E-Journal of Philosophy of Education:
International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 4, 2019

Freedom, Authority, and the Experience of the Pathos:
A Response to Gert Biesta’s “The Rediscovery of Teaching”
Fumio ONO
Doshisha University

Introduction
First, please allow me to share a personal recollection. The first time I ever saw thename of Gert Biesta was in the book Derrida & Education (Routledge, 2001), which heedited with Denise Egéa-Kuehne. Ever since 1997, when I was a Bachelor student, I haveworked on the philosophy of Lévinas, and for the past twenty years have focused on thefollowing two tasks. First, understanding, from a perspective that examines the
Enlightenment and Romanticism as its criticism, the philosophy of the Frankfurt school(Adorno, Benjamin etc.) and Hannah Arendt as well as the philosophical endeavors of
so-called post-structuralist philosophers. Second, genealogically re-interpreting twentiethcentury post-modern thought by connecting it historically and theoretically with German
philosophy and educational thought at the turn of the nineteenth century (Kant, Schelling,
Herder etc.).
Based on these interests I was engaging in a continual trial-and-error process ofattempting to understand the possibilities of Lévinasian philosophy, particularly how to
discuss his thought in the context of pedagogical problematics. However, Lévinas was
not a very popular object of study for scholars of education at the time. Those who did
focus on Lévinas understood his thought based on specific biases. There was therefore
no research on “Lévinas and education” that could satisfy my interest, excluding Michael
Wimmer’s work Der Andere und die Sprache. It was in this context that Derrida &Education appeared before my eyes. This was the year after I wrote my Master’s thesison the realization of ethical subjectivity in the work of Emmanuel Lévinas and Martin
Buber. Derridean philosophy is, of course, deeply related to that of Lévinas. At the time
I thought that Derrida’s thought was an ill fit for pedagogy to the same extent as that of
Lévinas, and this book boldly showed the possibilities of discussing Derrida’s thought as
Correspondence:
Fumio ONO, Doshisha University. Email: nockie230@hotmail.com

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pedagogical problematics, giving me the courage to continue my somewhat stumbling
research on Lévinas. In this sense, I am indebted to Biesta and his work, and while many
years have passed, I am very happy that I can finally share my gratitude with him in
person.
Here I have been assigned the task of responding to Biesta’s paper on Lévinasianphilosophy-inspired pedagogy. While I would like to repay my academic debt to him,from a Lévinasian perspective, this is not possible. Even so, I would like to respond to his
paper by offering some comments and raising a few questions.

