- 著者
-
俵木 浩太郎
- 出版者
- 教育哲学会
- 雑誌
- 教育哲学研究 (ISSN:03873153)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.1985, no.52, pp.30-42, 1985-11-10 (Released:2009-09-04)
The author tries to elucidate the meaning of Jesus' paradoxical teaching 'unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.Though an analogy like 'child' can have various connotations, the author singles out an aspect that children are pure and sincere in their wrath. However, the treatment of wrath as a psychological fact can differ from one culture to another. In Japan where paternalistic ideology has been dominant historically, patience and obedience are highly valued and wrath tends to be regarded as a vice per se, partly similar to old Jewish society. In classical Greece, on the other hand, wrath seems to have been recognised as something natural for human beings. In order to support this view the author refers to the wrath of Achilles and to the Aristotelian explana-tion of anger. (Nic.Eth. IV, v).Taking this difference into consideration, one can interpret Jesus' indignation in the temple of Jerusalem as a paradigmatic case of being like a child in the teaching of Jesus. This interpretation reminds one of Dostoevsky's novels The Brothers Karamazov in which a pure and tense wrath of a child and his death play an important role. There wrath is sympathetically understood by Alyosha, the youngest of the brothers who seems to be a personification of an ideal educator and friend of the young invented by the novelist. The author suggests that this novel can be interpreted as Dostoevsky's attempt to explain the teaching of Jesus.By way of conclusion the author proposes to interpret wrath of children as a symptom of their drive to grow. Thus, adults can arrive at a better understanding of what children are like and support children' vigorous growth.