Kant’s Conception of Pedagogy: Toward Education for Freedom

Although he was involved in the education debates of his time, it is widely held that in his mature philosophical writings Immanuel Kant is silent on the subject. In her groundbreaking Kant’s Conception of Pedagogy, G. Felicitas Munzel finds extant in Kant’s writings the so-called missing critical treatise on education; it appears in the Doctrines of Method with which he concludes each of his major works. Here Kant identifies the fundamental principles for the cultivation of reason’s judgement when it comes to cognition, beauty, nature, and the exercise of morality while subject to the passions and inclinations that characterise the human experience. From her analysis, Munzel extrapolates principles for a cosmopolitan education that parallels the structure of Kant’s republican constitution for perpetual peace. With the formal principles in place, the argument concludes with a query of the material principles that would fulfil the formal conditions required for an education for freedom.