Ironie als Bildungsziel

Starting from the plea for making irony an educational goal of political education formulated by Roland Reichenbach in one of his writings, the author discusses the question of which concept of irony is aimed at in this context. Reichenbach himself does not elaborate on whether there should also be other educational objectives to be pursued by political education. However, since he does not mention any other goals, the present contribution mainly focuses on the thesis that irony – although it cannot be the only educational goal of political education, superseding other educational objectives such as emancipation or affirmation – could or should none the less – in combination with these other objectives – be part of an open network of educational goals. The description of the situation given by Reichenbach, which forms the basis of his thesis that the late modern situation requires irony to be a goal of political education, essentially holds true for all areas of education. This leads to the question, discussed in the third part of this contribution, whether this definition of educational goals could be extended to other areas of education. Anschrift des Autors Prof. Dr. Henning Schlus, Universitat Wien, Institut fur Bildungswissenschaft, Sensengasse 3a, 1090 Wien, Osterreich E-Mail: henning.schluss@univie.ac.at