Beyond Physicalism And Pragmatism:Seeking The Root Of Philosophy In Pedagogy

By the influence of market economy, the thinking of the philosophical foundation of modern pedagogy is poor;By the influence of scientism,the thinking of the philosophical foundation of modern pedagogy is biased.Therefore, with the author’s understanding,Physicalism and Pragmatism are two important philosophy orientations of modern Pedagogy.Education is a science which studies the laws and phenomena of education, and the laws and phenomena of education mainly include three aspects: education and people, education and knowledge, education and society.The root of philosophy in pedagogy view the philosophy as a tool to analyze the facts and value of these educational phenomena, and then to guide the improvement of education.Based on this, the philosophy of education has four basic problems:the position of the people, the position of the knowledge, the position of the education, the position of the people’s socialization.Aimed at exploring laws in the objective world and driven by human’s rationality, Physicalism attempts to achieve a stable, systematical and true ideological system by means of logical thinking and empirical experiment. The standpoints of Physicalism education are as follows:humans are existence of objective state; knowledge is the existence of logical system;education is giving and receiving;and human’s socialization is a kind of rational mechanical system.Physicalism makes the pedagogy system constructed and scientific.It, however, for over pursued the universal idea, diminishes the inclination of human perception and experience, leading to the separation of subject and object, theory and practice. Aimed at pursuing practical needs and driven by benefits, Pragmatism takes scale of generated benefits and degree of need gratification as its evaluation criteria by means of performance assessment and management by objectives. The standpoints of Pragmatism education are as follows:humans are existence of tool modality; knowledge is the existence of usability; education is obtaining efficiency and benefits; and human’s socialization is the result of meeting social needs.It attaches great importance to social needs, values and practices so it might be vulnerable to attack by Utilitarianism and Performancism.As an inclusive philosophy, Life-centralism is not completely opposite side of Physicalism and Pragmatism, but a kind of inheritance and transcending of them.Meanwhile, It is to provide a new explanation for education, people, knowledge and human socialization:human’s nature is the existence of life,knowledge is an important achievement of the duration of life,education is growth of life,socialization is a process of the duration of life.Life-centralism reiterates human’s life nature, manifests the generation nature of knowledge, restores the life meaning of education, and shows respect for life process of human’s socialization. Therefore, Life-centralism’s respect for life makes it possible to transcend, endowing education with glory of human nature.