open access

https://hdl.handle.net/2115/84063

Education, welfare and governmentality : beyond the discourse of faculties, toward nourishing lives

日本語

Etymology of education

2011-06-30

Japanese Educational Research Association

Japanese journal of educational research

78(2)

162-173

　It is generally said that the etymology of education is to draw forth ones faculties. In this paper, I make a few attempts to examine this view on the original meaning of education and to deconstruct the discourse of faculties in the history of education. The question is not how we can make cooperation between educational policy and welfare policy, but how we have come to depend on the concept of faculty in order to imagine both education and welfare. This study, thus, is the genealogy of governing human faculties, which brought the administrative entity compounded from health, security, welfare and education. We must begin to define the historical conditions of the governmental technology so as to surmount it. 　0n this point, we can refer to Michel Foucault's approach to the history of governmentality. According to him, the pastoral care in the early Christianity inaugurated Western governmentality, and then raison d'État and police succeeded to their perspective and technology in the modern State. 　The police, in the 18th century's meaning, is an ensemble of means to increase forces of the State and to maintain the State in good order. It could be characterized by four points. First, it is the goal of police to reinforce the State's potential which includes skills and faculties of its inhabitants. Second, the police operate on individual faculties by way of promoting education and profession to render them competent for social happiness. Third, it covers the whole field of lives and attributes each phase of living acts to governmental significance and value; life is articulated and analyzed in relation to such domains as morality, health, security, arts and science, and paupers. Finally, it is evaluated by the measure of social welfare which is the operator of utility of governance. These viewpoints are refined and systematized in utilitarianism and human-capital theory, which are conveyed to us. In this way, our thought of education is firmly imprinted by the discourse of faculties which is rooted in the science of police. It is possible to say that education remains seized by the perspective of police so far as we discuss it with the concept of faculty. 　It should be converted from the education of faculty. To begin with, it is necessary to reexamine the etymology of education. It is obvious that education is derived from the Latin word educatio which meant rearing of young person, upbringing, nurturing and moreover breeding of animals. Its verbal form is not educere which is to draw forth something, but educare which is to nourish someone or some animals. This paper especially cites the important usages of Columella's De re rustica and some works of Cicero. They use the word educatio not only for human being, but also for animal, fowl and even for plant. Furthermore, the expression educatio et disciplina appears in Cicero's De legibus, and it reminds us of the Greek phrase τροφη και παιδεια in Plato's work. The Latin word educatio, namely, corresponds to the Greek word τροφη, which means nourishment, food and livelihood itself, rather than παιδεια. To conclude, the original meaning of education is not to draw forth faculty or ability, but supporting life with nourishing on the basis of verbal tradition of τροφη-educatio. This is why I insist that education is none other than well-being, as long as we live by eating while feeling pleasure.

学術雑誌論文

Version of Record

0387-3161

2187-5278

AN00056578