Miroslav Paulíček
Kant travelled little and yet became Kant, or by Travelling to Education?
Travelling has always been characterised by certain inherent ambivalence, which is also true for its educational dimension. Even Francis Bacon considered it part of education and life experience, though he also enumerated a large number of conditions that a traveller should fulfil in order to be truly educated. From René Descartes onwards, we can speak of the traveller as a specific type of stranger, a type described by Georg Simmel in terms of a special unity of proximity and distance in space, time and culture, while a form of strangeness can also be said to exist in relation to the traveller's domestic culture. In response to the emerging mass tourism, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk as well as Georg Simmel are very sceptical about the educational function of travelling, while the Descartesian question whether it is not more objective (and safer) to acquire education rather from books is gaining strength. Masaryk as well Václav Černík, a teacher from Kolín n. L., pointed to another, essentially national dimension of travelling, namely the extent to which it is legitimate to explore foreign cultures when one does not know one's own sufficiently.
Keywords: Travelling - Francis Bacon - René Descartes - Bernard Bolzano - Georg Simmel - Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk
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