Revisiting the place of philosophy with Heidegger: Being-in-academia

Abstract

In this article, I elucidate the meaning of the act of philosophizing as a research activity in academia. My main thesis is that, as academic philosophers, we need to change our existing relation to thinking in academia, which requires a radical re-evaluation of the ēthos, or, the dwelling-place of philosophy. Drawing on Martin Heidegger’s thought, I offer a place-based thinking, taking up the issue of being-in-academia as part of the question of dwelling. First, I explore the technological nature of being-in-academia departing from Heidegger’s account of scientific research as ‘constant activity’. After identifying the ontological character of our situation in academia as captivation in the world, I bring up the matter of overcoming modern academia, discussing the possibility of orienting ourselves at the limits of education. I argue that reassessing our utilitarian relation to world and language, and recognizing the meontological dimension of thinking, is key for being able to de-structure academia and make room for ‘ontological freedom’. I conclude that the emergence of a new dwelling-place requires a poietic process of place-making at the limits of academia.

Keywords:

• Academic capitalism
• Martin Heidegger
• topology of technology
• end of metaphysics
• poietic dwelling
• place of philosophy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Mitchell translates Heidegger’s notion of Gestell as ‘positionality’ (designating the essence of modern technology as that which fixes things in a certain technological position (Mitchell, 2015, p. 25). Yet, Sheehan’s translation of the notion as ‘the world of exploitation’ neatly unpacks the social and political dimension of what is at stake. (Sheehan, 2015, p. 258).

2 I consider Heidegger’s later critique of the ēthos of academia to be a fundamental improvement compared to his earlier view of education as expressed in his problematic rectorship discourse (Heidegger, 1990). The main point of difference is that in 1933, Heidegger proposes a project of ‘preserving’ the German university, while the post-war Heidegger is obliged to see that the issue does not concern only the German university, but the overall framework that within which the technological determines human existence. Dropping the idea of retaining the old university, he rather turns to the critique of the metaphysical underpinnings of our world of exploitation.

3 Independent of the Heideggerian context, there are many important works in the literature. Here I will mention only a few that helped me in my thinking. Rothblatt and Wittrock (1993), Münch (2007), and Rider et al. (2013) pay attention to the way in which modern education is deeply tied to the economical. Slaughter and Rhoades (2010) conceptualizes the current standing of higher education under the title of ‘academic capitalism’. In a similar line of thinking, Shore and Taitz (2012) sum up the existing ethos of academic research in OECD countries, as academic capitalism signifies the manner in which knowledge economy is regulated primarily for “generating revenues”, developing research considered pertinent for the existing economic model, which turn scholars into “flexible workers whose skills meet the needs of employers in the global knowledge economy” (2012, pp. 205–206).

4 I use and italicize the word poietic throughout the essay in the way Heidegger scholar Krzysztof Ziarek employs it (2013, p. 26) in order to differentiate it from the mere ‘poetic’. The main difference between the two is the following: While the adjective ‘poetic’ refers to that which pertains to poetry as a literary form, poietic emphasizes the Greek sense of the verb meaning ‘making’ as implicated in poiesis, namely ‘bringing forth’ that which is concealed.

5 Husserl’s treatise of the crisis of European sciences is precisely the attempt of showing why any scientific engagement that omits the epoché, and takes its objects as real-natural entities, is bound to turn into some sort of dogmatism, meaning dogmatic procedures of knowledge that cannot differentiate the correlation through which a phenomenon appears to a certain mode of subjectivity from the phenomenon itself (Husserl 1970).

6 Wittgenstein puts this idea very accurately: “121. One might think: if philosophy speaks of the use of the word ‘philosophy’, there must be a second-order philosophy. But that’s not the way it is; it is, rather, like the case of orthography, which deals with the word ‘orthography’ among others without then being second-order” (Wittgenstein, 2009, p. 54).

7 In that context, Thomson (2005) and Stock (2019) aptly underline that insofar as conceived as Latin ēducātiō, meaning ‘to bring up, rear’, education is essentially technological. The French and German words for education, namely Formation and Bildung are suggestive of the notion of ‘forming’ and ‘giving a form’, on the basis of an already existing ‘image’.

8 Unfortunately, here I will not be able to explicate the weaknesses of Heidegger’s critique of technology and modernity. For a critical review, see the Chapter 10 of Sheehan’s work (2015, p. 271–294). For a more systematic discussion, see the Chapters 2 and 3 of Thomson’s account (2005, pp. 44–104)

9 In regards with that idea, while Thomson (2005) suggests that Heidegger calls for re-ontologizing education, other authors such as Peim (2013) proffer that education has simply become fundamentally ontotheological, thus refusing the project of ‘school improvement’, which dominates the rhetoric of ‘school reforms’. My position situates between these two accounts.

10 Here I cannot provide a more detailed explanation of Heidegger’s idea of language. For the concerns of the article, Mugerauer’s (1988) discussions in the first and fourth chapters of his book are particularly important, especially regarding the notion of ‘learning’ along with reading and thinking.

11 I leave an analysis of Heidegger’s technological critique of eco-nomy, as the taking place of the law(s) (nomos) of dwelling in the oikos, meaning ‘house’ and ‘household’ in Greek for another study, which is closely related to the essence of the technological.

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Onur Karamercan

Onur Karamercan is an independent scholar currently based in Paris, France. Having completed his doctoral studies in Philosophy at the University of Tasmania (2018), he has also spent a research semester at the Department of Comparative Literature, University at Buffalo (SUNY). His main focus in research is on Martin Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology, with a specific concentration on his later thought of place and poetic language. His current research interests include philosophy of education and technology, philosophy of nothingness in the Kyoto school, comparative and intercultural philosophy and broad range of topics related to space and place studies.