Ethical values and education in Cemil Meriç

In this thesis, we took the works of Cemil Meriç and the texts written about him as the starting point for the purpose of investigating his views on ethical values and education.Considering that the background for Meriç?s thoughts related to ethical values and education carry high importance, we started the topic with a comprehensive introduction into his life, works, educational background, students and other people who influenced his world of ideas. Assuming that ethics is unitary, we mentioned in detail the issues of politics and ethics, which were frequently discussed by Meriç.We addressed the issues from a large perspective including the development of ethics and education in history and the place of political ethics in the east and west. We also investigated civilizations and their contributions to the intellectual heritage of the world in terms of ethics under the light of Meriç?s views. It may seem contradictory, but what we actually aimed to achieve was to bring together anarchism and ethics on one hand; and on the other hand, to prove that freedom is in fact not different from ethics.World literature was undoubtedly an indispensable ambition for Meriç. For this reason, we also gave examples from various world literatures and famous authors who were frequently referred in Meriç?s works. Furthermore, we tried to explain certain trends, especially humanism which had a big influence on literature. To these ends, we emphasized certain people like Saint Simon, İbn-i Haldun and Balzac.Indian Literature, which affected western literatures to a great extent, had special significance for Meriç. In fact, Meriç said between 1960-1964 that the following years would be his Indian period. While doing all the aforementioned things, we did not forget the human Meriç, but elaborated on his personal traits as well as his life as a lecturer. We mentioned how important a family is for a child?s education by giving examples from his own family and the narratives by his children.Meriç, also touched upon major problems of education and tried to shed light on certain issues related to the Turkish language and its gradual degradation, negative effects of the language revolution, the importance of foreign languages, problems associated with universities as well as today?s popular problems.