The Imperative of Phronetic Education for Practicing Freedom in Light of the Bible’s Literary Discourse

Abstract

The article intends to investigate the relationship between the gift of pondering and human freedom. We aim to prove that phronetic education is a prerequisite for the practicing of freedom in reflective thinking, and thus helps the human subject to establish itself as fully free. Phronetic teaching, which reflects on one’s actions and gains from one’s experiences, is oriented towards the increase and improvement in exercising freedom. Hermeneutic sensibility enhances the recognition of freedom as the virtue which is born in the mindful process of phronetic teaching. Investigating the notion of phronesis according to Aristotle, we affirm phronetic education’s decisive impact on reflectivity and the use of one’s free will. We explore the reality of phronetic pedagogy as a dialogic encounter and profess the challenge of the unanticipated as its crux. The centrality of the unexpected which happens in phronetic teaching leads to a conclusion that it is an education of hope, open to the exercising of freedom and to granting it.

Keywords

• phronetic education
• freedom
• aristotle
• h.-g. gadamer
• hermeneutic sensibility