— Overview
How we picture a human being changes what education is for. Late modern philosophy, in this account, sees a person as someone who forms the self, lives inside society and history, and chooses values by thinking them through. A scientific picture, grown with modern natural science after the seventeenth century, treats body and mind as matter and watches only what can be measured. The challenge to modernism is dated from the 1960s, and as something that came fully into the open in the 1970s and 1980s.
Kant's line is kept as it is given: treat humanity always as an end, never merely as a means.
— Contents and key concepts
Three ways of picturing a person
A newborn, in this telling, is weaker than almost any other living thing, and education is what has made a human being capable of so much. That is why the picture of human nature matters. A philosophical or religious picture centers value and what ought to be; a scientific picture centers fact and experience. Late modern philosophy is described as criticizing humanism, rationalism, and scientism, and as looking toward a more plural way of thinking. The challenge to modernism is dated to the 1960s, and as something that came fully into the open in the 1970s and 1980s.
Three pictures follow. A person is a self-forming subject who interprets the world actively; Dewey's continuous reconstruction of experience is cited as a way of saying that growth does not stop. A person is also social and historical, taking in society and culture and still remaking them. And a person is normative and rational, looking for a better direction through reflective choice. Education, here, is the unfolding of potential and of a particular temperament, not the programming of a machine.
A machine picture, and a line from Kant
The scientific view is set out as mechanistic: mind and body as matter, a confidence that arrived with modern natural science after the seventeenth century. Metaphysical questions about essence or meaning are treated as empty. Only outer behavior that can be observed and counted is allowed in. Behavior is to be explained without values, and is said to be open to prediction and control.
The objection is that this picture is so busy with fact that it has little room for a discussion of what a person ought to be. Kant's demand is kept as stated: treat humanity always as an end, never merely as a means. A person has a will that can meet a stimulus and not only obey it, and the freedom of a moral choice. To think that desirable human beings can be made by controlling behavior is, in this account, to risk a teaching that asks for blind compliance and can slide toward a totalitarian classroom. Existentialism is added as a counterpart: there is no essence fixed in advance; a person forms the self by choosing, deciding, and taking responsibility. The comparison left on the table is simple. One picture sees a person as active and as an end. The other sees a person as passive, mechanical, and at risk of being used as a means.
Sources
- an account of late modern philosophy's three pictures of the human — as a self-forming, social, and reflective being — set against a scientific, mechanistic view, with a challenge to modernism dated from the 1960s through the 1980s, and with Kant's demand to treat humanity as an end.
Last updated: 14 November 2026
Refund policy
- Change of mind / refund requested after partial use / more than 7 days after purchase
◆ Exceptions
- File errors / cannot download or open the file
◆ How to request a refund: send a 1:1 inquiry via Customer Service at the top