Philosophy ETDs

Publication Date

2-1-2016

Abstract

This dissertation is a study of Martin Heideggers thinking on education, a neglected thematic in the extensive philosophical literature of Heidegger scholarship. Discussion of Heidegger and education inevitably evokes the fault of Heidegger's involvement in National Socialism at Freiberg University. However, the core of this dissertation project is to show that Heidegger contributes favorably to our philosophical thinking on education. Further, this study aims to suggest that to consider the matter of 'Heidegger and education' only in the dark light of the act and political implications of Heidegger's becoming the first Nazi rector of Freiburg University is to miss Heidegger's central educational concern: that of teaching and learning the thinking and gathering of being itself. My central argument to this end is that in Contributions to Philosophy, Heidegger speaks a radical vision of education as preparation for overcoming the crises and plights of modernism, including those of late-modern education. More specifically, as Heidegger envisions it, this education would prepare future human beings 1) for returning to the original domains of questioning, to philosophy and philosophizing at its root; 2) for thinking in those original domains apart from, and even other than, the thinking of modern erudition, including philosophy; 3) for an ontological overcoming of the ontotheological essence and ground of the western philosophical tradition as metaphysics; 4) for thinking another beginning for philosophy, philosophizing, and the worlds of intelligibility and structures such a beginning would unfold. I situate the main of my discussion in Heidegger's tumultuous and transitional middle period, 1929-1938, specifically in both 1930/1940 studies of Plato's Cave Allegory 1936-38 and Heidegger's second masterwork Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event). By 1929, and in terms of plight (Not) and nihilism, Heidegger is beginning to thematize his thinking on the university and need for philosophical education to answer late-modern plight.. I understand Contributions to Philosophy to present the first thoroughgoing expression of Heidegger's mature philosophy of education as that which prepares human being for the thinking and gathering of being itself, which Heidegger calls Ereignis.

Degree Name

Philosophy

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

Philosophy

First Committee Member (Chair)

Goodman, Russell B.

Second Committee Member

Kalar, Brent

Third Committee Member

Padui, Raoni P.

Project Sponsors

University of New Mexico

Language

English

Keywords

Heidegger, Education

Document Type

Dissertation

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