교육이론은 인간의 본성에 관한 근본적 딜레마를 정면으로 대면하여 그것을 해명하지 않으면 안된다. 그 ‘근본적 딜레마’라는 것은, 교육은 본성을 훼손하는 일과 실현하는 일을 동시에 해야 한다는 것, 교육은 본성을 훼손하는 일을 통해서만 본성을 실현할 수 있다는 것이다. 주희와 듀이의 교육이론은 이 딜레마에 대한 대안적 해결을 제시한다. 듀이가 본성을, 본성을 훼손하는 것과 동일한 방식으로 실현하려고 한 것과는 달리, 주희는 본성의 실현(심성함양)을 본성의 훼손(문제해결)으로부터 분리함으로써 후자가 전자의 영향 하에 놓이도록 한다. 듀이의 이론에서와는 달리, 주희의 이론에서는 ‘본성’이 정당한 지위를 가지게 되며, 그런 만큼 주희의 이론은 심성함양을 위한 실천을 그 실천 자체에 의하여 설명하는 ‘메타프락시스적’ 성격을 극명하게 예시해 준다.
Educational theory, in its proper sense, is faced with what may be called the fundamental dilemma of human nature. The dilemma is that the realization of human nature must go hand in hand with the impairment of human nature, and that education, in order to realize the human nature, must do the job only in the same temporal process in which the human nature is impaired Educational theory of Chu Hsi offers an alternative way of solving the dilemma to that of Dewey. In Dewey s theory, the human nature is to be realized, if it ever is, in exactly same manner as it is impaired, i.e., through practical problem-solving, whereas in Chu Hsi s theory, the human nature is separately cultivated in isolation from the practical problem-solving in such a way that the daily practical activities are put under the morally viable influence of the human nature so cultivated. It is more than expected that in Chu Hsi, unlike in Dewey, the cultivation of human nature, or of the primordial mind , plays a fundamentally important role in educational theory. The human nature, as much as its ontological counterpart, the reality, can be cultivated and made intelligible in no other way than by putting it in practice. The term metapraxis , in the sense of practice of practice , may be used to refer to a family of discourses in which the practice is justified and made intelligible only by the practice itself. As long as the educational theory tries to explain the cultivation of the primordial mind, it may well claim its nature as metapraxis. And by so doing, the educational theory comes to share the same family of discourses with the religious and the political theories.