Abstract
This paper analyzes the entanglement of the modern concepts of freedom, autonomy, and the modern notion of the subject and how a passion for and insistence on freedom has undermined the reconstruction of human subjectivity in Heidegger and Foucault, and how such passion has also limited the educational effort at addressing the problems brought to education by the modern notion of the subject. Drawing on Levinas, it suggests that a new understanding of freedom as heteronomy will allow us to envision an open subjectivity that is essential for education. Particularly, it looks at Gert Biesta’s recent campaigns for “subjectification” and “the gift of teaching” to analyze the underlying contradictions caused by the entanglement of freedom and subjectivity.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Berlin, I. (1969). Two concepts of liberty. In I. Berlin (Ed.), Four essays on liberty (pp. 118–172). London: Oxford University Press.
Biesta, G. J. J. (2009). Good education in an age of measurement: On the need to reconnect with the question of purpose in education. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 21(1), 33–46.
Biesta, G. J. J. (2010a). Good education in an age of measurement: Ethics, politics, democracy. Boulder, Co: Paradigm.
Biesta, G. J. J. (2010b). A new ‘logic’ of emancipation: The methodology of Jacques Ranciere. Educational Theory, 60(1), 39–59.
Biesta, G. J. J. (2013). Receiving the gift of teaching: From ‘learning from’ to ‘being taught by’. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 32(5), 449–461.
Chalier, C. (2001). Kant and Levinas: On the question of autonomy and heteronomy. In R. Bernasconi, R. A. Cohen, & M. New (Eds.), In proximity: Emmanuel Levinas and the eighteenth century (pp. 261–284). Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press.
Child, M., Williams, D. D., Birch, A. J., & Boody, R. M. (1995). Autonomy or heteronomy? Levinas’s challenge to modernism and postmodernism. Educational Theory, 45(2), 167–189.
Chinnery, A. (2003). Aesthetics of surrender: Levinas and the disruption of agency in moral education. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 22, 5–17.
Cohen, R. (1998). Foreword. In Levinas, OB.
Critchley, S. (2008). The split subject. Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 35(1), 79–87.
Ferry, L., & Renaut, A. (1990). French philosophy of the sixties, an essay on antihumanism (M. Gattani, Trans.). Amherst: University of Massachusetts press.
Flynn, T. R. (1985). Truth and subjectivation in the later Foucault. The Journal of Philosophy, 82(10), 531–540.
Foucault, M. (1970). The order of things: An archaeology of the human sciences. London: Tavistock.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish, the birth of the prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). New York: Vintage Books.
Foucault, M. (1984). What is Enlightenment? In P. Rabinow (Ed.), The Foucault reader (pp. 32–50). New York: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M. (1988). ‘Ethics of care for the self as a practice of freedom,’ an Interview with Michel Foucault on Jan. 20, 1984, conducted by Raúl Fornet-Betancourt, Helmut Becker, Alfredo Gomez-Müller, trans. by J. D. Gauthier, S. J., in James Bernauer and David Rasmussen (eds.), The final Foucault. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Foucault, M. (2005). The hermeneutics of the subject: Lectures at the Collège de France 1981–1982. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gates, D. C. (2002). The fact of reason and the face of the Other: Autonomy, constraint, and rational agency in Kant and Levinas. The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 40(4), 493–522.
Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Anchor Books.
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time. New York: Harper & Row.
Jagodzinski, J. (2002). The ethics of the ‘real’ in Levinas, Lacan, and Buddhism: Pedagogical implications. Educational Theory, 52(1), 81–96.
Jaran, F. (2010). Towards a metaphysical freedom: Heidegger’s project of a metaphysics of Dasein. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 18(2), 205–227.
Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and infinity (A. Lingis, Trans.). Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. This text will be cited as TI for all subsequent references.
Levinas, E. (1985). Ethics and infinity (R. A. Cohen, Trans.). Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. This text will be cited as EI for all subsequent references.
Levinas, E. (1987) Philosophy and the idea of infinity. In Collected philosophical papers (A. Lingis, Trans.). Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. This text will be cited as PII for all subsequent references.
Levinas, E. (1998a). Otherwise than being or beyond essence (A. Lingis, Trans.). Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. This text will be cited as OB for all subsequent references.
Levinas, E. (1998b) entre nous, On thinking-of-the-Other (M. B. Smith & B. Harshaw, Trans.). New York: Columbia University Press. This text will be cited as OTO for all subsequent references.
Levinas, E., & Kearney, R. (1986). Dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas. In R. A. Cohen (Ed.), Face to face with Levinas (pp. 13–33). Albany: State University of New York Press.
Maloney, P. J. (1997). Levinas, substitution, and transcendental subjectivity. Man and World, 30(1), 49–64.
Paras, E. (2006). Foucault 2.0: Beyond power and knowledge. New York: Other Press.
Perpich, D. (2001). Freedom called into question: Levinas’s defense of heteronomy. In R. A. Cohen, R. Bernasconi, & M. New (Eds.), In proximity Emmanuel Levinas and the eighteenth century. Lubbock: Texas Tech University.
Peters, M. A. (2009). Derrida, Nietzsche, and the return to the subject. In M. Peters & G. Biesta (Eds.), Derrida, deconstruction, and the politics of pedagogy. Peter Lang: New York.
Rayner, T. (2004). On questioning being: Foucault’s Heideggerian turn. International Journal of Philosophical studies, 12(4), 419–438.
Säfström, C. A. (2003). Teaching otherwise. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 22, 19–29.
Tobias, S. (2005). Foucault on freedom and capabilities. Theory, Culture and Society, 22(4), 65–85.
Usher, R., & Edwards, R. (1994). Postmodernism and education. London: Routledge.
Wagner, P. (1994). A sociology of modernity: Liberty and discipline. New York: Routledge.
Wild, J. (1969). Introduction. In Levinas, TI.
Zhao, G. (2009). Two notions of transcendence: Confucian man and modern subject. Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 36(3), 391–407.
Zhao, G. (2012). Levinas and the mission of education. Educational Theory, 62(6), 659–675.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Zhao, G. Freedom Reconsidered: Heteronomy, Open Subjectivity, and the ‘Gift of Teaching’. Stud Philos Educ 33, 513–525 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-013-9401-4
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-013-9401-4