Home – Home – Jornals – "Philosophy of Education" 2023 number 2

Introduction. New existential schemes imposed to the world and the human being in the struggle for survival in the conditions of the pandemic era exacerbate the need to rethink the modern human ontology. The purpose of this article is the author’s attempt to build understanding of the essence of such ontology as the aim of modern education. Methodology. The article is based on the following methodological understanding: being fixed in variants, ontology is “objectified” in an individual worldview and “inculcated” into a person on the basis of ways of thinking and activity, as well as the meanings of this activity. Such methodological complex is transmitted through the education system. An attempt is being made to analyze it. Discussion. Based on the analysis of the methodological complex characteristic of the modern education system, the thesis is put forward about a variant of the ontology of a modern person as a competent “user” of a demiurge system opposing his/her creative potential, focused on survival and potentially unable to surpass this system. It becomes necessary to rethink the human dimension of such ontology in the context of education. The problem of modern education lies in the absence of the supposed goal of a broad existential framework for understanding educational processes and mechanisms for creating conditions for the formation of the human in the human being. Ontologically oriented education is aimed at creating and building a natural environment for the manifestation and development of natural human subjectivity. This requires a number of conditions: the content integrity of education, the development of appropriate types of thinking (unsupported, critical, systemic, methodological), the development of reflection, the development of imagination and the ability to dream, the aesthetic nature of education, the formation of existential human meanings, the development of the theme of soul and spirituality in education. Conclusion. The mission of modern education is to turn the signs of the instability of the epoch into the possibility of building a humane (human-sized) ontology of the human. In this context, innovations become significant, but understood as a variant of traditional experience. In the case of ontologically oriented education, this is the experience of cultivating the human in the human being.