Summary The transformation of pedagogy into a science of education and its differentiation into a variety of sub-sciences as well as fields of study brought about a crisis in legitimating the former central subject of an academic pedagogy in the former faculty of philosophy - or at least such was the notion. Wherefore a general subject when occupied with well-defined educational problems in praxis? Does the general in any way contribute to their understanding?Does a general theory of education serve basically to special pedagogies? Or are those special pedagogies able to justify themselves as part of the university without being based in a general theory? - Those are the questions at stake, whilst the article here tries to show that these questions fundamentally mistake the character and the function of a general theory of education.