The philosophical foundations of pedagogical modernity. Comenius and Descartes

In this paper, I intend to analyze the contribution of Comenius and Descartes as two of the main sources of modernity, pedagogical in the case of Comenius and philosophical in the case of Descartes. For this, first at all, I analyze the philosophical basis of Comenius' pedagogical project, which is focused in the concept of Universal Science. Secondly, I explain why this project seems to configure the pedagogical modernity but not the philosophical modernity. Thirdly, I present the key points of pedagogical Cartesian project, although this project did not make explicit in specific work of Descartes. Finally, I argue that the pedagogical modernity was based on a didactic provided by Comenius but with a Cartesian programmatic framework. This was possible, among other factors, because both share a basic principle of the new pedagogy: the democratization of education.