Sharing the World: Education toward Living and Surviving in a Time of Crisis

ogólnouniwersyteckie

If human existence is a hermeneutic existence, we cannot “fly from thinking” (Heidegger’s “flight from thinking,” from his Discourse on Thinking). We need to face life and attempt to make sense of health, illness, and disease. Education as a mode of being a human being in the world is a passionate engagement with the world. By sharing the world, we share what is most precious to us, our own lives.

Following Gadamer, we understand that any communication between differently situated consciousnesses occurs within the fusion of their horizons. In our attempt to understand what is happening in and to us, especially in times of crisis, we remind ourselves of our situatedness between familiarity and strangeness. In the process of convergence of those distant and familiar horizons, we discover the complexity of being a human being in the world. As such, we are never fully transparent to ourselves, nor is the world fully transparent to us, nor we to the world. Reading Camus’s, The Plague can open the world of the text into different possible interpretations for us, as the text meets the world of the reader. When Ricoeur claims that “time becomes human to the extent that it is articulated through a narrative, and narrative attains its full meaning when it becomes a condition of temporal existence,” he encourages us not to separate our own existence from the account we give of ourselves by telling our life story. Careful reading of Camus’s narration on suffering, madness, and compassion, invites us to revisit our fears of death and our wishes for a quick eradication of the pandemic in order to re-turn to the normality of previous life. We can read the text as a re-collection of what this pandemic means for humanity. By turning to the problem, we can learn from the pandemic something essential about ourselves, fundamental human fragility, and vulnerability, and not just how to overcome the intricacies of the current crisis. The pandemic is a phenomenal educational event, something that happens in and to us. It will not leave us unaffected but hopefully provide us, like every great narration, with an identity.

Albert Camus, The Plague, trans. Robin Buss (London: Penguin Books, 2001).

Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago: The University of Chicago

Press, 1992), especially the Fifth Study, “Personal Identity and Narrative Identity,” 113-139, and the Sixth Study, “The Self and Narrative Identity,” 140-168.

Andrzej Wierciński, Hermeneutics of Education: Exploring and Experiencing the Unpredictability of Education (Zurich: LIT, 2019).

Learning outcomes

Knowledge:

o student is familiar with new literature on the literature as indicated in bibliography

o is familiar with Heidegger’s, Gadamer’s, and Ricoeur’s philosophy of education

o knows the state of research in the hermeneutics of education and is able to design an innovative research project

Skills:

o can identify philosophical aspects of education

o can address the importance of feelings (curiosity, patience, courage, uncertainty, self-esteem) and validates them in the process of learning

o has skills in presenting aspects of philosophical hermeneutics in discussing issues in contemporary education in an international setting

o can effectively communicate with other scholars in hermeneutic philosophy and education

o as a creative and insightful student shows depth in thinking and elaborating of original and novel ideas

Social competences:

o appreciates the need to learn to understand one’s life

o can set measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely goals and ways to achieve them in the context of academic, professional, and social activity

o sees the need of dialogue between different academic disciplines and schools of thought

Students must attend classes, actively participate in discussions, and write a research paper of ca. 2500 words. The grade will be based on the paper 50%. Students should clear their topic with the instructor before writing. Final revised paper due Friday, December 18, 2020. Attendance/ Active in-class participation (50%). Along with the final paper students are required to submit a detailed report about their attendance and self-evaluation of their activity in the class.