Home – Home – Jornals – "Philosophy of Education" 2026 number 3

Introduction. The article offers a socio-philosophical analysis of the competency-based approach in education, treated not as a pedagogical technology but as an anthropological project. The relevance of the study is determined by the institutional restructuring of Russian higher education after its withdrawal from the Bologna process and by the accelerated devaluation of algorithmizable competencies under the influence of artificial intelligence technologies. The problem is that replacing personal integrity with a set of operational competencies leads to the fragmentation of a specialist’s professional identity rather than to its strengthening. Methodology. The object of the study is the competency-based approach as a paradigm of professional education; the subject is its philosophical and anthropological foundations and internal contradictions. The study employs comparative-historical analysis of the ancient opposition of techne and episteme, hermeneutic reconstruction of classical epistemological and ethical arguments, critical discourse analysis of the proponents of the competency-based approach, and the case-analysis method. Discussion. It is shown that the competency-based approach is ethically neutral, dependent on an external client (the labour market, professional standards), and produces a fragmented human figure (homo fragmentatis). It is argued that the approach fails most visibly precisely in non-standard situations, for which it is declared to prepare specialists. Conclusion. The necessity of restoring a hierarchy in which personal integrity is primary and competencies are secondary and derivative is substantiated; prospects for empirical verification of the article’s claims and for research into the transformation of the competency paradigm under the influence of artificial intelligence are outlined.