Abstract
The aim of the paper is to discuss the importance of philosophical reflection in pedagogy and the dangers resulting from reducing science to empirical research with its specific criteria. Taking reflection on ideals in education as an example, the author shows the importance of philosophy to pedagogy, particularly in the way in which it reveals the relation between what is and what ought to be.
The paper endeavours to prove that pedagogy stems from two crucial things - (1) scientific research observing that what is (facts), and (2) philosophical inquiry opening the question of meaning and aim of education as well as of educational theory. From a certain point of view, educational ideals are of both factual and "practical" character: we give them a certain shape in notions and representions, they lead our educational experience, and they help us to build educational theory.
However, philosophical reflexion reveals that they cannot be fully thought and explained by an individual mind or social praxis.