Abstract
The formation of the human being constitutes a pedagogical challenge because it involves a complex, unfinished subject shaped by dimensions that educational action cannot fully regulate. The purpose of this essay is to analyze the conditions of possibility for the formation of the generic human being, considering the drive, the relation to knowledge, and the limits of teacher intervention. It argues that both teachers and students are traversed by the drive, although they occupy different formative positions, and proposes the momentary fading of the primacy of drive satisfaction as a provisional opening toward knowledge. The analysis identifies four conditions: regulation and compensation of immediate satisfaction; hetero-structuration and transfer of work; the student’s work and the temporality of formation; and contingency. It concludes that pedagogical asymmetry concerns formation, knowledge, and responsibility; that teacher intervention can provide mediations but cannot manufacture the other; that the student’s own work is irreplaceable; and that no pedagogical device can guarantee the formative effect. Formation occurs as an effect within the subject and can only be recognized retrospectively; educating therefore means creating conditions for its possibility without claiming to guarantee its outcome