Kyo-sonzai no Kyoiku-gaku (Co-existence and Pedagogy - Heidegger’s Implicit Love)

This book describes Martin Heidegger’s ontology and the ideas of other thinkers who were deeply connected with Heidegger’s. In doing so, I identify an ethical foundation to underpin the work of education. Natural and social scientific accounts of educational work are important too, but my aim is to provide an ethical account. By “ethical,” I mean something that inspires and drives people’s actions—something that transcends matter, reality, meaning, and value.
 
The ethical driving force underpinning the work of education is unconditional love. As outlandish as this may seem, unconditional love is the primary concern of Heidegger’s ontology. It also features in the ideas of Alain Badiou, Gabriel Marcel, Paul Johannes Tillich, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Jean-Luc Marion. Although his ideas do not directly connect with those of Heidegger’s, John Dewey also discussed the very same unconditional love. In my view, this idea of love is central to (what was originally) Christian ontology and is slightly different from the idea of “belief.”
 
I venture to interpret Heidegger’s ontology through the lens of Christian thought. In developing his ontology, not only does Heidegger reject metaphysics, but his ideas also marked a rescinding of Christian theology. Nonetheless, I attempt to re-link his ideas with those of Paul the Apostle, Martin Luther, and St. Augustine of Hippo. In particular, the Christian concept of agape (unconditional love) served as a prototype for Heidegger’s Dasein (“existing”) and Mitsein (“co-existing”). According to Heidegger, the essential quality of being is Storge—a concerned mode in which one continually engages with and supports others to guide them toward authentic freedom.
 
However, in re-linking Heidegger’s ideas to Paul, Luther, and Augustine, I do not wish to attribute them to Christian theology as such. Instead, I intend to show that these Christian thinkers provided Heidegger with a context for developing his idea of Dasein. In reflecting on Christ’s relationship with man, one discovers the sympathia (mutual care and solicitude) underpinning human interactions. By the same token, Heidegger’s Stimme des Gewissens (“Call of Conscience”) leads one to discover the reciprocal concordance in agape.
 
In undertaking this endeavor, I identify Heidegger’s Mitsein as a fundamental component of education. That is, Mitsein forms the foundation for the work of learning something; it also forms the foundation for the work of teaching someone and guiding that person to learn something. In other words, the work of learning something and the work of teaching something are both underpinned by agape, or the sympathia manifesting as reciprocal interactions. However, achieving Mitsein in the form of agape, reciprocal interaction, or sympathia is not a stated ideal or goal of education. Although Mitsein is an essential element in the very existence of education, it features only tacitly or implicitly.
 
I believe that the purpose of education is to promote autopoiesis (self-creation). Accordingly, I believe that any pedagogy describing such an endeavor is naturally underpinned by the instinctive human desire to achieve a better life. Such a pedagogy requires no authorities, for it is authentically free.
 

(Written by TANAKA Satoshi, Professor, Graduate School of Education / 2018)