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The Cultivation of Caring Thinking in Education for the Re-Creation of the Democratic Human Being
Alexandros Theodoridis
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5313/2026.01.001
Democritus University of Thrace, Alexandroupolis, Greece
In a world growing ever more cruel and violent as nihilism becomes generalized, a world in which the disintegration of the human assumes dimensions that threaten its very cohesion, the demand for the humanization of the Western individual asserts itself as an urgent historical task. Among the institutions implicated in this process, education assumes a central role, as it is within it that wonder and critical thinking are gradually eliminated, together with the demand for shared deliberation, coherent meaning, and the tragic dimension of human existence, while an education of cruelty comes to permeate it from end to end. In order to prevent the full entrenchment of evil in the social world, from which only destruction can be expected, a decisive role could be played by caring thinking that would be coordinated with corresponding action and would come to deeply characterize the educational institution. Such a form of thinking was proposed in the second half of the twentieth century and took flesh and bones within the framework of the Philosophy for Children movement. Its contemporary application within educational practice could reactivate phronesis (practical wisdom) and contribute to enabling the Western human being to re-create themselves as a democratic human being—one who desires the creation of a world of freedom, equality, and justice, and who acts accordingly to bring it about: the creation of a compassionate and prudent world, the preservation of which would be the responsibility of all.
Western world, education, cruelty, violence, caring thinking, democratic human being
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