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Educational Philosophy and Theory,Vol. 44, No. 5, 2012

doi: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.2011.00767.x

Ehrmantraut, M. Heidegger’s Philosophic Pedagogy epat_767 571..575

London, Continuum, 2010

Heidegger’s influence in education has been important but not central, it has ebbed
and flowed over decades. Peters’ (2002) edited text Heidegger, Education, and Modernity
speaks to a more recent surge of interest in Heidegger’s philosophy amongst educators
in the English speaking world, a growth fuelled by the continual release of translations
from the German editions in a corpus of work which ‘reputedly will run to over a
hundred volumes’ (Peters, 2002, p. vii). In 2010 at least three new translations have been
published.1
Most of Heidegger’s works are lecture series, offering some insight into the ways in
which he conducted his classes. Yet concern with his pedagogical aims and techniques
has not been a major focus of Heidegger commentaries published in the realm of
educational philosophy. In Heidegger’s Philosophic Pedagogy, Michael Ehrmantraut takes
on this task by specifically dealing with the lectures given in the years 1927–1935,
following the publication of Being and Time. Many of these lecture courses addressed
‘introductions to philosophy and philosophic problems’ (p. 29), as did many others both
before and after this period. It is important to note here that Ehrmantraut’s text is not
itself an introduction to Heidegger’s work; it assumes a well-developed comprehension
of Heidegger’s philosophical pathway.
Ehrmantraut is clear that Heidegger’s notion of an introduction to philosophy is not
that of introduction to ‘one academic discipline among others’ (p. 35), where typically
a beginning is to be made with a ‘given stock of knowledge’ (p. 41). In contrast, a
Heideggerian introduction is concerned with making a beginning in ‘philosophizing’
(p. 35), specifically from the phenomenological standpoint of haecceitas, facticity, Dasein,
being-there. Heidegger opened his lecture courses with this form of introduction because
this is where he believed philosophizing started. But he did not always experience success
in these pedagogical ventures, as he signaled when dealing with student complaints
during a series of lectures titled An Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion; part of
a course run in the winter semester of 1920–1921.

Philosophy, as I understand it, is in a difficulty. The listener in other lectures

is assured, from the beginning on: in art history lectures he can see pictures;
in others he gets his money’s worth for his exams. In philosophy, it is
otherwise, and I cannot change that, for I did not invent philosophy. I
would, however, like to save myself from this calamity and thus break off
these so abstract considerations, and lecture to you, beginning in the next
session, on history; and indeed I will, without further consideration for the
starting-point and method, take a particular concrete phenomenon as the
point of departure, however for me under the presupposition that you will
misunderstand the entire study from beginning to end. (Heidegger, 2004,
p. 45)

© 2012 The Author

Educational Philosophy and Theory © 2012 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia
Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and
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572 Book Reviews

Figure 1: An adaptation of Heidegger’s (2000, p. 186) four-part schema of experience, with the original
text in bold. I have added the concrete and formal distinctions on each side of the ontological difference, as
well as Dewey’s descriptions of two different ways of thinking.

Heidegger’s (1982, p. 21) beginning with philosophizing, the aim of his introductions,
was the ‘phenomenological reduction’, where reduction had the Latin sense of reducere
as ‘leading back’. He (p. 21) expressed his interpretation of this reduction (which he
claimed was different to Husserl’s) as ‘leading phenomenological vision back from the
apprehension of a being ... to the understanding of the being of this being’. For Heideg-
ger, phenomenological reduction offered the possibility of a ‘leap’ to ‘an other beginning’
(1999, p. 53); a leap across the ‘ontological difference’ (1995, p. 358)2 from a beginning
with beings, with things considered in reflective thought, to a beginning with experiential
be-ing, comprehended in a way of thinking which could be described in Deweyan terms
as ‘qualitative’ (Dewey, 1930) or ‘affective’ (Dewey, 1926). This was a more feeling way
of thinking existence: as qualitative experiential whole rather than as parts interacting
with each other. These two ways of thinking afforded two different philosophical stand-
points and they were premised on two understandings of time.3
Leading undergraduate students in taking this leap across the ontological difference to
another beginning was not an easy pedagogical undertaking, especially in a context
where most were expecting the traditional form of introduction to philosophy as one
discipline amongst others. However, without an understanding of the ontological differ-
ence and performance of the phenomenological reduction, Heidegger’s philosophizing
would be mired in confusion to be comprehended as a philosophical anthropology, an
interpretation he vehemently rejected. In order to assist the reader with grasping Heideg-
ger’s positioning of the ontological difference and his phenomenological philosophizing,
I include as an informative scaffold4 the ‘four-part schema which Heidegger [2000] ...
sketched by hand on the board’ (Kisiel, 1993, p. 21) during a lecture course in 1919
(Figure 1).
In his analysis of Heidegger’s pedagogy, Ehrmantraut (p. 156) stresses the importance
of ‘leadership’, highlighting how the word pedagogy ‘is derived from the Greek words

