Conceptual Grounding of Education as Human Formation – a Dialogue between Aspects of the Field of Education Itself and the Buddhist Tradition

This article demonstrates and takes as its underpinning the idea that education has a normative dimension without which it cannot constitute itself as a specific field of practice and knowledge. This normative aspect of education relates to the need to promote, based on appropriate principles, the humanization of the human being. The article analyzes theoretically the concept of education to demonstrate and to underpin such principles that characterize education as human formation: equality, truth, utility, reasonability, introspection, individuation, freedom. Without these principles, education could hardly be conceived as a proper field of knowledge and practice. Then, the article undertakes a comparative analysis of these formative principles with those that emerge from the Buddhist tradition with regard to the understanding of human beings and their orientation in the world.