Democracy, culture and education 
as a question of form 
Pavel Zgaga 
The categories of eidos and morphe were elaborated in Aristotle's first philosophy; as such, they weren't central notions of his practical 
philosophy. However, general philosophical approaches in modern times can't 
be imagined without the category of form, neither in the field of pure 
ontological or epistemological issues nor in the confrontations of social 
philosophy. »Formal democracy« seems to be impossible in Plato's Republic or 
in Aristotle's Politics, and it looks convicing to make an analogy between the 
categorial couples hyle - morphe and natura - cultura (if the latter is 
understood as the appearance of »our second nature,« phylogenetically as well 
as ontogenetically). Nevertheless, there is a place that enables us to make such 
analogies. 
Aristotle knew very well that education - basically - only makes up »the 
deficiencies of nature« (The Politics, 1337a).1 Discussing what education 
should be at the end of the seventh book of The Politics, he raises specific 
questions: is it necessary to lay down any regulations about the upbringing of 
children? should the care of them be the concern of the state or of private 
individuals alone? 
At the very beginning of the eighth book, he sincerely states his opinion: 
education principally can't be a matter of private individuals. It should be »one 
and the same for all,« it should be »public and not private,« it is above all the 
duty of the legislator. Aristotle laments that the care of children as a private 
concern »is in our own day the common custom« and that »at present every 
one looks after his own children separately, and gives them separate 
instruction of the sort which he thinks best.« Such blindness about the 
common interest »does harm to the constitution.« It's not the willfulness of a 
dictator but the fundamental reason of being-in-polis that »the citizen should 
be moulded to suit the form of government under which he lives« (1337a). 
In an earlier place (1310a) he wrote that the adaptation of education to »the 
form of government« contributes most to the permanence of constitutions. 
(Besides, here we can read again that »in our own day this principle is 
universally neglected.«) It seems to be obvious to Aristotle that undisciplined 
individuals - and it really sounds modern! - hinder the realization of 
1. The translations of passages from The Politics are cited by The Works of Aristotle, vol. X., 
Oxford 1952 (3rd ed.> 
156 Pavel Zgaga 
community, city and state that they contradict »the true interests of the state.« 
Nevertheless, it has to be stressed that the category of the state here can't be 
understood in modern way, for example, as pure abstract force under 
individuals. It is not a question of different notions, but a question of different 
social worlds. Despite defending the right of - as it looks like - government to 
be concerned about upbringing children, and despite neglecting - as it looks 
like - the parents' rights, Aristotle can't be aligned with the sources of modern 
totalitarism. In the same place just cited, he says: »Now, to have been educated 
in the spirit of the constitution is not to perform the actions in which oligarchs 
or democrats delight, but those by which the existence of an oligarchy or of a 
democracy is made possible« (1310a). He speaks about the adaptation of 
education to the »form of government,« not to the material self-will of the 
master. For Aristotle, ethics, politics and economics are parts of a whole and it 
is a question of numerous historical transitions and mediations why they are 
separated today.2 In the same context it could be said that Aristotle's concept 
of the adaptation of the education to the form of government doesn't concern 
the modern notion of politics, but rather that of culture. 
So, the improvement of deficiencies of nature as »the entrance to to 
civilization«, if the modern concept is used, is understood as a step to the polis 
and as the preservation of it. This step is - among other perspectives - defined 
by the famous ancient idea of searching for virtue or the best life, that is, by 
certain accumulated knowledge (the wisdom) and by certain civilised (here it 
can be even said »policed«) behaviors that we are able and obliged to learn 
and to teach. Let's accept the consensus that the pure notion of the education 
- i.e., education not as an instrument of domination, not as a self-will of 
master, but the education as a mode of »culturation« - is possible only in the 
form of common, public and, to a certain degree, unitary education. However, 
it is obvious to Aristotle that there are issues that remain to be considered: 
»what should be the character of this public education and how young persons 
should be educated?« (1337a). Speaking pragmatically, the question of 
curriculum is opened here and, as we are acquainted with the mentality of 
educators (specially with so-called »pedagogues« of our own day), every 
educator insists that his own subject is the basis and the last sense of the 
education. »As things are,« Aristotle established, »there is disagreement about 
the subjects.« It is not only the case that there is no agreement about the things 
