EDUCATION AND CULTURE FROM LUCIAN BLAGA’S VIEWPOINT

 

Elena Marilena Năstase (Mihail)

Ms. Phd., University of Pitești, ROMANIA, elenamarilena2008@gmail.com

 

Abstract

Education is a broad concept, having intellectual, moral, social and political values, in order to prepare man for his integration into society, to develop his harmonious personality. Formal education is done in schools, constituting the most favorable environment to learn communication, more precisely to form the ability to talk to others, to think clearly and logically. On the other hand, informal education, along with extra-formal education, complements the communication skills. The present study aims to illustrate the relationship between education, culture and civilization according to the writer and the man of culture, Lucian Blaga. His remarkable personality used to capture the students in the hall of the University of Cluj, which specifically formed for him the Department of Philosophy of Culture. Continuing the ideas from the work Horizon and Style, Blaga upholds in The Genesis of Metaphor and The Meaning of Culture, a different vision of culture. If some Western thinkers consider it a living organism, having all the specific stages (birth, growth, flowering, fruiting, aging and death), the Romanian philosopher gives it an original perspective. The current study develops this conception, by differentiating minor culture from the major one. Lucian Blaga draws the attention to the fact that the forms of minor culture are not related to the organic temporality, because the “childish” feature of minor (ethnographic) culture has no age. Major (monumental) culture does not need an earlier stage. The metaphor and the myth contribute to the fulfillment of cultural creations. They are the consequence of ontological mutations, of placing man in the horizon of mysteries. The stylistic matrix falls into the category of “transcendent constraints” through which The Great Anonymous restricts human spontaneity in order no to reveal the mysteries of the world. In Lucian Blaga’s vision, “civilization” would represent the winter stage of a culture. The elements of civilization are not revealing, but they become utilitarian. The study also brings to the foreground the antonymous relationship between culture and civilization, critically illustrated from the perspective of Oswald Spengler, H. St. Chamberlain, Nietzsche. From Lucian Blaga’s viewpoint, the educational process manifests itself throughout life, being in connection with the stylistic matrix, with the cultural activity.

Keywords: education, culture, stylistic matrix, civilization