Home – Home – Jornals – "Philosophy of Education" 2013 number 3

The article contains a comparative analysis of the Western and Eastern paradigms of person’s education. The authors consider them to be equivalent and complementary ones. Taken together, they reflect the essence of education and self-education more properly. The West-European educational paradigm is primarily based on Christian traditions and rational science. Within this paradigm the human being, exploring and self-forming subject, is opposed to the object of his/her exploration, e.g. the teacher is opposed to his/her pupils. The East-Asian philosophical theories do not distinguish the human being from the whole system of world formation. According to these East-Asian theories, human education is a gradual attaining of enlightenment of his/her consciousness and feelings in the unity of the whole world. In order to reach this goal, specific methods, different from the ones in Europe, were created in Asia, e.g. koans, meditation, etc. Therefore, a synthesis of the West-European and East-Asian educational paradigms has a higher potential for human self-development rather than each of the systems separately.