Beyond competences: individual, mysteriousness, relationality

The debate on the topic of competences requires an increasingly crucial rethinking of their significance and the related training methods, so that they are not designed to train an individual in one’s own predominantly adaptive and functional side to the needs of the society. This paper aims to introduce the problematisation of competences so that they are primarily aimed at forming the person in an integral sense, looking at the person’s need and the constitutive, essential and original human qualities. Qualities – specifically mysteriousness and relationality – that if awakened and exercised intentionally in each person initiate and nurture that process of self-definition and self-actualization, making the self capable of intervening in the world to emancipate and expand it.