Abstract:
Education and politics are the main historical expressions of enlightenment. Enlightenment philosophers tried to create “new people” with the ability to grasp permanent truth via reason through education. They also tried to transform this enlightenment education into a new custom, which can back up the legal institutions in the new society that terminate the old history of violence and unreason. However, the enlightenment education and politics that support each other finally turned out to be abstract as the reality of class exploitation and contradiction. In order to maintain the civilization created within enlightenment, the enlightenment education eventually unified with the state machine ruled by capitalism, which tried to educate the working class as a subject obeying the capitalist ruling, also as products meeting the needs of capital growth. In the Marxian critique of enlightenment, the disciplinary essence of this education was revealed as a part of the capitalist ruling system, a new concept of education aiming at true development of freedom was also inspired with the concept of communism.
