“Educating for thinking” between “Apocalyptic and Integrated” For a pedagogy of mass communication

Abstract

After the introductory note with which Eco justifies the title of the work (chosen by the publisher Bompiani), the article reflects on the surprising relevance of Apocalyptic and Integrated (2017) in today’s age. By tracing some key concepts of the work, which refer to complexity and agency, the need for selective and consciously matured thinking/action is brought to light. This is because today’s reality should be read with a gaze trained to grasp the nodes of the rhizome (Deleuze and Guattari, 1978), which refers to the world of signs and meanings in which we are immersed. Thus, through the phenomenology of the capable man (Ricoeur, 2005), a path is traced that, rooted in memory and promise, links the past and the future, highlighting the exercise of critical thinking as the main way of carefully monitoring the criteria that determine the choices of action. Today more than ever, as in 1964, when Eco’s work was published, there is a need for a pedagogy of mass communication that reflects on education for thinking (Lipman, 2005) as a possible paideutic path capable of facing the challenges posed by the society of mass media and A.I.