Homo Digitalis, Digital culture and Digital Education: Explorations of Philosophical Anthropology and of Philosophy of Education

Abstract

The article presents an analysis of reflections of the Western philosophical anthropology and anthropological oriented philosophy of education upon the digital culture as a new stage of the mass culture development inherited from industrial society. It was done with the aim to show the heuristic potential of the conceptualizations of the digital culture in philosophical anthropology and philosophy of education. The orientation function of the concept “homo digitalis” is unveiled, which is wide-spread using in the West-European, especially in Germany, and in the provocative philosophy of education. The ideal-typically construct of the human as the creation and the creator of the digital culture explains the distinctiveness of the communications in the space of this culture which is represented generally as a visual culture making provocation on purpose making close of the traditional writing culture. There is settling a comparative analyze of human figures created of the different generations of the German philosophical anthropology with accentuating on the semantics of homo digitalis, homo faber and homo creator which are partly complementary. The spatially and temporally characteristics of the digital culture are described, its forms of the communication are explicating in their singularity where the phatic communication predominates and risks of the digital alienation exists. The digital culture changes the self-recognition of the post-industrial societies which need world-view and moral orientation including expertly moral evaluation that is necessary for the prevention of the modernization risks. The pathologies of the digital culture, especially the digital dementia can be observed in the practices of the digital education else, but the blended Learning, if it is rationally organized and adequately administrated available resources, can minimizes those pathologies.

Keywords

• homo digitalis
• ontology of the digitally
• digital culture
• education
• blended learning
• pathology
• alienation
• communication
• internet
• ethics