to be taught, »neither is it clear whether education is more concerned with 
intellectual or with moral virtue.« If we try to transfer again into modern 
discourse, e.g., in that of »the eastern« experiences, here is the relationship 
between enlightenmented, liberal instruction, developing of the reason, on the 
one hand, and partisan (»partial«), ideological (»the right course,« 
»universally accepted ethics« etc.) moulding of people's behaviors on the 
2. This is the issue of recent re-elaborations in the ancient concept of the practical philosophy. 
- Cf. e.g. W. Hennis, Politik und Praktische Philosophic, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1977. 
Democracy, culture and education as a question of form 157 
other. It is evident that in Aristotle's time there was no agreement on the 
principle to be followed in education: »should the useful in life (poiesis), or 
should virtue (praxis), or should the higher knowledge (theoria) be the aim of 
our training?« The famous Stageirian usefulness distinguishing between liberal 
(»if he does or learns anything for his own sake or for the the sake of his 
friends, or with a view to excellence«) and illiberal occupations has to be 
considered (1337b), but it was also clear why there is no agreement about the 
means of education: »for different persons, starting with different ideas about 
the nature of virtue, naturally disagree about the practice of it.« 
Ancient polis ended at the very walls of oikos (which have hidden children, 
women, slaves), and in this ancient discourse it primarily hasn't appeared as a 
place of conflicts and exclusions. It has much more been the mediation 
between the still-limited concept of public and the inhibited (patriarchal) 
concept of private and therefore it has appeared as the relatively harmonic 
regulation of the relationship between natura and cultura. In such 
understanding of polis, many aspects are linked that modern social knowledge 
carefully distinguishes or even comprehends as totally uncompatible. 
As the modern age arose, the idea of education as an improvement of the 
deficiencies of nature was in front again. In his paper On education, Kant 
defined a man as the only being that must be educated (das einzige Geschöpf, 
das erzogen werden muss). He maintained that a man can become a man only 
by means of education.3 In his hand-written legacy (fragment 1423), we can 
even read that a man is »an animal that has the need of education«. 
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, on the other hand, began his Émile with the assertion 
that education provides us what we lacked at time of our births and what we 
need later.4 But a moment that radically distinguishes Rousseau from Kant is 
grasped in the first sentence of the book: »Coming from the hands of the 
Creator, everything is good; everything corrupts in hands of a man.« The 
displacement of the accent has a deep conceptual importance for the 
understanding of the relationship between education and civic order, too: 
politics becomes a bitch. 
Education is no more reflected as an instrument that can best assure the 
permanence of constitution, as an entrance to politicum understood as the very 
fundamentals of civilization. Ancient harmonic understanding of basic 
civilised relationships decayed with the progress of the civilization. Wisdom 
was replaced by knowledge. Ethics and politics can't coexist in the concept of 
virtue any more, and a human being as an ancient freeholder divides into a 
man and a citizen. For Rousseau, we are forced to fight either against nature 
3. Cf. Immanuel Kant, Schriften zur Antropologie, Geschichtsphilosophie, Politik und 
Pädagogik, 1, 2; in: Kant Werke in zwölf Bänden, Bd. XI, XII, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 
1964, p. 697 and 699. 
4 . Cf. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile ou de l'éducation; in: Oeuvres complètes, T. IV, Gallimard, 
Paris 1969, p. 247. 
