reporting the Italian word that I chose. I try to transliterate it -not to translate yet- in English in: ‘anthropocritic’. That is: the critic of educational processes, actions, institutional choices through the acknowledgement of the given or not given possibility of flourishing of personal actualization of the young generation. Young people that do not think, speak, create, and act responsibly are considered not actualized, in other terms, blocked or shielded, not in transition from potentiality to actuality. Consequently, to the starting anthropological framework, that is, the ancient discussion over potentially and actuality, I need to add strong arguments against the widespread current cultural perspective. In intercepting what blocks, rather than lets flourish, I can really steer myself towards for example the classical analysis by Horkheimer and Adorno about consumer society, the overwhelming technical mentality exposed by Anders, through the false imaginaries create by mass media as Baudrillard argued, without forgetting, at the end, Chomsky’s lessons about the condition of our free thinking. The critique of the instrumental approach in education, following also the lesson of Joseph Dunne, brings me, at the end, to recover the Aristotelian sense of praxis and the concept of phronesis, but, in order to further distinguish the educational action from the moral one (even if they are necessarily linked), I propose the couple epimeleia-phronesis as completely describing the nature of the educational praxis. About the idea of the seven thesis: they represent the theoretical core, the principles, of all critical analysis and anthropological concepts involved in the argumentation.In questo lavoro mi sono occupato di questioni antropologiche ed etiche legate all’azione educativa. I temi più importanti trattati riguardano, generalmente, i presupposti teoretici ed antropologici che una filosofia dell’educazione può fornire al discorso pedagogico ed alla formazione delle figure educanti, ai fini della loro azione prassica. Posti questi requisiti, l’argomentazione si sposta verso la critica alla ragione tecnico-strumentale e mira ad individuarne l’impiego attuale nello stesso mondo educativo e della teorizzazione pedagogica. Le sette tesi rappresentano una esplicitazione di questi stessi concetti fondamentali di carattere antropologico e gnoseologico che vanno a porsi in alternativa rispetto ad alcune proposte vigenti; si ritrovano poi anche nelle varie analisi critiche specie della seconda parte. Questo nucleo teoretico fondamentale mira, infine, a proporre due idee chiave, innanzi tutto quella di agenzialità - termine utilizzato per sottolineare diversità e distanza rispetto all’agentivity fatta oggetto di ricerca di alcune scuole psicologiche -, visto alla luce del concetto di polarità guardiniana, ossia evidenziante la condizione concreto-vivente e bipolare dell’essere umano. La seconda idea chiave concettualizzata è quella che l’azione educativa debba avere delle caratteristiche fronetico-epimeletiche: si tratta da un lato del recupero della razionalità prassica aristotelica (strada già intrapresa negli ultimi decenni anche dalla filosofia dell’educazione britannica), dall’altro vi è il tentativo di vedere l’azione educativa e l’azione morale non come separabili ma come distinguibili. La seconda parte della ricerca riguarda la critica ad alcuni processi culturali che, si sostiene, risultano dimidianti o schermanti-bloccanti le polarità della vita vivente. Questa modalità di argomentazione l’ho definita antropocritica, concetto fatto oggetto di scavo all’interno di una delle tesi stesse. Analisi antropocritiche sono state rivolte a come viene trattato il pensiero, l’uomo in sé e i saperi con il loro bagaglio di memoria ereditata dai secoli passati. Lo scopo dell’antropocritica è scoprire se delle realtà di per sé viventi, o create per dei viventi, siano state sostituite da una metafisica tecnocratica surrettizia e da una pratica tecnico-strumentale, al fine di ritornare a scelte teoretiche e prassiche ‘adferanti’ che ristabiliscono equilibri polari, ossia portanti le opportunità educative e, allo stesso tempo, contrastanti la contraddittorietà delle scelte schermanti-depotenzianti stesse