Comenius, John Amos (1592–1670)

Comenius (Jan Amos Komensky), a Czech philosopher and theologian, was one of the founders of modern educational theory. As a Protestant minister he had to leave Bohemia during the Counter-Reformation, spending most of his life in various European countries. His greatest work (not published during his lifetime) is De rerum humanarum emendatione consultatio catholica (A General Consultation on the Reform of Human Affairs), whose leading idea is the demand for a harmonious arrangement of human relations on the basis of rational enlightenment, the development of education, and the instruction of all humankind. Comenius builds his philosophy on an idea of human nature understood as grounded in an active creative force perpetually leading to improvement: instruction and education are the tools to fulfil this humanitarian ideal. To lend force to this, Comenius constructs a whole ontological system, in which a harmonious development of the whole of existence leads to human reality as its highest tier.