The àgalma: “common good” of educational relationship

Abstract

The concept of common good, even before being an ethical issue, is a norm which applies to any subject. The (social, political or scientific) community is based on munus, which is not simply a gift to be enjoyed, but rather a duty, a burden, a continuous construction of all its members. What is munus of the pedagogical community then? If we follow this trail, even before answering by individuating a specific object, we should agree on the identification of a shared regulatory principle, which is easy to find in the educational relationship. The educational relationship, as a pedagogical duty and continuous construction, represents the ultimate goal of pedagogy, both in the scale of practice and in theoretical research. In the proposal of this article, the center of the educational relationship’s realization (and its true common good) is the àgalma, concept of Lacanian derivation, which represents the condition of success in the formation and transmission of knowledge as it lies on the transfert, presented here as a fundamental psycho-educational topos of the educational relationship.