158 Pavel Zgaga 
or against social orders; therefore, the question is whether to mould either a 
man or a citizen: both at the same time are not possible.5 Despite taking 
examples from the antiquity, despite becoming enraptured with Plato's 
Republic (»the best discussion on education ever written«), Rousseau lives in 
an entirely different world. »Public education (l'institution publique) doesn't 
exist and can't exist any more; for if the country (la patrie) ceased to be, there 
could be no more citizens. The words country and citizen should be canceled in 
modern languages. I know well the reason why, but I don't want to put it 
down; it is not connected with my issue«.6 
What happened to the country, e.g., to the state and citizens, that they caused 
them to disappear? What kind of reason does Rousseau hide and why doesn't 
he quote it? It seems evident that the answer can't be sought in his philosophy 
of education; a more promising place is his political philosophy. »Why then do 
people pay so much respect to ancient laws?« Rousseau asks in The social 
contract while researching »the death of the body politic.« The origin of this 
respect lies in »the excellence of these ancient decisions« (»for if the sovereign 
had not constantly found them salutary, it would have had innumerable 
opportunities to revoke them«), it lies in the continuing will of the sovereign 
(»whatever it once has said it wills, it continues to will, unless it revokes it«). 
He finishes the chapter with the following words: »and wherever, on the 
contrary, laws grow weaker with age, it is a proof there is no longer any 
legislative power, and that the state has ceased to exist«.7 For on the contrary, 
»if the constitution of a state is to be really firm and enduring, the natural 
fitness of things must be so well observed that the laws and natural 
circumstances coincide at every point and that the former do no more, so to 
speak, than to guarantee, accompany and rectify the latter.«8 
Similar thoughts can be found out at the beginning and at other places of his 
Émile, too. If public education is not possible any more, as we have already 
seen, there is the concept of domestic or natural education to be considered 
finally. Its essence is negative: »namely, to prevent something to happen«. -
»Therefore watch carefully over a young man; he will be able to protect 
himself from other things, but your duty is to protect him from himself.« In 
comparison with antiquity and its »synthetic« tonality (education as 
cultivation, i.e., »policing«) here is the opening of an entirely new aspect of 
differentiation in the concept of education: »Thus the first education must be 
purely negative. In no way it consists of instructing in virtue and truth; it has 
to prevent the heart from sins and the reason from mistakes.«9 
5. Cf. ibid., p. 248. 
6. Ibid., p. 250. 
7. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract; in. Political Writings, Nelson, London 1953, p. 
97. 
8. Ibid., p. 56-57. 
9 . Cf. Rousseau, Émile ou de l'éducation, p. 251, 663, 323. 
Democracy, culture and education as a question of form 159 
As in Rousseau's political philosophy, laws »do no more, so to speak, than to 
guarantee, accompany and rectify« natural circumstances, so in his philosophy 
of education the educator can only »prevent the heart from sins and the reason 
from mistakes,« he can only »prevent something from happening.« The right 
government and the right education coincide in the same moment: both are 
negative. This negativeness is elementary. The power of »the first« education 
doesn't add anything to young people, it doesn't »consist of instructing in 
virtue and truth,« and the »excellent« power of law doesn't regulate the world 
beneath on the way well known from the first sentences of Émile: a man 
»mixes and muddles climates, elements, seasons. He mutilates his dog, his 
horse, his slave. He inverts everything; he disfigures everything: he likes 
distortions, monsters.«10 
Historically, more and more progressive improvement of the deficiencies of 
nature (as »cultivation«) is seen just as the declination from nature. The initial 
act of education is »only« to improve the deficiencies of nature. However, 
education as a way to »perfect nature« is a process without end: it is a way to 
culture understood as a dualism of original and mediated, as an alienation. The 
same process is going on in the field of politics: »Let us assume that men have 
reached the point where the obstacles to their self-preservation in the state of 
nature are too great to be overcome by the forces each individual is capable of 
exerting to maintain himself in that state. This original state can then no 
longer continue; and the human race would perish if did not change its mode 
of existence.« But the inevitable state of culture, i.e., »substituting justice for 
instincts,« the formation of morality, etc., demands that a man »consults his 
reason before listening to his inclinations.« This transition is signed by a 
specific trade: »what man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty, and 
an unlimited right to everything he wants and is capable of getting; what he 
gains is civil liberty, and the ownership of all he possesses.«11 
Thus, the central problem of Rousseau's writing isn't »the glorious arising of 
the civilisation,« the appearance of specific human, the entrance to culture. 
