Abstract
In the last two decades, a decisive anti-foundationalist turn has emerged in educational philosophy and theory. With such a shift, both the possibility and the desirability to conceive of educational processes and practices in terms of mastery and predictability has been challenged. In this paper, by locating my work on such an anti-foundationalist horizon and by staging a comparison between Dewey and Heidegger, I wish to frame the issue in terms of what is behind and what is beyond the detached and self-assured subject that is supposed to found the kind of managerial frameworks that dominate educational practice worldwide. Specifically, it is my contention that for both Heidegger and Dewey, we are, on the one hand, vulnerable from the very beginning, delivered to an uncanny and uncertain condition; even knowledge is dependent upon a wider, non-discursive context. On the other hand, such an uncanniness and dependency, rather than flowing in some nihilistic defeat of educational purposes, puts radical responsibility on the side of the subject. For both Dewey and Heidegger, being a subject means being-with-others while transcending and advancing one’s boundaries. The notion of education that will emerge through the comparison between Dewey and Heidegger is a type of both subtraction and overstepping, a type of event that we cannot manage, and yet requires our attention, our educational effort in dealing with it, in loading it upon ourselves, thus reconsidering our existence.
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Notes
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A number of scholars have highlighted Dewey’s demolition of every kind of objective/subjective representation of knowledge (Bernstein 1961, 2010; Biesta 1994; Garrison 1994, 1998, 2003; Biesta and Burbules 2003; Hickman 2007). However, it is significant that the challenge to Cartesian subjectivity is expressed in almost the same tone and words by both Dewey and Heidegger. Consider, for instance, the following claims: “There is a counterpart realist doctrine, according to which consciousness is like the eye running over a field of ready-made objects, or a light which illuminates now this and now that portion of a given field. These analogies ignore the indeterminateness of meaning when there is awareness” (Dewey 1929/1925, p. 308) and, “The problem of the subject-object relation needs to be raised completely afresh, free of the previous efforts to solve it. […] It is not a question of so-called epistemology; that is, it is not to be raised primarily with regard to a subject that grasps an object; such a grasping may not be presupposed from the outset” (Heidegger 1992/1928, p. 131).
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d’Agnese, V. Behind and Beyond Self-Mastery: Risk, Vulnerability, and Becoming Through Dewey and Heidegger. Interchange 48, 97–115 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10780-016-9291-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10780-016-9291-9