Seventeenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

This paper takes a philosophical approach towards interdisciplinary education by looking at the core of interdisciplinary theory. While taking into account the many different meanings and and ways of interdisciplinary education, this paper argues for an intrinsic quest towards knowing right and wrong to be the very foundation of a fruitful interdisciplinary education. The main philosophical argument of this paper however is, that the human condition of a constant search for truth described in Plato’s Cave Analogy has not changed. Furthermore, together with its analogy in the Biblical story of Adam and Eve eating from the Tree of Knowledge, we can learn that the foundation of any interdisciplinary approach towards teaching and learning should be embedded in what I call an intrinsic quest towards knowing right and wrong. This kind of a quest should then be the consequence of an open, honest, and disinterested humanism which this paper describes further. Since this paper was written as part of a bigger research, although being a philosophical paper embedded in Western and Jewish philosophical thought, it also includes and builds on qualitative and quantitative data.