"The Secret of Youth" against nihilism of the youth according to Umberto Galimberti Cover Image

„Tajemnice młodości” Umberto Galimberti wobec nihilizmu młodzieży
"The Secret of Youth" against nihilism of the youth according to Umberto Galimberti

Author(s): Andrej RAJSKÝ
Subject(s): Social Sciences, Education, School education
Published by: Wydawnictwo LIBRON

Summary/Abstract: The contemporary period is the time of change, conversion, transformation, continual reformation and infinite exploration. The subject of our scientific search is the very status of posing educational questions: What is the way of grasping the subject of education in the context of insecurity, fluidity and also autoreferentiality of cultural discourses and practical cultivation processes? How to ask about education at all so that possible answers would keep the pace with challenges of culture that self-ironically questions the validity of its expressions already in the moment of their beginning? The term “nihilism” has more than a hundred-year-long history and besides the classic meanings of this term attempts at recontextualisation of nihilism in current efforts to provide a cultural diagnosis keep on appearing at present. A contemporary Italian philosopher, Umberto Galimberti, belongs to these authors, too – mainly in connection to education. His work The Disquieting Guest. The Nihilism and the Youth (2008), is not to produce series of scientific treatises meant for privy communities of academics and their “hermetic circles”, but to denote the symptoms of cultural problems in a language accessible for every average-orientated reader. Galimberti compiled and analysed several basic symptoms of nihilism of the youth: 1. disinterest in school, bullying; 2. emotional aridity; 3. loss of the sense of intimacy; 4. seductiveness of drugs; 5. resorting to death; 6. carelessness, psychopathy, sociopathy; 7. ritual violence. In the final section, we show his answer to the question: How to overcome nihilism of the youth?

  • Issue Year: 9/2017
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 115-126
  • Page Count: 12
  • Language: English