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‘Not-being-at-home’: Subject, Freedom and Transcending in Heideggerian Educational Philosophy

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Abstract

In my paper, by drawing on the writings Heidegger developed in the late 1920s, I wish to display what we may refer to as the thorough educational nature of Heideggerian reflection. It is my argument that the analysis of Dasein we find in the early Heidegger displays an extraordinary deep and dense reflection on selfhood and subjectivity, a reflection that is rooted in subject’s freedom and transcending. By paying attention to the interplay between these two features, I argue that in the late 1920s, while challenging the notion of an all-encompassing consciousness as the place where everything should be understood and managed, Heidegger built a conception of selfhood and subjectivity in terms of freedom, responsibility, and ongoing transformation. Such a conception, I argue, is in and of itself educational.

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Notes

  1. One exception is Lewis 2017.

  2. Nowhere have emphasis been added to any citation.

  3. Because of space and the purposes of my paper, I cannot adequately analyse Heidegger’s “being-with-others” and “being-for-the-sake-of-others” as the foundation of the dimensions of Dasein. I emphasize only that Heidegger stated often that “[i]nasmuch as Dasein exists qua being-in-the-world, it is already out there with beings” (Heidegger 1992/1928, p. 167) and “being-with-others belongs to the being of Da-sein, with which it is concerned in its very being. As being-with, Da-sein ‘is’ essentially for the sake of others” (Heidegger 1982/1927, p. 116). On this issue, see Charles Taylor, who argues that “Heidegger shows how Dasein’s world is defined by the related purposes of a certain way of life shared with others” (1995, p. 12). For an educational understanding of “being-with”, see also Magrini 2012.

  4. Dreyfus (1991), in his fundamental Being in the World. A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, also identifies the fact that Dasein “is interpretation all the way down” (25).

  5. I would like to thanks one of the anonimous reviewers for helpful comments about Thomson’s work.

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d’Agnese, V. ‘Not-being-at-home’: Subject, Freedom and Transcending in Heideggerian Educational Philosophy. Stud Philos Educ 37, 287–300 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-018-9598-3

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