© 2012 The Author

Educational Philosophy and Theory © 2012 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia
 Book Reviews 573

pais, ‘child’ and ago, ‘to lead’. Thus Heidegger’s pedagogy is an attempt to lead students
in taking their own leap across the ontological difference. It is important that this leap not
just be spoken about; it must be experienced personally as a ‘transformation’ (p. 119).
Heidegger uses the example of swimming to convey this pedagogical direction. ‘We shall
never learn what “is called” swimming ... or what it “calls for”, by reading a treatise on
swimming. Only the leap into the river tells us what is called swimming’ (1968, p. 21).
Without such a leap ‘one is supposed to learn swimming, but only goes meandering on
the riverbank, converses about the murmuring of the stream, and talks about the cities
and towns the river passes’ (1984, p. 7). All this talk unaccompanied by the personal
experience of the leap ‘guarantees that the spark never flashes over to the individual
student’ (p. 7).
Ehrmantraut (p. 123) appreciates that such an understanding of pedagogy as leader-
ship necessitates return to ‘the question of how one can be liberated for authentic
existence through another Dasein’s care for one’s own Being’. He points out (p. 123) that
this ‘clarification is all the more requisite because a generation of existentialist readings
of Being and Time has overlooked this problem entirely’. This is the existential problem
of teaching, a problem that has traditionally been taken up in psychological and socio-
logical terms, thereby highlighting the tension between individual and communal. But
‘Being and Time shows that Dasein is always both “communal” and “individual”; the
relation between individual and community is more complex than any “individualism” or
“collectivism” would have it’ (p. 140).5
This pedagogical problem is considered in Heidegger’s (2010d, pp. 118–119)
description of phenomenological being-with-one-another, especially when regarded in
its positive senses as to ‘leap in for’ or ‘leap ahead of’ the other, as existential care. While
leaping in for the other can be equated with traditional pedagogies which emphasize
acquisition of knowledge, Ehrmantraut (p. 117) focuses on ‘leaping-ahead’ as leader-
ship. In this pedagogy as leadership ‘the task of “introducing” philosophy ultimately
aims at making philosophizing possible in the existence of listeners’ (p. 118). Central
here is Heidegger’s (2010a, p. 185) existential (formal phenomenological) sense of care,
encompassed in the claim that ‘Dasein is a being which is concerned in its being about
that being’.6 This claim is phenomenological: it must be interpreted via the phenom-
enological reduction. It is not meant to convey a solipsistic concern for ‘I’, but both
individual and communal senses.
In order to get beyond the reflective misinterpretation of being-there as a subjective ‘I’,
Heidegger employed the term ‘who’ in ‘the Who-question’ (2009, p. 31), arguing that we
ask ‘not “What is the human being?” and not “Who is the human being?” [in general],
but “Who are we ourselves?” ’ (p. 33). Who for Heidegger was concrete phenomeno-
logical self, where ‘the self is no distinguishing determination of the I. This is the
fundamental error of modern thinking’ (p. 35). Phenomenologically there is no I, but
who, which ‘belongs just as well to theYou, to the We, and to the [plural]You’ (p. 35).The
existential problem of teaching is then one of leading as leaping ahead of the other, by
creating a potential who which is genuinely open to the authentic care of the other as an
‘existentiell can-be’ (p. 127). In Deweyan terms this authentic care is the ‘interest’
(Dewey, 1913) of the other, which cannot be separated from self, from who. In most
educational situations this phenomenological understanding of teaching offers a deeper

© 2012 The Author

Educational Philosophy and Theory © 2012 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia
574 Book Reviews

conception of the pedagogical task: teaching concerns an other’s way of being, as who,
not just beings (things or concepts).
Heidegger conceived his pedagogical challenge as one of leading the other across the
ontological difference to experiential awareness of this different standpoint with being.
This pedagogical challenge of philosophizing required creation of a particular way of
being which could embrace this awareness and lead an other to it. In order to do this
Heidegger believed he had to re-create the who of the university so as to achieve a
transformation of the being-there of his students via this who. Ehrmantraut describes
this as Heidegger’s attempt ‘to lead students back into an experience of the funda-
mental philosophic problems that lie in the essential [phenomenological] origins
of science’ (p. 152). Yet this was an educational strategy that failed in its political
conduct.7
Ehrmantraut recognizes that such a failure could be said to reveal ‘possible defects
in his [Heidegger’s] philosophic pedagogy’ (p. 152). Clearly, very few have raised the
name of Heidegger in educational discourses aimed at identifying exceptional teach-
ers.8 However these defects may have more to do with concrete application than with
Heidegger’s formal phenomenological philosophy. While there have been many notable
failures in the concrete aspects of Heidegger’s life, Wolin (1993, p. 279) suggests
that this ‘does not mean one can, mutatis mutandis, make the same argument con-
cerning his philosophy’. This is a contentious issue. Yet Ehrmantraut’s book opens the
door to the philosophizing required in order to most appropriately consider Heideg-
ger’s philosophic pedagogy. Here one must deal phenomenologically with the question
of how Heidegger’s concrete pedagogical practices (with their attending politics) may
not exhaust the ways in which the formal aspects of his philosophy can be enacted
pedagogically.