Using the Freudian concept of discontents in the civilization (das Unbehagen 
in der Kultur), Eva D. Bahovec showed inside Slovene discussions on this issue 
that it is rather the question of something constantly present as »a certain 
disturbance or a stain which should be removed, but there is no success.«12 
Culture is not possible as pure replacement of nature, replacement without any 
reminder. In such process something always rests. The former moulds the 
substance, just »gives form« to the latter. 
10. Ibid, p. 245. 
11 . Cf. Rousseau, The Social Contract, p. 14 and 20. 
12. Cf. Eva D. Bahovec, »Podobe avtoritete pri Rousseauju: gospostvo, vzgoja, analiza« (in 
Slovene; »The images of authority at Rousseau: domination, éducation, analysis«); in: Teorija 
vzgoje: moderna ali postmoderna? (Theory of education: modern or postmodern? Materials 
from the colloquium with James Donald, Ljubljana, april 1990), University of Ljubljana 
1990, p. 29. 
160 Pavel Zgaga 
Last, but not least, uneasiness in civilization arises from the polarisation of the 
original, from the inner evolution of polis, that results - through many 
historical mediations - as dualism of the modern state and modern civil 
societies. The elements being inhibited in antiquity have been actualised in 
modern times. With the French revolution, the concept of public education 
already openly indicated the possibility of institutional control over 
privateness. Education and the school as its main institutional form are 
gradually losing the prevailing features of their old character. It is not more or 
less the exclusive mechanism of privateness any more, that is, of the state - as 
we saw before at Aristotle - when »every one looks after his own children 
separately, and gives them separate instruction of the sort which he thinks 
best.« The ancient oikos, the closed sphere of household economy, is opening 
now. It is no longer left behind the fence - together with women, children and 
slaves - when paterfamilias as a constituting element of public is going to the 
forum, to the life of the political. Thus, certain aspects of the ancient oikos 
transform into the capitalist market, and others decay into the modern family 
and some ruins. Parallel with this new economy, questions of education and 
school ceased to exist as the responsibility of the paterfamilias or the 
guildmaster (who, e.g., trusted his brewery prescription to his assistant at the 
death-bed, in extreme privacy); they become social investments and new 
ambitions of an entirely new social discourse. 
However, the French revolution didn't create the school; it just came across it 
as a historical fact. As Furet and Ozouf perfectly showed in their study on 
literacy in France, the formation of the modern school was mediated through 
numerous processes: it is simultaneously »the outcome of three interacting 
factors: the Church, the State and the community« and the result of »the long 
maturing of social demand, independent of the evolution of institutions and 
régimes.«13 Already from the standpoint of the Church it is much more than 
»ideological counteroffensive« against the Protestant challenge. Mass literacy 
has a distinctive civilizing power and the school as its main instrument stands 
»at the crossroads of two different ways of thought: the first, religious in 
nature, picked up the Protestant gauntlet and sought to root orthodox Catholic 
piety in instruction. The second was instrumental, being concerned with 
normalizing social behaviour through the internalizing of a practical morality 
with a few simple rules: respect for one's parents, obedience towards one's 
masters, purity of thought and deed, turning away from evil.«14 Further, from 
the standpoint of the absolute State, »we find nothing comparable to what 
happened in the Church as regards elementary education: rather a movement 
in the opposite direction.«15 At last, from the standpoint of the third 
13. Cf. Furet F, Ozouf J, Reading and Writing. Literacy in France from Calvin to Jules Ferry, 
Cambridge University Press, 1982, p. 59 and 82. 
