Intentionality and Thinking as ‘Hearing’. A Response to Biesta’s Agenda

Abstract

In his 2012 article Philosophy of Education for the Public Good: Five Challenges and an Agenda, Gert Biesta identifies five substantial issues about the future of education and the work required to address these issues. This article employs a Heideggerian reading of education to evaluate ‘Biesta’s truth’. I argue that Biesta’s point of view (a) underestimates knowledge’s predominance and relativism; (b) frames intentionality in pre-Heideggerian terms, which—although not a problem in itself because an individual is free to choose a particular perspective on the concept—raises the issue of consistency in Biesta’s theoretical framework; and (c) a final criticism concerns Biesta’s choice of tools for engaging with the identified challenges: The primary tools Biesta uses are intrinsic to the perspective he challenges. The use of a ‘first person perspective’ to frame pedagogy that focuses on the subject and ‘subjectification’ reaffirms the fundamental Western gesture that makes human beings subjects who ‘stand-over-and-against’ the world. I argue that it is possible to penetrate Plato’s ‘theoretical gaze’ and find a ‘weak’ alternative to an all-encompassing point of view of education through a Heideggerian approach that regards intentionality and thinking as ‘hearing’.

Keywords:

• Biesta
• Heidegger
• weakness of education
• intentionality

Notes

1. For the Heidegger-Sartre controversy and its consequences for education, see Kakkory and Huttunen (2012).

2. The surprise—and the educational importance—of this text are based on Heidegger’s statement that ‘the understanding of intentionality’ must be pursued ‘before all the service to society’ (Heidegger, 1945/2002, p. 30).

3. My understanding of Heidegger’s thought as a weakening of the metaphysics of presence is clearly related to Vattimo’s reading of Heidegger. Vattimo was one of the first scholars to highlight that we cannot take Heidegger’s account of Being as another ‘strong’ understanding of truth, namely, another metaphysics narration. Vattimo clearly states that, for Heidegger, ‘Being never is, but sets itself on the path and sends itself […], it transmits itself’ (Vattimo, 1983/2012, p. 45). For Heidegger, Vattimo clearly notes, ‘There are no trascendental conditions of possibility for experience which might be attainable through some type of reduction or epoché, suspending our ties to historical-cultural, linguistic and categorical horizons. The conditions of possibility of experience are always qualified, or, as Heidegger says Dasein is a thrown project—thrown time and time again’ (Vattimo, 1983/2012, p. 40). In Heidegger, ‘we can no longer take the notion of entity [ente] as self-evident, since its being self-evident is already the result of a series of ‘positions’, occurences, or—as Heidegger calls them—historical-cultural ‘destined’ disclosures’ […]. It seems then that for Heidegger […] the question is one of reappropriating the conditions of possibility for what underlies and determines the ‘objective’ and the ‘self-evident’ as such. Yet in working out this problem Heidegger early on is led to discover […] the untenability [insostenibilità] of what metaphysics has always ascribed to Being, namely, its stability in presence, […] its thingness’ (Ibid. p. 44). Such an account of Heidegger has, of course, far-reaching consequences. However, these consequences, in my opinion, are weakened by what can loosely be referred to as Vattimo’s eschatological vision, that is, a vision of a future in which hermeneutical practice and the plurality of understandings necessarily will bring human beings to the path of dialog and compassion—an understanding that became more prominent in Vattimo starting from After Christianity (1999/2002). Of course, such confidence, especially from an educational point of view, is pivotal. However, from an educational point of view, one of the main meanings of Heidegger’s thought consists of the call to decide upon our existence, which involves an effort that we must make again and again. The question is an open one because the outcomes of such an effort are anything but guaranteed. Ultimately, because Dasein is a thrown project, no one can know in advance what will come to us from engagement with education.

4. On this issue, see also Polt, (1999) and Myiasaki (2007); for the ethical implications of Heidegger’s thought, see Olafson (1998) and Kompridis (2006).

5. For the implications of Heidegger’s 1954 essay on pedagogy and teaching, see Riley (2011).