Paul Natorp’s Social Pedagogy in Sergei Hessen’s Axiological Historism

Sergei (Sergey, Sergius) Hessen, inspired by the ideas of Heinrich Rickert, proposed an axiological interpretation of history as a process of realization of values in the form of material culture. Hessen shows human freedom in the axiological interpretation of Kantian ethics of duty as participation in the realization of values in historical reality. The whole variety of the content of realized values constitutes culture, which is the product not of an individual, but of society as a whole. Hessen’s axiological historism needed to substantiate the individual’s free will as a condition for the possibility of the sociocultural process. Under the influence of Paul Natorp’s social pedagogy, Hessen identified the correlation between individual freedom and societal goals of development. In social pedagogy, Natorp reasoned that society creates and develops culture when the correlation of individual freedom and social development goals is ensured. An understanding of the mutual dependence of the individual and society is provided by the school. The creation and deepening of the content of material culture depends on the creativity of many free people. This study will reveal how Hessen adopts and interprets the ideas of Natorp’s social pedagogy to substantiate the principles of interaction between the individual and society in the process of realization of values - formation of cultural content. It is established that Hessen, following Natorp, interprets education broadly as a process of socialization, and pedagogy as its instrument. Education offers a way to relate the individual and society, teaches that they are interrelated and interdependent in sociocultural development. Hessen overcomes the limitation of approaches to understanding society, focused on the priority of the individual/society, by emphasizing their interaction. Hessen uses this idea of organizing society as a collective social subject consisting of free people not only in pedagogy, but also in socio-political philosophy, forming the doctrine of social law. Hessen views the treatment of society in Natorp’s socio-political works as a development of his ideas of social pedagogy in socio-political philosophy. On this evidence, we can conclude that in his pedagogy, Natorp formed a concept of society that extends beyond pedagogy to his social philosophy as a whole.