This paper of philosophy of education sketches the modern concept of ideal of life as main vector of construction of man, and thus, of education. It is a humanistic and Western Enlightenment concept, and for this reason the introduction deals with Kant’s substantiation of the concept of ideal as such. Then, after a note about some philosophical ideas showing the openness and differentia specifica of the ideal, the concept of ideal of life as manifestation of the concept of ideal is decomposed: following the pedagogical, thus multidisciplinary outlook of D. Bazac’s book published in 1983 about the adolescents’ ideal of life. The ideal of life is individual, and its dialectical relations with social ideals and with educational ideals shed light on a complex in which all these types of ideal condition each other and involve equally complex relations with different social values. The role of models towards the ideal is showed, as well as the constitution of the ideal of life following a “de-idealisation” of the models: ultimately, the concretisation of the educative ideal in models concerns and strengthens the awareness of the different, divergent or convergent relations between ideals and reality. Just this capacity to mirror reality and induce the humans’ power to transform it and themselves according to the moral that underline the uniqueness of their species gives to the ideal of life the importance that only the educative process can emphasise. Thus, the ideal of life highlights the reason-to-be/telos/“what for” of the human beings as such.
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