Beyond learning, back to the care of the soul? Socrates, Patočka and the ‘worldward’ movement of education

Against the backdrop of the contemporary philosophical-educational opposition to the discourse of learning and in reference to Gert Biesta's and Jan Masschelein's appeals to Arendt's notions of labor and action, the present paper argues for the significance of Patočka's ideas for philosophy of education. In particular, his innovative reading of Socrates's care of the soul is deployed and it is construed as a most important conceptual tool to contrast learnification and to recover the worldward movement of paideia, which is at the very origin of the European project.