14. Ibid, p. 61. 
15. Ibid, p. 62. 
Democracy, culture and education as a question of form 161 
interacting factor, »the community,« the concept of public school offered 
possibilities for social promotion. The growth and anchoring of the school 
inside the heterogeneous social body didn't depend only upon the institutional 
offer (the Church, the State). A very important factor in its success was an 
active demand from partial communities such as: »The school was a product of 
local societies before becoming a factor in their transformation,« »it was a 
social phenomenon before being a technical instrument: the image of an order 
to be created, or of prestige to be won.«16 
The time of the revolution brought »the revolutionary school.« Even while it 
legitimated itself as »the national school,« i.e., as the institution of common 
interest, as a formation of citizens (not members of one or another faith), it 
played a paradoxical role of the performer of »the Church's conception of 
education.« Furet and Ozouf maintain that the French revolution created only 
its own school ideology, while the school praxis remained more or less the 
same. Despite its proclamation of the triumph of the light of reason over 
ignorance, it kept certain mythology of school. »The school became the central 
figure of society's limitless powers over happiness of the individual: under 
Ancicn Rdgime its job was to produce Christians, but under the new order it 
was expected to make men happy and free,« say the authors, who continue in 
another place: »Turning the Counter-Reformation's educational obsession with 
fashioning minds and behaviour against the Church, the Revolution fought to 
gain control of the school, not to transform it.«17 The growing discontent with 
»the revolutionary school« - which was literally decaying - and the returning 
of »the old school« can be observed also as a rebellion of civil society against 
»general« education, as the mainly spontaneous reaction of - in the meantime 
deeply transformed - community against the alignment of the concept of 
»salvation« instruction among »educational« competences of the State. 
The cross-points of politics and education in every fundamentalist praxis of the 
present time prove the same. It is not the issue of this paper, but I would like 
at least to speak against the recent »Slovene spring« among eastern 
experiences. Some Slovene authors have showed already that a large critisism 
of the state-planned school reform (so called »career-oriented education,« 
which began at the end of seventies and in reality aimed at a complete 
subjection of the school to the economy and management, at destruction of 
traditional intellectual and critical potentials of schooling, at fulfilment of the 
school as the main ideological state apparatus) among intellectuals and the 
public in general at the beginning of the eighties played a significant role in 
the accumulation of democratic potential at the late eighties. Furthermore, this 
critisism had even caused important democratic changes in the school system 
before the global reform of the political system in this country began.18 As the 
16. Ibid, p. 68. 
17. Ibid, p. 83 and 93. 
18. Soon after the constitution of the new Slovene government in spring 1990 - the Ministry of 
162 Pavel Zgaga 
quarrels on the independence of media and public institutions in general 
(which are going on inside and outside of the democratic national Parliament, 
constituted in the meantime) show, a new revolution has just passed the 
country, promising new absolute solutions. They show that the »absolute« 
liberation always ends with the reconstitution of domination. The only 
alternative against continued repetitions of the risk of restoring the school as 
an instrument of salvation and/or happiness, seems to be a well-known model 
that separates knowledge, instruction, minds from training of behaviours, 
certain life praxis, rituals, etc. This model foresees public education only as a 
form. 
In modern societies, it is not possible any more that »everyone looks after his 
own children separately, and gives them separate instruction of the sort which 
he thinks best.« Everyone is bombarded by several models of uniformity. 
However, modern democracy has to recognize the ability and the right of 
educating to each individual (parent) and, in certain degree, also to their 
numerous and specific partial (ethnical, racial, religious, class, etc.) 
