The Quarterly Journal of St. Philaret’s Institute

The problem of freedom as “the key question of education and moral philosophy”, according to K. D. Ushinsky, is analyzed within the context of modern situation in educational philosophy. The theory of moral education of S. I. Gessen is presented as its classical solution. Neokantian roots of the theory as well as the affinity of Gessen’s viewpoints to another representative of Russian neokantianism M. M. Bakhtin are demonstrated in the article. The author presents deep analysis of the Gessen’s solution with the emphasis on its dialectic and dynamic nature. The article traces the development of the idea of permanent human selftranscendance as a way to exercise freedom in German transcendentalism, existentialism and phenomenology. As a semantic parallel to Gessen’s “applied philosophy” in the field of psychology existential anthropology of V. Frankl is introduced. The author shows how the idea of ontologization of the morality, according to Frankl and Gessen, is linked to the tendency of “dragging” spirituality into a human character in the modern anthropology and pedagogy.