Education as the Liberation toward Self-Understanding: Between Capability and Vulnerability

general courses

(in Polish) .

Classroom

Short Description

This lecture-course focuses on understanding education as liberation toward self-understanding. Understanding ourselves means that we understand ourselves as the tradition that we are. We learn always differently, if we learn at all.

In the Statesman, 268 d, Plato addresses the need for flexibility while engaging the other in the conversation: “Then we must begin again from a new starting-point and travel by a different road.” Thus, taking a different road, ἕτερος ὁδός, becomes a mode of hermeneutic thinking, which acknowledges that everything can be seen differently, and, in fact, we understand in a different way, if we understand at all.” (Gadamer, Truth and Method, 296) To understand what wants to be understood, we need to recognize the inescapability from the past: In fact, the salvific turn to the past allows for a deeper understanding of the “tradition that we are.” (Gadamer, Truth and Method, 363) The necessity and productivity of tradition (Überlieferung) and language (Sprache) for human thinking disclose the essential mode of understanding as the way of being a human being in the world: Seeing (un-covering) things in their Wirkungsgeschichte. It is a hermeneutic call for attentiveness and responsiveness to the “tradition that we are.” Learning is looking “beyond what is close at hand—not in order to look away from it but to see it better, within a larger whole and in truer proportion.” (Gadamer, Truth and Method, 303) We learn always differently, if we learn at all.

Understanding ourselves means that we understand ourselves as the tradition that we are. We do not have the toolbox to access this understanding, not because we cannot arrange for it, but because such a toolbox is not possible, and, in fact, not desirable. Rather, when we understand ourselves today at the crossroads, we need to thematize what it means to us to be at the crossroads. Instead of the toolbox we need the readiness to new experience. As Gadamer says, an experienced person is not someone who cumulated the most of the experience, but someone who is genuinely ready for a new experience.

If we understand that the task we have to deal with at the crossroads is a cultural and educational problem, then we need to thematize what culture and education mean for us. We will turn back to Heidegger who was unequivocal about the cultural, political, educational, and social situation of his time. He sensed the greatest danger in the calculative way we live our lives. In Gelassenheit, he criticizes instrumental rationality. His distinction between contemplative thinking (besinnliches Denken) that makes being and action senseful, and calculative thinking (berechnendes Denken), the technical exploitation of the possessed knowledge becomes fundamental for an understanding of human existence. The modern human being avoids thinking by following safe paths, and not noticing that they do not engage one’s thinking. On the contrary, absorbed in calculation, we are fascinated that our instrumental, technical thinking is easily verifiable, and, in consequence, it brings quickly tangible benefits. Heidegger draws attention to the fact that a human being is the greatest enemy of oneself. Calculative thinking alienates a human being from oneself and obscures one’s self-understanding. The drama of alienation is magnified because danger becomes a chance to come into being in the world for which instrumental rationality, effectiveness in action and social verification are the decisive aspects of valuing human activity. Distancing oneself from the world and its expectations does not mean a withdrawal from any activity, it is not an escape from the world, but a meditative involvement in the matters of the world.

Heidegger reminds us also that an ability to stay in a distance to oneself, to others, to things and the world is accompanied by an openness to mystery. Reflection on oneself and the world, development of contemplative thinking, skepticism toward instrumental rationality, and radical responsibility for one’s development characterize a human being who is conscious of one’s own condition. Conditio humana is the condition of a human being rooted in the world; a human being who poses questions about oneself and others, who does not give in to stagnation and self-satisfaction because of the achieved successes, but creatively, constantly, and in a new way, asks the question of one’s mode of being. This is an integrally developing existence in the horizon of the truth of a life struggle and concrete experience.

Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Education is Self-Education,” Journal of Philosophy of Education, vol. 35, no. 4 (November 2001): 529-538.

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hans-Georg Gadamer on Education, Poetry, and History: Applied Hermeneutics, ed. Dieter Misgeld and Graeme Nicholson, trans. Lawrence Schmidt and Monica Reuss (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992).

Martin Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking, trans. John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund (New York: Harper & Row, 1966).

Gary B. Madison, On Suffering: Philosophical Reflections on What it Means to be Human (Hamilton: Les Érables Publishing / McMaster Innovation Press, 2009).

Andrzej Wiercinski, “Hermeneutic Notion of a Human Being as an Acting and Suffering Person,” Ethics in Progress, 4, no. 2 (2013): 18-33.

Knowledge:

o student is familiar with new literature on the literature as indicated in bibliography

o is familiar with Heidegger’s, Gadamer’s, and Riceour’s philosophy of education

o knows the state of research in the hermeneutics of education and is able to design an innovative research project

Skills:

o can identify philosophical aspects of education

o can address the importance of feelings (curiosity, patience, courage, uncertainty, self-esteem) and validates them in the process of learning

o has skills in presenting aspects of philosophical hermeneutics in discussing issues in contemporary education in an international setting

o can effectively communicate with other scholars in hermeneutic philosophy and education

o as a creative and insightful student shows depth in thinking and elaborating of original and novel ideas

Social competences:

o appreciates the need to learn to understand one’s life

o can set measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely goals and ways to achieve them in the context of academic, professional, and social activity

o sees the need of dialogue between different academic disciplines and schools of thought

Assessment criteria

Students must attend classes, actively participate in discussions, and write a research paper of ca. 2500 words. The grade will be based on the paper 50%. Students should clear their topic with the instructor before writing. Final revised paper due Friday, June 21, 2019. Attendance/ Active in-class participation (50%). Along with the final paper students are required to submit a detailed report about their attendance and self-evaluation of their activity in the class.