John Quay
Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne

Notes
1. Including Phenomenology of Intuition and Expression (Heidegger, 2010a); Logic: The Question of
Truth (Heidegger, 2010b); Being and Truth (Heidegger, 2010c).
2. Deleuze (1994, p. 65) states that ‘this difference is not “between” in the ordinary sense of the
word. It is the Fold’. The ontological difference is a fold in existence, not a division.
3. It is beyond the scope of this review to deal directly with the issue of time.
4. Heidegger (2002, p. 221) considered a diagram to be ‘an aid for understanding, simply
scaffolding around the phenomenon, scaffolding that must be torn down immediately’.
5. Heidegger (1999) explores this issue further via the question of the truth of being.
6. Interpreting Heidegger’s claim is helped when one is aware that Dasein means being-there, and
that his phenomenological focus is on experiential be-ing, not being as somehow outside of
experience.
7. Ehrmantraut (p. 151) notes that his study of Heidegger’s philosophic pedagogy ‘may inciden-
tally be of assistance in the attempt to understand Heidegger’s “politics” ’.
8. Where a teacher is ‘something else entirely than ... a famous professor’ (Heidegger, 1968,
p. 15).

© 2012 The Author

Educational Philosophy and Theory © 2012 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia
 Book Reviews 575

References
Deleuze, G. (1994) Difference and Repetition, P. Patton, trans. (London, The Athlone Press).
Originally published 1968.
Dewey, J. (1913) Interest and Effort in Education (Cambridge, MA, The Riverside Press).
Dewey, J. (1926) Affective Thought, Journal of the Barnes Foundation, 2:April, pp. 3–9.
Dewey, J. (1930) Qualitative Thought, Symposium, 1:January, pp. 5–32.
Heidegger, M. (1968) What is Called Thinking? J. G. Gray, trans. (New York, Harper & Row).
Original lecture series 1951–1952.
Heidegger, M. (1982) The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, A. Hofstadter, trans. (Bloomington,
IN, Indiana University Press). Original lecture series 1927.
Heidegger, M. (1984) The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, M. Heim, trans. (Bloomington, IN,
Indiana University Press). Original lecture series 1928.
Heidegger, M. (1995) The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics:World, finitude, solitude, W. McNeill
& N. Walker, trans. (Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press). Original lecture series
1929–1930.
Heidegger, M. (1999) Contributions to Philosophy (from Enowning), P. Emad & K. Maly, trans.
(Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press) Originally written 1936–1938.
Heidegger, M. (2000) Towards the Definition of Philosophy, T. Sandler, trans. (London, The Athlone
Press). Original lecture series 1919.
Heidegger, M. (2002) The Essence of Truth, T. Sadler, trans. (London, Continuum). Original
lecture series 1931–1932.
Heidegger, M. (2004) The Phenomenology of Religious Life, M. Fritsch & J. A. Gosetti-Ferencei,
trans. (Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press). Original lecture series 1920–1921.
Heidegger, M. (2009) Logic as the Question Concerning the Essence of Language, W. T. Gregory & Y.
Unna, trans. (Albany, NY, State University of NewYork Press). Original lecture series 1934.
Heidegger, M. (2010a) Phenomenology of Intuition and Expression, T. Colony, trans. (London,
Continuum). Original lecture series 1920.
Heidegger, M. (2010b) Logic:The Question of Truth, T. Sheehan, trans. (Bloomington, IN, Indiana
University Press). Original lecture series 1925–1926.
Heidegger, M. (2010c) Being and Truth, G. Fried & R. Polt, trans. (Bloomington, IN, Indiana
University Press). Original lecture series 1933–1934.
Heidegger, M. (2010d) Being and Time, J. Stambaugh, rev. trans. (Albany, NY, State University of
New York Press). Originally published 1927.
Kisiel, T. (1993) The Genesis of Heidegger’s Being and Time (Berkeley, CA, University of California
Press).
Peters, M. A. (2002) Preface, in M. A. Peters (ed.), Heidegger, Education, and Modernity (Lanham,
MD, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers), pp. vii–viii.
Wolin, R. (1993) French Heidegger Wars, in: R. Wolin (ed.), The Heidegger Controversy: A critical
reader (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press), pp. 272–300.

© 2012 The Author

Educational Philosophy and Theory © 2012 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia