Education, Experience and Existence: Engaging Dewey, Peirce and Heidegger (New Directions in the Philosophy of Education) by John Quay

Author:John Quay [Quay, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781135970048
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2013-07-17T22:00:00+00:00

Phenomenological construction

Phenomenology necessarily involves access through factical life experience via the phenomenological reduction. “What counts is to bring oneself into position to see phenomenologically in the very work of discussing the matters at issue” (Heidegger 1997/1924–25: 7). However, Heidegger isn’t wedded to phenomenology as a term used to describe this position and the matters made accessible. “Once an understanding of these is gained, then phenomenology may very well disappear” (p. 7). Here Heidegger is addressing his move away from using phenomenology as a label to describe his thinking. This move “was done, not – as is often thought – in order to deny the significance of phenomenology, but in order to abandon my own path of thinking to namelessness” (1971/1953–54: 29).

In what is most its own phenomenology is not a school. It is the possibility of [meditative] thinking, at times changing and only thus persisting, of corresponding to the claim of what is to be thought. If phenomenology is thus experienced and retained, it can disappear as a designation in favor of the matter of thinking whose manifestness remains a mystery.

(Heidegger 1972/1963: 82)

Instead of the name phenomenology, Heidegger prefers the simpler term thinking, which he variously characterizes as meditative, mindful or inceptual, so as to contrast it with the reflective method of scientific and calculative thinking. Like Dewey, Heidegger understands the connection between a way of thinking, method, and a philosophical standpoint. In place of the term ‘method’, which points to system and process, Heidegger (1968/1951–52: 168) considers “thinking itself,” meditative thinking, to be “a way” in the sense of a path or trail. He (2003/1973: 80) distinguishes “between path and method” in an attempt to distance meditative thinking, where “there are only paths” one follows in thinking being as being-here, from calculative or pragmatic thinking “in the sciences,” where “on the contrary, there are only methods, that is, modes of procedure.” Hence he considers “method, especially in today’s modern scientific thought,” to be “not a mere instrument serving the sciences; rather, it has pressed the sciences into its own service” (1971/1957–58: 74). Method is an expression of machination, and it is in this sense that Heidegger claims “science does not think” (1968/1951–52: 8), for science simply follows method. In contrast, a phenomenological path does not equate to methodical procedure; a path ventures into be-ing as being-here, offering various analogous forks and branches. A one-track consideration of method as the process of reflective thinking overlooks meditative thinking along a path.

When [meditative] thinking comes to an end by slipping out of its element [being-here] it replaces this loss by procuring a validity for itself [in reflective thinking] as … an instrument of education and therefore as a classroom matter and later a cultural concern. By and by philosophy becomes a technique for explaining from highest to lowest causes. One no longer thinks; [rather] one occupies oneself with “philosophy.” In competition with one another, such occupations publicly offer themselves as “-isms” and try to outdo one another.

(Heidegger 1998/1946: 242)

However, Heidegger recognizes that

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