1. The Meaning of Rediscovering Teaching in the Age of Learning
Biesta discussed “the need for a recovery and the rediscovery of teaching” in his paper.
When doing so, Biesta criticized the unfruitful binary that serves as the premise of
discussions surrounding education: either so-called ‘traditional’ teaching andauthoritarian forms of teaching or the abolition of teaching and ‘autonomous’ learning
process. In his book The Rediscovery of Teaching, Biesta repeatedly makes clear that“teaching is not a limitation of the freedom of the student, but the very way through which
the student-as-subject may emerge” (Biesta 2017: 41). Using the idea of “the experienceof being addressed,” he attempts to overcome an ‘egological worldview’ and places atthe center of our understanding of teaching the awakening of students and children as
subjects living in a creative relationship with the world.
I agree with this idea, and think that it provides for us philosophers of education afundamental yet very fresh perspective on the understanding of teaching and education.
I am also sure that the various ideas ushered in by his research provide courage andencouragement to parents and teachers who are struggling with difficulties related toteaching and education on a daily basis. Below, I would like to comment on aspects of
his paper by which I was particularly inspired.
Biesta provides a diagnosis: autonomous learning is increasingly being strengthened
while teaching is backgrounded. However, he also states, “to establish a more generalcase for the recovery and rediscovery of teaching is fraught with difficulties.” This isbecause in many cases the emphasis on teaching comes “from the conservative end of
the political spectrum” (ibid.: 42).
These diagnosis and assessment are very useful when thinking about contemporary
Japan. For example, a Central Education Council report entitled “Improving the Quality
and Abilities of School Education Teachers” (No. 184), emphasizes that teachers should
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continually and autonomously learn, using phrases like “an autonomous learningorientation” and “qualities and abilities demanded by the changing times and their own
career stages.” It appears that this increasing emphasis on learning can be found not onlyin the case of students but teachers as well. These assertions are in and of themselvescertainly important—the kind of things that therefore no one would argue against.
However, it appears that the spirit and principles orienting this report do not really respectteachers’ autonomous learning or creative activities.
For example, while the report highlights the need to adapt to an era of globalization,
English-language education is basically the only proposed method of doing so. One does
not really find any mention of addressing global problems, such as those related topoverty and the environment, or war, violence, nationalism, and colonialism. Also,
judging from the report’s content, its phrase “changing times” appears to only refer tothings related to new technologies: research on AI, the use of big data and ICT, and so on.
What does this mean? It appears that the report’s ideal image of a teacher is one who
quickly attunes themself and adapts to societal changes. The report expects an ironic
outcome: school education and teachers’ unidirectional technical adaptation to ‘external’changes leading to an “autonomous learning orientation.” What is lacking is respect for
the fact that schools and teachers are actors with subjectivity that produce change—that
they are the source, along with students and children, of creative activities that gives riseto the new.
As we can see, it appears that it is not the case that “learning” is simply emphasizedand “teaching” being done away with. A situation has emerged in which, while on thesurface one finds terms related to “learning” and an emphasis on its strengthening, for all
intents and purposes schools and teachers are increasingly expected to be technicallyattuned to the times and teaching is being further used as a method of control. While myexample was about the learning of teachers, the same kind of spirit and principles are
dominating student learning. In this context Biesta’s attempt to rediscover teaching shows
us what is wrong with the spirit and principles dominating contemporary Japanese
education.

2. Freedom as Responsibility and Relationships
There are several important points of inquiry when understanding Biesta’s idea ofteaching, particularly regarding the nature of freedom and of authority. He points out thefollowing regarding them:
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73“Such teaching is not authoritarian because it does not reduce the student to an object
but rather has an interest in the student’s subject-ness. But it does not overcome
authoritarianism by opposing it […]. It does so by establishing an entirely different
relationship. This is a relationship of authority, because in moving from what we
desire to what we can consider desirable, we give authority to what and who is otheror, with a slightly different word, we authorize what and who is other by letting it be
an author, that is, a subject that speaks and addresses us” (Biesta 2017: 56).
Here, Biesta says that teaching “does not overcome authoritarianism by opposing it.”This follows his basic orientation of not overcoming traditional teaching by placing
autonomous learning in opposition to it. Such a relationship would impoverish bothteaching and learning and ends up reproducing an oppositional schema that is notbeneficial.
Such a criticism appears to overlap with the criticism of German anti-education
movement (Antipädagogik). The anti-pedagogical position is based on a certain mistaken
understanding of the concept of freedom. In its place he proposes a third option regarding
freedom: “It is in this third option ― an option which relies on the idea that freedom is
not the opposite of authority or an escape from authority, but has to do with establishinga “grown-up” relationship with what may have authority in our lives” (ibid.: 42).
This way of thinking is similar to the understanding of freedom that Martin Buber
expressed around ninety years ago at a presentation at the New Education Fellowship(Buber, “Rede über das Erzieherische,” 1926). Buber criticized a mistaken conception of
freedom that places ‘compulsion’ and ‘non-interference’ in opposition to each other basedon a dualistic schema between old and new education, and said that the polar opposite ofcompulsion is not freedom (in the sense of non-interference or leaving alone) but rather“communion” (Verbundenheit). In other words, compulsion in education means“disunion” (das Nichtverbundensein) with others and the world, and freedom in
education is the “possibility of communion” (das Verbundenwerdenkönnen) with others
and the world (Buber 1962: 795). Here “communion” means having the responsibility to
the addresses of others and devoting oneself completely to them, while working together
to create reality with them. Freedom is not realized simply by being liberated fromsomething. Rather, freedom is fully realized in accordance with how one relates to others
and the kinds of relationships created in the process. Buber’s idea of freedom ascommunion shares aspects in common with Lévinas’s idea of “invested freedom” (laliberté investie) and “questioned freedom” (la liberté mise en question) (Lévinas 1990).
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F. ONOOf course, at the root of this we find traditional Jewish dialogical thought about being ina relationship in which one responds to God’s call, as well as about the subject and its
freedom being formed as responsibility to others. However, this is not a tradition that is
the sole property of Judaism; as Biesta convincingly argues, it is an idea open to educationin general that also enriches one’s understanding of education.