communities. Supporting the idea of the Only-One-Education would quickly 
turn a wise sovereign into a totalitarian tyrant. Yet, at the first sight a paradox 
arises from such a solution. If it is allowed that »everyone looks after his own 
children separately,« that everyone strives - exclusively - for the type of the 
school education that corresponds his ethnical, racial, religious, national, class, 
gender, etc., persuasion, then it »does harm to the constitution,« as Aristotle 
had already noticed. The State would cease to exist and the civilisation is at 
risk... Instead of public education, there would be lots of partial schools bound 
to the existence and reproduction of many partial, more and more 
self-sufficient communities. In this way, public education as an instrument of 
developing democratic politicum and tolerance seems to be seriously put in 
education was controlled by Christian Democrats - a discussion on restitution of religious 
instruction in schools began. While the Church carefully supports the idea of such restitution 
and while some other militant groups openly declare that »only return of religious instruction 
can save the deep moral crisis (divorces, suicides, abortions etc.) of our society«, the official 
standpoint of the ministry is that there is no need for restitution of catechesis, but religious 
aspects of certain issues are normal elements of school subjects and instruction. - These 
declarations were interpreted by Slavko Gaber as follows: »It seems that the recent 
uneasiness of the government, provoked by the school problems, lies in the fact that the 
reform of schooling had begun before the reform of political system. At least two things are 
obvious: 1) the school has done already with many images of previous (i.e. communist) 
»reformers« and it is going to build gradually a way not subjected to any entirely concrete 
power; 2) counter-reformers who stopped the assault of previous »reformers« and who are 
not the part of new political power would not give way to the possibilities of new assaults of 
new reformers«. - Cf. Verouk v Sole?! (in Slovene; Catechesis to the schools?!), ed. by S. 
Gaber and Z. Kodelja, Ljubljana 1990, p. 10. 
Cf. also contributions as follows: Eva D. Bahovec, »School Ideologies and Educational 
Theories: An Eastern Europe Case«; Zdenko Kodelja, »Decomposing Socialist Pedagogical 
Discourse: A Case for Althusser«; both in: The School Field (publ. in English by Slovene 
Society of Researchers in the School Field, Ljubljana), Autumn 1990, Vol. I, No. 2, p. 90-103. 
Democracy, culture and education as a question of form 163 
question, particularly when these partial communities stimulate the parents to 
try for »generalizing« their goals, that is, to alter »private« opinion or certain 
life style to the »common«, »the one and the right« ideology. We know this 
dialectic very well.19 
There is another possibility: to articulate the relationship between the State 
and the personal »educative fortune«, not by the mediation of certain partial 
community (Church, nation, race, class or gender, etc.) but by the citizenship 
of one's individuality. Public education has to consider a citizen, not as a 
member of a closed social loggia, and it has to consider several possibilities, not 
uniform behaviours of all. This approach has only to consider common human 
sense and common human rights. While numerous partial educations mutually 
exclude one another in regard to their different »material«, a truly 
»republican« (i.e., which belongs to res publica) public education is possible 
only as »a form« of practicing several social styles. Such a process doesn't only 
improve the deficiences of nature, it should also »improve« uneasiness in the 
civilization, by acknowledging it as uneasiness, that is, not by transforming it 
into an ideologically promised perfection of the lost and forgotten nature: 
education of »an all-round developed personality« or that of »the good man.« 
In this direction I understand - among discussions on education and human 
rights - Carole L. Hahn's definition of the political education: it is »the 
process by which individuals can acquire knowledge of their rights and the 
desire and abilities to exercise them.«20 The conditions of exercising, nothing 
more. The process at issue doesn't educate in a strictly concrete sense: it trains 
no specific life styles, no techniques. It doesn't provide happiness and it doesn't 
promise any salvation; it doesn't search for a complete and absolute (closed) 
educational universum, saved from all uneasiness. It is not defined by this or 
that empirical life praxis or ritual. As their form, it can be only the condition 
of social variety. 
19. Democratic politics' first principle today »is that there is no pure democracy and its 
condition is the uneasiness in democracy«. - Cf. Tomaž Mastnak, »Uneasiness in 
Democracy« (contribution from the international colloquium »Democratic Politics Today«, 
Ljubljana, March 1989), published in English in: Filozofski vestnik, Vol. X., 1989, No. 2, pp. 
157-159. 
20. Carole L. Hahn, »The Right to a Political Education«; in: Human Rights and Education (ed. 
by Norma B. Tarrow), Pergamon Press 1987, p. 173.