Diving into the topic
Although many days have passed it feels as if time flew by.
I got the PhD scholarship and started researching for my topic. Originally I applied with a thesis about the influence of scottish enlightenment on german protestant theologians, using Francis Hutcheson - whos work was translatet by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing - as an example. During my interview and a discussion between the profs and my going-to-be mentor we changed the topic. I am now researching Lessings approach on educating the people in his view that was formed by his own protestant tradition. Since the first thesis would have meant researching more about Lessing thant Hutcheson, the change wasn’t that huge. I still will dive into Hutcheson and scottish protestant educational theories but if I find out that Lessing wasn’t as much influenced as I hoped my thesis won’t lose ground. Its like Hutcheson is the icing on the cake but Lessing is the cake. Even without the icing the cake ‘d be fine :)
What I found so far:
Since I have to get the basics on education and education philosophy I am reading Hans-Georg Gadamer at the moment. Quite at the beginning of his “Wahrheit und Methode” he talkes about the sensus communis. An ancient greek term that was adopted by the romans (therefore being in latin) and included social/ politic aspects as well as reason. Thanks to our way to much praised Immanuel Kant only reason was left in Germany and sensus communis in the rest of europe means something else than in German(y). Even Gadamer said that Kant ruined the bigger meaning of it. While in Britain and France it has still (at least when Gadamer wrote his book in the 1960s) a social/ political meaning, it is about the mental ability only in German. Francis Hutcheson and Thomas Reid (re)introduced the Sensus Communis into society. Thomas Reid even founded a whole new philosophy on it - the common sense philosophy.
Is this significant for my topic? Yes ist is. It shows that there was an influence and depending on which side one was, it was correctly interpreted or ruined alltogether.
Gotta dive deeper. :)