3. Authority as the Capacity to “Newly Bring into Existence”
The nature of authority is just important as—and also deeply related to—the questionof freedom.
As we saw in the previous quote, Biesta chooses the path of investigating a third“entirely different relationship” that deconstructs a non-beneficial binary opposition
schema. Why, though, is this an “entirely different relationship”? Of course, he explainsthat this is because it is characterized by treating students as not objects but subjects.
However, why and how do freedom and authority connect amidst relationships withsubjects?
Émile Benveniste’s famous etymological research provides an answer to this(Benveniste 1969). Benveniste points out that both “authority” and “author” are derived
from the Latin auctor (creator, ancestor) and auctoritas (support, influence, authority),
and that this etymology is normally explained in connection to augeo (increase).
However, Benveniste continues, “increase” is “a secondary and weakened sense of augeo”
and has the more fundamental meaning of men who can “cause something to come into
being and can literally ‘bring into existence’” (Benveniste 1969: 151). While “increase”
means to “make something which existed before bigger (rendre plus grand quelque chosequi existe déjà),” Benveniste says that “augeo denotes […] the act of producing fromwithin itself (l’acte de produire hors de son propre sein)” (ibid.: 149).
“The primary sense of augeo is discovered in auctoritas with the help of the basic
term auctor. Every word pronounced with authority determines a change in theworld; it creates something. This mysterious quality is what augeo expresses, thepower which causes plants to grow and brings a law into existence” (ibid.: 150f.).
This point—that the original meaning of “authority” and “author” is not “to increase
something that already exists” but “the ability to bring something into existence”—is very
important for differentiating between authoritarianism and authority; the goal ofThematic Research: Rethinking Teaching: Toward the Reconstruction of (Philosophy of) Education

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authoritarianism is to increase something that already exists. This perspective also shows
the rich possibilities of Biesta’s “pedagogy of interruption” (Biesta 2010) that tries toconstruct free subjects that open up to the outside (in contrast to education that, based on
the principle of increasing what already exists, boils down to qualification andsocialization).
At the root of the concepts of “authority” and the “author” Benveniste found what we
could also perhaps call the capacity to newly bring things into existence. This is related
to Arendt’s attempt to give significance humans and education by updating the meaningof public realm and “the in-between” (der weltliche Zwischenraum) (Arendt 1967: 309)
based on the concept of “the capacity of beginning something anew” (die Fähigkeit,
selbst einen neuen Anfang zu machen) (ibid.: 18). Being free is to exist in relation to others
and the world and is connected to creating the new. Due to this creative power ofrelationships, being free is connected to authority.

4. Facilitators vs. Teachers?
There is still a large set of difficult problems in education related to freedom andauthority. Biesta began his paper (and book) with a criticism of the position that the only
meaningful response to authoritarian teaching is the abolition of teaching and a turntowards learning. While I also agree with this criticism, at the same time I do not thinkthat things end here.
For example, consider “free schools” or “alternative schools.” There, there are “staff
members” that call themselves facilitators. It may be true that those who claim to be
facilitators unjustifiably lower the value of teaching. However, such critical position
might be criticized on the grounds that it unfairly underestimates the unique importanceat times of facilitators for children who have been harmed and disappointed by, andtherefore runaway from, studying at school. Or, it could also be criticized for weakening,although not intentionally, the unique importance that autonomous learning can have.
Rediscovering teaching is important. However, is there not a need to also look into themore positive meaning of another form of “teaching” for people who favor facilitators?
Their activities are not a simple rejection of teaching. It surely is important to also
understand the meaning of “teaching” in a form that is on the surface “not teaching” hasfor them. As I think Biesta will agree, the meaning of this “teaching by not-teaching” isrelated to the content of his “rediscovered teaching.”

