In previous posts I have been comparing education to a journey. One which begins in everyday and familiar places. One which turns us from this world of everyday experience precisely so that when we return home from our journey we will see that home in light of the larger place-world we have gained an insight into. This I called the educational odyssey. I cannot really claim any originality with regards to this line of reasoning. Although I shall not go into the details here, there is a strong, even dominant, tradition in Western thought that has seen philosophy and education as a homecoming, a coming-back-to-oneself, and we see this particularly clearly in Heidegger.
As you may know, Heidegger himself considered his work to be an answer to Western philosophy, which, since the days of Plato, has been based on a deep-rooted misunderstanding about the nature of being. See the introduction to this entry on Wikipedia, which isn't at all bad. However, it would seem that Heidegger's emphasis, in his later works, on ideas about 'dwelling' and 'homecoming' puts him more in line with the Western tradition than is usually admitted. Certainly, it is partly his use of such concepts that has incited the charges of romanticism, conservatism, or worse, that have been leveled at him.
The really crucial question here, and a central question for our times, is... can we, should we, ever feel totally at home in the world? Is there not something essentially exclusive, even oppressive, about the very notion of home? Or can we talk about home and still allow for openness and receptivity to what is other? I'm not going to be able to answer this important question right now, but during this blog's lifespan I will be offering some thoughts upon the question.
Emmanuel Levinas is one philosopher who has presented an acute and highly original criticism of Western philosophy's obsession with homecoming. According to Levinas, the history of this philosophy has been characterised by the determination to reduce what is Other to the Same, that is, to gain complete knowledge of the Other and make it into an object for the self. We could put it this way: the project of traditional philosophy has been precisely to make us feel at home. Or, as Adriaan Peperzak explains,
"Although it recognises to a certain extent that philosophy is a journey abroad or 'from here to there', on which one is surprised by strange and unsuspected events, the interpretation of philosophy as the conquest of autonomous knowledge sees it as an odyssey: by the integration of all his adventures, the traveler comes back to his point of departure. He has enriched himself but has not changed radically. The truth he found was already there from the outset. In opposition to Abraham, who went out to 'unknown lands', Ulysses remained the same" (Peperzak, 1993, pp.91)
So, Levinas's alternative to this tale of odyssey is that of exodus. Here, the journeyer sets out, not with the firm intention of returning back to the home that they know, but rather to voyage forth to encounter strange and unknown lands without the promise of a return. Although these reflections may seem rather abstract at first glance, their implications for how we think about educational aims and practices could be quite deep and far reaching. It is these implications that I want to work through in this blog.
What I have written previously would seem to suggest that the chief aims of an education are to enrich us, giving us knowledge and understanding of the world, and finally return us to that world as a home- bringing us back home to ourselves, as it were. But should our aims be more radical even than this? Given a world that is full of plurality and difference, should not an education send us out, away from hearth and home, our attachments, and aim to bring us to face to face with the unknown? A kind of educational exile?
Reference
Peperzak, A. (1993) To the Other: An introduction to the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. Indiana: Purdue University Press.
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