ON IGNORANCE

It is only at second sight that ignorance reveals itself as a pedagogical category. Both phylogenetically and ontogenetically man starts out ignorant. A pedagogy which focusses exclusively on knowledge has forgotten the historical and systematic starting point of every education in the difference of ignorance and knowledge. An evaluating approach to this difference means that education is conceived and designed as either cultural-pessimistic or cultural-optimistic. ''Bildung'', however, as SOKRATES already knew, is knowledge's recollection of its own ignorance. This concept of education proves to be highly adaptable to our present crisis-ridden development.