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5. Experience, Ethics of the Weak, and Pathos
In closing let us turn to the Japanese pedagogical context. In 1988 ‘Clinical Pedagogy’(Rinsho-Kyoikugaku) appeared in Japan, and since then has continued to play a role tosome content in the country. The education scholar Shuji Wada (1932- ) and Analyticaland Clinical Psychologist Hayao Kawai (1928-2007) collaborated to create ClinicalPedagogy. However, the Dutch education scholar Martinus Jan Langeveld (1905-1989)
played a decisive role in its birth, serving as an intellectual backbone. In ClinicalPedagogy, teaching is understood as a dual activity comprised of ‘pedagogical’ and‘therapeutic’ elements. Perhaps these could also be described as ‘promotive’ and‘receptive’ elements. At the foundation of the position assumed by Clinical Pedagogy isthe approach of “facing the deathbed,” an idea connected to the etymology of the word“clinical.” In this approach existed a deep understanding of the “helpless” nature ofhumans, the tragedy of life, and the world of the weak (Wada & Sumeragi eds. 1996;
Sumeragi 2018). We can interpret it as the logic not of the strong but the weak, or as an
attempt to understand education from the ethics of the weak and then produce a new
educational theory and practice (Ono 2015; Ono 2017).
Drawing from Lévinas, Biesta points out that subjects arise after being addressed by
the other.
“Levinas puts forward the view that sense-making does not come before our
encounter with the other but actually only arises as a result of the encounter with theother or, to be even more precise: as a result of the “experience” of being addressedby another (human) being” (Biesta 2017: 5).
Also, in closing his lecture Biesta emphasized the following:“Such a world-centered approach to education can never guarantee that students willencounter an address, nor can it predict where the address may come from” (Biesta
2018: 11).
Here Biesta points to very important ideas: (1) passive experience, or the passivity ofexperience, (2) the relationship of experience to the formation of meaning (meaning
cannot be formed without a relationship with the other or the world), (3) the
retrospectiveness of experience acquiring meaning (meaning can only be spoken of as aresult), and (4) helplessness, beyond-one’s-control-ness, fragility, and logics and ethics ofThematic Research: Rethinking Teaching: Toward the Reconstruction of (Philosophy of) Education

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the weak.
If we trace the etymology of “experience,” that is, “ex-periri,” we find that it means “totry to do something,” “to go through perils,” and “suffering.” Therefore, in the first place
we cannot establish the meaning of experience in advance, namely, we cannot “guarantee”
nor “predict” anything. Lévinas suggested that, in contrast to knowledge which gives
preference to certainty or experience before living (éprouver avant de livre) and turns
experience into something quantifiable, experience is a passive event in which one issubjected to or “caught up in the world” (s’engager dans le monde) (Lévinas 2005: 75f.).
Michel Foucault, in his later years, was also interested in the genealogy of “experiencesof spiritualité,” which cannot be reduced to scientia or knowledge, such as “the trials in
one’s own life” and “the form one’s life takes” (Foucault 2001; Foucault 2009). Modern
science replaces this natural form of experience with knowledge of things that are certainor knowledge that is predictable. However, experience is, as Giorgio Agamben suggested,essentially, pathei mathos (πάθει μάθος); that is, the essence of human experience is “tolearn through pathos” (Agamben 2001; Ono 2018a; Ono 2018b; Ono 2018c).
Along with deeply understanding the unique significance of humans’ passivity,
beyond-one’s-control-ness, and weakness, thought must be created that gives full
attention to the possibility of human co-existence, cooperativity, communality andcommunity; the existential condition of human beings with com-passion. With suchthought we can criticize education that encloses students in a shut-off autonomous world
as well as education that quantifies experience and only emphasizes knowledge based onthat which can be said in advance with certainty (Ono 2018e). Also, we can open up apath that updates understandings of education and provides a vision of education that
includes its diverse potential. We are attempting to do this in our joint research project
entitled “The Patho-logical Turn of Education” (Okabe & Ono eds. 2019), and the abovediscussed four perspectives in Biesta’s research provide us with inspiration andencouragement—probably in ways that we have not even yet become aware of.

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Thematic Research: Rethinking Teaching: Toward the Reconstruction of (Philosophy of) Education