Gerhard Zecha Livres

Critical Rationalism has become an influential philosophy in many areas including a great number of scientific disciplines. Yet only few studies have been devoted to the role of the philosophy of Sir Karl Popper in the vast field of education. This volume undertakes to fill this gap. Leading scholars in the educational science and in the philosophy of education have critically written for this volume in an attempt to elaborate Popper's methodological and socio-political views and confront them with a globally relevant spectrum of scientific objectives and cultural values. Among the topics discussed are moral values, education for freedom and its consequences for the student, and the critical attitude in political education. Attention is also paid to the historiography of this significant philosophical movement. Regarding pedagogical research, the empirical paradigm, the falsificatory approach to educational research, the complex relationship between educational theory and practice as well as the problem of value-neutrality in educational science are objects of critical analysis.

Value change and uncertainty about the validity of traditional moral convictions are frequently observed when scientific re search confronts us with new moral problems or challenges the moral responsibility of the scientist. Which ethics is to be relied on? Which principles are the most reasonable, the most humane ones? For want of an appropriate answer, moral authorities of ten point to conscience, the individual conscience, which seems to be man's unique, directly accessible and final source of moral contention. But what is meant by 'conscience'? There is hardly a notion as widely used and at the same time as controversial as that of conscience. In the history of ethics we can distinguish several trends in the interpretation of the concept and function of conscience. The Greeks used the word O"uvEt81lm to denote a kind of 'accompa nying knowledge' that mostly referred to negatively experienced behavior. In Latin, the expression conscientia meant a knowing together pointing beyond the individual consciousness to the common knowledge of other people. In the Bible, especially in the New Testament, O"uvEt81l0"t is used for the guiding con sciousness of the morality of one's own action."

Im Jahre 1904 veröffentlichte Max Weber seinen berühmten Objektivitätsaufsatz, in dem er Werturteilsfreiheit für die Sozial-, Kultur- und Geisteswissenschaften forderte. Diese Auffassung führte im Laufe des 20. Jahrhunderts zu mehreren philosophischen Grundsatzdebatten ('Positivismusstreit') und zu interdisziplinären Auseinandersetzungen ('Werturteilsstreit'). Die Autoren der hier gesammelten Beiträge überprüfen hundert Jahre nach Max Webers Programmaufsatz die Gültigkeit und Fruchtbarkeit des von Max Weber propagierten Prinzips der Wertfreiheit und die Rolle der Werte in den Human- und Gesellschaftswissenschaften.