Santiago Andrés Duque Cano: From the cave-labyrinth to the vision of totality. Education and Formation as conversion from Patočka‘s reading of Plato and Comenius

Organized by the Department of Comenius Studies and Early Modern Intellectual History and University of Pardubice

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Santiago Andrés Duque Cano (Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, Colombia): From the cave-labyrinth to the vision of totality. Education and Formation as conversion from Patočka‘s reading of Plato and Comenius.

The presentation raises the question of the starting point and the conditions of possibility of education as conversion by taking up certain cores of Jan Patočka‘s reading of Plato and Comenius. First, allusion will be made to the cavern and the labyrinth as images that, in Plato and Comenius respectively, indicate the lack and obscurity from which the formative and conversion process starts. Then, the question will be raised about the conditions of possibility so that, in Platonic terms, the spark of understanding is ignited and the formation-conversion takes place. Emphasis will be placed on two of these conditions of possibility: the encounter with an other-guide and the vision of a sense of totality. What characteristics should this guide have? How can such a vision of totality be fostered? This paper proposes to advance in some lines of response to these questions.